The water was warmer than Honor would have chosen... but then again, she was from Sphinx. She glided to the bottom, then curled briefly into a ball, straightened, and broke the surface with a gasp of delight. She shook her head to toss hair out of her eyes, got her bearings, and swam strongly over to the ladder. Principle, she decided, was a very fine thing, but there was something to be said for wallowing in the decadent privileges of rank, as well.
She grinned and started up the ladder, then paused, waist-deep in the water, as the hatch opened, Sarnow's staff was still aboard Gryphon, and she'd expected to have the gym to herself until their return.
The newcomer started through the hatch but stopped dead when he felt the cranked up pull of the grav plates. He wore a comfortably worn-looking exercise outfit, and he looked around quickly, his own surprise evident, then straightened his spine as he saw her standing in the water.
"Excuse me, Dame Honor," he said quickly. "I thought the gym would be unoccupied. I didn't mean to intrude."
"That's all right, Captain Tankersley." Honor finished climbing out of the pool. "And you're not intruding. Come on in."
"Thank you, Ma'am." Tankersley moved further forward to let the hatch close behind him, then looked around and whistled silently. "Admiral Sarnow wasn't joking when he said they'd given him his own playground, was he?"
"No, he wasn't," Honor agreed. "Just a second, and I'll turn the gravity back down."
"Don't bother, please. I often turn it up myself—when there's no one around to scream about it. That's one reason I was so grateful the Admiral invited me to drop by when I was off duty."
"It does make people a bit cranky," Honor agreed with a smile.
"Well, I can see their point, but I got into the habit at Saganami Island. I was on the unarmed combat team, and Chief MacDougal always had us Manticoran and Gryphon sissies work out under at least an extra quarter-gee."
"You were on the team?" Honor asked in surprise. "So was I! Which form did you train in?"
"The Chiefs favorite," Tankersley said wryly. "Coup de vitesse."
"Have you kept in training?' she demanded.
"Yes, Ma'am. Not as well as I'd like, but I've kept it up."
"Well, well, well," Honor murmured. "That's very interesting, Captain Tankersley. It just happens that I need a sparring partner. Interested?"
"Only if you promise not to hurt me," Tankersley said. Honor's eyebrows rose, and he grinned. "I've seen that footage from Grayson, Ma'am."
"Oh." Honor's cheeks heated, and she looked away. "I'd hoped people would forget about that."
"Good luck, Ma'am. It's not every day a Manticoran officer foils an attempt to assassinate a friendly head of state—and on camera, no less."
Honor shrugged uncomfortably. "It was really Nimitz's doing. If he hadn't felt their emotions and warned me, we'd all have been dead."
Tankersley nodded more soberly and glanced across the gym at Nimitz, who returned his gaze with all the hauteur of a holovid star.
"At any rate," Honor went on more briskly, "I still need a sparring partner, and if you're available... ?"
"Of course, Ma'am. I'd be honored."
"Good!" Honor held out her hand and he took it with a smile. She smiled back, but then she looked into his eyes and paused. There was something in them she wasn't accustomed to seeing. She couldn't quite put her finger on what that something was, but she was suddenly aware of how wet and clinging her thin unitard was. She felt her face heating again, and her own eyes fell as she released his hand with a sudden sense of awkwardness.
He seemed to feel it, too, for he looked away with a slight air of embarrassment. Silence hovered between them for a moment, and then he cleared his throat.
"By the way, Dame Honor," he said, an edge of strain shadowing his voice, "I've always wanted to apologize for what happened in Basilisk. I—"
"There's no need to apologize, Captain."
"I think there is, Ma'am," Tankersley disagreed quietly. He looked back into her face, his own expression serious.
"No, there isn't," she said firmly. "You happened to get caught in an old feud. You certainly didn't have anything to do with it, and there wasn't anything you could have done to prevent it."
"But I've always felt so dirty over it." Tankersley's eyes fell. "You see, I'd endorsed Captain Young's request for a refit before we knew anyone else had been assigned there. All his senior officers had."
Honor stiffened. She'd wondered why Young hadn't been relieved for leaving his station; now she knew. He must have learned of her assignment to Basilisk before she had, and he'd taken steps to cover himself when he abandoned the picket to her. A captain who arbitrarily pulled his ship off station for refit had better have a very compelling hardware problem to justify it. But if all of his department heads agreed his ship was in need of general overhaul, The Book authorized him to seek permission from his station's senior officer to return to the yard. As long as the senior officer in question approved, he couldn't be officially censured for abandoning his station... even if it later turned out the overhaul hadn't been necessary after all. And since Pavel Young had also been the senior officer on Basilisk Station, he could grant his own "request"—and leave Honor alone and unsupported—without ever quite violating the letter of the regs.
But his career couldn't have survived it when the station blew up in her face, family influence or no, if his officers hadn't signed off on his request as well.
"I see," she said after a moment. She picked up her towel and dried her hair, then wrapped it around her neck and draped its ends to cover her breasts. Tankersley stood silent, spine rigid, still looking away, and she reached out and touched his shoulder lightly.
"I see," she repeated, "but what I don't see, Captain, is any reason you should blame yourself for it." She felt his shoulder twitch and gave it a tiny squeeze before she removed her hand. "You couldn't have known what was coming when you endorsed his request."
"No," he said slowly, then sighed and turned back to her at last. "No, Ma'am, I didn't know what he was up to. As a matter of fact, I did know there was bad blood between you. I didn't know exactly why," he added hastily, "and, as I say, I didn't know you were coming when I signed off on his refit request. But I should have guessed he was up to something, and it never even occurred to me to wonder what. I suppose that's what I really blame myself for. I knew him, and I should have wondered, but to tell you the truth, all I wanted was to get away from Basilisk myself."
"Now that," Honor said with a grin that was only slightly forced, "I can understand! I was none too pleased to be sent there myself, and you'd already been stuck there for—what? A T-year?"
"Just about," he replied more naturally, and his mouth twitched in a grin of its own. "The longest year of my life, I think."
"I can imagine. But, seriously, I don't blame you or anyone but Young himself, and you shouldn't either."
"If you say so, Milady." The broad-shouldered captain surprised her with a formal bow that should have made her feel ridiculous as she stood looming a full head taller than him in her dripping unitard. But it didn't, somehow.
"Well, then!" she said, "You were on your way to exercise, and I've got to get back to my paperwork. When do you think you might be free for a match?"
"Tomorrow at twelve hundred would be good." He sounded relieved by the change of subject. "I've got a work crew scheduled to start pulling the outer hull plates under Fusion Three during the first watch, and I want to be there, but I should be clear by lunch."