"All right, Stinker—you can stop worrying now," she told him, and his purr turned brisker and louder. His prehensile tail twitched as he touched her nose with his, and she laughed as she hugged him close once more.

It wasn't over. She knew that. But at least she knew where she had to go, what she had to do, to lay the nightmares to rest at last.

"Yeah," she told the treecat. "I guess it is about time I stopped feeling sorry for myself, isn't it?" Nimitz twitched his tail more strongly in agreement. "And it's time I got back on a command deck, too," she added. "Assuming, of course, that The Powers That Be want me back." This time there was no fresh flash of pain at the qualifier, and she smiled in gratitude.

"In the meantime," she said more briskly, "it's also time the two of us got airborne."

She stood, set Nimitz on the rock, and bent over her long bundle. She unfastened the straps that held it closed, and alloy clicked as she assembled the tubular frame with deft, practiced fingers. She and Nimitz had discovered the wild joy of riding the Copper Walls' glorious winds before she was twelve T-years old, and the 'cat bleeked in encouragement as she stretched the infinitely tough, gossamer thin fabric into place.

It took less than half an hour to assemble the hang-glider and double-check every joint. She slipped into the harness with the specially modified safety straps for Nimitz, and he scampered up her back and clung to her shoulders as she adjusted them about him. She felt his delight and anticipation bubbling with her own exuberance, and her natural eye sparkled as she clipped the harness leads to the glider and gripped the hand bar.

"All right, hang on!" she told him, and launched herself over the edge of the long, lofty drop with a whoop of sheer delight.

The sun was a fading rim of red-orange beyond the Copper Walls' peaks as Honor made the final turn. She floated like a Sphinx albatross, five kilometers off-shore, and her eyes slitted with amusement as she saw the bright splash of light against the deep twilight at the mountains' feet. The Harrington homestead's brilliant exterior lights blazed in the darkness, for her steward—who obviously thought a four-hour hike followed by a three-hour glide was a bit much for a recent invalid—was taking no chances with his captain's landing.

She grinned and shook her head fondly. Hang-gliding was a planetary passion on Sphinx, but Senior Chief Steward MacGuiness was from the capital world of Manticore. She suspected that he believed all Sphinxians (herself included) were more than a bit mad and needed looking after. He certainly did his level best to rule her life with an iron hand, and while it would never do to admit that she enjoyed the way he fussed over—and at—her, she had to admit (privately) that this time he had a point. She'd been an expert glider for over thirty T-years. As such she should have had the sense to get herself home when she had good light for the landing, which meant she was going to have to endure his ever so respectful reproaches with meek acceptance.

She swept in from the sea, adjusting her weight with finicky precision, smoothing her angle of descent, and the ground rushed up toward her with suddenly breathtaking speed. Then the brilliant light was right in front of her, her dropping feet reached out, and Nimitz chittered with delight as she raced forward, absorbing her velocity with an exultant laugh of her own.

She lost the last of her speed and went down on one knee, resting the glider frame on the red-gold grass before the house, and a cold, whiskered nose caressed her right ear as Nimitz radiated his own content. She unfastened his safety straps, and the 'cat dropped lightly to the ground and sat up to watch her unlatch her own straps and rise, stretching until her shoulders popped and grinning at him like a schoolgirl. Then she collapsed the glider with a few practiced motions—not completely, just into a halfway convenient burden—and tucked it under her arm as she headed for the house.

"You left your com home again, Ma'am," a respectful, gently reproving voice said as she stepped up onto the glassed-in storm porch.

"Did I?" she asked innocently. "How careless of me. It must have slipped my mind."

"Of course it did," MacGuiness agreed, and she turned her head to give him a brilliant smile. He smiled back, but there was an edge of carefully hidden regret behind his eyes. Even now the left side of the Captain's mouth was less expressive and responsive, giving her smile a lopsided quality that was more sensed than seen. "The fact that someone might have called you in earlier had nothing at all to do with it," he added, and Honor chuckled.

"Not a thing," she said, crossing the porch to stand the collapsed glider in the corner.

"As it happens, I did try to com you, Ma'am," MacGuiness said after a moment, his voice more serious. "A letter from the Admiralty arrived this afternoon."

Honor froze for just one moment, then adjusted the glider's position with careful precision. The Admiralty used electronic mail for most purposes; official letters were sent only under very special circumstances, and she schooled her face into calm and made herself fight down a sudden surge of excitement before she turned and raised an eyebrow.

"Where is it?"

"Beside your plate, Ma'am." MacGuiness glanced pointedly at his chrono. "Your supper's waiting," he added, and Honor's mouth quirked in another smile.

"I see," she murmured. "Well, let me get washed up and I'll deal with both of them, Mac."

"At your convenience, Ma'am," MacGuiness said without a trace of triumph.

Honor forced herself to move without haste as she walked into the dining room and felt the quiet old house about her like a shield. She was an only child, and her parents had an apartment near their medical offices in Duvalier City, almost five hundred kilometers to the north. They were seldom "home" except on weekends, and her birthplace always seemed a bit empty without them. It was odd. Somehow she always pictured them here whenever she was away, as if they and the house were a single, inseparable entity, like a protecting shadow of her childhood.

MacGuiness was waiting, napkin neatly folded over one forearm, as she slid into her chair. One of the perks for a captain of the list was a permanently assigned steward, though Honor still wasn't entirely positive how MacGuiness had chosen himself for that duty. It was just one of those inevitable things, and he watched over her like a mother hawk, but he had his own ironclad rules. They included the notion that nothing short of pitched battle should be allowed to interfere with his captain's meals, and he cleared his throat as she reached for the anachronistic, heavily embossed envelope. She looked up, and he whisked the cover from a serving dish with pointed emphasis.

"Not this time, Mac," she murmured, breaking the seal, and he sighed and replaced the cover. Nimitz contemplated their human antics with a small, amused "bleek" from his place at the far end of the table, and the steward replied with a repressive frown.

Honor opened the envelope and slid out two sheets of equally archaic parchment. They crackled crisply, and her eyes—organic and cybernetic alike—opened wide as they flicked over the formal printed words on the first page. MacGuiness stiffened at her shoulder as she inhaled sharply, and she read it a second time, then glanced at the second sheet and looked up to meet his gaze.

"I think," she said slowly, "that it's time to open the good stuff, Mac. How about a bottle of the Delacourt '27?"

"The Delacourt, Ma'am?"

"I don't think Dad will mind... under the circumstances."

"I see. May I assume, then, that it's good news, Ma'am?"

"You may, indeed." She cleared her throat and stroked the parchment almost reverently. "It seems, Mac, that BuMed in its infinite wisdom has decided I'm fit for duty again, and Admiral Cortez has found a ship for me." She looked up from the orders with a sudden, blinding smile. "In fact, he's giving me Nike."