War Of Honor

For the most part.

She turned her head, letting her gaze sweep over the nearest ships of her gathered task force. They floated in orbit about the planet Sidemore, the space-going equivalent of a fleet anchored in a safe harbor, but she'd been pleased when she arrived to find that Rear Admiral Hewitt had insisted upon maintaining a heightened state of readiness. All of his vessels' parking orbits had been carefully arranged to avoid any problems with wedge interference if it was necessary to bring up their impellers quickly. And he'd also seen to it that at least one of his battle squadrons' impeller nodes had been hot at all times. The ready duty rotated among his squadrons on a regular basis, but his precaution meant that its units could bring up their wedges in as little as thirty to forty-five minutes.

Honor had not only told him how much she approved of his wariness but also maintained and extended his standing orders, including the dispersal of their orbits, to the units of Task Force Thirty-Four, as well. Which meant, of course, that even ships as stupendous as Werewolf or Alister McKeon's superdreadnought flagship Troubadour were the tiniest of models when she gazed at them with the naked eye.

Of course, not all naked eyes had been created equal, and Honor smiled despite her moodiness as she brought up the telescopic function of her artificial left eye and the distant, floating mountains of battle steel grew and blossomed magically.

They hung there in the void, like killer whales in an endless sea of dark kelp, spangled with the green and white lights of starships in orbit, their flanks dotted with the precise geometry of weapon bays or LAC launch tubes. There were dozens of them, huge capital ships, pregnant with firepower and destruction and awaiting her orders. With the reinforcements she'd brought out from Manticore, she had eight full battle squadrons, plus Alice's understrength CLAC squadron, screened by five battlecruiser squadrons, three light cruiser squadrons, and two destroyer flotillas . . . which didn't even count the dozens of cruisers and destroyers scattered through the nearer sections of the Confederacy on anti-pirate duties. She had no less than forty-two ships of the wall under her command, which made her "task force" a fleet in all but name. It was also far and away the most powerful force which had ever been placed under her orders, and as she gazed out the viewport at the might and power ready to her fingertips, she supposed she ought to feel confident in the strength of her weapon if she should be called upon to use it.

Yet what she really was was aware of its flaws.

She couldn't fault the readiness state which Hewitt had maintained during his time on the station any more than she could fault the cheerfulness with which he'd surrendered his authority to her upon her arrival. Alister and Alice had managed to sharpen Task Force Thirty-Four to a far keener edge than she'd allowed herself to hope for during the voyage here, and Hewitt's squadrons had managed to maintain a far higher degree of readiness than Home Fleet. No doubt because his captains, like he himself, had been altogether too well aware of how far from any other help they'd be if it hit the fan out here in Silesia.

But all the readiness in the galaxy couldn't change the fact that only six of her forty-two ships of the wall were Medusa —class SD(P)s and none of them were the even newer Invictus —class ships. Or that eleven of the others were mere dreadnoughts, scarcely two-thirds the size and fighting power of even her older, pre-SD(P) ships. She had no doubt Janacek and High Ridge would roll the number forty-two out in suitably weighty tones for the benefit of any newsy or member of Parliament who asked pointed questions about the state of Sidemore Station. And she had just as little doubt that neither of them would mention just how obsolescent and undersized some of those forty-two ships were. Or that she had been allowed only four of the eight CLACs she'd requested. Or that ONI's most recent estimate gave the Imperial Andermani Navy something in excess of two hundred ships of the wall.

She inhaled deeply, then straightened up, squared her shoulders, and scolded herself for allowing herself to fall into a slough of despond. She'd known when she accepted the posting that this was exactly what was going to happen, although, to be honest, she hadn't anticipated that even Janacek would be quite so blatant as to assign every single Manticoran dreadnought still in commission to her. But even if he'd replaced every one of them with pre-pod superdreadnoughts, her strength would still have been totally inadequate if the Andies truly were willing to push things to the brink of outright hostilities. So it probably made sense, from Janacek's viewpoint, to pile as many as possible of his obsolescent assets into the same heap. After all, if he lost them, it wouldn't be as if anything vital had gone with them. Except, of course, for the people aboard them.

She scolded herself again, although a bit less forcefully. She really should be careful about imputing sordid motives to the First Lord. Not because she doubted that he had them, but because not even Sir Edward Janacek could have only sordid motivations. That would have completely devalued his ability to do such things out of simple stupidity, instead of calculation.

Her lips quirked in a smile, and she surprised herself by producing a chuckle. It was a small one, true, but it was also born of genuine amusement, and she felt Nimitz's flicker of shared amusement. And his gladness that she could at least still laugh.

She let her eyes sweep over the panorama beyond the viewport once again, ordering herself to let the infinite beauty of God's jewel box sweep through her like a cleansing breeze. The silent, pinprick glory of the endless stars blazed before her, and the blue-and-white, cloud-swirled beauty of Sidemore filled the lower quarter of the port. With her cybernetic eye, she could make out the floating gems of the planet's orbital solar power collectors, and the smaller reflections of communications relays, orbital sensor arrays, and all of the other clutter of an industrialized presence in space.

None of those things had been here when she'd first visited Marsh almost ten T-years ago. Then, Sidemore had been a backwater, a place merchant ships visited only by mistake, and thus the perfect hideout base for the brutal "privateers" who had taken it over. Thirty-one thousand of Sidemore's citizens had died during that occupation, over a third of them in a single, horrific instant when Andre Warnecke detonated his demonstration nuke as a mere bargaining ploy. But that wasn't going to happen again, she thought with deep satisfaction. Even if the RMN pulled out tomorrow, the Sidemore Navy would make mincemeat out of any privateer or pirate stupid enough to poke his nose into this system again.

Sidemore wasn't in the same league as Grayson, but Honor was honest enough to admit that that was at least partly because Sidemore had never been as important to Manticore as Grayson was. The Star Kingdom had pulled out all the stops to build Grayson into the industrial powerhouse it had become, and for all the crudity of its pre-Alliance tech base, Grayson had been aggressively dragging itself up by its own bootstraps for well over sixty years before Manticore ever arrived in its neighborhood. And much as Honor loved her adopted planet and respected the industry and determination of its people, she was also honest enough to admit that it had been only Grayson's astrographic position which had attracted the Star Kingdom's notice in the first place.

Which was also true for Sidemore. But Grayson had been seen as essential to Manticoran security; Sidemore had simply been a convenience. And so Sidemore hadn't received the same loan guarantees, or been the subject of the same investment incentives and tax breaks, or been the site of major shipyards, as Grayson had been. Which, in its way, made what the Sidemorians had achieved even more impressive, despite how modest it appeared in the shadow of Grayson's accomplishments.