"Sorry we're late, Ma'am," Henke said formally. "Captain Tankersley was tied up on another job when we docked."

"No problem, Mike." Honor's soprano was cooler than she would have preferred, but she held out her hand. "Welcome aboard Nike, Captain. I hope you can get her back on-line quickly for us."

"We'll certainly try, Milady."

Tankersley's voice was deeper than she remembered, rumbling about in his chest, and a trickle of someone else's feelings oozed into her brain. It was Nimitz, tapping her into Tankersley's emotions as he'd learned to do since Yeltsin. She was still far from accustomed to his doing that, and she reached up to touch him in a silent injunction to stop. But even as she did, she recognized the matching discomfort in the other captain, a sense of awkward regret over the circumstances of their first meeting.

"Thank you," she said more naturally, and gestured at the scanner. "Commander Ravicz has just been showing me the damage. Take a look, Captain."

Tankersley glanced at the display, then looked again, more closely, and pursed his lips in a silent whistle.

"All the way across?" He cocked an eyebrow and grimaced at Ravicz's doleful nod, then smiled wryly at Honor. "These new alloys will be wonderful things, Milady—once we figure out exactly what we're doing with them."

"Indeed." Honor's lips twitched at his tone, and she tapped the generator. "Am I right in assuming we're looking at complete replacement here?"

"I'm afraid so, Ma'am. Oh, I could try a weld, but we're talking a bead a good twenty meters long just across the outer face. This stuff's not supposed to break in the first place, and according to The Book, patching should only be considered as a last resort. The fracture cuts right through two of the central load-bearing brackets and the number two hydrogen feed channel, too, I'm afraid. Odds are we'd have to pull it anyway, and I'd rather not leave you with a repaired unit that could crap out again without warning. My people can try to patch it once we have it in the shop. If they pull it off—and if it meets specs after they do, which I doubt it will—we can put it in stores for later use. In the meantime, we can get Nike back up and running with a new housing."

"You have one we can swap out?"

"Oh, yes. We're topped up with spares for almost everything." Tankersley's pride in his newly operational base showed, and Honor felt herself thaw even further at his obvious readiness to tackle the job.

"How long are we talking, then?" she asked.

"That's the bad news, Milady," Tankersley said more seriously. "You don't have an access way large enough to move the spare through, so we're going to have to open up the fusion room." He put his hands on his hips and turned slowly, surveying the huge, immaculate compartment, and his eyes were unhappy.

"If Nike were a smaller ship, we could disable the charges and take out the emergency panel, but that won't work here."

Honor nodded in understanding. As in most merchantmen, fusion rooms in destroyers and light cruisers—and some smaller heavy cruisers—were designed with blow-out bulkheads to permit them to jettison malfunctioning reactors as an emergency last resort. But larger warships couldn't do that, unless their designers deliberately made their power plants more vulnerable than they had to. Nike was a kilometer and a half long, with a maximum beam of over two hundred meters, and her fusion plants were buried along the central axis of her hull. That protected them from enemy fire, but it also meant she simply had to hope the failsafes worked in the face of battle damage which did get through to them... and that there was no easy access to them from outside.

"We're going to have to go through the armor and a lot of bulkheads, Milady, and then we're going to have to put them all back again," Tankersley went on. "We've got the equipment for it, but I imagine it's going to take at least two months—more probably fourteen or fifteen weeks."

"Could Hephaestus knock that time down if we returned to Manticore?" She kept her tone as neutral as possible, but if Tankersley took any offense at the question it didn't show.

"No, Milady. Oh, Hephaestus has an edge in ancillary equipment, but I doubt they could shave more than a week off our time, and you'd spend twice that long in transit for the round trip."

"I was afraid of that." Honor sighed. "Well, it seems we're in your hands. How soon can we get started?"

"I'll get my own survey people over here within the hour," Tankersley promised. "We're still pretty busy with expansion work, but I think I can juggle my schedules a bit and start clearing away the control runs by next watch. I've got a tin-can in Slip Two with her after impeller ring wide open, and my exterior crews will need another day or so to button her back up. As soon as they're finished, Nike gets top priority."

"Outstanding," Honor said. "If I have to turn my ship over to someone, Captain, I'm glad it's at least someone who gets right to it."

"Oh, I'll certainly do that, Milady!" Tankersley turned back from his study of the bulkheads with a grin. "No mere yard dog wants a starship captain on his neck. Don't worry. We'll have you back up as quickly as possible."

Admiral Mark Sarnow looked up and touched a stud as the admittance chime sounded.

"Yes?"

"Staff Communications Officer, Sir," his sentry announced, and Sarnow nodded in satisfaction.

"Enter," he said, and smiled as the hatch opened to admit a tall, gangling redhead in a lieutenant commander's uniform. "So, Samuel. May I assume you bear word from the repair base?"

"Yes, Sir." Lieutenant Commander Webster held out a message board. "Captain Tankersley's estimate on Nike's repairs, Sir."

"Ah." Sarnow accepted the board and laid it on his desk. "I'll read it later. Just give me the bad news first."

"It's not all that bad. Sir." Webster's formal expression turned into a smile of his own. "The housings definitely shot, but Captain Tankersley figures they can have a replacement-in place within fourteen weeks."

"Fourteen weeks, eh?" Sarnow rubbed his brushy mustache, green eyes thoughtful. "I hate to have her down that long, but you're right—it is better than I was afraid of." He leaned back, still stroking his moustache, then nodded. "Inform Admiral Parks I think we can allow Irresistible to depart on schedule, Samuel."

"Yes, Sir." Webster braced briefly to attention and started to leave, but Sarnow raised a hand.

"Just a minute, Samuel." The lieutenant commander paused, and the admiral gestured at a chair. "Have a seat."

"Yes, Sir." Webster sank into the indicated chair, and Sarnow let his own swivel slowly back and forth as he frowned down at his desk. Then he looked back up to meet his com officer's eyes.

"You were in Basilisk with Lady Harrington?" His tone made the question a statement, and memory darkened Webster's eyes. One hand rose to his chest, almost by reflex, but he snatched it back down and nodded.

"Yes, Sir. I was."

"Tell me a little about her." Sarnow tipped his chair back and watched the lieutenant commander's face. "Oh, I've read her record, but I don't have any sort of real feel for her personality."

"I—" Webster paused and cleared his throat at the unexpected question, and Sarnow waited patiently while he got his thoughts in order. RMN personnel were seldom invited to comment on their seniors—especially their ex-COs—and, as a rule, the admiral disliked officers who encouraged people to do so. But he didn't retract the request. Admiral Parks hadn't actually said anything, yet his reservations about Harrington were obvious in the way he hadn't said it.

Honor Harrington had more command combat experience than any two other officers her age. Nothing in Sarnow's download of her record seemed to justify any admiral's being less than delighted to have a captain of her proven ability under his command, yet Parks obviously was. Was that because he knew something Sarnow didn't? Something that wasn't in her official personnel jacket?