Well, that was really unexpected. I thought as I woke up in what appeared to me a very advanced medical room. It was much along the lines of my personal lab, except that I didn't recognize anything.

I blinked my eyes and opened my mouth to speak and nothing came out. There was a beeping sound beside me and I turned my head to look and saw a strange machine that showed me my brainwaves, my heart rate, and my nervous system.

“Oh, good. You're awake.” A woman's voice said and I turned my head to look. The door quietly slid shut behind the tiny and very beautiful asian woman that looked to be about 5 feet in height while wearing heels. “My husband really did some great neurological work with you, Mr. Hansen.”

My eyes widened at her knowing my name and she giggled like a little girl.

“That little neurological implant you have really has some great connectivity. You've advanced our own theories by about ten years, to be honest.” She said, clearly amused at my look of surprise. “Don't worry, we've patented the software and hardware specifications before we used them and paid you handsomely for the advancement.”

I blinked my eyes at her and she giggled again.

“It's all right. We used your genetics to register you into the database.” She said and sat beside my bed. “You're not from a heavy grav world and yet your muscles and bone structure has clearly adapted from it.”

I couldn't speak, so I nodded.

She reached over and patted my arm. “The speech center of your brain was severed by something that destroyed a micro-thin sliver of your brain in both hemispheres, cutting the connections completely. Your motor cortex was damaged as well, not to mention cutting off your tongue and all the muscles in your mouth, your sinuses, and the top of your skull.”

I closed my mouth and sighed.

“Someone or something tried to kill you and they should have succeeded, Mr. Hansen. None of my husband's colleagues has any idea what happened to you or why you were still alive. You technically shouldn't be and the patch job my husband did was something he's never done before.”

I opened my eyes and gave her a pointed look.

She gave me a smile in return and held up a datapad, or something similar to it. “I've had the boys in IT hack a few things together to hopefully let you send something through your implant to this.”

I nodded at that and had to go back through the research I conducted all those years ago for the implant after examining Seven of Nine's cortical node. Once I found it, I went through it and nodded mentally at the settings and what it could do if an advanced technology could be made to connect to it in a similar manner to the Borg. I looked at the thing and at her face and at the thing.

“I'm not sure what you want to do.” She said.

I looked at it again, at my chest, and at her hands.

“Oh! Okay, I'll try that.” She said and stood to rest the thing on my chest and used her hand to bring up the program. She went through the settings and I saw what I needed to see. The thing's electronic identifier.

I changed the broadcast settings on the implant and sent a thought. I hope this works.

The thing beeped loudly and the text appeared on the display.

“EEP!” She yelped and then laughed. “Darn them! I'm going to wring their necks for setting the audio too loud.” She sat down and smiled at me. “Now that you can technically talk, can you tell me what happened?”

Where am I? I asked instead of answering.

“The planet Beowolf. We're just on the other side of the wormhole junction to the Manticore System.” She said.

Who are you? I asked.

“Oh! Ha ha. I completely forgot to introduce myself. My name is Allison Harrington, married for thirty years, and deeply in love with the man I intend to spend the rest of my life with.”

I'm John Hansen and I have no idea how I ended up here. The last thing I remember was a fight with a crazy woman with a sword.

“That... hmm. A sword? What did it look like?”

I sent a mental image of it and it took a couple of minutes for the datapad or whatever it was to decode the image. When it finally appeared, Allison gasped and stared at it. Her eyes went to my chin and her eyes widened.

Yes, my whole face would have been torn off if the hilt hadn't jammed against my chin.

“That was our thought as well. Your jaw had been shattered on both sides and we wondered why.” Allison said. “You are a very lucky man, Mr. Hansen.”

I nodded and sighed. Now what?

“We try the regeneration technologies on you and see how you respond. With luck, those bits of your brain that were destroyed might grow back, as will your tongue and the muscles in your mouth.” Allison informed me. “We had a hell of a time clearing out the contamination of your brain tissue from your nasal cavity, which might account for why you can't really move anything else.”

All right. When can we get started? I asked.

“Now that you're awake and responsive, we can give you an actual medical examination and your feedback will help us where to pinpoint where to focus on.” Allison said with a smile. “My husband and the other doctors worked for a long time on you, so we can handle that tomorrow morning.”

I smiled and nodded again. I think I can live through another check.

Allison giggled and stood. “We'll deduct the fees and things from your account.”

My eyes widened and she laughed as she left the room. I didn't try to call her back or asked her for anything else, because I was still connected to that datapad thing. I just had to hope that it was also connected to something else and I went through the program, then rejoiced as it had a dedicated connection to the mainframe of the medical facility.

I closed my eyes and went to work digging for anything I could find out about where I was. I couldn't try my bacta needles here, because I hadn't been able to find the connection I had to the Force. That was concerning, because I did not want to think about what that meant for my brain and potentially the loss of my magic-like abilities.

*

Living in a supposedly technologically advanced society was really boring. The people had somehow advanced to the point that they didn't enjoy the little things in life anymore, like movies, television shows, or even physical books. They were considered quaint and outdated, which really said a lot about how human society had evolved in this universe.

In fact, they had seemingly regressed to around the eighteen or nineteen hundreds and only had live plays, musicals, operas, and hosted parties that were really only social get-togethers for the well-to-do. The common people were left to their own devices. Like I said, really boring.

I gathered everything I could on current society in whatever time this was. Their time accounting was really weird and I didn't bother trying to figuring it out until I suddenly decided that I wanted to leave the planet. The time was different on every world in the so-called original Human League of Worlds, or the Solarian League, if you wanted to be technical about it.

I didn't have Eye with me and it took me several hours of sifting through hundreds of years of crap to come up with a date: 4,000 AD. I was shocked and my mind ground to a halt for several minutes before I put myself back on track and went back to work.

With that knowledge and the fact that the Solarian League wasn't the epitome of technological advancement like they thought they were, I electronically bought an open ticket on a regular transport to go to the most prosperous system that was still on good terms with the Solarian League. The Star Kingdom of Manticore.

I was going to leave as soon as I could and put myself back into proper order. I just hoped that their regeneration techniques were compatible with my own, because I didn't want them screwing me up more than I already was.

*

A month later, I thanked whatever luck I had that their procedures actually worked on me. I completely refused any suggestions for genetic alterations, mostly because I had no idea what it would do to my powers. I would have updated myself millennia ago if I thought becoming Kryptonian wouldn't lock me into a single existence and then kill me when I died.

After I was healed and they had run hundreds of tests on me to make sure, Allison offered to let me live in her old apartment. She had moved to live with her husband's family years ago and had only been home visiting family when I had been found and called her husband in to help. I politely refused, mostly because I was leaving as soon as I could get to that transport and use my open ticket.

I did thank her profusely for staying for as long as she did to take care of me, admitted that her husband was a lucky son of a bitch for having her as his wife, and then kissed her cheek and ran for it. Her giggling laugh followed me all the way out of the hospital.

I created a copy of Eye and he beeped happily at me for getting him some new and different computers to go through. I fought off my thoughts that I had left the 'real' Eye back with Megan and held in my sigh at how much I had lost this time. I wasn't going to let my depression get to me and went to a small food dispensary to sit and let Eye have fun.

I suspected he was going to be a while and I was going to need as much informtion as I could before I made a bag of clothes to take with me on my trip. I just had to contact the port authority to see when the next transport was leaving and make my way there.

*

The trip was pretty damn slow as we travelled to the Sigma Draconis system from Beowolf through the so-called wormhole junction. I wasn't sure why the ships were so slow until we reached the wormhole junction and there was a line of ships waiting. No one explained anything to me until I took a Steward aside and asked her what was going on.

She handed me a sick bag and happily explained what was going to happen. I didn't even have time to panic about disappearing on this side and reappearing before the ship did on the other side, just like when I travelled through a Stargate wormhole, because the entire ship seemed to pop at that moment and then reappeared on the other side of the wormhole, just like I always did.

She looked sick at the transition, so I handed her the sick bag that she had just handed to me. “N-n-no, thank you.” She said and looked at me like I was special. “Why aren't you feeling queasy after the transition?”

“That was my first trip through a wormhole on a ship.” I said, honestly. “I didn't know I was supposed to be sick.”

She took a deep breath and then smiled at me. “If the trip had been longer, I would introduce you to the captain. She would love to meet someone that can ride through the extreme gravity gradient like it was nothing.”

“Is that what they are calling sex these days?” I asked with a smile and she laughed.

“It will be another dozen hours before we reach the main system.” She said and lightly touched my arm, then she walked off to keep performing her duties, whatever they were.

How long are their normal trips if this one wasn't long enough for a captain to meet a passenger? I asked myself and went to my rented cabin.

I took Eye out and he started showing me more of the physics laws and science discoveries that he had acquired from the computers on Beowolf. The computers had been pretty advanced, so he had a great time breaking into them and pilfering them for everything they were worth... without getting caught, of course.

Warshawski Sails for riding gravity waves, hyperdrive engines that could send ships into a lower dimension and increase the relative speed to thousands of times past light speed, and wormhole drives for traversing naturally occurring wormholes. There was no mention of it happening instantly, though.

“All right, you've been teasing me for weeks about their weapons systems. Go ahead and show me.” I said and his screen changed to show me. I almost choked at the image. “You're kidding!”

Eye beeped happily at me and I laughed.

“Torpedoes. Their most advanced weapons systems are space torpedoes.” I said with a shake of my head.

That wasn't the best part, either. They were fire and forget, too. They had penetration aids, radar jammers, and x-ray pumped laser heads. When they ran out of the 'advanced' laser heads, they used clean nukes to do the dirty work. It was so antiquated compared to some of the weapons that I knew of, that I was left speechless for quite some time.

The tactics of space battles were even more ridiculous. They had 'walls of battle' where they lined up their super-dreadnoughts and had them all fire scores of missiles at the enemy, then they would rotate their ships to present their impenetrable impeller wedges for the enemy's missiles to impact against. They only lost ships when the other side was lucky to get a hit through the open ends of their wedges or through weakened sidewalls.

Their smaller ships suffered even more from the mentality of surviving as long as possible to fire upon the enemy and used similar tactics, only on a smaller and much more dangerous scale. The lasers and larger lasers named grasers, were the main bread and butter for combat at shorter ranges and they tore through sidewall energy shields and their generators more often than they didn't.

“If this is what their military tech is like after thousands of years, I'm reluctant to take a look at their advanced medical technology.” I said and Eye changed his screen to show it. “Oh, that's not bad. Not bad at all.”

“Beep.” Eye said and kept showing me the rejuvenation injections called 'prolong' and the different generations that people going get treated with. The younger the better for the latest or third generation treatment. People who looked like they were in their teens and twenties were actually in their early or late forties.

“We have got to get some samples of it when we arrive on Manticore.” I said and he beeped at me. “Sure, I'll check the regeneration programs, too. Regrowing limbs is almost our specialty and it'll be nice to compare notes.”

“Boop beep?” Eye asked.

I chuckled. “Do I want to falsify medical credentials? Do you even have to ask?”

“Beep.” Eye said and I laughed.

“Low key, of course. It'll take us a while to research what their actual technology is capable of before I can claim anything remotely like a higher class medical professional.” I said and he beeped. “We've got to look up the political system and the ruling monarchy, too. If it's anything like back on Earth, my fake credentials might not check out, even with your prodigious skills.”

Eye beeped at me several times and I laughed again.

“You need to wait until we're actually planetside before trying anything, my friend. We might need to create a whole computer hub locally for it to work, considering they only send messages through ships computers and don't have working multi-system communications.”

“Beep?” Eye asked me.

“Good point. We need to look into buying property to set up the Stargate. We can start working with the interstellar communications vacuum as soon as possible. These people are sorely lacking in a lot of areas, despite being advanced in a lot of other areas.” I commented and Eye beeped in agreement.

*

“Welcome to Manticore, sir. Are you just visiting or do you have business here?” The customs man asked me.

“I was planning on immigrating, actually.” I said and he looked surprised, then he smiled.

“I need to direct you to the next officer and he will take you to the main office.” He said and waved to another man. “We have a potential Manticoran on our hands. Can you take him to see Gail?”

“Of course.” The second man said and smiled at me. “We can gather your bags on the way.”

“I don't have anything besides my carry-on.” I said and picked up my small travel case. I only had that because the people on the other end were nervous about selling a travel ticket to someone without any baggage.

Both men frowned slightly. They didn't like someone showing up to stay with nothing on them.

“Don't worry, I have a ship delivering my equipment and things next month.” I lied and they bought it. “I didn't want to have it all here and sitting around in storage or something while I look for land to buy.”

Both men's frowns disappeared and they smiled again.

“Please, this way.” The second man said and waved for me to follow him.

I walked behind the man as we bypassed several other customs officials checking the other passengers and then we went through a door and down a hallway to a nice office that had its door open.

“Gail? We have an immigrant from Beowolf.” The man said.

“Really?” Gail asked, happily. “I haven't handled one of them in years!”

The man chuckled and waved me forward. “I'll leave you in her capable hands.”

I nodded to him and Gail waved for me to sit in front of her desk.

“You don't have any bags with you?” Gail asked and started typing on her computer.

“Like I told the customs officials, I'll be having a bunch of things delivered next month. I didn't want to pay for storage while I'm shopping for places to live and set uup shop.”

“That's quite understandable.” Gail said and her hands hadn't stopped typing as she smiled at me. “Can you tell me the nature of your decision to move here permanently?”

“Boredom.” I said and she looked surprised. “I've been on Beowolf and it's not what it's supposed to be.”

Gail softly laughed. “Had a few run-ins with the Sollies and the purists, have you?”

I rolled my eyes, even though I didn't really know what she was talking about.

Gail gave me a huge smile. “I hope you don't develop the same opinion of the Lords of the Realm.”

I smiled back. “I'd love to meet Queen Elizabeth! Can you arrange that for me?”

Gail laughed loudly and briefly paused in her typing. “I wish I could. Can you imagine getting to see her every time we welcome a new citizen to the kingdom? It would be great!”

“Wait, she doesn't? I think I feel cheated!” I joked and she kept laughing.

We talked a bit about what I was going to do on Manticore, if I was looking for work, going to work for myself, start a new business, or if I was going to enlist in the military.

“I just got here and you're already trying to conscript me?” I asked with a grin.

Gail shook her head and smiled back. “I'm just required to ask for the immigration papers.”

“How long does it take to become a citizen, anyway?” I asked.

“It depends on how quickly you can contribute to the economy. If you become a valuable asset, you can earn citizenship in just under two years.” Gail said. “If you only live here without doing anything significant, you might never become one.”

I thought about that and came up with a good compromise. “Can I pay the government with tons of gold and precious metals instead and become a citizen right away?”

Gail's mouth dropped open and she looked shocked.

“I'm not hearing a no.” I prompted with a huge smile.

“You... want to just... buy it.” Gail asked in a whisper.

“Sure. I've read how the original colonists came here. The higher the initial contribution, the higher they were considered in society.” I said and smiled. “I intend to buy a large piece of land with a mansion on it or I'll build one. I'll need room for a large building, too. Starship research, computer and cybernetic labs, medical treatment facilities, communications systems, and anything else I can think of.”

Gail sat there and stared at me. “Um... I... I don't think I can handle that.” She said and stood. “Please wait here while I go and consult with my supervisor.”

“Of course. Take your time. I'm not in any rush.” I said and she left the office at a fast walk.

“Beep.” Eye said from his hidden pocket under my jacket.

“Just a second.” I said and reached out for the Force. It felt like it was stuttering, so I took a deep breath, calmed down, and the feeling evened out. I had no problems popping the wires to the hidden cameras after that and disabled the recording device under the woman's desk. “Okay, go ahead.”

“Beep beep.” Eye said.

“Try to not break anything.” I said and he beeped again. “No, that's not a firm rule. It never is.”

Eye beeped happily and dove into the local computer network.

Gail didn't come back for almost twenty minutes and a much older woman accompanied her.

“Mr. Hansen? Would you come with me, please?” The older woman asked, even though it was said as a question, it was actually an order.

I nodded as I stood as I reconnected everything with the Force and followed her. She took me through a different hallway and I tentatively used the Force to feel out and noticed a lot of scanning technology hidden in the walls. I wasn't worried, because Eye was the best infiltration security system in existence, anywhere. He wasn't going to be detected physically or electronically, unless they set traps specifically for him.

We entered a much larger and plush office and she directed me to sit in front of the desk.

She sat behind it and observed me for several moments before she spoke. “Are you genuinely interested in investing in the Manticore System or were you just asking to find out if it was possible?”

I reached into my jacket and pretended to pull something out of my inside pocket. I placed a 10 inch long, 4 inch wide, and 2 inch high solid gold bar on her desk. It dropped with a loud thud onto the wood.

The woman's eyes widened. “Wh-what is the purity?”

“Ninety-nine point ninety-nine. It only has a small impurity so that it can retain the bar shape.” I said and she reached out to stroke it.

“How many of these do you have?” She asked, her voice hopeful.

“How many is enough?” I asked back and she looked up from the gold bar.

“That depends on where in our social hierarchy you want to be placed.” She said.

“I want to buy land near downtown in the main city, if possible, or just on the outskirts.” I responded.

“That... might be a little... difficult.” She said and her fingers stopped stroking the bar.

“What if I told you I came here to develop an interstellar communications network?” I asked.

The woman gasped and put a hand on her chest. “That can't be... there's no way...”

“All technology has to start somewhere.” I said and she nodded. “I can't guarantee that it will work; but, I do have multiple ideas to explore.”

“Do you have a working prototype?” A man's voice asked out of nowhere.

“I have a relay and broadcast station built on Beowolf. I came here to buy land and to build a sister station.”

Part of the wall opened up and a man in a military uniform with full admiral markings on it came out.

“In the middle of the city?” The admiral asked.

“It doesn't have to be there. I just want to live near the most activity.” I said and he nodded.

“Can it be used on ships?” He asked.

“Potentially.” I said and he squinted his eyes at me. “That's what the other ideas I have are for. If I can successfully develop it, it will be a much smaller system that can be installed on any ship and will provide communications within the same star system with other ships, bases, and planets.”

“We have that now.” The admiral said with a flat tone.

“Real time communications?” I asked with a smile, fully knowing that they didn't.

The admiral didn't say anything and walked over to the woman's desk. He used her computer and typed up a few things. When he was done, he pulled a data chip out of the computer and handed it to me.

“You get me that system in under two years and you'll be sworn into the House of Lords by the prime minister himself.”

I chuckled and stood to shake his hand. “It's nice doing business with you, Admiral.”

“Please, call me Hamish.” The admiral said with a smile. “Hamish Alexander.”

“Then you can call me John.” I said and smiled back. “John Hansen.”

“Joice, please expedite John's paperwork for immigration. He has some very important work to do for the Royal Manticoran Navy.” Hamish said and waved at the opened wall. “John? Would you care to brief me on this revolutionary system you plan to build?”

“Of course.” I said and followed him into the hidden room. We sat down in comfortable chairs and he waved for me to speak. “If it works, it uses various frequencies embedded in subspace, which is a sub-layer of hyperspace.”

Hamish leaned forward and listened attentively as I described what I intended to do.

*

Three months later, I owned a modest house near White Haven, Hamish's ancestral home, and a good chunk of the asteroid belt in orbit of the solar system. I also had an industrial building on the outskirts of the main industrial sector.

It was great, because it was huge and let me add a bunch of things without actually needing to cast expansion charms. I started working right away and Eye filled me in on the Manticoran's microscopic microchip technology called molycircs.

I immediately bought a manufacturing plant for it, thanks to a few nice words from Hamish to the right people. With it to make molecular circuitry, all of my technology was going to be reduced in size, assuming I could get it to work together after miniaturizing it. I wasn't worried, not after all that time I spent already converting my tech to use base components.

A month after that, I invited Hamish over to test the communications connection with Beowolf. He dropped everything he was doing and rushed over to where I worked. It made me laugh, especially when he arrived and said he didn't know anyone personally to call there. He called a friend of his and half an hour later, another admiral showed up and placed a call to his uncle.

Needless to say, Hamish, his friend, and the uncle were shocked that they were talking and there was no lag at all. They were also sworn to secrecy by Hamish, on orders from Queen Elizabeth herself. No one could know it was possible to speak across such huge interstellar distances, not yet anyway.

A week later, I was invited to Hamish's home to meet his wife, Emily.

“Please, come innn! Come innn!” Emily said with slightly slurred speech from her life support chair and waved me inside with her sole movable hand. She had golden blonde hair and was a very beautiful woman, even mostly crippled like she was. She had been in an aircar accident and became a quadriplegic. Her body had resisted both the nerve grafts and their medical technology's regeneration protocols.

“Hamish, you sneaky bastard! You never said your wife was an angel!” I said and knelt to take her hand.

Emily laughed and shook her head slowly. “I'm more of a devil, I think.”

“Nonsense.” I said and gave her a warm smile before I leaned down to kiss her hand.

“Hamish warned me to watch out for you.” Emily said, teasingly.

“Oh! I'm shocked! Shocked!” I exclaimed and put a hand to my forehead. “Whatever should I do? My heart cannot take such a betrayal!”

Emily laughed and lightly smacked my face. “Get up off the floor. You're dirtying up those nice trousers.”

“I would roll around on the floor like a dog if you wanted me to.” I said and stood as I pretended to brush off my knees.

Emily laughed again and it was like music. “Do you beg, too?”

“Only if it will get me somewhere important, like at your dinner table.” I joked and she kept laughing.

“I knew I was right to warn her.” Hamish said and smacked my shoulder. “Stop hitting on my wife.”

“How could I resist? It's not my fault she's gorgeous.” I said and Emily blushed.

“Just for that, you're sitting across from me at the table and not her.” Hamish said with a grin.

“Ah, dammit!” I pouted and Emily laughed some more.

We went to the dining room and the staff served up a great meal. We all chatted about nothing in particular and about what they did for fun, besides each other. When I said that, Hamish dropped his utensils and Emily looked embarrassed.

“Wait, you don't?” I asked and one of the maids made an angry sound. “I've become well versed in Manticore medical technology and your life support chair allows you a lot of freedom. You still have a hand that you can use and a mouth that he can use.”

“Don't be so vulgar!” The maid spat at me.

“I'm not being mean or vulgar, miss. I'm a medical doctor and I'm literally telling them that they can still enjoy each other, even if its in just a limited fashion.” I informed them.

“I thought you were an electronics engineer and technician?” Emily asked, her face still bright red.

“I'm a lot of things. An engineer, a doctor, a farmer, a pilot, a space explorer, an inventor, a fabricator, and a whole bunch of other things that I shouldn't say in polite company, even with the subject we are discussing.”

“I don't want you embarrassing my wife, John.” Hamish said and glared at me.

“She shouldn't be embarrassed. The two of you love each other too much to ignore each other like that.” I said and looked at Emily's embarrassed face. “I assume you've tried a few things and it didn't work out like you hoped?”

“Y-yes.” Emily said. “It didn't.”

“Hmm, that's interesting.” I said and sat back to rub my chin with my hand. “I suppose there's no need for me to keep this from you any longer. I know of a few experimental procedures that...”

“NO!” Hamish yelled and stood. “You will NOT be experimenting on my WIFE!”

I chuckled and that seemed to surprise everyone. “You need to let me finish speaking before objecting.”

Hamish glared at me and Emily lightly touched his hand. “Fine.” He said and sat down. “Go ahead and then I'll yell at you.”

I laughed and nodded. “The experimental procedures have all worked and are fully tested.” I finished. “What's the local population's stance on cloning?” I asked and they all gasped. “That bad? All right, we can skip growing you a blank body and putting your mind into it.”

Everyone just stared at me and didn't speak.

“We can try the basic regeneration treatment first that I went through myself, since I've already modified it to work here at about 140% of its peak efficiency. If that doesn't work, and because cloning new parts for you is looked down upon, we can use cybernetic replacements and convert your body into an android hybrid. In either case, you'll have full movement and feeling in about two weeks.”

The shocked looks I received was all the confirmation I needed that they hadn't considered the cybernetic option.

“I hope you don't mind floating in a regeneration tank for a week or so.” I said and Emily finally reacted and shook her head. “If you're worried about the life support chair, I can make you a backpack in a couple days to replace it.”

No one reacted to that and stayed silent.

“Yep, I still haven't worked out the timing for saying shocking things like that.” I said and took out a datapad and handed it over to Hamish. “Go ahead and look through that while dessert is being served.”

The butler took the cue and brought out the dessert, a nice cake covered in strawberries.

Hamish's eyes stared at the information on the datapad, then he hit the button for the next page, then the next and the next. “John, when did you have the time to do all of this?”

“I have all the time in the world.” I said with a smirk and nodded to Emily. “Show her.”

Hamish nodded and it was Emily's turn to stare at the data.

“This... this can't be real.” Emily whispered.

“Those are just the first two options and have a 100% success rate. I have a few others that can be achieved through other means and I refuse to do them here, because of the laws restricting genetic modification.”

“Those are to stop maniacs from creating super soldiers and killing us all.” Hamish said.

“I know. It's quite the conundrum, isn't it? Mankind tried to make perfect soldiers to fight for them and to save them, and instead created the people they needed to fight against and to be saved from.” I said with a chuckle. I didn't say how it had happened on a couple of different worlds during my travels, so it seemed to be an inherent flaw in whatever procedures used to make them.

“You sound a bit smug about that.” Emily commented.

I gave her a nod in return. “I've had some experience with runaway AIs and robotic sentience trying to overrun humanity. It takes a subtle and heavy hand to handle it. I even lost a good friend because of once instance.”

My back beeped and both Hamish and Emily jerked slightly.

“Thanks for keeping a low profile, Eye.” I said with a laugh and took him out from the back pocket he had been stored in. “Oh? You've cracked White Haven's security?”

“Excuse me?” Hamish asked, shocked.

“Eye's been having an absolute ball as he destroys the security protocols of the Manticore System's computers.” I said and handed him to Emily, who looked absolutely shocked at the gesture. “Go ahead and give her a rundown of what you've found so far, my friend.”

“Beep beep.” Eye responded and Emily's eyes widened as she looked at the display.

“Just wait. He's barely getting started.” I said with a grin. “Show her some of Lord Young's database.”

Emily gasped, as did Hamish. The vaunted backdoor information that Lord Young had on most of the Manticore Kingdom's leading personalities, as well as the House of Lords, was a well guarded and open secret. No one really knew what the information was, however.

“Like I said, Eye's been having an absolute ball.” I said with a laugh and dug into the cake. “The strawberries are fresh; but, the flour is a little off. A local variant, I assume?” I asked the butler.

“Yes. Getting flour produced on Sol is both expensive and unrealistic.” The man responded.

I gave him a large smile. “I think the cooking staff and I are going to become great friends in the coming weeks.”

The man gave me a large smile back and nodded.

“With this, we can circumvent Lord Young's power base and his stranglehold on his power block in the House of Lords.” Emily said to Hamish and then she looked at me. “Can you hold off on the regeneration tank for a few weeks?”

“Absolutely not.” I said and both she and Hamish looked surprised. “I'm going to have you on your feet in two weeks, no matter what.” I said and stood. “After the two of you spend a week in bed together, then you can start your backdoor deals taking down that despicable bastard.”

Hamish and Emily exchanged looks.

“You've waited this long to have a romp in bed, haven't you?” I asked them. “Do you want to wait even longer?”

“NO!” Hamish and Emily said together, then both blushed.

I nodded and looked at the butler. “Please have Emily prepared and bring her to my industrial complex in the morning. The sooner we get her tanked, the sooner she can become Lady White Haven again.”

The butler gave me another nod. “Yes, sir. We will be there bright and early.”

I walked around the table and bent over to kiss Emily's cheek, then I patted Hamish's shoulder. “I'll leave Eye here for tonight for you to play with.” I said and walked over to the butler. “Walk me out? Your masters are going to be busy for a while.”

The butler nodded again and did exactly that. He quietly thanked me at the front door before he shut it behind me. I chuckled at the nearly complete turnaround of the staff and apparated from there to go back home.

Two weeks later, Hamish had officially taken a leave of absence from the Admiralty, for personal reasons, and a completely restored Emily was pregnant soon after.

I continued to work on everything that I needed to do and Eye did his best to keep everything streamlined. We had a lot to get through to make the communications suite work with Manticore technology.

Since it was only us working, it was kind of lonely and I couldn't help going over everything I had left behind, especially Megan. I wiped off my wet face and kept working.

*

Nine months later, Hamish and Emily were overjoyed to being their son into the world, named after Hamish's father, Murdock. The capitol city of Landing declared it a holiday and everyone celebrated the famous couple's good fortune.

Three months after that, the Admiralty released a specially coded document to the navy forces that entailed a new upgrade to their communications suites on their ships. Since they did not trust normal technicians to install the brand new subspace relay devices to the communications stations on the bridges, it was my job to oversee the upgrades personally.

It was slow going, considering they wanted each ship seen to personally and for each to test their new communications capability. It was a little annoying and also kept me extremely busy, so I didn't object when orders came through the pipeline that I was to go to Basilisk Station to install the new communications suite into RMN Warlock, the technically permanent starship stationed there.

The captain was a complete ass named Pavel Young, who just happened to be the eldest son of the disgraced Earl of North Hollow, Lord Young. Hamish and Emily had been ruthless in undermining the previously powerful Lord and cut off a lot of his unofficial powers. Surprisingly, a lot of the current members of the House of Lords were all in favor of getting rid of the man and keeping the son as far away from politics as possible.

I wasn't sure how having the new communications suite inside a ship, that didn't have any contemporaries in the area, was going to help at all; but, I was bored back on Manticore and took the fasted ship possible to get to Basilisk Station and started work. I wasn't surprised to find that even the man's crew hated him with a passion, even though they hid it well.

A ship's crew didn't appreciate it when their captain pretty much sentenced them to exile, because it stalled their careers for as long as the ship was exiled and none of them were noticed by the powers that be for either promotions or transfers. It didn't matter how well you performed on an exiled ship, either. All senior officers in the rest of the navy seemed to ignore any reports from blacklisted ships.

So, it was with utter surprise to me when a ship named RMN Fearless showed up in the system. Eye quickly pilfered their electronics and showed me their orders had been hasty and rushed through after a pathetic showing in a set of fleet games that was supposed to showcase a new weapons system called a Grav Lance.

Eye showed me the specs and I laughed, because it was the dumbest thing I had ever seen. An energy weapon designed to cause fluctuations in a ship's sidewall generators so that energy torpedoes could destroy the target? That was a one in a hundred shot, even if you had full anonymity and didn't reveal yourself until the last moment. Once they knew you were there, you would be the first thing they would target.

I checked the results of the fleet games and nodded. It was exactly as I had thought. Fearless had made an initial fantastic showing and then was utterly destroyed in each subsequent battle. The super-dreadnoughts hadn't even bothered to specifically target her, they just swept all of the light cruisers out of the engagement area before the 'real' battle began.

“Those poor people.” I whispered and Eye beeped in agreement. “Show me the crew roster and their performances.”

Eye did so and I perused them for several hours. Most of the crew performed to specs, except for two significant standouts. The XO and the Chief Medical Officer. They were not helping the captain of the ship at all, despite that being their jobs. The captain was intriguing, too. She was six feet two inches tall without the standard two inch heeled boot of navy officers and she had a stark face with slightly oval eyes. Her resemblance to someone I met before had my brain tingling.

“Eye, are we done here on Warlock?” I asked and he beeped at me. I chuckled. “Done enough? Okay, buddy. Give me transfer orders to present to the captain of Fearless when she visits for the official transfer of system authority, because you know that ass is going to dump the responsibility on her.”

“Beep beep.” Eye responded and popped a molycirc chip out for me.

“You really love that microscopic circuitry.” I said and he beeped happily at me. “I'm not complaining. You're ten times as powerful and half the thickness. What's to complain about?”

Eye beeped at me and I laughed.

“You do not have performance issues.” I said and he beeped at me again. “You don't need your own hover drone again, you electronic lush!”

Eye beeped at me several times as he complained and I laughed and laughed. I ended up making him a Dragon Done eventually anyway.

*

Honor Harrington was pissed and had a difficult time keeping her face impassive as she left the office of the previous senior officer in the system. She had suspected she was going to hate serving under Pavel Young, considering their horrible history of mutual hatred, career sabotage against her, and attempted rape by him in the showers.

The last part had happened back in her academy days and she had beaten the pompous ass to within an inch of his life when he had cornered her alone. The idiot hadn't taken into account that she was from a higher gravity world, 1.35 times that of Sol, and her slightly denser muscular structure she inherited from her genetic mods made centuries ago to allow humans to live on a high gravity world.

The immediate satisfaction at the time hadn't been enough to cover her shame of the incident and the cover-up was so complete that no one would have believed her word against that of a nobleman's son, except for the Commandant of the Academy. He had almost begged her to tell the whole story and she had been too shy at the time to speak up, which just made everything worse for her, because she had made an enemy for life.

Honor pushed those thoughts aside as she donned the white captain's beret on her head while inside another captain's ship, a complete insult to said captain's authority. Lord Young's executive officer recoiled from her barely concealed fury and didn't comment on the beret as he led her to the lift to take her back to the boat bay.

Surprisingly, the lift stopped halfway to their destination and a handsome and well-muscled man stepped onto the lift. He started to smile at her and then froze when their eyes locked onto each other. Honor froze as well, because she felt something from him.

It was weird, because it was similar to the feeling she received from her best friend for decades, a treecat named Nimitz, that she had left behind on her ship because she knew this was going to be a trying time for her. She and the treecat had formed a mental bond during a crisis when she was a child and the treecat had saved her. It wasn't a full mental connection, though. It was only emotions and feelings for the most part.

They had been together for a very long time though and she could accurately guess what Nimitz was 'saying' when he make bleek sounds at her, because of the underlying emotions he would send as well. The treecats registered at 0.8 on the sentience scale, right up there with dolphins from Old Earth. She suspected that they had intentionally blown those last few points to make sure people underestimated them.

Now she had a man in front of her that hinted at a similar mentally prodding connection and she wasn't sure what to make of it. The doors of the lift closed and it resumed the trip to the boat bay.

“G-good day, Commander Harrington.” The man said with a slight stammer and then he gave her a genuine smile as he held a hand out to her.

Honor accepted the hand and he shook it, then to her surprise, he bent over and kissed the back of it.

“Can I make the joke that it's an honor to meet you, Honor Harrington?” He asked with a grin.

Honor couldn't stop her chuckle. “Yes, I've never heard that joke before.” She said, quite sarcastically.

The man laughed and it made her smile, despite the current situation. “John Hansen, navy-affiliated supervising electronics technician.” He said and let her hand go.

Honor raised her eyebrows at him. “What are you doing way out here from Manticore?”

“I'm transferring to your ship.” John said and held out a datachip to her. “My job's done on Warlock and now I'll be working on your ship.”

“Excuse me?” Honor asked and her face went blank as she accepted the chip.

“I've installed the new real time intra-system communications device on this ship and I'll be doing the same on yours, now that it's the default system command ship of the system.” The man said, smugly.

Honor raised her eyebrows at him again. “Who gave you the authority for that?”

“Earl of White Haven, Admiral Hamish Alexander, First Space Lord of the Navy.” John responded and her mouth opened slightly. “I get that reaction every time.”

“I wonder why.” Honor commented and he chuckled.

“Shock and awe, I suspect.” John said and gave her a questioning look. “If I may be so bold, can I catch a ride with you on your cutter? We are going to the same ship after all.”

The XO let out a sound of surprise and then schooled his face to not show anything.

“It's okay, Paul. I know you've filed tons of refit reports to get the crew of Warlock home two years early.” John said and Honor's eye twitched. “It's not his fault, Commander. Anyone showing up would have been in your position, so it wasn't personal... by Paul, anyway.”

Honor gave him a pointed look.

“Before you ask, I had no idea what was going on until a few minutes ago.” John said and she relaxed slightly. “It made my trip out here superfluous, considering I could have stayed at Hephastus and just added in the communication system during the refit this practically brand new ship desperately needs.”

“Oh.” Paul said, sadly. “I'm sorry, John. I didn't realize...”

“I know.” John said and smiled at him. “I'm glad you haven't become a toady for the ass and you're looking after the crew instead.”

Honor gave John a pointed look and he knew what that meant.

“No, I'm not encouraging sedition or mutiny. Paul worked within the system to help, so it's all perfectly legal.” John said. “He didn't do it behind his captain's back, either. Lord Young was well aware that his crew desperately wants to go home and he's done nothing to discourage that desire, since he wants out of here just as desperately.”

Honor nodded as the lift came to a stop. “You can accompany me.” She agreed and turned to shake Paul's hand. “It was nice meeting you, lieutenant commander.”

“Likewise, commander.” Paul said and stayed in the lift as Honor and John left.

“What about your equipment?” Honor asked the man walking beside her. She noticed that he was nearly as tall as her, barely a couple of inches in the difference, and she secretly appreciated it.

“I don't have any besides my specialty tools that I always carry with me.” John said and she gave him a surprised look. “Your ship should have what I need in the mechanics shops and the molycirc factory.”

“You can build the new communications system out of standard parts?” Honor asked, surprised.

“Technically.” John replied and smiled. “You don't expect me to give you the secrets to my proprietary technology, do you?”

Honor gave him a significant look and he laughed.

“Next you'll want me to convert your energy torpedoes into photon torpedoes!” John exclaimed, playfully.

“You're JOKING!” Honor gasped. “Photonic charges on energy constructs are only theoretical and...”

“It has a physical component.” John interrupted and he motioned to the cutter.

Honor raised her eyebrows at him again and then she nodded. She knew she would get a more detailed explanation soonest.

John stepped inside and the Steward pointed to where he should sit. He sat and Honor sat in the seat closest to the hatch, which was where the captain was supposed to sit. The door was closed and the officer of the cutter went to the cockpit to talk to the pilot.

“You can overcharge the torpedoes and it makes them two to three times as powerful, depending on where they impact.” John explained.

“The range...” Honor started to say.

“...is nearly ten times a normal energy torpedo, especially if you use the overcharge as a component for the propulsion system to increase the speed.” John interrupted and he didn't miss the greedy look on her face. “We have a bit of time until we arrive at your ship. Why don't we discuss what can be done to fix some of the horrendous damage that's been done to your command?”

Honor smiled widely at his words. “I think that is a wonderful idea, Mr. Hansen.”

John smiled back. “Please, I must insist that you call me John.”

“Then I must insist that you call me Commander Harrington.” Honor responded with a smirk.

John looked surprised for a moment and then he laughed. “Touche, Commander. Stop ordering you to relax standard protocol when you are assuming command of an entire star system.”

Honor nodded and briefly touched his arm. “You can call me Honor in private.”

“Understood.” John said as the cutter disengaged from the umbilical and the relatively small ship left the hangar bay at a very fast speed. “What do you want to talk about first?”

“Everything.” Honor said with a gleam in her eye.

*

The boat bay crew were surprised when the captain's cutter returned several hours later and there was an extra passenger onboard. They were shocked when that passenger made the captain laugh. She had actually laughed. That had never happened before and word would soon spread across the ship about it.

As the pair kept talking and left the docking bay to walk through the ship, everyone stopped what they were doing and stared at them. It was quite the sight, because the normally stoic captain was smiling and looked happy, which was completely opposite to her previous behavior for the entire time they had known her.

*

I escorted Honor to her quarters, even though I hadn't reported to her XO yet. It was his job to handle personnel and to assign shipboard quarters for me. It was just too bad that I found her to be delightfully entertaining, her wit extremely sharp, and her enthusiasm for tactics and weapon system applications was intriguing, to say the least.

“Is it too forward of me to want to continue our conversation over dinner, Captain?” I asked, now that we were on her ship and she had officially assumed that role. “I know you have a lot of work to do...”

“It is a bit forward, considering we just met.” Honor interrupted and gave me a smile. “However, I would also like to continue our conversation.”

I smiled back. “Shall I return at an appropriate time? I feel a little scummy after spending time on a ship commanded by Lord Young and I have a distinct desire to freshen up a bit.”

Honor chuckled softly. “I want to wash away being near him as well.”

“Then I look forward to an entertaining evening.” I said and gave her a slight bow. “Please excuse me.”

Honor nodded to me and I walked back down the hallway. I waited until I was through another hatch before I used the Force to feel out for anyone nearby. When I found I was alone, I took Eye out of the back pouch I always kept him.

“Find the XO for me.” I whispered.

“Beep.” Eye responded and showed me the map and where to go to get to the bridge.

“You already did it? Thanks, buddy.” I said and tucked him behind my back in the pouch I usually kept him in.

“Boop beep.”

“No, you can't use your autonomous drone on a small ship like this.” I responded and started to move through the ship as I avoided the more populated places.

“Beep!” Eye complained.

“Do you want to look fat and have love handles?” I asked with a smile.

“Beep?” Eye asked.

“You know the size of standard thrusters and the chassis we usually use. Even if we replaced everything with smaller versions, you still need the compressed air canisters for movement. You'd be spending more time charging them than moving around in this environment.”

“Boooop.” Eye said, sadly.

I couldn't help but laugh. “If you're so gung-ho for moving around on your own, give me a hand modifying a Dragon Drone. If we can convert a lot of the systems using molycirc chips and then change the programming to take advantage of it, we can get it down to about two feet wide, including the manoeuvring thrusters and hover technology. With the extra space, we can easily add a mount for you to fit in.”

“BEEP!” Eye shouted.

“Shh! We're coming up to a crowded area.” I said and entered a hallway near the recreation area and food dispensary.

Several people saw me wearing a generic uniform without navy insignia and they gave me inquisitive looks. I nodded to them and kept walking. I had to get to the XO and get my assigned quarters.

When I met Alistar McKeon on the bridge, I was just as disappointed in him as Eye's records showed I should be. I didn't have to read his mind to know how much he resented Honor becoming his captain over him, because he had been the XO on RMN Fearless for several years and believed he should have been given command of the aging ship.

He led me to his small office in the hallway down from the bridge and I handed him a copy of my transfer and my orders to add new communications gear. I didn't bother talking to him after the glare he had given me when he read my orders. I chucked him right into minimum security in Azkaban and created a magical clone of him.

“Hello, McKeon.” I said and shook his hand.

“I'm very glad I am not like him, father.” McKeon said. “He's been obstinate and hindered the captain as she performed her duties and let her do most of his duties as well.”

I shook my head. “We can't wait for him to get his head out of his ass, not with the ship being left all alone out here. Honor needs his help... your help. I'm going to dinner with her in an hour, so I want you to send her a discreet message during the meal and tell her you've realized what an ass the previous XO had been and would like to become a new one for her.”

McKeon smiled when he understood. “I'm sure that will put her into a good mood.”

“I certainly hope so. She needs a boost after Lord Young dumped the Basilisk Picket in her lap.” I said and he nodded. “I'll be visiting that doctor tomorrow as well. Honor doesn't need the dead weight dragging her and the crew down. If there's anyone else that needs to be replaced, let me know.”

McKeon looked thoughtful for several moments. “Most of the crew is new to the ship and pretty green, so we can work with them all and bring them up to fleet standard pretty quickly, especially the officers. We still have experienced enlisted to rely on as well.”

I had to smile widely at that. “Make sure you include that in your message, after your change of attitude announcement, of course.”

“It will be done.” McKeon said and sat down behind his small desk. He searched his computer terminal and nodded. “There are guest quarters not far from officer country.”

“Perfect.” I said and he handed me the assignment. “Thank you.”

“Enjoy your evening.” McKeon said and I left his office to go and get ready. I had a perfect outfit to wear to make Honor laugh. It was considered the height of fashion back on Manticore and it made me look like a prancing colorful peacock, with large feathers and everything.

An hour later, I hit the admittance chime beside her dining room door. When it opened, the brief surprised look on her Steward's face told me all I needed to know about how successful I was with the outfit.

“Y-y-our g-guest.” The man stuttered and coughed to clear his throat. “Ma'am, your guest has arrived.”

“Show him in, Mac.” Honor's voice said from inside the room.

I had to turn sideways and duck before I shimmied in through the hatch like a crab. The girly giggle that came from Honor shocked her steward into immobility and I smiled as I stood up straight.

“I hope I didn't overstep by wearing the latest fashion from New Paris.” I said and shook my tail feathers and my headdress.

Honor had her mouth firmly clamped shut and looked like she had tears in her eyes. It took her several moments before she composed herself enough to speak without laughing. Or crying. It was hard to tell.

“Please, come in and make yourself comfortable.” Honor said with amusement and waved at the chair on her left. “If that's possible.”

I chuckled and started walking across the medium-sized room that could seat ten people comfortably.

“I also have someone to introduce you to.” Honor said and turned to the hatch that led to her quarters. “Nimitz! Come here and meet our guest.”

I stopped walking when I felt something coming. It felt both dangerous and welcoming, which was an odd feeling to get from the Force. I saw a large cream and grey cat... no, a treecat according to the image I just received... as the creature with six limbs entered the dining room and it waited for Mac to place a children's highchair beside Honor's right side.

Nimitz hopped up onto the thing and then froze when he saw me. I froze as well, because I had an even stronger mental reaction from him than I had when I met Honor in the lift. The mental probe seemed to make a much better connection to the treecat and it let out a sound like a growling hiss, then he launched himself from the chair, hit the middle of the table, and jumped right at me.

“NIMITZ!” Honor yelled and leapt to her feet.

I wasn't worried, though. I felt no malice from him and I held my arms out for the treecat. He landed in my arms and started purring loudly and cuddled into my chest and neck as I felt that mental probe settle and the treecat seemed to take great comfort from it.

“Nimitz?” Honor asked as she walked over to me and lightly touched him. She took in a sharp breath as she felt his contentment, which surprised her even more than her thinking Nimitz was attacking me. “What just happened?”

I looked at the image of 'Treecat Scout' in my head and read the description. They were a telepathic species among themselves with empathic abilities that could be shared in a limited capacity with their bonded mates, both treecat and human. The longer they were together, the stronger the bond, and Nimitz had been with Honor for almost twenty years.

What I had felt from both Honor and Nimitz made sense now, because they were so similar. They both reacted to the old telepathic bond I had with Seven of Nine and the limited one I had with Gloria. It also seemed to resonate with the telepathic powers from Megan that let me tap directly into her mind and share everything with her.

Nimitz probably felt the shared mental glow and it must have reminded him of being with his own kind, while Honor probably felt meeting me was like meeting another slightly compatible treecat.

“I think it was nice for him to meet someone with a similar ability, once I was within his limited range for humans.” I said and Honor's eyes widened.

I didn't try to copy Nimitz's telepathic ability, because he was a different species and our brains didn't work along the same thought processes. It would take years to understand each other enough to speak mind to mind properly, assuming treecats even thought with words like humans did.

“You... you're telepathic?” Honor asked and seemed slightly nervous.

I chuckled. “Kind of. I'm not reading your active thoughts or anything. I can't go into specifics about it, mostly because it doesn't really matter. It requires concentration and a certain technique for me to probe someone's mind, as in I have to actively do it and it's not subtle.”

“That's a relief.” Honor said and relaxed as her hand continued to stroke her treecat. “It usually takes a large amount of celery for Nimitz to react like this to someone.”

“Bleek.” Nimitz said and rubbed his cheek on the lapel of my peacock suit, then he started chewing on one of the feathers.

“Hey, stop that.” Honor said and tapped his nose. “We're about to eat.”

“It's okay. It's calorie-free.” I said and Nimitz bleeked in laughter. “I will need to put you down to take the coat off, though.”

“Bleek bleek.” Nimitz said and turned to hold four of his paws out to Honor.

“You're such a baby.” Honor chuckled and took him from me and cuddled him.

“What does he weigh? Twenty pounds or so?” I asked and took off the suit coat and hung it on the closest chair.

“Nine kilos.” Honor answered. “He's also 65 centimetres long, not counting his tail.”

“About two feet and two inches long then.” I said and she gave me an odd look.

“Are you going to correct me every time I say a correct measurement?” Honor asked, pointedly.

“Not at all. When referring to some personal appendages, I much prefer the larger numbers that centimetres have compared to inches.” I responded with a big grin.

Nimitz bleeked several times in laughter as Honor blushed and then tried to fight it off.

“I meant Nimitz's claws, of course.” I said with a laugh and Honor huffed. “Two centimetres sounds a lot better than three quarters of one inch.”

“Bleek!” Nimitz agreed.

“Quiet, you! Don't encourage the scoundrel.” Honor said and rubbed his belly to make him bleek happily. She gave me another look and nodded at the chair beside hers before she deposited Nimitz on his chair and sat down herself.

I sat down then and smiled at her. “So, where were we in our previous discussion?”

“I believe you were telling me how impeller drives could be rigged to fail, even with the safety measures fully engaged.” Honor said with a shake of her head. “I'm having a hard time imagining that.”

I chuckled. “It does require some creative thinking that's... shall we say... way outside the box.”

“I'm going to assume some major programming changes to the control software, too.” Honor added.

“Now you're getting it.” I said and we restarted our technology talk that we had both thoroughly enjoyed earlier.

We were partway through dessert and discussing wormhole theory when Honor received a message from McKeon. She put up a hand to pause our talk and read the message immediately, so I had a front row seat as I watched her face change several times to reflect her emotions. She considered the message in depth and Nimitz was a good visual cue for her emotions, too.

“Good news, I hope?” I prompted her after a minute of silence.

Honor blinked her eyes at me and then she smiled. “I believe so.”

“I'm glad. The more good news the better.” I said and then I smirked at her. “I'll meet with him later to work out when I can completely tear apart your communications suite to install the new one.”

Honor looked horrified and I laughed, which made her groan. “You're horrible to tease a newly minted captain like that!”

Nimitz bleeked at me, too.

“I know, I know. Happy thoughts for tonight.” I said and tapped into the neural implant and sent out emotions instead of text.

“Bleeeeeeeeek.” Nimitz practically moaned and crawled across the table, carefully ignored the dishes he stepped around, and crawled into my lap. He curled up and started purring really loudly.

Honor gave me a very long slow blink before she shook herself. “What was that?”

“That my dear, was me tapping into some of my telepathic abilities.” I said and she looked at Nimitz and then back at me.

“Why do I feel like joining him as he basks in whatever you're doing?” Honor asked.

“You've been a bonded pair for years. You were bound to pick up a few quirks from him.” I said and she raised her eyebrows at me. “I'm going to assume he's picked up a few from you, too.”

Honor gave me a surprised look for a moment, then laughed. “Mac, we need after dinner drinks.”

Mac brought in a large mug of hot cocoa to hand to Honor and they both looked at me. “What can I get for you, sir?”

“I'll have what she's having.” I said and nodded at Honor. “It looks and smells delicious.”

“It's hot cocoa.” Honor said, a little defensively.

“I know. Like I said. I can smell it.” I responded and looked at Mac. “A mug the same size, please.”

“I will deliver it to the captain's ready room.” Mac said and left.

“Ready room?” I asked.

“It's his shorthand for telling us to go relax in the tiny room in my quarters.” Honor said and stood. “If you would like to join me?”

“I would like nothing better.” I said and carefully stood as I cradled Nimitz properly.

Honor smiled at me and I followed her through the hatch into her rooms and the place had a small two person couch and a wall inside. That was it.

“I see the Admiralty treats their captains properly before they make the Captain's List.” I joked and she laughed as she sat. “May I squeeze in as well? My lap can't hold Nimitz for long.”

Honor looked a little surprised that I had asked, then she smiled and pat the spot beside her.

I carefully sat down and I had to do it stiffly, because the height of the couch had my knees slightly higher than my hips. I looked down at my lap, looked at hers, and then smiled.

“Hold this for a minute.” I said and placed Nimitz on her lap and she held him steady with one hand and held her mug of hot cocoa with the other. I shifted my weight slightly, placed my feet a little wider apart, then I picked up Honor's feet.

“Hey!” Honor gasped and then she widened her eyes as I easily turned her and settled her legs over my lap and her calves and feet hung over the side of the couch.

“There, now Nimitz can sleep comfortably, you're comfortable, and I get to enjoy the look on Mac's face when he comes in... and there it is.” I said as Mac appeared in the hatchway and stared at us with shock on his face at seeing us looking comfortable on the couch.

Honor couldn't stop her laugh and had to hold her mug with both hands as she tried to control herself and not spill the contents.

“Your hot cocoa, sir.” Mac said and handed me the mug and then he left without further comment.

“I think... you broke him.” Honor said and laughed. Nimitz bleeked several times in amusement, too.

“My work here is done.” I said and saluted her with my mug. Honor held hers out and we clinked them together.

We took a big sip at the same time and then we leaned back on the couch to relax. “Ahhh.” We said at the same time, as if we had coordinated it. We exchanged knowing looks for a moment and then we laughed.

Nimitz looked at Honor, then at me, and let out a loud rumbling purr before he settled down on Honor's lap.

“It seems Nimitz has officially approved my improvisation for an appropriate place to sleep.” I said and Honor nodded.

“John, I...” Honor paused and gave me an odd look. “I hope you don't think that I... I'm not the type of person to...”

I held up a hand to stop her. “I've travelled a lot and visited more places than I care to name.” I said and then smiled. “There were places where I've never met anyone at all and remained a bachelor. Others, I've met a great love of my life and spent years, even decades with them.”

Honor blinked her eyes at me, as if trying to figure something out.

“I've also had one night stands and multiple partners at once. At one point, I even had more communal wives and children than any one person has any right to.” I admitted and her eyes were very wide.

“John, what... why are you telling me this?” Honor asked in a quiet voice.

“That's a good question.” I said and lightly stroked the still heavily purring Nimitz. “I travel a lot and when I do, I leave each life I've built behind, because I can't take it with me. Sometimes I tire of it and I'll act rashly and wreck any chances I could have had at happiness, then I leave. Other times, I'll relax, enjoy myself, and live life to the fullest for as long as I can. The last time...” My words drifted off.

“John.” Honor whispered, seeing my sad face.

“The thing is, on some worlds, I'll luck out and I'll find that special someone. Someone that I know I can have a wonderful life with. Someone I click with, as if we were meant to be together. Someone to laugh with, someone to share everything with.” I said and looked at her. “I'm tell you all of this because I want to be honest with you. Completely honest.”

Honor blushed and didn't break eye contact. “You're talking about me being the one you've found.”

“You piqued my interest when I read the reports of the war games and caught my interest completely when I met you.” I said and her eyes hardened. “You did wonderfully in those games, Honor. Better than every other captain, in fact. You took your lumps and stood proud, even though it grated on your nerves to be systematically hunted down once the Grav Lance secret was disclosed.”

“It only worked once, just like I warned the people that set the games up.” Honor said, her jaw set.

“It was only going to work just once, Honor. As in, ever. Just the once.” I clarified to her widened eyes. “You know those numbers are going to disseminated among the entire navy, which means...”

“...in about six months, even our enemies will know about it.” Honor said.

“Yes, which also means...” I prompted.

“They gutted my ship Fearless for nothing.” Honor huffed.

“Technically.” I said and she gave me a bit of a glare. “It proved that a light cruiser is the wrong platform to use for an extensive refit for a weapons system that it wasn't solely designed for.”

Honor sighed. “It was the smallest ship with the right power requirements that they could cram that monstrosity into.”

I laughed and nodded. “That was their first mistake. The power requirements alone should have made it a non-viable option. The severely limited range should have been their second clue.” I gave her a significant look. “What was the third mistake?”

Honor didn't even have to think about it and responded right away. “The absurd charge and fire time.”

“You got it.” I said and stroked Nimitz again. “Design flaws all over the thing should have kept it on the drawing board for another few years as they worked out how to get the thing to actually work before they went to scale model, then when that worked, you go to full scale.”

Honor looked at me like I was telling her the secrets of the universe.

“I have quite an extended history of weapons development.” I said and her eyebrows raised. “You've tried looking me up?”

Honor blushed slightly and nodded.

“Did you find anything interesting?” I asked with a crooked smile.

Honor chuckled. “You knew I'd look and you gave me that background file to find.”

“Actually, my good friend did.” I said and he beeped from inside my suit coat in the next room.

“What was that?” Honor asked.

“Eye was introducing himself.” I said and looked down at my lap that was covered in Honor's legs and a large treecat on her lap that would severely oject to being dislodged right now. “Can you ask Mac to bring me my coat? I'm apparently indisposed.”

Honor smiled and hit the attention button near the couch arm. “Mac, can you bring John's bird coat to us, please?”

“Right away, ma'am.” Mac said and clicked off.

“It's a peacock, thank you very much.” I said in a snooty voice and she chuckled as Mac entered the room and handed the coat to me. “Thank you, Mac.”

Mac nodded to me and left again.

I took Eye out of the inside pocket in the lower back of the jacket. “Hey, buddy. It's time to officially meet the woman I'm trying to court and woo.”

Honor blushed and didn't deny that was what I was doing... or told me to stop.

“Beep beep.” Eye said and I handed him over.

Honor accepted the security device and stared at the oddly shaped and large datapad. The handholds were a bit bulky, too. “What did he say?”

“He told me not to blow it.” I said and she gave me a pointed look. “Yes, really. He likes you, too.”

“Um, thank you?” Honor said to Eye and he beeped several times as text appeared on his screen. “What do you mean my computers suck?”

I laughed when Honor's legs jerked and I had to quickly reach over to hold Nimitz steady. He purred loudly because I had caught him before he could slide off of Honor's lap.

“He meant that your security software protocols are less efficient than what the Admiralty uses. Or Beowolf's.” I clarified.

Honor huffed. “That's because we don't have a room full of tech weenies working day and night to keep out spy software.”

“Who needs a whole room full? Eye and I are right here.” I said and Honor caught her breath.

“John, you can't be serious.” Honor said. “You're a communications technician and...”

“...a pilot, a fabricator, a doctor, a weapons developer, a starship designer, and an amazing lover.” I added and the last one made her blush pretty hard. “I'm a whole bunch of things more than that, too.”

“J-John, you... why?” Honor asked.

“I told you. I want to be completely honest with you and I believe you're her. The one I'm here for.” I said and her eyes widened. “I'm going to tell you a few things that are going to surprise you, too.”

“Even more things?” Honor asked and Eye beeped at her. She looked down at it and looked back at me.

“He told you to accept.” I said and she nodded. “Then what do you say?”

“Can I think about it?” Honor asked.

“Of course.” I said and reached over to lightly touch her hand. “You do have a lot of work to do with the orders on the chip that Lord Young gave you.”

Honor nodded again. She looked down at Eye and back at me. “Can you stick around and perhaps give me a hand?”

I smiled warmly at her and she smiled back. “I would be honored, Honor.”

Honor huffed. “You can stop doing that at any time.” She said and glared at me. “As in yesterday.”

“I only met you toda.... oh. Understood.” I said and tapped the navy pin on my collar. “McKeon? The captain and I are about to tear the ass out of Pavel Young's orders for her new system command.”

“That sounds like fun, John.” McKeon said.

“Would you care to join us?” I asked and looked at Honor. “With the captain's permission of course.”

Honor nodded and looked like she couldn't speak. Her eyes stared at my navy pin.

“That's an affirmative. Come on down.” I said.

“I'll be there in fifteen minutes after I clean up and change. McKeon out.”

“I assume that pin is one of the things you want to tell me about?” Honor asked.

I pretended to pull one out of my pocket and handed it to her. “Instant communications with anyone else that has a pin and are within five hundred feet of the ship.”

“That's not a lot of distance.” Honor said and attached it to her collar.

“I haven't updated the communications suite yet.” I said and smiled. “When it's installed, you can talk to anyone in the system that has a pin.”

Honor stared at me like I had just slapped her.

“Yes, it needs to be connected to the ship's broadcasting equipment, which I will also upgrade.” I said and she didn't react. “Should I also tell you it bridges between the personal suit comms and the intercom on the ship when it's fully connected?”

Honor just stared at me and stayed quiet.

“Oops, I think I froze her brain software.” I said with a smile. “I need something to cause a reverse shock.”

“Bleek!” Nimitz said and started purring.

“Good idea, my new friend.” I said and leaned over to put a hand on Honor's shoulders and held Nimitz steady with my other hand as I leaned in to give Honor a solid kiss right on the lips.

Honor let out a surprised sound before she closed her eyes and seemed to melt as her lips moved and her tongue danced with mine. Her hands reached up and cupped my face, too. We stayed like that for several minutes and Nimitz didn't mind being slightly squished between us as he purred louder.

McKeon showed up ten minutes later with a knock on the hatch and that poured a bucket of ice onto Honor's hormones. Mac let the man in and he looked apologetic. “Sorry, John.”

I waved for him to sit in a chair I just created in front of the couch. “It's all right. I needed to stop before I took advantage of such a handsome young woman anyway.”

Honor blushed and then glared at me.

“She is but a babe in the woods.” I said. “She's only...” I stopped when her hand shot out and the knife's edge of her hand stopped right in front of my eyes.

“Keep talking and you'll be spending some time in the infirmary.” Honor warned me. “Perhaps a long time.”

“No joking about a woman's age. Got it.” I said and she lowered her hand back to her side. “Can I at least say how sexy it was that I barely say you move and that your form was perfect?”

Honor gave me a squinted look for a moment, then she smiled and nodded.

I smiled at her and created a table between the couch and the chair to drop several datapads onto it. “Let's get to work.”

Honor's gaze almost cut through me and I gave her a wink. “I may have to accept, just to see what else you're going to shock me with.”

That made me laugh and I did not make a joke about showing her everything. Now was the time for work and not joking. I handed a duplicate order chip to MeKeon and made one for myself to plug into my datpad.

“Eye, give us a hand. Your expertise should be quite valuable.” I said.

“Boop, beep?” Eye asked.

“Within reason, my friend. We haven't started working on the ship yet.” I replied.

“Beep.” Eye said.

“Even I can't work miracles like that.” I chuckled. “We need to physically fix things before we can upgrade, remember?”

“Beep.” Eye responded and I put him on the table between the three of the humans and one treecat that was quite content to remain on Honor lap.

“If you look at the mission headers...” Honor said and we did so. “...you'll see that ass Lord Young has left us with a great many commitments and many of them are contradictory.”

“He's really screwed up, hasn't he?” I asked.

McKeon barked a laugh. “No, he's been a completely wonderful system commander for the entire time he and his ship have been posted here.” He said and shook his head. “These reports are barely more than headers listing them and there should be reams of data in each section.”

“Exactly.” Honor said. “He sat on his fat ass and did absolutely nothing.” She brought up an entry and Eye showed it on a holographic display above the table. “Thank you, Eye.”

“Beep.” Eye said.

“They haven't even done regular patrols with the ship. When they did it after first arriving in the system, it was barely a few hours away from the main area near the planet. If Pavel wasn't a senior officer, I would report him for dereliction of duty.” McKeon said with a shake of his head.

“Eye, bring up the previous ships stationed here and check their records for patrols.” I ordered.

Eye beeped several times and the display changed.

“Son of a bitch.” Honor cursed.

I read the thing and chuckled. “You won't be reporting him at all, unfortunately. He's following established procedure and not the intent of the written orders. According to this, there hasn't been a regular patrol of the entire system in several years.”

Honor's face changed to a stern one. “Then I'm really going to need your help. We need to work out how a single ship that can't actually perform all these duties at the same time, has to perform these duties at the same time.” She gave me a pointed look. “This is a Queen's ship and we will meet our responsibilities.”

I had to smile at her. “You don't know how happy it makes me that you said we.”

Honor looked surprised for a moment, then she blushed a little. “John...”

“I'm sorry, I can't kiss you. We're working right now.” I joked and she blushed as Nimitz, McKeon, and Eye bleeked, laughed, and beeped appropriately.

Honor gave me a look that said I was going to pay for that later. “Let's define what our duties will be and what we need to do them.” She said and Eye changed to a blank display. “The fleet is responsible for assisting Basilisk Control with the through traffic of the junction, including customs inspections. We are also responsible for inspecting all traffic with the planet named Medusa and with its orbital facilities, including the transshipment of cargo.”

Eye beeped and showed the normal traffic in a month.

“Damn, that's a lot of inspections.” I commented and McKeon and Honor nodded.

“We need to support the Resident Commissioner and the Native Protection Agency's police force, which also includes safeguarding all non-Medusan visitors to the planet.” Honor added.

“That's not too difficult.” McKeon said. “A small crew for orbital maintenance and a few satellites should handle it.”

Eye added it to the list.

“We also need to ensure the security of the entire star system from external threats.” Honor said. “To accomplish these tasks, we need to be in orbital proximity to the planet...” She said and Eye changed the text display to show the Medusan System. “...we need to be near the Junction terminus to support the traffic control...”

Eye added it and Honor made a motion with her finger and created a long sweeping arc in the display that Eye traced and copied for her into the display.

“We also need to be all around here, at the system's twenty light minute hyperspace limit, and patrolling constantly.” Honor said and gave me a look and looked at McKeon. “Any and all ideas are welcome, gentlemen.” She said and lightly touched Eye and Nimitz. “Both of you, too.”

Eye beeped happily and Nimitz bleeked in agreement.

“How many small ships are onboard?” I asked and Eye gave us the shuttlebay's contents. “Only two pinnaces?”

“They cut down on the missile crews and decided we didn't need a full compliment of carrying ships for personnel.” McKeon said. “I tried to protest at the time and was told that war games didn't need light craft.”

“Idiots.” I said and Honor nodded. War games never lasted, so cutting permanent supplies was a stupid idea, especially if you knew the ship was going to be deployed soon afterwards.

“I tried to object when they were gutting the magazine space for the remaining torpedo launchers, too.” McKeon added. “I was directed to contact Admiral Hemphill if I had a problem with her weapons system modifications.”

Honor nodded to him. “I'm sorry they made sure to not inform me of anything before rushing me off to assume command, because I would have protested heavily if I had known.”

“That might have cost you the command.” McKeon said, his concern evident.

Honor smiled. “I didn't say I would throw myself onto my ceremonial sword over it, McKeon.”

McKeon had to chuckle at that qualification. “You have a point, captain.”

“What about leaving the impeller pinnaces at the terminus, under a good commanding officer and enlisted crews, with people trained in inspections as boarding parties...” I started to say.

Honor touched my arm. “Enlisted aren't trained in that.” She said with a smile. “However, they had a lot of experience with bypassing customs.”

I gave her a surprised look, then I barked a laugh. “Damn, that's brilliant.” I said and looked at McKeon. “Who do we talk to about things like that?”

“Senior Bosun McBride. She's fairly old and she's served on a lot of ships. If anyone would know who was good at smuggling...”

“Ahem.” Honor fake coughed and looked away.

“I meant... appropriating local currency with items not properly inspected.” McKeon corrected.

I had to laugh at them making so many qualifying statements. “This is going to be the most carefully worded set of orders that any of us has ever seen.”

Honor and McKeon exchanged looks and looked at me, then both nodded. We quickly worked out the senior officer to assign to the duty, and it would be his job to fill out the details of who he would take with him. Eye made note of it as McKeon sent a message to the Senior Bosun.

“Next up on the duty list that we have to fulfill...” Honor said.

*

The officers of the RMN Fearless had been called to the captain's briefing room just off of the bridge and most wondered what was going on, except for the executive officer. He knew, because he had been involved in the planning. The orders that he, the captain, and John had come up with were almost veritably insane. They should work, however.

The hatch opened and everyone stood as Captain Harrington entered the briefing room. They all noticed the man walking behind her and he was almost as tall as she was and he stood behind and to the right of her chair as she sat down on it.

“Ladies and gentlemen, RMN Warlock will be departing for a desperately needed refit on Manticore momentarily.” Honor said and they all looked surprised at the senior ship leaving the system. “Captain Young, in his infinite wisdom, has decided to remain aboard her and will also be leaving the Medusa system.”

Several of the officers had open mouths and two of them actually gasped. The senior officer was never supposed to voluntarily leave a posted system. Ever.

“RMN Fearless will be the only Queen's ship in the system and I will be assuming all the duties and responsibilities as the Senior Officer.” Honor told them and no one responded, not that they could. “Needless to say, we have many duties to discharge as soon as Warlock has left the system.”

None of them missed that implication at all and a few of the officers exchanged looks. Only the most senior officers realized that Lord Pavel Young was endangering his career by dumping the posting onto their captain, because abandoning a post for whatever the reason without orders, was a terrible sign of a person's character.

“Lieutenant Venizelos, you will select thirty-five ratings and one junior officer to accompany you for detached duty. Fearless will accompany Warlock to the terminus junction. As soon as they transit the wormhole, I will drop you, your chosen personnel, and both pinnaces for your use at the Basilisk Control Terminal.”

The young tactical officer looked shocked at being chosen for an independent command. “Ma'am?”

“You will assume the duties of customs and security officer for all traffic that goes through the terminus. You will be attached to Basilisk Control for the duration of the assignment and I will leave you with detailed instructions.”

Venizelos sighed with relief at hearing that. Being dropped into the crapper was always better when you had official orders to cover your ass.

“However, I fully expect you to use your own judgment when the situation requires it.” Honor said, sternly. “Am I understood, Lieutenant?”

“Y-yes, ma'am!” Venizelos said with a lot more confidence than he felt.

“I believe Bosun McBride has a few names to share with you, so filling out your roster shouldn't take you long.” Honor said and the young man actually smiled at her. She turned her attention to her chief engineer. “Lieutenant Commander Santos.”

The woman didn't look worried, because she was sure that there was no way she would be assigned to detached duty.

“I want a complete on hand inventory of our recon drones.” Honor said and the woman's eyes widened. “Once that's complete, I want everyone in your department to strip out the sensor heads, swap them for standard warning and navigation beacons, and install simple station keeping drives and astrogation packages.”

“B-b-but, captain... that...”

“I already have the design specs and the programming for you.” Honor said and the man behind her handed her a datachip that she passed on to her chief engineer. “Mr. Hansen will be assisting you as well. He's a fabricator and an electronics specialist that's going to be updating our communications system to function in real time for the entire system.”

“That's not possible!” The communications officer, Rafe Cardones exclaimed.

“You would be surprised by what's actually possible with sufficient knowledge and the materials to create it.” John said.

“Speaking of materials.” McKeon said. “John is expecting a delivery tomorrow and it should have the majority of what we need to complete the full sensor net as we drop them during our globular flight through the system at ten light minutes.”

“Hold on for a minute! You want us to build the things, program them, and deploy them while the ship is patrolling?” Chief Engineer Santos asked, shocked. “When are we supposed to test them for viability and defective parts?”

Honor smiled at her. “I'm sure Lieutenant Cardones should have no problem running the tests after each batch is released.”

The young communications officer stared at her, his mouth hung open in shock.

“Lieutenant Stromboli.” Honor said and the navigator stiffened in his chair. “Plot the least-time globular course at the ten light minute restriction for the Medusa system and have it ready for us to follow as soon as we leave the junction.”

“Y-yes, ma'am.” The clearly terrified man said.

“We will deploy the drones as stationary sensor platforms and with them all in place, we will have sensor information that will cover the entire system. No other ship will be able to approach without us knowing about it.” McKeon said.

“Once we have done all that, I intend to place Fearless in Medusa orbit. We can cover the largest hole in the sensor net, the planet itself, and be in position to move at a moment's notice.” Honor said. “Although, we will be placing a drone in orbit to take up the slack when we do our regular patrols of the system.”

McKeon checked his datapad. “I think that's all we needed to discuss, captain. The rest can be addressed when we reach Medusa orbit.”

Honor nodded to him. “Very well.” She said and looked at her officers.

“If I may, captain?” John asked and she nodded. “We are all in this mess together, so please remember that senior officers are available to talk and discuss things with you. If you have any questions or require help, don't hesitate to approach them. If you just need to vent your frustrations, there are plenty of airlocks available with free venting to outside.”

Everyone looked shocked for a second, then McKeon let out a chuckle. Venizelos was next with a bark of laughter, then several other officers laughed, too.

Honor smiled slightly. “You have your instructions, people. Let's be about them.”

Everyone stood and nodded to her, then they all filed out of the room, except for Honor herself and John Hansen.

“Did you really have to threaten them by spacing them?” Honor asked as she turned her chair around to look at the amused face of a man she was growing quite fond of, even though she had only known him for a few hours.

“Ah, but I didn't. I told them to space themselves.” John said with a grin and she chuckled.

“You need to go and catch Santos before she starts freaking out about the drone deployments.” Honor said.

“I do.” John said and took her hand, helped her stand, then he stepped close. “I just have something important to do first.” He said and hugged her as he kissed her passionately.

Honor couldn't stop the pleased sound she made as their tongues fought for dominance. John broke the kiss and Honor's flushed face made him feel happy. He let her go and left the briefing room at a fast walk. He would have to do some slight of hand as he brought each of the drones into the engineering compartment for modifications.

They didn't have the parts on the ship to create all of the drones, so he was going to add some discreetly. He would have to wait for his fake equipment delivery before he could really show off with the materials and parts he could create for them to use. The modifications were going to be half local technology and half his technology, which would give them the best of both worlds.

*

The Royal Manticoran Navy ship Fearless escorted RMN Warlock to the Wormhole Junction Terminal and floated there in space as they waited for the much larger and powerful ship to leave. As soon as the ship disappeared from the outbound lane, RMN Fearless launched the two pinnaces, which were the smallest Light Attack Craft that could have an impeller engine, and the main ship accelerated away from the terminal.

Basilisk Control was surprised by how quickly the ship moved and then they were shocked when the crews on those two pinnaces became their new base security and customs inspection teams. They were also elated, because they finally had a navy captain that wasn't going to sit on their ass doing nothing.

RMN Fearless made their flight around the system and it took six entire days as they dropped off each of the drones to create a completely integrated sensor network that would let the ship monitor everything in the system without actually having to do patrols. They still would, because 'showing the flag' was the entire point of having a Manticoran Navy warship there in the first place.

The first problem they had was when the ship finished the deployment and arrived in Medusa orbit. The ships just sitting there were a severe problem for the system's security. That two of them were representatives of the Star Kingdom's enemies, The People's Republic of Haven, made it so much worse.

The immensely large merchantman that dwarfed Fearless wasn't that big of a deal, because it was burning money away from the enemy. The trouble really came from the diplomatic courier boat. It had diplomatic immunity and couldn't be searched, even if it was caught doing something illegal.

The local records and satellite support were severely lacking, which meant the captain would have to personally visit the Resident Commissioner to find out what the heck was going on with all the traffic around a planet full of local natives that didn't need anything at all from a scientifically advanced species.

*

I sent my request to leave the ship to go pick up my delivery and Honor granted it immediately. I was tempted to ask her why, except it was probably because I wasn't an official part of her crew. I wasn't bound by the navy's strict conduct rules and I followed them anyway, which seemed to please her.

I also sent word to the planet's Native Protection Agency and asked to borrow one of their available pinnaces. They were a little reluctant to do so, until I told them what I needed it for and that I would upgrade its impeller engine. They quickly gathered a crew for it and it came up from the planet's surface to dock with RMN Fearless.

I boarded the light attack craft and greeted the men and women before I gave the pilot and navigator the coordinates for my fake ship's arrival destination. I would have to stun them when we arrived there before I generated a fake hyperspace exit, which was really simple to do, and I would also create a heavily modified merchant ship.

It was the easiest way to bring all of the materials and equipment I needed to seed the whole system with Crybaby mapping satellites, explain replacement engines and parts, the replacement weapons I would install on Fearless, and the new energy shields that I had successfully integrated with impeller wedge technology. It closed both ends of a ship's open wedge and it would be completely protected.

If that doesn't get Honor to completely open up to me, I don't know what will. I thought as the engineer took me into the pinnace's engine room.

“All right, show me whatever magic you are going to perform on this thing to get it to go faster.” The woman said with a bit of a challenge in her voice.

“It requires your willing orgasm to work. The extra fluid adds the needed lubrication.” I responded with a straight face and she looked surprised. I started chuckling and took Eye out.

“That's not funny.” The woman scowled at me. “I should report you for that.”

“It was a joke to try and get you to relax.” I said and had Eye interface with the engine room's computers. “Although, if Lord Young hadn't been so isolationist while on station, we might have met before now and I would have asked you for that orgasm a long time ago.”

She gave me an odd look for a moment. “Not as a joke?”

“No, I've been celibate ever since I arrived on Manticore from Old Earth over two years ago.” I said and ignored her surprised look as I typed up a few things on Eye's interface. “I didn't find anyone who really appealed to me until I met Commander Harrington a week ago.”

“Who?” She asked.

“Captain of RMN Fearless. She's going down to the planet's surface to meet the Resident Commissioner while we go and meet my delivery.”

She crossed her arms and gave me a pointed look while also looking angry. “So, you're telling me that I just missed out on having you because you're more interested in someone else? Am I not good enough, Mr. High and Mighty?”

I realized what I had just implied, so I sighed and created a wand. “Obliviate. You felt flattered that a navy liaison would have asked you out if he was available, so you're going to turn him down to make sure he doesn't cheat on a ship's captain.”

The engineer blinked her eyes at me as the wand dissolved and she blushed a little. “You're handsome and all that; but, I'm not stepping on the new System Senior Officer's toes for a roll in the hay.”

“Are you sure? It could be a good roll.” I said and gave her a huge smile.

She laughed. “Just get my engine working as well as you promised.”

I nodded and updated the software as I used a few tools and physically changed a few of the safety interlocks to compensate for the update. “I need to adjust your inertial compensator, too.”

She led me over to the small room it was in and I adjusted that as well with both software and tools.

“There we go.” I said and waved at her computer console. “Go ahead and run some diagnostics.”

She nodded and went to the console and selected several different diagnostic programs.

Ten minutes later, she stared at the results. “You have got to be kidding me! There's no way you increased the efficiency by almost 30%! It's not possible!”

“It still has the same safety margins, too.” I said and lightly touched her shoulder as I walked by. “Have fun. I'll let the pilot know we're good to go.”

She nodded several times and started going over the changes I had made. I didn't tell her that the parts were unbreakable as well, so there was absolutely no chance of a physical breakdown. There would be no impeller engine accidents and no compensator failures on any ship I had access to.

The pilot actually hooted in surprise when I told him how fast we could go. We shot away from Fearless after we safely undocked and moved out far enough to engage the impeller drive.

It took us several hours to get to the halfway point and then the ship turned over and started decelerating. That was a weird thing that had to be done in this universe, because inertial sumps didn't exist here like in several of the other space faring universes I had visited. The ships constantly accelerated for half the trip, flipped over, and decelerated for the second half to come to a complete stop.

It was a maddening concept, because it added so much extra time to a trip that could be handled easily with a normal ship... well, what I considered a normal ship. I was sure if I created Voyager here that it would blow their minds and probably blow up the ship, too.

I had investigated trying to add an inertial sump to the standard ships and it wasn't compatible technology. It actually interfered with their impeller technology and would collapse the wedge as soon as the ship tried to move. That meant there would be no revolutionary change to their ships and their performance.

Then again, Voyager looked like an actual space ship and was 343 meters (1,125 feet) long, while RMN Fearless was a tube shape with small hammerhead ends at 460 meters (1,510 feet). That wasn't a whole lot of difference volume-wise, considering Fearless was only 48 meters (158 feet) wide and Voyager was 116 meters (380 feet) wide.

Voyager was a lot more comfortable to live in, too. That was probably because they didn't need all of the redundant weapons crews for loading missiles and things along most of the ship's hull on both sides. It was a little ridiculous that it wasn't automated or had missile magazines mounted right there beside the launchers. Safety reasons was a weak excuse for horrible efficiency.

In any case, it took another several hours to reach the rendezvous point. I waited for another half an hour, so the small crew would relax, then I cast stasis on the ship to freeze the crew in place and put them to sleep. I didn't have a lot of time to waste, so I created the heavily modified merchantman and apparated over to it.

I created an appropriate crew for it using holograms and mobile emitters, then took out the machine that would simulate a ship dropping out of hyperspace and attached it to the hull. I ordered the crew to cloak the ship until the machine activated and I apparated back to the pinnace. I woke everyone up and dispelled the stasis.

Ten minutes later, a massive electronic signature echoed across the system and the larger than normal merchantman appeared.

“Whoa! That's cutting it close!” The pilot exclaimed because the ship was almost right on top of us.

“My people are experts at this sort of thing.” I said and nodded at the communications console.

“Go ahead.” The woman there said and leaned back.

“Thanks.” I said and typed in the access code. “Hansen to Merchantman Alpha.”

“Alpha here, sir.” A woman's voice responded.

“Open the docking bay so we can catch a ride back.” I said and there were shouts of shock and surprise from the pinnace's crew. “Guide in the pilot, please.”

“Yes, sir. Opening rear hatch.” The woman said and started to give the pilot instructions.

The man looked stunned as he followed them and the pinnace floated around the Merchantman that was exponentially larger than the 300 ton and 30 meter long light attack craft.

A typical freighter like the Merchantman was usually between 4,000,000 to 8,000,000 ton range and on average were 3,000 meters (9,850 feet) long, which meant they dwarfed most of the warships in existence. They were used to ship everything from basic foodstuffs to building-sized equipment inside and their hulls and were usually unarmed and unarmored.

I chuckled as the entire crew gawked and stared as we gently floated into a refurbishment bay and not just a docking bay.

“Who the hell are you, sir?” One of the men asked.

“Royal Manticoran Navy Liaison, John Hansen, Lord of Griffon.” I said and everyone turned to stare at me instead. “Is it too soon to say I'm best friends with the First Lord of the Admiralty and his beautiful wife, Lady White Haven?”

Someone let out a soft sigh and there was a thump as one of the women fainted and fell to the floor.

“I guess it was.” I said and walked over to her and knelt as I picked her up and revived her. “Miss? Are you okay?”

She blinked her eyes at me several times. “You know the Angel of Manticore?”

I chuckled. “Emily blushes every time I call her that.”

“You call her that to her face?!?” She gasped and fainted again.

I laughed and put her into one of the chairs and buckled her in and waited until we docked before I woke her again. I turned to the crew. “You're welcome to take a tour of the ship for the next seven hours or you can catch some sleep in the luxury suites.”

“LUXURY SUITES!” Nearly everyone yelled, both men and women.

“Ensign, show them the way.” I said to one of the waiting holograms.

“Yes, sir.” The young woman said and motioned for the crew to follow her.

I went into the first main hold and filled it with materials for construction and armor plating. The next hold I filled with various parts. I went to the next and filled it with electronics and the next hold was filled with tools and machines. I went to the next and filled it with replacement ship weapons and missile magazines, and the last hold I filled with impeller engines, compensators, and shield emitters.

Once I made sure I had everything to cover for me creating anything I wanted, I made my way to the bridge and dropped a hundred Crybaby and R2 combos to start mapping the system. I also tossed out a thousand satellites and sent them all over the place to cover the approaches to the system that the satellites already present couldn't cover or reach.

I was really tempted to drop an Alliance space station at the Basilisk Terminal under cloak, just for the added protection, then decided that wouldn't be a good idea. The ships coming and going from the Wormhole Junction would be in constant danger of ramming the invisible station, so I gave up on that. I also considered upgrading the Basilisk Terminal itself, then discarded that idea as well.

“Let's go back to Honor. No rush.” I said to the captain.

“You heard the boss. We're taking a leisurely stroll.” The man said and chuckles came from the bridge crew. They all knew what he meant.

“We can't give too much away too quickly.” I cautioned them. “You don't have to stay within freighter limits, either.”

“Showing off to the locals?” The captain asked and I nodded. “Helm, full acceleration and then ease off once we're underway.”

“Yes, sir.” The man at the helm said and we took off like we were a light attack craft and not an 8,000,000 ton modified freighter.

“That should give them something to talk about.” The captain said with a laugh. “Wait ten minutes and send word to the inner system that we've arrived.”

*

Honor had a very enlightening talk with Dame Estelle about the goings-on in the system and especially the planet itself. How her government had let foreign nationals exploit the natives for so long without bothering to stop it, was a mystery to her. She had gone back to her ship with Nimitz on her shoulder and she wasn't sure why she felt a little empty because John wasn't waiting for her in her cabin.

She ate a quiet dinner and her eyes went to a subdued Nimitz, who wasn't very excited when he was rewarded for his good behavior with a small bowl of celery. She could feel his emotions and she was sure that he didn't enjoy the celery, because it wasn't given to him by John.

Honor picked up her treecat and hugged him as she retreated to her work space and started in on the seemingly endless paperwork that a captain always seemed to have, even with an XO that was doing his fair share of it. She went to bed several hours later and sleep seemed to evade her as her mind went over the frantic week that she and the ship had.

Well, it should have been a frantic week. John's presence had somehow mitigated a lot of frustration on her part and that of the crew. Especially in the engineering department. They had actually exceeded her satellite deployment schedule and Dominica Santos, the chief engineer, had nothing but praise for John's exemplary help.

Honor felt a little pang of jealousy at that thought, because she remembered the look Dominica had given John when she praised him. It was strange for her, because she wasn't used to feeling like that. She had only known John for a week and she had grown quite attached to him, despite her usual standoffish personality and her attempts to keep things professional. Nimitz chittered at her and Honor chuckled.

“Yes, I know you like him too, you stinker.” Honor said and Nimitz bleeked in amusement. The terminal beside her bed beeped and Honor hit the audio only acceptance button. “This is the captain.”

“Ma'am, we just had a huge hyperspace signature at the far side of the system's ecliptic.” Rafe Cardones' voice said. He had command for the night watch.

“A single signature?” Honor asked.

“Yes, ma'am.” Rafe said. “What are your orders, captain?”

“Confirm it's a merchantman and get me a visual soonest. Our monitoring satellites are there for a reason.” Honor said.

“We're getting the acceleration numbers now, ma'am.” Rafe said and then made a slight choking sound. “That can't be right. Get me another reading!”

“Lieutenant?” Honor asked, sternly.

“Ma'am, the numbers don't match a freighter. It's nearly the same numbers as a heavy cruiser and we've confirmed the size and the mass at eight million tons.”

Honor made her own slightly choking sound. Rafe's right. It shouldn't be possible for a ship that big to move that fast, even if it had a military grade impeller engine. “I'll be right there, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, ma'am. Bridge out.” Rafe said and cut the call.

Honor hopped out of bed and her steward Mac brought her a fresh uniform. She quickly dressed and put on her white beret as she gave Nimitz a pointed look.

“Bleek.” Nimitz said smugly.

Honor chuckled and turned slightly away. “Fine. If I have to call for an emergency, you get your ass back here and into your lifepod, understand?”

“Bleek!” Nimitz said and hopped up onto her back to rest the top two thirds of his body on her shoulder and dug his back paws into the thick pad halfway down her back.

When he was settled and placed one of his forepaws on her head for balance, Honor left her quarters and made her way to the bridge. Rafe hopped out of her chair when she appeared and stood beside it.

“All right. Anything new?” Honor asked and sat down as Nimitz climbed onto the headrest. She checked the chair arm displays and nodded.

“We've confirmed the acceleration numbers. It really is moving that fast.” Rafe said. “It's starting to taper off, so we have to assume they were redlining their engines to get the ship going.”

Honor squinted her eyes slightly. “That is an awful chance to take with a ship that big.”

“I couldn't agree more, captain.” Rafe said.

“Visual?” Honor asked.

“Main screen.” Rafe said and the view of the planet's orbital traffic changed to show a side view of a huge merchantman that looked distinctly odd.

“What kind of profile is that for a freighter?!?” The tactical officer asked, shocked.

“Give me an analysis.” Honor commanded and several people at different stations frantically went to work. Two minutes later, they sent her the compiled data. Her eyes devoured it all in moments. “Is this information correct?”

“Both from a visual and an electronic signature analysis, captain.” The tactical officer said. “That merchantman is fully armed and armored.”

“Good lord.” Someone whispered and a lot of people on the bridge nodded in agreement. The sheer amount of missiles a ship that size could fire was ridiculous. The largest warship ever produced was the superdreadnought and it was barely 1,400 meters long. The merchantman they were looking at right now was 3,000 meters long.

The communications console beeped loudly and the comm officer checked it. “Captain!” She exclaimed. “IFF confirms the ship is the RMMN Griffon's Pride!”

Most of the bridge crew relaxed at the woman's words.

Honor wasn't so trusting. “I wonder why they haven't sent a formal greeting...”

The communications console beeped again.

“Captain, there's a personal call request for you.” The woman said.

“On the main screen, please.” Honor said.

“Ma'am? Shouldn't you take it in your ready room?” The comm officer asked.

“Is it marked private?” Honor asked.

The woman checked. “No, ma'am.”

“Then put it on the screen.” Honor said.

The screen changed from showing the ship to show John Hansen's amused face. “Greetings and salutations, Captain Harrington and her honored companion! I apologize for dragging you both out of bed because of my little joke.”

“Giving a heart attack to half of my bridge crew wasn't much of a joke, John.” Honor replied and then settled back to wait for several minutes as the signal travelled across the system to his ship.

John chuckled when he saw her relax. “I just wanted the night shift to have a little excitement and to keep them on their toes.”

The entire bridge crew, Honor included, gasped at the real time communication.

“IT ACTUALLY WORKS?!?” The comm officer yelled and then coughed several times to try and cover it up. It didn't work. Everyone had heard her and they were glad it was her that yelled and not them, even though they wanted to.

Honor was the first to recover. “You certainly did bring some excitement into their lives.” She said and motioned with her hand at the display. “Now, would you care to explain exactly what the hell you're bringing into my command area?”

“To be fair, you did approve of me bringing my supply ship here.” John said in a teasing voice.

“Hold on, it's that armed and it's still a merchantman?” Rafe asked and then looked slightly embarrassed. “My apologies for speaking out of turn, captain.”

Honor waved his apology away. “I was about to ask the same question.”

“You don't expect me to test any new weapons or armament without actually putting it onto a ship, do you?” John asked and saw Honor's surprise. “Before you ask, yes, I have both the energy torpedo and Grav Lance upgrades onboard.”

Most of the bridge crew let out surprised sounds and muttered among themselves.

“You never did explain what the full upgrade really does.” Honor said.

“Ah, ah, ah! No discussing horribly kept state secrets over an open comm signal.” John said and Honor couldn't stop her snort of laughter. “We'll be there in orbit in about seven hours.”

Honor nodded. “We'll welcome you with open arms, especially my chief engineer.” She said with a smile. “The problem is that you're giving me a bit of a problem with how that ship looks.”

“Oh? You mean this basic freighter?” John asked and nodded to the side of the screen.

The tactical officer caught their breath and furiously typed at their console. “Captain! It's all gone!”

“What do you mean?” Honor asked.

“All the weapons readings, the odd hull shape, the visuals of missile tubes and grazers... it's gone.”

“Onscreen.” Honor said and John's face was replaced with the image of a normal multi-megaton freighter. “How is that possible?”

“Camouflage.” John's voice said. “Folding panels on the outside of the ship cover everything.”

“The electronic signatures?” Honor asked as John's face showed on the screen once more.

“Easily masked and redirected to resonate with the ship's impeller signature.” John said.

“That's brilliant!” The tactical officer exclaimed. “Ahem. I'm sorry for interrupting, captain.”

Honor waved it away. “I have to agree with my Tactical Officer.” She said and gave a bit of a glare to John. “That is a brilliant strategy.”

John laughed and understood what she was implying. “I wouldn't be showing you my toys if I wasn't going to share them with you, Honor.”

Honor lost the glare and Nimitz bleeked from the back of the chair.

“I'll see you both soon and then the real fun can start.” John said and his voice was full of innuendo.

Honor blushed a little before she firmly squashed it. “We will be having a discussion about proper protocols, Mister Hansen.”

John chuckled and gave her a proper RMN salute. “I look forward to it, captain my captain! John out.”

The screen went blank and then switched back to the view of the orbital traffic near the planet.

“With that excitement over, I think I'll head back to bed.” Honor said and Nimitz hopped from the chair to land on her shoulder. She stood up and nodded to Rafe.

“Goodnight, captain.” Rafe said and he watched as Honor left the bridge.

As soon as the hatch closed, a lot of talking broke out among the night shift bridge crew.

Honor smiled as she walked down the passageway, because she easily heard them. The hatches weren't soundproofed for just that reason. John had definitely given everyone something to think about. She thought and went back to the captain's cabin. She quickly changed out of her uniform and Mac took it away for her as she climbed into bed.

Nimitz purred as he cuddled up on her chest and Honor let her hand slowly pet his soft fur. She wasn't sure why she felt reassured that John would be back by her side in the morning and she drifted off to sleep with the warm presence of Nimitz to comfort her and his reassurance joined with her own.

*

Ensign 'Scotty' Tremaine was shocked when he and his inspection crew boarded the gigantic merchantman. He and PO Harkness had already caught one that was half the size, at about 4.5 million tons, smuggling kodiak bear pelts through the transshipment warehouses in orbit of the planet. The ship had been seized and the cargo was confiscated, which would net the capturing ship a hefty bonus for catching smugglers of restricted items.

He looked at the interior of the main hold of the Griffon's Pride and barely managed to not slap himself on the forehead at the sheer amount of work it was going to take to check everything. The funny thing was, the ship didn't actually qualify for inspection according to the regulations. The ship wasn't trading, exchanging, buying, or selling anything within the Medusa System.

The captain had heaved to for inspection anyway and was glad to do it. He had even invited Scotty's men to relax in the luxury suites when they had to take breaks and the kitchens were providing snacks and drinks for them, too. For free. It was shocking. Absolutely shocking. No one was supposed to be this nice about the whole thing.

“Ensign Tremaine!” A man's voice called out and Scotty turned to see the man that had somehow gotten into the good graces of his hard-ass captain.

“Mr. Hansen.” Scotty said and his hand twitched to salute.

John saw that and chuckled. “At ease, Ensign. Unlike any other ship you're going to inspect, this one's going to be a cakewalk.”

Scotty laughed and waved at the sheer amount of materials in the main hold. “Say that again!”

John laughed. “The ship's master already gave you the manifests. Most of this is solid materials, so you and your men should get through it fairly quickly. It's when you get to the next few holds that you might have problems.”

Scotty nodded because he had browsed the information and the parts alone would take hours to go through. He didn't even want to think about the electronics hold and hoped that they were in bins and sealed with the official RMN Customs seals.

“I just wanted to warn you that the hold with the ship weapons and the hold with the impeller engines are restricted to just yourself and PO Harkness.” John said and both Scotty and Horace looked surprised. “There are official state secrets contained in them, so it has to be kept confidential.”

“I... understood, sir.” Scotty said and swallowed audibly. He knew what breaking a state secret meant. Horace just looked ashen-faced.

“Good! Now, I'm going to give you a hand for a bit, then I have to pop over to Fearless and meet with your captain. I've earned a bit of a scolding from her, apparently.”

“Sir? Shouldn't you go over immediately?” Scotty said before he could stop himself.

John smiled and put a hand on his shoulder. “Sometimes absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

“Have you ever met Captain Harrington?” Scotty blurted out and John laughed.

“Don't worry, young man. I've got an appropriate present for her.” John said and let his shoulder go. “Let's start over by the hull plates and work our way forward.”

“Yes, sir.” Scotty said and the entire team moved in that direction.

*

Honor was slightly fuming when I entered the bridge because I had made her wait two extra hours before coming to see her.

I didn't divert my eyes from her glare and walked right over to her. I handed her a datachip folder and saluted crisply. “The owner of RMMN Griffon's Pride hereby relinquishes all rights and bequeaths the command to Commander Honor Harrington, Senior Officer of Basilisk Station.”

Honor's glare disappeared and her mouth opened slightly in surprise while Nimitz bleeked in amusement from the back of her chair. We could both feel Honor's utter shock at my gift.

I took out a giant stalk of celery from my tunic and he dove off the chair, tackled my hand and tore the celery from my fingers, then he dropped to the deck and ran off in a blur of creamy grey fur. His ecstatic chittering filled the bridge before the hatch shut behind him.

“I didn't think he could move that fast.” McKeon said with a chuckle from the XO's chair.

“John...” Honor whispered.

“You don't think I would let a ship that powerful enter the system you are in command of and not turn it over to you, do you?” I asked with a knowing smile. “I might be a bit arrogant at times...”

There was a light chuckle sound from behind me.

“...most times.” I corrected and a few more people laughed. “But, I'm not an idiot. I knew you needed as much help as you can get out here, so I brought it here for you.”

“I thought you meant the upgrades.” Honor said.

“I did.” I said and gave her a crooked smile. “What would you say about me tearing apart that Grav Lance and making into a Grazer Lance?”

There was a collective gasp from the entire bridge crew. A Grazer was a term for a shipboard Laser that was vastly superior in both strength and range to the normal laser, and it used Gamma Rays to punch through ships instead of X-rays like the laser warheads on their missiles. A Lance would make that about ten times as powerful as a normal Grazer.

“You... must be... joking.” Honor whispered in a soft voice that was laced with disbelief.

I shook my head. “I'll also install a separate power system and remove that monstrous power drain from the ship's main reactor. We can't have the ship's sidewalls or wedge disappearing when you fire the thing. That's just stupid.”

Honor's eyes hardened and she stood almost as fast as Nimitz had leapt. “McKeon, you have the bridge. Mister Hansen and I have a few things we need to discuss immediately!”

“Aye, Skipper.” McKeon said and stood up to salute.

Honor glared at me. “You're with me.” She said in a stern voice, then she strode across the bridge with a purpose.

I saluted McKeon and ran after her. We left the bridge at a fast walk and quickly made it to her cabin.

“Mac, no one is to disturb me as I deal with this... situation.” Honor ordered and Mac nodded, locked the hatch, and left to set electronic communications to go to him first.

As soon as Mac's hatch closed, Honor tore off her beret and mashed her lips against mine as she wrapped her arms around my neck. I could tell she didn't have a lot of experience, so I gently directed her with my own lips and mouth to give her a better kissing experience.

Honor started to moan as the kiss changed from desperate to passionate and there was a mental spark between us. She broke the kiss and gave me an intense look. “John...”

“It's been a while for me, too.” I whispered and picked her up in a princess carry.

Honor blushed as I carried her into her sleeping compartment. “There's not a lot of room for...”

“It's not a problem.” I said and waved my hand. The compartment quadrupled in size, as did the bed.

“J-John, what...” Honor started to ask.

“I'll explain everything after I've made love to you.” I promised and kissed her again.

“Mmmm.” Honor moaned and then gasped when I tore open her tunic.

I moved down and started suckling on her breasts, which really had her moaning. I had a lot of experience with things like this, so I took my time and gave her as much loving attention as she could stand. I could also feel her emotions and knew her empathic and telepathic abilities were just on the edge of activating fully.

I kissed my way down her body and opened her trousers. Honor stiffened slightly and I stopped briefly to give her a reassuring smile and several caresses on her abdomen. She nodded slightly and I pulled her pants down and slipped off her boots. I kissed and licked up her legs and let her know exactly what I was going to to.

Honor blushed as I approached the space between her legs and I gently caressed her thighs for several moments, then I eased her utilitarian underwear aside.

“Beautiful.” I whispered and she really blushed. I could also feel her disbelief, so I gave her another reassuring smile and gently waded into her softness with my tongue and kissed and licked her all over. That she had short dark slightly curly hair on her head and also above her special place, just added to her appeal.

“OHHH!” Honor gasped as she had an orgasm, and it was a pretty good one by the feeling of her emotions.

I lifted her legs and put them over my shoulders as I settled down to stay a while. She seemed to like what I just did, so I was going to give her the best experience she could ever have. I quickly discovered what worked and what didn't, thanks to feeling her emotions, and I made her orgasm over and over again.

“S...s...stop. Stop.” Honor gasped as her entire body trembled. “G-g-give me a m-minute.”

“No, you're ready now.” I said and crawled up to hover my face above hers as I placed the tip of my rock hard erection against her soaked opening. I looked deep into her eyes and gave her the same telepathic link I had with Megan and activated her own abilities.

“JOHN!” Honor gasped as my thoughts flowed into her mind and I shoved myself into her body at the same time. “OHHHHH!” She moaned and came hard, then I started moving in and out of her at a moderate pace. Even after working her over for a while, she was still really tight, so I couldn't pound her as hard as she wanted me to. Not yet, anyway.

After about ten minutes, she had relaxed enough down there, so I rolled her over onto her belly and rammed myself as hard as her emotions wanted me to. Oh, she really wanted me to. Harder and harder, at a speed and force that could have broken a normal woman, and she loved it.

Honor's 1.35 times Earth's gravity adjusted body could take a lot of punishment apparently, which was what made her such a force to deal with when in battle with her, either mentally or physically. Of course, her mind at the moment was locked into getting as much pleasure as possible from a man that could give it to her, both mentally and physically.

She had built mental barriers to protect herself from being hurt emotionally and I easily followed that train of thought to the incident that happened when she was in the academy.

I rolled Honor back over to face her once more and I could tell that she had followed me along my mental path into her thoughts. “He's a dead man, Honor. You will never have to think about him ever again.”

“J-John!” Honor gasped as she came again. “You... can't... murder...”

“It's not murder. It's garbage disposal.” I said and Nimitz bleeked in agreement. “How many other young women has he done that to? How many took it and never made the bastard pay like you did?”

“T-t-too many.” Honor whispered as tears came to her eyes. She had heard the rumors of several young women being paid off to stay quiet.

“Then don't worry about it anymore. He is no longer your concern. Not anymore.” I said and kissed her. “I'm here now, Honor. I'm here for you, just like Nimitz is.”

Honor blinked away the tears. “Like... like Nimitz?”

Yes, because together, the three of us can do anything. I thought to her and her emotions practically exploded out of her and flowed into me. Her long suppressed need for a human companion, her desire that had been unmet for over twenty years, and her desperate loneliness and acceptance that she would never get either thing.

I accepted it all and sent her both love and reassurance in exchange. I felt her mental connection lock onto me and she was as desperate to know about me as I was about her. I didn't open myself up completely, because that would have been way too much for a normal human mind to handle without a lot of preparation work. Instead, I gave her an overview of my life so far.

“J-J-John!” Honor gasped again and then came so hard that she passed out. Her last thought before she fell unconscious was that I had chosen her over all of the women I had seen and met while being in this universe, especially the supremely beautiful Emily Alexander and the other rich women from Manticore's capital city.

I would have to wait for her to wake up to let her know that I had been waiting a long time to find someone as interesting as her.

*

Honor woke up and she felt two warm presences around her body and also in her mind. That wasn't a dream?

No, dearest. John whispered into her mind.

Honor's mind went back to exactly how she had lost consciousness and she blushed.

John chuckled and Nimitz bleeked a laugh.

It's not funny. Honor thought to them.

I've had centuries of experience pleasing women, Honor. Although, I've only shared a mental connection with a few of them. John thought.

Honor saw the image of a tall blonde woman with mechanical implants on her face and hands, a woman who had swarms of bugs flying around her, then a very beautiful Native American woman with long black hair. The last had green skin and bright red hair.

Seven of Nine, Taylor Hebert, Gloria Colorado, and M'Gann. John thought and showed what happened to them.

I'm sorry to dredge up those memories. Honor thought.

Don't be. I regret losing Seven of Nine so suddenly and having to send Gloria away to keep her safe. Taylor moved on from her long existence to become something she felt like she was always meant to be. M'Gann... well, I didn't have much choice about that one.

Honor felt that it was true. Why did you choose me this time?

John kissed her and let her see and feel what he did when they first met. Recognition. Someone to have a full and meaningful relationship with. Someone he could devote himself to and knew that they were both going to benefit from it, as long as he could somehow convince her that it was worth a try.

Oh, John. Honor thought and kissed him back. I'll try. I really will.

You already have, dearest. John thought and chuckled. Your normal duty shift is nearly over.

“WHAT?!?” Honor gasped and sat up, which pushed Nimitz off of her chest and onto John, whom easily caught him, because Nimitz slid around like he was made of rubber and didn't let Honor's sudden movement disturb his comfort.

“Relax, Honor. McKeon is handling everything and my work crews are already stripping out the center of the Grav Lance mechanism to replace it.” John said. “I'll upgrade the energy torpedoes next shift and then I'll upgrade your impeller engine and inertial compensator.”

Honor stared at the man. “Why did you let me sleep through the rest of my shift?”

“You needed time to adjust.” John said and lightly tapped his temple. “I'll start teaching you some mind organizing exercises when you have some free time and then I can share a lot more than just the brief view you've already seen.”

Honor took a deep breath and let it out. “You really have chosen to share it all with me?”

“As much as can be allowed to exist here in this universe.” John said and she raised her eyebrows at him. “Those weird gravity waves and eddies that are scattered across interstellar space, really messes up a normal warp drive's ability to function.”

“Warp drive? What's that?” Honor asked and then suddenly she knew. “Good heavens!”

“Yeah, it really limits how I can travel when I can't even use a basic ship to go from system to system.” John said and then he smiled. “I do have another way that works just fine, as long as I've been on the planet before.”

Honor sucked in a sharp breath as information about the Stargate creating stable wormholes entered her mind. “I want one on the Fearless immediately!”

John chuckled. “What do you think I installed in my quarters as soon as they were assigned?”

Honor hopped out of bed. “Take me there now! I need to see this for myself!”

John gave her lithe and toned body a lecherous look to draw her attention to her nakedness.

“R-right. We should get dressed first.” Honor said as she blushed. She had never had anyone look at her like that before and she didn't know why it pleased her so much.

“Shower first.” John said and stood up with Nimitz in his arms. “Sorry, big guy. We're going to be a few minutes.”

“Bleek.” Nimitz said and didn't protest being put back on the warm bed and having a blanket tossed over him.

Honor wasn't sure what John was planning until he followed her into the bathroom. “It's a single person shower and you can't...”

John waved his hand and the shower quadrupled in size.

“Are you going to do that every time?” Honor asked as he pulled her into the shower.

“Only when necessary.” John said and turned on the water. He lathered up his hands and washed Honor diligently, then they were on the floor of the shower and Honor screamed his name in pleasure and cursed at him as he had his way with her again and again. She would never admit that she really enjoyed it, even in her own mind, because she had the proper image of a starship captain to maintain.

*

“Honor!” Allison Harrington exclaimed and jumped to her feet when Honor and I entered her office. She was of almost pure Asian descent from Old Earth and was just a touch under five feet tall, making her over a foot shorter than both Honor and myself.

“Mother!” Honor exclaimed right back as the two hugged each other tightly.

“I'm not going to ask how you are here when you are supposed to be causing all of that trouble on Basilisk Station.” Allison said and let her daughter go as she turned her head to look up at me. “I never thought I would ever see this handsome young man to tease him again.”

Honor snorted and clamped her mouth shut to stop her laugh.

“I didn't think the universe was this small, either. Hello Allison.” I said with a huge smile. I was tempted to call her young lady and decided to keep that a secret until Honor was okay with letting her mother know she was dating a much, much, much older man.

Allison laughed and it was a pleasant sound. She held her hand out to me with a mischievous smile on her face. “How happy are you to know that I'm the inordinately young mother of the tall troublemaker?”

I chuckled and accepted the hand, bent way down, and kissed the back of it. “Quite.”

“Such a charmer.” Allison said with a twinkle in her eye, because I hadn't let her hand go, and she looked back at Honor. “It's so nice to see you, dear.”

Honor smiled at her. “Are you going to ask me why I came to visit?”

Allison smiled back. “I assumed that you would tell me eventually.”

Honor chuckled. “Well, the very important reason that John and I crossed the interstellar distance from Basilisk to Sphinx is... because we could!”

Allison blinked her eyes several times before she spoke. “Excuse me?”

“We only popped by briefly to say hello.” I said and bent back down to kiss her hand again. “It was nice meeting you again.”

“But... but, but...” Allison stammered.

“Bye, mother!” Honor said and we left a stunned Allison behind in her office.

“Is your father going to be that easy to fluster?” I asked and took her hand.

“He's one of the best neurosurgeons in the Manticore System, as you very well know. He served a full term of service in the navy, too.” Honor said. “What do you think?”

“I think I'm glad that I brought along a 2,000 year old bottle of whiskey as a gift.” I said and she laughed.

Alfred Harrington was as non-reactive to our 'saying hello' joke as Honor predicted, then he promptly fainted at the sight of the old whiskey bottle. We left it and a note for him before we left.

*

For some inexplicable reason, the entire North Hollow family had arrived on Manticore. It had been the first time in years that they had all come home to the family seat. Apparently, a promise of receiving their just reward had made them all come running. The elder Lord North Hollow was in attendance and gathered everyone in the large opulent living room and smiled at them, then he took out a remote and pushed the button.

Every member of the Young family, including Lord Pavel Young, were wiped from existence as an undetectable explosive device detonated and a bright white light engulfed the entire piece of land that the family house was built on. All that was left was a mile wide crater that was half a mile deep. No evidence could be found, except for the broadcasted video of the family meeting.

Everyone knew what that meant, however. North Hollow had dug up one too many secrets and must have tried to blackmail the wrong person. It was the only explanation for what had happened. Also, the police didn't look too hard into the crime, on orders from the police commissioner, whom had been one of the people the old man ahd blackmailed for years.

The site was cordoned off and would eventually be filled back in and made into a nice park, because no one wanted to live where the rich scum of the Star Kingdom had lived and then died.

*

“Please tell me that idiot Lord Young did not give indefinite permission for a Haven Government merchantman to remain in the planetary orbit, for as long as was necessary, to wait for a repair ship or a shipment of replacement parts.” I said to Honor as we ate breakfast on her ship, RMN Fearless. Well, it was more like complaining, actually.

“They also refused any offers to repair it by Dame Estelle, the NPA, the other consulate enclaves on the planet, and by several other ships that have passed through the Medusa system since they arrived here.” Honor responded, completely confirming the idiot's decision.

“That doesn't make sense. I can understand leaving them here to burn money from their government, because commerce raiding is apparently acceptable here.” I said and Honor's lips tightened. “Either their cargo is non-perishable or they don't care about the late delivery fees.”

Honor sighed. “The fact that the Havenites have a diplomatic courier ship stationed here, also with Young's permission, is a lot more worrying to me.”

I sat back as she shared her thoughts with me about what that could mean. “I see why that could be upsetting.” I said after reviewing what she sent. “They courier uses a separate isolated and encrypted computer messaging system, that only senders and recipients can access, using their own individual unlocking codes.”

“Yes, they do. We have no idea what's being sent or transferred, even if we could get a satellite between the courier ship and the planet.” Honor responded.

“Or the potentially armed Havenite merchantman.” I added and she caught her breath. “It would make sense, wouldn't it? They used a very convenient message system by pointed laser to talk to each other and no one else can decipher them.”

“Beep!” Eye exclaimed and I chuckled. He floated beside the table on the front of a heavily modified Dragon Drone.

“You know we can't unleash you on them without tipping them off that we have you.” I warned him.

“Boop.” Eye said, sadly.

I reached over and patted his side. “We can brainstorm about what we can do to change that after we fix Honor's severely lacking armament.”

“Hey!” Honor shouted and smacked my arm.

“I meant on your ship, dearest.” I said and gave her chest a pointed look. “You know I love those things.”

Honor blushed as she felt my feelings and heard my thoughts. “John!”

I laughed softly and looked at her face. “I'll be good.”

Honor reached over and cupped the side of my face with her hand and gave me a kiss. “Thank you.”

“Nimitz, are you going with Honor today or with us?” I asked him.

“Bleek.” Nimitz said and hopped from his high chair, landed for a split second on the table and jumped again, then easily landed on top of Eye. He safely perched there and gave us a smug look.

“I think he's made a decision.” Honor joked and Nimitz bleeked in amusement.

“When I figure out how to add external controllers that you can safely use with your true-hands, we can build you a drone, too.” I said and Eye beeped in agreement.

“Bleek.” Nimitz said with confidence.

“I'm sure we will like it, too.” I said and Honor nodded. I stood up and walked around the table to give her a proper kiss. “I'll see you tonight.”

Honor nodded again and watched us leave the dining compartment.

“We're changing out that Grav Lance first.” I said as Eye followed me down the hallway. “With the main part already removed, we can add in the extras that it needs to work properly and mount the upgraded Grazer.”

“Beep?” Eye asked.

“We're using a city-size naquadah generator.” I said and Eye beeped in surprise. “I'm sure the tactical officer is going to be surprised when he sees the numbers the new weapon is going to generate.”

“Beep.” Eye said.

“Ha! Honor's going to wet her pants when she test fires it. I guarantee it.” I said and Nimitz bleeked a laugh. “Shh! It's supposed to be a surprise.”

Nimitz had a very amused expression on his treecat face as he bleeked in laughter. We both felt Honor's interest in the back of our heads and tried to not let the secret out too soon.

*

It took three days of fiddling to get the damn thing properly mounted. The idiots that modified the ship to hold the Grav Lance had actually cut into the ship's superstructure to fit the oversized weapon and weakened the hull. If it was ever fired at full power, there was a chance it would warp the keel of the whole ship and cause massive damage from the output.

The energy torpedoes were simply plug and play after the mods my work crews did on the replacements. They were still energy torpedoes, only they had ten times the yield and power output for both speed and distance. Since the new weapon systems had an independent power source, they could be rapidly fired and it wouldn't impact the main fusion powered reactors on the ship.

Of course, I wasn't going to give it a massive offensive upgrade without fixing the shield problem, too. The downside of being completely protected was the lack of adding acceleration to the ship with the 'wedge closed', as the engineers called it. The engine would continue to pull you through space, only at a constant rate without the ability to increase it.

The physics of this universe was really wonky, because a simple warp bubble would have solved that problem. The technology wasn't compatible, though. No matter how basic the components were that I broke it down to, they would not work together. They were just too fundamentally opposed sets of science for any cooperation to be successful.

Honor loved the specs when we were finally finished. Her ship's offensive capabilities had increased by 300% and she wasn't saddled by a crippling weapon that was only a surprise once. Even if the original could have been modified to fire multiple times without recharging, it was still a failed experiment to use on a ship that wasn't specifically designed to carry the thing.

Her weapon techs also enjoyed tearing out the idiotic programming and superfluous consoles that the tech weenies back on Manticore had installed to run the Grav Lance. If the thing couldn't be operated with the normal weapons controls, then what was the point of having it?

They had to learn a whole new way to set the thing up and they had almost no experience using it, except for the one time it was actually successful. The funny thing was, it was only because Honor's tactics had given them the win and it didn't matter what weapon they had used to attack.

“All right, helm. Bring us about and let's get our scheduled patrol underway.” Honor ordered.

“Aye aye, Skipper.” The man said happily and the communications tech cleared the ship's movements with traffic control.

Honor barely held in her blush at the honorific. The ship's crew had settled down and recovered from their humiliating beatdown in the war games and they no longer blamed her for the ship's failures. I had made it completely clear that it was the weapon's failure and not the captain's or the crew's fault.

“Once we're out near the elliptical of the system, veer us off by a few degrees and point us towards the nasty evil asteroids that navigation found for us last week.” Honor said.

“Yes, ma'am!” The man said, excitedly.

“Tactical, you'll join myself, Commander McKeon, and Mister Hansen at the holotable in an hour as we work out a good firing solution to take care of the enemy.” Honor ordered.

“Aye, cap'n.” The man there said with a sharp nod and a smile.

The ship was given permission to move and it broke orbit of the planet and started its patrol route. The bridge crew felt anticipation start to build, because they would be using their upgraded weapons systems for the first time. Their effective weapons systems. They hoped, anyway.

I had to hold in my chuckle at the emotions I was picking up through Nimitz and Honor, both theirs and the rest of the crew. They were just as excited about the upcoming weapons test as everyone else was.

When the time approached for the planning, the tactical officer let his assistant take over the watch and joined Honor, McKeon and I at the holotable in the briefing room at the back of the bridge. It didn't take us long to work out a good pattern to use to take care of the nasty evil asteroids and also give him and his assistant a lot of chances to test the equipment and the software in a life fire exercise.

*

Honor barely managed to keep her excitement contained until the entire exercise was over. The new energy torpedoes were phenomenal and devastated the smaller asteroids. The Grazer Lance on the other hand... she had almost peed her pants when the bright blue beam tore through the mile-wide asteroid like a hot knife through butter.

The second and third shots that were just as powerful, had her actively trying to keep herself calm. It was a difficult thing to do, however. The numbers on the more than successful test showed her that she could fight a super-dreadnought head to head and she only captained a light cruiser. It was unbelievable!

Honor made it through the after-action reports by gritting her teeth and hiding her reaction as much as possible. As soon as she issued the dismissed order, all the senior officers fled the briefing room. They knew what was going to happen. John had barely secured the door and turned back towards her, only to get tackled to the floor and had his clothes torn off.

An hour later, Honor was relaxing in post-coital bliss under a warm blanket. “We need to get more passive scans of both Republic of Haven ships.”

“Already done.” John said and Eye beeped at him from the corner of the room and activated the holotable. “I snuck a stealth drone right up both their asses and gained extensive scans of both ships.”

Honor sat up to look at the display. “The courier is exactly what it says it is.”

“Yes, diplomatic immunity and all.” John said and Eye beeped. “The merchantman, however...”

Honor gasped when the scans showed a military grade impeller signature and the nodes were retracted into the hull to conceal them. “They're fully armed like you thought!”

John nodded. “Since their government never admitted that they made Q-ships, intentionally built from the keel out merchant warships, there's no way to complain about it to their consulate on the planet or to their government.”

Honor frowned at the numbers it was showing. “Why would they bother stationing... oh, son of a bitch!Those bastards are going to cause the locals to revolt against Manticore's government!”

John chuckled humorlessly. “You arrived at that faster than I did.”

“I've spent a lot of time talking to Dame Estelle, the planet's governess. They've been having an upsurge in the locals smoking their holy religion's drugs and it's causing a lot of little skirmishes all over the place.” Honor told him. “With this evidence that we can't officially use, those skirmishes are looking a whole lot more suspicious than they used to.”

John nodded. “Eye, show her the planetary grid.”

Honor sucked in a sharp breath when a hologram of the entire planet appeared and then groups of dots formed all over it with numbers over the groups. “You know how many natives there are?”

“We also know how many are being killed, how, and when.” John said and the details appeared in a list beside the planet hologram. “There are also unscheduled aircar flights out into the middle of nowhere from the main settlement where the enclaves are for the different governments.”

Honor let out several soft curses before she composed herself. “Do you have any idea what they're doing?”

“Yes, and it ties directly into what you just said about the locals using more drugs than usual.” John said and showed groups of natives with animals of burden being led around with bundles of the local drugs in huge packs on the animals. “Eye, the medical scan, please.”

Honor caught her breath at the quality and effects of the drugs being four times that of the locally produced version. “They're running drugs?”

“Only to the locals.” John said. “You're right to think they are going to cause an insurrection. A lot of people will die because the local alien species wants more of their holy drugs that the Havenites are giving to them.”

“If they force us to abandon the planet's surface, Haven can annex the planet, because the junction is so far away and the planet itself isn't necessary to hold in order to keep the junction in Manticore's hands.” Honor said and stood, her nudity forgotten as she thought furiously. “However, Haven could easily set up a picket here, just like Manticore is supposed to have.”

“Instead of a single ship as a punishment detail, they'll have a squadron and maybe even a full flotilla standing by.” John said and stood as well. “With the junction right there...”

“...and the other junction they control at Trevor's Star, they could attack us on two fronts at any time, shoving a dozen ships through each terminus at the same time, essentially shutting the main wormhole junction down for hours or days, depending on the tonnage of the ships.” Honor commented as her brain worked on the details.

“The Manticore system would be sitting ducks if two enemy fleets drop into the main junction so close to the planets.” John said and the holotable changed to show the Manticore System. “Even with the fortresses defending the place, they are stationary and easily taken out with enough missiles.”

A route was shown where a blue line could cut through the main fortresses and then they would have a clear path to the planets and the system's government, which they could then force to surrender.

Honor made growling sound. “We know all this and we can't do anything about it.”

“No, you can't.” John said and she growled again. “You can't.” He said and touched her shoulder. “However, if you open your eyes and see what's right in front of you...”

Honor looked over the scenario playing out on the holotable, knowing it could be a total loss, and turned to shout at him for dismissing her concerns... and she saw his wicked smile. It was then she realized what he meant, because she had turned away from the display and was looking right at him now. He was right in front of her.

“J-John.” Honor whispered.

“Secret Operations Private Third Class John Hansen reporting for duty, ma'am!” John said and saluted.

Honor's smile turned wicked as she grinned at him.

*

The hired people in the hidden base never knew what hit them. One second, they were doing their thing by refining the local drugs to ridiculous levels, and the next second a bright beam of energy lit up the entire structure and bore down through the underground base as if it wasn't there.

Since the electronic records had already been pilfered as proof, the physical evidence was only circumstantial and couldn't be connected to Haven, mostly because of all the cut-outs and blind drops that had been arranged. The power tap on the planetary grid had been there right from the start, which meant someone in the Manticore System had built it on purpose.

Similar beams were seen and not heard all across the planet as each and every one of the drug shipments was destroyed in the same manner, as were the illegal guns that the criminals had seeded among the local tribes of aliens.

Unfortunately, the aliens themselves were barely above the Stone Age of evolution, so their weapons capability was basic at best and rudimentary at worst. The problem was that some of the natives figured out how to duplicate the modified rifles and were already making their own cheap versions.

Dame Estelle was not happy about that at all. Jumping from using flint and stone tools of the Stone Age to the metal manufacturing of the Iron Age, was too quick for any society to survive, so she had a lot of work to do to keep the lid on things and stop the local tribes from killing each other and wiping out their entire race.

It was a huge headache and the staff of the Domestic Affairs Office was going to be busy for a very long time trying to sort everything out.

The Havenite spies in the enclaves relayed what happened to the ships in orbit, both of whom had their impeller engines idling, so they only needed ten to fifteen minutes to get moving. They were allowed to have those minutes so that the RMN Fearless could catch them trying to flee the planet.

Just after both ships broke orbit against regulations and Traffic Control's orders to remain stationary, some kind of reactionless projectile tore through the engine room of the courier ship and caused an emergency shutdown of their fusion reactor with the compartment open to space. Thankfully, the occupants wore their emergency suits while on duty and no one died.

RMN Fearless wasn't taking any chances, either. They gave the Haven merchant ship one warning before they opened fire with the Grazer Lance. The bright beam tore through the armored merchantman like a hot knife through butter and pretty much erased their main fusion reactor from existence. With one shot. The entire ship lost power immediately and their impeller engines shut down.

With both ships so visibly disabled, neither of the captains could refuse the help from the rescue teams, not without causing an interstellar incident that would out their plans in the system. That didn't matter, though. Those plans had already been discovered, thanks to their computers being pilfered and the spreading Crybaby mappers that highlighted the Republic of Haven fleet that was stationed only a short hyperspace jump away.

Over the next half an hour, every single one of those fleet ships, including the repair and parts ships, were systematically disabled by the same reactionless projectile that took out the courier boat. No one had seen what caused it. They did see the Manticore warship that appeared at the edge of their sensors and they also received the open and uncoded message asking them if they required assistance.

*

Honor laughed and laughed as she rolled around in our bed. “Did you see that man's face? I thought he was chewing on glass because he looked so angry as he graciously accepted our help to send a message back to Haven! Hahahaha!”

I had to laugh as well and watched Honor enjoying the Havenites squirm after being caught trying to invade a Manticore protected system and then trying to deny it and deflect any and all questions about why they were all the way out at the ass-end of nowhere.

Their pathetic excuse that they were on a shakedown cruise was openly laughed at, because most of their ships were several iterations out of date. Their own computers were used against them as evidence, because they didn't have the time to wipe the data, not that they could. They wanted their people to live, after all.

Honor handed copies of everything Eye and I found to the Foreign Affairs Department and decided to let them handle the whole thing. She didn't need to get involved in that aspect of it, even if it did give her an immense sense of satisfaction to have thoroughly embarrassed the military of a foreign power.

I reached out and pulled her into a hug. Honor's happy face changed to a sultry one and she let out a sound not unlike a purr as she kissed me hungrily. We were soon together in that old-fashioned way and she let herself be loved and loved me in return.

It really was becoming something deep and lasting for the both of us, because of our mental connection and what we felt for each other. We had both needed someone to be there for them, for different reasons, and we had kind of slotted into exactly what we needed. The best part was that neither of us were interfering in the other's life. We had our work to do and we both understood to not rush things.

“Bleek.” Nimitz said and hopped up onto the bed when we were finished having fun.

“Hey, Stinker.” I said and scratched him under the chin. “I think Honor is going to be recalled to Manticore soon to report in person. What do you think?”

“Bleek.” Nimitz answered and both Honor and I felt his agreement.

“Is it for her in-depth investigation skills or because her ship RMN Fearless kicks ass?” I asked and Nimitz bleeked at me. “I think you're right. It's all Honor's fault.”

Honor laughed as she hugged us both and Nimitz purred.

*

The treecat's prediction was right and Honor was issued orders to return as soon as she handed command of the system over to her relief duty. The dreadnought led three other ships of various classes and tonnage and Honor kept her composure as she handed her first command area over to a One Star Rear-Admiral that would be taking over the now classed as much more important command area.

Who would have thought stopping an invasion would make the politicians back in Manticore get off their butts and change their attitude about Medusa to protect their home system? Maybe that was what they needed. A wake-up call to stop acting like they weren't under a constant threat from their enemies.

Surprisingly, Honor handed me back command of my armored merchant, just in case her being in control of it would put it under the control of whomever took over the station. I appreciated the thought and accepted it, then had the thing go under stealth and dissolved it. As far as anyone knew, it left of its own accord the same way it arrived.

We made it back to Manticore the next day and it was a whirlwind of meetings, greetings, and posturing by the military and the higher echelon of society. Honor weathered it fairly well, as long as I remained by her side and Nimitz was on her shoulder. I wasn't sure how I had suddenly become as much of her support structure as Nimitz was and I didn't question it. She needed me and I was there for her, and that's what mattered.

After one of the last briefings, Admiral White Haven invited the both of us to a small gathering of like minds. We changed into appropriate clothing, feathers and all, and arrived at the venue, only to discover that the small gathering was in reality half of the Admiralty and most of the rich and powerful in the city of Landing.

Honor only flinched once when one of the snobby ladies commented on how good she looked dressed as a flamingo. I could hear her in the back of my mind as she swore that she was never attending one of these parties ever again, unofficial orders or not.

I just chuckled and kept us mingling until we met who I really came here for. “Emily! It's so nice finally to see you again.”

“John!” Emily gasped and hugged my neck as she kissed each of my cheeks. “Your godson is at the point where he's walking around on his own and asking for his 'Unka Won'.”

I knew what that meant. “I hope you turned down the speech recognition software on the house computer system.”

Emily beamed a smile at me. “Right after Hamish had to pay for the delivery of ten thousand chocolate bars!”

Both Honor and I laughed at that and Nimitz bleeked happily.

“He's been giving out handfuls of them to everyone he meets at work. It's hilarious.” Emily said and brought us over to her husband. “Hamish!”

The man turned his head from talking to several admirals and his smile was just as bright as Emily's when he saw her. “Excuse me, gentlemen. Duty calls.”

The men chuckled and saluted with their drinks.

Hamish stepped away from them and put an arm around his wife. “John, it's great to see you in a non-official capacity for once.”

“Hey, it's not my fault your underlings wanted me to personally install every damn comm suite.” I said with a huge smile.

Hamish chuckled. “Can you blame them when you can do it quicker than your personally trained crewmen?”

“Ha ha. I just have to stop being so great.” I joked. “On second thought, I can't do that. Never mind.”

Honor slapped my arm and Emily laughed.

Hamish gave me a look and then looked at Honor. “You did a great job out there, Commander.”

“I couldn't have done so well if it wasn't for John.” Honor said and didn't elaborate or say anything else. She wasn't going to give anything away, especially about how often she used me for stress relief.

“He does have a tendency to buoy you up when you need it, doesn't he?” Emily asked with a fond smile.

“More than he should, I suspect.” Honor said and smiled the same fond smile.

“Hey, hey. None of that. I was strictly professional as Emily floated naked in an amniotic nutrient bath for two weeks.” I said in a snooty voice. “Yes, completely professional.”

Both Emily and Honor slapped my arm this time.

Hamish laughed. “I don't think I could hold it against you, even if you weren't so honorable.”

“The noble idiot wore a blindfold the entire time as he healed me.” Emily said with a roll of her eyes.

Honor laughed and she leaned in close to me. Her mind filled mine with her thoughts of how turned on that made her, especially because she knew that I hadn't done anything with anyone until I met her. She didn't really need the confirmation that I hadn't; but, that it was the Angel of Manticore that I could have had a liaison with and Emily's husband wouldn't have objected if I did, really set her emotions off.

“Professionalism is not a sin.” I countered and Emily giggled. “It's not!”

“He had a droid clean me and dry me off when I was taken out of the tank.” Emily said, clearly amused. “He's a doctor and he wouldn't even grab my ass when I slipped and he caught me. How could he insult me like that?”

“I like living, that's why. Most of Manticore would murder me if I ever tried anything.” I said to defend my actions, or lack thereof.

Hamish laughed and then coughed. Honor's eyes almost twinkled. Nimitz bleeked.

“See? They agree with me not being stupid.” I added and Emily laughed, too.

The evening went on with more mingling, occasional laughs, and champagne. Emily and Honor hit it off and both Hamish and I knew that they were going to be good friends for a long time.

*

RMN Fearless was decommissioned from active service and torn apart by BuShips. It was a surprising move by Admiral Sonja Hemphill, probably in an attempt to either duplicate or to figure out how it had been modified and changed into a better tactical asset than her original idea had been.

After her investigation, her office and staff bombarded the upstart John Hansen with messages and visits to the point that the man blocked anyone associated with her. He wasn't going to help her if she was just going to tear apart everything he built for the Royal Manticoran Navy, so he put in his notice, much to the navy and Admiralty's chagrin, and became a private contractor.

When Sonja was confronted by pretty much the entire upper echelon of the Admiralty, she admitted that she couldn't figure out how John had refurbished and rebuilt the Grav Lance into a Grazer Lance, not realizing he had completely replaced it.

She also said that her people could do the same modifications in a drydock that he and his people had done on the ship while it was in operation, if they had two months to do it. She wanted his methods disseminated across the navy's shipyards and it would increase their efficiency by a ridiculous percentage.

The problem was, Sonja refused to apologize for her behavior. She was in the right to pester the man, since she was his nominal boss, and it wasn't her fault that he wouldn't comply with her lawful orders and quit. They were lucky that she hadn't had the man arrested for not giving proper notice and cancelling their contract.

Hamish pretty much glared at the woman for a good ten minutes as she talked and defended her decisions, then he stood up without a word and walked out of the conference room. In ones and twos, each and every other person did the same thing, leaving Sonja Hemphill and her personal secretary alone in the room.

Sonja sat in her chair and felt a little scared that everyone had left. Not one person had agreed with her and had chosen to wash their hands of her. They couldn't get her out of office until the next Prime Minister was elected and the government changed hands; but, she knew that anything she proposed from this point forward was going to be rejected and she would never be allowed to attain office again.

Her not-so-secret task to haul the old fogeys out of the past and to embrace her new school of thinking, introducing new ideas, was dead in the water. It was all John Hansen's fault for turning them against her and she would make sure that everyone would know that.

The very moment Sonja send off her messages that condemned the man for what happened, it was switched and all of her own dirty secrets were sent instead. The backroom deals, the blackmail, abuse of office and her authority to get her way, all of it was released.

Sonja Hemphill retired the next day in disgrace.

*

Honor gave me and Eye pointed looks as the news reported it all. I smiled and Eye beeped, as if we didn't do anything. She smacked my arm and I laughed.

“She did it to herself.” I said and nodded at Eye. “Go ahead and show her.”

Eye beeped and showed a hologram of it.

Honor shook her head at what Sonja was supposed to have sent and leaned over to give me a kiss. “You had Eye switch it as soon as she chose to ruin your reputation.”

“That's exactly what happened. She just couldn't take no for an answer and couldn't accept the fact that someone else could come up with an idea that worked better than hers.” I explained. “I told the Admiralty multiple times that I had no problems training her people or walking them through my technology, as long as she wasn't personally involved. She would always swoop in and take over whenever she was.”

“She did that once?” Honor asked.

“Four times.” I answered and Honor winced. “I wasn't going to let her do it a fifth time.”

Honor sighed and reclined on the couch to put her legs over my lap.

“All she had to do was be nice and admit that she was wrong to try to bully me.” I added and sat there lightly rubbing her feet.

“I'm glad I wasn't that stupid to try and confront you to tell me all your secrets.” Honor commented.

“Me, too. That would have turned me right off and stopped me from loving the best woman in this universe.” I said and Nimitz bleeked in agreement. “I just wonder when Hamish is going to have Emily rush over here to start buttering me up to sign a new contract with the navy, now that 'Horrible Hemphill' is out of the picture.”

Honor let out a soft giggle. “Emily will be scandalized if you ever said no to her.”

I chuckled, too. “More like horrified. Only an idiot would refuse the Angel of Manticore.”

*Bing Bong!*

“Beep boop.” Eye said and showed the view out the front door to show a smiling Emily Alexander.

“Let the show begin.” I joked and gently stood and put Honor's legs back onto the couch.

“Try to not tease her too much.” Honor said as I walked over to the front door.

“Would I do that?” I asked just before I opened the door.

“In a heartbeat.” Honor said.

“Hi, John!” Emily said when the door opened and she stepped inside with her butler following her. “I'm not interrupting anything, am I?”

“No, just Honor warning me I still can't ravish you without Hamish keel-hauling me.” I said and shu the door before I hugged her.

Emily giggled and hugged me back. “I think we have different definitions of what that means.”

“Ha ha.” I said and stepped back. “Giles, you know where the kitchen is. Wait five minutes to deliver Emily's favorite beverage and Honor's hot chocolate, please. We have a bit of talking to do first.”

“Very good, sir.” The butler said and walked off.

“I think he actually likes you.” Emily said and took my hand to walk with me over to Honor.

“I respect his job and don't ignore his efforts on your behalf.” I said.

“That's pretty rare, I agree.” Emily let my hand go to flop down onto the couch beside Honor and hugged her. “Hello, Honor.”

Honor gave her a hug back. “You're touchy-feely so quickly? What happened?”

Emily giggled. “I never could hide anything from you.” She said and laid on her back to pat her own stomach. “My son is going to have a little sister.”

Honor let out a very unwomanly squeal and hugged her friend again. “That's wonderful, Emily! When will the city declare another holiday?”

Emily laughed. “In about seven months. We'll tank her about a month beforehand to let me recover, just like last time. I'll be in good shape to handle another baby and have enough stored milk to not feel stressed.”

I sat down on a chair nearby and watched the two women from two different generations enjoying themselves and carrying on like they grew up together. It was one of the better aspects of the Prolong treatment that a woman who could be old enough to be Honor's grandmother, was only middle age and could still have children.

Of course, I did extensive work with it on my own and the aspects of its treatment was comparable to bacta treatments mixed with my rejuvenation tanks. It was an aspect of biology that I never took an interest in before and it would enhance my Miracle treatment by a significant margin.

Reworking the formula wouldn't take me long at all, now that I wasn't working exclusively on upgrading the Manticore Navy's limited technology. Well, limited in the fact that I could create much more advanced tech that would blow all their minds if they knew about it.

“They didn't put Fearless back together?” Honor suddenly asked with a gasp and that shook me out of my internal musings.

“They tried to, only to realize the ship was already fairly old and the tech could be installed into a newer ship from the outset and not retrofitting it.” Emily said. “Hamish said they are already switching out a quarter of the normal missile launchers on the new ships for energy torpedoes, now that they've changed a few of the factories to make the production lines spit out energy torpedo launchers.”

“I hope they're adding a dedicated power generator to those ships. It's the best way to keep the weapons online if the ship loses power for any reason.” I said and Honor nodded.

“The navy already sent your company an order for ten thousand power generators.” Emily said with a smile.

“Since we're not under contract, they don't get the discount for high-volume orders.” I said and then realized what they intended. “They're trying to bribe me into signing again.”

“Hamish didn't want to wait until we know who the opposition is going fill Sonja's position with.” Emily told us.

“Why not?” I asked. “They could be worse than her.”

“Or better.” Emily countered. “You still have the same exit clause that no one but you and Hamish know about.”

“And you and Honor.” I reminded her.

“What Hamish knows, I know.” Emily said, smugly. “I can't speak for Honor, though.”

Honor smiled and looked at me. “I can't claim to know everything he does; but, we're getting there.”

I smiled back, because Honor had taken to my mental sorting of memories as if she had always done it. It had cleared up so much space in her head that she had already started copying over some of my own Halls of Memory. The old books, movies, and television shows had utterly fascinated her and she spent endless hours lounging around inside my head as we watched anything that caught her attention.

“Honor being between deployments the last few months has helped with that.” I said.

Emily nodded and laced her fingers together over her belly. “There's no available ship at the moment, so Hamish can't bump anyone from the current roster to give her a spot. After what happened, anything less than command of a vessel would be an insult, so he's pushing for a few of the older captains to accept going on half-pay for a season or two.”

“You could bump her up to flag captain and give her a task group.” I joked and both Emily and Honor laughed.

“I need a few more years of experience before I'm ready for that.” Honor said and copied Emily's pose and laced her own fingers over her belly. “Fearless was my first hyper-capable command. That it worked out so well in Basilisk was kind of a fluke.”

“After reading the unofficial action reports, that was a huge mess to stumble across.” Emily said in agreement. “Things could have gone so badly with everything that was going on.”

“Dame Estelle definitely appreciated how efficiently the situation was handled with a minimal loss of native life.” Honor said and gave me a look that said to stay quiet. I nodded slightly. She had kept the extent of my own participation in that resolution a closely held secret.

“Haven had a lot of egg on their faces as we ferried all of their people from their disabled ships through the wormhole junction to Trevor's Star.” Emily said, her smile huge. “The navy people loved having so much salvage to go through.”

I had to chuckle at that. “They let that fiction go through the courts?”

Emily nodded and grinned at me. “Hamish has made repairing them a priority over the refits of our own ships that were scheduled. He'll send the repaired ships off to the lesser patrolled systems of our allies to free up some of our ships of the line.”

“The planets on the ends of the junction should be happy about getting reinforced.” Honor said and didn't say anything about her possibly getting one of those new commands, because the ships were significantly less capable than their own navy's. Like Emily said, she wanted a newer ship and not and older one.

“You have no idea.” Emily said and let out another giggle. “The diplomatic corps are all in a tizzy about the PR boon this is going to be.”

Honor looked amused. “I can only imagine how much they enjoy telling people yes when they are asked for help.”

Emily smiled for a moment and then sighed. “Yes, domestically it has been a bit hard. We just don't have the tonnage to maintain everyone's demands...” Her voice trailed off and she looked guilty.

I immediately caught an errant thought that something was up. I walked over to the couch and knelt. “Emily? I don't like that look on your face. Can you tell us without violating state secrets?”

Both Emily and Honor looked surprised at my words.

“What? I deal with military secrets every day. That doesn't mean I have clearance or everything.”

Emily gave each of us a look and then sighed. “I knew I couldn't keep it a secret.”

Both Honor and I gave her pleading looks.

Emily cracked after only a few seconds. “In about a month, a new ship is going to be commissioned under the name Fearless. It's a Star-Knight class heavy destroyer.”

“Uh huh.” I said and made a motion with my hand to continue. “Why is that being kept secret?”

Emily's eyes went to Honor's face.

“Oh!” Honor gasped, then she let out another uncharacteristic squeal of delight. “They're going to offer it to me!”

Emily nodded and was engulfed in a hug. A few tears were shed, too. I held in my sigh at hearing that, because I knew that meant Honor was going to be spending a lot more time in space, from months to years, before she would be get any breaks. That meant I had a lot more work to get to before she would be deployed.

I stood up and both Emily and Honor turned their heads to look at me. “I think I need to go visit Hamish at the Admiralty. A month isn't much time for a new contractor to look over an entire ship.”

Emily caught her breath. “John, I...”

Giles walked in right then and delivered Emily's favorite fruit juice blend and Honor's hot chocolate. It was perfect timing, so I used it.

“Excuse me for a few hours, ladies.” I said and walked across the living room to the front door and opened it. “I'll be back for supper. Emily, you're welcome to stay and I'll invite Hamish, too.”

“John, wait!” Honor said a little loudly.

I waved to her and shut the door. I entered the garage, hopped into a generic hovercar, and took off. I was going to be pressed for time if I had to check over everything on a heavy cruiser and to work through and fix all of the little mistakes and problems that every new ship had. I couldn't cheat and expand the spaces inside to add time compression, either. Dammit.

*

The month passed by like a soft breeze on a summer's day. I worked my ass off to get the ship up to specs, reinforced it, and modified it with the same modifications I had given the old Fearless with the closed shielding system to add bow and stern walls to the side walls. I didn't neglect Honor, either. I made sure we spent as much time together as possible, even with her own work to get up to speed on her new command.

Honor wouldn't be taking official command of the ship until it passed its shakedown cruise and weapon testing; but, after all the work I did on the thing, it was going to pass by a very wide margin and there was no worry at all about it failing.

Unfortunately, since I wasn't part of her crew or assigned to monitor and maintain the ship, she would be leaving me behind on Manticore as she flies off to do her duty in the Silesian Confederacy on an anti-pirate campaign. Since the entire region of space was littered with both pirate vessels and planets that encouraged them to raid the more prominent ships that passed through the system, she was going to be deployed there for a long time.

I did manage to install a hidden Stargate in her quarters, so whenever she was docked anywhere for downtime and could leave the ship under her XO's command, I could go visit her in secret. It was going to put a damper on our budding relationship, even if we both knew it was going to happen eventually. She was a career officer and I wasn't, so she would be in space a lot more than I was going to be.

On the plus side, we were going to live a long time and didn't have to rush anything, despite the both of us wanting to.

*

Honor Harrington was grateful that John had done everything he could to fix her new ship. Most of them had growing pains as they settled into their role as a ship in the Royal Manticoran Navy, especially with a mostly new crew. She only retained her XO McKeon, Lieutenant Tremaine, Chief Petty Officer Harness, and her physician Fritz Montoya.

The problem she quickly discovered was that her ship was a bit too effective in its mission to suppress the piracy in the Silesian Confederacy. Because of the extensive work her significant other had performed on the ship, its need for regular maintenance was reduced to the point that her engineering teams started to hunt up problems for them to deal with. Idle hands and all that.

Honor did manage to take a week break every six months as the ship stopped at one of Manticore's temporary bases to restock their food stores and their fuel. She couldn't justify any more time than that, because her ship was just a little too good at not breaking down. When she complained to John about it, all he could do was laugh at being so good at his job.

Because of the open-ended nature of the mission, her ship wasn't recalled to Manticore for four years, which was fortunate for only one reason. It let her survive the purges by the government changing hands to the people trying to reduce the Manticore navy's aggressiveness.

When Fearless returned to Manticore's main shipyard for a mandatory refit to upgrade the normal weapon systems that John had come up with for all the navy's ships, Hamish and his friends had already resumed their control over the government... and they were pissed over what had happened during their absence.

Apparently, there had been an incident at one of the newly discovered inhabited systems called Yeltsin's Star. It had strictly religious humans from Old Earth living there and they had lived there for centuries, long before hyperspace travel had been a thing. They had left Earth in only cryopods on an automated ship and crashed on a planet that had one of the harshest environments known to man.

A lot of them died before they developed the technology to survive the heavy metals in the water, soil, and air. Once they had, there was a civil war and a third of the remaining population were sent off to the other inhabitable planet. Funnily enough, the other planet was a paradise and had no poisonous aspects at all.

The exiles hated it because it wasn't their promised land and they wanted to go back home. This started a long intra-system war between the two factions as they rediscovered spaceflight and the ability to kill each other at a safe distance.

Unfortunately, because of their strict religious tendencies, women were seen as only objects and were not people in the eyes of the law or the citizens there. That meant Manticore's equality policy for the sexes was blasphemous to the locals and female crewmen would be kept at a distance and out of sight.

It didn't matter in the end, because the splinter group on the other planet had made a deal with the Republic of Haven for several modern warships to help them in their struggles against their oppressors. That was what the small task force from Manticore's Diplomatic Corps had stumbled across when they arrived in the system. Instead of helping the people they had come to visit and establish peaceful talks with, the cowards disobeyed orders and tried to flee. They failed.

They had already been caught in the trap Haven had engineered and their ships were destroyed. Before they could recover the survivors to keep as hostages, their religious fanatic allies shot all of the rescue pods and killed them all. The Havenites tried to protest their actions and were summarily shot and their bodies tossed out the airlock.

That was the situation Honor returned home to. That alone would have been a devastating blow for her, and it was, then she found out who the commanding officer was. Her old instructor from the naval academy, Raoul Courvosier. She had looked up to he man as a secondary father figure after he had coached her through her Advanced Tactical course.

It hurt Honor greatly to hear about how he was betrayed and murdered and she wanted to do something about it. Her ship needed the refit, however. That made her frustrated to the point that she openly and publicly complained to the man that loved her and earned herself a suspension from duty. Not surprisingly, it would last until her ship was ready to deploy.

*

“Are you done venting now?” I asked Honor after she had ranted and raved for two hours about the idiots in command that has suspended her and weren't going to do anything about what happened to her mentor.

Honor glared at me for several seconds, then she seemed to lose her strength and flopped onto my couch with a loud sigh. “Dammit, John. How can you sit there and not be angry about this? Haven wrecked our chances to establish ties with people that are essentially in our backyard, then killed everyone we sent there.”

“Who said I wasn't angry about it?” I asked her.

Honor jerked slightly and sat up to stare at me.

“Just because I'm staying calm, that doesn't mean I don't want to go there and tear them a new asshole.” I told her and her eyes widened briefly, then they narrowed. “Before you ask, the answer is yes. I still have my merchantman ship and it's ready to go.”

Honor jumped to her feet. “We need to go right now!”

I held up my hands in a surrender pose. “There's no we, Honor. You can't be involved with this.”

“How dare you say that!” Honor spat at me. “Out of everyone, I'm the only one who...”

“...is too involved to not be blamed.” I interrupted her and she looked angry. “You are the first person they are going to suspect if anything happens.”

Honor took a step towards me. “If that's so, then won't they also suspect you?”

I smiled. “Unlike you, I am not a part of the military. I am a contractor and I can cancel my contract at any time.”

Honor lost the anger. “You... you're going to take all the blame.”

“And the responsibility.” I said and stood up. “My ship is already in the Yeltsin system under stealth.”

Honor opened and closed her mouth, as if she was trying to speak, and nothing came out.

“I only stayed here long enough to find out if you wanted any witnesses.” I said and took her into a hug. “Or survivors.”

Honor looked startled for a second, then shook her head. “No, I don't. Those monsters don't deserve to live after what they did.”

I gave her a tender kiss and she almost melted into my arms. I broke it after a few moments and then let her out of the hug as I stepped back. “I'll be back as soon as I can.” I said and walked over to my basement stairs. “Why don't you head over to visit Emily and be seen in public? Plausible deniability is a real thing.”

Honor nodded and I went down the stairs. I dialed the right address on the Stargate and stepped through to the room behind the bridge of the merchantman.

“Okay, what do we have?” I asked and sat in the main chair on the bridge.

“Boop beep beep.” Eye said from his spot nestled into the communications console.

“You raided all their computers, even the secured ones on the Havenite ships?” I asked and he beeped in response. “Excellent, my friend. Bring up the data we need on the screen to identify who we have to kill.”

Eye beeped menacingly and a list of people and their pictures appeared there.

I looked over it all. “Tactical! Set one of the satellite's targeting systems for the first name. Laser their ass if they are alone. If they are with a group, I want a quantum torpedo sent instead.”

“Yessir.” The man at the tactical station said and used the ship's and the network of satellites to target the head of the Masalan Reformist religion that had set it all in motion. “Target is in a meeting hall with...” He paused and the list on the main screen selected twenty names. “...his main priests or whatever they call themselves.”

I grinned. “Make that two torpedoes.”

“Yessir!” The man happily said and the ship didn't move as two torpedoes were shot towards the planet. Fifteen seconds later, those twenty names went black and the main palace was little more than dust.

“Good work.” I said and sat back in my command chair. “Let the slaughter continue.”

Eye beeped at me and the list kept updating as more people were found and eliminated.

*

A week later, Honor and Emily sat with Hamish as they watched the special news update. All three of them had pale faces as they watched the broadcast show the death toll, the material losses, and showed who was responsible for setting up the whole thing. The why was as simple as Haven wanting a forward base in the system to attack Manticore from.

“Those attack vector numbers don't make sense.” Honor said when they showed a tactical map of the system.

Hamish gave them a look and then looked at Honor. “I'm not sure what you mean.”

“There's no way to shoot from a central position and still hit a target on the planet without hitting anything in between.” Honor said and used her finger to trace one of the odd paths. “Grayson orbit has space stations that grow animals and food, since they can't do it on the contaminated planetary surface. This one shot should have hit and destroyed one or two of the farms.”

Hamish saw it could smash the dome of one and impact the surface of another. “Then what happened? Those are computer confirmed shots that were actually taken by torpedoes.”

Honor sighed and sat back to let Emily hug her. “John has been holding out on me.”

“The less you knew, the better.” John's voice said from her collar.

The three of them gasped and Honor tapped her navy pin comm badge.

“John! Where are you?” Honor asked.

“I'm cleaning up the trash in Trevor's Star.” John answered.

Honor and Hamish exchanged worried looks.

“It's all right. I'm giving them all the option to surrender first. Not just the captains of the ships and the wardens of their bases, either. Each person can choose to surrender and I won't condemn them to die because they were conscripted against their will.”

Hamish sighed and relaxed.

“I don't want to know how many chose to not surrender, do I?” Honor asked.

“About a third on average. Some of the people that surrendered had faked it and tried to attack anyway when my ship was close enough.” John said and Honor sighed in resignation. “I have full shields, Honor. I wasn't in any danger.”

Honor didn't say what she wanted to. “How long are you going to be?”

“A few months at least. The rats infesting the Republic of Haven are many.”

“John, you can't fight the entire enemy's navy by yourself!” Emily exclaimed.

“I'm not going to fight them.” John said and the three of the felt relief. “I'm going to gut them and lock them into their home system. No ships will be allowed to leave that system.”

Honor and Emily gasped.

Hamish took a deep breath and let it out. “John, you can't condemn them to die.”

John chuckled. “Why do you think they'll die? Because of all the nearby systems they conquered and subjected to tyranny? Would they want revenge on their oppressors?”

“John...” Honor whispered.

“I'll set up a planetary defense grid around the Haven system. No ships in or out. They are grounded until such time that they can get their act together and behave like normal people.”

“What about all the ships they already have out there?” Hamish asked.

“I sent a recall notice to return home using their own official signals. It was surprisingly easy for a friend of mine to crack their encryption.” John said. “It'll take them a while to return and I'll give them the same ultimatum. Stop poking your noses where they don't belong or it will be cut off.”

Honor sighed this time. “John, you... you can't just...”

“That's kind of the problem when you have superior technology and the means to use it. People can get scared when you do.” John said and then sighed. “I'll keep sending data to the Admiralty as I get it, so they know what's been going on under their noses.”

Hamish and Honor exchanged knowing looks, because his words told them more than he realized. Manticore had spies and traitors in their midst.

“I'll let you get back to watching the news. I have a military base to threaten and bombard. John out.”

Hamish stood when Honor tapped her comm badge. “I need to get to Admiralty House.”

Honor and Emily nodded and watched him leave their house at a fast walk.

“At least they aren't blaming you.” Emily said and put an arm over Honor's shoulder.

“I almost wish they would.” Honor admitted and Emily looked startled. “That way I could be there with John as he takes on the whole galaxy.”

“He's only fighting Haven, not the whole galaxy.” Emily said.

Honor sighed and hugged her. “It's going to end up that way. Just wait and see.”

Emily put her other arm around her best friend and held her.

*

Honor's prediction soon became reality. As I hunted down the Havenite stragglers to return them to their home system, Eye raided all of their computers. Each one had sparse data on other things, spies, secrets, assassination plots, and a whole bunch of things that brought us to each and every corner of the galaxy to deal with them. It took us five years to track everything down.

The last of which were the genetic perfection people of Mesa, the source of slavery in the entire galaxy. It was an underhanded way to get their people into all forms of society across every world and put them into positions of power to take over without anyone catching onto them. The plot was so deep and all-encompassing that only a handful of their main people knew the full extent of it.

Instead of trying to deal with it all, I blew up their planet. Three created Omega particles wiped the entire thing out of existence and Eye sent an encoded message with their own security phrases to tell all of their sleeper agents to 'wake up' and confess their crimes to the local authorities.

With my enormous task done, I made my way back home to the Manticore system. I had stayed in contact all this time and I had thought Honor and I were still good. When I arrived at my home, it was empty. I checked electronically to see where Honor was and she was at White Haven, Hamish and Emily's place.

I drove my hovercar over there and Giles answered the door when I knocked. He had a guilty face when he refused to allow me to enter the house. I sighed and walked by him and went to where I knew where the master bedroom was. I didn't bother knocking as I planted my foot right in the middle of the plasteel sliding door and kicked it.

The metal door tore out of the casing and flew across the huge bedroom and embedded in the wall. One scream of fright and two startled yells responded to that action. I looked at the bed and a naked Honor stood in a fighting pose on the right side and Hamish stood on the other side. A terrified Emily had stayed in the bed with the blanket pulled up to her neck.

“I wondered why you were always busy when I wanted to come visit.” I said with a normal voice.

“We've both been deployed and weren't here.” Hamish said and reached for Honor's pants to toss to her and picked up his own.

“Sure you were.” I said and looked at Honor. “I was man enough to stay home and wait for you while you were off gallivanting around the Silesian Confederacy for four years; but, when I went to space, you couldn't wait for me?”

“John, that's not what happened.” Honor said and pulled her pants on and picked up her blouse.

I reached up and tapped my temple, so she would remember that we were supposed to have a connection and it was no longer there. “I don't see Nimitz anywhere. Where is he?”

Honor blushed and turned away from me.

“He didn't like what was happening between us.” Hamish said and finished getting dressed.

I caught what actually happened from Honor as her mind replayed when they first got together and started their affair. “Don't sugarcoat it, old friend.” I said, sarcastically. “He hated that we were betraying me.”

Honor sighed. “John, I... I love them. Both of them. They've been there for me and...”

“And I wasn't?” I asked her and she still wouldn't look at me, so I looked at Hamish. “Now that you fools broke your own wedding vows and took the woman I wanted to marry myself...”

Both Emily and Honor gasped.

“...does this mean I can take Emily without feeling guilty about it?” I asked and Hamish looked angry. “What? We're not exchanging wives? You had mine. Why can't I have yours?”

“J-John, please don't.” Emily whispered.

I gave her a pitying look. “I thought we were friends, Emily. I trusted you to keep Honor safe and instead you gave her to your husband.”

A few tears rolled down Emily's cheek.

“Don't make her feel guilty about you not coming back for five years!” Hamish spat.

“Don't turn this around to make me the bad guy, Hamish!” I said and pointed a finger at him. “You crossed the line that friends are never supposed to cross. You took what you knew wasn't yours and you ruined everything! All my plans for a family with the woman I love are gone! You and Emily will never be godparents to our children!”

Emily let out a sob and Honor sat on the bed to hug her.

“John, stop it!” Honor said and glared at me.

I gave her a pointed look and then blanked my face. “You're not even going to try and apologize?” I asked and she blushed from embarrassment. “Then I hope you enjoy the life you've chosen. Eye, go ahead and release everything you dug up about Hamish and his liaisons.”

Eye beeped from my back.

“NO!” Hamish yelled and lunged for me.

My fist connected with his jaw and he crumpled to the floor, unconscious.

“You made your bed, Hamish. Now you have to lie in it.” I said.

“Don't you care that you're going to ruin his reputation?” Honor asked me.

“No, only ruining Emily's and yours is going to bother me.” I told her and she looked shocked. “A lot of people hold the sanctity of marriage close to their hearts. That you both willingly let it happen and broke sacred vows is going to piss off a lot of people.”

Emily let out another sob. “J-John, please... you can't... don't do this.”

“I'm sorry, Emily. The time to say that was just before you took Honor from me.” I said and walked over to the opening where the bedroom door used to be. “Maybe after you feel the scorn from thousands of people, you'll understand.”

I left the house and hopped in my hovercar. I thought about doing the same thing to Manticore that I did to Haven, then shook my head. I would definitely feel like a villain if I did that. No, the people needed to see that I've been wronged. Once that's done, I'll be moving on. There was nothing left here for me.

I just had to visit a couple of people first and give out a few presents.

*

Nimitz couldn't understand how he could leave his human behind on Manticore and travel to Sphinx, his home planet in the same star system, and not suffer excruciating pain from being so far apart. He also didn't know why she would cut off the only other person that could sense him through their bond. Two-legs that could connect to the People were rare and bonds should never be severed.

Still, Nimitz enjoyed the much faster travel on Warmonger's ship. That was the treecat name for John Hansen and it was well earned, even before he went across the galaxy to remove the threats to his home and his family. He was also happy to still be a part of Warmonger's family, despite Dances on Clouds cutting him off. That was Honor's treecat name and she earned it from hang gliding over the Copperwall Mountains.

Nimitz didn't know why Warmonger wanted to visit his home range and he didn't question it. His clan would want to meet him after he saved their planet from the bad people that wanted to make them pets. Those reports had been scary to listen to as Warmonger read them out. He also said there would never be a danger of that ever again and he would make sure of it.

The ship landed where Nimitz pointed to on the map and he led Warmonger through the trees to where he knew the outer layer of scouts from the clan were. A bleeked conversation happened and the scout ran off. Nimitz bleeked at Warmonger and they continued on at a slower pace, so the clan could have time to be ready to receive them.

Two hours later, several treecats that were the main hunters and defenders of the clan, surrounded Nimitz and Warmonger. After more bleeks like a warning, almost twenty treecats appeared all over the trees and an old female treecat stepped out of the underbrush and sat in front of Warmonger.

Without being prompted, Warmonger sat with his legs folded in the Lotus position and motioned to the treecat to sit and join him. To the surprise of all the other treecats, the elder mindsinger accepted the invitation and climbed onto his lap and laid down. He pet her and her loud purr made all the treecats relax.

Warmonger opened his mouth and spoke their weird mouth noises, which only a few of the treecats understood, then a large machine appeared beside him. He spoke some noises again.

“Hello. My name John.” The machine bleeked.

“BLEEK!” Several of the treecats shouted.

“Gasp!” The machine said.

Warmonger laughed and said some more two leg mouth noises.

“Kind of work. Learning. Speak more.” The machine bleeked.

So, that's what happened for the next few hours. Food appeared from nowhere and all the treecats took turns eating and speaking. Nimitz spoke the most, since he knew a lot of the mouth noises and what the machine was saying was close and he corrected it.

At one point, the machine let out a soft beep and stopped responding. Everything went quiet for several minutes and Warmonger held his hands up to stop anyone from speaking. They could all still communicate telepathically with each other, however.

You have made a great contribution to our lives, Laughs Brightly. The treecat mindsinger cuddled up on Warmonger's lap thought to Nimitz. Our clan will lead all of our people into the future.

Nimitz wasn't sure what she was talking about.

The mindsinger laughed mentally. Warmonger is giving us means to protect ourselves and the means to control that protection by using our own mouth noises.

Nimitz was stunned. He knew bringing John here was a good idea. He just never thought it would be so beneficial to his people.

The machine made another been sound and Warmonger reached over and hit several buttons. When he spoke, his words came out as bleeks from the machine. “It's finished now. You can speak to me and other humans if you want to or keep it to yourselves. The ships need verbal commands, which is why I did this.”

“Thank you, Warmonger.” The treecat in his lap said and slowly rose to her feet. “You have given us the greatest gift anyone could ever have. Independence.”

Warmonger chuckled. “I'll drop off a few Firefly ships and leave them under cloak back in the clearing. I suggest making a space for one of them near your home tree, so if anything happens, the medical supplies and the AI of the ship can take care of you and your people.”

The old treecat stood up on her hind legs and placed her front paws on his face. “You should not refuse the bond, young one.”

Warmonger sighed. “I'm blocking my telepathy because I'm leaving soon and I can't take anyone with me. It would be cruel to sentence one of you to death because I want to experience a full bonding.”

The old treecat patted his cheeks. “Punishing yourself won't help you cope with your loss. Only the joy of happiness can.”

Warmonger shook his head. “I'll look for someone else to help me heal after I move on.”

The old treecat dropped to her feet and walked off of his lap to sit on the ground. “Will you put the machine into one of the ships?”

“What, that huge thing? Of course not.” Warmonger said and several treecats hissed, some in anger and some in disappointment. “That was just so the rings could understand you and let you talk to the ships.” He said and took out a green power battery and a green lantern ring. “Ring, download language database.”

A second later, the ring bleeked. “Done.”

“There we go.” Warmonger said and held the ring out to the old treecat. “I suggest your middle fingerpaw to wear it to keep it out of the way.”

The old treecat did as he asked and put it on. A moment later, twenty more power batteries appeared around them and a pile of rings appeared in front of the old treecat.

“Now I'll tell you how to use it.” Warmonger said with a knowing smile.

*

Allison Harrington seriously thought about breaking her marriage vows with the handsome young man that had gifted her with so much medical technology that it would take her years just to learn how to use it all. The manuals to operate the machinery and devices were inches thick and she salivated over learning how to use that holographic scanner.

“You know that a blow job isn't breaking my vows.” Allison teased him.

John barked a laugh. “If you think I could let you suck me off without returning the favor, you're out of your mind.”

Allison blushed deeply at that thought. She knew that her short stature would let her give and receive easily on someone so tall. It was one of the reasons that she and her husband had fallen for each other. They made having sex really fun.

“I see that look.” John said and knelt on one knee. “Honor broke my heart when she went to someone that was married instead of finding someone else. Being lonely is one thing. Taking advantage of someone so close because they are so close, that's just wrong.”

Allison sighed. “They're being trashed in the media almost as much as Hamish for cheating.”

“I had Eye remove the names of the innocent, so they weren't dragged into the mess.” John said and hugged her. “It's not their fault they got involved like that. The courtesans are actually getting more business now.”

Allison patted his back and let him go. “The polite fiction it's not cheating, only works if everyone accepts it.”

John nodded and stood. “Honor would never accept being called a courtesan, so she has to take her lumps like a grown woman.”

Allison put a hand on his chest. “Do you really have to go?” She asked and in her mind she was thinking up ways for Alfred to accept a brief liaison with her as a courtesan.

John gave her a warm smile. “Right after I say goodbye to you.”

Allison sighed and let her hand drop to her side. “Where will you go?”

John' smile faded. “A very long way from here.”

Allison caught her breath. “You're never coming back.”

“No, and I don't think I would, even if I could.” John said. “I interfered too much and let my personal relationships suffer for it. I won't do that again.”

Allison gave him a sad look. “I don't want you to say goodbye, John.”

John gave her a sad look, too. “Allison, you were the first face I saw when I arrived here and now you're going to be the last.”

“What... what do you mean?” Allison asked, nervously.

John leaned down to place a tender kiss on her cheek and the edge of his lips touched hers. Allison shivered at the brief thrill that gave her and she watched as the handsome man stood up straight and started to softly glow in a golden light. Bright white wings appeared on his back just before he disappeared.

Allison gasped at the sight and her mind raced. She had never seen anything like that before and she thought about what it could mean, then she ran over to the security panel and checked the security footage. She smiled evilly when she saw the recording and copied it, then she sent the last few seconds of it to the only people who needed to see it. Honor and Emily.