At All Costs

"The pyre," Faith said, with a seven-year-old's assured, intimate familiarity with the story.

"Of course we were." She shook her head as she opened the book and began turning pages. "It's been so long, I'd forgotten where we'd gotten to."

Raoul began to fuss, with the quiet, stubborn, eyes-squeezed- shut intensity of a four-month-old. She reached out to his mind-glow, touching it gently, and smiled. He wasn't really unhappy, just... bored with a world which wasn't focused exclusively on him. "Bored" wasn't really exactly the right word, she thought, but a baby's emotions, though clear and strong, were still in a formative stage, and it was difficult-even for her-to parse them exactly.

She felt Nimitz, stretched out across the chair back, reaching for the baby with her. There was something just a little odd about Raoul's mind-glow. Most of the time, Honor was convinced it was her imagination, just a difference in the way babies' emotions worked. Other times, she was far less certain of that, and this was one of those times.

Nimitz touched the baby's mind-glow, and Raoul stopped fussing instantly. His eyes opened, and that sense of boredom vanished. Honor turned her head, looking at Nimitz, and the treecat's grass-green eyes gleamed at her from the semi-darkness beyond the reading lamp's cone. She felt him radiating gentle reassurance, and Raoul gurgled happily.

Honor smiled at her younger siblings, then laid the book down long enough to maneuver Raoul into a seated position, supported against her shoulder, and looked at Nimitz.

"Did you do that with me, too, Stinker?" she asked him quietly. "I know we started later, but did you?"

Nimitz gazed back at her, and she felt the thoughtfulness behind those green eyes. Then, unmistakably, he nodded.

"Oh, my," Honor murmured, then looked down into Raoul's wide-open eyes. The baby was intent, focused... listening, and she shook her head. "Sweet pea," she told him tenderly, "fasten your seat belt. It's going to be an interesting ride."

Nimitz bleeked in cheerful agreement, and she felt long, agile fingers tug at something on the back of her neck. Then Nimitz lifted the Star of Grayson over her head on its crimson ribbon and dangled it above Raoul.

The baby's attention sharpened. He couldn't tell exactly what the star was at this point, but the bright sparkles of light dancing on its golden-starburst beauty drew his eyes like a magnet, and he reached up with one tiny, delicate hand while Nimitz crooned to him.

Honor watched for a moment, trying to imagine how the more stodgy of Grayson's steadholders would have reacted to the thought of an "animal" using their planet's highest, most solemn award for valor as a toy to distract a baby. No doubt the heart attacks would have come fast and thick, and she smiled slightly at the thought.

Then she looked back at Faith and James, and her smile turned a bit apologetic.

"Sorry. But now that Nimitz is keeping Raoul occupied, we can be about it.

She opened the book again, found her place, and began to read.

"'Behold, my boy.' The Phoenix opened the boxes and spread the ci

"'There we are, my boy,' said the Phoenix sadly. 'The traditional ci

"And with the third mention of the word 'pyre,' David's legs went weak and something seemed to catch in his throat. He remembered now where he had heard that word before. It was in his book of explorers, and it meant-it meant-

"'Phoenix,' he choked, "wh-wh-who is the pyre for?'

"'For myself,' said the Phoenix.

"'Phoenix!'"

Raoul gurgled happily, reaching for the shiny star, and Honor tasted Faith and James' rapt attention as they concentrated on the story. She'd always found it hard to read this final chapter without letting her voice fog up and waver just a bit around the edges.

That was harder than usual tonight.

She kept on reading the well-worn, beloved words, but under them were other thoughts, far removed from the peaceful quiet of this comforting, enfolding nursery.

Three weeks. Just three weeks since the carnage and destruction, the death. The Star Kingdom was still coming to grips with what had happened. No doubt, the Republic of Haven was doing the same, although Nouveau Paris would only have gotten the word ten days ago.

One hundred and thirty-nine Manticoran, Grayson, and Andermani superdreadnoughts and seven CLACs destroyed outright, and another seven superdreadnoughts and two CLACs so badly damaged they would never fight again. Twenty-seven battlecruisers, gone. Thirty-six heavy cruisers and two thousand eight hundred and six LACs, destroyed. The official death toll for the Alliance was 596,245, with another 3,512 wounded survivors. But for the Republic, it was even worse: two hundred and fifty-one superdreadnoughts destroyed, along with six CLACs, sixty-four battlecruisers, fifty-four heavy cruisers, and 4,612 LACs, and sixty-eight superdreadnoughts and over three thousand LACs captured. The Star Kingdom was still trying to compute the true, shattering depth of Lester Tourville's casualties, but the numbers they'd already come up with stood at almost 1.7 million dead, 6,602 wounded, and 379,732 prisoners. The number of dead was almost certain to climb, according to Patricia Givens. It might even top two million before it was all done.

No one in history had ever seen a battle like it, and it ought to have been decisive. The walls of battle of both the Alliance and the Republic had been gutted. Yet despite Haven's horrific losses, the loss ratio was actually in the Republic's favor in hulls, and hugely so in terms of loss of life. Had it not been for the existence of Apollo-deployed so far only aboard Honor's ships-at this moment, no power in the universe could have prevented the Republic of Haven's remaining SD(P)s from rolling right over the Manticoran home system. Yet Apollo did exist, and what Honor had done to Genevieve Chin's fleet served as lethal notice to Thomas Theisman that he could not possibly take Manticore while Eighth Fleet survived.

Yet that also meant Eighth Fleet couldn't possibly uncover Manticore. Fleet Admiral Honor Alexander-Harrington was now the commander of the Star Kingdom's Home Fleet, her ships as anchored to the capital system as if each of them had been welded to Hephaestus or Vulcan.

And Honor had emerged from the holocaust as the only surviving Allied fleet commander engaged. She was being given credit for the victory, lauded as "the greatest naval commander of her age" by the newsfaxes. A Manticoran public shocked to its very marrow by the audacity of the Havenite attack, terrified by how close Lester Tourville had come to success, had fastened on her as its heroine and savior.

Not Sebastian D'Orville, who'd given his life knowing he and all his people were going to die. If D'Orville hadn't decisively blunted the initial attack, it would have devastated everything in the Manticore System, no matter what Theodosia Kuzak or Honor had done, and he and his fleet had died where they stood to do it.

Not Theodosia Kuzak, whose Third Fleet had sailed straight into the jaws of death. Who'd done everything right, yet tripped the guillotine which would have destroyed Eighth Fleet, just as surely as it had destroyed the Third, if Honor had been in her place.

And not Alistair McKeon, who had died like so many thousands of others, doing what he always did-his duty. Protecting the star nation he loved, serving the Queen he honored. Obeying the orders of the admiral who'd sent him unknowingly to his death... and who'd never even had the chance to say goodbye.

The praise, the adulation, were as bitter on her tongue as the ashes of the Phoenix's pyre, and she felt the darkness outside this quiet nursery. The darkness of the future, with all its uncertainties, all its risks in the wake of such a savage display of combat power and such cruel losses to both combatants. The darkness of the new and terrible blood debt the Star Kingdom and the Republic had laid up between them. The hatred and the fear which had to come from such a cataclysmic encounter, with all its dark implications for where the war between them might go.