A soft tone warned of their impending arrival, and she jammed the comb into a pocket and tugged the hem of her tunic down. Nimitz leapt up onto her shoulder and purred in her ear while she adjusted her beret, and there was just time for a quick, approving inspection of her reflection in the polished hit wall before the words "BOAT BAY ONE" flashed on the location display.
"Thank you—both of you," she said from the side of her mouth, and stepped through the door as it opened.
"Ah, there you are, Dame Honor!" The shadow of tension on Sarnow's dark face betrayed his own surprise at their abrupt summons to the flagship, and Honor wondered for a moment if he was being sarcastic. But he smiled, and his next words took any possible rebuke out of his comment. "I'm surprised you managed to get back aboard so quickly with so little warning."
He nodded towards the open pinnace hatch, and Captain Corell ducked through it. Honor followed the chief of staff, and Sarnow was hard on her heels. They settled into their seats while the flight engineer closed the hatch, made a quick but thorough visual inspection of the seal, and spoke into the boom mike of her com headset.
"Hatch secure," she told the flight deck, and Honor settled Nimitz in her lap as the departure light flashed on the cabin's forward bulkhead. The mechanical latches retracted, a puff of thrusters drifted them clear of the buffers, and then a harder surge of power—imperceptible through the pinnace's onboard grav generator—sent them streaking out of the bay like a scalded cat.
Auxiliary thrusters carried the pinnace's impeller safety perimeter clear of the ship, the pilot lit off his main drive, and Sarnow gave a tiny sigh of relief as the small craft went instantly to over two hundred gravities of acceleration.
Honor glanced across at him, and he smiled and tapped his chrono.
"I always hate being the last to arrive for a conference," he admitted, "but unless Admiral Konstanzakis' pilot's figured out how to take a pinnace into hyper, we should beat her by at least five minutes. Good work, Captain. I never thought you'd make it back aboard in time."
"I tried not to let any snow melt under my feet, Sir," she said with a small, answering smile, and he chuckled.
"So I noticed." He cocked an eye at his chief of staff, but Captain Corell was busy consulting a memo pad in her lap, and he leaned a bit closer to his flag captain and lowered his voice.
"And may I also say, Lady Harrington," he went on in an admirably grave tone, "that I've never seen you look more becoming."
Honor's eyebrows flew up at the totally unexpected—and unprecedented—compliment, and his smile turned into a mustache-quivering grin.
"I see supper agreed with you," he said even more softly... and winked at her.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Honor's own sense of urgency echoed around her as she stepped into the late-night bustle of HMS Gryphon. No warship ever truly shuts down, but even spacers tend to retain a sense of "day" and "night" as dictated by their clocks. It may not make much difference to the people who actually have the watch at any given moment, but it is too easy for the human animal to lose its temporal place without some sort of agreed upon referent. And as a general rule, a flagships "day" is defined as "the Admiral is up." When he retires, so do most of his staff and its myriad attachments, and the entire tempo of the flagship seems to relax with an appreciable breath of gratitude.
But no one was relaxed tonight. Gryphon's boat bays were brilliant with light and busy with side parties as flag officer after flag officer arrived aboard, and Honor didn't envy her boat bay control officer. Juggling that many small craft was a herculean task, even with the docking capacity of a superdreadnought.
She led Captain Corell out the hatch of Nike's pinnace behind Sarnow and hid a smile, despite her own tension, as the lieutenant assigned to greet them snapped to attention. The side party followed her example, bosun's pipes trilled, Marines saluted—nothing could have been more punctilious, but the lieutenants harassed expression suggested another pinnace was coming in right behind them... as soon as their boat got out of the way, that was.
"Welcome aboard, Admiral Sarnow. Lady Harrington. Captain Corell. I'm Lieutenant Eisenbrei. Admiral Parks extends his compliments and asks you to follow me to the briefing room, please."
"Thank you, lieutenant." Sarnow gestured for her to lead the way, and Honor could almost hear Eisenbrei's sigh of relief as she shepherded them out of the boat bay gallery. Another lieutenant tried not to hover too obviously to one side, and Eisenbrei gave her colleague a nod and made a small shooing gesture towards the gallery even as Nike's pinnace undocked. The other lieutenant vanished at a trot, Eisenbrei led her charges briskly away, and Honor managed—somehow—not to laugh as Corell looked her way and rolled her eyes heavenward.
Gryphon's main briefing room was crowded, despite its size, and heads turned to glance at the newcomers as Honor and Corell followed Sarnow through the hatch. There were dozens of admirals, commodores, and senior captains, all glittering with braid, and Honor extended a silent but profound thanks to Henke and MacGuiness as she took in the hectares of dress uniforms awaiting her.
She brought her cybernetic eye's magnification up slightly, studying the assembly while they walked toward it, and she saw her own puzzlement and curiosity on most of those faces. Most but not all—and those which didn't look puzzled wore masked expressions that looked ominously like anxiety. Even fear.
Admiral Parks was bent over a holo display with a commodore—probably Commodore Capra, the chief of staff, she thought, noting the braided aiguilette hanging from his left shoulder—but he, too, looked up at their entry. Looked up and raised a hand, interrupting Capra in mid-sentence.
His eyes narrowed as he straightened. The distance was too great for anyone without the advantage of Honor's enhanced vision to notice it, but those cold, blue eyes clung to her for just a moment, and the lips below them tightened. Then Parks moved his gaze to Sarnow, and his mouth tightened still further before he made it relax.
Honor snapped her eye back into normal vision and schooled her own face into careful nonexpression, but mental warning signals buzzed, and Nimitz shifted uneasily. That wasn't the way an admiral looked at someone he was happy to see, and her memory replayed her week-old supper conversation with Henke. Parks didn't seem any too pleased with Admiral Sarnow, either, but he'd looked at Honor first. Did that mean she was somehow the source of his unhappiness with the admiral?
Sarnow, at least, seemed unfazed by any potential hostility. He led Honor and Corell across the deck to Parks, and his voice was respectful but relaxed when he spoke.
"Admiral Parks."
"Admiral Sarnow." Parks returned the greeting in a tone which sounded just a bit too normal against the background of an emergency fleet conference, but he extended his hand. Sarnow shook it, then nodded to his subordinates.
"Allow me to introduce Captain Harrington, Sir. I believe you've already met Captain Corell."
"Yes, I have," Parks replied, nodding at Corell, but his eyes were on Honor, and she sensed a tiny hesitation before he extended his hand to her turn. "Welcome aboard Gryphon, Lady Harrington."
"Thank you, Sir."
"Please, find your seats," Parks went on, returning his attention to Sarnow. "I expect Admirals Konstanzakis and Miazawa momentarily, and I'd like to get started as soon as they arrive."
"Of course, Sir." Sarnow nodded, but waved his subordinates on toward the huge conference table while he paused for a word with an admiral Honor didn't recognize. She and Corell found the chairs marked with their names, and Honor glanced around to confirm that no one was immediately at hand.