Not that the Confederacy government was likely to regard that concern as any skin off its nose. The ships coming and going to Melchor these days were almost all Manticoran—aside from the handful of Andermani who still called there—and if the foreigners couldn’t take the heat, then they should get out of the kitchen. Or, as in War Maiden’s case, call in their own governments to look after their interests. Of course, the Confederacy scarcely liked to admit that it needed foreign navies to police its own domestic space, but it had learned long ago that Manticore would send its naval units to protect its commerce whatever the Silesians wanted, so it might as well let Manticore pick up the tab for Melchor. And if the Star Kingdom lost a few merchant ships and their crews in the process, well, it served the pushy foreigners right.

Honor was scarcely so innocent as to be surprised by the situation. That didn’t mean she liked it, but like anyone else who aspired to command a King’s ship, she recognized the protection of the merchant trade which was the heart, blood, and sinews of the Star Kingdom’s economic might as one of the Navy’s most important tasks. She didn’t begrudge being here to protect Manticoran lives and property, whatever she might think of the so-called local government that made her presence a necessity.

Despite all that, it was highly unlikely War Maiden would find anything exciting to do here. As Captain Courvosier had often warned, a warship’s life was ten percent hard work, eighty-nine percent boredom, and one percent sheer, howling terror. The percentages might shift a bit in a place like Silesia, but the odds in favor of boredom remained overwhelming. Honor knew that, too, but she was still just a bit on edge and not quite ready to turn in, which explained her detour by the wardroom. Besides, she was hungry. Again.

Her eyes swept the compartment with a hint of wariness as she stepped through the hatch, but then she relaxed. A middy in the wardroom was rather like a junior probationary member of an exclusive club, only less so. He or she had a right to be there, but the tradition was that they were to be seen and not heard unless one of the more senior members of the club invited them to open their mouths. In addition, they had better be prepared to run any errands any of their seniors needed run, because none of those seniors were likely to give up any of their hard-earned rest by getting up and walking across the wardroom when there were younger and more junior legs they could send instead. In fact, the tradition of sending snotties to do the scut work was one of the Navy’s longer-standing traditions, part of the semi-hazing which was part and parcel of initiating midshipmen into the tribal wisdom, and Honor didn’t really mind it particularly. For the most part, at least.

But this time she was lucky. Santino was off duty, of course, or she wouldn’t have been here in the first place, but Lieutenant Commander LaVacher, who, while an otherwise reasonably pleasant human being, had a pronounced talent for and took an unabashed delight in finding things for middies to do, was also absent. Lieutenant Saunders looked up from his contemplation of a book reader and nodded a casual welcome, while Commander Layson and Lieutenant Jeffers, the ship’s logistics officer, concentrated on the chessboard between them and Lieutenant Livanos and Lieutenant Tergesen, LaVacher’s first and second engineers, respectively, were immersed in some sort of card game with Ensign Baumann. Aside from Saunders’ offhanded greeting, no one seemed to notice her at all, and she made a beeline across the compartment towards the waiting mid-rats table. The food in the wardroom was considerably inferior to that served in the officers’ mess at normal mealtimes, but rated several more stars than the off-watch rations available to the denizens of Snotty Row. And perhaps even more important, from Honor’s perspective, there was more of it.

Nimitz perked up on her shoulder as she spotted the cheese-stuffed celery sticks and passed one up to him, then snuck an olive out of the slightly limp looking bowl of tossed salad and popped it into her own mouth to stave off starvation while she constructed a proper sandwich for more serious attention. Mayonnaise, cold cuts, mustard, Swiss cheese, sliced onion, another layer of cold cuts, dill pickle slices, another slice of Swiss cheese, some lettuce from the salad bowl, and a tomato ring, and she was done. She added a satisfying but not overly greedy heap of potato chips to her plate to keep it company, and poured herself a large glass of cold milk and snagged two cupcakes to keep it company, then gathered up a few extra celery sticks for Nimitz and found a seat at one of the unoccupied wardroom tables.

“How in God’s name did you put that thing together without counter-grav?”

She turned her head and smiled in response to Commander Layson’s question. The Exec gazed at her sandwich for a moment longer, then shook his head in bemusement, and Lieutenant Jeffers chuckled.

“I’m beginning to understand why we seem to be running a little short on commissary supplies,” he observed. “I always knew midshipmen were bottomless pits, but—”

It was his turn to shake his head, and Layson laughed out loud.

“What I don’t understand,” Lieutenant Tergesen said just a bit plaintively, looking up from her cards at the sound of the Exec’s laughter, “is how you can stuff all that in and never gain a kilo.” The dark-haired engineering officer was in her early thirties, and while she certainly wasn’t obese, she was a shade on the plump side. “I’d be as broad across the beam as a trash hauler if I gorged on half that many calories!”

“Well, I work out a lot, Ma’am,” Honor replied, which was accurate enough, if also a little evasive. People were no longer as prejudiced against “genies” as they once had been, but those like Honor who were descended from genetically engineered ancestors still tended to be cautious about admitting it to anyone they did not know well.

“I’ll say she does,” Ensign Baumann put in wryly. “I saw her and Sergeant Tausig sparring yesterday evening.” The ensign looked around at the wardroom’s occupants in general and wrinkled her nose. “She was working out full contact… with Tausig.”

“With Tausig?” Layson half-turned in his own chair to look more fully at Honor. “Tell me, Ms. Harrington. How well do you know Surgeon Lieutenant Chiem?”

“Lieutenant Chiem?” Honor frowned. “I checked in with him when I joined the ship, of course, Sir. And he was present one night when the Captain was kind enough to include me in his dinner party, but I don’t really know the doctor. Why? Should I, Sir?”

This time the laughter was general, and Honor blushed in perplexity as Nimitz bleeked his own amusement from the back of her chair. Her seniors’ mirth held none of the sneering putdown or condescension she might have expected from someone like a Santino, but she was honestly at a loss to account for it. Lieutenant Saunders recognized her confusion, and smiled at her.

“From your reaction, I gather that you weren’t aware that the good sergeant was the second runner-up in last year’s Fleet unarmed combat competition, Ms. Harrington,” he said.

“That he was—” Honor stopped, gawking at the lieutenant, then closed her mouth and shook her head. “No, Sir, I didn’t. He never—I mean, the subject never came up. Second runner-up in the Fleet matches? Really?”

“Really,” Layson replied for the lieutenant, his tone dry. “And everyone knows Sergeant Tausig’s theory of instruction normally involves thumping on his students until they either wake up in sick bay or get good enough to thump him back. So if you and Doctor Chiem haven’t become close personal acquaintances, you must be pretty good yourself.”

“Well, I try, Sir. And I was on the coup de vitesse demo team at the Academy, but—” She paused again. “But I’m not in the sergeant’s league by a longshot. I only get a few pops in because he lets me.”