“Com, please raise the Resident Commissioner’s office. Inform Dame Estelle that I would appreciate her finding time to meet with me at her earliest convenience.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Thank you.”

She leaned back in her chair once more, listening. Reports murmured over the intercom as the impeller wedge and inertial compensator went down and the standby thrusters took over the automatic station-keeping function. Bridge ratings moved from station to station, tapping notes into memo pads, Lieutenant Brigham was buried in the cartography section with Stromboli and his senior yeoman, updating their records on the drone net, and Honor savored the routine, orderly way they went about their duties. Despite the wracking workload she’d dumped on these people, the ship was alive once more.

Now it was up to her to redirect that aliveness into a sense of teamwork which included her as their captain, not their taskmaster.

Chapter Nine

DAME Estelle Matsuko, Knight of the Order of King Roger and Resident Commissioner for Planetary Affairs on the planet Medusa in the name of Her Majesty Elizabeth III, Queen of Manticore and Defender of the Realm, rose behind her desk as her office door slid open. The tall naval commander who stepped through moved with the graceful stride of muscles accustomed to a gravity a great deal higher than Medusa’s .85 g, and the treecat on her shoulder looked around with interested green eyes. Dame Estelle examined the pair of them with equal but hidden curiosity even as she extended a hand in welcome.

“Commander Harrington.”

“Commissioner.” The commander’s crisp, clipped accent was as clear an indication of her birth world as the treecat or the way she moved, and her grip was firm but carefully metered. Dame Estelle had felt the same sort of handshake from other Sphinxians—and the few who’d absent-mindedly forgotten to watch what they were doing made her grateful for the ones who remembered.

“Won’t you be seated?” Dame Estelle offered as the commander released her hand, and her brain was busy making mental notations.

Harrington carried herself with assurance, and Dame Estelle revised her original age estimate upward by five years. She was a striking woman, with a pale, strongly sculpted face and large, expressive eyes almost as dark as Dame Estelle’s own. Her hair was clipped shorter than most men’s under the white beret, and she wore an unmistakable air of competent professionalism. A far cry, the commissioner reflected, from the second-raters the Navy had been dumping on her, especially since Janacek took over the Admiralty. Yet there was a tension under Harrington’s disciplined surface. An uneasiness. At first she’d thought it was her imagination, but a closer look at the commander’s companion had disabused her of that notion. The treecat was curious about his surroundings, yes, but his long, slender body was taut and wary, and Dame Estelle had seen enough ’cats to recognize the protectiveness with which his tail wrapped about Harrington’s throat.

“I must say, Commander, that I was somewhat surprised by Lord Young’s sudden departure,” Dame Estelle said, and almost blinked at her visitor’s reaction. She’d meant the remark as simple small talk, yet its effect was profound. Harrington didn’t actually move a muscle, but she didn’t have to. Her eyes said it all, narrowing with a hard intensity that was almost frightening, and the treecat was far less restrained. He didn’t—quite—hiss, but his flattened ears and half-bared fangs made his position clear, and Dame Estelle wondered what she’d said.