At All Costs

"Missile trace!" Frazier Adamson barked suddenly, and Lester Tourville's belly muscles clenched.

What was left of Third Fleet had stopped firing when he did. Were they insane enough to resume the action? If they did, he'd have no choice but to-

"Sir, they're coming in from outside the zone!" Adamson said.

"What?" Molly DeLaney demanded incredulously. "That's ridiculous! They're a hundred fifty million klicks away!"

"Well, they're coming in on us now anyway," Tourville said sharply as Guerriere's missile defense batteries began to fire once more.

They didn't do much good. He watched sickly as the missiles which had suddenly brought up their impellers, appearing literally out of nowhere, hurtled down on his battered and broken command. They drove straight in, swerving, dancing, and his sick feeling of helplessness frayed around the edges as he realized there were less than sixty of them. Whatever they were, they weren't a serious attack on his surviving ships, so what-?

His jaw tightened as the missiles made their final approach. But they didn't detonate. Instead, they hurtled directly through his formation, straight through the teeth of his blazing laser clusters.

His point defense crews managed to nail two-thirds of them. The other twenty pirouetted, swerved to one side, then detonated in a perfectly synchronized, deadly accurate attack... on absolutely nothing.

Lester Tourville exhaled the breath he hadn't realized he was holding. He sensed the confusion of his flag bridge crew, and this time, he had no answer at all for them. Then-

"Sir," Lieutenant Eisenberg said in a very small voice, "I have a com request for you."

He turned his command chair to look at her, and she swallowed.

"It's... from Duchess Harrington, Sir."

The silence on Guerriere's flag bridge was complete. Then Tourville cleared his throat.

"Throw it on my display, Ace," he said.

"Yes, Sir. Coming up now."

An instant later, a face appeared on Tourville's display. He'd seen that face before, when its owner surrendered to him. And again, when she had been clubbed down by the pulse rifle butts of State Security goons. Now she looked at him, her eyes like two more missile tubes.

"We meet again, Admiral Tourville," she said, and her soprano voice was cold.

"Admiral Harrington," he replied. "This is a surprise. I thought you were about eight light-minutes away."

"I am. I'm speaking to you over what we call a 'Hermes buoy.' It's an FTL relay with standard sub-light communication capability. We can load it into a cell in one of our new missile pods." The expression she produced was technically a smile, but it was one that belonged on something out of deep, dark oceanic depths.

"It accompanied my missile launch so I could speak directly to you," she continued in that same, icy-cold voice. "I'm sure you observed my birds' terminal performance. I'm also sure you understand I have the capability to blow every single one of your remaining ships out of space from my present position. I hope you aren't going to make it necessary for me to do so."

Tourville looked at her, and knew that last statement wasn't really accurate. Knew a part of her-the part behind those frozen eyes, that icy voice-hoped he would make it necessary. But too many people had already died for him to kill still more out of sheer stupidity.

"No, Your Grace," he said quietly. "I won't make it necessary."

"My acceptance of your surrender," she told him, "is contingent upon the surrender of your ships-and their databases-in their present condition. Is that clearly understood, Admiral Tourville?"

He hovered on the brink of refusing, of declaring that he would scrub his databases, as was customary, before surrendering a ship. But then he looked into those icy eyes again, and the temptation vanished.

"It's... understood, Your Grace," he made himself say.

"Good. Decelerate to zero relative to the system primary. You'll be boarded by prize officers once you do. In the meantime," she smiled again, that same terrifying smile, "my ships will remain here, where we can... keep an eye on things."

"Your Grace," Andrea Jaruwalski said, as Honor turned away from her conversation with Lester Tourville.

"Yes, Andrea?"

Honor felt drained and empty. She supposed she should feel triumph. After all, she'd just destroyed almost seventy superdreadnoughts, and captured another seventy-five. That had to be an interstellar record, and for a bonus, her people had saved the Star Kingdom's capital system from invasion. But after so much carnage, so much destruction, how was a woman supposed to feel triumphant?

"Your Grace, we're getting IDs off Admiral Kuzak's surviving ships from the i

"Yes?" Honor felt herself tightening inside. The pitiful handful of icons where Third Fleet had been mocked her. If she'd been able to get her ships into position even a few minutes earlier, perhaps-

She forced that thought aside, and looked Andrea in the eye.

"Your Grace, most of our ships are gone," Jaruwalski said softly, "but I've got transponder codes on both Chimera and Intransigent."

Honor's heart spasmed, and the ice about her soul seemed to crack, ever so slightly. Nimitz stirred in her lap, sitting up once again, leaning back against her and reaching up to touch the side of her face with a long-fingered true-hand.

"I've been trying to contact them," Harper Brantley put in, drawing Honor's attention to him, and her eyes burned as she tasted his emotions. Like Jaruwalski, he wanted desperately to give her some sort of good news, to tell her someone she loved had survived. Something to balance at least some of the pain and the blood.

"I can't raise Chimera," Brantley continued. "It looks like she's actually in better general shape than Intransigent, but her grav com seems to be down. I've got Captain Thomas on the FTL, though."

"Put it on my screen," Honor said quickly, and turned to her com as it lit with the strained, exhausted face of Alistair McKeon's flag captain.

"Captain Thomas!" Honor said with a huge smile. "It's good to see you."

"And to see you, Your Grace," Thomas replied, and there was something just a bit odd about her voice.

"I've accepted the surrender of the remaining Havenite vessels," Honor continued. "Since you're so much closer to them than I am, it would make more sense to let Admiral McKeon or Admiral Truman handle the final details. Could I speak to Admiral McKeon, please?"

"I-" Thomas paused, then closed her eyes for just a moment, her weary face wrung with pain.

"Your Grace," she said softly, "I'm sorry. We took a direct hit on Flag Bridge. There were... no survivors."

Chapter Sixty-Nine

It was very quiet in the nursery.

Her parents were downstairs, undoubtedly playing hearts with Hamish and Emily while they waited for her, and she didn't have much time. They were all due at Mount Royal Palace for a formal state di

Lindsey Phillips had helped her get Raoul and Katherine changed and ready for bed while Emily supervised. Now she sat in her favorite chair-Raoul in her lap, Katherine asleep in the bassinet beside her-and adjusted the reading lamp, then looked at her sister and brother, curled like treecats on floor cushions in front of her.

"Are you ready?" she asked, and they nodded. "Where were we?"