David Weber - At All Costs

He deactivated the com and dropped its back into his pocket, then rapped on the partition between them and the pilot's compartment. It opened, and Tobias Stimson looked back at him.

"Yes, My Lord?"

"Jefferson Bay, Tobias."

"Very good, My Lord," Stimson said with obvious approval, and Hamish smiled at Honor as the air limo banked again.

"Better?"

"Yes," she said, just a bit darkly. "And the fact that you came around so quickly means you'll live to see another day despite the fact that you were going to drag me off to Admiralty House in the first place."

"Um." He rubbed the side of his head for a moment, then nodded. "Fair enough. In my defense, I'll only plead that the schedule was set yesterday, before you ran late. I'd gotten the timing into my head then."

"Hmph." She looked at him, then gave her head a little toss. "Fair enough, I suppose," she agreed grudgingly. "Just... don't let it happen again."

Katherine Allison Miranda Alexander-Harrington was a red-faced, scowling, beautiful baby, Honor thought. And her opinion was, of course, completely unbiased. After all, Raoul Alfred Andrew was at least equally beautiful, even if he was an older man.

She sat with Katherine in her arms, parked in her favorite lounger on the terrace, overlooking Jason Bay. Umbrellas kept the direct sunlight off the babies, and Emily's life-support chair was parked beside her.

They weren't exactly alone. Sandra Thurston and Lindsey Phillips had been waiting with Emily when Honor arrived. Sandra had been cuddling Katherine until Honor and Hamish got there, and Lindsey still had Raoul in her arms, with his sleeping face pillowed on her shoulder. Nimitz and Samantha had draped themselves across the umbrella-shielded table, basking in the children's mind-glows, and Andrew LaFollet and Jefferson McClure had been keeping an eye on Emily and the babies. Tobias Stimson and Honor's three-man personal detail had joined them, and now the six of them stood along the outer edge of the terrace, not exactly unobtrusively but giving them a protected bubble of privacy.

"We do good work," Honor said, smiling as she sampled the still uninformed mind-glow of the blanket-wrapped infant in her arms. She reached out, stroking the impossibly soft cheek with the tip of her right index finger, then looked up at Emily.

"Well, Dr. Illescue and his people had a little something to do with the mechanics," Emily replied with a huge smile of her own. "And your mother's willingness to kick me in the posterior played a part, too. Still," she continued judiciously, "I'd have to say, on balance-and only after due and careful consideration, you understand-that you have a point."

"I only wish I'd been there when she was born," Honor said softly.

"I know." Emily reached out and patted her on the thigh. "I guess not all aspects of technology are really progress. I mean, once upon a time the only people who had to worry about not being there when babies were born were the fathers. The mothers were always there."

"I hadn't really thought about it quite that way," Honor said.

"I had," Hamish said, coming out of the house behind them. James MacGuiness, Miranda LaFollet, and Farragut followed him, and Hamish raised his right hand, flourishing the beer steins in it proudly.

"Had what?" his senior wife asked as he reached them and bent to give each of them a quick kiss.

"Thought about whether or not it was really progress," he said, plunking the steins down and watching as MacGuiness carefully poured them full of Old Tilman.

"I got to be there for both of them," he continued, "and that was good. But I was really pissed at the Admiralty for sending Honor off at that particular time. In fact, I was so pissed I decided to take it up personally with the First Lord. The conversation was a little confusing."

"You're always a little confused, dear," Emily told him, watching as he and Honor sampled their beers.

"Nonsense!" he said briskly. "I'm always a lot confused."

"Well, don't confuse the babies," Honor advised.

"Lindsey won't let me," Hamish pouted, and Honor looked across at the nanny in surprise.

"Lindsey won't let you? That sounds suspiciously like she's become a permanent fixture!"

"I have, Your Grace," Lindsey said with a smile. "Unless you'd rather not, of course. Your mother told me you were going to need help, especially with your schedule, and since-as she rather charmingly put it-she had me 'nicely broken in,' she'd feel better if I was available to you and Lady Emily."

"Well, of course I'd rather! But can Mother really spare you from the twins?"

"I'll admit I'll miss them," Lindsey acknowledged, "but it's not like I won't see a lot of them, is it? And your mother has Jenny, not to mention their tutors and their armsmen, to help keep an eye on them. Even a pair of seven-year-olds is going to find it difficult to wear all of them down."

"If Mother is sure about this, I'm certainly not going to argue!"

"And if you'd been foolish enough to do so, Hamish and I would have hit you smartly over the head and confined you somewhere until you came to your senses," Emily said tranquilly.

"Spencer wouldn't have let you," Honor retorted.

"Spencer," Miranda said, settling into an unoccupied chair, "would have helped them. And if he hadn't, I would have."

Farragut leapt up into her lap with a bleek of satisfied agreement, and Honor laughed.

"All right. All right! I surrender."

"Good," Emily said. Then she looked at Hamish. "Was the carnage at Admiralty House very extreme when Honor failed to arrive on schedule?"

"Not really." Hamish swallowed more beer and laughed. "I just got off the com with Tom Caparelli. From what he had to say, Elizabeth was completely in agreement with Honor. She hadn't realized how late Honor was running, and she said something about star chambers, oubliettes, bread and water, and headsmen for anyone who dragged Honor away from Katherine before tomorrow morning."

"Not just from Katherine, I hope," Emily said with a lurking smile, and Hamish chuckled.

"Probably not," he agreed. "Probably not."

"Welcome back aboard, Admiral," Captain Houellebecq said quietly as RHNS Guerriere's side party dismissed behind Lester Tourville.

"Thank you, Celestine."

Tourville met Houellebecq's blue eyes levelly as he shook her hand. He was well aware of the questions behind his flag captain's attentive expression, but he was less certain he had the answers to them all.

Uncertainty and shock were two emotions he was unaccustomed to feeling, but they summed up his own initial reaction to the Octagon briefing handily. He'd known Lovat had been an unmitigated disaster, and the personal loss of so many friends-including Javier Giscard and the entire company of Sovereign of Space-had hit home with excruciating force. But his worst nightmares had fallen short of the new weapons capabilities the Manties had revealed. The reports on those had brought back other nightmares, of the days when he and Javier had watched Operation Buttercup rumbling down upon them as they waited to defend the same star system where Javier had just died.

And then, hard on the heels of that shattering news, had come Tom Theisman's proposed operation. If nothing else, it showed an impressive audacity, even if it was based on the logic of desperation. Still, if Theisman's assumptions about the availability of the new weapons was valid-and Op Research's conclusions matched those of the Secretary of War on that head-then this all or nothing throw of the dice might just work.

Of course, it might not, too. And although he'd regained his mental balance, questions about the proposed operation's mechanics and basic assumptions were still rattling around inside his own brain.