“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Thank you. Dismissed, Commander.”

He rose and left her cabin, confused and worried, and the burden of a strange, deeply personal shame went with him.

Chapter Twelve

THE Admiralty yeoman opened the office door and bowed the tall, dark-haired admiral through it, then closed it behind him. Admiral of the Green Lord Hamish Alexander crossed to the huge windows and looked out over the dazzling spires and pastel towers of the city of Landing, capital of the Star Kingdom of Manticore.

The dark blue water of Jason Bay, for all intents and purposes an inland sea hundreds of kilometers in length, stretched to the southern horizon, sparkling under the light of Manticore-A, and, despite the office’s air-conditioning, he could feel that sun’s radiant heat on his face through the windows’ insulated plastic. The outside temperature was welcome, if almost uncomfortably hot, for he’d just come from his family’s home in the Duchy of High Sligo, and it was winter in Manticore’s northern hemisphere. But Landing lay less than fifteen hundred kilometers above the equator, and brilliant greenery tossed in the brisk breeze off the sail-dotted bay.

He turned away from the window, folding his hands behind him, and surveyed the office of the First Space Lord. The room was paneled in light-toned native woods, not the extravagance it would have been on one of the inner-worlds, and there was a fireplace in one corner. It was functional, not merely ornamental, and that, Alexander thought, was an extravagance. The Admiralty Building was over a Manticoran century-and-a-half old and little more than a hundred stories tall, a modest little structure for a counter-gravity civilization, but that fireplace’s chimney bored up through thirty-odd stories of air shafts and ventilation ducting. He could only marvel at the stubborn insistence of whoever had designed the building, especially in a climate which required air-conditioning far more often than heating.

He chuckled and checked his watch. The First Space Lord was running late—not unusual for a man with his schedule—and Alexander took a leisurely turn about the familiar office, studying the models of starships and old-fashioned oil and acrylic portraits, reacquainting himself with old friends and noting the newer additions.

He was admiring the detail of a meter-long replica of HMS Manticore, the pride of the Fleet, when the door opened behind him. He turned, and his rugged face lit with a smile as Fleet Admiral Sir James Bowie Webster walked through it. The First Space Lord had the Webster chin, and he grinned and clasped Alexander’s hand in both of his to shake it firmly.

“Hamish! You’re looking good, I see. Sorry to roust you out so close to Emily’s birthday, but I needed a word.”

“So I gathered,” Alexander said dryly as Webster released his hand and sprawled untidily into his chair. Alexander ignored his offer of another chair and parked himself on one corner of the desk that looked big enough for a shuttle pad.

“How is Emily? And your father?” Webster asked, his smile fading a bit, and Alexander shrugged.