Echoes Of Honor

abilities.'

'Perhaps.' Honor drew a deep breath, more than a little ashamed of herself now that LaFollet had marched Styles off. Whatever Ramirez might say, she knew she could have handled things better than this. At the very least, she could have ordered Styles to place himself under quarters-arrest after any of a dozen earlier, less virulent confrontations. She hadn't had to let it get to this stage, or to humiliate him so utterly in front of others, and she wondered if she'd let it go so far deliberately. She knew how badly a part of her had wanted to crush him like a worm. Had her subconscious always hoped the opportunity to act as she just had would eventually present itself if she just gave him enough rope?

She didn't know... but she suspected she wouldn't have liked the truth if she had.

She closed her eyes for a moment and inhaled deeply once more, then made herself put Styles' fate out of her mind. She would have to return to it eventually, for she'd meant exactly what she said. Whatever her own motives, she simply could not let this most recent behavior pass, and she had more than enough witnesses—not simply to this episode, but to others—to guarantee that his career was over. The Judge Advocate General might allow him to resign rather than prosecute, given the circumstances which had put him on Hell for so long, but either way he would be disgraced, dishonored, and ruined. Yet she couldn't let herself be distracted by that just now, and her expression was calm when she opened her eyes once more.

'Whatever my opinion of Styles may be,' she said calmly, 'he did make at least two accurate statements. If I hold Krashnark here, I deliberately turn down a chance to alert the rest of the Alliance to the situation on Hell, and I may be wrong about their ability and readiness to cut loose the forces needed to lift us off this planet. Even if I'm not, my action will effectively make that decision for them, without ever giving them the opportunity to consider it. And he's also right that holding her throws away the near certain chance of getting two or three thousand people to safety in Alliance space.'

'If I may, My Lady?' Solomon Marchant half raised one hand, forefinger extended, and Honor nodded for him to go on.

'In regard to your first concern, My Lady,' Marchant said very formally, 'I would simply like to point out that whatever Admiral Styles may believe, you are the second-ranking officer of the Grayson Navy, which happens to be the second largest navy of the Alliance—and the third largest in this entire quadrant, after the RMN and the Havenite Navy. As such, you would be one of the people who would normally help make any decision as to whether or not the Alliance could safely divert shipping on such a mission. Under the circumstances, I believe it's entirely appropriate for you to exercise your own judgment in this situation.'

An almost inaudible murmur of agreement supported his argument, and Honor felt the sincerity of the emotions behind the murmur.

'And as to your second concern, My Lady,' Marchant went on, 'you say we could get two or three thousand people off Hell.' He glanced at Cynthia Gonsalves. 'Could you tell us what the current total number of evacuees is, Captain Gonsalves?'

'Three hundred ninety-two thousand, six hundred and fifty-one,' Gonsalves replied with prompt precision. Since the courts-martial had wound down, she had taken over as Styles' second-in-command... which meant she'd actually been doing virtually all of the work in coordinating the prisoner contact and census project. 'To date, two hundred seventeen thousand, three hundred and fifty-four have formally declined to collaborate with us. Most of those are Peep politicals, of course, but some of them are military or ex-military POWs.'

Her voice hardened and flattened with the last sentence, and Ramirez stirred in his chair.

'It's hard to blame them, Cynthia,' he said, his deep voice oddly gentle. 'Most of them have just run out of hope after so long on Hell. They don't believe we can possibly pull this off, and they don't want to be part of the reprisals the Black Legs are going to carry out when and if they come back.'

'I understand that, Sir,' Gonsalves replied, 'but understanding it doesn't change the consequences of their decision—for them, as well as for us.'

'You're right, of course, Ma'am,' Marchant said, reclaiming the floor. 'But my point, My Lady,' he turned back to Honor, 'is that while Admiral Styles was correct that we could cram forty percent of the people on Styx aboard Krashnark, even packing her to the deckheads would account for less than one percent of the total on Hell.'

'Which is still a lot more than none at all, Solomon,' Honor replied quietly.

'It is,' McKeon agreed before the Grayson officer could speak again, 'but I think you're missing Solomon's point—or simply choosing not to admit it.' He smiled wryly as her eye flashed at him, then continued more seriously. 'Whichever it is, though, the question you have to ask yourself isn't whether or not holding Krashnark here throws away the certainty of getting eight-tenths of a percent of us out, but rather whether or not it ups the odds of getting more than eight-tenths of a percent out by a large enough factor to justify accepting the risk of getting no one out.'

'Alistair is right, Honor,' Ramirez said before she could reply. 'Certainly there are going to be people—like Styles—who second-guess you however things work out. And some of the people who criticize you won't be idiots, too, because it's a question that can be legitimately argued either way. But the bottom line is that for everyone else, it would be a hypothetical question... and for you, it isn't. You're the one who has to make the call, and you have to make it now. So make it. In your considered judgment, does holding this ship in Cerberus improve your odds of success more than sending her for help the Alliance may or may not be in a position to extend to us?'

Honor sat back in her chair, feeling Nimitz's warm, supporting presence at her shoulder, and gazed into the mouth of Ramirez's stark options. She'd already considered the consequences and the odds, of course. If she hadn't, she never would have stated the intention which had so horrified Styles. But she knew herself too well— knew that this time was different, for Marchant and McKeon and Ramirez were right. It was her call, and they were waiting for her to make the decision which would commit them all not to an 'intention' which left room to wiggle later but to a hard and firm plan they would all carry through together... or die trying to.

'If we were talking about a lighter ship,' she said finally, 'my decision might be different. But this is a Mars-class. She masses six hundred thousand tons—almost as big and tough as most of their prewar battlecruisers—and if we're going to make this work, we've got to have some mobile combat units with real fighting power.' Her nostrils flared. 'Which means I can't justify sending her off.'

'I agree,' Ramirez said softly, and other heads nodded around the table.

Honor felt their support and knew how much it meant to her, but she also knew it was only support. The responsibility was hers, and the responsibility for the deaths of all of them would also be hers if she blew it.

Yet she had no choice. She simply could not abandon the POWs who hadn't run out of defiance for their captors after their time on Hell, just as she could not abandon the non-Allied POWs who had actively aided her in capturing and securing Camp Charon in the first place.

A 'calculated risk,' she thought. Isn't that what they called a decision like this back at Saganami Island? And they were right, of course. But it's an awful lot easier to analyze past examples of them in a classroom and decide where the people who took them screwed up than it is to take responsibility for them yourself!

'All right, then,' Admiral Lady Dame Honor Harrington said with calm, confident assurance, 'we keep her. Alistair, I want you and Harry to grab Gerry Metcalf and Master Chief Ascher. We're going to need as many people trained to combat-ready status on Peep hardware as we can get, because if this is going to work at all, we'll need a lot more hardware than a single heavy cruiser. But she's got simulators on board as well as complete manuals on all of her hardware in her data banks. So we'll use her for a training ship while we start getting our people brought up to speed.'

'Yes, Ma'am.' McKeon tapped a note to himself into his liberated Peep memo pad. 'I'll snag Gerry as soon as the meeting breaks up. Harry,' he looked at Captain Benson, 'can you free up Commander Phillips and... Lieutenant Commander Dumfries, I think, to help Gerry and me with the initial planning?'

'I'll have to rework the watch schedules a little, but I don't see a problem,' Benson said after a moment.

'Be sure you're comfortable with that before you give them up, Harry,' Honor warned her. 'Because once Alistair's got that running, you and Jesus and I are going to have to put our heads together and start thinking seriously about genuine tactics. I've got a few thoughts, but to make this work, we may well be going to have to get a lot more performance out of the orbital defenses than I'd initially planned on. If you give up Phillips and Dumfries, do you have someone else who can replace them?'

'I do,' Benson replied firmly.