Ashes Of Victory

out through Manticore or somebody carries the news elsewhere through a regular hyper trip. Which means no one on the outside is going to hear a thing about it for at least several weeks, and probably a lot longer than that, given the traffic control we've clamped down locally. Especially since McQueen sprang her damned offensives.'

He frowned.

'One thing that did was make it very plain that we've been lax in our security arrangements. They clearly had hellishly good intelligence for most of their ops, and they had to have gotten it someway. `Neutral shipping' in the Junction probably explains a good bit of it, at least in the case of Basilisk and Trevor's Star. Plain old visual examination can tell them a lot about what they see, and the Government has decided that we simply can't restrict Junction traffic patterns much further. That's the real reason we're cutting down on military Junction transits as much as we can, especially transits by new construction we don't want the Peeps to know about.'

He shrugged, in acceptance of orders from his civilian superiors, if not in actual agreement with them.

'Anyway, I'm confident we can at least keep the news from breaking until after Grayson's had an opportunity to decide how to handle it domestically. As for sending you the long way around, that's a consequence of the ship we're using, since it's part of that new construction we're keeping people from seeing. But that was Governor Kershaw's call, and while I'm sure you would have preferred a shorter voyage, it's certainly appropriate to send you home on the senior Grayson ship present. And even if it weren't, I'm not foolish enough to argue with a bunch of Graysons about it!'

He grinned at her expression, then sobered.

'In addition, your transit time will give Her Majesty and the Protector both some time to consider how they want to handle the official announcement before you actually arrive. And they're going to want to give it some very careful thought, I'm sure.' He shook his head. 'I can't even begin to imagine how it will all play out on the diplomatic front. You do appreciate what a monumental black eye you've just given the Peeps in general and State Security and Public Information in particular, don't you?'

'I have wiled away the occasional hour on the way here thinking about that,' Honor admitted, and it was White Haven's turn to smile at the wicked gleam in her eye. 'In fact, honesty compels me to admit that I've actually spent a bit of time here and there gloating over it,' she went on. 'Especially the bit about my execution.' The amusement in her eye vanished, replaced by a hard, dangerous light which would have made White Haven acutely uneasy if it had been directed at him. 'I've seen the imagery myself now, you know. It was in Farnese's memory.' She shivered involuntarily at the memory of her own brutal 'execution,' but the light in her eye never faded. 'I think I know exactly how my parents must have reacted to that. And Mac and Miranda.' Her jaw tightened for a moment. 'Whoever put that particular bit of sick, sadistic footage together has a lot to answer for, and knowing how hard Pierre and Saint-Just will shortly be looking for a scapegoat has afforded me considerable consolation over the past few weeks.'

'I'm sure it has,' White Haven agreed. 'And judging from even the brief report you've had time to give us so far, I imagine the consequences will actually go a lot further than that in the end. You do realize that you've just executed — you should pardon the expression — the largest mass prison break in the history of mankind, don't you? You got out — what? Four hundred thousand people?'

'Something close to that, once Cynthia Gonsalves gets here,' Honor said, and he nodded at the correction. Captain Cynthia Gonsalves, late of the Alto Verdan Navy, had left the Cerberus System well before Honor, but her transports were far slower than the warships and assault ships Honor had managed to secure. Which meant it would be weeks yet before the first wave of escapees actually arrived.

'Well, that has to be the largest number of POWs ever to escape in a single operation,' White Haven pointed out, 'and the sheer scale of the thing is almost unimportant beside where you managed to escape from. State Security will never recover from the blow to its reputation, and that doesn't even consider what's going to happen when people like Amos Parnell start talking to the newsies about who actually carried out the Harris Assassination—!'

The earl shrugged, and Honor nodded. No doubt Public Information would do its best to discredit anything the ex-Chief of Naval Operations of the People's Navy might say, but not even Public Information was going to able to shrug this one off, especially in the face of the files Honor's people had lifted from Camp Charon's own security records. She suspected that PubIn was going to have just a bit of a problem convincing people that the commandant of StateSec's most important prison hadn't known what he was talking about when he taunted Legislaturalist prisoners with the truth behind the Harris Assassination's civilian massacre. And once it truly registered that the Committee of Public Safety, organized to prevent the overthrow of the state by the 'traitorous' naval officers responsible for the coup attempt, was headed by the man who had in fact masterminded the entire operation, the effect on interstellar diplomacy was likely to be profound.

'As a matter of fact,' White Haven went on much more quietly, breaking into her train of thought, 'as delighted as I am to see you back on both a personal and a professional basis,' she felt his emotions shy away from the word 'personal,' but the intensity of his train of thought helped pull him past it, 'the effect on the Alliance's morale will probably be even more important, in the short term, at least. Frankly, Milady, we need some good news rather badly. Esther McQueen's managed to throw us firmly back onto the defensive for the first time since Third Yeltsin, and that's shaken the Alliance's morale seriously, especially among its civilians. Which means all the Allied governments are going to be absolutely delighted to see you.'

Honor shuddered. She knew he was right, yet she hated even to think about the media circus the news was bound to spawn. All she wanted to do whenever she contemplated it was to run far, far away and hide, but she couldn't. She had responsibilities she couldn't evade — even, she thought smolderingly, if he won't tell me just what sort of 'arrangements' they made on Grayson! And even if she hadn't had those responsibilities, she could see the propaganda value too clearly. She detested the idea of being turned into some kind of larger-than-life icon. She'd already had more than her fair taste of that, had to put up with more media intrusiveness than any individual should have to tolerate, and this was going to be infinitely worse.

But none of that mattered, except, perhaps, on a personal basis.

'I understand, My Lord,' she said. 'I hate it, and I'd do anything I could to avoid the media frenzy, but I understand.'

'I know you do, Milady,' he said. Very few people, perhaps, would have believed she truly loathed the very thought of the adulation soon to be channeled her way, but Hamish Alexander was one of those few, and she smiled gratefully at him.

He began to say something else, then stopped as a soft chime sounded. He leaned forward to look across her and out the view port beside her, and nodded in satisfaction.

'And here's your transport to Grayson, Milady,' he announced. Honor glanced at him for a moment, then turned to look out the port herself, and Nimitz pushed up to stand in her lap. He pressed his nose to the armorplast, then twitched his whiskers as he, too, saw the white mountain of battle steel drifting in the void, bejeweled with the green and white lights of an 'anchored' starship.

The superdreadnought was one of the largest ships Honor had ever seen. Possibly the largest warship, she reflected, her experienced eye estimating its tonnage from the relative size of the huge ship's weapons hatches and impeller nodes, although she supposed she might have seen larger merchant vessels. That was her first thought, but then she noted the odd, distinctive profile of the after hammerhead, and her eye narrowed in sudden recognition.

'That's a Medusa!' she said sharply.

'In a manner of speaking,' White Haven agreed. 'Actually, though, the Graysons built her, not us. It seems they got hold of the plans for the new class about the same time BuShips did back home... and they had a bit less deadwood and conservative stick-in-the-mud opposition to deal with.'

He added the last phrase in a dust-dry voice, and Honor turned back to the port to hide her expression as her mouth quirked uncontrollably. She remembered that shattering night in her library only too well for personal reasons, but she also recalled that one Hamish Alexander had been one of the conservative sticks-in-the-mud who'd opposed the initial concept of the hollow-cored, pod-armed missile SDs. She, on the other hand, had written the final recommendations which had led to the Medusa design's actual formulation as her last duty as a member of the Weapons Development Board.

'And have they been tested in action, My Lord?' she inquired after a moment, as soon as she felt she could keep her voice level.