She deserved better, Honor thought, blinking on her tears once more, but at least she’d ended as a warrior. Ended in combat and then brought her surviving people home, not died in her sleep after decades in mothballs. And even when she was gone, something of her would remain, for HMS Fearless had been added to the RMN’s List of Honor, the list of names kept perpetually in commission by new construction to preserve the battle honors they had earned.

She drew another deep breath and turned from the window, and her melancholy eased as she looked at the three men who stood with her. Alistair McKeon looked very different and yet utterly right, somehow, with the three gold cuff bands of a full commander and the white beret of a starship’s captain, and the destroyer Troubadour lay waiting for him, already under orders for the new, heavily reinforced Basilisk Station picket. Not a single over-aged light cruiser, but a task force, covering the terminus while construction of its own network of forts got under way.

She smiled at him, and he smiled back. Then she turned her gaze to the other two officers standing with her. Lieutenant Commander Andreas Venizelos looked as dapper and darkly handsome as ever beside a Lieutenant (Senior Grade) Rafael Cardones, who no longer seemed quite so young. They wouldn’t be leaving with McKeon. They had a new assignment to a new ship, just as Honor did. It would be another few months before she exchanged her black beret for a white one once more, but when she did, Venizelos would be with her as her executive officer, with Cardones at Tactical. Honor had insisted on that, despite Cardones’s lack of seniority, and no one at BuPers had dared argue with her.

“Well, Alistair,” she held out her hand, “I’ll miss you. But Troubadour is lucky to have you—and the Fleet will need an old Basilisk hand to keep them straight. Make sure Admiral Stag stays on his toes.”

“I will, Ma’am.” McKeon’s smile became a grin, and he squeezed her hand, then frowned quickly as his wrist com beeped. “That’s my boarding shuttle, Ma’am. I’ve got to run.”

“I know. Good luck, Captain McKeon.”

“The same to you, Captain Harrington.” McKeon stepped back, saluted sharply, and vanished down the passage, and Honor smiled after him. Then she turned back to Venizelos.

“Did you get that crew list glitch straightened out, Andreas?”

“Yes, Skipper. You were right—it was a snafu at BuPers. They promised to have it corrected by tomorrow morning.”

“Good.” She cocked her head in thought for a moment, then shrugged. “I suppose you’d better get back to the slip, then. These yard dogs need a real officer keeping an eye on them.”

“Yes, Ma’am.” Venizelos grinned and beckoned to Cardones, and the two of them trotted off towards the building slip at the far end of Hephaestus where Honor’s new command, the Star Knight-class heavy cruiser HMS Fearless, was nearing completion. She watched them go, then turned back to the old Fearless with another sigh.