Honor flicked her eyes to the telltale above the airlock. Nimitz was right, and she scooped the ’cat into her arms and rose as the pinnace’s flight engineer reached for the hatch button.

Others pushed up out of their seats behind her, and she glanced over her shoulder. LaFollet and Spencer Hawke sat in the row directly behind her, but there were enough others to make the pinnace’s spacious passenger compartment seem almost crowded. Mercedes Brigham, George Reynolds, Andrea Jaruwalski, and Timothy Meares were all present… and so were Surgeon Captain Fritz Montoya and a full twenty-person medical team.

A second pinnace, this one loaded with two platoons of Werewolf’s Marines, settled into the docking buffers beside Honor’s pinnace, and her expression tightened once more. Then she moved forward as the inner hatch of the airlock opened.

· · • · ·

It wasn’t the first time Honor had seen Thomas Bachfisch wounded. But this time was worse. Much worse. She felt the physical pain radiating from him as she stood beside his bed in Pirate’s Bane’s spartan sick bay, and it took every ounce of self discipline she possessed to keep her own nonphysical pain out of her expression.

“Your Grace,” Jinchu Gruber said, “will you please convince him to let Doctor Montoya get him out of here?”

Pirate’s Bane’s executive officer stood on the other side of Bachfisch’s bed. Gruber wasn’t exactly in pristine condition himself, Honor noted. His left arm was in a sling, he walked with a noticeable limp, and the left side of his face was badly bruised.

“Stop fussing, Jinchu.” Bachfisch’s voice was hoarse with pain, but he managed a tight smile. There was a different sort of pain in that smile, and something inside Honor winced as she tasted his emotions. “I’m better off than a lot of people.”

“Yes, you are, Skipper.” Gruber’s voice was harsh, hard-edged with exasperation. “Now stop feeling guilty about it, damn it!”

“My fault,” Bachfisch replied, shaking his head doggedly on the pillow.

“I didn’t see you holding a pulser on anyone to make us sign on,” the exec shot back.

“No, but—”

“Excuse me, Your Grace,” Fritz Montoya put in, “but I’d appreciate it if the three of you could argue about this later.” Honor turned to crook one eyebrow at the doctor, and Montoya shrugged. “I’ve already sent the worst half dozen cases across to Werewolf. Or, perhaps I should say, the worst half dozen other cases. I’d really like to get Captain Bachfisch over there sometime this week, too.”

“I’m not leaving the Bane,” Bachfisch said stubbornly.

“Oh yes you are, Captain,” the blond-haired surgeon captain told him with an implacable calm Honor knew altogether too well from personal experience. “We can argue about it for a while first, if you really want to. But you are leaving.”

Bachfisch opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Honor put one hand gently on his shoulder.

“Don’t argue,” she told him, resolutely not looking at the space where his legs ought to have tented the sheets. “You’ll lose. For that matter, you’d lose even if Fritz was the only person who was going to be arguing with you. And he isn’t.”