Mission of Honor-ARC (75 page)

"Of course not." She felt the tears flowing, and the guilt she'd felt before, the sense of failure, was a knife in her heart. "Mother was right. She usually is."

"I know," he said quietly, changing position to pull her face down against his shoulder while Nimitz and Samantha cuddled tightly against her.

"Somehow," she heard herself say, and the steel had gone out of her voice, replaced by dead, defeated flatness, "I never thought about this. Never worried about it—not really. I
thought
I had, but I know better now. I never really let myself think that it could have happened. That I could have
let
it happen."

"You didn't!" he said softly, fiercely. "There wasn't one, solitary
damned
thing you could have done to stop this Honor."

"But we should have. We were
supposed
to. It's our
job
, Hamish, and what
use
are we if we can't even do our jobs?"

Hamish Alexander-Harrington heard the grief, the pain, in that dead soprano voice, and he understood it. Better than he'd ever understood anything in his life, in that moment, he understood exactly what his wife was feeling, for he'd felt it himself. But his arms tightened around her, and he shook his head hard.

"You aren't thinking a single thing
I
haven't already thought," he told her. "If it was anyone's 'job,' Honor, it was the Admiralty's. So, trust me, love, there's not one single, ugly, hateful thing you can think about yourself that I haven't already thought about myself. But we're both wrong. Yes, keeping this from happening is what our lives have been about ever since we put on the uniform. But you weren't even
here
when it happened, and
nobody
saw it coming. Nobody was asleep at the switch, Honor. Nobody ignored anything. Every damned one of us did our jobs, exactly the way we were supposed to, and this time, it just wasn't enough. Somebody got past us because they came at us in a way no one could have predicted."

She stiffened in his embrace, and even without her own empathic ability, he could literally feel her effort to reject what he'd just said, to continue to punish herself. But he wouldn't let go—not with his arms, not with the fierce embrace of his heart. He held her ruthlessly, knowing she could feel what he felt, knowing she couldn't escape his love.

For a long, long moment the tension held, and then she sagged against him, and he felt the deep, almost silent sobs shuddering through her. He closed his eyes again, holding her against himself, cradling her in his arms and his love.

He never really knew, later, how long they sat there. It seemed to last forever, yet finally, she shifted slightly, pillowing her head on his shoulder, and he tugged a handkerchief from his pocket and dried her eyes.

"Better?" he asked very quietly.

"Some," she replied, although she wasn't at all certain that was actually the truth. "Some."

"I'm sorry, love," he said again, softly.

"I know." She patted the arm still around her gently. "I know."

There was another long moment of silence, and then she inhaled deeply and sat up straight.

"I'll miss them," she told her husband, and her voice remained soft, but her eyes were not. They glittered, still bright with tears, yet there was a darkness beneath that glitter, a hardness beneath those tears.

Hamish Alexander-Harrington knew his wife as only two humans who had both been adopted by a pair of mated treecats ever could. He'd seen her deal with joy and with sorrow, with happiness and with fury, with fear, and even with despair. Yet in all the years since their very first meeting at Yeltsin's Star, he suddenly realized, he had never actually met the woman the newsies called "the Salamander." It wasn't his fault, a corner of his brain told him, because he'd never been in the right
place
to meet her. Never at the right time. He'd never had the chance to stand by her side as she took a wounded heavy cruiser on an unflinching deathride into the broadside of the battlecruiser waiting to kill it, sailing to her own death, and her crew's, to protect a planet full of strangers while the rich beauty of Hammerwell's "Salute to Spring" spilled from her ship's com system. He hadn't stood beside her on the dew-soaked grass of the Landing City duelling grounds, with a pistol in her hand and vengeance in her heart as she faced the man who'd bought the murder of her first great love. Just as he hadn't stood on the floor of Steadholders' Hall when she faced a man with thirty times her fencing experience across the razor-edged steel of their swords, with the ghosts of Reverend Julius Hanks, the butchered children of Mueller Steading, and her own murdered steaders at her back.

But now, as he looked into the unyielding flint of his wife's beloved, almond eyes, he knew he'd met the Salamander at last. And he recognized her as only another warrior could. Yet he also knew in that moment that for all his own imposing record of victory in battle, he was not and never had been her equal. As a tactician and a strategist, yes. Even as a fleet commander. But not as the very embodiment of devastation. Not as the Salamander. Because for all the compassion and gentleness which were so much a part of her, there was something else inside Honor Alexander-Harrington, as well. Something he himself had never had. She'd told him, once, that her own temper frightened her. That she sometimes thought she could have been a monster under the wrong set of circumstances.

And now, as he realized he'd finally met the monster, his heart twisted with sympathy and love, for at last he understood what she'd been trying to tell him. Understood why she'd bound it with the chains of duty, and love, of compassion and honor, of pity, because, in a way, she'd been right. Under the wrong circumstances, she could have been the most terrifying person he had ever met.

In fact, at this moment, she
was
.

It was a merciless something, her "monster"—something that went far beyond military talent, or skills, or even courage. Those things, he knew without conceit, he, too, possessed in plenty. But not that deeply personal something at the core of her, as unstoppable as Juggernaut, merciless and colder than space itself, that no sane human being would ever willingly rouse. In that instant her husband knew, with an icy shiver which somehow, perversely, only made him love her even more deeply, that as he gazed into those agate-hard eyes, he looked into the gates of Hell itself. And whatever anyone else might think, he knew now that there was no fire in Hell. There was only the handmaiden of death, and ice, and purpose, and a determination which would not—
could
not—relent or rest.

"I'll miss them," she told him again, still with that dreadful softness, "but I won't forget. I'll
never
forget, and one day—
one
day, Hamish—we're going to find the people who did this, you and I. And when we do, the only thing I'll ask of God is that He let them live long enough to know who's killing them."

"Thank you for agreeing to see me, My Lady. I realize this is a difficult time for you."

"Don't thank me, Judah," Honor replied, standing behind her Landing mansion's desk as James MacGuiness escorted Admiral Judah Yanakov into her office. MacGuiness' composed, professional expression might have fooled a lot of people, but not someone who knew him . . . and Yanakov did. Honor tasted the Grayson admiral's concern for her steward's grief, as well as her own, and she smiled sadly, almost wistfully, as she gripped Yanakov's extended hand. "It's 'a difficult time' for a lot of people right now."

"I understand, My Lady."

Yanakov looked at her searchingly, not trying to hide his concern, and she met his gaze squarely. She was fairly certain he was one of the handful of people who'd figured out she could actually sense the emotions of those about her, although she wasn't at all sure whether he realized she could do it on her own, without Nimitz's presence. In any case, he'd never made any attempt to hide his respect and his genuine affection for her from her, and there was a clean, caring flavor to his worry about her.

Of course, there was something else, as well. She'd expected that when he requested a face-to-face meeting on such short notice.

"Have a seat," she invited, and he settled into the indicated chair, looking out with her across the waters of Jason Bay through the crystoplast wall. "Can we offer you something?" she added, and he shook his head.

"I think we're all right then, Mac," she said, looking up at MacGuiness, and the steward managed an almost normal-looking smile before he bowed slightly and withdrew. She watched him go, then turned her own attention back to the crystoplast.

There was a storm coming in, she thought, gaszing at the black clouds rolling towards the city across the angry whitecaps. A storm that mirrored the one in her own soul.

The final, official count of fatalities was still far from complete, but she knew only too well what it had been for her own family. Aside from her mother and father, the twins, and Hamish, Emily, Raoul, and Katherine, she had exactly five close surviving relatives in the Star Empire. That number would be reduced to four very soon now, because Allen Duncan—her Aunt Dominique's husband—had decided to return to Beowulf. There were too many memories on Sphinx, too much pain when he thought about his wife and all four of his children. Much as he'd come to love Manticore, he needed the comfort of his birth world and the family he had there.

Beyond him, her immediate family, her cousin Sarah, who'd suddenly become the second Countess Harrington, and Benedict and Leah Harrington, her Aunt Clarissa's surviving children, her closest living Manticoran relative was a fifth cousin. She knew how unspeakably lucky she was to still have her parents, her brother and sister, and her own children, but it was hard—
hard—
to feel grateful when all the rest of her family had been blotted away as brutally and completely as Black Rock Clan.

Nimitz stirred unhappily on his perch by the windows as that thought flickered across her mind, and she tasted his echo of the grief which had swept through every treecat clan on Sphinx. Honor knew, now, that Nimitz and Samantha's decision to move their own family to Grayson had been part of a deliberate, fundamental change in treecat thinking. She suspected that Samantha had played a greater role in pushing through that change than she was prepared to admit to the two-legs, but it had clearly been a reaction to the 'cats' awareness of the dangers human weaponry posed. Yet that awareness had been as close to purely intellectual as a treecat was likely to come. It had been a precaution against a threat they could theoretically envision, but not something the vast majority of them had ever
expected
to happen.

That had changed, now.

Frankly, Honor wouldn't have blamed the 'cats if they'd decided that what had happened to Black Rock Clan was proof their long ago ancestors had been right to have nothing to do with humans. If they'd blamed even their own humans for letting things come to such a pass in a war which was none of the treecats' affair and turned their backs on any future relationship with them.

They hadn't done that. Perhaps it was because they were so much like humans, in some ways. Or perhaps it was because they
weren't
—because they were such uncomplicated, straightforward people, without humanity's unfailing ability to seek someone close at hand to blame for disasters. Whatever the reason, their response had been not simply grief, not simply shock, but anger. Anger directed not at their own two-legs, but at whoever was really responsible. Cold, focused,
lethal
anger. Honor had always known, far better than the rest of humanity, just how dangerous a single treecat's anger could be. Now the bitter fury of the entire species was directed to a single end, and if some people might have found the thought that a race of small, furry, flint-knapping arboreals could pose any serious threat to someone who commanded superdreadnoughts was ludicrous, Honor Alexander-Harrington did not. Perhaps that was because
she
was too much like a 'cat, she thought. She knew, without question or doubt, where her own anger was going to lead in the end, and so she understood the treecats only too well.

She gave herself a mental shake. She'd been wandering down dark and dangerous side roads in her own thoughts over the past few days. She wasn't alone in that—she knew that perfectly well—but she forced herself to back away from the cold iron of her own icy hatred, from the distilled essence of her vengeful fury, and concentrate once again on the more natural storm moving in across Jason Bay.

The surf would be piling higher against the seawall of the marina where her sloop
Trafalgar
was currently moored, she thought after a moment, and made a mental note to have someone check the boat's security. She really ought to do that herself, but there was no way she'd have time for it, even assuming Spencer or any of her other armsmen would have been prepared to let her out of the house long enough to attend to it.

That thought leaked even through the clinkers and ash of her rage and twitched the corners of her mouth in a temptation to smile. Spencer hadn't been happy about her decision to take
Trafalgar
out all by herself immediately after she'd finished her face-to-face briefings with Elizabeth at Mount Royal Palace. He'd tried to insist she ake at least one of her armsmen along, but she'd flatly refused. She hadn't been able to prevent him from flying top cover with no less than three sting ships, a tractor-equipped air car, and a standby SAR diver, but at least she'd been able to keep him high enough above her for her to find a shadow of the solitude she and Nimitz had needed so badly.

The weather had been blustery that day, too, if not as energetic as the Bay looked today, and it had been too long since she'd smelled saltwater and felt spray on her face. But
Trafalgar
's familiar motion, the kick of the wheel against her hands, and the sluicing sound of water as the sloop heeled sharply, burying her lee rail in a smother of racing white foam, while seabirds cried plaintively overhead, had reconnected her to the sea. And with that, she'd been reconnected to the continuity of life, as well. The deaths of her family, of Miranda and Farragut, and of Andrew, were not going to leave her unscarred, just as no comfort short of vengeance could ever truly slake her fury. She knew that. But her soul had been scarred before, and she'd survived. She would survive this time, too, just as she would find that vengeance, and scars and retribution were not the only things in the universe. The iodine-smelling wind, the way the loose ends of her braid whipped on its strength, the surging motion of the deck, and the song of wind slicing around the stays and humming in the mast had swept through her like the tide of life itself.