But however furious and terrified he might be, the admiral seemed unwilling to be quite that explicit.

“That’s neither here nor there,” he said instead. “Obviously some sort of screening or selection process would have to be worked out. But the point is that we could get at least that forty percent—whoever it was—to safety and inform higher authority of the situation here at the same time. Given that, it would be the height of irresponsibility even to contemplate holding Krashnark here! And,” he took his eyes from McKeon’s just long enough to dart a sideways glance at Honor but went on as if speaking solely to McKeon, “I suspect a board of inquiry might well conclude that it went beyond simple irresponsibility into criminal disregard of duty and—”

“That will be enough, Admiral Styles.” Honor’s voice had changed. Unlike Styles’, her tone was now cool and calm, almost conversational, but Andrew LaFollet smiled coldly when he heard it. He stood against the conference room wall behind her, able to see and hear everything yet so unobtrusive no one even noticed his presence after so many weeks, and he watched Styles’ choleric face with anticipation. The Steadholder had put up with more than enough from this bigmouthed fool, and LaFollet felt himself silently urging Styles to misread her tone and manner.

“I beg your pardon, Admiral Harrington, but it is not enough!” the Manticoran said sharply, and satisfaction widened LaFollet’s smile. The idiot had misread her voice. He actually thought her apparent calmness was a good sign. Or perhaps he simply thought it indicated that she was uncertain and trying to hide it, or that he finally had a pretext he could use to undercut her authority in the eyes of her subordinates for his own gain.

“I have questioned the wisdom of many of your decisions here on Hades,” he went on, “but this one goes beyond unwise to insane! I have accepted your command authority despite the… irregularity of your claimed seniority in a non-Manticoran navy, but your current course of conduct leads me to seriously question my own wisdom in doing so. Whatever the actual status of your commission—or even the legality of your holding commissions in two different navies simultaneously—this decision absolutely proves you lack the experience for your supposed rank!”

Alistair McKeon had started to lunge furiously up out of his chair when Styles began. Now he sat back instead, regarding the Rear Admiral with the same sort of fascination with which people watched two ground cars slide inexorably towards one another on icy pavement. Honor sat very still in her chair beside him, watching Styles with her single hand flat on the table before her and her head tilted slightly to one side. Her only expression was the small, metronome-steady tic at the living corner of her mouth, and Nimitz crouched on his perch, as motionless as she… except that the very tip of his tail flick-flick-flicked in exact rhythm with the tic of her mouth.