"Nathan? What is it?" the admiral asked quickly, and Robards cleared his throat.
"Sir, I think—" He stopped, with an air of helpless confusion which would have been almost comical if it had been even a trace less deep.
"Go on," White Haven encouraged.
"Admiral, System Surveillance picked up a cluster of unidentified hyper footprints about twelve minutes ago," the Grayson lieutenant said.
"And?" White Haven prompted when he paused once more.
"Sir, they made transit quite close to one of the FTL platforms and were identified almost immediately as Peeps."
"Peeps?" White Haven sat suddenly straighter in his chair, and Robards nodded.
"Yes, Sir." He glanced down at something White Haven presumed was a memo pad display, cleared his throat once more, and read aloud. "Tracking made it five battlecruisers, four heavy cruisers, a light cruiser, and two of their Roughneck-class assault transports."
"What?" White Haven blinked. He couldn't possibly have heard right. That was a decent enough squadron for something like a commerce raid, or possibly even a strike at some lightly picketed rear system, but twelve ships, without even one of the wall among them, wouldn't stand a snowflake's chance in hell against the firepower stationed here at Trevor's Star. And what in the name of sanity would a pair of transports be doing here? They'd be dead meat for any decent warship—even one of the old-fashioned, pre-Shrike LACs—if they moved inside the hyper limit.
"I assume they hypered back out immediately?" he heard himself say. The only logical explanation was that someone on the other side had made a mistake. Perhaps the Peeps were planning a major attack on Trevor's Star and the transport echelon had simply arrived too soon... or the main attack force was late. In either case, the sensible thing for the Peep CO to do would be to flee back into hyper-space—at once.
"No, Sir," Robards said, and drew a deep breath. "They didn't do anything at all, Sir. Except sit there and transmit a message to System Command HQ."
"What sort of message?" White Haven was beginning to be irritated. Whatever ailed his flag lieutenant, prying the facts out of him one by one was like pulling teeth. What in God's name could have someone normally as levelheaded as young Robards so off-balance and hesitant?
"They said— But, of course it can't be, only— I mean, she's—" Robards broke off again and shrugged helplessly. "Sir, I think you'd better see the message for yourself," he said, and disappeared from White Haven's terminal before the earl could agree or disagree.
The admiral frowned ferociously. He and Nathan were going to have to have a little talk about the courtesy due a flag officer, he thought thunderously, and after that they'd—
His thoughts chopped off in a harsh, strangled gasp as another face appeared on his display. Other people might not have recognized it with the hair which framed it reduced to a short, feathery mass of curls and one side paralyzed, but Hamish Alexander had seen that same face in exactly that same condition once before, and his heart seemed to stop beating.
It can't be, he thought numbly. It can't be! She's dead! She's—
His thoughts disintegrated into chaos and incoherence as the shock roared through him, and then the woman on his display spoke.
"Trevor System Command, this is Admiral Honor Harrington." Her voice sounded calm and absolutely professional—or would have, to someone who didn't know her. But White Haven saw the emotion burning in her good eye, heard it hovering in the slurred soprano. "I'm sure no one in the Alliance expected to see me again, but I assure you that the rumors of my recent death have been exaggerated. I am accompanied by approximately one hundred and six thousand liberated inmates of the prison planet Hades, and I expect the arrival of another quarter million or so within the next eleven days—our transports have military hyper generators and we made a faster passage than they will. I regret any confusion or alarm we may have caused by turning up in Peep ships, but they were the only ones we could... appropriate for the voyage."
The right side of her mouth smiled from the display, but her voice went husky and wavered for a moment, and she stopped to clear her throat. White Haven reached out, his fingers trembling, and touched her face on the com as gently as he might have touched a terrified bird, yet the terror was his, and he knew it.
"We will remain where we are, with our drives, sidewalls, weapons, and active sensors down until you've had time to check us out and establish our bona fides," she went on after a moment, struggling to maintain her professional tone, "but I'd appreciate it if you could expedite. We were forced to pack these ships to the deckheads to get all our people aboard, and our life support could be in better shape. We—"
She broke off, blinking hard, and Hamish Alexander's heart was an impossible weight in his chest—heavy as a neutron star and yet soaring and thundering with emotions so powerful they terrified him—as he stared at her face. He was afraid to so much as breathe lest the oxygen wake him and destroy this impossible dream, and he realized he was weeping only when his display shimmered. And then she spoke again, and this time everyone heard the catch in her breath, the proud tears she refused to shed hanging in her soft voice.
"We're home, System Command," she said. "It took us a while, but we're home."
Appendix
HMS Minotaur
(1) Shrike LAC (shown for scale)
(2) Gravitic Detection Array
(3) Weapon Ports
(4) Missile Tubes
(5) Phased Radar Array
(6) Lidar Array
(7) Life Pod Escape Hatches
(8) Life Pod Escape Tubes
(9) LAC Bay Hatch
(10) LAC Bay
(11) Personnel/Missile Loading Tubes
(12) Docking/Umbilical Cradle
(12A) Docking Arms
(13) Life Pod
(14) Isler Corporation GRAVMAK (Gravity-Magnitnaya)
Fusion Reactor Burning Hydrogen/Boron-11 Mix
15) Hydrogen/Boron Feed Channels
(16) Gravity Generators
(17) Magnetic Field Housing
(18) Boat Bay
(19) Radiation/Particle Shield Generator
(20) Sidewall Generator
(21) Vectored Thrust Auxiliary Fusion Reactor Thruster
(22) After Impeller Ring
(23) Broadside Phased Array Radar
(24) Broadside Gravitic Array
Shrike LAC
(1) Point Defense Laser Cluster
(2) GRASER main armament
(3) Anti-ship Missile Tube
(4) Anti-ship Missile "Revolver" Magazine Cell
(5) Point Defense Missile Tube
(6) Small Craft Hangar
(7) Folding Wing Cutter/Lifeboat
(8) Anti-ship Missile
(9) Sidewall ("Bow Wall") Generator
Engineering Details
(1) Point Defense Laser Cluster Emitters
(2) Standard Beta Node
(3) New "Beta-Squared" Beta Node
(4) Alpha Node
(5) Graser Broadside Armament