"I know we're not done yet, Howard, but I've got to take a break. Will you and your wives join Nimitz and me for supper?"

"Is it that—?" Clinkscales checked his desk chrono and shook himself. "I see it is that late, My Lady. And, yes, we'd be honored to join you. Assuming," he regarded her suspiciously, "that your steward promises not to serve fried squash again." He shuddered in memory, for Manticoran squash was subtly different from the vegetable of the same name on Grayson, and he'd suffered a violent allergic reaction when MacGuiness introduced him to it.

"No squash," Honor promised with a smile. "I don't know what's on the menu, but Mac and I took that off it for the rest of our stay here. In fact, he's been taking lessons in local cuisine, and—"

A buzz from her com console interrupted her, and she grimaced.

"I may have invited you too soon," she muttered, and pressed the acceptance key.

"Yes?"

"I'm sorry to disturb you, Ma'am," a Manticoran voice said.

"I was about to com you, Mac. What is it?"

"We've just received word from Air Traffic, Ma'am. There's an inbound pinnace, ETA twelve minutes." Honor's eyebrows rose. The arrival of a pinnace, especially this late in the evening, was unusual to say the least. And why was MacGuiness informing her of its arrival instead of her Grayson security chief?

"A pinnace? Not an aircar?"

"No, Ma'am. A pinnace... from HMS Agni. I understand Captain Henke is aboard in person," MacGuiness added.

Honor stiffened. Agni here? The Manticoran element might explain why Mac was making the call instead of Colonel Hill, but why hadn't Mike written to warn her she was headed for Yeltsin's Star? For that matter, why come down in a pinnace instead of screening her from orbit? If Agni was in small craft range of Grayson, she could have sent a message on ahead hours ago.

"Did Captain Henke say anything about why she's here?"

"No, Ma'am. All I have is an official request for immediate access to you. Your security force passed it to me for clearance."

"Clear it at once," Honor said. "I'll be in my office."

"Yes, Ma'am." MacGuiness cut the circuit, and Honor sat back in her chair with a pensive frown.

Someone rapped once, lightly, on the office door, then opened it without awaiting permission. It was Michelle Henke, with James MacGuinness at her heels instead of the regular Grayson armsman.

"Mike!" Honor cried in delight, and started around her desk, both hands extended. She expected Henke to grin at the absurd sight of Honor Harrington in a Grayson gown, but she didn't. She only stared at her, her face that of a woman who'd just taken a pulser dart, and Honor came to a stop, hands falling to her sides, and braced her shoulders in sudden, formless dread.

"Honor." Her name came out in a tight, painful parody of Henke's normal tone, and Honor reached for her link to Nimitz. Reached for it and gasped at the anguish writhing behind Henke's tormented face. Her emotions were too intense, too painful, for Honor to sort out, but they hit Nimitz like a club. The dismantled stapler thudded to the floor as he rose up, ears flattened against his skull, and hissed in sibilant challenge, and Honor reached out again in quick compassion, stunned by the ferocity of her friends pain.

"What is it, Mike?" She forced her voice to remain level and gentle. "Why didn't you screen me?"

"Because—" Henke drew a deep breath. "Because I had to tell you in person." Each word seemed to cost her physical agony, and she ignored Honor's hands to grip her shoulders.

"Tell me what?" Honor wasn't frightened yet. There hadn't been time, and she was too concerned for her friend.

"Honor, it's—" Henke drew another breath, then pulled her close, hugging her fiercely. "Paul was challenged to a duel," she whispered into Honor's shoulder. "He—Oh, God, Honor! He's dead!"

CHAPTER NINETEEN

There ought to be a better way to do this, but Georgia Sakristos couldn't think of one, and at least she was cautiously pleased with the contact she'd finally decided upon. She had to contact someone, and her choice should get it to the right people without letting anyone who knew about her own part in the operation guess she was the leak; if she hadn't been sure of that she wouldn't be doing this at all.

Unfortunately, that didn't mean no one on the other side could ever connect her to it. That would be almost as bad as having her employer discover she'd talked, and making personal contact added measurably to her risk, yet time was short, and she had to convince the other person her information was reliable. The absence of any documentary evidence would make that hard enough without fumbling around through time-wasting intermediaries.

It was a risk, but her com was plugged through enough layers of cutouts to make it effectively untraceable. The filtration devices should make her voice unrecognizable, and she intended to screen her contact's private and unlisted civilian number. Her ability to find that number should encourage its owner to take her seriously; more importantly, civilian exchanges incorporated antirecording security circuits which could be overridden only with a court order. All of which should make her risk minimal, but Georgia Sakristos, ne'e Elaine Komandorski, hadn't stayed out of prison by relying on "should."

On the other hand, she thought, her lovely face (the best biosculpt money could buy) grim, some things were worth risking prison to escape, and she'd kept her own name, face, and voice out of the transaction. She'd handled the entire thing through blind drops... and deliberately chosen a specialist who would insist on knowing exactly who his client was.

She ran over her plan in her mind once more. The newest Earl North Hollow had an almost childish faith in his office's security systems, and they really were good. Sakristos knew; she was the one who'd installed them for his father. The only way through them from the outside would be by brute force, and that would destroy all those other lovely records and the power they represented. No, what she wanted was to remove one, specific file—hers—without damaging the others. It was a tall order, but there was one thing Pavel Young didn't know about his own security. When she'd set it up, the computers had listed him as his father's executor, authorized to enter the system in the event of the old earl's death. Pavel knew that; what he didn't know was that Georgia Sakristos had been listed as the backup, with command code authority if he were unavailable, incapacitated... or dead.

It had taken only one night, and the bruises that went with it, to convince her that even prison would be better than an unending sentence as Pavel Young's "lover," and she was still his chief security officer. In anyone else, that combination would have been too stupid to believe; in his case, Sakristos understood exactly how it worked, and her lips worked with the desire to spit. No one else was quite real to Pavel Young. That was especially true for women, but it applied to everyone else around him, as well. He lived in a universe of cardboard cutouts, of human-shaped things provided solely for his use. He had no sense of them as people who might resent him—or, indeed, who had any right to resent him—and he was too busy doing things to them to even consider what they might do to him if they got the chance.

It was a blind spot he couldn't even recognize, much less cure, despite the outcome of his vendetta against Honor Harrington, and that same sublime arrogance blinded him to the danger in forcing his own security chief to play sick sex games. Georgia Sakristos called up the security files on her terminal once more, and her smile was ugly as the verifying code blinked. The idiot hadn't even accessed the files to see who had command authority in the event of his death. Of course, he was a young man by Manticoran standards. No doubt he thought he had plenty of time to put his affairs in order.