Field Of Dishonor

the ones left over from the long Grayson-Masada cold war. She hadn't seen any schematics or blueprints, but she was willing to bet their designs were impressively innovative, too. The Graysons hadn't simply bought off-the-shelf Manticoran designs. They still required advice and technical assistance, but they'd studied their defensive requirements and made their own decisions with formidable self-confidence, just as they had with Alvarez herself. The heavy cruiser mounted barely half as many energy weapons as a Manticoran cruiser would have, yet those she did mount were far heavier, easily a match for most battlecruisers' beams. She couldn't hit as many targets, but the ones she did hit were going to know they'd been nudged. It was a radical departure in warship design, yet it made uncompromising sense, given the increased power of modern energy weapons. And now that she'd seen it, Honor wondered how many other aspects of Manticore's own building policies had been shaped by an unconscious acceptance of outdated conventionality.

And the sheer scale of the Graysons' efforts was even more astonishing than their sense of innovation. The planet's entire population was barely two billion, only a quarter of it male, and she doubted that even a tiny fraction of its women had yet been integrated into its workforce, yet they'd already put in—with a great deal of Manticoran assistance, to be sure—not one, or even two, but three modern orbital shipyards. The smallest was easily eight kilometers across, and it was growing steadily... all of that despite the fact that they were simultaneously building a modern navy from the keel out.

She shook her head, marveling silently, as the visual display showed her a quartet of orbiting battlecruisers. They were units of the new Courvosier—class, and tears prickled as she watched them. The Grayson Navy had chosen its own way to acknowledge its debt to Admiral Courvosier and the other Manticorans who'd fallen in its home world's defense. Somehow, she thought, the admiral would have found it a fitting tribute... once he stopped laughing. But—

Her thoughts broke off as the flag bridge hatch whispered open, and she turned her head to smile a welcome at Mark Brentworth.

'All tucked neatly into orbit, Captain?' she asked, conscious of the understrength bridge watch's ears, and he nodded.

'Yes, My Lady,' he returned just as formally. He crossed to her side and looked down into her visual display, then tapped the image of one of the battlecruisers. 'That's the Courvosier herself. You can recognize her by the missing graser bay amidships. They left it out to free up mass for her flag accommodations and a full-scale fleet CIC. The other three should be Yountz,Yanakov, and Madrigal ; together they form the First and Second Divisions.'

'They're gorgeous,' Honor said, and she meant it. They were easily the size of her own Nike, perhaps even a bit bigger, and their design mirrored Alvarez's concentration on fewer but more powerful weapons.

'We think so,' Brentworth admitted. He reached past her to manipulate controls, and the view in the display shifted to a more distant objective. 'And this, My Lady, is what your kingdom gave the Grayson Navy,' he said quietly.

Honor inhaled sharply at the sight. She'd heard about it, of course, but this was the first time she'd actually seen it. When Admiral White Haven ambushed the powerful Havenite fleet that had attacked Yeltsin, eleven of its superdreadnoughts had been forced to surrender intact. Not undamaged, by any means, but in repairable condition, and White Haven and Admiral D'Orville, his immediate Manticoran subordinate, had handed them directly over to Grayson.

It had been a generous gesture—in more ways than one. On a personal level, White Haven and D'Orville had given up an almost unimaginable prize money award, and, on another level, some Royal Navy officers argued that the ships should have been retained for Manticore's own desperate need. But Queen Elizabeth had endorsed White Haven's decision without a moments hesitation, and Honor was in complete agreement with her Queen. The Grayson Navy, for all its gallantry and willingness, had yet to build its first ship of the wall. That had made it little more than a spectator in the titanic clash which had raged across its system, but Grayson deserved those ships— and even a political illiterate like her grasped the enormous diplomatic benefit in giving them to the GSN. It told the Graysons how highly Manticore valued its alliance with them—and said exactly the same thing to all the Star Kingdom's other allies.

But even though she'd known about it, she hadn't been emotionally prepared to see those wounded leviathans lying quietly under the guns of Graysons orbital forts. They dwarfed those forts to Lilliputian dimensions, yet their very presence was proof the navy which had built them was far from invincible. Repair ships swarmed about them as the furious business of repair and refit went on, and it looked like one of them was already nearing its recommissioning under the Grayson flag.

'We're going to rename that one Manticore's Gift,' Brentworth said quietly, and shrugged as Honor looked up at him. 'It seemed appropriate, My Lady. I don't know what they've decided to call the others, and they won't be true sisters when we're done with them. We're upgrading their electronics to Manticoran standards and putting the new inertial compensators into each of them, but we're also retaining any weapons that survived. I imagine we'll refit all of them to the same standard once we have time; for right now, we're concentrating on simply getting them back into service as quickly as possible.'

'If Manticore's Gift is as close to ready as she looks, you people must be setting new records,' Honor said, and he smiled at her sincerity.

'We're certainly trying to, My Lady. As a matter of fact, our biggest problem just now is figuring out how to crew them. You do realize that the Navy's total tonnage is something like a hundred and fifty times what it was before the Alliance? The first batch of our officers is just finishing accelerated training at your Saganami Island, and the scale of our orbital work's always given us a lot more trained spacers than our planetary population might suggest, but we're recruiting heavily from Manticore's merchant fleet. Not,' he grinned suddenly, 'without some screaming about 'poaching' from your own Admiralty. Of course, we've promised to give them back as soon as we can.'

'I'm sure that helped.' Honor laughed. 'But, tell me, are you recruiting mixed crews?'

'Yes, My Lady, we are.' Brentworth shrugged again. 'There was some opposition, but those SDs made too big a hole in our personnel. We'd managed to keep up with our own construction, barely, and some of our more conservative types wanted to do the same with them—until they saw the numbers. I'm afraid we're still restricting 'our' female personnel to the capital ships, though.'

'Really? Why?'

'Because,' Brentworth replied with a slight blush, 'the Office of Shipbuilding insisted on separate accommodations for them, and only ships of the wall have the mass for that.' Honor blinked in astonishment, and his blush darkened. 'I know it sounds silly, My Lady, and High Admiral Matthews argued himself blue over it, but the whole concept is still too new to us. I'm afraid it's going to be a while before we stop doing silly things.'

'Don't sweat it, Mark,' Honor said after a moment. 'Nothing says there's any reason for Grayson to mirror- image Manticoran practice. And one thing you don't want to do is destabilize yourself making changes too quickly.'

Brentworth cocked his head, as if a bit surprised to hear her, of all people, say that, and she chuckled.

'Oh, I was furious over the way you treated our female personnel when we first arrived here, but you people have done an unbelievable job so far, and I know it hasn't been easy for you. I assure you, no one from the Star Kingdom—with the possible exception of a few idiots in the Liberal Party—is keeping any sort of scorecard. I'm certainly not. Your Navy and I got to know one another too well for that sort of nonsense.'

Brentworth started to reply, then closed his mouth and nodded with a smile before he stood back from her chair and gestured at the hatch.

'In that case, Lady Harrington, may I invite you to accompany me? Certain members of that Navy, including High Admiral Matthews, Admiral Garret, and my father, should be arriving in Boat Bay Two to welcome you back in about fifteen minutes.'

CHAPTER FIFTEEN