David Weber - Worlds of Honor

She looked deep into three young sets of eyes in turn, holding each of them until their owners nodded solemnly.

"Good." She leaned back in her chair and nodded at the older Hibsons. "Your parents and I have already discussed the need to schedule a few sessions with a counselor for all of you, but if you want someone else to talk to about it, come to me. And that includes you, Andrea, assuming I'm anywhere in com reach."

"I will, Ma'am," the blonde began, "and—"

"Excuse me. Is this a private party, or are drop-ins welcome?" a crisp soprano voice inquired.

Ranjit turned his head as the speaker stood in the open doorway. She was tall for a woman, with broad shoulders and short-cropped brown hair, and she wore the space-black and gold of the Royal Manticoran Navy with the cuff stripes of a lieutenant commander. All of that registered, but only at the corners of his mind, for she also had something else that reached out and seized his attention. It couldn't be what it looked like! He'd wanted to see one of them for as long as he could remember, dreamed of being adopted by one, but he'd never really expected ever to meet one of them, and especially not off Sphinx!

The fluffy-coated, six-limbed creature on the officer's shoulder turned its head to meet his own goggle-eyed stare. There was a moment of silence, and then the treecat bleeked and twitched its whiskers at him, obviously delighted by his stunned reaction to its presence.

"Commander Harrington!" Berczi said, and Ranjit's parents stiffened, as if they recognized the name. His mother released him to stand up as the teacher started to push herself awkwardly to her feet, but the woman in the doorway waved her back into her chair.

"Stay where you are, Major. I just dropped by for a word with Susan. And—" she glanced speculatively at Kalindi and Liesell "—her parents?"

"Yes. Yes, we are," Liesell said, and stepped forward to take the newcomer's hand in both of hers. "Thank you, Commander. Thank you . We can never repay you for what you've done."

"There's no need to repay me for anything, Ms. Hibson," the tall woman said gently. "It was Nimitz here who found Susan, you know, not me. If you want to thank anyone, thank him—and the people who actually dug Ranjit and Andrea out, of course. But to be perfectly honest, Susan would have done the job without me or Nimitz. She was less than five meters down when he sensed her, and there was no way five measly meters of snow were going to stop your daughter, Ma'am."

Susan blushed a bright, blazing scarlet—a hue so hot she could have used it to melt her way to rescue if it had been available at the time, Ranjit thought—and Liesell reached out and wrapped her arm tightly around her daughter's shoulders.

"I believe you're correct, Commander," she said with a wry smile. "Her father and I have noticed before that she can be just a bit on the stubborn side."

"So I've heard," Commander Harrington agreed. "Which brings me to the rather delicate matter of what I wanted to speak to her about."

"With me, Ma'am?" Susan said, and her tone was almost as big a surprise for Ranjit as the treecat's appearance. He'd become accustomed to the way his sister always spoke of the Navy—as the "chauffeurs" and "deck jockeys" whose sole job was to move important people like Marines around—but there was no sign of that now. She had addressed the tall officer in tones of profound respect, and as he heard it, Ranjit sensed that there was a great deal about their rescue that he hadn't been told yet.

"Yes." The tall woman looked consideringly down at Susan, and the 'cat on her shoulder joined her, cocking his head to peer thoughtfully at Ranjit's sister. "I thought you'd like to know what I just heard over at the CP," the woman said. "If your parents don't mind, of course."

"Mind what, Commander?" Kalindi asked.

"Well, I'm afraid it has to do with that stubbornness your wife just mentioned, Sir," Harrington said. "You see, the newsies are swarming all over the resort looking for human interest stories, and I'm afraid your daughter here is rapidly turning into the central heroine of the entire disaster. The quickie interview they did with her last night has gone out on live feeds and in all the 'faxes, and we've already heard back from Manticore about her."

"From Manticore?" Susan repeated. "About me? "

"Yes. You know, you really impressed everyone with the rescue teams. We all feel you showed a lot of nerve and determination, and you did a good job of helping us backtrack your tunnel to find Ranjit and Andrea, too."

She paused, and Ranjit watched bemusedly as Susan blushed yet again. The woman with the 'cat smiled ever so slightly, almond eyes gleaming as she enjoyed Susan's atypical tongue-tied silence. She let it stretch out for several seconds, then cleared her throat.

"It just happens," she went on, "that Major Stimson and Major Berczi are old friends, and the Major explained your, um, military ambitions to us. I believe you also said a little something about them to the newsies, didn't you?"

Susan darted an agonized look at her parents, then nodded, and Harrington shrugged. "Well, Major Stimson had already mentioned them to me, and I mentioned them to Captain Tammerlane—he's the skipper of my ship—and he passed them on up the chain in turn, and then the interview imagery hit the capital news net, and, well—"

She shrugged, grinning, and Susan turned her eyes to her brother in agonized embarrassment. She stared at him pleadingly, and he shook himself.

"And what –Ma'am?" he asked finally.

"Well, I understand that somehow your sister's plans got bucked all the way up the chain to the Commandant of the Corps," Commander Harrington told him.

"All the way—?" Ranjit's jaw dropped, and twisted back around to stare at his Susan.

"Yes, indeed. And according to the traffic over at the CP, General Ambristen was rather taken with her exploits himself. Sufficiently so, in fact, that on the recommendation of Major Berczi, Major Stimson, and myself, the Corps has already reserved a slot for her at OCS, assuming—" Harrington darted a moderately severe glance at Susan "—that she gets her grades up, of course."

" Really? " The word burst out of Susan like an explosion, and Harrington nodded with a chuckle.

"Really," she assured the girl. "But it really is contingent on your passing the academic requirements, too. May I assume that you'll be doing a little something about those grades Major Berczi mentioned to me?"

"Yes, Ma'am! I mean– Yes, of course I will!"

"Good. In that case, maybe you and I will serve together sometime."

"I'd . . . I'd like that, Ma'am," Susan said, suddenly almost painfully shy. "I'd like that a lot."

"Stranger things have happened," Harrington observed. Then she nodded to Andrea and Ranjit, shook hands once more with both of Susan's parents, sketched an abbreviated salute to Berczi, and disappeared.

Ranjit stared after her for a long, endless moment, then looked at his parents, but they weren't looking at him. They were looking at each other, with expressions that mingled resignation, pride, bittersweet laughter, and the admission that their long effort to divert Susan from the Marines had just turned into an abject failure. It was going to take them a while to deal with that and once more begin paying any attention to the rest of the world, and Susan was in even worse shape. She was simply standing there, staring off into space, and her entire face was one huge, beatific smile. There wasn't so much as a hint of intelligence in her bemused eyes, and Ranjit shuddered. She was going to be extremely difficult to live with for the next few weeks, or months— or years , he thought wryly—once she resumed interactive contact with the world about her. But that wasn't going to happen for a while, so he turned to Csilla Berczi.