War Of Honor

explained to Admiral Draskovic how badly I needed you, and she took it from there.'

He cocked his head at her, his expression quizzical, and she tasted his amused disbelief. Apparently, he'd had the misfortune to meet Josette Draskovic, and he obviously suspected just how . . . congenial the Fifth Space Lord and Honor must have found one another's personalities. He started to say something, then visibly changed his mind and said something else entirely.

'Well, I can't say I'm going to miss Trevor's Star, Ma'am. It's a perfectly nice star system, and the San Martinos are perfectly nice people, but there's not a whole lot to do there except drill. And I hope you know without my saying it how pleased and flattered I am by the assignment. It's really good to see you again, and having you fly your lights aboard Werewolf —Well, that's something the entire ship's company was delighted to hear about.'

'I'm glad . . . assuming you're not just buttering the Admiral up, of course,' Honor told him with a grin, and he chuckled as he shook his head in denial of the charge. 'Seriously,' she went on, allowing her grin to fade, 'I was really impressed by how well you and your ship performed in Operation Buttercup, Rafe. You did darned well, and your experience will stand us in good stead if it falls into the toilet in Silesia.'

'How likely is that to happen?' her new flag captain asked. His expression was much more sober, and he sat forward in his chair, elbows on thighs and clasping his stein in both hands while he watched her face with sharp, dark eyes.

'I wish I could tell you for certain,' Honor sighed. 'ONI is supposed to be sending us complete copies of its analysis of Andy ship movements in and around Marsh. Our information on those should be pretty good for the immediate neighborhood, but from what I've seen so far, its reliability is going to fall off pretty steeply outside that area.'

She paused and gazed at Cardones thoughtfully. She'd already decided not to discuss her confrontation with Draskovic with him, for several reasons. First, of course, it was her fight, and not his. Second, while she rather doubted even Draskovic would attempt to retaliate by wrecking the careers of the junior officers whose services Honor had requested, she couldn't be certain of that. And she could be certain that if Rafe upped the ante by choosing sides in his seniors' quarrel the consequences for his career would be catastrophic, at least in the short term. In the longer term, he would probably survive whatever happened, because eventually, Janacek was bound to lose his position at the Admiralty. When that happened, his successor's first priority was probably going to be the rehabilitation of the officers Janacek's administration had purged. But rehabilitation after the fact wouldn't make the sort of vengefulness in which someone like Draskovic would indulge any more enjoyable at the time, and she knew her Rafe Cardones. He gave his loyalty the same way he did everything else—with conviction, enthusiasm, and a hundred and ten-percent effort. Worse, he had a passion (carefully hidden, he fondly imagined) for dragon-slaying, which only reinforced her decision not to tell him everything. She didn't need anyone else to fight her battles for her, but if she wanted Rafe safely out of the line of fire, the only way to keep him there was never to tell him a battle was being fought.

Yet there were other unpleasant truths about the current Admiralty administration, and although she hadn't planned on going into them—not yet, at least—Rafe was going to be her flag captain. Her tactical deputy and right hand. Which meant she had no choice but to share her concerns with him. Not only was it absolutely essential for him to understand at all times what she was thinking and why she was thinking it, but she owed him that openness and honesty.

'This stays in this room unless I tell you differently, Rafe,' she said after a moment, and watched him settle deeper into his chair. It was a subtle thing, more sensed through her empathic link than seen, but his shoulders squared ever so slightly and his eyes narrowed intently.

'I don't trust our intelligence assessments,' she said quietly, meeting his gaze levelly. 'Just between the two of us, Admiral Jurgensen isn't the right man for ONI. He's always been an administrator, a bureaucrat and not an actual 'spook.' And my impression is that he has a tendency to . . . shade, let's say, his analyses to suit his superiors' needs. Or desires.'

She raised her artificial left hand, palm uppermost and slightly cupped in a questioning gesture, and Cardones nodded slowly.

'I'm not comfortable about the sources our assessments are apparently based on, either,' she went on. 'ONI is always reticent about naming sources, and rightly so. But from reading between the lines, and especially from looking at what isn't there to be read at all, it looks to me like our human resources are thin on the ground in both Silesia and the Empire right now. Admiral Jurgensen has assured me that my concerns in that area were unnecessary, and I certainly don't have any hard evidence that he was wrong. But I've deployed to Silesia several times, Rafe, and there's a distinctly different feel between these assessments and the ones my captains or I were given then. I can't explain the difference exactly, but they feel . . . unfinished. Incomplete.

'The Foreign Office assessments aren't a lot better, either. In their case, however, it's not because of any lack of sources. Actually, it's almost a case of information overflow. There's too much detail, too much minutiae and not enough hard indicators of what it is the Andermani are up to. The official Foreign Office position at this moment is that the Andies themselves aren't certain just what they have in mind. That they're testing the waters, as it were, with these shows of force around Sidemore Station. The official opinion is that the Empire's position hasn't yet hardened, and that there's an opportunity for us to shape the ultimate Andermani intentions by demonstrating 'firmness and consistency.' '

'Excuse me, Ma'am,' Cardones said, 'but have any of these Foreign Office types ever actually been to Silesia? Or the Empire?'

Honor's lips twitched at his plaintive tone, and even more at the emotions behind it. But she ordered herself sternly not to smile and shook her head at him.

'I'm sure some of them have,' she told him with admirable restraint. 'At some point in their lives, at least.'

'It certainly doesn't sound like it,' Cardones said frankly. 'You and I have both been there before, Ma'am, and somehow I don't think either of us believes that anyone this side of the Devil himself is going to do much 'shaping' of Gustav XI's foreign policy.'

'I'll concede that the Emperor tends to exercise very direct control of the Empire's policy. For that matter, my own opinion is that he probably knows exactly what it is he has in mind. Unfortunately, he's always been a bit on the unpredictable side.'

Cardones looked as if he wanted to interrupt, and she shook her head quickly.

'All right, not just unpredictable. Stubborn and obstinate to the point of bloody-mindedness, too. But those other qualities just make him even more unpredictable. I think he tends towards pragmatism, and it's obvious that there's nothing wrong with his IQ, but once he convinces himself to do something, no one's going to be able to talk him out of it, however hard they try. So figuring out what he ought to be doing is frequently worse than useless, because it can leave you making perfectly logical assumptions that bear absolutely no relationship to what he's actually going to do. All of which means that Imperial policies have also been unpredictable from time to time, given his control of them. And, no, Rafe, I don't think the Foreign Office analysts have it right this time. They're not particularly interested in hearing my opinion of their opinions, however. You might say that the current Government and I aren't exactly on the same page of the playbook.'

Cardones turned a snort of laughter into a particularly unconvincing coughing fit, and this time Honor went ahead and smiled, although she personally didn't find the situation especially amusing.

'The point is, Rafe,' she went on more briskly, 'you have a right to know that we're sailing straight into a minefield here. Our intelligence is less than complete and, frankly, the motives of the people analyzing it are suspect, in my opinion. The Government has a very strong vested interest in keeping the lid on in Silesia, and I'm very much afraid that that means Foreign Secretary Descroix is pushing her people, if only by example, into making what I consider to be grossly over optimistic assumptions. I hope I'm wrong, but I think the Andies are about ready at last to push outright territorial demands on Silesia. That's what I think their shows of force and beefed up presence throughout the Confederacy are all about, and the fact that ONI is beginning to suggest that there may have been a few 'unspecified upgrades' in the IAN's weapons technology doesn't make me feel any better.'

'This doesn't sound like fun, Ma'am.' Cardones' earlier amusement had vanished. He didn't seem frightened—just focused and very thoughtful, his eyes dark with professional concern. 'Have we been given any new policy directives?'

'No,' Honor admitted with a grimace. 'According to my briefings from both the Admiralty and the Foreign