"His 'short list?" Honor repeated. "I didn't know he had one."

"He doesn't, officially. But the Admiral's always been a little leery of giving the back room types too free a rein. He likes to run their concepts by line officers he's worked with before and whose judgment he trusts. Nobody gets a peek unless they're cleared to whatever classification level a given proposal's been assigned, but we're outside the official loop. Which means, since no one with the WDB will ever see our reports, that we can speak frankly without worrying about retaliation."

"I see."

Honor gazed at McKeon thoughtfully. Vice Admiral of the Green Jonas Adcock, the Bureau of Weapons' commanding officer, was one of the RMN's characters. He was also one of the Navy's very few senior officers who had never received prolong, for he and his family had immigrated to the Star Kingdom from Maslow, a planet as technically backward as Pre-Alliance Grayson. Adcock had been too old to accept prolong when he arrived, but there hadn't been anything wrong with his brain. He'd graduated eighth in his Academy class, despite not having encountered a modern educational system until he was nineteen T-years old, and his career had been distinguished. Now, at an age of just over a hundred and fourteen, he was far too physically frail ever to hold a spacegoing command again, but there was still nothing wrong with his brain. He'd taken over BuWeaps eleven years before, just in time for the war, and he'd been an aggressive dynamo ever since. Indeed, he was probably the largest single reason that rationalized versions of the jeune ecole's proposals were beginning to come off the drawing boards as useable hardware.

Honor had enjoyed several far-ranging discussions with him while she'd been assigned to the Weapons Development Board, and she'd been impressed by his ability to think outside the boxes. She also liked and respected him, and, looking back with the advantage of what McKeon had just said, she realized he'd picked her brain on current operational problems even more thoroughly than she'd realized at the time. But he'd never suggested that he maintained an unofficial network of evaluators.

On the other hand, she'd been a member of the Board herself during their talks, and from what McKeon was saying, the admiral had taken pains to keep the WDB’s members from realizing that he was using line officers to critique their proposals before he signed off on them. Which, she admitted to herself, was probably wise of him, given the egos of some of the officers who'd served on the Board. Sonja Hemphill came to mind, for "Horrible Hemphill" would have been furious to find that her proposals were being independently evaluated (or, as she would no doubt have phrased it, "second-guessed") by her juniors, no matter how experienced those juniors might be. Honor wasn't certain that Hemphill would have taken overt revenge upon any junior officer rash enough to object to one of her pet projects, but the jeune ecole's leader would never, ever, have forgiven the officer in question. And other officers Honor had known most certainly would have punished any outside, unofficial evaluator who disagreed with them.

"Were you cleared to tell me about this?" she asked after a moment, and McKeon shrugged.

"He never told me not to, and I'll be very surprised if you don't start hearing from him yourself, now that you're off the Board. From what he said to me before Adrian pulled out of Manticore for Yeltsin, you really impressed him. In fact..." McKeon grinned "...he sounded a mite perplexed over how you landed on the Board in the first place. He's fond of mangling an old cliche: 'Those who can, fight; those who can't, get assigned to the WDB to figure out ways to handicap those who can.'"

"Am I to understand," Honor said, once she was certain she could keep her voice steady, "that he regards the WDB as somewhat less than effective?"

"Oh, no! Not the Board," McKeon assured her. "Only the officers who keep getting assigned to it. But you, of course, are the exception that proves the rule."

"Of course." Honor regarded him sternly for several seconds, then shook her head. "He should never have encouraged you," she observed. "You were quite bad enough before you had friends in high places."

"Like you, Your Ladyship?" McKeon’s obsequious tone would have fooled anyone who didn't know him. Andrew LaFollet and James Candless, who'd been with Honor long enough to realize that McKeon was one of her two or three closest friends, were sufficiently accustomed to his sense of humor to take it in stride. Whitman, however, had never met the captain before, and Honor felt her newest arms-man's immediate, instinctive flash of anger at McKeon’s familiarity. But she also felt him get that anger under control almost instantly as he took his cue from his fellow armsmen and Honor herself, and she smiled at him before she glanced back at McKeon and grimaced.

"Maybe in Yeltsin," she told him, only half humorously, "but it might not be very smart to let too many people back in the Star Kingdom know we're friends. I haven't been entirely rehabilitated yet, you know."

"Close enough," McKeon said, and his voice was suddenly serious. "Some idiots will always listen to assholes like Houseman or the Young’s, but the people whose brains still work are starting to figure out that your personal enemies are a batch of..."

He bit off whatever he'd been about to say, but his expression was so disgusted, and angry, that Honor reached out and rested a hand on his shoulder.

"You're probably not the most unprejudiced judge of them," she replied in a tone whose lightness fooled neither of them, "but I like your evaluation. And Nimitz certainly agrees with you."

"An excellent judge of men, and women, is Nimitz," McKeon observed. "I always said so."

"He just likes you because you slip him celery."

"Why not? How could anyone who doesn't recognize a deeply sincere bribery attempt when he sees one possibly be a good judge of character?" McKeon grinned at her, and she shook her head sadly.

"And to think," she sighed, "that the Lords of the Admiralty saw fit to make someone of your dubious moral character a Queens officer."

"But of course, Milady!" McKeon said, grinning even more broadly as the lift came to a halt. "Surely you didn't think Nimitz was where I started bribing people, did you?"

The lift doors slid open, and Honor and McKeon headed down the passage, walking side by side and laughing while her armsmen brought up the rear.

Chapter Thirteen

Citizen Admiral Theisman walked silently into the War Room and stood watching the incoming green dot decelerate towards Enki. It was late arriving, System Control had expected it over a week ago, but delayed arrivals weren't all that unusual. Of course, an entire week was a bit excessive. In fact, a regular Navy captain who turned up that late could expect his superiors to devote several unpleasant minutes to discussing exactly why he'd been so casual about his movement orders. But no one was likely to raise any such question with the captain of this ship.

Warner Caslet had the acutely developed antennae of any staff officer, and he turned his head as he sensed Theisman’s arrival. He stood quickly and crossed to the citizen admiral, and Theisman nodded to him.

"Warner."

"Citizen Admiral." Caslet didn't ask what brought Theisman here. He simply turned back to the huge display, standing at his admiral's side with his own hands folded behind him, to watch the green bead. It barely seemed to move across the twenty-five meter holo sphere, but its velocity was almost twelve thousand kilometers per second, and it drew steadily closer to the larger blue icon that indicated Enki's position.