Ashes Of Victory

"And then?" Saint-Just prodded.

"Sir, it will depend on what the facts are, how bad they are, and how we want to approach them," Boardman said frankly. "If nothing else, however, I feel confident Huertes will have dropped the other shoe by then. Or, for that matter, we'll have direct reports from our own sources in Manticore. We can at least buy enough time for that to happen, and for us to decide on the best angle from which to spin the story."

"And domestically?" Pierre asked.

"Domestically, we can put whatever spin we like on it, Sir, at least in the short term. Whatever they may want to do for their home audiences, I doubt very much that any of the services is going to risk being tossed out of the Republic just to dispute Public Information's reportage locally. And if they try, we've got the mechanisms in place to stop them cold. In the short term. In the long term, at least a garbled version of the Manties' version is bound to leak out here at home, but that will take months at the very least. By the time it does get out, it will have lost a lot of its immediacy. I don't expect the greatest impact to be here at home, unless we really drop the ball. It's the consequences in the League that I worry about."

"And me," McQueen said quietly. "It's largely the Solly tech transfers which have let us get within shouting distance of the Manties' naval hardware. If this story is going to jeopardize that technology pipeline, we could have a very serious problem."

"Unless we finish the Manties off before it becomes `serious,' " Saint-Just observed with a wintery smile.

"With all due respect, that isn't going to happen anytime soon," McQueen replied firmly. "Oh, it's always possible we'll get lucky or their morale will suddenly crack, but they've redeployed to cover their core areas in too much depth. We're punching away mainly at systems they took away from us, Oscar. If they let us hang onto the initiative, we'll wear them down eventually. That's the great weakness of a purely defensive strategy; it lets your opponent choose her time and place and achieve the sort of concentrations that grind you away. But we're still a long way from reaching any of the Alliance's vitals — except, of course, for what happened in Basilisk. Raids on places like Zanzibar and Alizon may have profound morale effects, but they don't really hurt the Manties' physical war-fighting capability very much, and now that they realize we're on the offensive, the systems where we really could hurt them, like Manticore, Grayson, Erewhon, and Grendlesbane, are far too heavily protected for us to break into without taking prohibitive losses."

Saint-Just looked stubborn, and Pierre hid a sigh. Then he rubbed his nose again and squared his shoulders.

"All right, Leonard. I don't like it, but I think you're right. Draft a statement for me on the basis you've suggested, then com Huertes and offer her an exclusive interview with me. I'll want to be briefed very carefully, and you'll inform her that certain areas will be off-limits for reasons of military security, but I want to come across as open and forthcoming. Maybe I can coax her into letting that other shoe fall... or bait her into trying to mousetrap me with it, at any rate. But what I really want is to remind her and her colleagues how valuable access to my office is. Maybe then they'll think two or three times before they do something that might piss us off enough to deny them that access.

"In the meantime, Esther—" he turned to McQueen "—I want you to expedite operations. In particular, I want you to put Operation Scylla on-line as soon as possible. If we're going to take a black eye over Cerberus, then it's going to be up to you to win us some countervailing talking points by kicking some more Manticoran butt in the field."

"Sir, as I told you yesterday, we—"

"I know you're not ready yet," Pierre said just a bit impatiently. "I'm not asking for miracles, Esther. I said `expedite,' not charge off half-cocked. But you've demonstrated you can beat the Manties, and we need it done again as soon as you possibly can."

He held her eyes, and his message was clear. He was willing to back her military judgment against Saint-Just's — mostly, at least, and for the moment — but he needed a miracle, and the sooner the better. And if he didn't get one, he might just rethink his faith in her... and his decision to restrain Saint-Just from purging her.

"Understood, Citizen Chairman," she said, her tone resolute but not cocky. "If you want some Manticoran butt kicked, then we'll just have to kick it for you, won't we?"

CHAPTER FIVE

"So how does it feel to be alive again?"

The question came out in a husky, almost furry-sounding contralto, and Honor's mouth quirked as she looked across from her place in the improbably comfortable, old-fashioned, unpowered armchair that seemed hopelessly out of place aboard a modern warship. HMS Edward Saganami's captain smirked insufferably back at her, white teeth flashing in a face barely a shade lighter than her space-black tunic, and Honor shook her head with a wryness that was no more than half amused.

"Actually, it's a monumental pain in an awful lot of ways," she told her oldest friend, and Captain the Honorable Michelle Henke laughed. "Go ahead, laugh!" Honor told her. "You haven't had to deal with people who name superdreadnoughts after you — and refuse to change the name when it turns out you weren't quite dead yet after all!" She shuddered. "And that's not the worst of it, you know."

"Oh?" Henke cocked her head. "I knew they'd named the Harrington after you, but I hadn't heard anything about their refusing to change the name."

"Well, they have," Honor said grumpily, and rose to stalk around the spacious quarters the RMN's designers had provided for the brand-new heavy cruiser's lady and mistress after God. All of Saganami's perso

She set Nimitz on the back of the chair, and Samantha flowed up from where she'd perched on its arm to wrap her tail about him once more. Honor watched the two 'cats for a moment, grateful that the harsh, metallic-tasting bitterness of Nimitz's fear and sense of loss had retreated into something all three of them could handle, then looked back at Henke and began to pace with proper vigor.

"I argued myself blue in the face, you know, but Benjamin says he can't overrule the military, the Office of Shipbuilding says it would confuse their records, Reverend Sullivan insists that the Chaplain's Corps blessed the ship under her original name and that it would offend the religious sensibilities of the Navy to change it now, and Matthews says it would offend the crews' belief that renaming a ship is bad luck. Every one of them is in on it, and they keep playing musical offices. Whenever I try to pin one of them down, he simply refers me — with exquisite courtesy, you understand — to one of the others. And I know they're all laughing in their beers over it!"

Henke's grin seemed to split her face, and her throaty chuckle rippled with delight. She was one of the people who'd figured out the truth about Honor's link to Nimitz long ago, which lent a certain added entertainment to Honor's certainty about how much the highest Grayson leaders were enjoying themselves.

"Well, at least the Admiralty agreed to back off from calling them the Harrington —class," she pointed out after a moment, and Honor nodded.

"That's because the Star Kingdom has a slightly less low so-called sense of humor," she growled. "And," she added, "Caparelli and Cortez know I'd've resigned my commission if they hadn't gone back to designating them the Medusa —class. I only wish I thought I could get away with making the same threat stick against Matthews."