A quarter-second later, Battlecruiser Divisions 141 and 142 of the Peoples Navy ceased to exist.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Honor smiled a sleepy little smile into the darkness, listening to the slow, even breathing behind her, and her hand crept up to caress the wrist and forearm draped over her ribs. It was a shy caress, almost an incredulous one, and amusement at her own sense of wonder deepened her smile.
A soft noise came out of the dark, and her eyes turned unerringly to its source. The sleeping cabin's hatch had been closed when she dozed off. Now it stood ajar, and a thin edge of light leaked through it. It was dim, barely lightening the blackness, but it was enough. Two green eyes sparkled at her from the bedside desk, and she felt the deep, gentle approval behind them.
She touched the wrist again, smile trembling with mingled echoes of present joy and remembered pain as old memories stabbed, and, for the first time in years, she let herself face the things she'd chosen to suppress for so long.
Being Allison Harrington's daughter had been hard for a girl who knew she was ugly. Honor loved her mother and knew her mother loved her. Despite a career at least as demanding as a naval officer's, Allison had never been "too busy" to give her daughter warmth and love and support... but she'd also been petite and beautiful. And there Honor had been, knowing she would never match her beauty, that she would always be the out-sized freak, and secretly loathing the part of herself that couldn't quite forgive her mother for making her feel her plain-faced gawkiness.
And then there'd been Pavel Young.
Her smile disappeared as she bared her teeth in automatic reflex. Pavel Young, who'd done his hateful best to destroy what little illusion of attractiveness she'd somehow nourished and turn her wistful dreams of what might have been into something ugly and disgusting. But at least she'd known he was the enemy, known his attack had been born of hate and outraged ego, not something she'd somehow deserved. He'd left her feeling dirtied and defiled, but he hadn't quite finished her off. No, that had been left to a "friend."
The remembered sorrow and crushing shame of a long-ago afternoon poured through her. It had been an agonizing thing, the most deeply hidden secret of an often desperately unhappy adolescence, for she hadn't realized until it was too late why Nimitz had taken such a dislike to Cal Panokulous. Not until she'd come smilingly, without knocking, into the dorm room of someone she thought loved her... and overheard the man who'd washed away the foulness of Young's touch chuckling over the com with an Academy classmate who knew them both over how "clumsy" she was.
She closed her eyes against the flood of long-denied anguish. Even after all these years, she'd never been able to admit how savagely that had wounded her. Not just the betrayal, but the terrible, cutting blow to a teen-aged girl who'd already been shamed by a would-be rapist. A girl whose mother was beautiful and who knew she was ugly. Who'd been so desperate for someone to prove she wasn't that she'd ignored Nimitz's warning only to discover how horribly one human being could wound another.
Never again. She'd sworn to herself that it would never happen again, just as she would never let him know she'd overheard. She'd simply fled, for if she'd confronted him, he would either have lied and denied it or laughed and admitted it... and in either case, she would have killed him with her bare hands. Yet, in a way, she'd been almost grateful. He'd warned her what could happen, shown her that no man would ever have more than a crude and casual interest in bedding someone as clumsy and ugly as she, and so she'd put any thought of its ever happening out of her mind.
She touched that warm, gentle hand again, pressing it to her ribs, absorbing its warmth like some pagan charm against devils, and her eyes closed tighter. She'd always known most men were decent. No one could be adopted by a 'cat and not know that, but she'd built her walls anyway. She'd hidden not just a part of herself but the reason she hid that part, even from the best of them, for she'd had to. Friends, yes; friends she would die with or for, but never lovers. Never. She'd cut herself off from that risk—cut herself off so completely she'd actually been content, never consciously realizing what she'd done—because she couldn't let anyone, especially herself, know how deeply the shamed girl still hiding within the determined naval officer had been wounded. Because she couldn't let anyone guess that one thing, at least, in the universe hurt so much, frightened her so completely, that she dared not confront it.
And so she'd gone her own way, cool and disengaged, faintly amused by the romantic entanglements she saw about her but totally untouched by them. She'd known it worried her mother, but her mother was the last person she could ever have discussed it with, and Allison Harrington didn't know what had happened to her daughter at Saganami Island. Without that knowledge and with a set of cultural baggage so different from that of a typical Sphinxian, there was no way she could have guessed what Honor chose not to admit even to herself, and Honor had been glad it was so. She'd actually been content, in a wistful sort of way, for she'd had Nimitz, and she'd accepted that she would never have—or need, or even truly want—anyone else.
Until now.
Paul Tankersley's slow breathing didn't change, but his hand responded even in his sleep. It slipped up her ribs and cupped her breast like a warm, friendly little animal.
Not passionately, only tenderly. His warmth pressed against her spine, his breath gusted on the back of her neck, and her fingers clasped his hand against her as her nerves recalled the smooth, incredible heat of his skin, the silken fineness of his hair.
She'd wanted to come here tonight, yet she'd been terrified, as well. It seemed silly now, but the decorated war hero, the captain whose tunic sparkled with ribbons for valor, had been afraid, and she'd agonized over bringing Nimitz. She'd needed the 'cat. Much as she'd trusted Paul, as much as she'd wanted him, she'd needed Nimitz's ability to protect her, less against Paul than against her own fear of still more betrayal. Her insecurity had shamed her, but she couldn't simply reject it, even though she'd known how few humans realized how utterly disinterested 'cats were in human sexuality and feared Paul might feel as if she'd brought a voyeur.
Yet Paul hadn't objected to Nimitz any more than he'd commented on her cosmetics, though his eyes had lit at the sight of Mike's efforts. She'd felt his emotions through Nimitz while they ate, and this time she'd clung to that awareness rather than discourage the 'cat from linking them. She'd tasted the pleasant, somehow tingling edge of his desire, like the smoky lightning of old whiskey, but there'd been so much more behind it. Things she had known with absolute certainty no man would ever feel for her.
Her pulse had calmed—or perhaps simply raced for another reason—and, for the first time she could recall, she'd been glad to let someone else take charge. Someone who understood the mysteries which had always confused and frightened her. And when the meal was over, she'd actually grinned when Paul informed the 'cat that bedroom doors were intended to assure privacy.
That was the moment, she thought now, luxuriating in the comfortable darkness, when she knew, absolutely and beyond doubt, that she'd been right about Paul Tankersley, for Nimitz had simply risen high on his true-feet with a flirt of his tail to reach the door button. He'd opened the hatch and walked unconcernedly out into the main cabin, leaving her alone with Paul in the clearest possible proof that he trusted this man.
Yet for all that, she'd been stiff and wooden at first. The old inadequacies had cut too deep, made her too aware of her ignorance. She was forty-five T-years old, and she didn't know what to do. Didn't even know where to begin! The courage it took to reveal that to a man had dwarfed what it had taken to sail Fearless into Saladin's broadsides at Yeltsin, but she'd known, somehow, that if she didn't risk herself now, she never would.