At All Costs

More LACs were still streaming towards Second Fleet from the i

But that, Theodosia Kuzak thought grimly, was going to prove just a bit more difficult than the bastards thought.

"How much longer?" she asked harshly.

"Our last units should clear the Junction in the next eleven minutes, Ma'am," Captain Smithson said.

"Good." Kuzak nodded once, then turned to Commander Astrid Steen, her staff astrogator.

"Plot me a couple of micro jumps, Astrid," she said coldly. "Those people have just had the crap kicked out of them. Now we're going to finish the job Home Fleet began."

"Admiral Kuzak's preparing to head in-system, Your Grace," Harper Brantley said quietly.

"Thank you, Harper."

Honor looked up from the holographic com display hovering above the briefing room's table at which she, Nimitz, Mercedes Brigham, Rafael Cardones, and Andrea Jaruwalski sat under her armsmen's watchful eye. The display was separated into individual quadrants, showing the faces of Vizeadmiral Hasselberg, Judah Yanakov, Samuel Mikl¢s, and the commanders of every squadron in company with Imperator. Alice Truman and Alistair McKeon weren't there, and she tried to hide the cold, bleak anxiety she felt at their absence.

"Please inform the Admiral that we're still on schedule for our own ETA," Honor continued.

"Of course, Your Grace," her communications officer said quietly, and withdrew. The briefing room hatch closed behind him, and Honor returned her attention to the discussion at hand.

Most of the faces on her display showed a greater or lesser degree of shock at the total destruction of Home Fleet, and no wonder. Not only had the sheer weight of the Havenites' fire come as a complete surprise, but all of the Alliance's partners had taken losses when it hit. Of the ninety superdreadnoughts which had just been destroyed, twelve had been units of the Grayson Space Navy, and another twenty-six had been Andermani.

Of all her subordinates, Yanakov seemed least shocked. Or, at least, the least affected by whatever shock he felt. But, then, Judah had been present when Giscard leveled the Basilisk System's infrastructure in the last war, and his command had been part of Hamish's fleet for Operation Buttercup. And before that, he'd been at the First and Fourth Battles of Yeltsin. Three quarters of the pre-Alliance Grayson Space Navy had been wiped out in First Yeltsin, and half its superdreadnought strength had been destroyed at Fourth Yeltsin. And he was the man whose task force had crushed the defensive forces deployed to cover Lovat. Despite his youth-and he was almost as young as his prolong made him look-he'd seen more carnage than any other flag officer on Honor's display.

Almost as much as she had.

Hasselberg had looked almost stu

But of them all, Honor thought, Bin-hwei Morser's reaction was the most interesting. She wasn't simply an admiral; she was also Graffin von Grau. Like Hasselberg himself, she was a member of the Empire's warrior aristocracy, and she was clearly one of those who took the Andermani martial tradition seriously. She might cherish doubts about her Emperor's decision to ally himself with the Star Kingdom which had been the Empire's traditional rival in areas like Silesia for so long, but that didn't matter. Not anymore, not now. Her dark eyes-remarkably like Allison Harrington's, or Honor's own, now that Honor thought about it-were narrow and intense, focused and fiery with purpose.

"I wish Admiral Kuzak had waited for us," Mikl¢s said after a moment. "I'd feel a lot better if we were going in with her, especially after seeing how many birds these people can launch. She's still outnumbered better than two-to-one in wallers, and Alice is going to be outnumbered almost that badly in LACs."

"She can't wait, Samuel," Yanakov disagreed. "I don't have any idea how long it took the Peeps to deploy that many pods, however the hell they did it, but they had to use up most of their ammo to do it. She needs to hit them before they can pull out and restock their magazines. And even if that weren't a consideration, right now, the Peeps are edging away from Sphinx. She can't be sure they'll continue to do that if she doesn't move in now. If they get themselves sorted out, decide their damages aren't that bad after all, they've still got the strength-or close to it-to stand up to Sphinx's close-in defenses. And even if the defenses destroyed everything they've got left, they'd last long enough to take out virtually all of the planet's orbital infrastructure."

He smiled thinly.

"We Graysons have had a lot of experience worrying about what might happen to our orbital habitats. Trust me, I know exactly what's going through Admiral Kuzak's mind. She's got to keep the pressure on if she's going to keep them ru

"Judah's right," Honor said. "Our lead superdreadnought won't even transit the Junction for another eight minutes. We'll need another seventy-five minutes just to get the superdreadnoughts and your carriers through, Samuel. That's almost an hour and a half. She can't give them that long to think about things, not when they're already so close to the planet."

She spoke calmly, almost dispassionately, but she tasted the emotions of her staffers and, especially, her flag captain. They knew what was hidden behind that fa‡ade, she thought. Knew she couldn't forget that the planet they were talking about was the world of her birth. That all too many of the people on it were people she'd known all her life-family, friends. That it was the homeworld of the entire treecat species.

But what not even they knew was that at this very moment, both of her parents, and her sister and brother, were on Sphinx visiting Honor's Aunt Clarissa.

"The question before us," she continued, "is what we do after we make transit."

"We'll probably have instructions from the Admiralty, Your Grace," Mercedes Brigham pointed out. She smiled without any humor at all. "Thanks to the grav com, the central command can actually give real-time orders at interplanetary distances now."

"You may be right," Honor acknowledged. "So far, though, Admiral Caparelli's been refraining from backseat driving. And even if he doesn't, I want all of us to be thinking on the same page."

"One thing I don't believe we can do, Your Grace," Cardones said, "is commit ourselves before all our units have passed through the Junction."

Despite his relatively junior rank, the flag officers listened carefully. As Honor's flag captain, he was her tactical deputy.

"I strongly agree, Your Grace," Brigham said. "And at least we should have time to see how the situation's developing before we commit."

"I agree, too," Honor said. "But let's get some lighter units through as quickly as we can. Admiral Oversteegen, I want your squadron to take lead and transit as soon as you reach the terminus. Commodore Bradshaw and Commodore Fanaafi, you and your Saganami-Cs are attached to Admiral Oversteegan." She smiled grimly. "If the Havenites are still trying to keep an eye on the Junction, let's give whoever's minding their drones something else to worry about."