Ashes Of Victory

"They are, indeed," Elizabeth agreed, "and I'd appreciate it if you'd carry a message from me to Protector Benjamin when you return there."

"A message?"

"Yes. Please inform the Protector that I would consider it a great honor if he would do me the courtesy of extending an invitation from the Sword of Grayson to the Crown of Manticore for a state visit to his planet."

Someone — Honor thought it was Colonel Shemais — inhaled audibly behind them, and Honor herself almost stumbled in her surprise. The last state visit by a reigning Manticoran monarch to a foreign planet had been Roger III's visit to San Martin eight T-years before the Peeps took Trevor's Star. The Queen of Manticore was simply too busy, and too important to the Alliance, to go haring off on trips away from the security of her capital and the nerve center of her communications net.

"Are you certain about that, Your Majesty?" Honor asked. "As Steadholder Harrington, I think it would be a wonderful idea. As Duchess Harrington, I have to wonder if you ought to be off Manticore that long. The voyage time alone will run to over a standard week for the round trip. And Grayson will go berserk over a visit from you. I'll be astonished it they're willing to turn you loose in less than another couple of weeks, so you're looking at at least the better part of a standard month away from the capital just when we'll all be finding out whether or not Admiral White Haven and Alice Truman can maintain their momentum after Buttercup's initial strikes."

"I'm aware of all that," Elizabeth replied. "But I think the timing makes this an even better idea, not a worse one. What I'd really like is to come after the Conclave of Steadholders convenes. It would be logical for me to visit while the Keys are in session, and having me there, where Benjamin and I can issue joint communiques as reports of additional victories come in from Eighth Fleet, would let us wring the most PR mileage possible out of them. Having me on Grayson to issue those communiques would also let me personally and directly demonstrate the Star Kingdom's deep gratitude to our Grayson allies. For that matter, the indication of confidence — the fact that I'm willing to be away from Manticore during such crucial military operations — would be very reassuring to our own public opinion and all our allies." She shook her head. "No, Honor. If Benjamin will go along, I think this may be the best possible time to schedule something like this. Besides, I'd really like to meet him in person, and if I bring Allen and Uncle Anson along, we could deal with several pressing intergovernmental matters face-to-face and probably settle all of them in a fraction of the time we'd need to do the same thing through normal cha

"If you're sure it's what you want, I'd be delighted to carry the message."

"Good." Elizabeth tucked her hand back into her hostess' elbow and kicked one leg to make her skirt swirl. "And now that we have that unimportant little detail settled, Duchess Harrington, let's you and I — and Miranda, of course — go show these Manticoran stuck-in-the-mud snobs what the true fashion-conscious are wearing this season!"

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

"Stand by for translation... now."

Captain (Junior Grade) Jonathan Yerensky a

He gri

He listened to a murmured litany of background reports without really hearing them. His staff had been with him for over three T-years. They might have spent all too much of that time floating in orbit around Trevor's Star, but it had given them plenty of time to train in exercises and sims. By now, they knew exactly what he needed to know immediately and what he expected them to handle on their own, and he knew he could rely on them to do just that.

Which freed Hamish Alexander to study his bland, uninformative plot and worry.

Well, uninformative from the enemy's side, he amended, for quite a few Allied icons burned on the display. First, there were the seventy-three superdreadnoughts and eleven dreadnoughts of his wall of battle. Then there were the traditional screening elements, already spreading out to assume missile defense positions. And last, there were the seventeen CLACs of Alice Truman's task group and their escorts — battlecruisers and heavy cruisers, with four attached dreadnoughts to give them a little extra weight — astern of the main formation. A blizzard of diamond chips erupted outward from the CLACs as he watched, and he smiled grimly as they began to shake down into formation even as they accelerated ahead of the main body. CIC had a tight lock on them when they launched, but their EW was already on-line, and within minutes even Benjamin the Great's sensors began to lose them.

A second blizzard, almost as dense, sped outward at accelerations even a LAC could never hope to match, and White Haven tipped back his command chair as the FTL-capable recon drones darted in-system.

I actually feel almost as calm as I'm trying to look, he reflected with some surprise. Of course, that's because I can be reasonably confident the Peeps don't have a clue as to what's coming at them. Whether or not that will be true — and whether or not it will matter if it isn't — the next time around are two different questions, of course.

He watched the drones speeding steadily inward, and he smiled.

Citizen Admiral Alec Dimitri and Citizen Commissioner Sandra Co

"Twenty-two light-minutes from the primary?" she murmured, and Dimitri turned his head to give her a tight smile.

"It does seem a bit... overly cautious of them. Especially on that broad a bearing from Enki," he agreed, and wondered what the hell the Manties thought they were up to. Barnett was only a G9 star, with a hyper limit of just a hair over eighteen light-minutes, so why were they turning up a full four light-minutes further out than they had to? And on a bearing from the primary which added yet four more u

The citizen admiral clamped his hands behind him and took a slow, deliberate turn around the command balcony above the enormous war room. His outermost sensor shell was seventeen light-minutes from the primary, safely within the hyper limit to at least make hit-and-run raids on it difficult, but far enough out from the gravitational center of Barnett to give the enormous passive arrays a reach of almost two and a half light-weeks, over which they could expect to pick up the hyper transit of anything much bigger than a courier boat. That range put them nine light-minutes outside the planet Enki, and the actual range to the platform closest to the Manties was about thirteen light-minutes. Which meant it would be another — he checked the time — ten minutes and twenty-six seconds before he got a light-speed report from the sensors with the best look at whatever was coming at him. On the other hand, the i