Echoes Of Honor

possibility of interception.

'No doubt it will show up eventually, Citizen Secretary,' he said after a moment, 'but for the moment, it's not going to help them a whole hell of a lot. They still have to cover the same defensive volume with the same number of available warships. Maybe even more importantly, they have to make certain they hold Trevor's Star after all the time and trouble they spent taking it in the first place. From my own reading of the intelligence reports, that's the real reason they sent White Haven off to organize an entirely new fleet at Yeltsin. They're keeping almost all of his old fleet right there at Trevor's Star to protect it.'

'You're right,' McQueen agreed. 'For now, at least, it is distracting them from more offensive activities. But it's a dynamic situation, not a static one. By holding the system, they remove the threat of an invasion of the Manties' home system down the Junction. And that means they can start standing down those damned forts they built to cover the central terminus, which is going to free up one hell of a lot of trained manpower.'

'But not immediately,' Bukato countered with a smile, and McQueen smiled back. Neither of them had yet said anything astonishingly brilliant or insightful, but this sort of brainstorming had become a rarity in the current People's Navy. 'Even if they shut the forts down tomorrow—or yesterday, for that matter—they can't actually use the fresh manpower against us until they build the ships for those people to crew.'

'Exactly!' McQueen's eyes sparkled. 'Of course, they can still build ships faster than we can. But we still have a lot more building slips than they do and our construction rates are going up. It may take us longer to build a given ship than it takes them, but as long as we can work on building more of them at the same time we've got a shot at matching their construction rate in total numbers of hulls. Add that to the fact that we can crew as many ships as we can build, whereas they have a hell of a lot smaller population base, and the 'big battalions' are still on our side... for now. But that infusion of additional crewmen from the forts is going to fuel one hell of a growth spurt in their front-line strength a year or so down the line. What we have to do is find a way to use the distraction aspect of their commitment at Trevor's Star against them before they can use the benefits of its possession against us.'

'Ah?' Bukato cocked his head. 'You sound as if you have a way to use it in mind,' he observed slowly.

'I do... maybe,' McQueen admitted. 'One of the things I've just been reading over was the availability numbers on our battleships.' Bukato grimaced before he could stop himself, and she chuckled. 'I know—I know! Every single time someone's come up with a brilliant idea about how to use them, we've ended up with less battleships when the wreckage cooled. And, frankly, we lost an awful lot of them in the run up to Trevor's Star simply because we had no choice but to commit them to defensive actions against dreadnoughts and superdreadnoughts. But I was surprised to see how many we have left. If we strip the eastern sectors down to bedrock, we could assemble quite a fleet of them to support a core of real ships of the wall.'

'You're thinking in terms of a counterattack,' Bukato said quietly.

'I am,' McQueen agreed. It was the first time she'd said a word about it to anyone, and intense interest flickered in Bukato's dark, deepset eyes. 'I'm going to keep the exact point where I want to launch it my own little secret for a while longer,' she told him, 'but one of the jobs Citizen Chairman Pierre gave me was to improve the Fleet's morale. Well, if we can knock the damn Manties back on their heels at a place of our own choosing, even if it's only briefly, we should make a running start on that particular chore. It wouldn't hurt civilian morale, either, and that doesn't even count what it would do to Manty morale... or their future deployment considerations.'

'I'd certainly have to agree with that, Citizen Secretary,' Bukato said. 'The tech transfers from the Solarian League have helped shake some of our people loose from their sense of inferiority, but most of them are still too defensive minded for my taste. We need more admirals like Tourville and Theisman, and we need to give them the support they require, then turn them loose.'

'Um.' McQueen nodded, but she couldn't hide a frown of displeasure as mention of Lester Tourville and Thomas Theisman reminded her of the whole Honor Harrington episode. She saw a flicker of concern flash across Bukato's face as her expression altered and quickly banished the grimace before he could decide it was directed at him for some reason.

And it's not as if the affair was a total disaster, she reminded herself. You know damned well Ransom was going to purge Tourville and his entire staff—if not Theisman as well—for trying to protect Harrington from StateSec. At least the paranoid bitch managed to get her worthless ass killed before she did any more damage to the Fleet! And it also means I don't have to fight her tooth and nail over every tiny move I make, either. On the other hand, StateSec is treating Tourville and his people as if they were the ones who killed her! Count Tilly's been back from Cerberus for almost four months now, and her entire crew's still sequestered while Saint-Just's security goons 'investigate' the episode. Idiots!

'I realize Citizen Admiral Theisman is still a bit... old-fashioned,' Bukato said, responding to her frown, 'but his record in combat is exemplary, Citizen Secretary, and the same is true of Tourville. I hope you don't intend to let any rumors or partial reports keep you from—'

'Relax, Citizen Admiral,' McQueen said, waving a hand in the air between them, and he shut his mouth quickly. 'You don't have to sell me on Tourville or Tom Theisman—not as fleet commanders, anyway. And I have no intention of making them any sort of fall guys for what happened to Citizen Secretary Ransom. Whatever anyone else might think, I know—and I've seen to it that Citizen Chairman Pierre and Citizen Secretary Saint-Just know, as well—that none of what happened was their fault.' Or I think I've made certain of that, at any rate. Saint-Just says he's more worried about keeping Tilly's crew 'out of the public eye until we make Cordelia's death official,' at least. Whether he actually means it or not, though...

She studied Bukato a moment, then shrugged mentally. She was doing all she could for Tourville, and it wasn't the very smartest thing she could discuss with Bukato. But perhaps the time had come to test the waters with him in a different way.

'I only wish I could have convinced the Committee to countermand Citizen Secretary Ransom's plans for Harrington,' she said. 'We might have avoided the entire mess if she'd been willing to let the Navy have custody of Harrington instead of dragging her off to Camp Charon to hang her!'

Bukato's eyes widened at the genuine vitriol in the last sentence. The new Secretary of War was taking a major chance in offering a subordinate access to her inner thoughts—especially if those thoughts were critical of the Committee of Public Safety or any of its members, present or past. Of course, it could also be—in fact, it almost certainly was—a test of him as well. The problem was that he didn't know exactly what he was being tested for. Loyalty to the Committee, which might be demonstrated by denouncing her? Or loyalty to the Navy and his service superior (assuming that those weren't actually two quite different things), which might be demonstrated by keeping his mouth shut?

'I wasn't privy to that decision, Citizen Secretary,' he said very slowly, choosing his words with exquisite care. Then he decided to throw out a feeler of his own. 'Nonetheless, it did seem... questionable to me.'

'Not to me,' McQueen snorted. She saw a flash of anxiety in his eyes and grinned tightly. 'It seemed goddamned stupid to me,' she said, 'and I told Citizen Chairman Pierre and Citizen Secretary Saint-Just as much at the time.'

Surprised respect showed in Bukato's expression, and she hid a chuckle. She hadn't expressed herself quite that candidly to them, but she'd come close to it. If StateSec listened to the audio chips she was sure they were making, her version would be near enough to Saint-Just's recollections (or the chips he might have made of that meeting, assuming he was sufficiently paranoid for that—and he was) to stay on the safe side of accurate. And from the look on Bukato's face, her willingness to be candid with him on such a topic had just raised her stock with him considerably.

'Mind you, it wasn't their idea, and I don't think they cared for it, either,' she went on, always conscious of those hidden microphones. 'But she was a member of the Committee, and she'd already dumped the story and her intention to execute Harrington into the Solly news feeds. And that whole Leveler business was barely four T- months old at the time. I don't have to tell you how that had shaken things up, and they felt their only choice was