Ashes Of Victory

'Cleanly,' he snarled, his cold eyes blazing for just an instant with raw fury, and he kicked the dead armsman savagely. 'Stinking bastard!' he hissed, his voice softer but even more malevolent.

'Come on!' the other man demanded. 'I can already hear sirens! We've gotta go now!'

'Then shut up and go, damn it!' the cold-eyed man barked, and jerked a furious nod down a side alley to where their getaway car waited. The other man didn't hesitate. He was off with the gesture, racing down the alley and already fumbling the keys from his pocket.

'Bastard!' the cold-eyed man hissed once more, then drew a deep breath and gazed down for one more moment at the bodies of his companions.

'This world is God's,' he told them, a man swearing a solemn oath, and then he, too, disappeared down the alley.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

'Welcome to Trevor's Star... finally, Dame Alice.' Hamish Alexander's word choice might have been more felicitous, but he smiled broadly as he reached out to shake the golden-haired officer's hand firmly. They stood in the boat bay of GNS Benjamin the Great, and Alice Truman, in rear admiral's uniform but wearing a vice admiral's collar stars, grinned back at him as she returned his handclasp with interest.

'It's good to be here, My Lord.'

'I'm glad you think so, because we've been waiting for you with what might be called bated breath,' Earl White Haven told her. She raised an eyebrow, and he laughed. 'Your arrival means we're about finished playing paper tiger for Barnett's benefit, and we've all been looking forward to that. Impatient as the public may be back home, I doubt they can even begin to match our impatience. For that matter, most folks back home probably don't even realize we were initially supposed to go after Barnett almost three full T-years ago!'

'Probably not,' Truman agreed. 'As a matter of fact, My Lord, it's hard for a lot of us in the Service to really realize how long you've been sitting out here. Maybe—' she smiled again, this time mirthlessly '—because McQueen's managed to make life so... interesting that we haven't really had much leisure to think about it.'

'Well, leisure is one thing Eighth Fleet's had altogether too much of,' White Haven said firmly, 'and I'm looking forward to making things interesting for McQueen for a change.'

He turned and gestured for Truman to accompany him, and the two of them followed Lieutenant Robards towards Benjamin's central lifts.

'I think we can confidently assume we'll manage at least that much, My Lord,' she said. 'I know my boys and girls are ready to hold up their end of it. I just hope ONI and the First Space Lord have figured McQueen's probable responses accurately.'

'Oh, I think they have.' White Haven waved her into the lift car ahead of him, then joined her while Robards punched the destination code into the panel. 'I've been more and more impressed with the First Space Lord's insight into the Peep operational posture, especially over the last few months,' he went on. 'Oh, he got caught out like the rest of us by the Basilisk raid, but between them, he and Pat Givens have predicted just about every major Peep move since then with surprising accuracy. And that little number he pulled off on the Grendelsbane approaches was nothing short of genius.' The earl shook his head. 'Even if they don't launch the sort of offensive down there that he's hoping for, he's certainly drawn them into a false position. They have to believe we're still not ready for a stand-up fight... and I'll guarantee they don't have a clue as to what Buttercup is about to do to them.'

'I hope you're right, My Lord,' Truman repeated. And, to be honest, she felt confident he was. Which was the reason she spent so much time and effort making herself stand back a bit from the general confidence. Someone had to watch out for the pseudogators lurking in the reeds to bite them all on the ass if Sir Thomas Caparelli — and Hamish Alexander — weren't right, and it looked like the job was hers.

And one reason I made it mine was because I know how green some of my people really are, she reminded herself grimly. I said we can hold up our end, and we can, but Lord what I'd've given for just three more weeks of training!

'Another reason I'm glad you're here now,' White Haven went on in a more serious tone, 'is that security on the entire Anzio project has held up much better than I ever expected it to. All my flag officers and most of my captains have received the stage one briefing, and there are lots of rumors floating about all the way down the line. But no one really knows anything, and people have been remarkably careful about when, where, and with whom they'll even discuss the rumors. Which is why I scheduled this conference on the very day of your arrival. I know it's rushing you a bit, but I really want my senior officers, at least, to hear about the new LACs from the horse's mouth, as it were, before the carriers actually begin arriving.'

'I understand, My Lord. And at least you said `from the horse's mouth,' rather than another portion of his anatomy.' She chuckled. 'Besides, I might as well admit I'd pretty much figured out that was what you had in mind when you invited me aboard. Which is why I brought this.' She raised her left hand, and the chain from her wrist to the briefcase it held glittered in the lift car's lights.

'And `this' is?' White Haven inquired politely.

' `This' is the official holo presentation my staff put together for Admiral Adcock and BuWeaps just after our last readiness tests, My Lord. I think it will bring all of your people up to speed quite handily. And give them a realistic appreciation of the LACs' limitations, as well as their potential.'

'Excellent!' White Haven beamed at her. 'I've known you were a resourceful officer since that business at Yeltsin's Star, Dame Alice. I'm happy to see you've stayed that way.' The lift slid to a halt, and he looked at Robards. 'I see we did forget one thing though, Nathan,' he said.

'We did, My Lord?' Robards frowned, and White Haven chuckled.

'It's not our fault, of course. We didn't know Admiral Truman was going to be bringing her home video. I'm sure if we had known, we'd have remembered to be sure everyone had lots of popcorn.'

* * *

Commander Tremaine sat in the chair reserved for him in PriFly, otherwise known as Primary Flight Operations. PriFly was the nerve center of HMS Hydra's LAC operations, and he let his eye flick down the long rows of steady, green lights on the master status panel. Each of those lights showed a LAC bay with its own LAC nestled into the docking arms at one hundred percent readiness for launch. Had any bay been down, or the LAC in it not ready for instant deployment, its light would have burned an angry red, not green. But there wasn't a single flicker of red, and he allowed himself a deep, well-deserved glow of pride as the big CLAC held her place in the transit queue.

He took his attention from the master status panel and looked into the repeater plot deployed from the arm of his command chair. In its own way, that plot was even more impressive than the status panel. There were almost as many lights on it, although their precisely drawn lines were spread more widely, and the ships each of those lights represented were far larger than any LAC. Especially the string of blinking green beads which stretched out ahead and astern of Hydra's own light dot.

Seventeen. That was how many LAC carriers — and their wings — Admiral Truman had managed to get worked up. Each of them was the size of a dreadnought, and between them, they carried almost two thousand LACs.

A lot of those LACs could have used weeks or even a month or two more of working up, but that would have been true whenever the Admiralty decided to take the gloves off, he reminded himself. Someone would always have been the new kids in the pipeline, after all, and they were scheduled to spend almost a month integrating the carrier groups with Eighth Fleet. Most of that would be for Eighth Fleet's benefit, but they'd get in some more training of their own. And however it worked out, it was past