Ashes Of Victory

"Um." Saint-Just considered the citizen admiral for several more seconds. "You've made some convincing points, Citizen Admiral," he said finally. "And whatever lack of faith I may feel where Tourville and Giscard are concerned, I do have at least one outstanding commissioner riding herd on them. More than that, I have to admit, if somewhat against my will, that the `evidence' against them is conjectural at this point. I don't apologize for feeling an urge to eliminate them just to be on the safe side. Not after what's happened here in Nouveau Paris... and what could still happen if we're unlucky. But you do have a point about jumping too quickly. And about how valuable they could be in our present situation. For that matter, my advisers and I hadn't sufficiently considered the effect removing them might have on the loyalty of Capital Fleet's officers.

"All of those are sound points, and I appreciate your courage in making them. I don't say you've completely convinced me, because you haven't. But you have given me a great deal to think over before I make my decision."

"That was all I really wanted to do, Sir," Theisman said, standing as Saint-Just rose and walked around his desk. The Citizen Chairman held out his hand, and Theisman shook it firmly. Then Saint-Just walked towards the office door with him.

"I trust you won't let yourself get into the habit of arguing my orders with me, Citizen Admiral," he said with wintry humor that didn't quite hide the warning behind it. "In this instance, however... thank you."

It came out a little grudgingly, and Theisman allowed himself a smile.

"You're welcome, Sir. And trust me. I have no intention of habitually arguing with you. Leaving aside the little matter that you're certainly Citizen Chairman Pierre's legitimate successor, I'm not foolish enough to do anything which might make me look like a threat. You've been honest enough to warn me my own position and continued good health depend on how well I do my job and your confidence in my loyalty to the Republic. I can understand your attitude, and I appreciate your candor. And candor also compels me to say I am sufficiently terrified to be very careful about the company I keep and the things I suggest. I'll do my best to tell you the truth as I see it, but I'll also watch my mouth and stay the hell away from anything that might make you think of me as another Esther McQueen."

"A straightforward declaration," Saint-Just observed, and there might actually have been a slight twinkle in his eye as he opened the office door for Theisman. "I see you have greater depths than I'd thought, Citizen Admiral. That's good. I'm not foolish enough to expect everyone to be loyal because they love me, and it's refreshing to meet someone who's honest enough to admit he's afraid of making me suspicious of him."

"I much prefer to be open and straightforward," Theisman deliberately reused the Citizen Chairman's choice of adjective. "Trying to be any other way simply invites misunderstanding, and none of us can afford that at this moment."

"True, Citizen Admiral. Absolutely true," Saint-Just agreed, shaking his hand once more, and Theisman stepped out into the waiting room. The Citizen Chairman's new secretary glanced up at him curiously, then returned to her paperwork, and the citizen admiral allowed himself to draw a deep, lung-stretching breath before he crossed to the waiting-room door and stepped into the hall.

Oh, yes, Citizen Secretary. Open and straightforward — which is not necessarily the same thing as loyal and honest. But I hope to hell you don't figure that out before it's too late.

He headed down the hall towards the lifts and the pi

I've done what I can, he told them. For God's sake try to stay alive a little longer. We're going to need you— both of you — soon enough... if not for exactly the reasons Saint-Just thinks.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Hamish Alexander stood on Benjamin the Great's flag deck with his hands clasped behind him and tried very hard not to feel a sense of godlike power.

At the moment, his plot was in astrographic configuration, showing him the stars between Trevor's Star and the Lovat System. Peep-held systems sprawled across it in a leprous red rash. That much remained the same. But a few changes had been introduced over the last two months, and his lips pursed thoughtfully as he regarded them.

Lovat lay close to the center of the spherical volume of the PRH. Only forty-nine light-years from the Haven System, it was a major industrial node, which made it an important target in its own right. It was also one of the PRH's core systems, a daughter colony rather than one of its unruly conquests, whose local government had been one of the first to declare its support for the Committee of Public Safety following the Harris assassination. Yet for all its importance, it was so far behind the frontiers no prewar strategist had ever seriously contemplated the possibility of a major attack upon it.

But things change, and over the last four or five T-years most strategists, Allied and Peep alike, had come to regard Lovat as the penultimate stop on any advance to Nouveau Paris. Always well fortified, the system now bristled with defenses almost as tough as those protecting the capital system itself, not to mention a local defense fleet built around several squadrons of the wall.

All in all, Lovat was a formidable military obstacle, and after eleven years of war, it had come to seem hopelessly remote. Something, some people had joked, to make them grateful for prolong, since that was the only thing which gave them a chance of living long enough to see it taken.

But now, as White Haven gazed into the plot, a solid cone of green stars glowed amid the crimson traceries of Peep-held space. That cone's base rested on the systems of Sun-Yat, to the northwest, and Welladay, to the southeast, and its tip was the Tequila System — pointing straight at Lovat from a distance of barely 3.75 light-years.

It was incredible, he thought, contemplating the campaign he'd fought to reach this point. It had been utterly unlike the grinding, brutal slogging match for Trevor's Star. Indeed, it was unlike any campaign any admiral had waged in over seven hundred years, and White Haven was honest enough to admit it had been made possible only by the new ship types he'd once dismissed so cavalierly. But he'd learned his lesson, he told himself. First when Honor — his lips curved in a small, secret smile — jerked him up short, and now, especially, when Alice Truman's LAC wings had spearheaded Operation Buttercup with such power and panache.

The Peeps are done, he thought almost wonderingly. Finished. They don't have a prayer against the new hardware, and our people are learning how to use it more effectively every day.

His thoughts ranged back over the hectic, furiously paced series of actions which had brought them to this point. Secure in his technological and tactical superiority, he'd embraced the operational concept Truman and Honor had devised for Buttercup and split Eighth Fleet into independent, fast-moving, hard-hitting task forces. The main force, TF 81, built around a solid core of Harrington/Medusas, had hammered straight up the middle, smashing the defenses of one fortified system after another with missile bombardments to which the Peeps could make no reply. At the same time, lighter forces, each based around three or four CLACs and escorts, with one or two SD(P)s to keep an eye on things, had spread out from the main axis of advance. They'd slashed into more lightly held systems, ravaging the picket forces covering the flanks of the nodal task forces TF 81 had reduced to wreckage. Even when the Peeps detected the LACs on their way in, the fleet, lethal little craft invariably managed to accomplish their missions. Partly that was because those missions were carefully pla