"Roll port! All batteries, engage!"
"Engage with forward batteries!" Simonds yelled desperately.
He had no choice. Thunder was too slow on the helm, and he'd compounded his original mistake. He should have completed the turn, gotten around as quickly as he could to interpose his wounded port sidewall while he rolled to block with the top or belly of his wedge; instead, his helmsman obeyed the orders he'd been given, checking the turn to come back to port in the same plane, and Thunder hung for a few, short seconds bow-on to Fearless.
The battlecruiser's forward armament spat fire, two powerful spinal lasers blazing frantically at the target suddenly square across her bow. The first salvo wasted itself against the belly of Fearless's wedge, but the cruiser was rolling like a snake. Thunder fired again, pointblank energy fire ripped through her sidewall, and armor was no protection at that range. Air and debris vomited into space, but then her surviving broadside came to bear.
Four lasers and three far more powerful grasers went to continuous rapid fire, and there was no sidewall to stop them.
Matthew Simonds had one flaming instant to know he'd failed his God, and then HMS Fearless blew his ship apart around him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Honor Harrington stepped into a trill of bosun's pipes, and Nimitz stiffened on her shoulder even as her good eye widened in surprise. Admiral White Haven had summoned her for a final, routine meeting before she took Fearless home, but Ambassador Langtry waited beside him in Reliant's boat bay. That was odd enough, yet no lesser personages than Admiral Wesley Matthews and Benjamin Mayhew himself stood with them, and speculation frothed through her even as her hand rose in automatic salute.
Hamish Alexander waited for Protector Mayhew and Sir Anthony Langtry to find chairs, then sat behind his desk and considered the woman before him.
Her treecat was obviously restive, but she looked calm, despite the surprise she must be feeling, and he remembered the first time he'd seen her. She'd been calm then, too, when she'd come aboard to report her damages and casualties with an indifference which had repelled him. She hadn't even seemed to care, as if people were simply part of a ship's fittings, only weapons to be expended and forgotten.
Her emotionless detachment had appalled him ... but then the report came in that Commander McKeon had somehow gotten almost a hundred of his crew away in his single surviving pinnace, and the mask had slipped. He'd seen her turn away, trying to hide the tears in her good eye, the way her shoulders shook, and he'd stepped between her and his staff to block their view and guard her secret as he realized this one was special. That her armor of detachment was so thick because the pain and grief behind it were so terrible.
His memory flickered ahead to another daythe day she'd watched in stone-faced silence as the men who'd raped and murdered Madrigal's crew faced a Grayson hangman. She hadn't enjoyed it, but she'd watched as unflinchingly as she'd headed into Saladin's broadside. Not for herself, but for the people who would never see it, and that unyielding determination to see justice done for them had completed his understanding of her.
He envied her. He was twice her age, with a career to make any man proud, including the freshly accomplished conquest of the Endicott System, yet he envied her. Her squadron had been harrowed and riven, its two surviving units battered into wrecks. Nine hundred of her crewmen had died, another three hundred were wounded, and she would never, ever believeas he would never have believed in her placethat the death toll couldn't have been lower if she'd been better. But she was wrong, as he would have been wrong, and nothing could ever diminish what she and her people had done. What her people had done for her because of who and what she was.
He cleared his throat, and as she turned to look at him, he was struck once more by the clean, sharp-edged attractiveness of her. He felt it even with half her face paralyzed and her anachronistic eye patch, and he wondered what her impact must have been like before she was wounded.
"Obviously, Captain Harrington," he said quietly, "I asked you aboard for something besides the traditional pre-departure meeting."
"Indeed, Sir?" Her slurred soprano was no more than politely inquiring, and he smiled slightly and tipped his chair back.
"Indeed. You see, Captain, there've been a lot of dispatches flowing back and forth between Grayson and Manticore. Including," he let his smile fade, "a rather sharp protest from the Honorable Reginald Houseman."
Her steady regard never flickered.
"I regret to inform you, Captain, that the Lords of Admiralty have placed a letter of reprimand in your personnel file. Whatever the provocation, and I grant there was provocation, there is no excuse for a Queen's officer's physically attacking a civilian representative of the Crown. I trust it will never be necessary for me to remind you of that again?"
"So do I, My Lord," she said, and her tone meant something very different from his. There was no arrogance in it, no defiance, but neither was there any apology, and he leaned across the desk.
"Understand me, Captain," he said quietly. "No one can dispute your accomplishments here, nor is any officer of the Queen inclined to waste much sympathy on Mr. Houseman. My concern is not for him. It's for you."
Something happened in that cool, brown eye. Her head cocked a bit to one side, and her treecat mimicked the movement, fixing the admiral with his unblinking green gaze.
"You're an outstanding officer." Her sharply carved face blushed, but she didn't look away. "But you have the vices of your virtues, Captain Harrington. Direct action isn't always the best policy, and there are limits. Overstep them too often, whatever the provocation, and your career will end. I would consider that a tragedy, both for you and for the Queen's service. Don't let it happen."
He held her gaze for a moment, and then she bobbed a small nod.
"I understand, My Lord," she said in an entirely different voice.
"Good." Alexander leaned back again. "Now, however, at the risk of undoing my effort to put the fear of God into you, I must inform you that, aside from your tendency to pummel her diplomats, Her Majesty is quite pleased with you, Captain. In fact, I understand she intends to express her thanks to you in person upon your return to Manticore. I imagine that should, um, offset any potential consequences of your reprimand."
Her blush turned dark and hot, and for the first time since he'd met her, she looked almost flustered.
"I also have to inform you that a certain Captain Alfredo Yu, lately in the service of the People's Republic of Haven, was picked up in Endicott. He's requested asylum from the Crown." Harrington straightened in her chair, her eye very intent, and he nodded. "I'll be sending him home aboard your ship, Captain, and I expect you to show him the courtesy due his rank."
She nodded, and he nodded back.
"That completes what I needed to say to you, but I believe Protector Benjamin has something to say." Alexander turned politely to Grayson's ruler, and she followed suit.
"I do, indeed, Captain Harrington," Mayhew said with a smile. "My planet can never adequately thank you for what you did for us, but we are keenly aware of our debt, not simply to you but to your crews and your Kingdom, and we desire to express our gratitude in some tangible fashion. Accordingly, with Queen Elizabeth's permission through Sir Anthony, I ask you to sign our draft treaty of alliance in her name."