"I'm inclined to agree with Dame Christa," Parks said in a carefully neutral voice. "There's no point helping them rattle their sabers at this point, Admiral Sarnow. Of course, if the situation changes, my view of the proper response will change with it."

He met Sarnow's eyes, and the rear admiral nodded after only the slightest of pauses.

"All right. In that case, Admiral Tyrel," Parks went on, looking at his other battlecruiser commander, "we'll split your squadron. Put two ships at Yorik and three each at Zanzibar and Alizon. Captain Hurston—" he nodded at his operations officer "—will assign appropriate screening elements."

"Yes, Sir." Tyrel looked unhappy, and Parks didn't blame him. Splitting his squadron would not only increase each unit's individual vulnerability but effectively reduce Tyrel from a squadron CO to a divisional commander. On the other hand, it would put a senior officer at Zanzibar, by far the most ticklish of Parks' responsibilities. And, he admitted to himself, it would leave Sarnow's battlecruisers, once they were all assembled, here in Hancock where he could keep an eye on their aggressive CO.

"I think that concludes our business for the morning, then," he said, rising to indicate the end of the conference, and started for the hatch.

It opened as he reached it, and a communications yeoman recoiled as he found himself face-to-face with his admiral.

"Uh, excuse me, Sir Yancey. I have a priority message for Captain Beasley."

Parks waved the yeoman past him, and his staff com officer took the message board from him. She scanned the text, then made an irritated sound through her teeth.

"Problems, Theresa?" Parks asked.

"Perimeter Tracking picked up a new arrival about thirty minutes ago, Sir," Beasley said, and glanced across at Sarnow. "It seems your flagship's arrived, Admiral. Unfortunately, she's not exactly in fighting trim."

She handed the message board to the rear admiral, and went on speaking to Parks.

"Nike's suffered a major engineering casualty, Sir. Her entire after fusion plant's off-line. According to her engineer's preliminary survey, there's a fracture clear through the primary bottle generator housing."

"Something must have gotten past the builder's scans," Sarnow agreed, still reading the message. "It sounds like we're going to have to pull the entire installation."

"Did they suffer any personnel casualties?" Parks demanded.

"No, Sir," Beasley reassured him.

"Well, thank God for that." The admiral sighed, then shook his head with a dry chuckle. "I'd hate to be her skipper about now. Imagine reporting for your first deployment with the Fleet's newest battlecruiser and having to tell your station commander you're reduced to two-thirds power!" He shook his head again. "Who is the unfortunate fellow, anyway?"

"Countess Harrington, Sir," Sarnow said, looking up from the message board.

"Honor Harrington?" Parks asked in surprise. "I thought she was still on medical leave."

"Not according to this, Sir."

"Well, well." Parks rubbed his chin, then looked back at Beasley. "Alert the yard to expedite their detailed survey, Theresa. I don't want that ship out of action any longer than necessary. If it's going to be faster to return her to Hephaestus, I want to know it soonest."

"Yes, Sir. I'll get right on it."

"Thank you." Parks rested his hand on Sarnow's shoulder for a moment. "As for you, Admiral, it would seem your transfer to your new flagship may be a bit delayed. For the moment, I'll hold Irresistible here for you. If Nike has to be sent home, I'm sure the Admiralty will send you a replacement before I have to release Irresistible."

"Thank you, Sir."

Parks nodded and beckoned for his chief of staff to join him as he left the briefing room. Commodore Capra fell in at his right side, and Parks glanced back to be sure they were out of earshot before he sighed.

"Harrington," he murmured. "Now isn't that just peachy?"

"She's an outstanding officer, Sir," Capra replied, and Parks' nostrils flared in a silent snort.

"She's a damned hothead with no self-control is what she is!" Capra said nothing, and Parks grimaced. "Oh, I know all about her combat record," he said testily, "but she ought to be kept on a leash! She did a good job in Basilisk, but she could have been more diplomatic about it. And that business about assaulting an envoy in Yeltsin—

He shook his head, and Capra bit his tongue. Unlike Parks, the commodore had met The Honorable Reginald Houseman, Ph.D., and he suspected Harrington had let him off far more easily than he deserved. But that wasn't a viewpoint he could expect his admiral to share, and the two of them walked on in silence until Parks suddenly stopped dead and slapped his forehead.

"Oh, Lord! It was Houseman she attacked, wasn't it?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Great. Just wonderful! And now Houseman's cousin is chief of staff for the heavy cruiser element of Sarnow's screen. I can hardly wait for the two of them to meet up!"

Capra nodded without expression, and Parks went on, more to himself than his companion, as they stepped into the lift and he punched their destination code.

"Just what we need." He sighed. "Two fire-eaters, one of them flag captain to the other, and the makings of an instant feud between her and a cruiser squadrons chief of staff!" He shook his head wearily. "Somehow I'm starting to think this is going to be a very long deployment."

CHAPTER SIX

"There, Ma'am," Ivan Ravicz said unhappily. "See it?"

Honor studied the scanner display, then tightened her left eye socket to switch to microscopic mode. She bent closer to the housing and grimaced as she finally found it. The tiny, ruler-straight fracture line was almost invisible—even her cybernetic eye had trouble spotting it—but it ran clear across, cutting diagonally from corner to corner and extending almost down to deck level.

"I see it." She sighed. "How did the builder's scans miss it?"

"Because it wasn't there." Ravicz scratched his nose, deep-set eyes more mournful than ever, and gave the generator a disgusted kick. "There's a flaw in the matrix, Skipper. It looks like good old-fashioned crystallization to me, even if that isn't supposed to be possible with the new synth alloys. The actual fracture probably didn't occur until we went to a normal operational cycle."

"I see." Honor readjusted her eye to normal vision and straightened, feeling the gentle pressure of Nimitz's true-hand on her head as he balanced against her movement.

Like Honor's last ship, Nike had three fusion plants, yet her energy requirements were huge compared to a heavy cruiser's. HMS Fearless could have operated on a single plant, but Nike needed at least two, which gave her only one backup. She needed Fusion Three back before she could be considered truly operational, and from the look of things, getting it back was going to take far longer than Honor cared to think about.

Admiral Parks' greeting message had been perfectly correct, but she'd sensed a coolness behind it, and, under the circumstances, she would have loved to blame this on Hephaestus' yard dogs. Deprived of a legitimate human target for his unhappiness, Parks might well decide Nike's captain ought to have known it could happen... and taken steps to see that it didn't.

"Well, in that case, I suppose we—"

She broke off and turned her head as boots sounded on the deck plates behind her, and her lips tightened ever so slightly as she saw the man at Mike Henke's side. He was short, the crown of his head just topping Honor's shoulder, but solid and chunky, and his dark hair, longer than current fashion decreed, was drawn back in a neat ponytail under his black beret. His cuffs bore the same four gold rings as her own, but his collar carried the four gold pips of a junior grade captain, not the single planet of a captain of the list, and Nimitz shifted on her shoulder as he sensed her sudden spurt of associative dislike—and her self-recrimination for feeling it.