David Weber - In Enemy Hands

"Thank you, Sir." It came out in a whisper, and MacGuiness blinked hard as he looked around the empty cabin. "It doesn't seem—" he began, then stopped, clenched his jaw, and turned his head away, concealing his face from the captain. "Thank you for telling me, Sir," he said in a strangely breathless voice. "If you'll excuse me, I... I've got some things I have to take care—"

He pulled away from the hand on his shoulder and walked quickly into Lady Harrington's sleeping cabin. The hatch closed behind him, and Greentree gazed at it for several silent seconds, then sighed and turned back to the hatch. He was certain Mattingly must have guessed the reason for his visit to MacGuiness, but that wasn't going to spare Greentree the task of telling him, as well. Of being the official spokesman for the news none of Lady Harrington's people wanted to hear.

Behind him, in Honor Harrington's sleeping cabin, James MacGuiness sat in a chair, staring up at the gemmed scabbard of the Harrington Sword above the crystal cabinet which held the Star of Grayson and the Harrington Key. He made no sound, and his body never moved, and the tears sliding down his face fell as silently as rain.

Honor sighed, looked up from the book she'd been pretending to read for the last hour or so, and rubbed her eyes wearily. She sat for a moment longer, then laid the book aside, swung her long legs off the narrow bunk, crossed to the center of the single large compartment she shared with Marcia McGinley, Geraldine Metcalf, and Sarah DuChene, and began a series of stretching exercises.

McGinley looked up from the chess problem she was currently working through. She watched Honor for a moment without speaking, then glanced at DuChene and raised an eyebrow. The astrogator nodded in answer to the unvoiced question, and the two of them rose to join Honor. She moved aside to give them a little more space, and the three of them circled about one another in the strangely graceful almost-dance the limited deck space enforced upon their exercises while Metcalf watched them from her own bed. There was no room for her to join them until one of them sat down, and she waited patiently, but Nimitz was unprepared to see a perfectly good—and stationary lap—go to waste. He launched himself from the foot of Honor's bed to Metcalf's, and the tac officer chuckled as he sprawled across her legs and turned his belly fur up to be petted.

Honor watched the others from the corners of her eyes as she exercised and wished longingly for even a little more space. There wasn't really enough room for her to have gone through her training katas properly even if she'd been alone. With the others crowding in on her, she probably would have inflicted serious bodily injury on someone if she'd tried. Yet for all the inconvenience of being squeezed so tightly together, the part of her which eroded a little further every day under the dead weight of her helplessness was grateful the others were present. Not that any of them wanted to be here, but at least she and Nimitz didn't have to face the added burden of isolation which proper military courtesy would have imposed upon them in a larger vessel.

Despite the vast gulf between Honor's rank and theirs, McGinley, Metcalf, and DuChene were the next most senior female POWs, and it was impossible for the Peeps to offer any of their prisoners—even Honor—private quarters. Citizen Captain Bogdanovich had apologized on Citizen Rear Admiral Tourville's behalf for crowding the four of them together, but Count Tilly was only a battlecruiser. There was only so much space to go around, and however spartan, the compartment—intended by the ship's designers to provide berthing space for six junior officers—was preferable to a cell in the brig.

At first, Metcalf and DuChene had been more than a little uncomfortable at being thrown in with Honor... and Nimitz, of course. They'd seemed to feel it was somehow their fault that she'd been denied the privacy they were convinced she deserved, and the difference in their ranks had only made things worse. She'd done her best to disabuse them of the notion that they were to blame for anything that had happened, and McGinley's presence had helped. Neither Metcalf nor DuChene had ever served with Honor before. Aside from the brief contacts they'd had during her visits aboard Prince Adrian , they'd been total strangers, but McGinley, as Honor's operations officer, offered a sort of bridge. She held the same rank as the other two, yet she was also comfortable with her role as the second most important member of Honor's staff, and her existing working relationship with Honor had gradually extended itself to Metcalf and DuChene. Nothing could make their situation anything other than irregular and awkward, but the others had settled down after the first few days.

The difference in their ranks remained, of course, even in their new and strained circumstances. Honor was not simply their superior but their CO, the senior officer of all the Allied POWs, which required her to remain aloof from the others. She could never hope to be "one of the girls," but they'd fallen into an almost comfortable relationship, and Honor was glad, for she was self-honest enough to admit that in her current situation she needed any sense of stability she could get. Her contact with the other POWs was virtually nonexistent, and a sense of being disconnected—of never knowing exactly what was happening to people for whom she still felt responsible—added to the gnawing fear of the future which continued to eat at her.

Nimitz, on the other hand, seemed almost content... but appearances were deceiving. He couldn't hide his sense of being trapped fromHonor, although his cheerful opportunism would have fooled anyone who lacked her link to his emotions. He'd gotten to know McGinley well aboard Alvarez ; now he imposed shamelessly upon her for petting and grooming. In fact, he'd deigned to accept the ministrations of all three of Honor's junior officers. She might almost have felt abandoned if she hadn't realized how he'd turned petting or playing with him into a sort of occupational therapy for them... and if his willingness to luxuriate unabashedly in their attentions hadn't been such a major factor in overcoming Metcalf's and DuChene's original discomfort.

Besides, watching Nimitz manipulate the others out of their depression helped distract Honor from her own. And her fellow prisoners weren't the only people the 'cat had charmed. Indeed, Shannon Foraker visited Honor—and Nimitz—so regularly that Honor worried about her. Too much familiarity with a Manticoran officer was likely to cause a Peep officer serious trouble, and she felt a little guilty for not having hinted to Foraker that she might want to keep her distance. But the truth was that she was too grateful for the citizen commander's visits to discourage her, and Tourville had decided to use his ops officer as his official liaison with Honor.

Foraker was certainly a good choice, if his object was to be sure he'd picked someone he could trust to see to it that his prisoners were properly treated, but Honor had come to suspect the citizen rear admiral of an additional motive. Despite her promotion, the ops officer hadn't changed much since Honor had met her in Silesia, and she clearly wanted to repay Honor for how well she'd been treated aboard HMS Wayfarer . But what superiors in most navies might have seen as an honorable intention on her part could be extremely dangerous to an officer in the present People's Navy, and that, Honor suspected, was the real reason Tourville had made her his liaison. Since she'd been ordered to see to the prisoners' well-being, her superiors could hardly come down on her for being conscientious in the discharge of her duties.

It was unlikely the ops officer realized what Tourville was up to (always assuming, of course, that Honor had figured it out properly), but that blind spot was part of her charm. She had an almost childlike innocence. Not foolishness or stupidity, but a refusal—or perhaps an outright inability—to let her personal relationships be dictated by the ideologically-fired pressures swirling through the People's Navy. She seemed to possess absolutely none of the constructive paranoia which helped guide many of her fellows through the minefields about them, and the thought of what might have become of her if her skill and talents had made her one bit less valuable to her superiors was enough to send a chill down Honor's spine. No doubt it was silly of her to worry herself over what could happen to an officer in an enemy navy, especially when those very talents made the officer in question uniquely dangerous to her own side, but it was hard to remember that when Foraker made a point of reminding Count Tilly 's cooks of Honor's special dietary needs or stopped by on her limited off-duty time to play chess with McGinley, or feed Nimitz celery, or give Metcalf the painting supplies which had been recovered from her quarters aboard Prince Adrian .