She'd sat flat on her backside, looking up at him in such astonishment he'd burst into laughter. She'd found herself laughing right back at himand then she'd gotten up and shown him a little trick she'd picked up aboard her last command from a Marine sergeant-major with more experience in the coup than she and Tankersley had between them. He'd gasped in surprise, then whooped in shock as he landed belly-down on the mat with her kneeling on his spine, and the final awkwardness had gone out of their relationship from that moment.
But she hadn't realized what might be replacing it, and she examined her own feelings with care and no small amount of shock.
"Well, we'll just have to show Captain Dournet he's wrong, won't we?" she said at last, her tone light, and lowered the concealing towel as she felt her flush fade. She smiled at him. "Which, of course, we can't do until you yard dogs get us put back together."
"Ouch!" He threw up a hand like a fencer acknowledging a hit. "We're doing the best we can, Ma'am. Honest. Cross my heart."
"Well, for a bunch of idle lay-about yard types, you aren't doing too badly," she allowed with a grin.
"Why, thank you! And while I'm thinking about it, you wouldn't happen to have time for a little sparring match with an idle lay-about, would you?" He smiled menacingly, and she shook her head.
"Sorry. I didn't even check in with Mike when I came back aboard. I just headed down here to soak, and now that I've done that, I've got about three megs of paperwork waiting in my cabin computer."
"Chicken."
"Merely industrious," she assured him. She gave him an airy wave and turned to leave, but he reached out and touched her shoulder.
"If you don't have time to spar," he said, his voice suddenly devoid of all teasing, "would you care to join me for supper tonight?"
Honor's eyes widened. It was a small thing, barely noticeable, but Nimitz sat up abruptly on the parallel bar, and his ears twitched.
"Well, I don't know" she began almost instinctively, then stopped herself. She stood there, feeling awkward and uncertain, and looked into his face intently. She'd gone to some lengths to convince Nimitz not to link her to others' emotions without warning, but just this once she longed for the 'cat's ability to read the feelings behind Tankersley's expression. For that matter, she wished she understood her own feelings, for her normal cool detachment seemed frazzled about the edges. She'd always avoided anything that even looked like an intimate relationship with a fellow officerpartly because it was a professional complication she could do without, but even more because her experiences in general had been less than happyyet there was something in his eyes and the set of his mouth...
"I'd be delighted to," she heard herself say, and fresh surprise washed through her as she realized she meant it.
"Good!" His smile wreathed his eyes in laugh wrinkles, and Honor felt a strange, answering bubble of silent laughter deep within her. "May I expect you around eighteen hundred, then, Lady Harrington?"
"You may, Captain Tankersley." She gave him another smile, then stepped across to the parallel bars, scooped Nimitz up, and headed for the dressing rooms.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Admiral of the Green Sir Thomas Caparelli, First Space Lord of the Royal Manticoran Admiralty, was a barrel-chested man with a weight-lifter's torso grafted onto a sprinters legs. Although he was going just a bit to pot these days, the athlete whose bruising, physical style had run Hamish Alexander's soccer team into the mud of Hopewell Fieldrepeatedlywas still recognizable. Yet his face was taut, the unabashed swagger which had characterized him as both captain and junior flag officer in abeyance, for the First Space Lord was a worried man.
He and his fellow officers rose as Allen Summervale, Duke of Cromarty, leader of the Centrist Party and Prime Minister to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth III, entered the conference room. The PM was tall and slim, like all the Summervales, and, despite prolong, his hair was silver and his handsome face deeply lined. Cromarty had spent over fifty T-years in politics and headed Manticore's government for fifteen of the last twenty-two, and every one of those years had cut its weight into him.
The Prime Minister waved his uniformed subordinates back into their seats, and Caparelli's jaw tightened as he saw who'd walked into the room behind Cromarty. Lady Francine Maurier, Baroness Morncreek, had every right to be here as the civilian First Lord of Admiralty. So did Chancellor of the Exchequer Lord William Alexander, the Government's second ranking member. But Alexander's older brother didn'tofficially, at leastand the First Space Lord tried not to glower as the Earl of White Haven found a chair of his own.
"Before we begin, Sir Thomas, I'd just like to mention that Earl White Haven is here at my request, not his." Cromarty's expressive, whiskey-smooth baritone had always been a potent political weapon, and his gentle announcement drew Caparelli's eyes to him. "As you know, he recently completed a survey of our frontier stations' readiness states for Admiral Webster. Under the circumstances, I felt his input might be of value."
"Of course, Your Grace." Caparelli knew he sounded grudging. It wasn't that he disliked the earl, he told himself. It was just that, athletics aside, Alexanderor White Haven, as he now washad always had a knack for making him feel he was competing out of his class, and the earl's succession to his father's titles, coupled with the prestige of his year-old conquest of the Endicott System, only made it worse.
"Thank you for your understanding." Cromarty's smile was so winning Caparelli actually felt much of his resentment seep away. "And now, Sir Thomas, may I hear your conclusions?"
"Yes, Sir." Caparelli gestured at Second Space Lord Patricia Givens, head of the Bureau of Planning, under whose control the Office of Naval Intelligence fell. "With your permission, Your Grace, Admiral Givens will brief us on the high points."
"Certainly." Cromarty nodded and turned his attention to Admiral Givens as she stood and activated the holo wall behind her, bringing up an enormous star map of the frontier between the Manticoran Alliance and the Peoples Republic of Haven. She stood with her back to the display, facing the people around the table, and drew a light wand from her pocket.
"Your Grace, Lady Morncreek, Lord Alexander." She nodded courteously to each of the civilians and smiled briefly at White Haven, but she didn't greet him by name. They were old colleagues and friends, but Patricia Givens had a strong sense of loyalty. She was on Caparelli's team now, and, despite the Prime Minister's explanation, the earl was an interloper today.
"As you know, reports are coming in of incidents all up and down our frontier." She pressed the remote built into her light wand, and a sparkle of blood-red lightsa dangerous, irregular line of rubies that arced around Manticore in a complete half-circleglittered in the display behind her.
"The first incident reported," Givens went on, turning and using her light wand to pick out a single red spark, "was the destruction of Convoy Mike-Golf-Nineteen, here at Yeltsin. It was not, however, the first incident to occur. We simply heard about it first because the transit time from Yeltsin to Manticore was shorter than for the others. The first known incursion into Alliance territory actually occurred here" the light wand moved southeast from Yeltsin "at Candor. Nineteen days ago, a light cruiser squadron, positively IDed by our sensors as Havenite despite its refusal to respond to our challenges in any way, violated the Candor System's territorial limit. Our local mobile forces were unable to generate an intercept vector, and the Peeps passed through the outer system, well within missile range of one of our perimeter com centers, without firing a shot, then departed, still without a word."