Flag In Exile

Yet five of her six ships had survived, a testimonial, she thought with infinite bitterness, to the engineers who'd designed and built them, not to the fool who'd led them to the slaughter. But they'd done the job, she told herself. She'd lost thirteen million tons of shipping and twenty thousand people; the Peeps had lost over a hundred million tons, and their butchers bill didn't even bear thinking on. She'd just destroyed an entire peacetime navy in less than five minutes of actual combat. The remnants of Force Alpha were fleeing for their lives, and Force Zulu was already headed for the hyper limit. No doubt both of them would go right on ru

She felt Nimitz on the back of her chair. The bright glitter of adrenaline and the aftershock of the combat-lashed emotional tornado which had whipped at him from Terrible's crew still flickered and danced in their link, yet his fierce denial of her cruel self-condemnation came to her clearly. And she knew, in the part of her brain that could still think, that he was right. That, in time, she would come to remember the courage of her crews, the way they'd risen above their rough edges and how magnificently they'd performed for her. In time, she would actually come to remember this ghastly, blood-soaked day with pride... and the knowledge that she would, however much her people deserved to be remembered with pride, sickened her.

She closed her eyes once more and drew a deep, deep breath, then shoved herself back in her command chair. She turned her head and saw her staff looking at her, and their faces were white and strained. She knew they were as shocked and horrified as she, and she turned her chair to face them and made herself smile, made herself look confident and determined while her heart wept within her.

She opened her mouth to speak, but someone else beat her to it.

"My Lady," Commander Frederick Bagwell said quietly, "Force Zulu has just cut its acceleration towards the hyper limit to zero." He looked up and met her eyes. "They've stopped ru

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

It was very quiet on PNS Conquerant's flag bridge.

It had taken three and a half minutes for their light-speed systems to give them the details of the brief, terrible destruction sixty-three million kilometers behind them, but the disappearance of TG 14.1’s impeller signatures had already told them what those details would be. One battleship, Thomas Theisman thought numbly. Only one battleship had survived!

He knew who was in command back there, who it had to be. Intelligence had been wrong about how quickly Grayson could refit captured SDs, but it had been right about where Honor Harrington was, for that brutally professional slaughter bore all the hallmarks of her touch. She'd done it to the People’s Navy again, he thought. Smashed them with consummate skill, made it look easy.

He wanted to hate her, but he couldn't. Hate what she'd done to his navy, yes, and long to smash her in return, but he'd met the woman behind the name. He'd seen what it cost her to kill her enemies and lose her own people, and somehow that kept him from hating her.

He knew he should break off. Operation Dagger had just been blown out of space with the man who'd conceived it and God alone knew how many thousands of others. Harrington had enough overtake to catch him millions of kilometers short of the hyper limit on his present course, but his smaller battleships had the acceleration edge over even her SDs. If he altered course by ninety degrees, her overtake advantage wouldn't matter; he'd be generating an entirely new side vector, one she could never catch him on, and that was precisely what he should be doing, but...

He ignored his staffs stu

"Kill our deceleration, Megan."

His ops officer stared at him for one second, then swallowed.

"Aye, Citizen Admiral," she replied, and he heard her passing the orders to the rest of the task group.

"What are you doing?" De

"I'm thinking instead of simply reacting, Sir."

"Thinking?" LePic gasped, and Theisman nodded.

"Exactly. I'm thinking that ru

"Take her?" LePic's horror at the devastation of Meredith Chavez's task group was plain on his face. "Are you insane? You saw what she just did to twenty-four battleships, and we only have twelve!"

"That's correct, Citizen Commissioner, twelve undamaged battleships which now know what they're really up against."

"But she's got superdreadnoughts!"

"Yes, she does. But one of them was totally destroyed, a second's suffered obviously heavy damage, and the other four have almost certainly been hurt as well. And she's exhausted her missile pods. She can't swamp us like she did Citizen Admiral Chavez and Citizen Admiral Thurston. No, Sir," he shook his head, "the odds aren't as bad as you may think. Not nearly as bad."

LePic swallowed again, but the shock was fading in his eyes as he made himself consider what Theisman had said.

"Are you serious, Citizen Admiral?" he asked quietly.

"I am." Theisman turned his head to look at his ops officer. "Megan, what's your analysis?"

"Citizen Admiral, I can't give you one, not from this range. Our data's too poor."

"Based on what you have," Theisman pressed. He cut his eyes briefly sideways at LePic, and Megan Hathaway recognized the warning in that glance. She drew a deep breath and made herself speak slowly and deliberately, forcing any hint of panic out of her tone for the civilian's benefit.

"Well," she said, "you're right that they've lost an SD, and from what we can see from here, it looks like a second one's suffered enough drive damage that it's having trouble staying with the rest of her formation. She's lost six battlecruisers, as well, and more of them must be damaged." She paused and frowned, twisting a lock of hair around her right index finger, and she sounded almost surprised when she resumed. "You may be right, Citizen Admiral. Certainly her other SDs must've taken some damage. The question is how much."

"My own thought, exactly." He turned back to LePic. "Citizen Commissioner, we don't dare execute our part of Dagger with combat effective ships of the wall behind us. If we pull put for Endicott and they follow us, they can trap us between themselves and whatever ships are already picketing the system. But if they've taken as much damage as I suspect they have, if, in fact, they aren't combat effective anymore, we can engage and destroy them. And if we do that, then we can still achieve all of Dagger's objectives, because there won't be anything heavy enough to stop us."