She gave a wry grimace of distaste and turned her eyes resolutely to the sight she’d been avoiding. HMS Warlock floated in the same orbit, barely a hundred kilometers clear, and she swallowed a bitter-tasting envy mixed with old hatred as she gazed at her.

The Star Knight class were the RMN’s latest heavy cruisers, three and a half times more massive than Fearless and with almost six times her firepower, even before Hephaestus and Horrible Hemphill had butchered her. The big, sleek ship hung there, taunting Honor’s elderly command with its mere presence, and knowing who commanded that beautiful vessel made it far, far worse. She’d thought she’d hit bottom when they assigned her to Basilisk Station; now she knew she had.

The duty helmsman brought Fearless to rest relative to Warlock, and she drew a deep breath, wondering if any of her crew guessed why she’d left Nimitz in her quarters. Not that she intended to tell them.

“Call away my cutter, please,” she requested. “Mr. Venizelos, you have the watch.”

“Aye, aye, Ma’am,” Venizelos replied, and watched curiously as his captain stepped into the lift and headed for the boat bay.

Honor sat silently, arms folded, as her cutter crept across the emptiness between Fearless and Warlock. She’d been tempted, in a way, to use one of her pinnaces, but she knew why—just as she knew that that particular bit of ostentation would have been one too many. So she’d taken her cutter, despite the fact that it moved far more slowly than a pinnace would have. Even the most efficient thrusters gave a much weaker acceleration than impellers, and a cutter was too small to mount an impeller drive. It was also too small for the inertial compensator needed to offset an impeller’s brutal power, though its gravity generator could compensate for the lower gee-force of its thrusters. Yet despite Honor’s own impatience and need to get this over, the trip was short, even at the cutter’s relatively slow speed. Too short. She’d spent the last thirty-one hours dreading this moment.

Her pilot completed his final approach, and the cutter shivered as Warlock’s tractors captured it. It rolled on its gyros, aligning itself with the heavy cruiser’s internal gravity as the brilliantly-lit cavern of Warlock’s boat bay engulfed them, then settled into the docking cradle. Alloy clanged gently as hatch collars mated, and the green pressure light glowed.

She was alone, and she allowed herself a sigh as she stood and tucked her beret under her epaulet. Then she tugged the skirt of her tunic down, squared her shoulders, and walked briskly through the opening hatch and down the tube into the twitter of bosun’s calls and the salutes of the side party.

Young hadn’t come down to welcome her in person, she saw. She supposed it was a calculated insult—it was the petty sort of gesture at which he excelled—but she was relieved by his absence. It gave her a chance to settle herself and get her inner defenses in place before the inevitable confrontation.