David Weber - On Basilisk Station

"Only one," she said, and turned to McKeon. "We've just agreed we can cut down on the inspection flights. Can we restrict them to just the boarding shuttles?"

"I don't see any reason why we couldn't," McKeon said after a moment's consideration. "It's what they were built for, after all."

"In that case, I want all three of those pinnaces reassigned from the Government Compound to Fearless ," Honor told Isvarian. "With all three of them available, we can land Major Papadapolous's entire force in a single assault drop."

"And retain them all aboard ship without giving away our deployment plans in the meantime," Isvarian said with a nod.

"Precisely. Major?"

"Well . . ." Papadapolous seemed unaware he'd spoken as he peered back down at his display with puckered eyes, and she could almost see the thoughts racing through his brain. He started to speak again, only to pause once more, then nodded slowly.

"It's going to be messier, Ma'am," he warned, "and with all my people up here, there's going to be a lot more room for us to pick up on an incident late or bobble our coordination and let something through into the enclaves. That's what concerns me most, but we're not going to be able to integrate my squads with NPA formations without time for them to train in coordination with their parent units, either, so we're going to lose a lot of flexibility and responsiveness once we're down, too. Still, I think we can probably work something out." He rubbed his jaw, still staring at the holo, then looked up at Isvarian.

"Can you stay aboard another day or so, Major? We're going to have to rethink the entire ops plan, and I'd really value your input."

"I'll be happy to, Nikos." Isvarian rose to join his study of the holo. "And I'm not sure we'll lose quite as much flexibility as you think. We can still plan my people's original positions to tie into your eventual deployments, and maybe we can use First and Second Platoons as squad level reaction forces rather than trying for unit-by-unit integration."

"That's what I was thinking," Papadapolous agreed. "And then—" He broke off and looked at Honor with a hint of apology. "Sorry, Captain. The major and I can get into the nuts and bolts on our own time. I'll try to have a preliminary plan for you by the end of the day."

"That will be fine, Major," Honor told him. She rose and smiled at him and Isvarian. "I'm still impressed, gentlemen, and I have every confidence your final solution will work out equally well."

She gave them another smile and beckoned to McKeon. She and the exec walked out of the briefing room. Behind them, through the closing hatch, she saw the two officers they'd left behind hunched over the holo with their heads close together in earnest conversation.

Lieutenant Samuel Houston Webster hummed to himself as he worked his steady way through the mountain of routine signal traffic. Venerable and sacrosanct tradition required every communications officer to resent the paperwork his position entailed, but Webster was guiltily aware that he failed to measure up in that respect. There were days he resented the time it used up, yet the fact that he, alone of his ship's other officers, knew as much about Fearless's information flow as the captain tickled his ego. More than that, it was surprisingly difficult to resent anything he "had" to do for Captain Harrington.

His fingers danced over his console with practiced ease, and a small corner of his mind occupied itself with other matters even as he kept an eagle eye on the secure traffic he was breaking down into clear. The Captain was good people, he told himself. That was about the strongest accolade in his vocabulary, and very few of his superiors ever earned it. Webster wasn't vain or arrogant, but he was entirely aware that the fortunate accident of his birth meant he was almost bound to become a senior officer himself someday. As such, he'd discovered that he had a tendency to look at his superiors of the moment through two sets of eyes. One belonged to the very junior officer he was, eager to learn from their greater experience and example, but the other belonged to the future flag officer he intended someday to be, and that second set of eyes was more critical than his cheerful exterior might suggest.

He'd been very disappointed in Lieutenant Commander McKeon, for example. If anyone on board should have seen what the Captain was up to and helped her achieve it, it was her exec. But McKeon seemed to have come around, and Webster had made a very careful note of the way the Captain had avoided climbing all over him before he did. There'd been times he'd been a little upset with her for not jerking McKeon up short, but the final result she'd achieved with him had been an eye-opener.

It was funny, in a way. Captain Harrington was so quiet. The RMN had its share of characters, and Webster had known captains who could blister battle steel when they were ticked. Captain Harrington never even raised her voice, and he'd never once heard her swear. Not that her calm manner meant anyone but an idiot would ever take liberties with her. In fact, he'd been surprised to realize that her very quietness was even more effective precisely because it was so different from the fire and thunder another captain might have shown.

He admired that, just as he admired the way she maintained her distance from her subordinates, always there, always approachable, but never letting anyone forget that she was in charge. Yet at the same time, she could rattle someone's cage any time she chose—like the way she'd forced Rafe Cardones into finding the answer to that problem with the drones—and she seemed to know everything there was to know about all of them. She even knew that while Cardones liked being called "Rafe," Webster passionately hated it when people called him "Sam." He rather doubted that information was listed anywhere in their personnel jackets, and he was at a loss to figure out how she'd acquired it.

Another message flickered on his display, the jumbled symbol groups flowing magically into clear text, and he paused. His eyebrows rose in surprise, and then he began to smile as he read it through. He sat for a moment, tapping on the edge of his console in thought, then nodded to himself. This one would go into the hopper last, he decided. It was only a routine "information" message, but Webster had a keener sense than most of the infinitely polite infighting between the Navy's first families. He rather thought it would make the Captain's day—if not her week—and it would be a nice surprise to finish out the traffic.

He tapped a priority number into the terminal and brought up the next message with a grin.

Honor sat working at her own terminal in the quiet of her cabin. She'd been spending too much time in her bridge briefing room. Knowing the Captain was just on the other side of that hatch, hovering over them, could have an inhibiting effect on junior officers, and with McKeon coming around it was no longer necessary to hover. They'd made great strides over the past week and a half. Not enough to completely compensate for the time they'd lost building their professional relationship, but certainly enough to leave the day-to-day affairs of the ship completely in his hands. So she'd brought her workload "home" to deal with.

She finished Dominica Santos's weekly maintenance report, approved the suggestions the engineer and McKeon had made for dealing with several minor problems, and paused to rub her eyes. The dining cabin hatch slid open, and MacGuiness padded through it with a fresh cup of hot cocoa as if her thoughts had summoned him.

"Thank you, James." She sipped with a smile, and he smiled back.

"You're welcome, Ma'am," he said, and vanished as quietly as he'd appeared. She took another sip and set the mug aside, preparing to jump back into the minutiae of her reports, when the admittance buzzer sounded. She hit the intercom key.