* * *

  “I know they’re different, Bernard, but we just have to make allowances.” Benjamin Mayhew IX, Planetary Protector of Grayson, snipped another rose and laid it in the servant’s basket, then turned to regard his naval commander in chief sternly. “You knew they had women in uniform. Surely you realized we’d have to deal with that sooner or later.”

  “Of course I did!” Admiral Yanakov glowered at the basket, not bothering to hide his conviction that flower arrangement wasn’t precisely the most manly art his head of state might have pursued. He was one of the few who made no secret of his feelings, but then, he was also Protector Benjamin’s fifth cousin, with very clear memories of an infant who’d still been making puddles on the palace carpet when he himself was already in uniform.

  “Then I don’t quite understand your vehemence.” Mayhew gestured, and the servant withdrew. “It’s not like you to carry on this way.”

  “I’m not speaking for myself,” Yanakov said a bit stiffly. “All I said was that my officers don’t like it, and they don’t. In fact, ‘don’t like’ is putting it far too mildly, Ben. They hate it, and there are some ugly rumors about her competence.”

  “Her competence? Good God, Bernard! The woman holds the Manticore Cross!” Yanakov looked at him in some confusion, and Mayhew sighed. “You’d better bone up on foreign decorations, cousin mine. For your information, the Manticore Cross is about one notch lower than the Star of Grayson—and it can only be earned for heroism under fire.”

  “The Star of Grayson?” Yanakov blinked as he digested that thought. It didn’t seem possible someone as good looking and young-

  He stopped himself with a mental curse. Damn it, the woman wasn’t as “young” as he kept thinking! In fact, she was forty-three T-years old, barely twelve years younger than Yanakov himself, but still . . .

  “All right, so she’s got guts,” he growled. “But I’ll bet she won that medal in Basilisk, didn’t she?” The Protector nodded, and Yanakov shrugged. “Then it’s only going to make the officers who don’t trust her more suspicious, not less.” He flushed at his cousin’s expression but plowed on stubbornly. “You know I’m right, Ben. They’re going to think exactly what the Havenites are going to say out loud: decorating her was part of a deliberate propaganda effort to cover up what really happened when she lost it—probably because it was her time of month!—and blew away an unarmed merchantman.” His teeth grated in fresh frustration. “Damn it, if they had to send us a woman, couldn’t they at least have sent us one who isn’t rumored to be a murderer?!”

  “Oh, that’s bullshit, Bernard!” Mayhew led the way across the domed terrace into the palace, followed by his blank-faced personal Security man. “You’ve heard Manticore’s version of Basilisk, and you know as well as I do what Haven wants in this region. Who do you think is telling us the truth?”

  “Manticore, of course. But what you or I believe isn’t the issue. Most of my people are only too ready to see any woman as potentially dangerous in a command slot. Those who don’t automatically assume they must be loose warheads are horrified by the thought of exposing women to combat, and real conservatives, like Garret and his crowd, are reacting on pure emotion, not reason. They see her as a calculated insult to our way of life—and if you think I’m making that up, you should have heard a little conversation I had with my ops officer! Under the circumstances, Haven’s version of what happened only validates all three groups’ concerns. And don’t come down too heavily on my people, either! Some of your civilian types are even worse than anybody in the military, and you know it. Hell, what about Jared?”

  “Dear, sweet cousin Jared.” Mayhew sounded as disgusted as he looked, then waved his hands in the air. “Oh, you’re right—you’re right! And old Clinkscales is even worse, though at least he’s not second in line for the protectorship.” The Protector sank into an overstuffed armchair. “But we can’t afford to see this thing go down the tubes over something as stupid as cultural prejudice, Bernie. Manticore can do a lot more for us than Haven can: they’re closer, their technology’s better, and they’re a hell of a lot less likely to absentmindedly gobble us up one fine day.”

  “Then I suggest you tell your negotiators that,” Yanakov sighed.

  “I have, but you’re the historian. You know how the Council’s cut back the Protector’s constitutional authority over the last century. Prestwick is a decent sort as Chancellor, but he doesn’t really want to open the door to resumption of direct rule by Yours Truly. I happen to think we need a stronger executive to deal with all that’s about to come down on us, but I may be a bit biased by who I am, and whatever I’d like to have, the fact is that I’m pretty much reduced to the power of prestige. Admittedly, the Mayhew Clan still boasts a fair amount of that, but a disproportionate share of it’s with the conservatives—and the conservatives, as you yourself just pointed out, think accepting any outside help ‘will threaten the Grayson way of life’! I’ve got the Council in line so far, and I think I’ve got a majority in the Chamber, but it’s slim—very slim—and if the military doesn’t sign on, I’ll lose it. You’ve got to get your people to see reason about this.”

  “Ben,” Yanakov said slowly, “I’ll try, but I don’t know that you fully grasp just what you’re asking for.” Mayhew straightened in his chair, but the Admiral went on speaking. “I’ve known you since you were a kid, but I’ve always known you were smarter than I am. If you say we need the Manticoran alliance, I believe you. But sometimes I think your grandfather made a mistake having you and your father educated off-world. Oh, I know all about the advantages, but somewhere along the way you sort of lost touch with how most of our people feel about some issues, and that’s dangerous. You talk about the conservatives in the Chamber, but, Ben, most of them are less conservative than the population as a whole!”

  “I realize that,” Mayhew said quietly. “Contrary to what you may think, having a different perspective actually makes it easier to see some things—like how difficult it really is to change entrenched attitudes—and the Mayhews have no more desire to be Grayson’s Pahlavis than its Romanovs. I’m not proposing to overturn society overnight, but what we’re talking about is the survival of our planet, Bernie. We’re talking about an alliance that can bring us modern industry and a permanent Manticoran fleet presence Simonds and his fanatics won’t dare screw around with. And whether we sign up with Manticore or not, we’re not going to be able to sit this one out. I give the Havenites another T-year at the outside before they move openly against Manticore, and when they do, they’ll come straight through us unless there’s something here to stop them. We’re in the way, Bernie, and you know that even better than I do.”

  “Yes,” Yanakov sighed. “Yes, I do. And I’ll try, Ben. I really will. But I wish to hell Manticore had been smart enough not to stick us with a situation like this, because I will be damned if I think I can pull it off.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Sergeant Major Babcock smiled as Honor stepped onto the mat.

  Babcock was from Gryphon, Manticore-B V. Gryphon’s gravity was only five percent above Terran Standard, less than eighty percent that of Honor’s native Sphinx, and Babcock was a good twenty centimeters shorter, with a much shorter reach, to boot. She was also just over twice Honor’s age, and like Admiral Courvosier, she was first-generation prolong. The original treatment had stopped the aging process at a much later point than current techniques, and there were strands of gray in her red hair and crows-feet around her eyes.

  None of which had kept her from throwing Honor around the salle with embarrassing ease.

  Honor was taller and stronger, with better reaction speed and hand-eye coordination, but that, as Ms. Midshipman Harrington had learned long ago on Saganami Island, didn’t necessarily mean a thing. Babcock was in at least as good a shape as she was, and she’d been doing this forty T-years longer. She knew moves her CO hadn’t even thought of yet, and Honor suspected the sergeant major was delighted by the opportunity (one couldn’t exactly call it an excuse) to kick the stuffing out of a senior Navy officer.

  On the other hand, Honor was getting back into the groove herself, and she wasn’t in the mood to be humiliated today.

  They met at the center of the mat and fell into guard positions, and there was no smile on Honor’s lips. Her face was still and calm, her background anger and frustration—not at Babcock, but nonetheless real—leashed and channeled, and only those who knew her very well would have noted the hardness in her eyes.

  They circled slowly, hands weaving in deceptively gentle, graceful patterns. Both were black belt in coup de vitesse, the martial art developed to combine Oriental and Western forms on Nouveau Dijon eight centuries before, and a hush enveloped the gym as other exercisers turned to watch them.

  Honor felt her audience, but only distantly as her senses focused on Babcock with crystal, cat-like concentration. Coup de vitesse was a primarily offensive “hard” style, a combination of cool self-control and go-for-broke ferocity designed to take advantage of “Westerners’“ larger size and longer reach. It wasn’t too proud to borrow from any technique—from savate to t’ai chi—but it was less concerned with form and more with concentrated violence. It made far less effort to use an opponent’s strength against her than most Oriental forms did and laid proportionately more emphasis on the attack, even at the occasional expense of centering and defense.

  A classmate from the Academy unarmed combat team who preferred the elegance of judo to the coup had once likened it to fencing with two-handed swords, but it worked for Honor. And, like any of the martial arts, it wasn’t something one thought through in the midst of a bout. You simply did it, responding with attacks and counters which were so deeply trained into you that you didn’t know what you were doing—not consciously—until you’d already done it. So she didn’t try to think, didn’t try to anticipate. Babcock was too fast for that, and this was a full contact bout. She who let herself become distracted would pay a bruising price.

  The sergeant major moved suddenly, feinting with her left hand, and Honor swayed backward, right hand slapping Babcock’s right ankle aside to block the flashing side-kick. Her left palm intercepted the elbow strike follow up, and Babcock whirled on her left foot, using the momentum of Honor’s block to turn still faster. She slammed the ball of her right foot onto the mat and her left foot came up in a lightning-fast back-kick, but Honor wasn’t there. She slipped inside the striking foot, and Babcock grunted as a rock-hard fist drove home just above her kidneys. Honor’s other hand darted forward, snaking around the noncom for the throw, but Babcock dropped like a string-cut puppet, pivoted out of Honor’s grip, and kicked up through an instant backward somersault. Her feet caught Honor’s shoulders, driving her back, and Babcock bounced up like a rubber ball—only to find herself flying away as hands like steel clamps flung her through the air.

  She hit the mat, rolled, vaulted to her feet, and recovered her stance before Honor could reach her, and it was the captain’s turn to grunt as stiff fingers rammed into her midriff. She buckled over the blow, but her left arm rose instinctively, blocking the second half of the combination and carrying through in an elbow strike to Babcock’s ribs that rocked the sergeant major on her heels, and a fierce exultation filled her. She pressed her attack, using her longer reach and greater strength ruthlessly, but the sergeant major had a few tricks of her own.

  Honor was never certain precisely how she found herself airborne, but then the mat slammed into her chin, and she tasted blood. She hit rolling, bouncing away from Babcock’s follow-through, and rocked up on her knees to catch an incoming kick on her crossed wrists and upend her opponent. Both of them surged upright, and this time they were both smiling as they moved into one another with a vengeance.

  * * *

  “I trust you feel better now?”

  Honor’s smile was a bit puffy as her tongue explored a cut on the inside of her lower lip, and she wrapped the towel around her neck as she met Admiral Courvosier’s quizzical eyes. She should have worn a mouth protector, but despite what promised to be an amazing array of bruises, she felt good. She felt very good, for she’d taken Babcock three falls out of four.

  “As a matter of fact, I do, Sir.” She leaned back against the lockers, playing with the ends of her towel, and Nimitz hopped up on the bench beside her and rubbed his head against her thigh, purring more loudly than he had in days. The empathic treecat was always sensitive to her moods, and she grinned as she freed one hand from the towel to stroke his spine.

  “I’m glad.” Courvosier wore a faded sweatsuit and handball gloves, and he sank onto a facing bench with a wry grimace. “But I wonder if the Sergeant Major realizes how many frustrations you were working out on her.”

  Honor looked at him more closely, then sighed.

  “I never could fool you, could I, Sir?”

  “I wouldn’t go quite that far. Let’s just say I know you well enough to know what you’re thinking about our hosts.”

  Honor wrinkled her nose in acknowledgment and sat beside Nimitz while she dabbed absently at the small, fresh blood spots on her gi.

  The situation hadn’t gotten better, especially since the Havenite embassy had hit its stride. There was no way to eliminate the courtesy calls between her ships’ companies and their hosts, and she knew the Graysons’ special discomfort with her was spilling over onto her other female personnel.

  Nimitz stopped purring and gave her a disgusted look as he picked up the direction of her emotions. Honor spent entirely too much time worrying over things, in his opinion, and he leaned up to nip her admonishingly on the earlobe. But Honor knew him as well as he knew her, and her hand intercepted him and scooped him into her lap to protect her ear.

  “I’m sorry, Sir. I know how important it is that we all hang onto our tempers—Lord knows I’ve laid it all out for everyone else often enough!—but I hadn’t counted on how infuriated I’d be. They’re so—so—"

  “Pigheaded?” Courvosier suggested. “Bigoted?”

  “Both,” Honor sighed. “Sir, all I have to do is walk into a room, and they clam up like they’ve been freeze-dried!”

  “Would you say that’s quite fair where Admiral Yanakov is concerned?” her old mentor asked gently, and Honor shrugged irritably.

  “No, probably not,” she admitted, “but he’s almost worse than the others. They look at me like some unsavory microbe, but he tries so hard to act naturally that it only makes his discomfort even more evident. And the fact that not even the example of their commander in chief can get through to the others makes me so mad I could strangle them all!”

  Her shoulders slumped, and she sighed again, more heavily.

  “I think maybe you had a point about the Admiralty’s choice of senior officers for this operation, Sir. The fact that I’m a woman seems to get right up their noses and choke them.”

  “Maybe.” Courvosier leaned back and folded his arms. “But whether it does or not, you’re a Queen’s officer. They’re going to have to face senior female officers sometime; it’s part of our mission description to teach them that, and they might as well get used to it now and spare us all grief later. That was the FO’s opinion, and though I might have gone about things a bit differently, overall I have to agree with their assessment.”

  “I don’t think I do,” Honor said slowly. She played with Nimitz’s ears and frowned down at her hands. “It might have been better to spare them the shock until after the treaty was a fait accompli, Sir.”

  “Bushwah!” Courvosier snorted. “You mean it might have been better if Ambassador Langtry had let us go ahead and warn them you were a woman!”

  “Would it?” Honor shook her head. “I’m not so sure, Sir. I think maybe it was a no-win situation—and the fact is that the Admiralty was wrong to pick me. To hear Haven tell it, I’m the most bloodthirsty maniac since Vlad the Impaler. I can’t imagine anyone we could have sent who would’ve been more vulnerable to that kind of attack after Basilisk.”

  She stared down at her hands, caressing Nimitz’s fluffy fur, and Courvosier gazed at the crown of her head in silence. Then he shrugged.

  “Actually, Basilisk is precisely why the Admiralty chose you, Honor.” She looked up in surprise, and he nodded. “You know I had my own reservations, but Their Lordships believed—and the FO agreed—that Grayson would see what happened there as a warning of what could happen here. And just as they tapped me because I’ve got a reputation for strategy, they picked you because you’ve got one for tactics and guts . . . and because you’re a woman. You were meant to be a living, breathing symbol of just how ruthless Haven can be, on the one hand, and how good our female officers can be, on the other.”

  “Well,” Honor squirmed at the thought that she might have a “reputation” outside her own service, “I think they made the wrong call, Sir. Or, rather, Haven’s turned it around on them. I’m a liability to you. These people can’t get past who I am to think logically about what I am.”

  “I believe that will change,” Courvosier said quietly. “It may take time, but no one gave me a time limit when we shipped out.”

  “I know they didn’t.” Honor rolled Nimitz onto his back to stroke his belly fur, then sat straight, planted both feet on the floor, and met the admiral’s eyes levelly. “Nonetheless, I think I should remove myself from the equation, Sir. At least until you get the ball rolling in the right direction.”

  “You do?” Courvosier arched his eyebrows, and she nodded.

  “I do. In fact, I sort of thought that might be wiser from the moment Yanakov and his people came on board Fearless to greet you. That’s why I didn’t go ahead and send Alice and Alistair straight on to Casca as I’d originally planned.”

  “I thought that might be the case.” The admiral considered her soberly. “You’re thinking about taking the other merchies to Casca yourself?” She nodded. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Honor. The Graysons may see it as running out, as proof a ‘mere woman’ can’t take the heat.”