In Fire Forged: Worlds of Honor V-ARC (29 page)

Which, coupled with the waiter’s last question, gave Honor furiously to think.

“I can’t answer that,” she said finally. “I can tell you that any conversation with my ship would be completely secure from
our
end, but I’m not in any position to vouch for its security from
this
end.”

She didn’t bother to add that any breach of her ship’s communications security from the Jasper end would be a serious violation of all sorts of solemn interstellar agreements. Nor, from the look in his eyes, was he surprised by her response. Or happy about it, for that matter.

“It happens,” she heard her own voice continuing, without any conscious decision on her part, “that no one expects me back aboard in the next two or three hours, though.”

The waiter brightened visibly.

“In that case, Commander,” he said, “I mean, given that you’ve got some time to kill before returning to your ship and that it’s stopped raining, I wonder if you’ve seen Wozniak Park?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Wozniak Park, Ma’am. I mean, Mikolaj Wozniak Memorial Park. It’s named for the first Saginaw Sector governor, Mikolaj Wozniak. It’s quite close, actually—only about three and a half kilometers from here—and it’s famous throughout the system for its landscaping and water features.”

“No,” she said, watching his expression closely. “No, I haven’t had the opportunity to visit it yet.”

“Well, I’d really hate for you to miss it,” he said. “Especially if you don’t have to be back aboard your ship for another couple of hours. I think”—he looked straight into her eyes—“that you’d find it well worth your time.”

Honor glanced at Nimitz one last time. The treecat still seemed fascinated by the waiter, but she saw no sign of threat response in his body language, and she looked back at the man.

“I appreciate the advice,” she told him. “And, given the strength of the recommendation, I may just try to take a look at it before I head back to the port.”

*
   
*
   
*

“Tell me, Stinker—do
you
think I’ve lost my mind? Because I’ve got to tell you,” Honor Harrington shook her head, gazing out across the sparkling blue waters of Mikolaj Wozniak Memorial Park’s central lake, “
I’m
pretty sure I have!”

She and Nimitz sat on a bench which was still slightly damp under a sky which had turned into crystal blue banded with chunks of still dark-bottomed clouds. Sunlight highlighted the upper portions of those clouds dramatically in dazzling white, and Honor found herself wondering if today were some sort of local holiday, given the number of obviously school-aged children who seemed to be materializing out of thin air. Dozens of remote-controlled boats dotted the lake’s surface, including some of the best working sail-powered vessels Honor had ever seen. At least one of them had three fully rigged masts, and as she watched, the model—probably the next best thing to two meters in length—came about, head sails and yards resetting themselves smoothly. Others churned busily about under power, and despite the relatively cool weather (for Jasper; for Sphinx, it was actually quite warm), a couple of dozen kids were wading in the lake’s shallows. More were tearing about madly in some local variant of tag, and shouts, laughter, and squeals of delight wafted from playground equipment and a magnificently muddy soccer field in a backdrop of such utter normalcy that it was hard to remember she was really here to do anything but enjoy the park.

Nimitz didn’t seem to have any trouble remembering that, though. As she finished her question, he stood straight up right in her lap, turning to face her, and laid the palm of one long-fingered true-hand against her cheek, then shook his head in an unmistakable “no.” She looked down at him, and her lips quirked in a smile.

“I’d feel better about your diagnosis if you hadn’t so happily gone along with some of the other incredibly stupid things I’ve done in my life,” she told him severely. “Like, oh, buzzing the commodore during the Regatta, for example. You and Mike both thought that
one
was a wonderful idea, if memory serves.”

The ’cat bleeked, wrinkling his muzzle and twitching his long whiskers at her. She grinned back at him, although there was a certain degree of truth to her accusation. Nimitz had the soul of a practical joker with a particularly low sense of humor, and he’d gleefully aided and abetted her in more than one outrageous Academy prank. The incident with the Regatta was simply the most spectacular one for which they’d been
caught
.

She chuckled and wrapped both arms around him, lowering her head until the bottom of her chin rested gently on top of his skull. They sat quietly, admiring the park—which truly was as beautiful as the bizarre waiter had told her it was—and the radio-controlled sailboats slicing across it on the brisk afternoon breeze, and her smile slowly faded.

It was never a good idea for the captain of a Queen’s ship to go traipsing off on her own, and Honor was well aware of that minor fact. If she hadn’t been able to figure it out on her own, she’d sat through literally dozens of security briefings which would have made the point for her quite nicely. There were any number of ill-intentioned souls who would just love to get their hands on the sort of information a starship commander could provide. Or, for that matter, on the ransom money the Royal Navy might decide to pay to get her back before all that information got compromised.
 

Up until the point she’d headed for this park, any threat to her personal security had been minimal. The spaceport and its immediate environs were probably the best policed areas of the entire planet, since it would never have done for tourists and important business travelers to find themselves robbed, assaulted, or abducted. Chez Fiammetta’s had been no more than a couple of kilometers outside the port itself, and she and Teschendorff had made the trip to it in an air taxi, so security hadn’t been much of an issue then, either.

It was now…and she knew it.

She hadn’t taken any taxis to get to the park. Instead, she’d walked, and more than one set of curious eyes had followed the space-black-and-gold Manticoran uniform along the damp, shaded sidewalk. Now she was simply sitting here, holding Nimitz in her lap on the lakeside bench, and she had no doubt that if Nimitz had been wrong about the waiter’s emotions the two of them had to present an incredibly tempting target to anyone who wished her—or Manticore—ill.

Of course, there were targets…and then there were
targets
. Anyone who’d never seen a Sphinxian treecat in action could probably be excused for thinking of Nimitz as primarily an adorable, fluffy pet. For that matter, the ’cat went to considerable pains to project exactly that image. The truth was rather different, given his ability to sense the emotions of any potential enemy at ranges of up to a couple of hundred meters, especially if those emotions focused upon him or his person. Then there was the fact that a treecat’s natural weapons were astonishingly lethal, especially for a creature of its diminutive size. And in addition to Nimitz’s abilities and weaponry, there was the three-millimeter pulser in the shoulder holster under Honor’s tunic. It wasn’t as heavy as the weapon she’d habitually carried in a belt holster from the time she was twelve whenever she ventured into the Sphinx bush with Nimitz, but it ought to be sufficient to deal with just about anything smaller than a hexapuma. It was her constant companion whenever she went dirt-side on her own, and she routinely shot “High Expert” on the Navy and Marine pistol courses.

None of which changed the fact that she was sitting here, enjoying the breeze as it caressed her short-cropped hair, on a bench in a public park on a Silesian planet at the invitation of a man she’d never met before who seemed to know an awful lot about her and her family. If she hadn’t actually lost her mind, she’d certainly managed to display enough questionable judgment to get on with.

Nimitz twitched in her arms, and she straightened. The treecat turned his head, looking along one of the paths, and she followed his gaze, then stiffened ever so slightly as she recognized the waiter. He saw her at about the same time she saw him, and something about his body language suggested a combination of both surprise and relief.

He looked both ways, up and down the path and across the lake, then quickened his pace very slightly, strolled up to her, and waved one hand at the bench on which she sat.

“May I join you, Commander?”

“It’s a public bench,” she pointed out, and he smiled slightly.

“So it is,” he agreed, and settled gingerly into place.

She studied him frankly, and he sat patiently, giving her time. His eyes were a peculiar shade of amber, almost yellow, and his dark complexion had an odd cast which wasn’t quite like anything she’d ever seen before. Not surprisingly, probably, given the variations the two thousand years of mankind’s Diaspora had worked into the basic warp and woof of humanity. But there was something about him…something—

Her thoughts chopped off abruptly as he opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue.

It was an absurdly childish gesture…except that it wasn’t. Given her family history, she knew exactly what she was looking at as he showed her the barcode of a genetic slave on his tongue.

He let her look at it for an instant, then closed his mouth, and this time his crooked smile was bitter.

“I told you I knew your family on Beowulf, Commander,” he said. “In fact, I once met your mother personally, although I doubt she remembers it. She was barely out of high school at the time.”

“Mother’s memory might surprise you,” Honor replied. She knew she sounded as if she were playing for time—since she was—but she also chuckled. “Mind you, that memory of hers can be pretty selective when it suits her purposes.”

“And yours, Commander? Can your memory be selective when it suits
your
purposes?”

Honor regarded him thoughtfully for several seconds, then shrugged.

“I’m not going to answer that just yet,” she told him. He looked a question at her, and she flicked her right hand in a throwing-away gesture. “I’m not going to give you any sort of carte blanche, not until I’ve got some idea what this is really all about, and I’m not going to pretend I will, either. I don’t imagine you’d have gone to all the trouble of inviting me to meet with you out here if you didn’t have something fairly significant on your mind. If you want to go ahead and tell me about it, I’m willing to listen. I’m not willing to give you any guarantees about what I’ll do if I don’t like what I hear.”

She held his gaze very levelly.

“Bearing that in mind, do you want to continue this conversation? Or should we both just sit here and admire the lake?”

“You’re rather more direct than your relatives back on Beowulf, Commander. Did you know that?”

“I take after Daddy’s side of the family in that respect, I think,” she said, and he snorted.

“That’s certainly
one
way to describe him,” he said feelingly, and Honor allowed one eyebrow to arch at the fresh evidence that he knew a very great deal, indeed, about her and her family.

He sat looking at her for several more thoughtful seconds, then gave his head an odd little toss. It was a decisive gesture, and he turned sideways on the bench to face her fully.

“In case you’re wondering, Commander, I didn’t have any idea you’d be anywhere near the Saginaw System before Commodore Teschendorff walked you into the restaurant. I mean, I don’t want you thinking my presence here on Jasper has anything to do with
your
presence here on Jasper. It’s just one of those things that happens every once in a while, however unlikely they may seem.”

Honor watched him levelly, but Nimitz’s right hand-foot pressed very gently against her thigh in the signal that told her the waiter was telling her the truth.

“I suppose I can accept that coincidences happen,” she said.

“When I began to realize who you might be—to be honest, it was Nimitz that started me thinking about it, then I saw your eyes.” The waiter shook his head. “Did you know you have your mother’s eyes?”

“It’s about the only part of her I
did
get,” Honor said wryly. Her own overgrown gawkiness had been an even more painful cross to bear during her prolong-extended adolescence because of her own mother’s exquisite, almost feline beauty. Honor loved Allison Harrington dearly, but there was still a part of her which couldn’t quite forgive her mother for being so much more beautiful than she herself would ever be.

The waiter started to say something, then shook his head and changed whatever it had been into something else.

“Working here in Onyx, I hear things,” he said. “In fact, I hear lots of things. For example, I hear that the
Evita
’s case has already been resolved. In a manner of speaking.”

“Resolved?” Honor repeated sharply, straightening on the bench. “What do you mean, ‘
resolved
’?”

“I mean the good ship
Evita
—and her entire sadly misunderstood and maligned crew—has mysteriously vanished,” the waiter told her. He watched the shock and fury welling up in her eyes, then shook his head. “Surely that’s not a
complete
surprise, Commander!”

Honor managed not to glare at him. Nimitz quivered against her with the barely audible sound of a snarl which wasn’t directed at the waiter but fully mirrored her own rage. Then her nostrils flared, and she grimaced.

“No,” she admitted. “Not a
complete
surprise. I wish it was.”

“I’m sure you do.”
 

The waiter’s amber eyes were oddly sympathetic, almost gentle, yet she saw something else under the sympathy that was anything but gentle.

“I’m well aware of Governor Charnowska’s vocal support for a closer, more cordial relationship with the Star Kingdom, as well, Commander,” he continued. “I’m afraid, though, that the situation in this sector is…less than ideal, shall we say?”

“I’m sure it is.” Honor leaned back. “On the other hand, I hope you won’t be offended if I say it’s obvious to me that you have some sort of information you want to share with me. Besides the disappearance of the
Evita,
I mean. You know as well as I do that I’d have found out about that soon enough on my own. So let’s take it as a given that you dropped it on me to get my attention and demonstrate that you really do ‘hear things’ here in Onyx. Now suppose you tell me exactly who you are and exactly what it is I’m sitting here on this bench to hear about?”