At All Costs

"That's an... impressive itinerary, Your Grace," Dame Alice Truman said.

Honor's staff and senior flag officers sat around the outsized table in her dining cabin. The familiar cups of coffee, tea, and cocoa had made their appearance on schedule, following the dessert dishes, and Judah Yanakov extracted a worn briar pipe from his tunic pocket. He held it up and raised an eyebrow at his hostess.

"That's a truly disgusting habit, Judah," she told him with a smile of affection, and he nodded.

"I know it is, My Lady. And we'd almost stamped it out on Grayson, until you Manties came along with all your modern medicine. Now I can indulge myself and know your decadent, worldly medical science will preserve me from the consequences of my own excesses."

"Does Reverend Sullivan know about this hedonistic streak of yours?" she asked severely.

"Alas," he replied sadly. "I'm afraid my family's always been known for its lapses. My first Grayson ancestor, for example. There he was, the captain of the colony ship, supposed to be in charge of completely decommissioning and scrapping her as an example of the evil technology we'd fled Old Earth to escape. And what did he do? Kept her intact for almost sixty years. Transferred her computers and her auxiliary power plant down to Grayson, too. With that sort of a begi

"Stop boasting," Brigham told him with a smile of her own. "I read that biography of your great-great-great-whatever' your grand-aunt wrote. We all know the Yanakov family was instrumental in preserving human life on Grayson. Did I get that quotation right?"

"Almost," he corrected solemnly. "The actual passage you're thinking of says that our family was 'instrumental, by the Tester's grace, in preserving human life on Grayson against overwhelming odds.'" He smiled admiringly. "Aunt Letitia always had a fine, well-rounded way with a phrase, didn't she?"

"Oh, forgive me! How could I have forgotten that bit?"

"Stop it, you two!" Honor said with a laugh. "And, yes, Judah. You can light the reeking thing as soon as Mac readjusts the air circulation to protect the rest of us."

"I'm reconfiguring now, Your Grace," MacGuiness' voice said from the open pantry hatch.

"Thank God," Alistair McKeon murmured, careful to be sure the comment was loud enough for Yanakov to hear.

"Infidel." Yanakov raised his nose with a sniff, and McKeon threw a balled up linen napkin at him across the table.

"Children. Children!" Honor scolded. "I should never have left the na

The laughter was general this time, and Honor was glad to hear it. She was especially glad since Yanakov's seniority in the Grayson Navy had made him her official second in command. Fortunately, he, Truman, and McKeon had known one another for years and worked smoothly together in the past. No one had gotten his or her nose out of joint following Yanakov's arrival.

Nor had Honor felt any qualms. Yanakov had matured considerably from the days when he'd been one of her brilliant but occasionally overenthusiastic divisional commanders in the Grayson Space Navy's second battle squadron. He'd lost none of the audacity, the ability to think quickly and see possibilities others might miss, but the enthusiasm had been tempered by experience and honed to an even keener, more dangerous edge. He still had a gambler's instincts, but now they were those of a coldly capable, calculating, and highly professional gambler.

"All right," she said as Yanakov got his pipe properly stoked, "I think we can all agree that what the Strategy Board has in mind is, as Alice says, an 'impressive itinerary.' It's also going to be the most powerful single attack the Alliance or any of its members has ever launched. I had a personal message from Herzog von Rabenstrange just before I returned to the fleet. His current estimate is that we should have at least thirty-five Andermani Apollo-capable SD(P)s and sixteen of their BC(P)s joining us here. The first ten or twelve wallers will actually be here within the next two weeks; the others will arrive as they complete their working up exercises with the new systems.

"Assuming he meets his minimum estimate of thirty-five, we'll have a total of fifty-three pod-superdreadnoughts, fifty of them Apollo-capable. That's fifteen percent of the Alliance's total SD(P)s. And until the rest of the Andermani superdreadnoughts complete their refits, it's over twenty-seven percent of the total actually available. It's also more pod-layers, not even counting the battlecruisers, than Earl White Haven had for Buttercup, and none of his ships had Apollo."

She paused to let that sink in, looking around the table at her staffers and flag officers, radiating her own confidence even as she tasted theirs. And they were confident, despite a certain completely understandable anxiety. Confident of their weapons, confident of their doctrine, and confident of their leadership.

She savored that confidence, even as she carefully concealed her own reservations. Not about the practicality of Sanskrit II. Not about the quality of the fleet which was her weapon, or the admirals who would wield it. But about why they were launching this operation in the first place, and what its consequences might be.

There's nothing they could do about it anyway, she reminded herself once again. So there's no point worrying them with it. The last thing they need right now is to be looking over their shoulders, wondering whether or not we ought to be doing this.

"Judah," she continued, breaking the small silence she had imposed, "you've actually had the most experience using Apollo ship-to-ship. I've spent quite a while reviewing your after-action report, and also your ops officer's report, and it seems to me that we overestimated the number of birds necessary to get through to a single target. Would you concur?"

"Yes, and no, My Lady. Yes, we overestimated the numbers we needed at Lovat, but that was a freebie. They didn't have any idea what was coming, and they never had time to adjust. That won't be the case next time."

"No, it won't," McKeon said. "On the other hand, how much good will it to do them to know what's coming? How the hell do you establish a viable defensive doctrine against something like this?"

"Admiral Hemphill and the ATC simulators are developing one right now, Alistair," Samuel Mikl¢s pointed out.

"They're trying to develop one," McKeon corrected. "I'm willing to bet they aren't having a lot of luck so far, and unlike the Peeps, they know exactly what Apollo can do. I'm not saying no one will ever come up with a doctrine which won't at least knock back Apollo's effectiveness. I just don't see any way the Peeps can have done it yet. I certainly can't think of anything they could do about it, and I've spent the odd couple of dozen hours thinking about it."

"I think you've got a point, Alistair," Honor said. "But so does Judah. I'm inclined to think we could probably pull back our original estimates by thirty or forty percent. The Lovat effectiveness numbers would support a pull back of at least fifty percent, but I think we have to factor in Judah's concerns."

"All right." McKeon nodded cheerfully. "I'd rather err on the side of pessimism than be overly optimistic and get my... tail caught in a wringer."

"I've got a few concerns of my own," Truman said. "They don't have anything to do with Apollo, but the observed performance of the Peep LACs at Lovat has me a little concerned. I wish we'd had more time to examine the wreckage, maybe pick up a couple of intact examples for BuWeaps and ONI to play around with."

"What specifically worries you?" Honor asked.

"Well, we really didn't turn it up until we started our intensive post-battle analysis back here at Trevor's Star," Truman admitted. "But when we took a good hard look, it became fairly obvious that they've got at least one, and probably two, new LAC classes. And unless I miss my guess, they're using fission power plants."