"What about him?" Honor's tone was guarded, and Henke snorted.
"I happen to know you're the only flag captain in this task force who's never been invited to a conference aboard Gryphon. Why don't I think that's a simple oversight?"
"There hasn't been any real reason for him to call me on board," Honor said uncomfortably, and Henke's snort was even louder.
"It's odd enough when an admiral doesn't even invite a newly arrived battlecruiser captain aboard for a courtesy call, Honor. When that captain is also the flag captain of his primary screening formation and she isn't invited to a single flagship conference, it goes beyond odd."
"Perhaps." Honor sipped her wine, then sighed and set the glass aside. "No, not 'perhaps,'" she admitted. "I thought at first I was in the doghouse over Fusion Three, but that stopped making sense weeks ago."
"Exactly. I don't know what his problem is, but it's obvious there is one. And our people are beginning to notice. They're not happy that their captain seems to be being snubbed by their admiral."
"It doesn't reflect on them!" Honor said sharply.
"It's not the reflection on them they're worried about," Henke replied quietly, and Honor shifted uncomfortably.
"Well, there's not much I can do about it. He outranks me by a few light-months, if you recall."
"Have you spoken to Admiral Sarnow about it?"
"No—and I'm not going to, either! If Admiral Parks has some sort of problem with me, it's my problem, not the Admiral's."
Henke nodded. Not in agreement, but because she'd already known what Honor would say.
"In that case, what's on the schedule for tomorrow?" she asked.
"More sims," Honor replied, accepting the change of subject with a small, grateful smile. "A convoy exercise. First we get to defend it against 'raiders operating in unknown strength,' then we get to turn around and attack it—against a dreadnought division escort."
"Ouch! I hope this 'convoy's' going to be carrying something to make our lumps worthwhile."
"Ours not to reason why," Honor said solemnly, and Henke chuckled.
"Well, if we're going to be invited to make the supreme sacrifice for Queen and Kingdom tomorrow, I'd better emulate Nimitz and get some sleep." She started to rise, but Honor's raised hand stopped her. "Something else?" she asked in surprise.
"As a matter of fact..." Honor began, but then her voice trailed off. She lowered her eyes to the linen tablecloth and fidgeted with a fork, and Henke leaned back in her chair in sudden speculation as her commanding officer's face turned bright, hot pink.
"You remember when I needed advice back at Saganami Island?" Honor said after a moment.
"What sort of advice? Multi-dee math?"
"No." Honor's blush darkened. "Personal advice."
Henke managed to keep her eyes from widening and nodded with only a brief hesitation, and Honor shrugged.
"Well, I need some more of it. There are some... things I never learned, and now I wish I had."
"What sorts of things?" Henke asked cautiously.
"All sorts!" Honor surprised her yet again with a breathless little laugh and dropped the fork to fling up her hands. Her face was still flushed, but it was as if the laugh had demolished some internal barrier, and she smiled. "As a matter of fact, I need some help with makeup, Mike."
"Makeup?" The word started to come out sharp with astonishment, but Henke choked the incredulity out of her voice just in time. And she was thankful she had when she saw the sparkle in Honors dark eyes.
"I could have asked my mom about it anytime, and she would've been delighted to teach me. Maybe that was part of the problem. She would have decided the 'ice maiden' had finally melted, and God only knows where that would've ended!" Honor laughed again. "Did I ever tell you what she wanted to give me as a graduation present?"
"No, I don't think you did," Henke said, and deep inside she felt a sense of wonder. For all their closeness, there'd always been a guarded core to Honor Harrington—one Henke suspected only Nimitz had ever managed to breach—and this bright-eyed, almost breathless Honor was a stranger to her.
"She wanted to buy me an evening with one of the best male 'escorts' in Landing." Honor shook her head and chuckled at Henke's expression. "Can't you just see it? A great big, towering gawk of an ensign with fuzz for hair out on the town with some glamorous hunk! Lord, I would have died! And just imagine what the neighbors would've thought if they'd ever found out!"
Henke began to chuckle herself as she pictured it, for Sphinx was far and away the most straight-laced of the Kingdom's planets. Professional, licensed courtesans were a fact of life on Manticore. It might not be considered quite the thing to seek their services, but everyone knew "someone else" who had. They weren't particularly unusual on Gryphon, either, but they were very rare birds indeed on Sphinx. Yet she could easily believe Allison Harrington would have done just that. Honors mother was an immigrant from the Sigma Draconis System's Beowulf, and the sexual mores which prevailed there would have curled a native born Manticoran's hair, much less a Sphinxian's!
The women faced one another across the table, and their chuckles turned into full-throated laughter as each saw the almost fiendish delight in the other's face. But then Honor's laughter slowly ebbed, and she leaned back once more with a sigh.
"Sometimes I wish I'd let her go ahead and do it," she said wistfully. "I could have trusted her to pick the best for me, and maybe then—"
She broke off and waved her hand, and Henke nodded. She'd known Honor for almost thirty T-years, and in all that time, there had never been a man in her life. Never even a hint of one, which seemed even odder somehow in light of her easy relationships and often close friendships with male officers.
And yet, perhaps it wasn't so strange. Honor didn't seem to have any problem regarding herself as "one of the guys," but it was painfully obvious she still thought of herself as the "towering gawk" and "hatchet-faced horse" of her girlhood. She was wrong, of course, but Henke understood how little right or wrong mattered in terms of self-image. Then there'd been Pavel Young, the only man on Saganami Island ever to express an interest in Ms. Midshipman Harrington—and the man who'd tried to rape her when she wasn't interested in return. Honor had kept that whole episode locked inside, but Lord only knew how it had affected a girl who already thought she was ugly.
Yet Henke suspected there was another reason, as well—one Honor herself wasn't aware of—and that reason was Nimitz. Mike Henke remembered the desperately lonely girl who'd been assigned as her dorm mate at Saganami Island, but that loneliness had extended only to other people. Whatever else happened to her, Honor had always had the assurance—not just the belief, but the proof—that one creature in the universe loved her... and that creature was an empath. Henke had known several people who'd been adopted by treecats, and every one of them seemed to demand more from personal relationships. They demanded trust.
Absolute, total trust, and very few human beings were prepared to extend that to anyone. Henke had always known that. It was one reason she was so immensely flattered to possess Honor's friendship, but she sensed, if only dimly, how that need for trust could cripple anything more than friendship, for a treecat's companion knew when another's trust—and trustworthiness—were less than absolute. In a sense, the price they paid for their bonds with their 'cats was a certain coolness, a distance, from other humans. Especially lovers, with their bottomless capacity to hurt them.