At All Costs

"So it's confirmed that it was Giscard?"

"The news came in just before my shuttle left. He's been officially voted the thanks of the Republic's Congress for his successful defense of Solon. And Tourville got the same thing for hammering Zanzibar."

"That's good to know," Brigham said thoughtfully. Honor looked at her, and the chief of staff shrugged. "It always makes me feel better, somehow, to be able to put a face on the enemy, Your Grace."

"Does it?" Honor shook her head. "It helps me when I consider their probable actions or reactions, but I really think I'd rather not know the people on the other side. It's easier to kill strangers."

"Don't fool yourself, Your Grace," Brigham said quietly. "I've known you a long time now. The fact that they're strangers doesn't make you feel any better about killing them."

Honor looked at her again, more sharply, and her chief of staff looked back levelly. And she was right, Honor thought.

"At any rate," she continued, her tone conceding the point, "we can't afford to let them do that to us again for several reasons. The losses themselves are painful enough, but we've got to regain the momentum, and we're not going to be able to do that if they keep bloodying our nose. So the decision's been taken that even though it's important to get back onto the offensive as quickly as we can, we're not going to do it until we've been able to reinforce Eighth Fleet significantly. Which means turning up additional modern wallers, among other things."

"Which is going to take how long?" Brigham asked anxiously.

"At least another six to eight weeks. That's why I said Imperator's repair time wasn't going to set us back badly."

"New wallers sound good, but I hate the thought of giving them that much free time, Your Grace." Brigham's expression was worried. "They've got to be tempted to follow up their success against Zanzibar, and if we take the pressure off of them for a couple of months...."

She let her voice trail off, and Honor nodded.

"I made the same point to Admiral Caparelli and the Strategy Board. And I also made a suggestion about how we might alleviate some of the worse consequences of having to effectively stand down Eighth Fleet's offensive for that long."

"What sort of suggestion, Your Grace?" Brigham regarded her narrowly.

"We're going to try to keep them looking over their shoulders. Begi

"That's... deliciously nasty, Your Grace," Brigham said admiringly. "They'll have to assume we do plan to attack and react accordingly."

"Initially, at least. I suspect they're smart enough to wonder if that isn't exactly what we're doing, since they know they've hurt us badly. But I think you're right; they're going to have to honor the threat, at least the first time we do it to them. After that, they could change their minds."

"So if we do it to them two or three times while we aren't ready to attack," Brigham said, "get them accustomed to the idea that our scouts are just part of a strategy of bluffs, then when we are ready to attack-"

"Then hopefully, scouting the systems will actually give us a bit of an edge of surprise, since they'll know we aren't really going to hit them," Honor agreed. "And if we do it right, we may be able to convince them to do an al-Bakr and tip their hands on their current defensive thinking and deployments."

"I like it," Brigham said. "Obviously, I'd prefer not to have to suspend operations, but if we have to, let's make it work for us as much as we can."

"That's more or less what I was thinking. So why don't you and I spend some time thinking about which systems we'd like to make them most nervous about?

"Your Grace?"

Honor and Spencer Hawke broke immediately, stepping back towards opposite sides of the mat. They fell into rest positions, then Honor bowed and Hawke returned the courtesy before she turned towards James MacGuiness.

"Yes, Mac?"

MacGuiness stood just inside the gymnasium hatch. Like Honor's original flagship, HMS Second Yeltsin was an Invictus-class superdreadnought. Honor had transferred her flag to her while Imperator was undergoing repairs, but although she and her staff been aboard Second Yeltsin for almost two weeks now, ever since her return from Manticore, the ship still didn't feel like "home."

Still, it wasn't exactly like camping out in a hut in the woods, either. Second Yeltsin, like Imperator, had been built as a flagship from the keel out, and several of her amenities reflected her flagship status, including the small, well-equipped private "flag gym" one deck down from the admiral's personal quarters. Honor had preferred to use the main gymnasium aboard Imperator, where she could take the pulse of the flagship's crew's morale and attitudes, but since Simon Mattingly's and Timothy Mears' deaths, Andrew LaFollet had put his foot down firmly. He simply could not guarantee her security with so many people so close together, and his feelings-and concern-had been so strong that this time Honor had offered barely token resistance. Even now, she could taste her personal armsman's focused attention as he stood behind MacGuiness, of all people, tautly wary of any sudden move on the other man's part.

"There's a special courier boat, Your Grace." If MacGuiness was aware of LaFollet's scrutiny, and he almost certainly was, he gave no sign of it. Nor did Honor taste any resentment of her armsmen's heightened wariness in MacGuiness' mind-glow. "It's from Admiralty House," he continued. "It just came through the Junction, and Harper's already received a transmission from it. It has personal dispatches aboard for you."

Honor felt her eyebrows try to rise. The regular morning shuttle from Manticore had arrived barely three hours ago; the evening shuttle was due in another five. So what was so urgent that the Admiralty had sent it aboard a special dispatch boat?

She felt a sudden pang of anxiety, then forced herself to put it aside. If this had been some sort of personal bad news, it would have arrived aboard a private courier, not an official Admiralty dispatch boat.

"Thank you, Mac," she said calmly. "I'll grab a shower and take the dispatches in my quarters."

"Of course, Your Grace."

MacGuiness bobbed his head and departed, and Honor turned back to Hawke.

"I'm sorry to break this up, Spencer. I think you're starting to get the hang of it." Hawke gri

"As always, My Lady, I'm at your disposal," he told her with a bow, and she chuckled and looked at LaFollet.

"By golly, we're getting close to getting him civilized, aren't we?"

"'Close' only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and tactical nuclear weapons, My Lady," LaFollet replied gravely.

Honor slid the data chip into her desktop terminal. The display came up, and she frowned slightly as a header floated before her. The dispatch bore the electronic seal and personal cipher key of the First Lord, not the First Space Lord. Was it a personal message from Hamish, after all?

She input her own key and slid her right hand across the DNA sniffer. An instant later, the display blinked in acceptance, and the header disappeared, replaced by Hamish's face. He looked oddly excited, but not worried. In fact, if anything, the reverse.

"Honor," he said, "I suppose I could've let this come to you through normal cha