Ashes Of Victory

"And the second support you will have will be your own confidence in yourself. In your training, in your hardware, and more importantly, in your people. But most importantly of all, in your own judgment. It won't always be perfect. Sometimes, despite all we can do here at Saganami and in ATC, it will be execrable. But you must have faith in yourself, Ladies and Gentlemen, because there will be no one else. You will be it. Your ship, your people, will live or die on the basis of your judgments and your decisions, and even if you get it all absolutely right, some of them will die anyway."

Her smile had vanished, and her face was stern, almost cold.

"Accept that now, because it will happen. The enemy wants to live as badly as you do, and like you, the way for her to do that is to kill the ones trying to kill her. Which will be you, Ladies and Gentlemen. You and the people under your command. And I can assure you that there will be nights your dead will haunt you. When you ask yourselves if you could have saved a few more lives if you'd only been faster, or smarter, or more alert. Sometimes the answer will be yes, that you could have saved them. But you didn't. You did your best, and you did your job, and so did they, but they're still dead, and whatever the rest of the universe thinks, you will go to your own grave convinced you ought to have done better, should have found the way to keep them alive. Worse, you'll think back to what happened, replay it in your head over and over, with the invaluable benefits of hindsight and all the time in the world to think about the decisions you had only minutes to make at the time, and you'll see exactly where you screwed up and let your people die."

She paused, and beside her, Kriangsak and Captain Garrison, the senior simulation programer for ATC, nodded, their faces as still as her own.

"Accept that now," Honor repeated quietly after a moment. "Accept it... or find another line of work. And I warn you all now, as Admiral Courvosier, my own Academy mentor, warned me, that even if you think you understand exactly what I'm telling you, you'll discover in the event you weren't really prepared for the guilt. You can't be, not until it's your turn to shoulder it. But that will be the third thing that supports you in battle, Ladies and Gentlemen: the knowledge that your people will die uselessly if you screw up. It's not your job to keep them alive at all costs. It's your job to be certain they don't die for nothing. You owe them that, and they expect it of you, and that need to keep the faith with your people is what will keep your brain working and the orders coming even while the enemy blows your ship apart around you. And if you don't believe it will, then the command chair on the bridge of a Queen's ship is not the proper place for you."

There was complete and utter silence in the game room, and Honor let it hover there for several seconds. Then she leaned back in her chair with a small smile.

"On the other hand, your careers aren't going to consist solely of desperate battles to the death. I assure you that you'll find the odd moment of relaxation and even pleasure in the Queen's uniform — or that of your own worlds' navies," she added, nodding at Hearns and Gillingham. "Unfortunately," she went on, her tone turning droll, "tonight won't be among them."

Another ripple of laughter answered her, and she nodded to Kriangsak.

"Admiral Kriangsak, with Captain Garrison's able assistance, has very kindly constructed a small tactical problem for you, Ladies and Gentlemen," she informed them, and several apprehensive glances flickered towards Kriangsak, who simply smiled benignly. "We'll be dividing into three teams. Admiral Kriangsak will serve as the adviser to one team, Captain Garrison will advise the second, and Captain Thoma—" she nodded to the red-haired woman whose tunic, like Honor's own when she was in uniform, bore the bloodred ribbon of the Manticoran Cross "—will advise the third. Captain Henke and Commander Jaruwalski will play the role of referees and umpire the exercise."

"And you, Your Grace?" Jaruwalski asked, as i

"And I, Commander," Honor told her with unconcealed relish, "will command the op force." One of the midshipmen groaned, and Honor gave them all a wicked smile. "This one is pass-fail, Ladies and Gentlemen. If you still have a ship left at the end, you pass. Otherwise..."

She let her voice trail off menacingly, then bestowed another smile upon them.

"And on that note, people, let's be about it!" she told them briskly.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

"Well that certainly went much better. In fact," Scotty Tremaine said judiciously, gazing at the scores for CLAC Squadron Three's latest engineering inspection, "one might even say that it went quite well, mightn't one, Sir Horace?"

"One might," Sir Horace Harkness growled back. "I guess. Sort of."

Unlike the youthful commander, the burly warrant officer's expression was not a happy one. Indeed, an objective observer, if asked to describe it in one word, would have been hard-pressed to choose between disconsolate, surly, or just plain disgusted. The less charitable might even have suggested "petulant."

Despite the fact that the Book said the senior engineer in any LAC wing was supposed to be a commissioned officer, an awful lot of engineers, at both the squadron and wing levels, held warrants rather than commissions. Normally, a warrant was offered to a noncom who, because of his special knowledge or depth of expertise, or because he was needed for duties normally assigned to an officer, had to be placed on a footing of equality with at least the more junior of the commissioned officers with whom he dealt. Warrant officers stood outside the executive line of command, for the WOs might actually be thought of as the noncommissioned equivalent of staff officers. Even the design of their uniforms indicated their unique status, for their tunics were tailored like those of officers, but they carried sleeve stripes (although in silver, not gold) similar to those of petty officers and silver or gold crowns, depending on grade, as collar insignia. In addition, each WO's sleeve carried the insignia of his specialty above the stripes.

A WO-1 was equivalent to a junior-grade lieutenant in a nonline specialty, while a chief warrant officer, or WO-3, like Sir Horace Harkness, was equivalent to a senior-grade lieutenant. A master chief warrant officer, or WO-5, was actually equivalent to a full commander... and had reached the highest rate any member of the Navy could attain without a formal commission. Given the basis on which they were offered their warrants in the first place, a WO was usually somewhat older than the average commissioned officer of his equivalent rank. On the other hand, the more youthful commissioned officers who found themselves warrant officers' legal superiors knew those WOs had been given their warrants expressly because they were so good — as in, much better than any wet-behind-the-ears, fresh-out-of-Saganami-Island, young whippersnapper could hope to be, though he might someday approach their abilities, if he worked really hard and listened to the voice of experience when it deigned to share its wisdom. As a result, the RMN's warrant officers carried far more clout than most civilian observers would have expected.

Nonetheless, BuPers really had wanted commissioned engineers for any slot above the individual LAC squadron. BuPers, however, had been disappointed, and the reason its desires had never been more than a rather wistful hope was simple enough. The sudden, explosive expansion of the Royal Manticoran Navy's light attack craft strength after decades of steady build down had simply caught the Fleet short of LAC engineers. Severely short, as a matter of fact.