"Why do you say that?" she demanded.

"Because he's gone out of his way to tell a few stories about incidents between us, love," Giscard said with a slow smile. "Incidents which never happened—or not, at least, quite the way he describes them—and all of which emphasize the 'tension' between us."

"You mean—?"

"I mean I think he's covering for us," Giscard told her. She gazed into his eyes for several seconds, chewing her lower lip with even white teeth, then sighed and twitched her shoulders in a shrug.

"I'm grateful to him if he is," she said unhappily, "but I'd be even more grateful if he'd never guessed. And he'd better be careful about his stories, too. If he gets too creative and StateSec starts comparing his versions with those of some other informer..."

She let her voice trail off, and Giscard nodded again, this time soberly.

"You're right, of course. But I don't think he'll let himself get carried away. And don't forget—you and I are exhibiting a lot of 'tension' in our official relationship. What he's doing is mostly a matter of... emphasizing that tension, and I suspect most of his embroidery is the sort that could be put down to someone exaggerating for effect. Or possibly an amateur angling for a job as an official informer."

"Um." Pritchart considered that, then sighed in resignation and leaned back against his shoulder. "Well," she said in a determinedly brighter tone, "at least you came up with a brilliant way to get rid of Joubert, Javier!"

"I did, didn't I?" Giscard said rather complacently. He had no doubt that StateSec would figure out that getting rid of Joubert was exactly what he'd done, but, then, he'd made it plain from the beginning that he'd accepted the chief of staff only under protest. And although Pritchart had argued strenuously against his decision to reassign Joubert to command PNS Shaldon, not even a commissioner as vigilant in the People's service as she could argue that it had been a demotion. No one had expected Citizen Captain Herndon to drop dead of a heart attack en route to the target, but his exec had been far too inexperienced to command a dreadnought in action, whereas Citizen Captain Joubert had both the experience and the seniority for the spot. And so Citizen Admiral Giscard had regretfully deprived himself of his services by transferring him to Citizen Rear Admiral Darlington's Task Group 12.4.2 and tapped Citizen Commander Macintosh to fill both the chief of staff's slot and the ops officer's, and everyone—except, of course, for Citizen Commissioner Pritchart's official persona—was delighted with the change.

He chuckled quietly at the thought, and Pritchart smiled, following the direction of his mind with her usual uncanny acuity. His arms tightened about her for a moment, and his mood darkened. At least I can say one thing for worrying about StateSec's reaction if they find out they've got an unregenerate Aprilist watching over a rogue admiral, he thought. It puts the thought of such minor things as being killed in action into their proper, unimportant perspective!

"We'd better go," he said quietly, and she turned to kiss him with fierce, quiet desperation before they stood and donned their masks once more.

"They're going for a straight-up duel," Citizen Captain Bogdanovich said, and shook his head.

"Why not?" Tourville replied quietly. The two of them stood gazing down into the master plot, hands clasped behind them, and the citizen vice admiral shrugged. "Thanks to Shannon, they may figure we forgot to bring any pods along, and their missiles—and point defense—have always been better than ours. In their place, I think I'd want to get to energy range as quickly as possible, but then, I do know about our pods. Even if I try to forget it, I can't, which may be affecting my opinion."

"No it's not," the chief of staff said with a wry smile. "You'd want to charge in and get it done anyway."

"I'm not that bad," Tourville protested. He turned to frown quellingly at Bogdanovich, but the chief of staff only grinned. "Am I?" the citizen vice admiral asked rather more plaintively, and Bogdanovich nodded.

"Oh, well. Maybe you're right," Tourville conceded. But maybe you aren't, too, my friend, he added silently. I may believe in getting in and getting it done, but I'm not prepared to be stupid about it. And I didn't just happen to decide to keep Count Tilly as my flagship, either. She's more fragile than a battleship, but battlecruisers are going to draw a hell of a lot less fire than the battleships are, too!

He smiled at the thought, then turned and walked back to his command chair.

Rear Admiral Tennard waited tautly as the range continued to drop. He'd gone out to meet the Peeps, then turned to decelerate back the way he'd come. The range was down to only a little more than six-point-seven million kilometers now, and he was letting it drop by a steady eight hundred KPS. They'd be in long missile range in a little over four minutes, at which point he would attack and then increase his accel to hold the range open as long as possible.

"Stand by to launch," he said in a firm, quiet voice.

"Recommend we deploy the pods, Citizen Admiral," Shannon Foraker said. The tension everyone else felt burned in her voice, as well, but on her it had a curious effect. It was almost as if this tension were a familiar one—even a welcome one—which displaced that other tension which had gripped her for so long. In that moment, she sounded more like Lester Tourville's old tac witch than she had since Honor Harrington's capture, and he turned his head to look at her. She glanced up, as if she felt his eyes upon her, and then, to his astonishment, she actually smiled and winked at him!

"Recommendation approved, Citizen Commander," he told her, and Citizen Lieutenant Frasier passed the order over the intership net.

"Sir! Admiral Tennard, they're—"

"I see it," Tennard said, and the sound of his own voice surprised him. It was even, almost relaxed, when every cell of his brain screamed his fatal mistake at him. It hadn't even occurred to him that they might have held their pods inside their wedges, and it should have. Such a simple thing to do... and he'd never seen it coming, never even considered it.

But it was always the simple things, wasn't it? And he knew now. The long, lumpy trails of pods deployed astern of the battleships and battlecruisers in ungainly tails, revealing themselves to his sensors, and there were far more of them than he had.

"Course change," he said. "Let's close the range."

"Close the range, Sir?" his chief of staff asked as Tennard's flag captain acknowledged the order.

"Close it," the rear admiral confirmed grimly. "Those people are going to blow the ever living hell out of us when they launch. And then, if they have a clue at all, they'll be the ones holding the range open. They'll stay outside our energy envelope and pound us with more missiles until we're scrap metal."

"But—"

"I know," Tennard said softly. "But our best shot is going to be to get in close enough to land a few good licks with our energy weapons before they take us out." He managed a tight, bitter smile. "I screwed up, and I'm going to lose this system, but nothing I can do will get our people out of the trap I walked them right into," he said almost calmly. "That being the case, all we can do is try to take some of them with us."

"They're altering course, Citizen Admiral," Foraker reported, and studied her plot carefully. "They're coming to meet us again," she announced after a moment.

"Trying to get into energy range," Tourville grunted. He rubbed his luxuriant mustache for a moment, then shrugged. "Bring us about as well, Karen," he told Citizen Commander Lowe. "They must have figured out how Shannon suckered them, but there's an old, old saying about suckers and even breaks."