"Is something on your mind, Admiral?" he asked.

"Yes, Sir, I'm afraid something is," Sarnow said quietly. "I wonder if I might speak with you a moment." His eyes flicked to Commodore Capra and Captain Hurston, then back to Parks. "In private, Sir."

Parks inhaled sharply and felt the matching surprise in Capra and Hurston. Sarnow's tone was diffident and respectful yet firm, and his green eyes were very level. Capra started to say something, but the admiral raised a hand and stopped him.

"Vincent? Mark? If you'd excuse us for a moment? I'll join you in my chart room to finish reexamining those deployment changes when Admiral Sarnow and I are finished."

"Of course, Sir." Capra rose, gathering up the ops officer with his eyes, and the two of them left. The hatch sighed shut behind them, and Parks tilted his chair back and raised one hand, palm uppermost, at Sarnow.

"What was it you wished to speak to me about, Admiral?"

"Captain Harrington, Sir," Sarnow replied, and Parks' eyes narrowed.

"What about Captain Harrington? Is there a problem?"

"Not with her, Sir. I'm delighted with her performance. In fact, that's the reason I asked to speak to you."

"Oh?"

"Yes, Sir." Sarnow met his CO's gaze with an edge of challenge. "May I ask, Sir, why Captain Harrington is the only flag captain never to be invited to a conference aboard Gryphon?"

Parks leaned further back, his face expressionless, and his fingers drummed on the arm of his chair.

"Captain Harrington," he said after a moment, "has been fully occupied getting her ship back on-line and learning her responsibilities as a flag captain, Admiral. I saw no reason to take her away from those more pressing duties to attend routine conferences."

"With all due respect, Sir Yancey, I don't believe that's true," Sarnow said, and Parks flushed.

"Are you calling me a liar, Admiral Sarnow?" he asked very softly. The younger man shook his head, but his eyes never flinched.

"No, Sir. Perhaps I should have said I don't believe her pressing schedule is the sole reason you've excluded her from your confidence."

Air hissed between Parks' teeth as he inhaled, and his eyes were as icy as his voice.

"Even assuming that statement to be true, I fail to see precisely how my relationship with Captain Harrington concerns you, Admiral."

"She's my flag captain, Sir, and a damned fine one," Sarnow replied in those same, level tones. "In the past eleven weeks, she has not only mastered her squadron duties to my complete—my total—satisfaction, but done so while simultaneously overseeing major repairs to her own command. She's demonstrated an almost uncanny knack for tactical evolutions, earned the respect of all of my other captains, and taken a considerable portion of Captain Corell's headaches onto her own shoulders. More than that, she's an outstanding officer with a record and depth of experience any captain could be proud of and very few can match, but her pointed exclusion from task force conferences can only be taken as an indication that you lack confidence in her."

"I have never said or even hinted that I lack confidence in Captain Harrington," Parks said frigidly.

"Perhaps you've never said so, Sir, but you have certainly, whether intentionally or unintentionally, indicated that you do."

Parks' chair snapped upright, and his face tightened. He was clearly furious, yet there was something more than simple fury in his eyes as he leaned toward Sarnow.

"Let me make one thing plain, Admiral. I will not tolerate insubordination. Is that clear?"

"It isn't my intention to be insubordinate, Sir Yancey." Sarnow's normally melodious tenor was flat, almost painfully neutral but unflinching. "As the commander of a battlecruiser squadron attached to your command, however, it is my duty to support my officers. And if I feel one of them is being treated unfairly or unjustly, it's my responsibility to seek an explanation of his or her treatment."

"I see." Parks pushed himself back in his chair and took a firm grip on his seething temper. "In that case, Admiral, I'll be perfectly frank. I wasn't pleased when Captain Harrington was assigned to this task force. I have a less than lively faith in her judgment, you see."

"No, Sir, again with all due respect, I don't see how you could form an opinion of her judgment without ever even meeting her."

Parks right hand clenched on the conference table, and his eyes were dangerous.

"Her record clearly demonstrates that she's both hotheaded and impulsive," he said coldly. "She personally antagonized Klaus Hauptman, and I need hardly tell you how powerful the Hauptman Cartel is. Or how rocky Hauptman's relationship with the Fleet has been for years. Given the tension with the PRH, setting him at loggerheads—further at loggerheads, I should say—with Her Majesty's Navy was a stupid thing for any officer to do. Then there was her insubordination to Admiral Hemphill when she addressed the Weapons Development Board after Basilisk. What she said needed saying, granted, but it should have been said in private and with at least a modicum of proper military respect. Certainly she showed gross misjudgment by using a vital service board to publicly embarrass a flag officer in the Queens service!

"Not content with that, she assaulted a diplomatic envoy of Her Majesty's Government in Yeltsin, and then issued an ultimatum to a friendly head of state. And while no charges were ever filed, it is a matter of common knowledge that she had to be physically restrained from murdering POWs in her custody after the Battle of Blackbird! However splendid her combat record, that behavior indicates a clear pattern of instability. The woman is a loose warhead, Admiral, and I don't want her under my command!"

Parks made his hands unclench and leaned back, breathing heavily, but Sarnow refused to retreat a centimeter.

"I disagree, Sir," he said softly. "Klaus Hauptman went to Basilisk to browbeat her into abandoning her duty as a Queen's officer. She refused, and her subsequent actions—for which she received this Kingdom's second highest award for valor—are the only reason Basilisk does not now belong to the People's Republic. As for her appearance before the WDB, she addressed herself solely to the issues the Board had invited her there to discuss, and did so in a rational, respectful fashion. If the conclusions of the Board embarrassed its chairwoman, that certainly wasn't her fault.

"In Yeltsin," Sarnow went on in a voice whose calm fooled neither man, "she found herself, as Her Majesty's senior officer, in a near hopeless position. No one could have realistically blamed her for obeying Mr. Houseman's illegal order to abandon Grayson to the Masadans—and Haven. Instead, she chose to fight, despite the odds. I don't condone her physical attack on him, but I certainly understand it. And as for the 'prisoners of war' she allegedly attempted to murder, may I remind you that the POW in question was the senior officer of Blackbird Base, who had not simply permitted but ordered the murder and mass rape of Manticoran prisoners. Under the circumstances, I would have shot the bastard—unlike Captain Harrington, who allowed her allies to talk her out of it so that he could be legally tried and sentenced to death. Moreover, the judgment of Her Majesty's Government on her actions in Yeltsin is plain. May I remind you that Captain Harrington was not only knighted and admitted to the peerage as Countess Harrington but is the only non-Grayson ever to be awarded the Star of Grayson for heroism?"

"Countess!" Parks snorted. "That was no more than a political gesture to please the Graysons by acknowledging all the awards they piled on her!"

"With respect, Sir, it was much more than a 'political gesture,' though I don't deny it pleased the Graysons. Of course, if she'd been given the precedence actually due a steadholder under Grayson Law—or, for that matter, commensurate with the size of her estates on Grayson or their probable eventual income—she wouldn't have been made a countess. She'd be Duchess Harrington."