Mission of Honor

For a moment, it didn't register. Then Honor's eyes widened, and she felt her head shaking in futile, instinctive rejection.

They sat in silence for several seconds until, finally, it was her turn to draw a breath.

'Wesley was out at Blackbird?' she said softly.

'Yes, My Lady. I'm sorry. He was there for a stupid, routine conference.' Yanakov shook his own head, his eyes bright with mingled sorrow and anger. 'Just one of those things. But I know how close the two of you were. That's why I wanted to tell you in person. And,' he managed an unhappy smile, 'to assure you that if you should happen to want the assignment, it's yours. After all, you're senior to me.'

'Not on a bet, Judah,' she replied almost instantly. 'I know how much Hamish hates being tied to the Admiralty, and I know how much Wesley hated having to give up a space-going command. I don't think I'd like it any more than either of them.' She shook her head again, much more firmly. 'They're not getting me off a flag deck that easily! Not now, especially.'

Her voice turned harsher on the last sentence, and Yanakov nodded.

'I was afraid that was what you'd say,' he admitted. 'I thought it might be worth a try, at least, though.'

'I'd do almost anything for you, Judah,' she told him. 'Almost anything.'

Yanakov chuckled. It sounded a bit odd—perhaps because both of them had heard so few chuckles in the last few weeks—but it also sounded remarkably natural. As if they might actually get used to hearing it again, sometime. Then he stood and extended his hand again.

'I'm afraid they want me home in a hurry, My Lady. I'm headed back aboard the same dispatch boat and it's scheduled to break Manticore orbit in less than two hours. So I'm afraid I have to say goodbye now.'

'Of course.'

Honor stood, but instead of taking his hand, she walked around the deck and stood facing him for perhaps two seconds. Then she put her arms around him and hugged him tightly.

She felt him stiffen instinctively, even after all these years. Which, she supposed, showed you could take the boy out of Grayson, but you couldn't take the Grayson out of the boy. But then his automatic response to being touched so intimately by a woman who was neither his wife nor his mother or sister disappeared, and he hugged her back. A bit tentatively, perhaps, but firmly.

A moment later, she stepped back, both hands on his shoulders, and smiled at him.

'I'm going to miss Wesley,' she told him softly. 'We're both going to miss a lot of people. And I know you don't really want the job, Judah. But I think Benjamin made the right pick.'

'I hope so, My Lady. But when I think about the monumental mess we've got to clean up . . . .' He shook his head.

'I know. But you and I have done that before, haven't we?'

He nodded again, remembering the horrific damage he'd helped her put right after they'd beaten off Operation Stalking Horse's assault on his home star system.

'Well, then,' she said, and squeezed his shoulders. 'On your way, High Admiral. And'—she looked into his eyes once more—'God bless, Judah.'

* * *

'Ladies and Gentlemen, please find your seats,' Fleet Admiral Rajampet invited loudly and, Daoud al- Fanudahi thought, completely unnecessarily. As far as he could tell, not one of the astronomically senior flag officers in the briefing room was out of his or her seat, and he found Rajampet's instruction symptomatic. The Navy had been spending quite a bit of time passing lots of other totally unnecessary orders back and forth, after all. When it hadn't been too busy either panicking, at least. Or, even worse, posturing.

He wasn't absolutely certain which of the latter this particular meeting was going to do, but he had a bad feeling about it.

He himself, along with Irene Teague, was seated well back from the main conference table, as befitted their monumentally junior rank. And that, too, he found symptomatic. They were probably the only two people in the entire room who actually had a clue what was going on, so of course they were seated as far from the decision-makers as the physical limits of the briefing room permitted.

You know , he told himself a bit severely, this tendency of yours to perpetually look on the dark side of things may be one of the reasons certain of your superiors think of you as an incurable pessimist—not to mention just a bitof an alarmist .

Maybe it is , another corner of his mind replied, but the real reason is that this pack of idiots doesn't want to face the fact that they've gotten their collective asses in a crack—and all the rest of the League along with them—because none of them have the least idea what they're up against. They're not about to admit that by actually askingquestions that might give them a glimmer of reality. Especially not when asking would only prove how monumentally they screwed up by not asking sooner!

Rajampet's unnecessary order had at least one beneficial consequence; it brought the whispered side conversations to an abrupt halt. The CNO looked around the other officers, eyes bright in their nest of wrinkles, and let the silence linger for a moment, then cleared his throat.

'I'm sure none of us need to recapitulate the events of the last several weeks,' he began. 'Obviously, all of us are dismayed by what happened to Admiral Crandall's task force at Spindle. And I think it would be fair to say,' he continued in a deliberately judicious, soberly thoughtful tone, 'that the efficacy of the Manticoran Navy's weapons has come as a most unpleasant surprise to all of us.'

He allowed himself to glance—briefly—at Karl-Heinz Thimбr and Cheng Hai-shwun. Other eyes followed his, but Thimбr and Cheng had obviously realized this, or something like it, had to be coming. They sat there calmly, apparently oblivious to the looks coming their way. The bureacratic infighter's number one rule, ''Never let them see your fear,' was well known to everyone around the table, but the two men ostensibly responsible for the SLN's intelligence arms were giving a bravura demonstration of it, and with very little sign of strain. Which, al-Fanudahi reflected, said a great deal about how highly placed their various relatives and patrons actually were.

'It would appear, however, that we aren't the only ones the Manties have pissed off,' Rajampet continued after a second. 'Intelligence is still working on determining exactly who was responsible for the attack on their home system. I'm sure we'll see some progress on that front quite soon.'

Precisely what prompted that confidence on his part eluded Daoud al-Fanudahi, who happened to be the person who was supposed to be doing the progressing and who still didn't have even a glimmer of proof, whatever he might know instinctively had to be the truth.

'In the meantime, however, we have to consider how to respond to the Manties' blatant imperialism and arrogance,' the CNO went on in that same, measured tone. 'I don't believe there can be much doubt—especially in light of the Manties' decision to close all wormholes under their control to Solarian shipping—that what we're really looking at here on their part is a comprehensive strategy which they've been contemplating for some time. On the one hand, they've revealed their new weapons' capabilities; on the other, they're threatening our trade and economic life's blood. Both of those, obviously, are pointed suggestions that the League should stay out of their way instead of objecting to their expansionism in and beyond the Talbott Cluster.'

Lord, don't any of these idiots read our reports? al- Fanudahi wondered behind an impassive face. 'Imperialism'? 'Expansionism'? I don't know what the Manties are up to in Silesia, but that's the last thing that was on their mind when they got involved in Talbott! But do any of our lords and masters want to hear about that? Of course not! After all, it would never do to dispute Kolokoltsov's and Abruzzi's version of reality, would it?

'Given that attitude on their part,' Rajampet said, 'it's unlikely they'll be inclined to respond favorably to the government's diplomatic initiatives. At the same time, however, they have to be reeling from what's happened to them. Let's face it, Ladies and Gentlemen—we got reamed at Spindle. But compared to what's happened to the Manties' home system, what happened to Admiral Crandall's task force was only a minor inconvenience, as far as the Navy and the League are concerned. Even with her entire force off the table, we still have over two thousand of the wall in full commission, another three hundred in refit or overhaul status, and better than eight thousand in reserve. Task Force 496 represented less than half of one percent of our total wall of battle and our support structure is completely unscathed, whereas the Manties have just had their entire industrial base blown out from