"I would have," Henke said quietly, "and so would Hartley. So would anyone who knew both of you and heard both sides of the story."

"Oh?" Honors smile was crooked. "You would have believed the Earl of North Hollow's son tried to rape a hatchet-faced overgrown horse like me?"

Henke flinched inside at her friends bitter tone but bit her tongue against a quick reply. She suspected very few people guessed how ugly Honor had thought she was at the Academy. And, in truth, she had been on the homely side then, but her sharp-planed face had matured into a clean-cut beauty in the years since. She wasn't "pretty," and she never would be, Henke thought, but she also had no idea how other women envied her unique bone structure and dark, exotically slanted eyes. Her face had a mobile, expressive alive-ness, despite the slight stiffness of its left side, and she didn't even know it. Yet the pain in her eyes now wasn't for her supposed homeliness. It was for the girl she had been, not the woman she was. And, Henke knew, for the way she'd betrayed that girl by not seeking justice for her.

"Yes," she said softly. "I would have believed you. As a matter of fact, that was pretty much what I thought had happened at the time. That's why I went to Hartley."

"You went to Hartley?!" Honor's eyes widened, and Henke shrugged uncomfortably.

"I was worried about you—and I was fairly sure you weren't going to come forward with the truth. So, yeah, I told him what I thought happened."

Honor stared at her, and her memory replayed the agonizing scene in the commandant's office, the way he'd almost begged her to tell him what had really happened, and she wished—again—that she had.

"Thank you," she said softly. "You're right. I should have spoken up. They might've have broken him if I had... but I didn't think about all that then, and it's too late now. Besides—" she squared her shoulders and inhaled again "—he finally got his."

"Yes and no," Henke countered gently. "His reputation's shot to hell, and he knows it, but he's still in the service. And he's still on active duty."

"Family influence." Honor gave a ghost of a smile, and Henke nodded.

"Family influence. I guess none of us who have it can really help using it, whether we want to or not. I mean, everyone knows who we are, and there's always someone who wants us to owe them a favor, even if we never asked for it. But North Hollow—" She shook her head distastefully. "People like him make me sick. Even if you weren't my friend, I would have loved to see Young busted. Hell, with a little luck, he might even have drawn brig time, but—" Henke's mouth quirked "—I forgive you. It's hard, you understand, but I guess I'm just naturally big-hearted."

"Gee, thanks," Honor said, relieved by the lightening tone of the conversation, and Henke grinned.

"Don't mention it. But I think you should know that Paul never did like Young, and he likes him a lot less now. As far as I can tell, it's mutual, too. Something about Paul's helping the brass deliberately sabotage his refit so Warlock didn't get back to Basilisk in time to keep you from making him look like the stupid sack of shit he is."

"What? I never knew that was deliberate!"

"Paul never said it was, but he sure did something Admiral Warner liked. They pulled him out of Warlock and transferred him to Hephaestus before you were even back from Basilisk, and he's been playing yard dog ever since. He's up to captain junior grade now, and Daddy tells me they're probably going to sneak him onto the list sometime soon. But don't you dare tell him I told you that!" Henke said with a sudden, ferocious frown. "He'd be madder than hell if he thought someone was pulling strings for him."

"Is someone?"

"Not as far as I know. Or, at any rate, not any more than they do for anyone they think is good at his job. So don't breathe a word to him."

"My lips are sealed. Not that I expect to have much opportunity to exchange confidences with him."

"No?" Henke cocked her head again, then grinned. "Well, just remember to keep mum if you do get the chance," she said. "Now, about those orders—"

CHAPTER FIVE

"—so we're on schedule for our construction projects, and the yard is fully operational for local repairs," Commander Lord Haskel Abernathy concluded.

The commander shut his memo pad down, and Vice Admiral of the Green Sir Yancey Parks nodded in approval.

"Thank you, Hack," he said to his logistics officer, then raised his eyes to the staff officers and squadron commanders in the flag briefing room of the super-dreadnought HMS Gryphon. "And well done," he went on. "That goes for all of you, and especially for Admiral Sarnow's people. Between you, you've put the yard a good month ahead of projections."

Abernathy smiled at the compliment, and Sarnow gave a silent nod. It was a courteous gesture, yet Parks felt an instant stir of irritation.

He stepped on it quickly, castigating himself for feeling it at all, but it was hard. There was always a certain awkwardness when an officer relieved a junior who stayed on under him, and Parks resented being put in such a position. Knowing the situation couldn't be any easier for Sarnow didn't help much, either. Parks had been in Hancock for barely a T-month, and the rear admiral would be more than human if a part of him weren't gauging Parks' successes against what he might have achieved if he'd retained command. To his credit, he'd never let a sign of it show, but that didn't prevent the new station commander from feeling challenged by his very presence.

Parks pushed the thought aside and cleared his throat.

"All right, ladies and gentlemen. That brings us up to date on what we're doing. What do we think the Peeps are up to, Zeb?"

Commander The Honorable Zebediah Ezekial Rutgers O'Malley, Parks' staff intelligence officer, was a tall, rangy man with mournful eyes whom everyone but his admiral knew as "Zero." He also had a lively sense of humor (fortunately, given the burden of his initials) and a memory like a computer, and he didn't even bother to key his memo pad.

"At this moment, Sir, Seaford Nine has been reinforced to two squadrons of superdreadnoughts, one dreadnought squadron, and one understrength battle-cruiser squadron, with half a dozen cruiser squadrons and three full destroyer flotillas as escorts."

He paused, as if inviting comment, but there was none.

"That means, of course, that we've got an edge of about forty percent in ships of the wall," O'Malley went on, "and once we have the rest of Admiral Sarnow's squadron on hand, we'll have sixteen battlecruisers to their six, though we have reports a third superdreadnought squadron may be en route to Admiral Rollins. That would give him the edge, but, according to ONI, he's sticking with the same basic activities—drills and maneuvers, never more than a light-year or two out from Seaford—and there's no sign of any particular increase in preparedness on his part.

"There is one item in my latest download which concerns me, however." He raised an eyebrow at his admiral, and Parks nodded for him to continue.

"Our attache on Haven has expressed a belief that the assassination of the Peeps' finance minister represents a significant increase in domestic instability. His analysis of the situation—which differs somewhat from that of ONI's analysts back home—is that the Harris Government might welcome some sort of foreign crisis to defuse Dolist tensions."

"Excuse me, Commander," Mark Sarnow's melodious tenor interrupted politely, "but how, exactly, does the attache's analysis differ from ONI's?"

"I'd say it was more a matter of degree than of fact, Sir. ONI agrees the domestic front is giving Harris and his stooges grief and feels Harris probably wouldn't be heartbroken by an opportunity to posture and view with alarm where we're concerned, but their analysts think his hands are too full for him to actively seek a confrontation. Commander Hale, our attache, thinks they're wrong. That the pressure Harris feels might push him into seeking just that as a diversion from economic problems which are fundamentally insoluble."