War Of Honor

"Not until they get the hell out of our star systems, at any rate," Younger agreed emphatically.

"That thought had crossed my own mind," Giancola admitted. "And I notice that the Manty navy has just a

"According to the Naval Affairs Committee's last briefing, they're dispatching at least five squadrons of ships of the wall, plus at least one carrier squadron. Of course, that information is bound to be out of date, since the dispatch boat took the better part of two weeks to get here from Trevor's Star. Actually, if they stuck to their original schedule, they should have already sent them on their way, although NavInt says they seem to be ru

"Harrington, eh?" McGwire looked thoughtful.

"Exactly. Everyone knows she and High Ridge aren't exactly bosom buddies," the Secretary of State said. "But even he has to know she's one of the best naval officers they've got. The fact that they're prepared to send over thirty additional ships of the wall all the way to Silesia and put them under the command of someone like her suggests that they're prepared to take a rather firm line with the Andermani."

"And from the point Ambassador von Kaiserfest raised with you over di

"That thought had also crossed my own mind," Giancola replied. "As had the fact that if worse came to worst, the Manties would have to transfer even more of their available naval forces to Silesia to deal with it. Which, just coincidentally, would mean they had to transfer those forces directly away from us."

"I'm not sure I like the sound of that, Arnold." McGwire sounded suddenly more cautious, almost alarmed. "It's one thing to contemplate the possibility of a foreign distraction for High Ridge and Descroix, but it's quite another to deliberately court a fresh military confrontation with the Manties! I trust you haven't forgotten what their Eighth Fleet did to us. I certainly haven't, I assure you, and however much I might differ with the President's negotiating stance, I'm not about to support anything which might put us back in that position."

"Nor would I," Giancola assured him. "But that particular situation isn't really likely to arise again."

"You've been dropping smartass hints about that for months now, but all I've seen is a lot of smoke and no substance," McGwire told him in frosty tones, "And, frankly, it would take one hell of a lot of substance to convince me that we wouldn't be reaching right back into a meat grinder if we started screwing around with the Manties again. You may think we can avoid that situation, or at least survive if it hits us in the teeth. I don't happen to agree, and with all due respect, I'm not prepared to risk the survival of the Republic on the possibility that you know what you're talking about."

"It isn't a 'possibility,' " Giancola said calmly. "It's a virtual certainty. Whatever I may think of Theisman when it comes to foreign policy or his apparent inability to subordinate theory to reality when it comes to the 'rule of law,' I don't think there's much question about his ability as a naval officer. Would you agree with that?"

"Anyone but an idiot would," McGwire half-snapped.

"I'm glad to hear you say that," Giancola told him. "Because it just happens that that's what my 'smartass hints' have been about. It would appear that without his having bothered to tell anyone about it, the Secretary of War has been quietly but rather effectively doing something about our military inferiority."

"Doing what?" McGwire asked intently.

"By a fortunate turn of circumstances, we're actually in a position to answer that question for you, Samson," Arnold Giancola said calmly, and looked at his brother. "Jason, why don't you tell Samson and Gerald about the good Admiral's little Bolthole."

Chapter Twenty Two

It wasn't the usual route for deploying to Silesia.

Under normal circumstances, a Manticoran task force making transit to the Confederacy would have gone out by way of the Manticoran Wormhole Junction's Gregor terminus. But Gregor was an Andermani star system located in the very heart of the Empire. The Star Kingdom might hold title to the terminus itself, along with the legally recognized right to fortify the area around it and to maintain a fleet base orbiting the system's secondary component, but it was the Empire who held sovereignty over the rest of it.

Which was why Honor had opted to travel the Triangle Route in reverse. Rather than making transit to Gregor, and from there to Silesia and home again by way of Basilisk, as most merchant skippers would have, she and the reinforcing units of Task Force Thirty-Four had moved "north" to Basilisk, and then "west" to Silesia. It wasn't the fastest possible way to get there, since it required her to effectively cross the entire breadth of the Confederacy to reach Marsh, but it was one way to avoid any possible . . . unpleasantness with the Andies before she even reached her new command area. She didn't really like tacking on the additional thirty-four light-years, but even in the zeta hyper-space band, that amounted to less than five days of travel time, and the additional delay was acceptable under the circumstances which actually applied.

Not that every one of her officers agreed with her about that.

"I still say that all of this pussyfooting around is ridiculous," Alistair McKeon grumbled.

He, Alice Truman, and their chiefs of staff had come aboard Werewolf by pi

"It's not 'pussyfooting,' Alistair," she replied mildly, sipping her own cocoa while her guests nursed a particularly good Sphinxian burgundy. She knew it was a good one, although she personally didn't care for it particularly, because her father had selected it for her.

"I calls it as I sees it," he told her with a lopsided grin. "And pussyfooting is exactly what it feels like to me. No offense, Nimitz," he added with a nod to the treecat in the highchair beside Honor, who showed him bone-white fangs in a yawn of amusement.

"In a lot of ways, I have to agree with Alistair," Truman put in. "Not that Wraith and I can't find a lot of useful things to do with the additional time, of course."

She cocked her head at Captain (senior-grade) Craig Goodrick, her chief of staff. Goodrick, who'd earned the nickname "Wraith" for his work with the electronic warfare capabilities of the first Shrike—class LACs, was an unremarkable-looking officer. The brain hiding behind his unassuming facade, however, was one of the better ones in the RMN, at least when it could be pried away from contemplating a hand of spades. Now he shrugged.

"Actually, Ma'am, I don't mind the longer transit time at all. I'm not especially crazy about anything that looks like tiptoeing around the Andies' sensibilities when they're being such pains in the posterior, but given the realities where our LAC groups are concerned, I'll take all the exercise time I can get and be glad of it."

"Heresy!" McKeon proclaimed, but there was a twinkle in his eye, and Commander Roslee Orndorff, his own chief of staff, chuckled out loud. It was a very substantial chuckle from a very substantial woman, and the 'cat in the chair beside her bleeked a laugh of his own. Honor didn't know Orndorff very well, but the ash-blond commander was another of the handful of naval officers who had been adopted. Her Banshee didn't seem to mind that his human-style name was derived from a mythological female harbinger of death. He was a good bit younger than Nimitz, around Samantha's age, in fact, but it was obvious to Honor that he shared Nimitz's low sense of humor.