Ashes Of Victory

coffee table to one side of his desk. 'The Navy's tried to make it that, anyway, and it's certainly the biggest. But that can be both a plus and a minus, since BuMed clearly hates to admit that no one can be the best there is at everything. I suspect they probably also feel just a little piqued with themselves for losing your father to civilian practice. Still, once they calm down, they'll realize only a lunatic would fail to avail themselves of his expertise if it was available.'

There was a strange undertone to his emotions, and Honor cocked her head as she sank into the indicated chair with Nimitz while Caparelli seated himself facing her.

'Excuse me, Sir Thomas, but that sounded rather like a personal observation.'

'Because it was.' The First Space Lord smiled. 'Your father was Chief of Neurosurgery at Bassingford after that little misadventure of mine in Silesia, and he did a far better job of reassembling all my bits and pieces than anyone expected. He cut way down on the amount of regen I had to survive along the way, and I rather doubt that he's gotten anything but better since.' He shook his head firmly. 'You go right ahead and ignore anyone at Bassingford who tries to talk you into letting them do the work, Your Grace. They're good, but `good' is no substitute for the best there is.'

'Why, thank you, Sir Thomas. I never knew Daddy was one of your physicians, but I'll certainly tell him what you just said. I'm sure it will mean a great deal to him.'

'It's no more than the truth. And no more than what I said to him at the time, for that matter,' Caparelli said with a chuckle. 'Of course, I imagine people in his line of work hear a lot of that sort of thing from the patients whose lives they put back together.'

He leaned back in his chair, eyes focused on something Honor couldn't see for several seconds, then shook himself.

'But I didn't ask you to visit me to talk about that, Your Grace,' he said more briskly. 'Or, at least, not to talk about it beyond being certain you've been cleared to return to duty. What I actually wanted was to offer you a job. Two of them, really.'

'Two jobs, Sir Thomas?'

'Yes. Well, there was one other point I wanted to address, but we can get to that later. First, I'd like to tell you what I had in mind for letting us get the most good we can out of you while you're stuck here in the Star Kingdom anyway.'

He leaned still further back, crossed his legs, and interlaced his fingers across his raised knee, and Honor could feel the intensity of his thoughts. She was rather surprised by some of what she sensed, for Caparelli had never had a reputation as a thinker. No one had ever accused him of stupidity, but he'd always had the sort of direct, shortest-distance-between-two-points, linear approach that went through obstacles, generally rather forcefully, rather than around them. It was a personality which went well with his weight-lifter's torso and wrestler's arms, but there had always been those who felt he was just a little short of... finesse for a flag officer of his seniority.

Now, as she sampled his emotions and as he marshaled his thoughts, she knew his critics had been wrong. It was possible he'd changed since becoming First Space Lord and finding himself responsible for directing the Star Kingdom's and, for all intents and purposes, the entire Manticoran Alliance's combat operations, but she felt very little of the bull in a china shop he was supposed to be. He might not be a supporter of an indirect approach to many problems, and he would never, she suspected, be the intellectual equal of someone like Hamish Alexander. But there was an almost frightening discipline behind his dark eyes, and a toughness and tenacity — an unwavering determination — which she suddenly realized might just make him a perfect choice for his present position.

'What I had in mind, Your Grace,' he began after a moment, 'was to use you at Saganami Island. I realize that's not very conveniently placed for access to your father's hospital on Sphinx, but it's only a few hours away, and we would, of course, make Navy transport available and coordinate your schedule around your treatment's timetable.'

He paused, looking at her questioningly, and she twitched a small shrug while she stroked Nimitz's ears.

'I feel sure we could work around that, Sir Thomas. Daddy may be a civilian now, but he was an officer for twenty-odd T-years. He's well aware of how even `limited duty' can complicate a course of treatment, and he's already told me he'll do everything he can to eliminate scheduling conflicts. For that matter, he and Doctor Heinrich, one of his colleagues here on Manticore, have already discussed the possibility of his using Doctor Heinrich's facilities rather than my shuttling back and forth between here and Sphinx.'

'That would be an excellent arrangement from the Service's viewpoint,' Caparelli said enthusiastically. 'At the same time, your health and recovery come first. If it turns out that you need to return to Sphinx, even full time, until you're fit to return to full, active duty, I would expect you to tell us. I trust you understand that.'

'Of course I do, Sir,' Honor replied, and to her surprise, he snorted.

'Easy for you to say, Your Grace, but I've talked with several of your ex-COs, including Mark Sarnow and Earl White Haven. Even Yancey Parks. And every one of them warned me that I'd have to have someone watch over you with a club if I really expected you to put your health above what you fondly conceive to be your duty!'

'That's a bit of an overstatement, Sir.' Honor felt her right cheek heat and shook her head. 'I'm the daughter of two physicians. Whatever anyone else may think, I'm not foolish enough to ignore doctor's orders.'

'That isn't exactly what Surgeon Captain Montoya told me,' Caparelli observed with what the uncharitable might have called a grin, and she felt his fresh amusement as her blush darkened. 'But that's neither here nor there... as long as I have your word that you will inform us if you need additional down time for medical reasons?'

'You do, Sir,' she said, just a bit stiffly, and he nodded.

'Good! In that case, let me explain what Admiral Cortez and I have in mind.'

Despite herself, Honor's eyebrow quirked at that. Sir Lucien Cortez was Fifth Space Lord, in charge of the Bureau of Personnel. In many respects, his was the hardest Navy job of all, for it was his responsibility to manage the Service's enormous manpower demands, and he'd shown a positive genius for making the available supply of bodies stretch. As BuPers' CO, the Naval Academy on Saganami Island fell within his sphere for rather obvious reasons, but she was surprised that he'd gotten personally involved in deciding how the Academy might best make use of a simple commodore. But her surprise passed quickly, because, of course, she wasn't a 'simple commodore' anymore, whether she liked it or not.

'As you know,' Caparelli went on, 'we've been steadily increasing the size of the Saganami student body since the war began, but I doubt that anyone who hasn't spent some time there could fully realize how much its composition has changed. A bit less than half our total midshipmen are now from out-kingdom, from various Allied navies, and probably thirty percent of those allied personnel are Graysons. We've graduated well over nine thousand Grayson officers since Protector Benjamin joined the Alliance.'

'I knew the number was high, Sir, but I hadn't realized it was quite that high.'

'Few people do.' Caparelli shrugged. 'On the other hand, there were about eighty-five hundred in our last graduating class, and eleven hundred of them were Graysons. In addition, we've accelerated the curriculum to run each form through in just three T-years... and this year's first form will have well over eleven thousand in it.'

Both Honor's eyes widened. There'd been only two hundred and forty-one in her own graduating class... but that had been thirty-five T-years ago. She'd known the Academy had expanded steadily over most of those three and a half decades, and that its expansion had become explosive in the last ten or eleven T-years, but still—

'I never imagined we were turning out that many ensigns every year,' she murmured, and Caparelli shrugged again.

'I wish the number were twice as high, Your Grace,' he said bluntly. 'But one of the core advantages which have let us take the war to the Peeps despite the numerical odds has been the difference in our officer corps' training and traditions. We're not about to throw that edge away, which means we can't cut the training time any shorter than we already have. We've called up a lot of reservists, and we're running even more mustangs through the Fleet OCS program, of course, but that's not quite the same. Most of the reservists require at least three or four months of refresher training to blow the rust off, but they already have the basic skills. And the mustangs are all experienced enlisted or noncoms. We've adjusted our criteria a bit to reflect the realities of our manpower requirements, and we make some exceptions in the cases of truly outstanding candidates, but on average, they've