War Of Honor

"Yes, Ma'am," he said, and walked casually across the bridge towards Lieutenant Harper Brantley, Honor's staff communications officer.

She watched him go, then turned her head as she tasted a sudden spike in Mercedes Brigham's emotions. Her chief of staff was gazing at her in intent speculation. Speculation that became something else when Honor gri

Brigham looked back at Honor and opened her mouth as if to say something, then closed it again and shook her head severely at her admiral, instead.

None of the other staffers had noticed the silent exchange. They were all far too intent on their own duties to pay any attention to Meares' movements or the chief of staff's expression. Nor did they notice when the flag lieutenant bent over Brantley's shoulder to whisper quietly in his ear.

The com officer's head popped up, and he looked incredulously at Meares for just a moment, then darted a half-accusing, half-amused looked at his admiral before he bent back over his console. He murmured something into his hush mike, then leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms.

Nothing at all happened for perhaps ninety seconds, and then quite a lot of things happened in rapid succession.

The incoming bogeys suddenly and simultaneously made turnover over ten minutes early, and as they did their icons began to multiply in the plot. Dozens—scores—of additional light codes appeared, spreading outward like captive constellations, and Honor tasted her staffers' consternation as they recognized what they were seeing. It was a sight they'd seen scores of times over the past three or four T-years; it was just that they'd never seen anyone else lunching full deckloads of LACs.

For a few, brief moments consternation (and something just a bit more akin to panic than any of them would ever have admitted) was all they felt as they grappled with the sudden awareness of how far the bogeys' unexpected possession of LACs would go towards evening the tactical imbalance they had assumed favored Task Force Thirty-Four so heavily. But before they could react, the flood of LAC icons began to blink from the crimson of unknown, assumed hostiles to the steady green of friendly units. The color change flowed through the formation in a cascade, one LAC squadron at a time as each of them brought its transponders online. And as each LAC group completed its transition, its mothership's icon blinked to green, in turn.

"Your Grace," Jaruwalski began, "we know those ships! They're—"

She chopped herself off abruptly and turned to favor Honor with a much more old-fashioned glance than the one Brigham and turned upon her as she realized how superfluous her report actually was. Honor returned her look—it would never have done to call it a glare, of course—with her best i

"Yes, Andrea?" she said.

"Never mind, Your Grace." For a moment, the ops officer sounded remarkably like a Grayson na

"Never mind, Your Grace," she repeated, in quite a different tone. "I suppose by now we should all be accustomed to what passes for your sense of humor."

Chapter Thirty

"I expected better than this from you, Edward."

Michael Janvier, Baron High Ridge and Prime Minister of Manticore, looked down his aristocratic nose at his First Lord of Admiralty, and his tone was rich with disapproval. The conference room's smart wall had been reprogrammed to create a moonlit forest glade behind him, but he appeared totally oblivious to the bizarre contrast between its calm tranquility and his own almost petulant expression.

"Not seven months ago," he went on in precisely metered words, "you assured us that the Republic of Haven had no pod-superdreadnoughts. Now you're reporting that they have a minimum of at least sixty in commission . . . which is only four less than we have. And, I might add, that they've managed to assemble this force without our so much as suspecting they might be doing so."

He paused, gazing at his First Lord with his best, patented look of disappointment, and Sir Edward Janacek resisted a powerful urge to glare back at him. It was just like High Ridge to try to make this all his fault, he reflected. But of course he couldn't say that. And however typical of the Prime Minister the automatic search for a scapegoat might be, his own position at the Admiralty made him the natural choice for the role in this case, which meant this conference had to be handled very carefully, indeed.

"What I'd like to know," Lady Elaine Descroix put in as the Prime Minister's pause lingered, "is exactly how bad the situation really is."

"Yes," Countess New Kiev agreed. "And not just the military situation, either." She gave the Foreign Secretary a sharp glance, to which Descroix did her best to appear completely oblivious.

"I believe Elaine speaks for all of us, Edward," High Ridge pronounced in those same, measured tones, and Janacek gritted his teeth for a heartbeat or two.

"Obviously," he began once he was confident he could keep his own tone level, "the fact that we've suffered an Intelligence failure on this scale makes any precise estimate of the situation difficult, if not impossible. I have, of course, discussed the nature and extent of that Intelligence failure with Admiral Jurgensen, and I assure you that we will be using every resource available to us in our efforts to repair it."

"Is Jurgensen the right man to be repairing anything?" Descroix asked, and twitched one shoulder when Janacek looked at her. "Whatever else may have happened, Edward, one thing is certain. As you just said, we've suffered an enormous intelligence failure, and Admiral Jurgensen is Second Space Lord. Ultimately, the performance of ONI is his responsibility, and it would appear to me that he's failed in it."

"Francis Jurgensen is a dedicated and conscientious officer," Janacek replied. He spoke with careful, deliberate emphasis, every centimeter the First Lord of Admiralty defending a subordinate, even as he heaved a huge internal sigh of relief that Descroix had pointed her accusing finger at someone besides himself. "Obviously, we're currently engaged in a major reassessment of ONI's performance, and we believe we've already identified several weak links. The majority of them are holdovers from the Mourncreek Admiralty, but I must admit that a substantial percentage of them are people we put into place after assuming office. The problem is that someone can look very good on paper or even on the basis of his past record and still conceal serious weaknesses. Unfortunately, those sorts of weaknesses only become apparent after a failure calls attention to them. That happens fairly frequently in intelligence work, I'm afraid, but this time the failure was rather more . . . spectacular than most.

"I feel it would be inappropriate to relieve Admiral Jurgensen at this time. In part, that's because I believe he deserves an opportunity to correct the problems he's only recently discovered rather than being scapegoated individually for the failures of a great many people. But I also feel that 'changing horses in midstream' is often a serious mistake. Any newcomer as Second Space Lord would start from scratch in his new position. He'd have to learn everything about his job, and there would be an inevitable period of disruption and distraction while he did so. Admiral Jurgensen, on the other hand, already has ample evidence of things which have gone wrong. With that evidence in hand and the intimate familiarity with the mechanics and internal dynamics of his command which he's gained over the last several T-years, I feel he's in a position to offer a continuity and effectiveness any new appointee would find very difficult to match."