“What’s the status of our request to reprovision, Exec?” she asked McKeon. The executive officer glanced at Blanding, then straightened in his chair.

“We’re cleared to take on supplies Monday, beginning at twelve-thirty hours, Ma’am,” he said crisply. Too crisply. McKeon was holding his personal contacts with Honor to an absolute minimum, erecting a barrier she couldn’t seem to break through. He was brisk, efficient, and obviously competent—and there wasn’t a trace of rapport between them.

She bit her tongue against a fresh urge to snap at him. A warship’s executive officer was supposed to be the essential bridge between its captain and her officers and crew, the skipper’s alter ego and manager as well as her second in command. McKeon wasn’t. He was too good an officer to encourage any open discussion of Fearless’s failings—or her captain’s—among his subordinates, but silence could speak volumes. McKeon’s silence was more eloquent than most, and not only was it contributing powerfully to her isolation from her officers, but that isolation was transmitting itself to the rest of her crew, as well.

“Any word on those extra missile pallets we requested?” she asked him, trying once more to break through the icy formality.

“No, Ma’am.” McKeon tapped a brief notation into his memo pad. “I’ll check with Fleet Logistics again.”

“Thank you,” Honor managed not to sigh, and abandoned the attempt. She turned to Dominica Santos, instead. “What’s the status of the grav lance upgrade, Commander?” she asked in a cool, even voice that hid her near despair.

“I think we’ll have the replacement convergence circuits in place for an on-line test by the end of the watch, Ma’am,” Santos responded, keying her own memo pad to life. She studied the screen, never looking up at Honor. “After that, we’ll have to—”

Alistair McKeon sat back and listened to Santos’s report, but his attention wasn’t really on it.

He watched Harrington’s profile, and dull, churning resentment burned at the back of his throat like acid. The captain looked as calm and collected as she always did, spoke and listened as courteously as ever, and that only made him resent her more. He was a tactical officer himself by training. He knew precisely how impossible Harrington’s task had been, yet he couldn’t rid himself of a nagging suspicion that he could have done better at it than she. He certainly couldn’t have done any worse, he thought spitefully, and felt himself flush guiltily.

Damn it, what was wrong with him? He was supposed to be a professional naval officer, not some sort of jealous schoolboy! It was his job to support his captain, to make her ideas work, not to feel a corrosive satisfaction when they didn’t, and his inability to overcome his personal feelings shamed him. Which, of course, only made them worse.

Santos finished her report, and Harrington turned with equal courtesy to Lieutenant Venizelos. That should have been another of McKeon’s jobs. He was the one who ought to be keeping the meeting moving, bringing out the points he knew should be called to the captain’s attention and subtly shoring up her authority. Instead, it was one more task he avoided, and he knew, deep inside, that he was painting himself into a corner. Habit would make it impossible for him to reclaim responsibilities he left undischarged long enough, and as Harrington came to believe, with cause, that she simply could not rely upon him, she would stop giving him the chance to prove she could.