Of course, she thought smugly, it had been an even better step for some than for others. Eve Chandler was already licking her chops in anticipation of her next conversation with Invincible's tac officer. Queen's Cup for gunnery, indeed! And Ivan Ravicz was as happy as a treecat with his own celery patch. His new fusion plant had performed flawlessly, and Agamemnon had been pushed to the limit matching the acceleration of Nike's superbly tuned drive. Even George Monet had been seen to crack a smile or two, and that constituted an historic first for the com officer.
Besides, Commodore Banton had already promised that her ships' companies were buying the beer.
Honor noted the gleam in Henke's eyes and smiled fondly as her exec turned back to her own panel. Mike had a right to be pleased. It was her training programs which had kept Nike in such top-notch fighting trim, after all.
But there was more to it than training alone. Exercises and simulations could do many things, but they couldn't provide that indefinable something more that separated a crack crew from one that was simply good. Nike had that something more. Perhaps it came from the mysterious esprit de corps which always seemed to infuse the ships of her name, the sense that they had a special tradition to maintain. Or perhaps it came from somewhere else entirely. Honor didn't know, but she'd felt it crackling about her like latent lightning, begging her to use it, and she had. She hadn't even thought about her maneuvers—not on a conscious level; they'd simply come to her with a smooth, flawless precision. Her people had executed them the same way, and they had every right to feel pleased with themselves.
It helped that Commodore Banton was a good sort, of course. Honor could think of several flag officers who would have reacted far less cheerfully to the drubbing Banton had just taken, especially when they discovered they'd been beaten not by their admiral but by his flag captain. But she suspected Banton shared her own suspicions about the Admiral's motive for declaring himself a casualty. Honor might be his flag captain, yet she was also junior to six of the seven other battlecruiser captains under his command, and it was the first chance she'd had to show her stuff anywhere but in the simulators. Sarnow had deliberately stepped aside to let her win her spurs in the squadron's eyes, and she wanted to preen like Nimitz at how well it had gone.
In fact, she thought, leaning back to steeple her fingers under her pointed chin, "preen" was exactly what she intended to be doing very shortly... among other things. It was Wednesday, and the squadron was going to rendezvous with the repair base well before supper. She intended to arrive in Paul's quarters with a bottle of her father's precious Delacourt and find out just what his laughing hints about hot oil rubdowns were all about.
The corners of her mouth quirked at the thought, her right cheek dimpled, and she felt her face heating up, and she didn't care at all.
"Captain, I'm picking up a hyper footprint at two-zero-six," Commander Chandler announced. "One drive source, range six-point-niner-five light-minutes. It's too heavy for a courier boat, Ma'am."
Honor looked at the tac officer in faint surprise, but Chandler didn't notice as she queried her computers and worked the contact. Several seconds passed, and then she straightened with a satisfied nod.
"Definitely a Manticoran drive pattern, Ma'am. Looks like a heavy cruiser. I won't know for sure till the light-speed sensors have her."
"Understood. Keep an eye on her, Eve."
"Aye, aye, Ma'am."
A cruiser, hmmm? Honor leaned back in her chair once more. One cruiser wouldn't make much difference, but Van Slyke would be happy to see her. She would bring his squadron up to full strength at last, and the rest of the task group would probably see her as a harbinger of the far more powerful reinforcements they'd been promised. Besides, she'd probably have dispatches on board, and even the tiniest scrap of fresh information would be a vast relief.
She reached up and drew Nimitz down into her lap, rubbing his ears and considering the com conference the Admiral had scheduled for tomorrow morning. There were several points she wanted to make—not least how lucky she'd been to get away with that EW drone trick—and she slid further down in the chair as she considered the best (and most tactful) way to express them.
Several minutes ticked away, and the quiet, orderly routine of her bridge murmured to her like some soothing mantra. Her mind toyed with phrases and sentences, maneuvering them with a sort of languid, catlike pleasure. Yet her dreamy eyes were deceptive. The soft chime of an incoming signal from the com section brought her instantly back to full awareness, and her gaze moved to Lieutenant Commander Monet's narrow back.
The com officer depressed a button and listened to his earbug for a moment, and Honor's eyes narrowed when his shoulders twitched. If she hadn't known what an utterly reliable, totally humorless sort he was, she might actually have thought he was chuckling.
He pressed another sequence of buttons, then swiveled his chair to face her. His face was admirably grave, but his brown eyes twinkled slightly as he cleared his throat.
"Burst transmission for you, Captain." He paused just a moment. "It's from Captain Tankersley, Ma'am."
Faint, pink heat tingled along Honors cheekbones. Did every member of her crew know about her... relationship with Paul?! It was none of their business, even if they did, darn it! It wasn't as if there were anything shady or underhanded about it—Paul was a yard dog, so even the prohibition against affairs with officers in the same chain of command didn't come into it!
But even as she prepared to glower at the com officer, her own sense of the ridiculous came to her rescue. Of course they knew—even Admiral Sarnow knew! She'd never realized her nonexistent love life was so widely noticed, but if she'd wanted to keep a low profile she should have thought of it sooner. And the twinkle in Monet's eyes wasn't the smutty thing it could have been. In fact, she realized as she sensed the same gentle amusement from the rest of her silent bridge crew, he actually seemed pleased for her.
"Ah, switch it to my screen," she said, suddenly realizing she'd been silent just a bit too long.
"It's a private signal, Ma'am." Monet's voice was so bland Honors mouth twitched in response. She shoved herself up out of her chair, cradling Nimitz in her arms and fighting her rebellious dimple.
"In that case, I'll take it on my briefing room terminal."
"Of course, Ma'am. I'll switch it over."
"Thank you," Honor said with all the dignity she could muster, and crossed to the briefing room hatch.
It slid open for her, and as she stepped through it, she suddenly wondered why Paul was screening her at all. Nike would reach the base in another thirty minutes or so, but the transmission lag at this range was still something like seventeen seconds. That ruled out any practical real-time conversation, so why hadn't he waited another fifteen minutes to avoid it?
An eyebrow arched in speculation, and she deposited Nimitz on the briefing room table as she sat in the captains chair at its head and keyed the terminal. The screen flashed a ready signal, and then Paul's face appeared.
"Hi, Honor. Sorry to disturb you, but I thought you'd better know." Her eyebrows knitted in a frown as his grim expression registered. "We just got an arrival signal from a heavy cruiser," his recorded voice continued, then paused. "It's Warlock, Honor," he said, and she went rigid in her chair.
Paul looked out of the screen as if he could see her reaction, and there was compassion in his eyes—and warning—as his image nodded.