Lieutenant Commander Prevost had one plasticast-sheathed arm in a sling and moved with a painful limp, but her quiet voice was crisp as she spoke to the helmsman. Apollo's executive officer was far from the only walking wounded member of the cruiser's crew. Over half Truman's people were dead or wounded; of her senior officers, only Prevost and Lieutenant Commander Hackmore, Apollo's chief engineer, were still on their feet at all.
"Ready to pull out, Alice?"
"Yes, Ma'am. I wish—" Truman cut herself off with a little shrug and looked at the shattered ruin of Apollo's tactical and astrogation stations and the patches on the bridge's after bulkhead. That hadn't been a direct hit, Honor knew—just a secondary explosion that had killed Lieutenant Commander Amberson, Lieutenant Androunaskis, and the astrogator's entire plotting party.
She held out her hand.
"I know. I wish you could stay, too. But you can't. I wish I could give you more medical staff, God knows Lieutenant Gwynn could use them, but—"
It was Honor's turn to shrug, and Truman nodded as she gripped the proffered hand firmly. If Fearless and Troubadour were called upon to fight Thunder of God, they would need every doctor and SBA they had.
"Good luck, Skipper," she said quietly.
"And to you, Alice." Honor gave her hand one last squeeze, stepped back, and adjusted her white beret. "You have my report. Just—" She paused, then shook her head. "Just tell them we tried, Alice."
"I will."
"I know," Honor repeated, and gave her a nod and a small half-wave, then turned away without another word.
Ten minutes later, she stood on her own bridge, watching the direct vision display as Apollo broke Blackbird orbit. The light cruiser's damage was hideously apparent in her mangled flanks, but she drove ahead at five hundred and two gravities, and Honor made herself look away. She'd done all she could to summon help, yet she knew, deep at the core of her, that if help were truly needed, it would arrive too late.
She felt her tired muscles listing under Nimitz's weight and made herself straighten as she switched the optical pickups to the surface of Blackbird. A time display clicked downward with metronome precision, and the visual dimmed suddenly as it hit zero. A huge, silent boil of white-hot light erupted from the frigid surface, swelling and expanding in the blink of an eye, and she heard her bridge crew's barely audible growl as it wiped away every trace of the Masadan base. Honor watched for a moment longer, then reached up to rub Nimitz's ears and spoke without looking away from the dying explosion.
"All right, Steve. Take us out of here."
The moon fell away from her, and she turned from the display at last as Troubadour formed up on her ship. They were together again—her entire remaining squadron, she thought, and tried to shake the bitterness of the reflection. She was tired. That was all.
"How's our com link to Troubadour, Joyce?" she asked.
"It's solid, Ma'am, as long as we don't get too far away from her."
"Good." Honor glanced at her com officer, wondering if her question made her sound a prey to anxiety. And then she wondered if perhaps she sounded that way because she was. Metzinger was a good officer. She'd tell her if there were any problems. But with her own gravitic sensors down, Fearless could no longer receive FTL transmissions from the recon drones mounting guard against Thunder of God's return. Her ship was as one-eyed as she was, and without Troubadour's gravitics to do her seeing for her ...
She checked the chrono again and made a decision. Nightmares or no, she couldn't do her job with fatigue poisons clogging her brain, and she folded her hands behind her and walked across the bridge towards the lift.
Andreas Venizelos had the watch, but he rose from the command chair and followed her to the lift door. She felt him behind her and looked over her shoulder at him.
"You okay, Skipper?" he asked in a soft voice. "You look pretty shot, Ma'am." His eyes clung to her face, and she felt his concern for her.
"For someone who's lost half her very first squadron, I'm fine," she replied, equally softly, and the right side of her mouth quirked.
"I guess that's one way to look at it, Ma'am, but we kicked some ass along the way. If we have to, I figure we can kick a little more."
Honor surprised herself with a weary chuckle and punched him lightly on the shoulder.
"Of course we can, Andy." He smiled, and she punched him again, then drew a deep, tired breath. "I'm going to go catch some sleep. Call me if anything breaks."
"Yes, Ma'am."
She stepped into the lift. The door closed behind her.
Alice Truman watched her own display as Fearless and Troubadour headed towards Grayson and bit her lip at the thought of what they might face in the next few days. She hated herself for leaving them, but Commander Theisman had done too good a job on Apollo, and that was all there was to it.
She touched a com stud.
"Engineering, Commander Hackmore," an exhausted voice said.
"Charlie, this is the Captain. You people ready for translation?"
"Yes, Ma'am. About the only parts of this ship I can vouch for are her propulsive systems, Skip."
"Good." Truman never took her eyes from the departing dots of Honor's other ships. "I'm glad to hear that, Charlie, because I want you to take the hyper generator safety interlocks off line."
There was a moment of silence, then Hackmore cleared his throat.
"Are you sure about that, Captain?"
"Never surer."
"Skipper, I know I said propulsion's in good shape, but we took a lot of hits. I can't guarantee there's not damage I haven't found yet."
"I know, Charlie."
"But if you take us that high and we lose it, or pick up a harmonic—"
"I know, Charlie," Truman said even more firmly. "And I also know we've got all the squadron's wounded with us. But if you kill the interlocks, we can cut twenty-five, thirty hours—maybe even a little more—off our time."
"Figure all that out on your own, did you?"
"I used to be a pretty fair astrogator, and I can still crunch numbers when I have to. So open up your little toolbox and go to work."
"Yes, Ma'am. If that's what you want." Hackmore paused a moment, then asked quietly, "Does Captain Harrington know about this, Ma'am?"
"I guess I sort of forgot to mention it to her."
"I see." Truman could feel the tired smile behind the words. "It just, um, slipped your mind, I suppose."
"Something like that. Can you do it?"
"Hell, yes, I can do it. Aren't I the most magnificent engineer in the Fleet?" Hackmore laughed again, more naturally.
"Good. I knew you'd like the idea. Let me know when you're ready."
"Yes, Ma'am. And I just want to say, Captain, that knowing you figured I'd go along with this makes me feel all warm and tingly inside. It must mean you think I'm almost as crazy as you are."
"Flatterer. Go play with your spanners."
Truman cut the circuit and leaned back, rubbing her hands up and down the arms of her chair while she wondered what Honor would have said if she'd told her. There was only one thing she could have said, by The Book, because Truman was about to break every safety reg there was. But Honor had enough on her plate just now. If Apollo couldn't be here to help take that big bastard on, the least she could do was bring back reinforcements as quickly as possible, and there was no point giving Honor something else to worry about.