Ashes Of Victory

The problem was that because the movements were so logical from a military perspective, and because McQueen was justifying them on the basis of obeying a direct order from Rob Pierre, Saint-Just could scarcely object to them. He'd gotten his way in the accelerated operational tempo. If he started complaining about how McQueen was doing what he'd wanted her to do in the first place, it could only be seen as a possible indication of paranoia on his part, which would undercut his credibility with Pierre on the topic of McQueen in the future. But if she was, in fact, using her new orders as a way to restructure Capital Fleet into something which would be more... responsive to any plans of her own, then it was Saint-Just's job to see to it she failed in her objective.

He tilted his chair back and drummed the fingers of his right hand on a chair arm while he swiveled back and forth in short, thoughtful arcs. What he needed, he decided, was a way to defang any plans she might have while justifying his own actions just as amply and logically as she'd justified hers. But how?

He thought for several more moments, then stopped drumming on the chair arm while an arrested light flickered in his eyes.

Theisman, he thought. The man's about as apolitical as a lump of rock, he's good at his job, and the Navy respects him. More to the point, he's been stuck out at Barnett the whole time McQueen's been Secretary of War. Whatever she may be up to with Bukato and his bunch over at the Octagon, she hasn't had the opportunity to involve Theisman in it, and if he winds up commanding Capital Fleet, she'll at least be stymied until she can bring him on board her little conspiracy. And since she's raiding Barnett herself on the basis that we can afford to lose it, she can hardly object to the transfer by arguing that we need to leave him in such a critically important post.

He pondered the idea for a while longer, turning it in his thoughts to examine it from all angles. It wasn't perfect, he decided, but it would at least be a step in the right direction. Besides, McQueen would know why he'd done it, and that would piss her off mightily... which would make it eminently worthwhile in its own right.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Honor looked around the smallish office and sighed. It was a heartfelt sound, but even she couldn't have said whether it sprang from relief or sadness. There was certainly relief in it, because the last several months had been much more exhausting than any "convalescent duty" should have implied. Which was mostly her own fault. She should have turned down at least one of Sir Thomas' requests, but she could no more have done that than she could have flown the Copperwalls without her hang glider.

It had left her with some hard decisions, though. One had been to more or less abandon the language-teaching project to Doctor Arif and Miranda. Well, the two of them and James MacGuiness. Leaving Nimitz behind for his and Samantha's "lessons" had been one of the harder things she'd done since escaping Cerberus, especially when, even at a distance, she'd been able to taste his frustration in the early days of the project. But one lesson she'd forced herself to accept years ago was that she simply had to turn loose when she delegated some responsibility. Hovering over the person she'd entrusted a task to only bought the worst of both worlds. She ended up spending almost as much time on it as if she'd simply done it herself from the begi

It was something she'd long ago learned to do where junior officers were concerned — her lips twitched in a small smile as she remembered an agonizingly young Rafael Cardones and a flight of improperly programmed recon platforms — but that was because she'd recognized her responsibility to teach them. It was infinitely harder to hand a job she thought she ought to be doing to someone she knew could do it just as well, because that felt... lazy. Like shirking. Which helped explain why she felt she'd never had quite enough time over the last T-year to spend on any given task.

But if she hadn't been able to put in as many hours in this office as she thought she really should have, she'd put in enough to discover something she hadn't known. Something she had to give up along with the office... which explained the sadness that was also so much a part of that sigh.

She loved to teach.

She supposed that she shouldn't have been surprised by that. After all, one of the things she'd most enjoyed about her career was stretching the minds of junior officers, sharing with them the joy she'd found in mastering their shared profession. And, if she was honest, she took far more pleasure from the men and women she'd watched grow and blossom into the potential she'd seen in them from the outset than she did in all her medals and titles and prize money. They were what the future was all about, just as they were the ones who would have to do the fighting and the dying if the Star Kingdom was to have a future, and teaching them how much they could accomplish was one of the highest callings she could imagine.

Which had made her a natural at Saganami Island. Not only that, but the empathic sense she'd developed had given her a priceless gift: that of knowledge. Of knowing her students recognized how much they meant to her, how proud of them she was.

She would miss D'Orville Hall. She would miss everything about Saganami Island, even if it was no longer quite the Academy she recalled. It was so much bigger, so much more bustling. The reality of the war which had been only a looming threat during her years here had fallen upon the Academy like a landslide and made it over into something faster and more furious, with a different, harder-edged dedication. In all too many ways, the wartime Academy had become an extension of the front lines, which was good, in some respects, she thought. She had stressed to her students that they were headed straight from their classrooms into a shooting war, and it was important they understand that. Yet along the way the "Saganami experience," she supposed she should call it, had lost something. Not of i

No, that wasn't right, either. In fact, she couldn't seem to hit exactly the right way to describe it, and she doubted she ever would be able to. Perhaps there wasn't a word.

And perhaps what I'm really remembering is that golden glow of never-was that seems to hang onto everything we remember from "happier days," she thought with a wry snort, and Nimitz bleeked softly from the perch beside the door.

"All right. All right, Stinker! I'm through moping," she told him, and closed the desk drawer firmly. Her papers and record chips had already disappeared, and she made one last check for dust or forgotten possessions, and then held out her arms to the 'cat.

He launched himself from the perch with every bit of his old assurance, and she laughed, tasting and sharing his pleasure as he landed precisely in her arms and then swarmed up and around onto her shoulder. He adjusted his position with care, hooking his feet-hands — both feet-hands, functioning perfectly at last — into the shoulder of her tunic while the claws of his true-feet dug gently in below her shoulder blade. He balanced himself there, one true-hand resting on top of her head, and she drew a deep, lung-filling breath.