"I thought you said the Admiral was waiting, Mike!"

"I did, but before you go aboard Gryphon —" The exec's hand darted into the small belt purse under her tunic for a cleaning tissue, and Honors face turned crimson as Henke reached out to whisk away the remnants of eye shadow and lip gloss. The commander didn't even smile, but her eyes twinkled, and Honor's own eyes cut sideways to MacGuiness.

The steward wore no expression at all. Or, no, that wasn't quite right. He looked like a man who was both insufferably pleased and afraid of what might happen if he admitted it. Honor captured his gaze and held it for a single, fulminating moment while Henke worked on her face, and he cleared his throat and looked away quickly, busying himself with the garment bag.

It opened to reveal Honor's best dress tunic and trousers, and she cocked an imperious eyebrow at him.

"Commander Henke said you might require a change, Ma'am. And, of course, I knew—" MacGuiness hit the verb just a bit too hard "—you'd want to look your best tonight."

"I do not need a pair of mother hens! And I'll thank—"

"Hold still!" A ruthless hand gripped her chin, tilting her head to the side, and the tissue muffled her voice as it made a final swipe across her lips. Henke cocked her own head to consider her work, then nodded. "There! Uniform, Mac?"

"Of course, Ma'am."

Honor gave up and shoved Nimitz into the crook of MacGuiness's elbow, then shed her undress tunic even as she toed off her boots. For the first time, she felt an edge of body consciousness in MacGuiness's presence, but he seemed unaware of any reason she should be remotely uncomfortable, and she grinned wryly to herself. All those years in gyms and dressing rooms, working out with men, throwing them around the salle—and being thrown by them—and tonight she was suddenly aware that she wasn't just "one of the guys" after all!

She stepped out of her trousers, suppressing an urge to turn her back on MacGuiness, and accepted the fresh pair with the gold stripes up their outer seams.

"Oh, damn!" Henke sighed as she sealed the trousers. "There's makeup on your collar, Honor. Hold still!"

Honor froze, and Henke's fingers worked busily with the soft roll of her white blouse's turtleneck.

"There!" the exec said again. "Just be careful not to fuss with it and disarrange anything."

"Yes, Ma'am," Honor murmured meekly, and Henke's lips quivered as she took the tunic from MacGuiness' unencumbered hand and helped her into it.

"Get us moving again," Honor went on, pulling her boots back on. She bloused her trouser legs properly and sealed the tunic, and the lift began to move once more. She accepted a comb from MacGuiness and dragged it through her hair with ruthless dispatch while she watched the steward stuff her discarded clothing into the garment bag, and laughter glinted in her eyes.

A soft tone warned of their impending arrival, and she jammed the comb into a pocket and tugged the hem of her tunic down. Nimitz leapt up onto her shoulder and purred in her ear while she adjusted her beret, and there was just time for a quick, approving inspection of her reflection in the polished hit wall before the words "BOAT BAY ONE" flashed on the location display.

"Thank you—both of you," she said from the side of her mouth, and stepped through the door as it opened.

"Ah, there you are, Dame Honor!" The shadow of tension on Sarnow's dark face betrayed his own surprise at their abrupt summons to the flagship, and Honor wondered for a moment if he was being sarcastic. But he smiled, and his next words took any possible rebuke out of his comment. "I'm surprised you managed to get back aboard so quickly with so little warning."

He nodded towards the open pinnace hatch, and Captain Corell ducked through it. Honor followed the chief of staff, and Sarnow was hard on her heels. They settled into their seats while the flight engineer closed the hatch, made a quick but thorough visual inspection of the seal, and spoke into the boom mike of her com headset.

"Hatch secure," she told the flight deck, and Honor settled Nimitz in her lap as the departure light flashed on the cabin's forward bulkhead. The mechanical latches retracted, a puff of thrusters drifted them clear of the buffers, and then a harder surge of power—imperceptible through the pinnace's onboard grav generator—sent them streaking out of the bay like a scalded cat.

Auxiliary thrusters carried the pinnace's impeller safety perimeter clear of the ship, the pilot lit off his main drive, and Sarnow gave a tiny sigh of relief as the small craft went instantly to over two hundred gravities of acceleration.

Honor glanced across at him, and he smiled and tapped his chrono.

"I always hate being the last to arrive for a conference," he admitted, "but unless Admiral Konstanzakis' pilot's figured out how to take a pinnace into hyper, we should beat her by at least five minutes. Good work, Captain. I never thought you'd make it back aboard in time."

"I tried not to let any snow melt under my feet, Sir," she said with a small, answering smile, and he chuckled.

"So I noticed." He cocked an eye at his chief of staff, but Captain Corell was busy consulting a memo pad in her lap, and he leaned a bit closer to his flag captain and lowered his voice.

"And may I also say, Lady Harrington," he went on in an admirably grave tone, "that I've never seen you look more becoming."

Honor's eyebrows flew up at the totally unexpected—and unprecedented—compliment, and his smile turned into a mustache-quivering grin.

"I see supper agreed with you," he said even more softly... and winked at her.

Honor's own sense of urgency echoed around her as she stepped into the late-night bustle of HMS Gryphon. No warship ever truly shuts down, but even spacers tend to retain a sense of "day" and "night" as dictated by their clocks. It may not make much difference to the people who actually have the watch at any given moment, but it is too easy for the human animal to lose its temporal place without some sort of agreed upon referent. And as a general rule, a flagships "day" is defined as "the Admiral is up." When he retires, so do most of his staff and its myriad attachments, and the entire tempo of the flagship seems to relax with an appreciable breath of gratitude.

But no one was relaxed tonight. Gryphon's boat bays were brilliant with light and busy with side parties as flag officer after flag officer arrived aboard, and Honor didn't envy her boat bay control officer. Juggling that many small craft was a herculean task, even with the docking capacity of a superdreadnought.

She led Captain Corell out the hatch of Nike's pinnace behind Sarnow and hid a smile, despite her own tension, as the lieutenant assigned to greet them snapped to attention. The side party followed her example, bosun's pipes trilled, Marines saluted—nothing could have been more punctilious, but the lieutenants harassed expression suggested another pinnace was coming in right behind them... as soon as their boat got out of the way, that was.

"Welcome aboard, Admiral Sarnow. Lady Harrington. Captain Corell. I'm Lieutenant Eisenbrei. Admiral Parks extends his compliments and asks you to follow me to the briefing room, please."

"Thank you, lieutenant." Sarnow gestured for her to lead the way, and Honor could almost hear Eisenbrei's sigh of relief as she shepherded them out of the boat bay gallery. Another lieutenant tried not to hover too obviously to one side, and Eisenbrei gave her colleague a nod and made a small shooing gesture towards the gallery even as Nike's pinnace undocked. The other lieutenant vanished at a trot, Eisenbrei led her charges briskly away, and Honor managed—somehow—not to laugh as Corell looked her way and rolled her eyes heavenward.