Chapter One
The funny thing about war is that everybody loses. Oh, the leaders might spout such garbage about how “Our losses were so much less than theirs,” but they still lost something, now didn’t they?
-Jared Praneroad, 22 P.D.
Steadholder Duchess Knight Admiral Lady Dame Honor Alexander-Harrington looked out over the deck of the RMN Stalwart as it cruised out of the Rembrandt system. Stalwart, her sister Stubborn, and six other superdreadnoughts were going out to chart unknown space between the Solarian League’s verge and the Talbott Sector. It was something of a miracle that nobody had even bothered to look there before, but wormholes dictated where people had gone just as much as railroads on Old Earth. There wasn’t much there, save one G4 star in the middle of nowhere. That was what Honor and the Admiralty were interested in.
Of course, this could have been done by any rear admiral or even commodore, but Honor had volunteered out of whimsy. The Grand Alliance fleet was still building up. Haven and Grayson had delivered their bits and more, but Manticore was at least a T-year behind on production, which left Honor floundering for something to do. This mission had popped up in her docket, and she had gone for the bait. Many people would have seen this as a demotion, but she was just glad to have something to do, which brought her thoughts back to the bridge as the ships climbed into hyperspace. The trip would only take eight days, so she planned to settle down and let her staff and the people running the ships take care of business. Nimitz bleeked in approval of that plan.
Nimitz was a cream and grey treecat, a six-limbed arboreal mammal from the planet of Sphinx, one of Manticore’s three habitable systems. Nimitz, and treecats in general, were very intelligent empaths and telepaths. Nobody truly understood how that telepathy worked, but it was obvious that the nerve clusters in their hips contributed. There were two nerve clusters; one for sending, one for receiving. Honor’s eyes darkened as she remembered the time when a brute from the terror regime of Haven’s previous rulers had broken his middle hip, making it so that he couldn’t send his thoughts anymore. That was what had led to the development of sign language so that Nimitz could communicate with both his own kind and humans, but Nimitz could still share thoughts with Honor, so she considered herself lucky. She felt Nimitz give her a little bit of happiness for that.
Her eyes swept the bridge, and they stopped upon Captain (senior grade) Scotty Tremaine. Scotty had been with her since Basilisk, and she smiled as he took care of everything. He was very competent, and he handled his crew with a quick, crisp efficiency that made other captains quite jealous of his abilities. Like Honor, Tremaine had volunteered for this mission, but he had done so only when he had heard that Honor was going. He still followed her with almost puppy-like devotion, but he had matured from the first time she had seen him. What hadn’t changed was the fact that Senior Chief Warrant Officer Horace Harkness was with him. The Bureau of Personnel had realized they made an unstoppable duo, and this trip was no exception.
Honor looked at the visual display, and the chaotic, strange patterns of hyperspace stretched out before her. She didn’t really have much to do this trip either, but she had some very evil surprises spread out for Scotty and his crew waiting in the simulation room tomorrow. Her smile turned into a nasty grin, and she turned to head to her quarters.