Ashes Of Victory hh-9 Page 9

"That doesn't really matter, Wanda." Pierre sighed. "What matters are the consequences."

  "I think our best bet is to be as cautious as we can without completely clamming up, Sir," Boardman said. "There's no point in our denying, to the Sollies, at least, that something happened at Cerberus and that at least some prisoners apparently managed to escape. At the same time, we can say, honestly, that we haven't yet heard back from the forces we'd already dispatched to Cerberus in response to concerns previously raised by StateSec personnel. That will indicate that we were as well informed as possible, given the communications lag, before Huertes came to us. And it will also buy us a little more time. We'll obviously have to ascertain the facts for ourselves before we can offer any comment, and we can respectfully decline to engage in useless speculation until we have ascertained the facts."

  "And then?" Saint-Just prodded.

  "Sir, it will depend on what the facts are, how bad they are, and how we want to approach them," Boardman said frankly. "If nothing else, however, I feel confident Huertes will have dropped the other shoe by then. Or, for that matter, we'll have direct reports from our own sources in Manticore. We can at least buy enough time for that to happen, and for us to decide on the best angle from which to spin the story."

  "And domestically?" Pierre asked.

  "Domestically, we can put whatever spin we like on it, Sir, at least in the short term. Whatever they may want to do for their home audiences, I doubt very much that any of the services is going to risk being tossed out of the Republic just to dispute Public Information's reportage locally. And if they try, we've got the mechanisms in place to stop them cold. In the short term. In the long term, at least a garbled version of the Manties' version is bound to leak out here at home, but that will take months at the very least. By the time it does get out, it will have lost a lot of its immediacy. I don't expect the greatest impact to be here at home, unless we really drop the ball. It's the consequences in the League that I worry about."

  "And me," McQueen said quietly. "It's largely the Solly tech transfers which have let us get within shouting distance of the Manties' naval hardware. If this story is going to jeopardize that technology pipeline, we could have a very serious problem."

  "Unless we finish the Manties off before it becomes `serious,' " Saint-Just observed with a wintery smile.

  "With all due respect, that isn't going to happen anytime soon," McQueen replied firmly. "Oh, it's always possible we'll get lucky or their morale will suddenly crack, but they've redeployed to cover their core areas in too much depth. We're punching away mainly at systems they took away from us, Oscar. If they let us hang onto the initiative, we'll wear them down eventually. That's the great weakness of a purely defensive strategy; it lets your opponent choose her time and place and achieve the sort of concentrations that grind you away. But we're still a long way from reaching any of the Alliance's vitals — except, of course, for what happened in Basilisk. Raids on places like Zanzibar and Alizon may have profound morale effects, but they don't really hurt the Manties' physical war-fighting capability very much, and now that they realize we're on the offensive, the systems where we really could hurt them, like Manticore, Grayson, Erewhon, and Grendlesbane, are far too heavily protected for us to break into without taking prohibitive losses."

  Saint-Just looked stubborn, and Pierre hid a sigh. Then he rubbed his nose again and squared his shoulders.

  "All right, Leonard. I don't like it, but I think you're right. Draft a statement for me on the basis you've suggested, then com Huertes and offer her an exclusive interview with me. I'll want to be briefed very carefully, and you'll inform her that certain areas will be off-limits for reasons of military security, but I want to come across as open and forthcoming. Maybe I can coax her into letting that other shoe fall... or bait her into trying to mousetrap me with it, at any rate. But what I really want is to remind her and her colleagues how valuable access to my office is. Maybe then they'll think two or three times before they do something that might piss us off enough to deny them that access.

  "In the meantime, Esther—" he turned to McQueen "—I want you to expedite operations. In particular, I want you to put Operation Scylla on-line as soon as possible. If we're going to take a black eye over Cerberus, then it's going to be up to you to win us some countervailing talking points by kicking some more Manticoran butt in the field."

  "Sir, as I told you yesterday, we—"

  "I know you're not ready yet," Pierre said just a bit impatiently. "I'm not asking for miracles, Esther. I said `expedite,' not charge off half-cocked. But you've demonstrated you can beat the Manties, and we need it done again as soon as you possibly can."

  He held her eyes, and his message was clear. He was willing to back her military judgment against Saint-Just's — mostly, at least, and for the moment — but he needed a miracle, and the sooner the better. And if he didn't get one, he might just rethink his faith in her... and his decision to restrain Saint-Just from purging her.

  "Understood, Citizen Chairman," she said, her tone resolute but not cocky. "If you want some Manticoran butt kicked, then we'll just have to kick it for you, won't we?"

  CHAPTER FIVE

  "So how does it feel to be alive again?"

  The question came out in a husky, almost furry-sounding contralto, and Honor's mouth quirked as she looked across from her place in the improbably comfortable, old-fashioned, unpowered armchair that seemed hopelessly out of place aboard a modern warship. HMS Edward Saganami's captain smirked insufferably back at her, white teeth flashing in a face barely a shade lighter than her space-black tunic, and Honor shook her head with a wryness that was no more than half amused.

  "Actually, it's a monumental pain in an awful lot of ways," she told her oldest friend, and Captain the Honorable Michelle Henke laughed. "Go ahead, laugh!" Honor told her. "You haven't had to deal with people who name superdreadnoughts after you — and refuse to change the name when it turns out you weren't quite dead yet after all!" She shuddered. "And that's not the worst of it, you know."

  "Oh?" Henke cocked her head. "I knew they'd named the Harrington after you, but I hadn't heard anything about their refusing to change the name."

  "Well, they have," Honor said grumpily, and rose to stalk around the spacious quarters the RMN's designers had provided for the brand-new heavy cruiser's lady and mistress after God. All of Saganami's personnel spaces were bigger on a per-crewman basis than those of older ships, but Henke's day cabin was as big as the captain's cabins of some battlecruisers. Which at least gave her plenty of room in which to pace.

  She set Nimitz on the back of the chair, and Samantha flowed up from where she'd perched on its arm to wrap her tail about him once more. Honor watched the two 'cats for a moment, grateful that the harsh, metallic-tasting bitterness of Nimitz's fear and sense of loss had retreated into something all three of them could handle, then looked back at Henke and began to pace with proper vigor.

  "I argued myself blue in the face, you know, but Benjamin says he can't overrule the military, the Office of Shipbuilding says it would confuse their records, Reverend Sullivan insists that the Chaplain's Corps blessed the ship under her original name and that it would offend the religious sensibilities of the Navy to change it now, and Matthews says it would offend the crews' belief that renaming a ship is bad luck. Every one of them is in on it, and they keep playing musical offices. Whenever I try to pin one of them down, he simply refers me — with exquisite courtesy, you understand — to one of the others. And I know they're all laughing in their beers over it!"

  Henke's grin seemed to split her face, and her throaty chuckle rippled with delight. She was one of the people who'd figured out the truth about Honor's link to Nimitz long ago, which lent a certain added entertainment to Honor's certainty about how much the highest Grayson leaders were enjoying themselves.

  "Well, at least the Admiralty agreed to back off from calling them the Harrington —class," she pointed out after a moment, and Honor nodded.<
br />
  "That's because the Star Kingdom has a slightly less low so-called sense of humor," she growled. "And," she added, "Caparelli and Cortez know I'd've resigned my commission if they hadn't gone back to designating them the Medusa —class. I only wish I thought I could get away with making the same threat stick against Matthews."

  She glowered, and Nimitz and Samantha bleeked in shared amusement as they tasted her emotions. She raised her head to shake a fist at them, but the living corner of her mouth twitched again, this time with true humor at the absurdity of her situation.

  "I think it's a sign of how much they care about you that a reactionary old batch of sticks is willing to give you such a hard time, actually," Henke observed. Honor shot her a sharp glance, and the other woman shook her head. "Oh, I know Benjamin is the cutting edge of what passes for liberalism on Grayson, Honor, and I respect him enormously, but let's face it. By Manticoran standards, the most liberal soul on the entire planet is a hopeless reactionary! And with all due respect, I don't think I could legitimately call either Reverend Sullivan or High Admiral Matthews liberals, even for Grayson. Mind you, I like them a bunch, and I admire them, and I don't feel particularly uncomfortable around them. In fact, I'll even admit they're both doing their level best to support Benjamin's reforms, but they grew up on pre-Alliance Grayson. Matthews has done an excellent job of adjusting to the notion of allowing foreign women into Grayson service, and an even better one of treating them with equality once they're there. But deep down inside, he and Sullivan — and even Benjamin, I suspect — are never really going to get over the notion that women need to be coddled and protected, and you know it. So if they're willing to give you a hard time, they must really, really like you a lot."

  She shrugged, and Honor blinked at her.

  "Do you even begin to realize how ridiculous that sounds? They respect women, and want to protect them, so the fact that they're all willing to drive me totally insane means they like me?"

  "Of course it does," Henke replied comfortably, "and you know it as well as I do."

  Honor gave her a very direct look, and she gazed back with an expression the perfect picture of innocence until Honor finally grinned in ironic acknowledgment.

  "I suppose I do," she admitted, but then her smile faded just a bit. "But that doesn't reduce the embarrassment quotient one bit. You know some Manticorans are going to think I signed off on keeping the name. And even if they weren't going to, I think it's about as pretentious as anything could possibly get. Oh—" she waved her hand as if brushing away gnats "—I suppose it made sense, in an embarrassing sort of way, to name a ship after a naval officer who was safely dead, but I'm not dead, darn it!"

  "Thank God," Henke said quietly, and all the laughter had gone out of her face. Honor turned quickly to face her as she felt the sudden darkness of her emotions, but then Henke shook herself and leaned back in her chair.

  "By the way," she said in a conversational tone, "there's something I've been meaning to say to you. Have you seen the HD of your funeral on Manticore?"

  "I've skimmed it," Honor said uncomfortably. "I can't stand to watch too much of that kind of thing, though. It's like seeing a really bad historical holodrama. You know, one of the `cast of thousands' things. And that doesn't even consider the crypt at King Michael's! I mean, I realize it was a state funeral, that the Alliance thought the Peeps had murdered me and that that had turned me into some sort of symbol, but still—"

  She shook her head, and Henke snorted.

  "There was some of that kind of calculation involved, I suppose," she allowed, "if not nearly as much as you probably think. But what I had in mind was my own humble participation in your cortege. You knew about that?"

  "Yes," Honor said softly, remembering the images of an iron-faced Michelle Henke, following the anachronistic caisson down King Roger I Boulevard at a slow march through the measured tap-tap-tap of a single drum with the naked blade of the Harrington Sword upright in her gloved hands and unshed tears shining in her eyes. "Yes, I knew about it," she said.

  "Well I just wanted to say this, Honor," Henke said quietly. "And I'll only say it once. But don't you ever do that to me again! Do you read me on that, Lady Harrington? I never want to go to your funeral again!"

  "I'll try to make a note of it," Honor said, striving almost successfully for levity. Henke held her gaze for a long, still moment, then nodded.

  "I suppose that will have to do, then," she said much more briskly, and leaned back in her own armchair. "But you were saying your friends back on Grayson have done something else to offend your fine, humble sensibilities?"

  "Darn right they have!" Honor took another turn about Henke's day cabin, the hem of her Grayson-style gown swirling about her ankles with the energy of her stride.

  "Stop stomping around my quarters, sit down, and tell me what it is, then," Henke commanded, pointing to the chair Honor had previously occupied.

  "Yes, Ma'am," Honor said meekly. She sat very precisely in the chair, chin high, feet planted close together, hand resting primly in her lap, leaned forward ever so slightly, and looked at her friend soulfully. "Is this better, Ma'am?" she asked earnestly.

  "Only if you want to be thumped," Henke growled. "And in your present condition, I might even be able to take you."

  "Ha!" Honor snorted with lordly disdain, then leaned back and crossed her legs.

  "Better. Now tell!"

  "Oh, all right," Honor sighed. "It's the statue."

  "The statue?" Henke repeated blankly.

  "Yes, the statue. Or maybe I should call it `The Statue'—you know, capital letters. Maybe with a little italics and an exclamation point or two."

  "You do realize I don't have even a clue what you're babbling about, don't you?"

  "Oh? Then I take it you haven't been down to Austin City since my recent untimely demise was reported?"

  "Except to ride the pinnace down to pick you up from the Palace, no," Henke replied in a mystified tone.

  "Ah, then you haven't been to Steadholders' Hall! That explains it."

  "Explains what, damn it?!"

  "Explains how you could have missed the modest little four-meter bronze statue of me, standing on top of an eight—meter — polished! — obsidian column, in the square at the very foot of the main stairs to the North Portico so that every single soul who ever walks through any of the Hall's public entrances will have to walk right past it at eye level."

  Even the ebullient Henke stared at her, stunned into silence, and Honor returned her goggle-eyed gaze calmly. Not that she'd felt the least bit calm when she first saw the thing. It had been another of Benjamin's little "surprises," although she believed him when he insisted the idea had been the Conclave of Steadholders', not his. He was simply the one who hadn't bothered to mention its existence to her before she found herself face-to-face — well, face-to-column, anyway — with the looming monstrosity.

  No, she made herself admit judiciously, calling it a "monstrosity" wasn't really fair. Her own taste had never run to heroic-scale bronzes, but she had to agree, in the intervals when she could stop gnashing her teeth, that the sculptor had actually done an excellent job. The moment he'd chosen to immortalize was the one in which she'd stood on the Conclave Chamber's floor, leaning on the Sword of State while she awaited the return of the servant Steadholder Burdette had sent to fetch the Burdette Sword, and it was obvious he'd studied the file footage of that horrible day with care. He had every detail right, even to the cut on her forehead, except for two things. One was Nimitz, who'd been sitting on her desk in the Chamber while she waited but had somehow been translocated from there to the statue's shoulder. That much, at least, she was willing to grant as legitimate artistic license, for if Nimitz hadn't been on her shoulder, he'd still been with her, and far more intimately than the sculptor could ever have guessed. But the other inaccuracy, the nobility and calm, focused tranquility he'd pasted onto her alloy face...That she had a problem with, for her own memories of that day, waiti
ng for the duel to the death with the treasonous Burdette, were only too clear in her own mind.

  She realized Henke was still staring at her in stupefaction and cocked her head with a quizzical expression. Several more seconds passed, and then Henke shook herself.

  "Four meters tall?" she demanded in hushed tones.

  "On top of an eight-meter column," Honor agreed. "It's really very imposing, I suppose... and when I saw it, I was ready to cut my own throat. At least then I really would be decently dead!"

  "My God!" Henke shook her head, then chuckled wickedly. "I always thought of you as tall myself, but twelve meters may be just a bit much even for you, Honor!"

  "Oh, very funny, Mike," Honor replied with awful dignity. "Very funny indeed. How would you like to walk past that... that thing every single time you attended the Keys?"

  "Wouldn't bother me a bit," Henke said. "After all, it's not a statue of me. Now, you on the other hand... I suppose you might find it just a little, ah, overwhelming."

  "To say the least," Honor muttered, and Henke chuckled again. There was a bit more sympathy in it this time, but her eyes still danced with wicked amusement as she pictured Honor's face when she'd first seen Benjamin IX's "surprise."

  "And they won't take it down?"

  "They won't," Honor confirmed grimly. "I told them I'd refuse to use the main entrance ever again if they left it there, and they said they were very sorry to hear it and pointed out that there's always been a private entrance for steadholders. I threatened to refuse to accept my Key back from Faith, and they told me I wasn't permitted to do that under Grayson law. I even threatened to have my armsmen sneak up on it some dark night and blow it to smithereens... and they told me it was fully insured and that the sculptor would be more than happy to recast it in case any accident befell it!"

  "Oh, dear." Henke seemed to be experiencing some difficulty keeping her voice level, and Honor reminded herself, firmly, that she had too few friends to go around killing every one of them who found her predicament hilarious. Especially, she acknowledged, since that seemed to include every single one of them.