David Weber - At All Costs

"Can you restore it?" Honor asked urgently.

"We're working on it," Henke replied. "The good news is that the damage appears to be in the control runs; the nodes themselves look like they're still intact, including the alphas. The bad news is that we've got one hell of a lot of structural damage aft, and just locating where the runs are broken is going to be a copperplated bitch."

"Can you get her out?"

"I don't know," Henke admitted. "Frankly, it doesn't look good, but I'm not prepared to just write her off yet. Besides," she managed another smile, this one almost normal looking, "we can't abandon very well."

"What do you mean?" Honor demanded.

"Both boat bays are trashed, Honor. The Bosun says she thinks she can get the after bay cleared, but it's going to take at least a half-hour. Without that-" Henke shrugged, and Honor bit the inside of her lip so hard she tasted blood.

Without at least one functional boat bay, small craft couldn't dock with Ajax to take her crew off. There were emergency personnel locks, but trying to lift off a significant percentage of her crew that way would take hours, and the battlecruiser carried enough emergency life pods for little more than half her total complement. There was no point carrying more, since only half her crew's battle stations were close enough to the skin of the hull to make a life pod practical.

And her flag bridge was not among the stations which fell into that category.

"Mike, I-"

Honor's voice was frayed around the edge, and Henke shook her head quickly.

"Don't say it," she said, almost gently. "If we get the wedge back, we can probably play hide and seek with anything heavy enough to kill us. If we don't get it back, we're not getting out. It's that simple, Honor. And you know as well as I do that you can't hold the rest of the task force back to cover us. Not with Bogey Three still closing. Even just hanging around for a half-hour while we try to make repairs would bring you into their envelope, and your missile defense has been shot to shit."

Honor wanted to argue, to protest. To find some way to make it not true. But she couldn't, and she looked her best friend straight in the eye.

"You're right," she said quietly. "I wish you weren't, but you are."

"I know." Henke's lips twitched again. "And at least we're in better shape than Necromancer," she said almost whimsically, "although I think her boat bays are at least intact."

"Well, yes," Honor said, trying to match Henke's tone even as she wanted to weep, "there is that minor difference. Rafe's coordinating the evacuation of her personnel now."

"Good for Rafe." Henke nodded.

"Break north," Honor told her. "I'm going to drop our acceleration for about fifteen minutes." Henke looked as if she were about to protest, but Honor shook her head quickly. "Only fifteen minutes, Mike. If we go back to the best acceleration we can sustain at that point and maintain heading, we'll still scrape past Bogey Three at least eighty thousand kilometers outside its powered missile range."

"That's cutting it too close, Honor!" Henke said sharply.

"No," Honor said flatly, "it isn't, Admiral Henke. And not just because Ajax is your ship. There are seven hundred and fifty other men and women aboard her."

Henke looked at her for a moment, then inhaled sharply and nodded.

"When they see our accel drop, they'll have to act on the assumption Imperator has enough impeller damage to slow the rest of the task force," Honor continued. "Bogey Three should continue to pursue us on that basis. If you can get the after ring back within the next forty-five minutes to an hour, you should still be able to stay clear of Bogey Two, and Bogey One is pretty much scrap metal at this point. But if you don't get it back-"

"If we don't get it back, we can't get into hyper anyway," Henke interrupted her. "I think it's the best we can do, Honor. Thank you."

Honor wanted to scream at her friend for thanking her, but she only nodded.

"Give Beth my best, just in case," Henke added.

"Do it yourself," Honor shot back.

"I will, of course," Henke said. Then, more softly, "Take care, Honor."

"God bless, Mike," Honor said equally quietly. "Clear."

The communicator on her desk buzzed, and she looked up from the report and pressed the acceptance key.

"Yes?"

"Your Grace," Harper Brantley's voice said, "you have a message."

"What is it?"

"We've just been informed that the First Lord and First Space Lord are aboard the midday shuttle flight, Your Grace. Their pinnace will dock with Imperator in thirty-seven minutes."

"Thank you, Harper."

Honor's courteous voice was calm enough to fool anyone who didn't know her very well indeed. Harper Brantley was one of those who did.

"You're welcome, Your Grace," he said quietly, and cut the circuit.

Honor sat back in her float chair, and Nimitz crooned comfortingly from his perch. She looked up and smiled, acknowledging both his love and his effort to cheer her, but they both knew he hadn't succeeded.

She looked back at her terminal, and the latest in the merciless progression of reports floating in its display. There was never an end to any Queen's officer's paperwork, and she'd found that was even truer after a resounding defeat than it was after a victory. In many ways, she was grateful. It gave her something to do besides sitting in the stillness of her quarters, listening to her ghosts.

Nimitz hopped down onto the desk and rose on his haunches, leaning forward to rest his true-hands on her shoulders while the tip of his nose just touched hers. He stared into her eyes, his own grass-green gaze as deep as the oceans of Sphinx they had sailed together in her childhood, and she felt him deep inside her. Felt his concern, and his scolding love as they both grappled with her sense of guilt and loss.

She reached out and folded her arms about him, holding him to her breasts while she buried her face in his soft, soft fur, and his croon sang gently, gently through her.

Honor stood in Imperator's boat bay, Andrew LaFollet at her shoulder, as the pinnace settled into the docking arms. The green light glowed, the inner end of the personnel tube opened, and the bosun's pipes shrilled as Major Lorenzetti's Marine side party snapped to attention.

"First Lord, arriving!" the intercom announced, and Hamish Alexander, Samantha on his shoulder, swung himself through the tube first, as befitted his seniority as Sir Thomas Caparelli's civilian superior.

"Permission to come aboard, Captain?" he asked, as Rafe Cardones saluted.

"Permission granted, My Lord."

"Thank you." Hamish nodded and shook Cardones' proffered hand. Then he stepped past the captain and his eyes met Honor's for just a moment before he held out his hand to her. She shook it without speaking, her empathic sense clinging to the concern and love in his mind-glow, acutely aware of all the other, watching eyes, as the bay speakers spoke again.

"First Space Lord, arriving!"

"Permission to come aboard, Captain?" Sir Thomas Caparelli asked in the ancient ritual.

"Permission granted, Sir," Cardones gave the equally ritualistic response, and Caparelli stepped across the painted line on the deck.

"My Lord, Sir Thomas," Honor said in formal greeting as she released Hamish's hand to shake Caparelli's in turn.

"Your Grace," Caparelli replied for both of them, and Honor tasted his emotions, as well. The anger she'd half dreaded and yet half desired was absent. Instead, she tasted sympathy, concern, and something very like compassion. Part of her was glad, but another part-the wounded part-was almost angry, as if he were betraying her dead by not blaming her for their deaths. It was illogical and unreasonable, and she knew it. And it didn't change her emotions one bit.