Ashes Of Victory

almost identical laughter behind them. 'You do realize, however,' Elizabeth went on, 'that whatever I may do or feel, the newsies are going to smother the 'faxes with headlines like `HARRINGTON MAKES NEW BREAKTHROUGH IN INTERSPECIES COMMUNICATION' or `SALAMANDER STRIKES AGAIN,' don't you?'

'Oh no they are not,' Honor said roundly. 'Not this time! And the reason they aren't, Your Majesty, is that in response to the earnest request of one of your loyal subjects, you are going to have Dr. Arif make her announcement from Mount Royal Palace, and Ariel is going to be the one who demonstrates his newfound loquaciousness for the newsies.'

'What?' Elizabeth shook her head quickly. 'I couldn't possibly take credit for something like this, Honor! Not when it's going to mean so much to everyone who's been adopted!'

'You won't. Dr. Arif and my mom will get the credit. I'm sure my name will be tucked away somewhere in the small print of Dr. Arif's first few monographs on the subject, but that will be then, when the initial excitement's worn off. All I want is for you to make the original announcement and buy me the time to get off-world before the newsies hit their stride. And frankly, Your Majesty, this is an excellent opportunity to make a little down payment on that debt you keep insisting the Star Kingdom owes me. I still think you're wrong about that, you understand, but I'm prepared to take shameless advantage of your wrongheadedness in this instance.'

'I see.' Elizabeth studied her for a long moment, then smiled slowly. 'Well given the size of the stick I've needed to beat you with to make you take anything from me, I don't see how I can possibly refuse if you feel so strongly about it that you're actually eager to call in a marker on it.'

'Good,' Honor said firmly, and started back towards the ballroom and her other guests.

'You know,' Elizabeth went on thoughtfully as the two of them walked down the path side by side, 'now that I think about it, there's something else I really ought to've done before this. Not for you, precisely, but possibly for Steadholder Harrington and all the other steadholders of Grayson.'

'I beg your pardon?' Honor looked down at her in puzzlement.

'Grayson has been our most important, most loyal, and most courageous ally since this war began,' the Queen said, and there was no laughter at all in her tone this time. 'They started with an awful lot less than Erewhon, and frankly, they've accomplished one hell of a lot more. And if, as I confidently expect, we begin getting back reports on the success of Operation Buttercup in the next couple of weeks, we'll owe an enormous amount of that success to Grayson, both for the R&D alleys they helped point us down and for the way their Navy is fighting alongside our own.'

She paused, and Honor nodded.

'I certainly can't argue with any of that, Your Majesty,' she said soberly, unable to hide the pride she felt in her adopted world. 'Graysons are a remarkable bunch.'

'They are, indeed,' Elizabeth agreed, 'and I'd appreciate it if you'd carry a message from me to Protector Benjamin when you return there.'

'A message?'

'Yes. Please inform the Protector that I would consider it a great honor if he would do me the courtesy of extending an invitation from the Sword of Grayson to the Crown of Manticore for a state visit to his planet.'

Someone — Honor thought it was Colonel Shemais — inhaled audibly behind them, and Honor herself almost stumbled in her surprise. The last state visit by a reigning Manticoran monarch to a foreign planet had been Roger III's visit to San Martin eight T-years before the Peeps took Trevor's Star. The Queen of Manticore was simply too busy, and too important to the Alliance, to go haring off on trips away from the security of her capital and the nerve center of her communications net.

'Are you certain about that, Your Majesty?' Honor asked. 'As Steadholder Harrington, I think it would be a wonderful idea. As Duchess Harrington, I have to wonder if you ought to be off Manticore that long. The voyage time alone will run to over a standard week for the round trip. And Grayson will go berserk over a visit from you. I'll be astonished it they're willing to turn you loose in less than another couple of weeks, so you're looking at at least the better part of a standard month away from the capital just when we'll all be finding out whether or not Admiral White Haven and Alice Truman can maintain their momentum after Buttercup's initial strikes.'

'I'm aware of all that,' Elizabeth replied. 'But I think the timing makes this an even better idea, not a worse one. What I'd really like is to come after the Conclave of Steadholders convenes. It would be logical for me to visit while the Keys are in session, and having me there, where Benjamin and I can issue joint communiques as reports of additional victories come in from Eighth Fleet, would let us wring the most PR mileage possible out of them. Having me on Grayson to issue those communiques would also let me personally and directly demonstrate the Star Kingdom's deep gratitude to our Grayson allies. For that matter, the indication of confidence — the fact that I'm willing to be away from Manticore during such crucial military operations — would be very reassuring to our own public opinion and all our allies.' She shook her head. 'No, Honor. If Benjamin will go along, I think this may be the best possible time to schedule something like this. Besides, I'd really like to meet him in person, and if I bring Allen and Uncle Anson along, we could deal with several pressing intergovernmental matters face-to-face and probably settle all of them in a fraction of the time we'd need to do the same thing through normal channels.'

'If you're sure it's what you want, I'd be delighted to carry the message.'

'Good.' Elizabeth tucked her hand back into her hostess' elbow and kicked one leg to make her skirt swirl. 'And now that we have that unimportant little detail settled, Duchess Harrington, let's you and I — and Miranda, of course — go show these Manticoran stuck-in-the-mud snobs what the true fashion- conscious are wearing this season!'

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

'Stand by for translation... now.'

Captain (Junior Grade) Jonathan Yerensky announced the return to normal-space, and Hamish Alexander grimaced as the familiar discomfort and disorientation lashed through him. That was one nice thing about being a senior admiral, he thought. By the time you acquired as much rank as he had, you no longer had to worry about impressing uppity juniors with your stoicism. If crossing the alpha wall made you feel like throwing up, you could go ahead and admit it... and nobody dared laugh.

He grinned at the reflection, but his eyes were already flicking over his repeater plot on Benjamin the Great's flag deck. At the moment, CIC was feeding him a schematic of the entire star system. Which didn't tell him a thing, of course. As soon as the scanner crews had anything besides stock projections of the system's astrography to show him, CIC would throw it on his plot.

He listened to a murmured litany of background reports without really hearing them. His staff had been with him for over three T-years. They might have spent all too much of that time floating in orbit around Trevor's Star, but it had given them plenty of time to train in exercises and sims. By now, they knew exactly what he needed to know immediately and what he expected them to handle on their own, and he knew he could rely on them to do just that.

Which freed Hamish Alexander to study his bland, uninformative plot and worry.

Well, uninformative from the enemy's side, he amended, for quite a few Allied icons burned on the display. First, there were the seventy-three superdreadnoughts and eleven dreadnoughts of his wall of battle. Then there were the traditional screening elements, already spreading out to assume missile defense positions. And last, there were the seventeen CLACs of Alice Truman's task group and their escorts — battlecruisers and heavy cruisers, with four attached dreadnoughts to give them a little extra weight — astern of the main formation. A blizzard of diamond chips erupted outward from the CLACs as he watched, and he smiled grimly as they began to shake down into formation even as they accelerated ahead of the main body. CIC had a tight lock on them when they launched, but their EW was already on-line, and within minutes even Benjamin the Great's sensors began to lose them.

A second blizzard, almost as dense, sped outward at accelerations even a LAC could never hope to match, and White Haven tipped back his command chair as the FTL-capable recon drones darted in-system.