David Weber - At All Costs

Of all her subordinates, Yanakov seemed least shocked. Or, at least, the least affected by whatever shock he felt. But, then, Judah had been present when Giscard leveled the Basilisk System's infrastructure in the last war, and his command had been part of Hamish's fleet for Operation Buttercup. And before that, he'd been at the First and Fourth Battles of Yeltsin. Three quarters of the pre-Alliance Grayson Space Navy had been wiped out in First Yeltsin, and half its superdreadnought strength had been destroyed at Fourth Yeltsin. And he was the man whose task force had crushed the defensive forces deployed to cover Lovat. Despite his youth-and he was almost as young as his prolong made him look-he'd seen more carnage than any other flag officer on Honor's display.

Almost as much as she had.

Hasselberg had looked almost stunned when the initial reports came in. It hadn't been just the scale of the destruction. It had also been its speed, for the Andermani Navy had never experienced anything like it. Well, to be fair, neither had the Manticoran Navy, until this afternoon, but at least Manticore and Grayson had been granted some prior experience. They'd had firsthand practice adjusting to abrupt, wrenching changes in the paradigm of combat. The Empire had not, and the reality had come to the vizeadmiral like some hideous nightmare, despite all the effort he'd spent conscientiously trying to prepare himself for the realities of modern warfare.

But of them all, Honor thought, Bin-hwei Morser's reaction was the most interesting. She wasn't simply an admiral; she was also Graffin von Grau. Like Hasselberg himself, she was a member of the Empire's warrior aristocracy, and she was clearly one of those who took the Andermani martial tradition seriously. She might cherish doubts about her Emperor's decision to ally himself with the Star Kingdom which had been the Empire's traditional rival in areas like Silesia for so long, but that didn't matter. Not anymore, not now. Her dark eyes-remarkably like Allison Harrington's, or Honor's own, now that Honor thought about it-were narrow and intense, focused and fiery with purpose.

"I wish Admiral Kuzak had waited for us," Mikl¢s said after a moment. "I'd feel a lot better if we were going in with her, especially after seeing how many birds these people can launch. She's still outnumbered better than two-to-one in wallers, and Alice is going to be outnumbered almost that badly in LACs."

"She can't wait, Samuel," Yanakov disagreed. "I don't have any idea how long it took the Peeps to deploy that many pods, however the hell they did it, but they had to use up most of their ammo to do it. She needs to hit them before they can pull out and restock their magazines. And even if that weren't a consideration, right now, the Peeps are edging away from Sphinx. She can't be sure they'll continue to do that if she doesn't move in now. If they get themselves sorted out, decide their damages aren't that bad after all, they've still got the strength-or close to it-to stand up to Sphinx's close-in defenses. And even if the defenses destroyed everything they've got left, they'd last long enough to take out virtually all of the planet's orbital infrastructure."

He smiled thinly.

"We Graysons have had a lot of experience worrying about what might happen to our orbital habitats. Trust me, I know exactly what's going through Admiral Kuzak's mind. She's got to keep the pressure on if she's going to keep them running."

"Judah's right," Honor said. "Our lead superdreadnought won't even transit the Junction for another eight minutes. We'll need another seventy-five minutes just to get the superdreadnoughts and your carriers through, Samuel. That's almost an hour and a half. She can't give them that long to think about things, not when they're already so close to the planet."

She spoke calmly, almost dispassionately, but she tasted the emotions of her staffers and, especially, her flag captain. They knew what was hidden behind that fa‡ade, she thought. Knew she couldn't forget that the planet they were talking about was the world of her birth. That all too many of the people on it were people she'd known all her life-family, friends. That it was the homeworld of the entire treecat species.

But what not even they knew was that at this very moment, both of her parents, and her sister and brother, were on Sphinx visiting Honor's Aunt Clarissa.

"The question before us," she continued, "is what we do after we make transit."

"We'll probably have instructions from the Admiralty, Your Grace," Mercedes Brigham pointed out. She smiled without any humor at all. "Thanks to the grav com, the central command can actually give real-time orders at interplanetary distances now."

"You may be right," Honor acknowledged. "So far, though, Admiral Caparelli's been refraining from backseat driving. And even if he doesn't, I want all of us to be thinking on the same page."

"One thing I don't believe we can do, Your Grace," Cardones said, "is commit ourselves before all our units have passed through the Junction."

Despite his relatively junior rank, the flag officers listened carefully. As Honor's flag captain, he was her tactical deputy.

"I strongly agree, Your Grace," Brigham said. "And at least we should have time to see how the situation's developing before we commit."

"I agree, too," Honor said. "But let's get some lighter units through as quickly as we can. Admiral Oversteegen, I want your squadron to take lead and transit as soon as you reach the terminus. Commodore Bradshaw and Commodore Fanaafi, you and your Saganami-Cs are attached to Admiral Oversteegan." She smiled grimly. "If the Havenites are still trying to keep an eye on the Junction, let's give whoever's minding their drones something else to worry about."

"Sir, we've got impeller signatures moving clear of the Junction!" Commander Zucker said sharply.

"How many?" Diamato asked tautly.

"Hard to say with all this wedge interference, Sir." Zucker grimaced. "I make it at least fifty, though."

"Right." Diamato nodded and looked at his com officer. "Immediate priority for the Flag. Tell them we have fifty-plus wallers deploying for a hyper translation! Tell them-"

He broke off, as the deploying impeller signatures abruptly vanished.

"Correction!" he said sharply. "Inform the Flag that fifty-plus wallers have just translated out!"

"Captain Houellebecq says damage control has that fire in CIC under control, Sir."

"Thank you, Ace." Lester Tourville nodded to Lieutenant Eisenberg, and then returned his attention to Captain DeLaney.

"The numbers are still coming in, Boss," the chief of staff told him, her expression grim. "So far, they don't sound good. At the moment, it sounds like we can write off over half our wall of battle. Probably more than that, if we don't control the star system when the dust settles."

"We always knew we were going to get hammered," Tourville said, his own voice and expression calmer than DeLaney's. And it was true. His losses were twelve percent higher than his pre-battle estimate-almost twenty-five percent higher than the Octogan staff weenies had estimated-because he hadn't anticipated how tightly the Manties would bunch their salvos. But from the beginning, everyone had understood that Second Fleet was going to take severe losses.

"But we cost them almost as many ships of the wall as we lost," he continued, "and if NavInt's estimates are accurate, we've got damned near three times as many of them as they do. Did. Not to mention the fact that we're about to take at least temporary control of their home star system away from them."

"I know," DeLaney said. "But I'm a little concerned about their LACs. We've got twenty-three hundred of them still coming in on us, and we're a lot lower on ammo than I'd like. We've fired off sixty percent of our MDMs, and we've lost effectively half our wall. I don't have exact numbers, but the current availability has to be no more than about two hundred thousand rounds. If we burn them trying to keep their Shrikes out of knife range, we're going to be sucking vacuum against Third Fleet."