At All Costs Read online

  She shrugged, and Honor was forced to concede her point. Still....

  "As you say, Faith is a perfectly acceptable heir," she said. "And while I suppose I ought to be thinking in dynastic terms, it doesn't really come naturally to me."

  "I hate to say it, Honor, but Cat may have a point from another perspective, as well," Benjamin said slowly. "Oh, there's no legal reason you need to produce an heir of your own body right this minute. Especially with, as you say, Faith acknowledged as your heir by everyone. But you're a prolong recipient. You say you're not used to thinking in dynastic terms, but what happens if you wait another twenty or thirty years and then have a child? Under Grayson law, that child would automatically supplant Faith, whatever special provisions the Conclave may have made in her favor when everyone thought you were dead. So there's Faith... who's spent thirty or forty years thinking of herself as the Harrington Heir Apparent and suddenly finds her nose put out of joint by a brand new infant nephew or niece."

  Honor looked at him, and he sighed.

  "I know Faith is a wonderful child and she loves you dearly, Honor. But this is Grayson. We've seen a thousand years of those dynastic politics you don't think in terms of, and there have been some really ugly incidents. And the ugliest ones of all have usually happened because the people they happened to were so sure they couldn't arise in their families. Besides, even if no overt problem crops up, would it really be fair to Faith to yank the succession out from under her like that? Unless you produce a child fairly soon, she's got to grow up thinking of herself as Miss Harrington, with all the trappings and importance of the job. You didn't do that, but she's in a totally different position, and it's going to be fairly central to her self-image, you know."

  "Maybe so, but-"

  "No buts, Honor. Not on this one," Benjamin said gently. "It will be. It has to be. I know it was a lot harder for Michael than he ever let on, and he never wanted the Protector's job in the first place. But he was in exactly the same position Faith is, and when Bernard Raoul came along and pushed him out of the succession, he was almost... lost for a while. He needed to redefine who he was and what he was doing with his life when he was suddenly no longer Lord Mayhew." The Protector shook his head. "I was discussing this with Howard just last month, and he said-"

  It was Benjamin's turn to break off suddenly as Honor's face tightened in remembered pain.

  "I'm sorry," he said after a moment, even more gently. "And I don't mean to be exerting any unfair pressure. But he was concerned about it. He loves Faith almost as much as he loves you, and he was worried about how she'd react. And," he smiled crookedly, "I think he was sort of hoping he'd have a chance to see your child."

  "Benjamin, I" Honor blinked rapidly, and Nimitz crooned soothingly in her ear.

  "Don't," Benjamin said, and shook his head. "We don't need to be discussing this right now, and you don't need me reminding you that we're losing him. I wouldn't have brought it up at all, but I think maybe Cat was right to at least put the thought before you. Now we've done that, and you can think about it later. And as far as Howard himself is concerned, of course he loves you. He told me once that he thought of you very much as his own daughter."

  "I'm going to miss him so much," she said sadly.

  "Of course you are. So am I, you know," Benjamin reminded her with a bittersweet smile. "I've known him literally all my life. He's been an extra uncle, one I've loved almost as much as he sometimes exasperated me."

  "And one whose death is going to make a hole in the Conclave," Katherine observed sadly.

  "I've discussed my choice for his successor with the Standing Committee and the Chair of the Administration Committee," Honor said. She inhaled deeply, deliberately and gratefully turning to the change in subject. "I think it should go as smoothly as anything could, under the circumstances."

  "And you're not supposed to discuss it with me, My Lady Steadholder," Benjamin pointed out.

  "And I'm not supposed to discuss it with you," Honor conceded. "Which is, if you don't mind my saying so, one of the stupider of Grayson's innumerable traditions."

  "I suppose when you spend as long assembling them as we have, one or two suboptimal selections may make it through the filtering process." Benjamin shrugged. "Overall, they work pretty well for us, though. And the fact that you're not allowed to discuss it with me doesn't mean my various spies and agents don't know exactly who you're planning to nominate. Or that I don't heartily approve of your selection, for that matter."

  "Well, since we've gotten all of that out of the way without ever transgressing, perhaps we could discuss some of the things we are allowed to talk to Honor about," Katherine suggested.

  "Such as?" Her husband raised his eyebrows at her, and she gave him an exasperated look.

  "Such as what the Admiralty is going to have her doing, for starters," she said.

  "Oh. That."

  Benjamin glanced at his elder daughters. Jeanette favored Elaine at least as strongly as Rachel favored Katherine, with her biological mother's fair coloring and blue eyes. At the moment, both young women seemed torn between attempting to appear invisible or mature and insightful, whichever was more likely to let them go on sitting exactly where they were.

  "Sword rules apply, girls," he said. Both of them nodded solemnly, and he turned back to Honor. "What are they going to have you doing?"

  "I can't really tell you for certain yet," Honor replied, watching the young women from the corner of one eye. Rachel had reached up to caress Hipper's ears again, and her expression was intent. Understandably, since she would be entering the Royal Manticoran Navy's Saganami Island academy in less than a month. Honor had delivered the traditional "Last View" address to the senior class two weeks before; the other forms' abbreviated wartime summer leaves would be up in ten days, and Rachel would be returning to Manticore aboard the Paul Tankersley to report to the newest class of snotties. Jeanette looked curious and sober, but she'd never been the navy-mad tomboy Rachel had.

  "I'm not trying to be mysterious," Honor continued. "Things have been so crazy ever since I got back from Sidemore that it seems the Admiralty's strategic thinking changes on an almost daily basis. The numbers ONI is coming up with keep getting worse, not better, and they keep whittling away at what was supposed to be Eighth Fleet's order of battle." She shrugged with an alum-tart smile. "I suppose it's almost a tradition now that building up anything called 'Eighth Fleet' won't go smoothly."

  "And you say we have some stupid traditions," Benjamin snorted.

  "Well, it's not as if anyone wants it to be that way, Benjamin. But after the hammering we took in the opening phase, nobody's about to uncover Manticore, Grayson, or Trevor's Star. So anything Eighth Fleet gets is going to be what's left over after our minimum security requirements for those systems have been met. Which isn't going to be a lot. Not right at first, anyway. And to be totally fair, Eighth Fleet doesn't really exist yet. I'm Commanding Officer (Designate), Eighth Fleet. My staff and fleet HQ haven't even been formally activated yet."

  "I know. And, to be honest, I was actually a bit surprised they made the announcement that Eighth Fleet would be reactivated as publicly as they did. Relieved, but surprised." Benjamin waved her into an armchair beside the hearth and seated himself facing her. His wives went over and sat beside their daughters, and Carson Clinkscales walked across to stand beside Honor's chair.

  "I'm pleased at the evidence that the Admiralty is thinking in offensive terms," the Protector continued. "After the pounding Theisman gave us, it must have been dreadfully tempting to revert to a totally defensive stance."

  "I'm sure it would have been for a lot of people," Honor said. "Not for Thomas Caparelli and Hamish Alexander, though." She shook her head again. "The difference between them and the Janacek Admiralty is like the difference between day and night."

  "Which, if you'll forgive me, My Lady," Lieutenant Commander Clinkscales said, "may be because they can find their posteriors without approach radar."
/>   "I think you could safely describe them as possessing that degree of native ability, Carson," she observed, and he blushed slightly.

  "Sorry, My Lady," he said after a moment. "What I meant was that it was because Janacek and Chakrabarti couldn't find their backsides."

  "Actually, that's a bit unfair to Chakrabarti, I think," Honor said. "But Janacek-and those idiots Jurgensen and Draskovic!" Her mouth tightened, and she shook her head. "In their cases, you certainly have a point. But my point was that Sir Thomas-and Earl White Haven-have been in this position before. They're not about to panic, and they know we're going to have to take the fight to the other side as soon and as hard as we can. We can't afford to leave the initiative completely in Thomas Theisman's hands. If we do that, he'll hand us our head within the next six months. At the outside, a T-year."

  "Is it really that bad, My Lady?" Clinkscales asked quietly.

  "Almost certainly," she replied, her soprano voice quiet against the background crackle of the flaming logs. "It's starting to look very much as if Admiral Givens' initial estimates may actually have been low."

  "Low?" Benjamin frowned at her.

  "I know. I think everyone-myself included-felt she was being too pessimistic in her original assumptions. It just didn't seem possible that the Republic could really have built a fleet the size of the one she was projecting. But that was because we all insisted on thinking in terms of ships built since Theisman overthrew Saint-Just."

  "Well, of course we did. They couldn't possibly have had the technology to build the new types any sooner than that. Certainly not before Hamish hit them with Buttercup."

  Honor's expression didn't flicker as Benjamin used the current First Lord of Admiralty's given name, but she was careful not to use it herself.

  "No, they couldn't have," she agreed. "And that's the reason Earl White Haven, for one, was convinced Admiral Givens' estimates were too high. Unfortunately, he's had to change his mind in the last couple of weeks. I don't have the details yet, but according to his last letter, she's dug up some data that went back to before Jurgensen took over from her at ONI. Some anomalies her own analysts had turned up and been unable to explain at the time. Apparently, they suggest that the Peeps might have been stockpiling components even before Saint-Just was killed."

  "Stockpiling? For that long?" Benjamin looked skeptical, and she shrugged.

  "I haven't seen the data or the analysis myself, Benjamin. And I may have it wrong. But that was my impression from the Earl's letter when I viewed it last night. I'm sure he'll have more to say to me about it when I get back to Manticore."

  "I'm sure he will," Benjamin said slowly, frowning in manifest thought.

  "And if Admiral Givens is right, My Lady?" Clinckscales asked quietly.

  "If Admiral Given is right, then we're looking at a serious numerical disadvantage," Honor said soberly. "And one which is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. The question, of course," she smiled without a trace of humor, "is whether or not the numbers are bad enough to offset our quality. And at the moment, considering the command team they've managed to put together, that's a very pointed question, indeed.

  Chapter Two

  "Ah, there you are, Aldona! Come in. Find a seat."

  Aldona Anisimovna nodded to her host with carefully metered deference and obeyed the smiling order. And it was an order, however pleasantly given. Albrecht Detweiler was, quite possibly, the wealthiest and most powerful single individual in the explored galaxy. There were entire star nations, and not just those full of neobarbs or stuck off in the back of beyond in the Shell, worth less than he was. Quite a few of them, in fact.

  The door closed silently behind her. Despite the presence of over a dozen people, the combination office and library radiated a sense of spaciousness. As well it should, even if barely five percent of the population of Mesa even knew it existed. The percentage of people off Mesa who knew about it was, she devoutly hoped, considerably smaller than that.

  It was also by far the most luxuriously and beautifully furnished "office" she'd ever been in, which was saying quite a lot for a full board member of Manpower Incorporated. The superb light sculptures in their tailored niches; the walls paneled in the exotic woods of at least a dozen different planets; the old-fashioned, priceless oil and watercolor paintings, some of them dating back all the way to pre-space days on Old Earth; the antique printed books; and the spectacular view across the Mendel Ocean's sugar-white beaches and sparkling blue water all came together to form an inevitably appropriate frame for the power and purpose concentrated in this meeting.

  "I believe we're all here now," Detweiler observed as Anisimovna settled into one of the powered float chairs facing his desk, and the side conversations ended quickly. He smiled again and pressed a button on his desk panel, and the panoramic ocean view disappeared beyond an abruptly opaque wall of windows as he brought up the security systems which made it impossible for any surveillance device to snoop upon this particular meeting.

  "I'm sure most of you have at least an idea of why I asked you to drop by the island today," Detweiler said, his smile fading into a purposeful expression. "Just in case I've overestimated the IQ of anyone present, however, the immediate cause for this little get-together is the recent plebiscite in the Talbott Cluster."

  Faces tightened, and one could almost feel the combination of anger, tension, and-whether any of them would have admitted it or not-fear his words evoked. Detweiler certainly felt it, and he showed his teeth in what definitely was not another smile.

  "I realize that for most Sollies, Manticore and Haven might as well be Shangri-La or Never-Neverland. They're off somewhere on the edge of the explored universe, full of belligerent neobarbs so primitive and bigoted they spend all their time killing one another. That, unfortunately, falls somewhat short of the truth, as all of us are rather painfully aware. What some of you may not realize, is that in many ways the situation is getting worse, not better, from our perspective."

  He tipped back in his own chair and surveyed his guests. One or two of them looked a bit puzzled, as if they couldn't quite see why the situation was any worse than it had always been. After all, both the Star Kingdom of Manticore and the Republic of Haven had been the openly avowed mortal enemies of Manpower Incorporated and the genetic slave trade literally for centuries. From the viewpoint of Manpower and the Mesa System generally, the last twenty T-years of warfare between the Star Kingdom amd the Republic had been excellent news. At least it had distracted both of them, to greater or lesser extent, from their interference in Manpower's affairs.

  "Aldona," he said after a moment, "suppose you and Isabel tell us about what happened at Congo."

  "Certainly, Albrecht," Anisimovna said. She was rather pleased her voice sounded so calm and composed. She also managed to avoid breaking out into a nervous sweat, thanks to the last twenty or so generations of genetic modifications to the Anisimov genome.

  "As you know, Albrecht," she began briskly, trying not to think about how many such reports had ended... badly in this office, "and as some of the other members of the Board and Council are aware, Congo was rather central to certain plans we had for the Manties and Haven. The wormhole junction there offered additional possibilities in that respect, as well as the more obvious, purely commercial opportunities. After discussions here on Mesa, it was decided that the time to put our contingency plans into effect was rapidly approaching, and-"

  "Excuse me, Aldona," Jerome Sandusky interrupted. He looked at her, but most of his attention was actually focused on Detweiler. "We're all aware, in general terms, at least, of what happened at Tiberian and Congo. In my own case, the fact that Congo's been added to my bailiwick in Haven means I've become reasonably familiar with previous operations there. But what I'm not quite clear on is exactly why it seemed necessary or desirable to put ourselves into a position where something like that could happen in the first place."

  "The decision was made by the Strategy Committee, Jerome,
" Anisimovna said coolly, and he flushed ever so slightly. "As a member of the Committee," which you aren't, she did not say aloud, "I agreed with the logic, but as you know, the Committee's discussions are privileged."

  "In this instance, however, Aldona," Detweiler said easily, "I believe we might make an exception. This is something all of us need to be brought fully up to speed on, so go ahead and answer Jerome's question for all of us." She looked at him, and he nodded. "My authority," he added.

  "Very well, Albrecht." Anisimovna returned her attention to Sandusky. She spent a moment or two organizing her thoughts, then leaned slightly forward in her chair, gray eyes intent.

  "For most of the last two decades, the Manties and the Peeps have been shooting at each other," she began. "From our perspective, that's been a good thing in many ways. They've always hated us, and we've never been able to penetrate their military or political establishments the way we have the League or most other star nations. We've managed to... enlist certain individual bureaucrats, diplomats, officers, and politicians, but never in sufficient numbers to undermine their dogged devotion to the Cherwell Convention."