David Weber - In Enemy Hands

Honor paused in her conversation with Walker, as if she felt McKeon's eyes upon her. She turned to smile at him, and he made a small, semisaluting gesture with his glass. She opened her mouth as if to speak, then hesitated, eyes refocusing as she gazed over his shoulder. McKeon looked a question at her, but she said nothing, so he half-turned in his chair to look in the same direction and felt his eyebrows arch in surprise.

Alex Maybach, McKeon's personal steward, hovered over two junior stewards as they wheeled an enormous confectionery monstrosity through the pantry hatch. The cake was at least a meter long, baked in a stylized shape obviously intended to represent Prince Adrian , and blazed from end to end with burning candles, and a corner of his surprised brain wondered how Maybach could possibly have kept the thing hidden from him.

He was still wondering when someone gave the signal and the entire dining cabin burst into what a particularly charitable observer might have called singing. McKeon wheeled back to his guests, trying to glare while those of them with sufficient seniority grinned like loons and those too junior for such levity did their best to maintain straight faces, and Nimitz's clear "Bleek!" of delight cut through the chorus.

"—birrrthday to yoouuu!"

The song came to a merciful close in a burst of applause, and McKeon shook his head at Honor.

"How did you manage it?" he demanded under cover of the general hilarity. It never occurred to him to doubt that she was behind it. His own officers might have been willing to ambush him in the wardroom, but none of them would have had the nerve to try the same thing in his own quarters. Yet not even she could have planned this without using the com to arrange things, for until the scrubber unit failed, she'd had no way to know she would be aboard at the proper time. So how had she kept him from realizing that she was in communication with his people while she set it up?

"You remember that long parts list and technical data file Commander Sinkowitz downloaded to your Engineering Department?" she asked with a lurking smile, and he nodded. "Well, I got him to hide a personal message to Commander Palliser in it, and Palliser relayed it to Alex. Surely you didn't think we were going to let you get away without inflicting some sort of party on you!"

"I could hope," he mock-growled, and she laughed, then held out her hand to him. The background noise faded as he gripped it, and she glanced at the others, then looked back at him.

"Happy birthday, Captain, and best wishes from all of us," she said simply. Someone started to clap again, but she raised her left hand in a silence-restoring gesture and went on. "I'm certain your ship's company has its own gift for you—it better have one if it knows what's good for it!—but I brought along a little something of my own."

She released McKeon's hand and reached out towards Robert Whitman. The armsman took three crisp strides forward and drew a small, gaily wrapped package from his tunic pocket. He handed it to his Steadholder with military precision, then came to attention at her shoulder. Andrew LaFollet braced simultaneously to attention against the bulkhead behind her, and the general air of festivity abruptly focused into something much more intense as Honor extended the package to McKeon.

He took it from her slowly, his expression a silent question, but she merely shook her head and gestured for him to unwrap it. Her armsmen's formality and her own change of demeanor made McKeon's nerves tingle, and he untied the ribbon and quickly ripped away the wrapping to reveal the simple black box under it. He glanced back up at Honor, then opened the box slowly and inhaled sharply. Its velvet-lined interior held a pair of RMN collar badges, but instead of the single gold planet of a captain of the list, each of them bore a pair of planets, identical to the ones on Honor's collar. He stared at them for a dozen heartbeats, then shook himself and met Honor's gravely smiling eyes.

"Congratulations, Alistair," she said. "It won't be official until we return to Yeltsin, and I know it's supposed to be bad luck to let the cat out of the bag early. But the Admiralty sent out confirmation just before we sailed, and High Admiral Matthews knew I'd want to be the one to tell you, so he passed me the word. When you suffered your Environmental casualty, I decided your birthday was the perfect time to tell you."

No one else said a thing, and as McKeon felt the curiosity hovering in the cabin like an extra presence he realized that she hadn't told anyone else, either. Only her armsmen and—he looked past her at the smile on Andreas Venizelos' face—her chief of staff had known, and he swallowed hard, then turned his wrist so the others could see into the box. There was a moment of intense silence, and then the applause began.

"Congratulations, Skipper!" Commander Gillespie snatched up his glass, raising it to his captain, and other glasses rose around the table. "Hey, if they're kicking you upstairs, does this mean I get command of the Adrian ?" Gillespie demanded.

"Not unless BuPers is really desperate!" McKeon growled back. Gillespie laughed, and McKeon reached into the box to brush one collar pin with a fingertip. "Me, a commodore?" He shook his head wonderingly, and Honor laid a hand gently on his arm.

"You deserve it," she said, quietly but firmly, "and I'm glad for you. Of course, this will make you awfully senior to command a heavy cruiser division, so I'll probably lose you, but I'm still glad. And given the way Eighth Fleet's expanding, Admiral White Haven will probably find something for you to do without sending you home."

"I—" McKeon paused, unable to decide exactly what he'd meant to say, then reached down to put his own hand over the one on his forearm. "Thank you," he said, equally quietly. "That means a lot, coming from you."

She didn't reply, only squeezed his arm for a moment, then sat back with a smile, and he cleared his throat.

"All right, you lot! That's enough racket!" He shook his head sternly at his unrepentant juniors. "This is no way for the senior officers of a Queen's ship—or their allies!—to carry on. Not only have you demonstrated unruliness and a severe case of lèse majesté, but a total ignorance of proper birthday party protocol!" He swept them all with twinkling gray eyes, then pointed at the candle strewn cake. "The guest of honor is supposed to blow out his candles to begin the celebration, and unless you people get your priorities straightened back out, I won't share my cake with any of you!"

It was early the next morning by Prince Adrian 's clocks when Convoy JNMTC–76 reached its next port of call. Honor had enjoyed her visit to McKeon's ship, and especially the success of her surprise party. Organizing it on such short notice without tipping off an alert skipper like McKeon had been much more complicated than her casual explanation might have suggested, and she felt rather smug at how well she'd pulled it off. But the truth was that she'd become even more spoiled than she'd realized. Alex Maybach had done his best, but she'd missed MacGuiness' unobtrusive services when she turned in after the party. She'd especially missed the rich cocoa that magically appeared just as she was getting ready for bed, regardless of how late that happened to be, and she was rather looking forward to getting "home" again once the convoy reentered normal-space and Scotty could chauffeur her back to Alvarez .

At the moment, however, she stood with Venizelos on Prince Adrian 's command deck, Nimitz on her shoulder, and watched McKeon's crew prepare for translation out of hyper. Andrew LaFollet had found a corner into which to tuck himself, though he looked as if he were suffering from a touch of claustrophobia, and Honor didn't blame him. She really would have preferred to have at least McGinley present, as well, but there simply wasn't room to fit her ops officer onto the cramped bridge without getting in the way of Prince Adrian 's command crew. Honor supposed she could have insisted on cramming Marcia in anyway. Some flag officers would have done so, at any rate, but without some overridingly important justification, Honor refused to crowd the people who had to be there to operate the ship, however inconvenient it was for her.