“Something like that,” Honor repeated, astonished afresh and trying not to show it. She didn’t know how long this woman had been a prisoner, but captivity obviously hadn’t done a thing to slow down her mental processes.

“Well I will be dipped in shit,” the other woman said almost prayerfully, and then stepped forward so quickly not even LaFollet had time to react. Honor felt her armsman flinch beside her, but the blonde only held out her right hand, and Honor tasted the wild, almost manic delight flaring through her.

“Pleased to meet you, Commodore Harrington. Very pleased to meet you! My name’s Benson, Harriet Benson,” she said in that slurred accent, “and this—” she nodded her head at her companion “—is Henri Dessouix. Back about two lifetimes ago, I was a captain in the Pegasus System Navy, and Henri here was a lieutenant in the Gaston Marines. I’ve been stuck on this miserable ball of dirt for something like sixty-five T-years, and I have never been more delighted to make someone’s acquaintance in my life!”

Chapter Thirteen

“SO that’s about the long and the short of it,” Benson said fifteen minutes later. Complete introductions had been made all round, and the two POWs sat cross-legged under the shade of the same tree with Honor while LaFollet hovered watchfully at her shoulder and Mayhew and Clinkscales stood guard. “I was dumb enough—and also young, stupid, and pissed off enough—to join up with the effort to organize a resistance movement after the surrender, and InSec dumped me here in a heartbeat.” She grimaced. “If I’d realized no one else was going to be able to stand up to their goddamned navy for the next half century, I probably would’ve kept my head down back home, instead.”

Honor nodded. She had only a vague notion of the Pegasus System’s location, but she knew it was close to the Haven System… and that it had been one of the PRH’s very first conquests. And from the flavor of Harriet Benson’s emotions and the steel she sensed at the older woman’s core, she strongly suspected the captain would have attempted to resist the Peeps whatever she had or hadn’t known about the future.

“And you, Lieutenant?” she asked courteously, looking at Dessouix.

“Henri got shipped in about ten years after I did,” Benson replied for him. Honor was a bit startled for a moment by the other woman’s interruption, but Dessouix only nodded with a small smile, and there was no resentment in his emotions. Was it his accent? It was certainly much thicker than Benson’s, so perhaps he routinely let her do most of the talking.

“From where?” she asked.

“Toulon, in the Gaston System,” Benson said. “When the Peeps moved in on Toulon, the Gaston Space Forces gave them a better fight than we did in Pegasus. Then again,” her mouth twisted, “they knew the bastards were coming. The first thing we knew about it was the arrival of the lead task force.”