War Of Honor

Now if only that fucking idiot Janacek had let the Navy build some of them!

Jeffers felt his jaw muscle ache from how fiercely he was gritting his teeth and made himself turn away from the plot. He was a bit surprised that Starcrest had been able to make good her escape when Maitland ordered her to run for it. Probably it was simply a case of the Peeps having bigger fish to fry, he thought bitterly. But it could also have something to do with the amount of damage Maitland's superdreadnoughts and LACs had managed to inflict, as well.

Alan Jeffers was too honest with himself to pretend that he wasn't intensely grateful that Maitland's orders meant he and his crew would live. But neither could he absolve himself from a crushing sense of guilt. It was a burden, he suspected, which would cling to him for a long, long time.

"I wonder how Admiral Kirkegard did at Maastricht, Sir," Commander Tibolt murmured. He and Admiral Chong stood side-by-side on RHNS New Republic's flag bridge as TF 11 settled into orbit around the Thetis System's sole habitable planet.

"No telling," Chong replied. He watched the blue-and-white beauty of the planet on the visual display for several moments, then squared his shoulders and turned away. Another display attracted his eyes. The one that listed his task force's losses.

Only a single ship's name glowed in the blood-red color that indicated a total loss, and his lips curved in a smile of grim satisfaction. No one liked to lose any ship, or the people who crewed that ship. But after the savage losses the old People's Navy had taken at the hands of the Manties again and again, a single heavy cruiser and seventy LACs actually destroyed was a paltry price to pay for an entire star system. Not to mention the fact that the Manties had lost over two hundred of their own LACs, four heavy cruisers, and a pair of superdreadnoughts, as well.

"Actually," he told Tibolt after a moment, "I'm more curious about what's happening at Grendelsbane and Trevor's Star."

Chapter Fifty Seven

"May I ask what you think of Prime Minister High Ridge's message, My Lord?" Niall MacDo

"I think that making himself sound civil probably increased his blood pressure enough to take two or three decades off his life expectancy," Hamish Alexander replied cheerfully. "One could certainly hope so, at least."

MacDo

Not that any of his fellow Grayson citizens disagreed where High Ridge was concerned. It was just that Graysons as a group were more . . . deferential than most Manticorans. It confused MacDo

Of course, White Haven himself was a member of that very aristocracy, which probably accounted for his own lack of automatic respect for it.

"I won't pretend that I don't share your hopes, My Lord," the admiral said after a moment. "But it looks as if he's decided to put the best face he can on the situation."

"He doesn't have a lot of choice," White Haven pointed out. "To be honest, I'm quite certain that was a part of Protector Benjamin's calculus when he hatched this entire notion. And while it would never do for me to accuse the Protector of meddling in the internal political affairs of an ally, I think he put High Ridge into his current position with malice aforethought."

MacDo

"High Ridge's only option is to pretend he's in favor of Benjamin's actions. Anything else would make him look at best weak and ineffectual, since he couldn't keep Benjamin from doing it anyway. At worst, if it turns out we're right and he's wrong about the Peeps' intentions, he'd look like a complete and total idiot if he'd sat around protesting the fact that we're saving him from his own stupidity. Not," White Haven added with a particularly nasty smile, "that we're not going to make him look stupid anyway, if the ball does go up."

MacDo

And, MacDo

The Grayson returned his attention to Benjamin the Great's flag plot. It was appropriate that he and White Haven should be standing on that ship's bridge at this particular moment, he thought. The "Benjie," as the Navy affectionately referred to Benjamin the Great, had been White Haven's flagship from the day she commissioned until the conclusion of Operation Buttercup. But although the ship was still less than eight T-years old, Benjie belonged to a class of only three ships. Her design had been superseded by the Harrington —class SD(P)s, and MacDo

Personally, MacDo

"Whatever High Ridge might think of all this," White Haven said, stepping closer to MacDo

"No, she doesn't," MacDo