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  She closed her eyes, caressing Nimitz, and a small, self-pitying inner voice railed against the universe's unfairness. She'd never wanted political power, never asked for it. She'd done her best to avoid it when it was thrust upon her, for whatever anyone else thought, she knew only too well how unfitted for politics she was. Yet it seemed no matter what she did or where she went, she took a vortex of political strife with her like a curse, and she wondered despairingly if there would ever be an end to it.

  She hadn't meant to infuriate the Liberal and Progressive Parties back home when she was sent to Basilisk Station. She'd simply done her best to do her duty; surely it wasn't her fault that doing so had made the Liberal and Progressive leadership look like fools?

  But it had, and the hatred that had earned her had only intensified when her grieving guilt over Admiral Courvosier's death had combined with disgust for Reginald Houseman's order to withdraw her forces and abandon Grayson to Masada. No doubt his powerful Liberal family would have been furious enough with her for simply ignoring his orders and underscoring his cowardice, but, no, she'd had to lose her temper and strike him! He'd had it coming, but a Queen's officer had no business giving it to a Crown envoy, and her actions had cast the Opposition's fury with her in ceramacrete.

  Then there'd been Pavel Young. His court-martial for abandoning her in the Battle of Hancock had created the bitterest political fight in the memory of the House of Lords, yet that paled beside what had followed. Paul's murder and Young's death at her hands had almost brought Duke Cromarty's Government down, not to mention getting her exiled to Grayson.

  And now this. The demonstrations had been bad enough, but God alone knew where this latest twist would end. She tried and tried to do her best, to recognize where her duty lay and meet her responsibilities, and every time she did, the galaxy blew up in her face, and she was sick unto death of it. Not even the knowledge that the people whose respect she valued supported her seemed to balance the exhausting strain of fighting political battles for which she was supremely unsuited. She was a naval officer, for God's sake! Why couldn't they just let her be one without all these endless, bickering attacks? Without the unending pressure of making her somehow responsible for the political and religious turmoil of two entire star systems?

  She sighed again, opened her eyes, and gave herself a stern mental shake. They were about to let her be an officer again; and Reverend Hanks and Protector Benjamin were eminently capable of fighting their own battles. Besides, it wasn't as if the universe were truly out to get her, however it felt from time to time, and she had no business losing her perspective this way. All she could do was the best she could, and as long as she did, she could face whatever came with the knowledge that she had. That, as her Grayson subjects would say, she'd risen to her own Test.

  Her lips twitched at the thought, and the bleakness faded in her eyes. No wonder she and her Harringtons got along so well. Whether she shared their Faith or not, they were too much alike not to get along. The Church of Humanity didn't demand an individual triumph in the tests God sent her; it demanded only that she try. That she give it her very best shot, whatever the cost or outcome, and that was a code any warrior could appreciate.

  She straightened her shoulders and glanced back out the window as the car moved past the entrance to Yanakov Park. She let her gaze rest on the soothing green welcome of the park, savoring the beauty of the sight, but then her eyes narrowed and she paled. Good God, was it starting already?

  Nimitz's head shot up, ears pricked and whiskers quivering as he sensed her sudden alarm. Both of them stared for one more instant at the group of men moving purposefully through the park gates, and then she whirled to LaFollet.

  "Get Colonel Hill on the com! Now, Andrew!"

  "My Lady?" LaFollet stared at her for a heartbeat, then whipped his head around to peer quickly through all the car's windows. He was reaching for his portable com in reflex obedience to her barked order, but his face was a study in confusion. "What is it, My Lady?" he demanded as he keyed the com.

  "Tell him to get hold of HCP and then get a platoon of the Guard to the park!" The major gaped at her, and Honor slapped an open palm on her armrest. It wasn't like Andrew to be slow on the uptake, she thought furiously, so why had he chosen today, of all days, for his brain to go to mush on her?!

  "Uh, of course, My Lady," LaFollet said after a moment, so soothingly she wanted to scream. "May I tell the Colonel why?"

  "Why?" Honor repeated incredulously. She stabbed an index finger at the men just vanishing through the gate. "Because of them, of course!"

  "What about them, My Lady?" LaFollet asked cautiously, and she stared at him. His confused perplexity flowed to her over Nimitz's empathic link, and she was stunned by his obtuseness.

  "We've had enough people banged up in riots without their taking clubs with them, Andrew!"

  "Clubs?" LaFollet's confusion was complete, and he darted another look out her window just as a second group of men headed into the park. Like the first, they, too, carried long, slender clubs over their shoulders, and the major's eyes narrowed. Honor began to relax at the evidence that he finally recognized the threat, but then, impossibly, he began to laugh.

  It started with an incredulous chuckle, and his face worked with his desperate effort to stifle it, but he couldn't. It got away from him, erupting in a choked bubble of relieved hilarity that filled the car's interior. Honor and Nimitz stared at him in disbelief, and their expressions only made him laugh harder. No, not laugh, they made him howl, and Honor reached out and shook him hard.

  "C-c-c-clubs, My Lady?" The major gasped for breath, holding his aching ribs with both hands, and tears of mirth gleamed in his eyes. "Those... those aren't clubs, My Lady, they're baseball bats!"

  "Baseball bats?" Honor repeated blankly, and LaFollet nodded as he freed one hand from his ribs to wipe his eyes. "What's a baseball bat?" she demanded.

  "My Lady?" He was plainly astonished by the question, but then he shook himself. He wiped his eyes again and sucked in a deep breath, trying to force the echoes of laughter from his voice. "Baseball bats are what the batter uses in a baseball game, My Lady," he said, as if that explained something.

  "And what," Honor asked through gritted teeth, "might a baseball game be?"

  "You mean people don't play baseball on Manticore, My Lady?" LaFollet seemed as confused as Honor was.

  "Not only do they not play baseball, whatever it is, on Manticore, they don't play it on Gryphon or Sphinx, either. And I'm still waiting for you to tell me what it is, Andrew!"

  "Ah, of course, My Lady." LaFollet cleared his throat and nodded. "Baseball is a game. Everyone plays it, My Lady."

  "With clubs?" Honor blinked. She'd always thought rugby was a violent sport, but if these people went about whaling away at one another with clubs...!

  "No, My Lady, with bats." LaFollet frowned at her, but then his expression cleared. "Oh! They don't use them on each other, My Lady. They use them to hit the ball, the baseball."

  "Oh." Honor blinked again, then smiled sheepishly. "I take it, then, that they aren't planning to go out and stage a riot after all?"

  "No, My Lady. Although," the major grinned, "I've seen a few games where the losing side did just that. We take baseball seriously on Grayson. It's our planetary sport. That's just a pickup game," he jabbed a thumb at the gate through which the... baseball players had disappeared, "but you should see one of the professional teams. Every steading has a franchise. Do you mean they really don't play it at all in the Star Kingdom?" The notion seemed to be beyond his grasp, and Honor shook her head.

  "I never even heard of it. Is it anything like golf?" It didn't seem very likely. Golf was hardly a team sport, and the thought of trying to tee off with one of those bat things appalled her.

  "Golf?" LaFollet repeated cautiously. "I don't know, My Lady. I've never heard of 'golf.'"

  "Never heard of it?" Honor frowned, but then her brow cleared. Of course Graysons didn't play gol
f any more than they swam. The mere thought of trying to maintain a proper golf course on a planet like this was enough to make her dizzy. None of which brought her any closer to understanding what in heaven's name Andrew was talking about.

  "All right, Andrew," she said after a moment. "We're not going to get anywhere swapping the names of sports neither of us ever heard of, so suppose you explain just what baseball is, how it's played, and what the object is?"

  "Are you serious, My Lady?"

  "Of course I am. If 'everyone' plays it, then I should at least know what it is! And, speaking of that, if 'every' steading has a professional team, why don't we?"

  "Well, teams are expensive, My Lady. A club's payroll can run fifteen or twenty million austins a year, and then there's the equipment, the stadium, the travel expenses..." The major shook his head in turn. "Even if the league were prepared to accept an expansion team, just paying for it would be impossible for Harrington, I'm afraid."

  "It would, would it?" Honor murmured.

  "Yes, My Lady. But as to what baseball is, it's a game between two teams of nine men each." LaFollet leaned back beside his Steadholder and slid his com back into his pocket, and his face glowed with the enthusiasm of the true aficionado. "There are four bases, arranged in a diamond pattern with home plate and second base at the top and bottom, and the object..."

  The ground car rolled steadily onward, leaving the park behind and Lady Dame Honor Harrington actually managed to forget about defrocked priests, political crises, and even her approaching return to space while she listened to her personal armsman begin her initiation.

  CHAPTER NINE

  A soft tone alerted the passengers in the VIP lounge to their transportation's arrival, and Admiral Lady Dame Honor Harrington, Grayson Space Navy, glanced at the ETA board, drew an inconspicuous breath, and climbed out of her chair. She tried not to grimace as she adjusted her unfamiliar cap, but she'd served her entire military career wearing the simple, comfortable beret of the RMN. The high-peaked, visored cap of Grayson uniform seemed to weigh at least three kilos, and it would be utterly impossible inside a helmet. Of course, the GSN didn't wear headgear under its helmets, but that didn't prevent her from feeling that it ought to.

  She snorted at her own perverse ability to worry about such minor points, yet the truth was that she felt like some sort of actress in the strange uniform. No doubt she'd grow accustomed, but so far she'd worn it for less than three hours, aside from fitting sessions, and Grayson had some peculiar notions of military tailoring.

  The uniform was blue, for one thing, which could only strike any professional spacer as an unnatural color for naval uniform. The short-waisted tunic was a lighter blue than the trousers, as well, which seemed an equally unnatural reversal of the way things ought to be, and the gold leaves on her cap’s visor made her feel like some comic-opera costumer's idea of a prespace military dictator. And what had possessed the GSN to use buttoned collars instead of the comfortable practicality of the RMN's turtlenecks or at least a simple pressure seal? And if they simply had to inflict buttons on people, couldn't they at least spare her this never-to-be-sufficiently accursed "necktie"? Not only did it serve absolutely no practical purpose, but they insisted that it be hand-tied, which made it an unmitigated pain in the posterior. Why anyone should put a noose around her own neck just to suit some centuries-out-of-date concept of military fashion surpassed Honor's understanding, and after trying for ten solid minutes to get its knot properly adjusted, she'd finally given up and had MacGuiness tie it for her. From his expression, Mac found it as ridiculous as she did, but he'd had the free time to practice with the thing, and she hadn't.

  She snorted again, running a finger around her collar (which couldn't possibly be as tight as it felt), and reflected that women might actually have gotten the better of the Grayson fashion wars. She'd thought skirts were ridiculous when she first arrived, but she hadn't paid much attention to what Grayson men wore. Now she had to, since the Navy's uniform conformed to male fashion, and what she'd accepted simply as quaint local costumes appeared in a different light when she had to put up with them.

  She glanced over her shoulder at the two armsmen guarding the lounge entrance, then at Andrew LaFollet, standing in his proper position to watch her back. Grayson law required her to take her security detail even into space with her, but none of her bodyguards had so much as commented to her about her new assignment or its impact on them. LaFollet had sent Simon Mattingly and nine of her twelve-man team ahead to Terrible to set things up while he, Jamie Candless, and Eddy Howard, her usual "travel party," kept an eye on her. Each of those men was a silent, competent presence who seemed perfectly content to go wherever his duty to his Steadholder took him, yet Honor felt a stab of guilt at dragging them away from their homes and families. As a general rule, steadholders never left Grayson, which meant their armsmen didn't, either, but her armsmen would be stuck off-planet whenever she was. It wasn't her idea, and the law's requirements weren't her fault, but she'd already made a mental note to do something to show her appreciation, and now she knew what it would be. The Harrington Steadholder's Guard's uniforms also followed Grayson patterns, and if she couldn't save herself from this ridiculous monkey suit, she could at least have the HSG's uniform redesigned into something rational!

  Nimitz bleeked a laugh from the chair beside the one she'd just left, and her crooked smile admitted he was right. RMN mess dress was almost as uncomfortable as her current outfit, and she was fretting over unfamiliar styles mostly in an effort to ignore the one part of her new uniform which was utterly familiar yet seemed more unnatural in her eyes than any of the rest of it. A Manticoran uniform would have had only three nine-pointed stars on its collar, not the four six-pointed ones she wore, but the four broad gold cuff rings were the same in both navies, and the notion of Honor Harrington in an admiral's uniform was still so ridiculous she half-expected to wake up any second.

  She didn't. The tone sounded again, and the Navy pinnace drifted down to lass the pad with gentle precision. It touched down exactly on schedule, and a fresh tremor of uncertainty ran through her as she folded her hands behind her and gazed through the crystoplast window at it.

  Throughout her career, she'd made a point of familiarizing herself with any new command before she took it over. The one time she hadn't, when she'd assumed command of the light cruiser Fearless literally on an hour's notice, the nasty surprises, hardware and otherwise, she'd wound up facing had only confirmed the wisdom of her usual practice. But this time there'd simply been no way to do it. She knew, in general terms, what Grayson had done in the way of refitting their ex-Havenite prize ships, but that was only because she'd been interested enough to keep track as a more-or-less private citizen. She'd had no expectation of ever commanding one of them, so she'd seen no reason to push for anything specific, and the last week's mad administrative whirl as she prepared to turn the daily affairs of Harrington Steading back over to Howard Clinkscales had left no time to bone up on the details. Now she was about to assume command of a six-ship superdreadnought squadron, and she didn't even know her own flag captain’s name or who her chief of staff might be!

  Honor didn't like that. It was her job to know what she was doing, and the fact that she'd been "too busy" to prepare properly was a weak excuse. She should have made the time, she told herself as the pinnace powered down its turbines and the pad ramp extended itself to the midships hatch. She had no idea how she could have done it, but she ought to have found a way, and...

  A louder bleek interrupted her thoughts, and she turned to look at Nimitz. He sat up in his chair, head cocked with an air of martyred patience, and made a sharp scolding sound when he was certain he had her attention. There was a limit to the amount of self-criticism he was willing to put up with in his person, and the look in his green eyes told Honor she'd just reached it. What with political decisions, religious crises, and ten thousand administrative details, there'd been no way she could have made time for any
thing else. She and Nimitz both knew that, and she felt her lips quirk as the cat's stern injunction to stop fretting flowed into her.

  Nimitz, she thought, might not be the best, or most impartial, judge of naval officers, but this time he was probably right. The entire First Battle Squadron was still in the process of formation. She'd have time to familiarize herself with the hardware, and it wasn't as if there'd be a lot of preexisting SOP for her to fall over, since any operating procedures would be hers to create. As for personnel, she was confident High Admiral Matthews had picked a strong team for her, though the one person she'd specifically requested had been unavailable. She'd wanted Mark Brentworth as her flag captain, but he'd just been "frocked" to commodore and given GNS Raoul Courvosier and the First Battlecruiser Squadron.

  She could still have had him, and part of her wished she'd insisted, but there was no way she was going to pull him from that command. Besides, it wasn't as if the Brentworth clan would be unrepresented in BatRon One. Mark's father, Rear Admiral Walter Brentworth, commanded its First Division, and no one could have deserved it more.

  She was glad to know she'd have him, but aside from Mark and a handful of very senior officers, like his father or High Admiral Matthews himself, Honor didn't know anyone in the GSN well enough to have an opinion of them, and she'd had no desire to pick names for a squadron command team at random. Better to rely on the judgment of someone who did know them. It was entirely possible she and that someone else might differ on the qualities they found ideal in an officer, but some basis for evaluation was better than none, and she could always make changes later if she had to.