Admiral D’Orville clenched his fists, then sighed and made himself lean back in his chair with a wintry smile. Sonja was going to be impossible to live with for months, and he could scarcely blame her. Few of his ships would be “destroyed” before the wall got itself sorted out and altered course, but enough were already crippled to even the odds… and who knew when her “detached units” would suddenly appear, as well?

It was all most un-Sonja-like, but it had certainly been effective, and Admiral Sebastian D’Orville made a mental note to find out exactly whose light cruiser that had been. Anyone who could bring that little maneuver off was someone to watch, and he intended to tell him so in person.

Assuming he could keep himself from strangling the sneaky bastard long enough to congratulate him.

Chapter Four

THE ship-wide elation which had followed the “destruction” of Admiral D’Orville’s flagship was noticeably absent as Honor watched her steward pour coffee. The rich aroma of the beverage filled the small briefing room’s silence, but the cup Steward First Class MacGuiness placed at Honor’s elbow contained hot cocoa. She never had understood how something that smelled as nice as coffee could taste so foul, and she wondered yet again if perhaps Manticoran coffee trees hadn’t mutated somehow in their new environment. Such things happened, but she doubted that was the answer in this case, given the appalling relish with which most RMN officers imbibed the loathsome stuff.

Not that anyone was showing much relish today.

She hid a sigh behind her expressionless face and sipped her cocoa. Things had gone far better than she’d dared hope in the major Fleet problem of the recent maneuvers, but, as if to compensate, the subsequent problems had worked out even more disastrously than she’d feared. As expected, D’Orville and his squadron commanders had realized exactly what Fearless had done to them, and their humiliating showing had inspired them to make certain it never happened again. More than that, it had given them a personal grudge against Fearless (whatever Admiral D’Orville might have had to say about his personal admiration for their maneuver), especially after Hemphill’s detached dreadnoughts turned up and battered the surviving Aggressors into ignominious retreat with forty-two percent losses.

D’Orville’s captains had been waiting for Honor in the follow-up exercises. Indeed, she suspected some of them had been more concerned with nailing Fearless than winning the exercise! In a total of fourteen “engagements,” the light cruiser had been “destroyed” thirteen times, and she’d only succeeded in taking someone with her (aside from King Roger, of course) twice.

The moral effect on Honor’s people had been brutal. Being pounded on that way would have been hard for anyone, but it was especially painful after their elation over picking off the enemy flagship, and Admiral Hemphill’s signals had made it even worse. Lady Sonja had been livid at how easily her secret weapon (and, no doubt, hopes for advanced promotion) were countered once the other side knew about it, and her messages to Fearless’s captain had descended from congratulatory to querulous to scathing… and downhill from there. She had to know it wasn’t Honor’s fault, but knowing didn’t seem to make her any happier.