"That's why I need you to be aware that the moment at which we reveal the existence of Bolthole and the ships you've been building out here is going to be a matter of very careful political consideration. Both the President and I, on one side, and the confrontationalists, on the other, will want to announce the new fleet at the moment which would be most advantageous for us. The President and I need to find a time when we can be confident the Manties won't be tempted into some sort of preemptive action, which means holding off for as long as we can to build up the most powerful deterrent possible. The confrontationalists will be looking for a time when the fact that we now have the capability to match the Manty advantages—or to offset them, at least—will generate the most push behind their own policies.
"The decision will be made at a higher level than yours, of course. But we need you to be ready, and you need to understand that the amount of notice you're likely to get will be slight. And," he smiled wryly, "we also need you to go right on working your miracles and exceeding our expectations, because whenever Bolthole gets announced to the rest of the galaxy, we're going to need to have all of the available muscle we can."
Chapter Eleven
Hamish Alexander followed James MacGuiness through the door to the private gymnasium under Honor's Jason Bay mansion and stopped.
Honor was on the mat at the center of the large, brightly lit and well appointed gym. She wore a traditional white gi, with the black belt which now bore eight braided rank knots. That didn't surprise him, because he'd known she'd gained the eighth one just over a T-year ago. Coup de vitesse wasn't his sport—he'd put his time into soccer and fencing—but he knew that there remained only a single formally recognized grade for her to attain. Given her tenacity where things which mattered to her were concerned, that ninth knot was as good as on her belt; it was only a question of when.
But somehow he didn't think that was what she had on her mind this afternoon. She wasn't running through her practice katas, nor was she working out against a human partner. No, she was going all out in a full-contact bout against the humanoid training remote she'd had specially built, and it was pushing her hard.
Just how hard became evident as the remote executed a devastating attack. White Haven knew too little about coup de vitesse to understand what he'd seen. It was like fencing, where the untrained eye could see the action but never hope to understand its nuances and complexity. All he knew was that he'd seen the remote's hands move with blurring speed. One of those hands locked onto Honor's right arm and carried it high, while the other shot out in a fist-thrust that slammed into her belly, and then it turned, twisting her captive arm, throwing hips and shoulders into her torso, and she went flying through the air to slam down on the mats with bone-bruising force.
White Haven's surprise turned into alarm as the remote charged after her with—literally—inhuman speed. But she hit the mat rolling, came up on her knees in one, fluid motion, and her own hands were waiting by the time the remote reached her. She reached up, seized the front of its gi, and rolled backwards, as if to pull it down atop herself. But even as she rolled and her shoulders touched the mat, her knees came up into the remote's belly. They lifted powerfully, her legs straightened, and suddenly it was the remote which went hurtling through the air.
It hit the mat with an earthquake shock, and promptly started to come upright, but Honor had continued her own motion through a backwards somersault. Before the remote could regain its balance and come to its feet, she was upon it from behind. Her right arm snaked forward, locking itself around the remote's neck, squeezing its throat in the crook of her elbow, and then the heel of her other hand smashed into the back of its head like a sledgehammer.
White Haven winced in sympathetic anguish. For all its savage power, that ferocious, left-handed blow was delivered with lethal precision, and the fact that it was her left hand made its precision even more remarkable, because that hand was no longer human. He suspected that no one, outside her therapists (and probably Andrew LaFollet), would ever know how hard she'd had to work to master the replacement for the arm she'd lost on Cerberus. But he knew few people ever learned how to use a powered prosthesis as naturally as the organic limb it had replaced or to regain the true full range of motion, and the process took many years for those who did manage it.
Honor had done it in little more than three . . . and done it well enough to not merely regain her old form at coup de vitesse, but to actually attain the next rank of mastery.
Of course, the prosthesis did provide a few unusual advantages. For one thing, it was several times more powerful than natural flesh and bone. There were limits to what she could do with that strength, because her shoulder had been undamaged when she lost her arm, and the natural limitations of that joint dictated how much stress she could exert. But the fact that "her" left arm was far stronger than any arm had any business being was dramatically—one might almost have said gruesomely—evident when the back of the training remote's "skull" deformed under the force of her blow and the entire head flopped forward in a disturbingly realistic representation of a snapped neck.
The remote collapsed onto its front, and Honor slumped across it, her breathing harsh and ragged in the suddenly silent gym. No one moved, and White Haven glanced across to where Andrew LaFollet and Simon Mattingly had stood watching their Steadholder.
Their expressions were not reassuring. Remotes like Honor's were rare. That was primarily due to their expense, but it also reflected the fact that they could be dangerous. In fact, they could be deadly. Like Honor's prosthetic arm, their maximum strength was far greater than that of any human, even a genetically-modified heavy-worlder like Honor Harrington, and their reflexes were much faster. Any training remote came equipped with governors and software inhibitors intended to protect the user, but it was ultimately the responsibility of the person training against one of them to determine its actual settings. More than one human being had been seriously injured, or even killed, as a consequence. No remote had ever "gone berserk," but they performed precisely as their owners instructed them to, and sometimes those owners made mistakes when they specified performance levels.
It was obvious from LaFollet's worried expression that the Grayson thought Honor was approaching precisely that mistake. Given the fact that, unlike White Haven, LaFollet was also a practitioner of coup de vitesse—that he regularly sparred with Honor, in fact—the armsman was certainly in a position to judge, and the earl swallowed a bitter mental curse as he watched Honor push herself pantingly back up on her knees, and then stand.
He'd known for years, since the day they first met at Yeltsin's Star, that Honor Harrington's temper was lethal. People seldom saw it, and he also knew that the calm and serenity she normally projected were just as real as her temper. Yet it was there, chained and subordinated by duty and compassion, perhaps, but without losing one bit of its power. And sometimes it frayed its leash. There were stories about the times it had almost slipped free, part of the legend which had grown up around "the Salamander," but that temper was almost never a match for the discipline and strength of will which restrained it.
Almost . . . but not always. He'd known that, too, but this was the first time he'd ever seen her deliberately free it. That was why LaFollet was worried, and why the "sparring bout" had ended only in the "death" of the remote, and the earl winced again at the recognition of how much pain it must have taken to drive her to that state.
She stood gazing down at the crumpled remote for several seconds, then drew a deep breath, straightened her shoulders, and looked up at LaFollet. She peeled off her sparring gloves, removed her protective mouthpiece, and nodded to him, and the armsman nodded back, obviously trying to conceal his relief, as he pressed buttons on a hand unit. The training remote stirred, then rose and walked off the mat with mechanical calm, completely unaffected by its recent demise, and Honor watched it go. Then she turned and looked at White Haven.
She showed no surprise at seeing him. She must
have known he was there, sensed his emotions, from the moment he entered the gym. He smiled at her, but it was a crooked, half-bitter smile, wise with the knowledge of how badly they'd hurt one another without ever meaning to.
He hadn't realized for a long time that she could actually feel the emotions of those around her. It wasn't really his fault he hadn't, because so far as he was aware, no other human had ever shared the treecats' empathic sense. But once he'd begun to guess the truth, preposterous though that truth had seemed, he'd wondered how he'd ever failed to realize. It explained so much about her uncanny ability to "read" people . . . and about the way she reached out so naturally to those about her, constantly soothing someone else's pain or healing someone else's hurt.
And who can do that for her? Who can give back even a little of all she gives to everyone else? he wondered bitterly. Not me. All I can do is make it still worse by sitting here radiating how much I love her when that's the very thing ripping both of us apart.
Somehow, even after he'd begun to suspect the truth, he'd managed to avoid facing its inevitable implications. Of course she knew how he felt about her. She'd always known, and it had been that knowledge which had driven her away to the squadron command which had landed her on Hades as a POW and nearly killed her. And now he knew the complete reason she'd run away. Because she'd not only sensed his emotions but shared them. And so while he'd thought he was suffering in such noble, splendid isolation by concealing his love for her, she'd been bearing the burden of knowing exactly how they both felt.
Her expression wavered for just a moment before she smiled at him, and he kicked himself mentally. Beating himself up for feeling what he felt and for "inflicting" it upon her did neither of them any good. Nor was it his fault. He knew both those things, yet the knowing changed neither his emotions nor his guilt and frustration for inundating her with them . . . which only made all of them worse.
"Hamish," she said, and her soprano was husky. A large, dark bruise was rising on her right cheek, and her upper lip was swollen. He didn't much care for the way she favored her right side, either, but she only held out her flesh and blood hand to him, and he took it in his and kissed it. It was no longer the simple, adopted Grayson courtesy it had been, and both of them knew it, and he wondered miserably what they were going to do.
"Honor," he said in reply as he released her hand.
Nimitz and Samantha leapt down from their perches and came pattering across the gym towards them, but he scarcely noticed. His attention was fixed on Honor.
"To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?" she asked in a very nearly normal voice, and he produced a smile which he knew fooled neither of them.
And would I really want it to? Hard as this is, painful as I know it is for her, there's still something wonderful about it. About knowing that she knows exactly how much I love her, no matter how much it's cost us both. And how much it's cost Emily.
The thought of his wife reminded him why he was here . . . and why he'd come in person, rather than screening her. Why he'd deliberately arranged to make her feel his emotions. Something flickered in her eyes, and his mouth quirked with wry bitterness as he saw her recognition. At least it was only emotions, and not thoughts, he reminded himself.
"I come bearing an invitation," he said, much more lightly than he felt. Nimitz and Samantha arrived while he was speaking, and Honor bent to scoop Nimitz up without ever taking her eyes from White Haven's face. She straightened, cradling the 'cat in her arms.
"An invitation?" she repeated, and he felt a fresh flicker of pain at the wariness in her voice.
"Not from me," he hastened to reassure her, and then chuckled humorlessly. "The last thing you and I need right now is to give the scandalmongers more ammunition!"
"True," she agreed, and smiled with a flash of what might have been genuine amusement. But the smile disappeared almost as quickly as it had come, and she cocked her head at him. "If not from you, then from whom?" she asked, and he drew a deep breath.
"From my wife," he said very, very softly.
Honor never moved, yet in that instant it was as if he could feel her emotions, sense the way she flinched inside as if from an unexpected blow. She stared at him, and he wanted to reach out and take her in his arms. But he couldn't, of course.
"I know it sounds bizarre," he went on, instead, "but I promise I haven't lost my mind. In fact, the invitation was Emily's idea. Very few people realize it, but the truth is that she's probably even better at picking political problems apart and finding answers than Willie is. And right this minute, Honor, you and I need all the help we can get. She knows that . . . and she wants to offer it."
Honor couldn't take her eyes from his face. She felt as if the training remote had just punched her in the belly all over again. The totally unexpected "invitation" had hit her like a pulser dart, and behind the shock was another emotion: fear. No, not fear—panic. He couldn't be serious! Surely he must realize by now why she'd so persistently avoided ever meeting his wife, and that had been before the Government 'faxes began their systematic demolition of her life. How could he even ask her to face Emily Alexander now? When his own emotions shouted at her that he knew exactly how she felt about him? And that she knew exactly how he felt about her? The countless layers of betrayal inherent in their love and all the pain and devastation the press accounts had heaped upon them wrapped themselves about her, clinging to her like some strangling shroud, and yet underneath it all she could taste his need for her to accept his "invitation."
She was drowning, crushed under the intensity radiating from them both, and she closed her eyes and fought for some fragile semblance of calm. It was impossible. This time, she couldn't step away, couldn't throttle back her sensitivity and awareness, couldn't close the circuit down. The uncontrolled cataract of their emotions crashed back and forth, doubling and redoubling, almost like some bizarre feedback effect, and her thoughts were coated in ceramacrete. She felt Nimitz, swept along with her like some ancient whaler from Old Earth, careening on a "Nantucket sleigh ride" as her emotional turmoil dragged him after her like a sounding whale, seeking escape from the harpoon's anguish in the depths, and there was nothing she could do about that, either.
And at the bottom of that tide race, there was Hamish. There was always Hamish, the source of so much pain because of what should have been so wonderful. The man who'd finally accepted the knowledge that she could feel exactly what he felt, know precisely how deeply he loved her. And who knew she also knew precisely how deeply he still loved his wife, how exquisitely his own sense of having betrayed both Honor and Emily by letting himself love them both tormented him. And how desperately he wanted her to accept his impossible suggestion.
She wavered, unable to reach out to him—too terrified by what he proposed to accept it, yet equally unable to refuse. And as she hung there, she suddenly felt something else. Something she'd never felt before.
Her eyes snapped open, and her head turned as they locked on Samantha. Nimitz's mate crouched beside her, and now the 'cat's emotions came roaring through her like yet another hurricane. She'd felt Samantha's presence—the "mind-glow," the 'cats had called it after they learned to sign—countless times before, but never like this. Never so intensely and powerfully. It crashed and roared with Samantha's own sense of shock and discovery . . . and a terrible, singing joy and astonished recognition.
There was too much going on, too many pressures and impossible demands, for Honor to sort out what was happening, but she felt Samantha reaching out. Stretching. There was no word in any human language for what the 'cat was doing in that instant, and Honor knew she would never be able to truly explain it even to herself, yet she had an instant of warning, a brief flash of awareness. Just long enough for her to cry out, although she would never know whether it was in protesting horror or in shared joy.
It didn't really matter which it was. She could no more have stopped what was happening than she could have halted Manticore in its orbit. Nothing
could have stopped it, and she watched through three sets of eyes—hers, Nimitz's, and above all, Samantha's—as Hamish Alexander's head turned towards the 'cat. As astonishment and disbelief flared in those ice-blue eyes and he reached out a hand just as Samantha hurled herself from the floor into his arms with a high, ringing bleek of joy.
Chapter Twelve
"How could it have happened?"
It was the first coherent sentence Hamish Alexander had strung together in almost ten minutes. He cradled the wildly purring treecat in his arms, as if she were the most precious thing in the universe, and his blue eyes glowed with disbelief and soaring welcome as he stared down at her. He knew what had happened. No one could have spent as much time as he had with Honor and Nimitz—and Samantha—or, for that matter, with Elizabeth and Ariel, and not recognize an adoption bonding when he saw it. But knowing what had happened and understanding it were two different things.