"Oh." Honor's cheeks heated, and she looked away. "I'd hoped people would forget about that."

"Good luck, Ma'am. It's not every day a Manticoran officer foils an attempt to assassinate a friendly head of state—and on camera, no less."

Honor shrugged uncomfortably. "It was really Nimitz's doing. If he hadn't felt their emotions and warned me, we'd all have been dead."

Tankersley nodded more soberly and glanced across the gym at Nimitz, who returned his gaze with all the hauteur of a holovid star.

"At any rate," Honor went on more briskly, "I still need a sparring partner, and if you're available... ?"

"Of course, Ma'am. I'd be honored."

"Good!" Honor held out her hand and he took it with a smile. She smiled back, but then she looked into his eyes and paused. There was something in them she wasn't accustomed to seeing. She couldn't quite put her finger on what that something was, but she was suddenly aware of how wet and clinging her thin unitard was. She felt her face heating again, and her own eyes fell as she released his hand with a sudden sense of awkwardness.

He seemed to feel it, too, for he looked away with a slight air of embarrassment. Silence hovered between them for a moment, and then he cleared his throat.

"By the way, Dame Honor," he said, an edge of strain shadowing his voice, "I've always wanted to apologize for what happened in Basilisk. I—"

"There's no need to apologize, Captain."

"I think there is, Ma'am," Tankersley disagreed quietly. He looked back into her face, his own expression serious.

"No, there isn't," she said firmly. "You happened to get caught in an old feud. You certainly didn't have anything to do with it, and there wasn't anything you could have done to prevent it."

"But I've always felt so dirty over it." Tankersley's eyes fell. "You see, I'd endorsed Captain Young's request for a refit before we knew anyone else had been assigned there. All his senior officers had."

Honor stiffened. She'd wondered why Young hadn't been relieved for leaving his station; now she knew. He must have learned of her assignment to Basilisk before she had, and he'd taken steps to cover himself when he abandoned the picket to her. A captain who arbitrarily pulled his ship off station for refit had better have a very compelling hardware problem to justify it. But if all of his department heads agreed his ship was in need of general overhaul, The Book authorized him to seek permission from his station's senior officer to return to the yard. As long as the senior officer in question approved, he couldn't be officially censured for abandoning his station... even if it later turned out the overhaul hadn't been necessary after all. And since Pavel Young had also been the senior officer on Basilisk Station, he could grant his own "request"—and leave Honor alone and unsupported—without ever quite violating the letter of the regs.

But his career couldn't have survived it when the station blew up in her face, family influence or no, if his officers hadn't signed off on his request as well.

"I see," she said after a moment. She picked up her towel and dried her hair, then wrapped it around her neck and draped its ends to cover her breasts. Tankersley stood silent, spine rigid, still looking away, and she reached out and touched his shoulder lightly.

"I see," she repeated, "but what I don't see, Captain, is any reason you should blame yourself for it." She felt his shoulder twitch and gave it a tiny squeeze before she removed her hand. "You couldn't have known what was coming when you endorsed his request."

"No," he said slowly, then sighed and turned back to her at last. "No, Ma'am, I didn't know what he was up to. As a matter of fact, I did know there was bad blood between you. I didn't know exactly why," he added hastily, "and, as I say, I didn't know you were coming when I signed off on his refit request. But I should have guessed he was up to something, and it never even occurred to me to wonder what. I suppose that's what I really blame myself for. I knew him, and I should have wondered, but to tell you the truth, all I wanted was to get away from Basilisk myself."

"Now that," Honor said with a grin that was only slightly forced, "I can understand! I was none too pleased to be sent there myself, and you'd already been stuck there for—what? A T-year?"

"Just about," he replied more naturally, and his mouth twitched in a grin of its own. "The longest year of my life, I think."

"I can imagine. But, seriously, I don't blame you or anyone but Young himself, and you shouldn't either."

"If you say so, Milady." The broad-shouldered captain surprised her with a formal bow that should have made her feel ridiculous as she stood looming a full head taller than him in her dripping unitard. But it didn't, somehow.

"Well, then!" she said, "You were on your way to exercise, and I've got to get back to my paperwork. When do you think you might be free for a match?"

"Tomorrow at twelve hundred would be good." He sounded relieved by the change of subject. "I've got a work crew scheduled to start pulling the outer hull plates under Fusion Three during the first watch, and I want to be there, but I should be clear by lunch."

"Fine! I'll see you at twelve hundred, then, Captain Tankersley," Honor said with a nod, and headed for the showers with Nimitz padding along at her heels.

The battlecruiser Invincible accelerated toward her assigned target area. Captain Marguerite Daumier sat in her command chair, outwardly relaxed as she led her temporary division's firing run, but Honor suspected she was less calm than she looked, for the atmosphere on Invincible's bridge was prickly with tension.

She rubbed Nimitz's ears, her own face carefully expressionless, as she stood at the back of the bridge, silently comparing Daumier's command crew to her own. Daumier had commanded Invincible for over a T-year, and her people worked with a smooth precision Nike's bridge crew had yet to attain—not that Honor intended to admit that to a living soul. But whatever Invincible's internal command team was like, the performance of her division had been sadly substandard.

It wasn't Daumier's fault. Nor, for that matter, was it anyone else's, really. None of the three ships had ever worked together before, and there was an undeniable hesitancy to their coordination. Intolerant had actually missed a course change and maintained three hundred and eighty gravities acceleration on her old heading for over ninety seconds before Captain Trinh realized what had happened. Honor was just as glad she hadn't been on his bridge to witness his reaction when he did, and she'd half expected Sarnow to com the unfortunate offender for the express purpose of ripping his head off. But the admiral had only winced and stood watching the display in silence while Trinh fought to get back into formation.

That had been the day's most spectacular error, but it certainty hadn't been the only one. Most of them might not have been apparent to someone simply watching the exercise, but they were painfully evident to the people trying to carry it out. Despite their size, battlecruisers were far too lightly armed to oppose a wall of battle ship broadside to broadside. They had to rely on bold, perfect handling to outmaneuver larger opponents, and the same qualities were required to catch the smaller ships which were their rightful prey, for cruisers and destroyers could pull higher accelerations and were faster on the helm. Unhappily for Sarnow's captains, their ability to act and react as a unit was far below the Navy's usual standards, however good they might be as individuals.

Except for Achilles and Cassandra, that was, which must make Captain Daumier even more unhappy, Honor thought sympathetically. Commodore Isabella Banton's veteran division had operated as a team for over two T-years, and it showed as she whipped them around in obedience to Sarnow's signals. They moved as if they were a single ship, performing with a precision which brutally underscored the other ships' clumsiness. Had it come to an actual fight, Banton's two ships could probably have whipped Daumier's three, which couldn't make Daumier a very happy woman just now.