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It was Truman's turn to nod, but the worry was back in her eyes, because time wasn't something "we" didn't have; it was something Grayson and Captain Harrington might already have run out of.

The lift slid to a halt and the door opened onto the flag bridge's hustle and bustle. Alexander's task force was still shaking itself into orderthree of his battlecruisers had been transferred abruptly to him to replace ships unready for instant departurebut Captain Hunter, his chief of staff, noted his presence. Hunter said something to the admiral's ops officer and crossed quickly to the lift, holding out his hand to Truman.

"Alice. I heard Apollo's damage was wicked, but it's good to see you again. I only wish it were under other circumstances."

"Thank you, Sir. I do, too."

"Come into the briefing room, Byron," Alexander said. "I think both of us need to go over Commander Truman's story with her in some detail."

"Of course, Sir."

Alexander led the way into the briefing room and waved his juniors into chairs.

"I'm afraid I haven't met Captain Harrington, Commander," he said. "I know her record, but I don't know her or her present situation, so I want you to begin from the beginning and tell us everything that happened from the moment you first entered Yeltsin space."

"Yes, Sir." Truman drew a deep breath and straightened in her chair. "We arrived on schedule, My Lord, and"

Alexander let her voice roll over him, listening as much to how she spoke as to what she said. His mind worked clearly and coldly, isolating bits of data, noting questions to be raised, filing other answers away, and under his concentration was that icy, personal core of fear.

For despite all the risks Truman had taken, the odds were very high that Honor Harrington and all of her people were already dead, and if they were, Hamish Alexander was about to begin the war Manticore had feared for almost forty years.

* * *

"Skipper?"

Honor looked up from her paperwork as Venizelos stuck his head in through the open hatch.

"Yes, Andy?"

"I thought you'd like to know we've got Laser Four back upsort of. There's still a glitch in the fire control runs somewhere, and the crew's going to have to update the on-mount computers manually, but the bay's vacuum-tight again and all the test circuits are green."

"Well done, Andy!" Honor smiled with the right side of her mouth. "Now if you and James could just get the gravitics back up ... ?"

She let her voice trail off on a teasing note, and he grimaced.

"Skipper, the difficult we do immediately; the impossible takes a shipyard."

"That's what I was afraid of." Honor waved at a chair, and the exec eyed her covertly as he parked himself in it.

She looked better, now that quick-heal was fading the horrible contusion which had disfigured her face. The left side was still frozen and dead, but Venizelos was getting used to that. And though her left eye's vision was as impaired as Montoya had feared, the neat black eye patch with which she'd replaced its bulky dressing gave her a sort of raffish toughness.

Yet it wasn't her appearance that mattered, he thought. She'd been madder than hell when she woke from her first sleep in fifty-three hours to discover Montoya and MacGuiness had slipped a mickey into her cocoa. For a while, Venizelos had thought not even the doctor's sworn oath that he could have had her back on her feet in less than fifteen minutes had Thunder of God turned up would keep her from brigging both of them. But it had also put her to sleep for over fifteen hours, and deep inside she must have realized how desperately she'd needed that rest.

Venizelos hadn't known what Montoya intended, but if he had known, he would have drugged her cocoa himself. She'd been tearing apart before his eyes, and he'd been terrifiedboth for her and for all the people who needed her so badly. It had been dreadful enough when she learned of Admiral Courvosier's death; after what happened to Madrigal's people, it had become terrible to watch. He couldn't blame her for her hatred, and he'd understood her guilt, even if he didn't share her cruel self-conviction that she'd failed the Admiral, but he'd also known they needed her back. If it hit the fan, they needed Honor Harrington on Fearless's bridge, working her magic for them all once more, not an exhausted automaton who'd worn herself into a stupor.

"Well" she leaned back, and her voice pulled the exec out of his thoughts "I suppose we're as ready as we're going to get before she turns up."

"You really think she's coming, Skipper? It's been over four days. Wouldn't they've been here by now if they were going to come?"

"You'd think so, yes."

"But you don't, do you?" Venizelos asked, and his eyes narrowed as she shook her head. "Why not, Skipper?"

"I couldn't give you a logical reason." She folded her arms beneath her breasts, her single eye dark and deep. "Anything they do in Yeltsin at this point will only make their own situation worse. If they destroy us or nuke Grayson, the Fleet will turn them into a memory. Even if the Masadans don't know that, the Peeps do. And if they were going to do anything, they should already have done it without giving us time to make repairs and get set, much less giving a relief from Manticore time to get here. And yet ..."

Her slurred voice trailed off, and Venizelos shivered deep inside. The quiet stretched out until he cleared his throat.

"And yet, Ma'am?" he asked quietly.

"She's out there," Honor said. "She's out there, and she's coming." Her eye focused on his face, and the right side of her mouth quirked at his expression. "Don't worry, AndyI'm not turning mystic in my old age! But think about it. If they were going to be rational, they should have pulled out the instant the squadron got back. They didn't. Certainly they should have run instead of standing to fight when we came after them at Blackbird! And then" her voice turned dark and grim "there's the way they treated Madrigal's people."

She fell silent for a moment, brooding down at the table once more, then shook herself.

"The point is, these aren't rational people. They don't even live in the same galaxy as the rest of us. I can't build a nice, neat enemy intentions analysis, but from what we've seen of them so far, I thinkno, I know they won't change now."

"Not even if the Peeps pull Thunder of God out on them?"

"Now that," Honor admitted, "is the one thing that might stop them. But the question is whether or not the PRH can pull her out, and after what happened at Blackbird, I'm not too optimistic on that point." She shook her head again. "No, I think she's coming. And if she is, we should be seeing her soon. Very soon."

CHAPTER THIRTY

Cramming them in had been even harder than Yu had expected. Every spare compartment was packed to the deckhead with Masadan soldiers and their personal weapons. A man couldn't turn around without stepping on one of them, and Yu would be vastly relieved when he off-loaded the first consignment.

Their numbers put a strain on Thunder's environmental plant, as well, which was what had prompted the current meeting. Yu, Commander Valentine, and Lieutenant Commander DeGeorge, Thunder's purser, sat in the captain's day cabin, going over the figures, and DeGeorge was an unhappy man.

"The worst thing, Skipper, is that most of them don't even have vac suits. If we suffer an enviro failure, it's going to be ugly. Very ugly."