It's a pity the Confederacy's government is too corrupt to let that happen.
And that, she knew, as much as Manticore's interest in the system and the industriousness of its people, was why Marsh was succeeding in turning itself into a modern, prosperous star system. There were no Silesian governors to batten on the opportunities for graft and corruption and strangle any sustained industrial expansion at birth.
None of which, she reminded herself briskly, had any particular bearing on the task which had brought her back to Marsh after all these years.
She turned her back on the viewport and headed for her desk. She had entirely too many reports waiting for her. Mercedes had flagged the most important dozen or so for her attention, but Honor was still behind in her reading, and Mercedes was altogether too capable of making her feel intolerably guilty just by looking reproachfully at her. Honor suspected she'd been taking Reproachful 101 lessons from James MacGuiness. And since she'd scheduled a meeting of the entire task force's staffs for this afternoon, it would probably be a good idea to give her chief of staff one less reason to employ The Look.
She chuckled again and punched up the first report in the queue.
"Excuse me, Ma'am."
Honor looked up from the letter to Howard Clinkscales she'd been recording as James MacGuiness appeared in the open hatch of her day cabin.
"Yes, Mac? What can I do for you?"
"Lieutenant Meares asked me to inform you that a merchant captain just screened the com center with a request to make a courtesy call on you."
"Really?" Honor frowned thoughtfully. Timothy Meares, her flag lieutenant, was a bit on the youthful side, but he'd very early shown the good sense of accepting MacGuiness's assistance in managing his Admiral. Among other things, Meares had quickly grasped that MacGuiness usually had a better idea than anyone else aboard Werewolf of how busy Honor actually was at any given moment, and the flag lieutenant had come to trust the steward's judgment about when and whether or not to interrupt her with some routine matter.
He'd also recognized the fact that Honor expected him to use his own discretion about those same routine matters, and he had a somewhat more exalted opinion of her importance than she herself did. Which made the fact that he'd passed the request along to MacGuiness at all informative. Obviously, there was some reason he hadn't seen fit to reject this particular captain's attempt to invite himself to dinnerfiguratively speaking, of courseout of hand. At the same time, he'd passed it along through the filter of MacGuiness, which suggested that perhaps he'd wondered if an older and wiser head who'd been with Honor much longer than he had might decide to quash it.
If that had been his intention, MacGuiness clearly hadn't opted to do any quashing, and she felt her initial prick of curiosity grow into something stronger as she reached out to taste the steward's emotions. He radiated a combination of anticipation, curiosity of his own, minor trepidation, and an echo of something which wasn't quite amusement.
"May I ask if this merchant captain said who he is and why he wants to see me?" she asked after a moment.
"I understand, Ma'am, that he's a Manticoran national, although he's been here in the Confederacy for many years now. According to my information, he's managed to acquire ownership of a small but extremely successful shipping line. In fact, he holds a special warrant from the Confederacy to permit his vessels to be armed, and Lieutenant Meares tells me that our records indicate that he's destroyed at least a dozen pirate vessels we know about over the past ten T-years. As to precisely why he wants to see you, all he's actually told the Lieutenant is that he'd like to pay a courtesy call on you. I believe, however, that the Lieutenant suspects that the good captain has come across some sort of local information which he believes it would be beneficial to share with you."
Nothing could have been blander than MacGuiness's expression or tone, but that edge of not-quite-amusement was stronger than ever as he regarded her gravely. And, she noted, his sense of trepidation had grown in direct parallel.
"That's all enormously interesting, Mac," she told him with a twinkle of moderate severity. "It didn't exactly answer my first question, though. I would imagine this mystery skipper has a name?"
"Oh, of course, Ma'am. Did I forget to mention it?"
"No," she told him. "You didn't 'forget' anything. You chose not to tell me because that curiously twisted faculty which serves you as a sense of humor told you not to."
He grinned as her shot went home, then shrugged just a bit too casually.
"You have a naturally suspicious personality, Ma'am," he told her in virtuous tones. "As it happens, however, the gentleman does have a name. I believe it's...Bachfisch. Thomas Bachfisch."
"Captain Bachfisch?" Honor jerked bolt upright in her chair, and Nimitz's head snapped up where he reclined on his bulkhead perch. "Here?"
"Yes, Ma'am." MacGuiness's grin had vanished, and he nodded seriously. "Lieutenant Meares didn't recognize the name. I did."
"Captain Bachfisch," she repeated softly, and shook her head. "I can't believe it. Not after all this time."
"I've heard you speak of him," MacGuiness told her quietly. "According to Lieutenant Meares, he sounded a bit hesitant about asking to see you, but I felt certain you wouldn't want this opportunity to slip away."
"You're certainly right about that!" she said firmly, then cocked her head. "But you said he sounded 'hesitant' about asking to call on me?"
"That was the way Lieutenant Meares put it, Ma'am," MacGuiness replied. "I'm sure the com section has the actual request on record, if you'd care to view it, but I haven't seen it myself."
"Hesitant," Honor repeated and felt an obscure sort of pain somewhere deep down inside. Then she shook herself. "Well, he may be hesitant, but I'm not! Tell Tim that his request is approved, and that I'll see the Captain at his earliest convenience."
"Yes, Ma'am," MacGuiness acknowledged, and disappeared as quietly as he had come, leaving Honor to her thoughts.
He's aged, Honor thought, hiding a pang of dismay as the stoop-shouldered man in the blue uniform swung himself across the interface from the boarding tube's zero-gee into the boat bay gallery's standard single gravity. She'd checked Werewolf's copy of the officers' list and found Bachfisch's name on it. Her old captain was a full admiral now, but solely because seniority continued to accrue even on half-pay, because that was precisely where he'd been for almost forty years. Forty hard years, she thought as she gazed at him. The dark hair she remembered was liberally laced with silver, despite his first-generation prolong, and Nimitz shifted ever so slightly on her shoulder, uneasy as both of them tasted the sense of pain and loss which flowed through him as he found himself once again upon a Queen's ship.
"Pirate's Bane, arriving!" the boat bay intercom system announced crisply, and the side party came to attention as the bosun's pipes shrilled in formal salute.
The dark eyes widened in surprise, and the shoulders squared themselves. That pain and loss intensified almost unbearably for just a moment, then turned into something far warmer. Not gratitude, although that was part of it, so much as understanding. An awareness of exactly why Honor had chosen to extend full formal military courtesies to a mere merchant skipper, whatever his half-pay rank might be. He came to full attention and saluted the junior-grade lieutenant boat bay officer at the head of the side party.
"Permission to come aboard, Ma'am?" he requested formally.
"Permission granted, Sir," she replied, snapping him a parade ground-sharp salute of her own, and Rafe Cardones stepped forward to greet him.