“This is preposterous—an outrage—!” Styles lunged to his feet and started to lean threateningly towards Honor, only to break off with a gurgle as Andrew LaFollet’s left hand caught the collar of his tunic from behind. LaFollet no more believed Styles had the courage to physically assault his Steadholder than anyone else in that conference room did… but he didn’t very much care. It was far too good a pretext to pass up. He was a good five centimeters shorter than Styles, but he was all wiry muscle and bone, and he got his back and shoulders into it as he pivoted and heaved.

Styles pitched backward, arms windmilling. He sailed through the air, crashed down on his back with a grunt of anguish, and slid across the floor until his head slammed into the wall and stopped him. He lay for an instant, half-stunned, then blinked and started to push himself back up—only to freeze as he found himself looking into the muzzle of Andrew LaFollet’s rock-steady pulser from a range of two meters.

His eyes went huge. Then they traveled slowly up the Grayson’s arm to the armsman’s face, and his heart seemed to stop as he recognized LaFollet’s complete willingness to squeeze that trigger.

“I have tolerated your gross insubordination, incompetence, cowardice, defiance, and disrespect for as long as I intend to, Admiral Styles,” Honor told him coldly. “You have been warned dozens of times, and you have steadfastly declined to amend your behavior, despite repeated warnings that my patience was not without limit. Very well. I will not warn you again. You will now accompany Major LaFollet to the brig, where you will be held in close confinement until such time as formal charges are preferred against you before a court-martial board of Her Majesty’s Navy. I have no doubt that those charges will be sustained… and you know as well as I what the penalty attached to them will be.”

Styles seemed to wilt down inside himself, his normally dark face turning a sickly paste-gray, and she watched him with the dispassion of a scientist gazing at some particularly revolting new bacterium. She gave him time to speak, if he should be foolish enough to want to make things still worse, but he said nothing. From the taste of his emotions, he was probably physically incapable of making his vocal apparatus work at the moment, and she forced her mouth not to twist with contempt before she glanced back at LaFollet.

“Carry out your orders, Major,” she said quietly, and her armsman nodded and stepped back from Styles. His pulser twitched commandingly, and Styles came to his feet as if the weapon were a magic wand that had cast a spell of levitation upon him. He stared at LaFollet, unable to take his eyes from the Grayson’s implacable expression, and swallowed hard as the contempt and loathing discipline had prevented LaFollet from displaying earlier looked back at him. The last thing in the universe that he wanted to do, Harry Styles realized in that instant, was to give Andrew LaFollet even the smallest excuse to do what the armsman wanted so badly to do.