“You wouldn’t dare,” the magnate said softly.

“Sir, I would.” McKeon’s voice was chipped flint, and Hauptman sat back in his chair, glaring back and forth between him and Honor.

“All right,” he grated at last. “I see you’ve covered yourself after all, Commander Harrington. So go ahead, play tin-god out here. I wash my hands of the entire situation. Examine anything you damned well want, but don’t you ever—ever—think this is over!”

McKeon gathered himself afresh, but Honor touched his arm and shook her head. She stood in silence, and when the exec made to rise with her, she waved him gently back into his chair. She inclined her head coldly at Hauptman, then gestured at the briefing room hatch, and the seething magnate stalked through it as it opened.

The bridge was still as death when they emerged onto it, but Honor scarcely noticed. She accompanied Hauptman into the lift, and the two of them rode to the boat bay in a silence deeper than the stars. But when they arrived, Honor reached out and pressed the override button, holding the lift door closed, and turned to him.

“Mr. Hauptman,” she said in a voice of frozen helium, “you’ve seen fit to insult me and my officers and to threaten my parents. In fact, you have descended to the tactics of gutter scum, and that, in my opinion, Sir, is precisely what you have proven yourself to be.” Hauptman’s nostrils flared in a congested face, but she continued in the same ice-cold voice.

“I am fully aware that you have no intention of forgetting this incident. Neither, I assure you, have I. Nor will I forget your threats. I am a Queen’s officer. As such, I will react to any personal attack upon me only if and as it arises, and for myself, both personally and as a Queen’s officer, I dislike the custom of dueling. But, Mr. Hauptman, should you ever attempt to carry through your threat against my parents—” her eyes were leveled missile batteries and the tic at the corner of her mouth jerked like a living thing “—I will denounce you publicly for your contemptible actions and demand satisfaction. And when you accept my challenge, Mr. Hauptman, I will kill you like the scum you are.”

Hauptman stepped back against the wall of the lift, staring at her in shocked disbelief.

“Believe it, Mr. Hauptman,” she said very, very softly, and let the lift door open at last.

Chapter Twenty-One

ADRENALINE still flared in Honor’s blood and nerves as she rode the lift back to the bridge. That had been an ugly side of her, but the petty, repulsive shallowness hiding behind Klaus Hauptman’s wealthy front had waked it, and she’d meant every word. More than that, he knew she had. And they both knew that his reputation—his all-important, self-worshipping reputation—would never survive should he refuse her challenge if it came.

She drew a deep breath as the lift stopped. The door opened, and she stepped out onto the bridge. Panowski looked up quickly, his face anxious, and she realized some of the vicious confrontation must have leaked past the briefing room hatch. Or perhaps it had simply been the tension between her and Hauptman when they passed back through on their way to the boat bay. It didn’t matter. The lieutenant knew. His worried face showed his reaction, and she saw matching expressions on the faces of most of her ratings.