At All Costs

"I'm sure it does," Caparelli said calmly. "What struck me most strongly, however, was how light your losses were, given what you sailed into."

His raised hand stopped her protest, and his eyes met hers levelly.

"I know exactly what I'm talking about, Honor, so don't tell me I don't. You walked into a carefully prepared ambush. I've reviewed your reports, and those of your surviving captains, and the log recordings from your flag bridge and from Imperator's tactical section. I reviewed them very carefully, and whether you want to believe this or not, I also reviewed them very critically. And, on the basis of what you knew, when you knew it, I can't see a single thing you did wrong."

"What about sailing directly into that last missile launch?" Honor challenged. "If anyone should have seen that coming, I should have!"

"The fact that you and Mark Sarnow used similar tactics at Hancock Station sixteen T-years ago doesn't make you clairvoyant," Caparelli replied. "You did realize they were coming in out of hyper behind you, and I doubt very much most flag officers would have figured it out as quickly. And without knowing the size of the salvos Bogey One could throw, your decision to stay away from a force which outnumbered you three-to-one in ships of the wall was the only reasonable one you could have made."

"And what about abandoning Ajax?" Honor's voice was so low it was almost a whisper.

"That, too, was the proper decision, Your Grace," Caparelli said quietly. Honor looked up, meeting his eyes once more, tasting his sincerity. "It was hard. I know that. I know how close you and Admiral Henke were. But your overriding responsibility was to the ships you could still get out, and with the damage you'd already suffered, slowing to cover Ajax would have made that impossible. If you'd been able to evacuate her perso

"But-" Honor began, eyes burning, and Caparelli shook his head.

"Don't. I've been there, too, and I know leaving people behind, however correct the tactical decision may have been, always hurts. You always ask yourself if there wasn't some way you could've gotten everyone out, and curse yourself at night for not having found one. The fact that you and Countess Gold Peak were so close, for so long, has to make that still worse, but I've come to know you. Whether Michelle Henke had been aboard that ship or not, you'd still feel what you're feeling right now."

Honor blinked, then looked away for just a moment. He was right, and she knew it. And yet, remembering Mike-

She closed her eyes, her memory replaying the last she'd seen-the last she would ever see-of Michelle Henke. She and her other survivors had gotten across the hyper limit, with Bogey Two and Bogey Three in hot pursuit. Rifleman had performed her part of Omega One by translating up into hyper to rejoin Samuel Mikl¢s' CLACs at the designated rendezvous once the task force's other survivors were across the limit. And Mikl¢s' squadron had executed a flawless micro-jump to rendezvous with Honor's survivors, in turn. They'd gotten the surviving LACs aboard the carriers and translated out less than fifteen minutes before Bogey Three crossed the hyper limit after them, but that hadn't been soon enough to prevent her from knowing what happened.

She wished there'd been time for at least one last personal message, but Ajax's communications section had taken massive damage in the first salvo Bogey Two had fired into Henke's lamed flagship. There'd been no way to communicate-even the remote sensor arrays had been too far away to see it clearly-but from the sensor recordings, it looked as if Ajax had taken at least one battlecruiser with her. The explosion when her own fusion plants let go, however, had been far clearer.

"I left her," she said softly. "I left her behind to die."

"Because her drive was damaged," Caparelli said, deliberately misinterpreting the pronoun's antecedent. "Because you had no choice. Because you were a fleet commander, with a responsibility for the survival of the other ships under your command. It was the right decision."

"Maybe."

Honor looked back at him, and the First Space Lord cocked his head. She could taste him accepting that that "maybe" was as close as she could yet come to agreeing with him, and her mouth moved in an almost-smile.

"But whether it was the right decision or not, I still got my backside kicked right up between my ears and didn't take out my objective. Exactly what Eighth Fleet wasn't supposed to have happen to it."

"It's not given to us to simply command victory," Caparelli told her. "The other side has an interest in wi

"As for your failure to hit your objectives, yes, you did. Admiral Truman, on the other hand, operating according to your plan, blew the Lorn shipyard, every bit of its supporting industry, and every mobile unit in the system into scrap for the loss of six LACs."

"I know she did," Honor conceded. "And I also know our primary objective was to force the Republic to redeploy, which-on the evidence of Solon-they've certainly done. But I feel depressingly confident that the way this story is going to be spun for their civilian population will dwell on how hard they hit my task force, not how well Alice's did."

"I think we can all safely depend upon that," Caparelli agreed. "Especially since you've been the one blacking their eyes up until now. The defeat of 'the Salamander'-and I agree that, however well you did to salvage what you did, it was a defeat-is going to be page-one news in every Peep 'fax. They're going to play it up to the max, exactly the way our own 'faxes have been playing up Eighth Fleet's successes.

"Nor, I'm afraid," he said, much more bleakly, his emotions suddenly far darker, "is that the only thing they're going to have to play up."

"I beg your pardon?"

Honor looked at him, and he shrugged heavily.

"The initial report came in this morning. Their Admiral Tourville is apparently back from Marsh, and they've given him a new fleet to replace the one you trashed. Units under his command hit Zanzibar about the same time you were attacking Lorn and Solon."

Honor inhaled sharply, looking back and forth between Caparelli and Hamish.

"How bad was it?"

"About as bad as it could have been," Hamish replied. She looked at him, and he sighed. "He came in with four full battle squadrons of pod-layers, and their battle squadrons are still eight ships strong. He also had a couple of divisions of carriers and at least two battlecruiser squadrons to support them, and although we'd reinforced heavily after Admiral al-Bakr's fiasco-and I use the word deliberately," he added bitterly "-it wasn't heavily enough. He hit the defenses like a hammer, and he started right out by sweeping the asteroid belt with remote arrays of his own, followed by LAC strikes on our pre-deployed pods. Not only that, he'd brought along fast colliers stuffed with additional missile pods. He left them tucked away in hyper, came in just far enough to draw our mobile units away from their own support bases, and engaged them at long range until both sides had burned most of their ammo. Then he pulled back across the limit, reammunitioned, and came right back in before we could replace the expended defense pods get our own pod-layers back in-system to rearm. It was a massacre."

"How bad?" she repeated.

"Eleven SD(P)s and seven older superdreadnoughts," Caparelli said grimly. "Plus seven hundred LACs, six battlecruisers, and two heavy cruisers. Those were our losses. Most of the Zanzibaran Navy went with them. Not to mention," the First Space Lord added harshly, "the near total destruction of Zanzibar's deep-space industry. For the second time."