"So tell me, Boss. Are we sure this is a good idea this time around?" Captain Molly Delaney asked.
Admiral Lester Tourville looked at her with a slight frown, and she shrugged.
"I'm not saying it isn't," his chief of staff said. "It's just that the last time the Octagon sent us off on one of its little missions, it didn't work out so well."
Times had certainly changed, Tourville reflected. An officer who'd said what Delaney just had would have been arrested, charged with defeatism and treason against the People, and almost certainly shot—probably in less than twenty-four hours—under the old régime.
Not that she didn't have a point, he admitted to himself.
"Yes, Molly," he said aloud. "As a matter of fact, I do think it's a good idea. And," he added just a bit pointedly, "what you say to me in private like this is one thing."
"Understood, Sir," Delaney said a bit more formally—but, Tourville was pleased to note, without any trace of obsequiousness.
"I'll admit," the admiral continued after a moment, "that attacking a target like Zanzibar isn't exactly something for the weak-nerved, but at least this time we've got what looks like adequate—and accurate—operational intelligence. And assuming the numbers we've got are correct, we've also got a big enough hammer this time."
"I know," Delaney said, and there might have been just a bit of embarrassment in her smile. "It's just that we got caught with our trousers so thoroughly down around our ankles last time."
"That," Tourville conceded, "we certainly did. Of course, this time we can also be fairly certain Honor Harrington is going to be somewhere else. And while I'm not particularly superstitious, I have to admit that I consider that a good omen."
He and Delaney exchanged grins whose humor was more than a bit strained as they recalled the Battle of Sidemore. It was the second time Lester Tourville had crossed swords with Honor Harrington. The first time, units under his command had crippled her ship and captured her. The second time, she had—he acknowledged it freely—kicked his ass up between his ears.
His calm expression concealed an inner shudder as he remembered the nightmare in the Marsh System. Four hundred light-years from home, with a fleet which was supposed to have a decisive edge over its unprepared, unsuspecting opponents, only to discover that its opponents were anything but unsuspecting . . . and very well prepared, indeed.
When Harrington sprang her trap, he hadn't expected to get anything out. As it was, he'd somehow managed to extract almost a third of his total fleet. Which, of course, was another way of saying he'd lost over two-thirds of it. And he would have lost it all, if Shannon Foraker's defensive doctrine hadn't worked so well. Most of the ships he'd gotten out had been badly battered, and although he'd managed to evade any pursuit in the depths of hyper-space, the voyage home had been a nightmare all its own. Restricted by damage to the Delta bands, his maximum apparent velocity had been only 1,300 c, which meant the trip had taken over three months. Three months of dealing with damage out of limited onboard resources. Three months of watching his wounded recover—or not—when even his surviving units had lost thirty percent of their medical personnel. And three months without any idea at all how the rest of Operation Thunderbolt had gone.
It was fortunate that the answer to that last question was that it had gone quite well indeed. The success of the other fleet commanders might have rubbed a little more salt into the wound of his own failure, but at least the Manties had been hammered far harder overall than the Republic. It was a pity Javier Giscard hadn't gone ahead and attacked at Trevor's Star, but Tourville couldn't fault that decision—not on the basis of what Javier had known at the time. But the Grendelsbane attack, especially, had been a crushing success, and no one at the Octagon had blamed Tourville or his staff for what had happened to Fourth Fleet in Marsh.
One or two politicians had had a few things to say. In fact, a couple of them had been vocal enough to get themselves firmly onto Lester Tourville's personal shit list. That was one side of a living, breathing democracy which Tourville was honest enough to admit he could have done without. But the most telling evidence that he continued to enjoy the confidence of his superiors was his new assignment.
Second Fleet was a new organization. The old Second Fleet had been dissolved after Thunderbolt, and the new one's skeleton of veteran units was receiving primarily new construction, straight from completing working up exercises under Shannon Foraker's direction in Bolthole. When he'd been given the command, his understanding had been that it wouldn't be committed to action for at least a T-year, and probably somewhat longer. Second Fleet was supposed to be the knuckleduster no one on the other side knew existed until it landed in a devastating right cross.
But even the best plans were subject to change, and Operation Gobi was right down Lester Tourville's alley. Nor was it going to require him to commit his complete strength. He could put together the required strike force out of his more experienced, battle hardened units without exposing his newbies. In fact, he supposed he really could have handed the entire operation over to one of his task force commanders . . . if there'd been a single chance in hell he wouldn't be commanding it himself.
"It ought to be interesting, anyway," he said after a few moments. "I wasn't there when Icarus smashed Zanzibar last time, but somehow I don't think the Zanzibarans are going to be especially happy about getting run over by an air lorry a second time. And Zanzibar is at least as important to the Alliance's war effort as all of the systems Harrington has hit so far, combined, were to ours."
"I know, Boss." Delaney nodded. "As a matter of fact, I think that's one reason I may be feeling a little more anxious." Tourville quirked an eyebrow at her, and she shrugged. "They have to know Zanzibar's important to them, if we do. And they gave up an awful lot of intel on their defensive deployments the last time we hit them. If I were them, I'd have been making some changes since."
"Which is exactly what the operations plan assumes they've done," Tourville pointed out. "But unless they're prepared to make a major commitment of ships of the wall, they're going to be using some variant of what we already saw. And unlike them, we are prepared to make a major commitment of the wall." He smiled thinly. "I don't think they're going to enjoy the experience as much as we are."
Honor stood on Imperator's flag bridge, hands clasped loosely behind her, and watched her plot as Eighth Fleet headed out on Cutworm III. The bloodstains had been cleaned up long ago, of course, and the shattered consoles and command chairs had been replaced. But no one on the bridge was likely to forget that six people they'd all known well had died there. And Honor could feel Spencer Hawke, standing in Simon's spot beside the hatch.
She watched the silent, peaceful icons moving across the plot, accelerating steadily towards Trevor's Star's hyper limit, and tried to analyze her own emotions. Sorrow predominated, she thought. And then . . . not guilt, exactly, but something like it.
Too many of her armsmen had died in the line of duty, protecting her back, or simply caught in the crossfire of naval engagements they would never have been anywhere near if not for her. At first, she'd felt almost angry at them because of the way their deaths weighed upon her sense of responsibility. But gradually she'd come to understand it didn't really work that way. Yes, they'd died because they'd been her armsmen, but every one of them had been a volunteer. They'd served her because they'd chosen to, and they were content. They were no more eager to die than anyone else, but they were as confident that they had given their service to someone worthy of them as Honor Harrington had been confident of the same thing the first day she met Elizabeth III face to face. And because they were, it wasn't her job to keep them alive—it was her job to be worthy of the service they'd chosen to give.
And yet, despite that, she carried the weight of their deaths as she carried the weight of all her dead, and she desperately wanted them to live. And however she might feel about Simon Mattingly's death, or the deaths of her other bridge personnel, there was Timothy Meares himself. The young man she'd killed.
She stood in almost exactly the same spot she'd stood then. She could turn around and see exactly where Simon had fallen, where Meares' body had slammed to the deck. She knew she'd had no choice, and that even as she killed him, Meares had understood that. But he'd been so young, had so much promise, and to die like that—killed by a friend to stop him from killing other friends . . .
Nimitz bleeked in her ear, the sound scolding, and she shook herself mentally as she tasted his emotions. He, too, grieved for Simon and for Meares, but he blamed neither her nor Meares. His hatred was reserved for whoever had sent Timothy Meares on his final horrifying mission, and Honor realized he was right.
She didn't know who had ordered her assassination, or planned its execution . . . but she would. And when she did, she would personally do something about it.
Nimitz bleeked again, and this time the sound was hungrier and soft with agreement.
"Sir, the task force is ready to proceed."
Lester Tourville turned his head to look down into the small com display. Captain Celestine Houellebecq, the commanding officer of RHNS Guerriere, flagship of Second Fleet, looked back out of it at him.
"What?" Tourville asked with a small smile. "No last-minute delays? No liberty parties still adrift?"
"None, Sir," Houellebecq replied deadpan. "I informed the shore patrol that anyone who reported in late was to be shot beside the shuttle pad as an object lesson to others."
"There's the spirit I like to see!" Tourville said, although, truth be told, he found the joke just a bit too pointed, given the previous régime's history. "Always find a positive way to motivate your personnel."
"That's what I thought, Sir."
"Well, in that case, Celestine, let's get them moving. We've got an appointment with the Manties."
"Aye, Sir."
Houellebecq disappeared from the display as she began issuing the orders necessary for Task Force 21 to break parking orbit, and Tourville turned his attention to his plot.
The slowly moving light codes wouldn't have meant much to a civilian, but they were an impressive sight to the trained eye. He picked out the ponderous might of his four battle squadrons, shaking down into cruising formation as they accelerated slowly. Ahead of them were the icons of a pair of battlecruiser squadrons, and six Aviary-class CLACs followed in their wake. A sprinkling of lighter units spread out in a necklace of jewels ahead of the main formation, watching alertly for any hint of an unidentified starship, and a trio of fast replenishment ships loaded with additional missile pods trailed along behind the carriers.
Not a capital ship on the display was more than three T-years old, and once again Tourville felt something suspiciously like awe. The Republican Navy might remain technologically inferior, in some ways, to the Royal Manticoran Navy, but unlike the Manties, it had risen from the ashes of defeat. Its officers, its senior personnel, had known what it meant to lose battle after battle, but now the same officers and personnel had learned what it was to win. More than that, they'd come to expect to win, and Lester Tourville wondered if the Manties truly realized just how true that was.
Well, he thought, if they don't realize it now, we'll give them a hint in about two weeks.
"Sir, we've just picked up a hyper footprint. It looks like at least two ships, probably destroyers or light cruisers."
"Where?" Captain Durand demanded, walking across the space station's command deck to Plotting.
"Forty-two light-minutes out from the primary, on our side and right on the ecliptic, Sir," Lieutenant Bibeau replied.
"So the foxes are scouting the hen house," Durand murmured.
The Plotting officer looked up at him a bit strangely; Charles Bibeau was from the slums of Nouveau Paris, whereas Durand came from the farming planet of Rochelle, and the Skipper kept coming up with oddball metaphors and similes. But the lieutenant caught his drift just fine, and nodded in agreement.
"All right, Lieutenant," Durand said after a moment, resting one hand lightly on Bibeau's shoulder as he watched the hyper footprints fade from the plot. "Keep an eye out. If we can pick up their platforms, so much the better, but the main thing I want to know is when anyone else hypers in."
"Aye, Sir."
Durand patted him on the shoulder once, then turned and walked slowly back to his own command chair.
Somewhere out there, he knew, Manty reconnaissance arrays were creeping stealthily inward, spying out the details of the Solon System's defenses. He knew what they were going to see, and it wasn't all that impressive: a single division of old-style superdreadnoughts, a slightly understrength battlecruiser squadron, and a couple of hundred LACs. Hardly enough to cause a Manty raiding force to break a sweat.
Which was fine with Captain Alexis Durand. Just fine.