War Of Honor

Yet however understandable her LACs deficiencies might be, her battle squadrons weren't a lot better, and with far less excuse. The same complacency and lack of attention to routine training had spread its subtle malaise through the ships of the wall, as well. Especially the older, pre-pod classes. Those ships were almost universally regarded as obsolescent, at best, and even the perso

"To be completely honest," she told her guests, "I probably would have taken the long way around even if I hadn't been concerned about the Andies' sensibilities. God knows we needed the time to get the rust blown off." She shook her head. "I hate to admit it, but the whole time Earl White Haven and I have been fighting with Janacek and High Ridge over procurement policies, we managed to take our eyes off an even more important ball. We were so worried about the hardware that we forgot to worry about how well our people were trained to use the hardware they actually had."

"Even if you hadn't, how much could you realistically have expected to accomplish, Ma'am?" Mercedes Brigham's tone was respectful, but it was also firm, almost brisk. "There were only so many battles you could fight," she pointed out. "And if you'll forgive me for pointing it out again, there's no point for blaming yourself for the consequences of policies you opposed. And you did oppose the entire mindset that made this sort of mistake possible."

"Well, yes. But not because I saw this one coming. I think that's what actually bothers me most about it, to be honest. I like to think I'm smart enough to notice things like this sneaking up on me, and I hate finding out I wasn't."

"Everyone gets an egg in the face every so often," McKeon observed philosophically, then gri

"Or," Goodrick said in a darker voice, "the people who get into bed with people like Manpower."

The captain smiled thinly and very, very coldly. Of all the people in the dining compartment, Wraith Goodrick had the most intensely personal bone to pick with the Mesan slavers, because his mother had been genetically designed and sold like so much animate property. She'd been consigned to one of the notorious "pleasure resorts" whose whispered existence was an open secret, however well hidden they might be, and she'd escaped that fate only because she'd been loaded as cargo aboard a freighter which had enjoyed the unhappy experience of straying into the arms of an RMN light cruiser. Which was how she'd come to be emancipated in the Star Kingdom and why Goodrick had imbibed his searing hatred of all things Mesan literally at his mother's breast.

Which, in turn, explained his almost religious experience when Honor and Andrea Jaruwalski explained Operation Wilberforce to Task Force Thirty-Four's senior officers once they were en route to Marsh.

"We can certainly hope that will prove the case for some of them, at least," Honor told him, with no more doubt than anyone else in the compartment what he was referring to. "Not that we can absolutely count on it, of course," she added on a note of caution. "We are going to be operating in Silesia, not Manticoran space."

"Judging from the way the Manpower scandal worked out in the Star Kingdom, that may actually be an advantage where bigger fish are concerned, Your Grace," Orndorff pointed out.

"Maybe," Honor acknowledged. "On the other hand, I'm not entirely certain that whole affair has been as completely put to bed as it might appear just now. The circumstances which led to the ... circumscribed nature of the investigation aren't going to obtain forever. And the information that was handed over to the Crown may not be all the information there is. Or that can still be turned up if someone looks in the right place."

"Well, someone certainly looked 'in the right place' for the Wilberforce information."

Alice Truman's observation came out in ever so slightly questioning a tone. Everyone in that dining compartment was consumed with curiosity about the source of Honor's private information on the network of Silesian system governors and Navy officers who'd reached highly profitable accommodations with Mesa. It was far too detailed and internally consistent for them to doubt its accuracy, but none of them could begin to imagine how she'd gotten her hands on it.

And she intended to keep it that way. She owed Anton Zilwicki that much for his trust in handing it over to her.

"That particular information does provide an example of what I'm talking about," she agreed with a slight smile which told Truman her fishing expedition was going to come up dry. "Not that any of it has any domestic Manticoran co

"None of which," she added, pulling the conversation back to its earlier thread, "has any particular bearing on whether or not the Opposition—and especially the Opposition's Navy types, like yours truly—should have realized how ... flabby the Queen's Navy was getting. Or keeps me from wishing I'd paid enough attention to at least realize this particular mistake was being made in the first place!"

"Well," Goodrick said, accepting the change of subject for all of them, "we all realize it now, Your Grace. And since it's already been made, all we can do is dig in and undo as much of the damage as possible before we ever get to Sidemore."

"Agreed." McKeon nodded sharply, and leaned forward, his ma

"I take it that the fact that you're bringing it up now means that you're not talking about exercises restricted solely to the wall?" Truman made the statement a question, and McKeon nodded again.

"We're already working on that side of it, Alice. What Roslee and I wanted to discuss is how we could best go about structuring our training schedule to exercise the wall and the LACs jointly, both in cooperation and against one another."

"That sounds like an excellent idea to me," Honor said firmly. In fact, that sort of discussion was precisely why she believed in inviting her officers to dine with her on a regular basis, and she looked over her shoulder at Andrew LaFollet.

"Andrew, would you please pass the word for Andrea to join us as soon as she finds it convenient?" she requested. Her personal armsman nodded in acknowledgment and reached for his com, and Honor turned back to her other guests and leaned forward in her own chair.

"I'm sure Andrea will be able to offer some extremely useful suggestions once we get her in on this," she said. "But in the meantime, we should be about it, so why don't all of you tell Mercedes and me exactly what it is you have in mind?"

"All units, this is Cockatrice One —Alpha. We'll go with Alpha Delta Niner-Six." Captain Scotty Tremaine listened to the voice in his earbug. "Werewolf Four, take the lead battlecruiser. Werewolf Five and Six, you're on Bandit Two. All Chimera squadrons, take your targets from Bandit Two along the targeting queue. Centaur and Cockatrice groups, decel to establish interval Baker Eight—you're on cleanup. Execute now!"

Tremaine watched his plot in Werewolf's Primary Flight Control carefully as the massed squadrons of TF 34's four CLACs began to flow outward in response to Commander Arthur Baker's orders. This was the third attack exercise of the day, and the first two had not been outstanding successes.