Honor finished the message and laid the board gently on the table. Her face was pale but composed. Only her eyes showed the true depth of her tension as she looked up at McKeon, and the exec shifted his weight uneasily.

“So,” she said at last, and glanced at the chronometer. The message had taken ten hours to reach them; Hauptman’s courier boat would arrive within another twenty.

“Yes, Ma’am. He has to be coming out to see you personally, Captain,” McKeon said softly.

“What makes you so certain, Exec?”

“Ma’am, it can’t be for any other reason—not on a Crown courier. That’s a deliberate statement, a proof of his political clout. If he were just coming out to check on his own factors, he’d’ve come on one of his own ships. And it can’t be to see Dame Estelle, either. He must have already hit every political lever he has at home, and if he couldn’t get Countess New Kiev to interfere, he knows damned well he won’t get Dame Estelle to. That only leaves you, Captain.”

Honor nodded slowly. There were gaping holes in McKeon’s logic, but he was right. She could feel that he was, and there was genuine concern in his eyes and voice. Concern, she thought, which wasn’t for himself. It was for his ship and, perhaps, just possibly, for his captain, as well.

“All right, Exec,” she said. “You may be wrong. I don’t think you are. But whether you are or not, it doesn’t change our duties or our priorities, does it?”

“No, Ma’am,” McKeon said quietly.

“Very well, then.” She looked sightlessly around the briefing room for a moment, trying to think. “I want you to concentrate on working with Rafe and Ensign Tremaine’s ground party. Nail that relay’s power source down for me. In the meantime, I’ll have a word with Dame Estelle and tell her who’s coming to call on us.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Good.” Honor rubbed her temple, feeling Nimitz’s tension on the back of her chair. She sounded cool and confident, she thought. The conscientious captain, concerned only with her duty while her stomach knotted with something much too much like fear and her mind filled with uncertainty. But she had no choice. Her duty was all she knew how to do. Yet, for the first time in her career, when she reached out for the steadying weight of responsibility, it wasn’t enough. Not enough.

“Good,” she repeated, lowering her hand from her temple. She stared at her fingers for a second, then looked back up at McKeon, and the exec thought her face looked even younger—and far more vulnerable—than he had ever seen it. A familiar flicker of resentment stirred within him like an involuntary mental reflex, but with it came another, stronger impulse.

“We’ll take care of it, Ma’am,” he heard himself say, and saw the surprise in the backs of her eyes. He wanted to say something else, but even now that was more than he could do.