“On the chip, Ma’am.” McKee’s confirmation was soft, and Ferrero smiled humorlessly at the com officer’s tone. Yet she had no choice but to respond to Gortz’s actions in uncompromising terms… especially if they did represent a deliberate shift in the IAN’s policy towards the Royal Navy. Higher authority could always back off from her initial hard-line position, but until those same higher authorities could be advised of what had just happened, it was up to her to do anything she could to make the Andermani rethink any inclination towards confrontation.

“Send it,” she told McKee, then turned to Lieutenant McClelland, her astrogator.

“Turn us around, James,” she told him. “Take us back out across the limit. And calculate a least-time transit to Marsh.”

“Aye, aye, Ma’am.” The short, brown-haired, brown-eyed officer—one of the few native Sidemorians in Jessica Epps’ company—studied his plot, then looked at the cruiser’s helmsman.

“Helm, reverse heading and go to five-zero-five gravities,” he said.

“Reversing heading and going to five-zero-five gravities, aye, Sir,” the helmsman replied, and Jessica Epps turned end-for-end and began decelerating towards the hyper limit.

“Captain,” McKee said in a very formal voice, “Hellbarde is hailing us. They sound… pretty insistent about speaking to you.”

“Ignore them,” Ferrero told her in a voice of liquid helium.

“Aye, aye, Ma’am,” McKee acknowledged, and Ferrero returned her attention to her plot.

Chapter Eighteen

THE woman waiting for Honor under the landing pad’s crystoplast canopy when the shuttle landed in the misting Grayson rain was dark-haired and eyed. The hair might have been a little more thickly threaded with silver than the first time they’d met, but the comfortable, lived-in face was the same.

The uniform wasn’t. Mercedes Brigham was a rear admiral in the Grayson Space Navy, but she was also one of the GSN’s many “loaners” from the RMN, and she wore the Royal Navy’s uniform this afternoon. In Manticoran service, her rank was that of a commodore, and Honor had been a little concerned over how she might feel at the notion of accepting a demotion to serve on someone else’s staff. She’d known Mercedes well enough for long enough to feel fairly confident the older woman would genuinely wish for the assignment. But she’d also known her well enough to be afraid she would accept the job out of a sense of obligation and friendship whether it was really one she wanted or not.

The taste of Brigham’s emotions, coupled with the commodore’s enormous smile, put that concern, at least, instantly to rest.

“Mercedes!” Honor said, as she stepped off the foot of the shuttle ramp. The fresh, life-rich smell of the spring rain embraced her, and she felt a familiar twinge of irony. That scent was like the very breath of a living planet after a week on shipboard air, yet it was a world whose atmosphere was potentially lethal in the long term to any human, especially an off-worlder like herself. It was a point her intellect was only too well aware of, but her instincts were another matter, and she drew the smell deep into her lungs despite all her forebrain could do.