David Weber - At All Costs

"And are you one of them, Admiral?"

"Yes, Madam President, I am," Henke said quietly.

"I see. And I appreciate your honesty. Still, it does rather underscore the nature of our quandary, doesn't it?"

"I suppose it does."

Silence fell in the sunlit hospital room. Oddly enough, it was an almost companionable silence, Henke discovered. After perhaps three minutes, Pritchart straightened up, inhaled crisply, and stood.

"I'll let you get back to the business of healing, Admiral. The doctors assure me you're doing well. They anticipate a full recovery, and they tell me you can be discharged from the hospital in another week or so."

"At which point it's off to the stalag?" Henke said with a smile. She waved one hand at the unbarred windows of the hospital room. "I can't say I'm looking forward to the change of view."

"I think we can probably do better than a miserable hut behind a tangle of razor wire, Admiral." There was actually a twinkle in Pritchart's topaz eyes. "Tom Theismann has strong views on the proper treatment of prisoners of war-as Duchess Harrington may remember from the day they met in Yeltsin. I assure you that all our POWs are being properly provided for. Not only that, I'm hoping it may be possible to set up regular prisoner of war exchanges, perhaps on some sort of parole basis."

"Really?" Henke was surprised, and she knew it showed in her voice.

"Really." Pritchart smiled again, this time a bit sadly. "Whatever else, Admiral, and however hardly your Queen may be thinking about us just now, we really aren't Rob Pierre or Oscar Saint-Just. We have our faults, don't get me wrong. But I'd like to think one of them isn't an ability to forget that even enemies are human beings. Good day, Admiral Henke."

The pinnace drifted slowly down the length of the spindle-shaped mountain of alloy. Honor, Nimitz, Andrew LaFollet, Spencer Hawke, Rafael Cardones, and Frances Hirshfield sat gazing out the armorplast viewport as the small craft reached the superdreadnought's after hammerhead and braked to a complete halt, like a tadpole beside a slumbering whale.

Hard-suited construction workers, robotic repair units, and an ungainly webwork of girders and work platforms, all arranged with microgravity's grand contempt for the concept of "up and down," clustered about the ship as she floated against the stars. Powerful work lamps illuminated the frenetic activity of the repair crews and their robotic minions, and Honor frowned thoughtfully as she watched the bustling energy.

"Looks pretty terrible, doesn't it, Your Grace?" Cardones said, and she shrugged.

"I've seen lots worse. Remember the old Fearless after Basilisk?"

"Or the second one after Yeltsin," Cardones agreed. "But it's still like seeing your kid in the emergency room." He shook his head. "I hate seeing her in this shape."

"She looks a lot better than she did, Skipper," Hirshfield pointed out.

"Yes, she does," Cardones acknowledged, glancing at his executive officer. "On the other hand, there was a lot of room for improvement."

"The important thing is that the yard dogs say you can have her back in another six days," Honor said, turning away from the viewport to look at him, "and that's good. Captain Samsonov's been perfectly satisfactory, but I want my flag captain back."

"I'm flattered, Your Grace. But even after I get her back, we're going to need some pretty serious exercises to blast the rust off."

"Oh, I've been keeping an eye on you, Rafe," Honor said with a smile. "You and Commander Hirshfield here have kept your people hopping in the simulators the entire time the ship's been down. I'm sure you will need a few days, at least, but I doubt you've let too much rust accumulate."

"We've tried not to," Cardones admitted. "And it's helped that we didn't have to completely shut down. Just being able to keep our people on board helped, and we've been able to drill regularly with the forward weapons mounts, at least."

"I know. I wish I'd been able to stay, myself. Unfortunately-"

Honor shrugged, and Cardones nodded in understanding. Honor could, theoretically, have remained on board Imperator, since the repair techs had been working primarily on exterior sections of the hull and, as Cardones had said, the rest of her crew had never had to leave her. Unfortunately, Imperator had been thoroughly immobilized, and if any emergency had turned up, Honor would have required a flagship capable of moving and fighting.

"Still," she went on, "I'm looking forward to moving back aboard. Mac is looking forward to it, too." She grinned. "Actually, he's got at least half my stuff already packed up!"

"We're ready whenever you are, Ma'am," Cardones told her.

"Unless the yard dogs manage to break something new, I think I'll make the move in about four days," Honor said. "I'll start then, anyway. It's going to take at least a couple of days for Mac to get everything moved and settled back into place, and I need to make another run to Admiralty House this week, anyway. I think I can schedule it to overlap with the move and let Mac get everything arranged while I'm on Manticore."

"That sounds fine to me, Your Grace," Cardones said, and Hirshfield-who, as Imperator's XO, was actually in charge of all such housekeeping details-nodded in agreement.

"Good," Honor turned away from the viewport. "In that case, let's get back over to Yeltsin. We'll just about have time for lunch before the staff meeting if we hurry."

"We're calling the new operation 'Sanskrit,'" Andrea Jaruwalski told the assembled admirals, commodores, and captains in HMS Second Yeltsin's flag briefing room. "'Cutworm,' unfortunately, got leaked to the newsies, and it's been bandied about quite a bit over the last several weeks. Besides, we're going to be adopting an entirely new operational approach, so a new designation makes sense from a lot of perspectives."

She looked around the big compartment, and Honor reached up to gently rub Nimitz's ears while she listened. The next best thing to eight weeks had passed since Task Force 82 limped back into Trevor's Star, and as she'd feared, Eighth Fleet's reinforcement had taken a heavy hit in the wake of the Zanzibar disaster. Despite the fact that there was nothing left, really, to defend in the Zanzibar System, it had been politically impossible to refuse to station a powerful defensive force to keep an eye on the ruins. And Alizon, in particular, had been vociferous about the need to bolster its defenses. It was fortunate that over forty Andermani superdreadnoughts had finally completed their refits to handle Manticoran missile pods and reported for duty. But even with that reinforcement, finding the sheer number of hulls required had been extraordinarily difficult.

Now, though, things were beginning to look up. An entire division of Invictuses had arrived just yesterday, and two more superdreadnought divisions, all pod types, were anticipated before the end of the week. If things stayed on schedule, Eighth Fleet would have three entire squadrons of SD(P)s-eighteen ships-on its order of battle within the next two weeks. Additional battlecruisers, including the next five Agamemnons, had also come in, and Admiralty House was promising her three more Saganami-Cs, as well. And while all that had been going on, Alice Truman and Samuel Mikl¢s had been reorganizing their carriers' LAC wings, incorporating twice as many Katanas into their orders of battle.

"This, of course," Jaruwalski continued, "is only a preliminary meeting. Her Grace wants us to be sure we're all thinking in the same direction. At the moment, we're planning on an execute date nineteen days from today. The preliminary operations plan, based on our anticipated units, will be drafted over the next ten days. At the end of that time, we'll conduct a dress rehearsal in the simulators. Any problems that come up will be discussed, and we'll draft a revised ops plan over the next three or four days. At that time we should know definitely what our unit availability will be, and we'll make any adjustments necessary. We'll run the revised plan through the simulator at X minus three days."