David Weber - At All Costs

But despite hus shock, his voice was clear.

"Aye, aye, Ma'am!"

"Harper," she continued, turning to the communications section. "Immediate priority message to Admiral Kuzak, copied to Admiralty House. Message begins: 'Admiral Kuzak, I will be moving to your support within-" she looked at the chronometer, but nothing she could do could make time move more slowly "-fifteen minutes. If I can reduce that, I will.' Message ends."

"Aye, aye, Your Grace!"

Honor nodded, then sat back in her command chair and rotated it slowly to face the rest of her flag bridge personnel. She could see the echo of her own horror on their faces, taste it in their mind-glows, as they realized what was about to happen to Third Fleet, whatever they might manage to do.

They stared back at her, but they saw no horror in her calm expression. They saw only determination and purpose.

"All right, people," she said. "We know what we have to do. Now let's be about it."

Admiral Genevieve Chin, CO Fifth Fleet, stood on the flag bridge of RHNS Canonnade and let the background murmur of readiness reports wash over her.

"We've got them, Ma'am!" Commander Andrianna Spiropoulo announced exuberantly. "Astro put us less than fifty million klicks behind them-right on the money!"

"So I see." Chin might have quibbled with her operations officer's assessment of their astrogation, since they were several million kilometers further from the limit than they should have been. She suspected that Lieutenant Commander Julian had deliberately dropped them in a bit further out than she'd specified. But Spiropoulo's assessment of the tactical situation matched hers perfectly, and she fought hard to keep the exuberance out of her own voice.

She also knew she hadn't succeeded completely.

Well, maybe I didn't, she thought. But if I didn't, I've earned it. We all have, after the way they pounded us in the last war. But it's more than that for me.

"All right, Andrianna," she said, turning her back to the plot and the icons of the Manty wallers whose crews were beginning to realize they'd walked straight into a trap, "we don't have a lot of time before they run out of our envelope. Let's start rolling pods."

"Aye, Ma'am!"

Andrianna's dark eyes gleamed, and Chin glanced at Captain NicodŠme Sabourin. Her chief of staff looked back, and then, unnoticed by the rest of Flag Bridge's personnel, he nodded, ever so slightly.

Chin nodded back. Sabourin was probably the only member of her staff who could fully savor her own sense of... completion. She'd come a long way to reach this point. She'd survived being scapegoated by the Legislaturalists for the disaster of Hancock Station at the very start of the last war. She'd survived long, dreary years in the service of the Committee of Public Safety-never quite trusted, too valuable to simply discard, always watched by her people's commissioner. She'd even survived Saint-Just's ascension to complete power... and the chaos following his overthrow.

She'd been "rehabilitated" twice now. Once by Rob Pierre's lunatics, solely because she'd been scapegoated by the previous r‚gime. And once by the new Republic, because she'd damned well done a good job protecting her assigned sector despite the psychotic sadist they'd assigned as her people's commissioner.

This time, she actually believed it was going to stick. She'd still lost a lot of ground in the seniority game. Men and women who'd been junior officers, or even enlisted personnel, when she'd already been a flag officer, were senior to her now. Thomas Theisman, for one, who'd been a commander when she'd been a rear admiral. But she was one of only a handful of people who'd made admiral under the Legislaturalists who were still alive at all, so she supposed that was something of a wash.

And whether the universe was always a fair place or not, she couldn't complain about where she was today. The woman who'd been saddled with the blame for the Legislaturalists' disastrous opening campaign against the Star Kingdom of Manticore, was also the woman who'd been chosen to command the decisive jaw of the trap which would crush the Star Kingdom once and for all. She'd waited fifteen T-years for this moment, and it tasted sweet.

NicodŠme Sabourin understood that. She hadn't known it for quite some time, but he'd been a second-class petty officer aboard one of her dreadnoughts at Hancock Station. Like her, he was looking forward to getting some of his own back this afternoon.

"How are your target solutions, Andrianna?" she asked calmly.

"They look good, Ma'am, considering their EW."

"In that case, Commander," Genevieve Chin said formally, "you may open fire."

"We walked right into it," Theodosia Kuzak said bitterly. "I walked right into it."

"It's not like we had much choice, Ma'am," Captain Smithson said.

The two of them stood staring into the plot, watching the overwhelmingly superior force which had suddenly cut in astern of them as it rolled pods. Waiting. The orders were already given. Their own missiles were already launching. There was, quite literally, nothing at all Kuzak could do at this point except watch other people execute her orders.

She turned her head, looking at her chief of staff, and Smithson shrugged.

"We couldn't let them punch out Sphinx, and that meant coming in after them," he said. "You did."

"I should have seen this coming," she shot back, but quietly, quietly, keeping her voice down. "After what Harrington did to them at Lovat, it was the logical response."

"Oh?" Smithson cocked his head, smiling ironically despite the hurricane of missiles rushing towards them. "And I suppose you were supposed to somehow use clairvoyance to realize they had another hundred wallers in reserve? That they were going to throw three hundred and fifty superdreadnoughts at us? Just you-not Admiral Caparelli, not ONI, not Admiral D'Orville, or Admiral Harrington. Just you. Because, obviously, this is all your fault."

"I didn't mean-" she began angrily, then stopped. She looked at him for a moment, then reached out and squeezed his shoulder.

"I guess I did deserve that. Thanks."

"Don't mention it." Smithson smiled sadly. "It's one of a chief of staff's jobs."

"All right, Alekan," Alistair McKeon told his ops officer harshly. "We're the only squadron with Apollo. Admiral Kuzak has authorized us for independent targeting to make best use of the system. That means it's going to be up to you."

"Understood, Sir." Commander Slowacki nodded hard.

"I want to concentrate on this new bunch," McKeon continued. "They haven't been hit yet, their fire control and their tactical departments are going to be in better shape. We'll take them one ship at a time."

"Understood, Admiral," Slowacki said again, and McKeon pointed at the icons of Genevieve Chin's task force.

"Good. Now go kill as many of those bastards as you can."

"Aye, aye, Sir!"

"I wish Her Grace were here, Sir," Commander Roslee Orndorff said quietly beside McKeon as Slowacki and his assistants began updating their targeting solutions.

"I don't," McKeon told Orndorff, his voice equally quiet, and shook his head. "This is one not even she could get us out of, Roslee."

"I guess not," Orndorff agreed. "And you're right. I shouldn't wish she was stuck in here with the rest of us. But-no offense, Sir-I... miss her."

"So do I." McKeon reached out and stroked the head of the treecat perched on Orndorff's shoulder. Banshee pressed back against his hand, but only for a moment. Then the 'cat pressed his cheek against the side of his person's head and crooned softly to her.

Orndorff reached up, caressing him tenderly, without ever taking her eyes from the plot.