David Weber - At All Costs

"Trust me, Sir Thomas," Honor said dryly, "there was nothing 'free' about an old-style Silesian election. The winning candidate paid cash on the barrel head for every one of those votes."

"I know, I know. But we can't simply go in and depose elected governors, however they got themselves elected in the first place, without excellent justifying cause. Some of them are stupid enough to think that will let them get away with running things the old way, and, unfortunately, several of the stupid variety had their local Confederacy Navy command structure firmly in their pockets under the previous regime. There's been a lot of passive resistance to Admiral Sarnow's instructions to decommission so many of their older units, obsolescent pieces of junk or not. And there's been even more resistance and obstructionism to his policy of completely reshuffling the star systems' command staffs. He's made a couple of salutary examples which seem to be convincing all but the most brain-dead we mean business, but unfortunately, we can't account for almost thirty percent of the Confeds' official ship list."

"Thirty percent, Sir?" Surprise startled the question out of Mercedes Brigham, despite her relative lack of seniority, and Caparelli chuckled with very little humor.

"It's nowhere near as bad as that sounds, Commodore," he reassured her. "At least half-more probably two-thirds-of the ships we can't account for were long gone before we ever came along. Hell, one of the more audacious system governors and his local naval commander were listing an entire squadron of battlecruisers-eight ships, and the next best thing to twenty thousand personnel-as present on active duty when they didn't even exist! The two of them, and maybe a half dozen other officers they needed to maintain the charade, were pocketing the nonexistent crews' salaries, not to mention every penny that was supposedly being spent on ammunition, reactor mass, maintenance, etc."

He shook his head, obviously bemused by anything which could operate on that sort of basis and still call itself a "navy."

"Still," he continued after a moment, his voice a bit bleaker, "some of those ships really did disappear, crew and all. I suspect that more than a few of the ones that did were already doing a little freelance piracy on the side, and I'm quite certain a lot of them think they can get away with doing it full-time, given how distracted we are by the Peeps. Which means, of course, that the very ship types Sarnow needs to chase them down are also the ones Eighth Fleet needs for operations like Cutworm. And then, of course, there's always Talbott."

"Are the reports about terrorist operations accurate, Sir?" Honor asked quietly.

"I think they've probably been sensationalized a bit by the media, and so far they're highly localized, but, yes. There've been some ugly incidents, especially in the Split System. Admiral Khumalo isn't exactly the sharpest stylus in the box, either, I'm afraid. Not a bad administrator, under most circumstances, but not really the right man to have on the spot when there's blood in the streets. Fortunately, Baroness Medusa is quite the opposite."

"I remember her from Basilisk," Honor agreed with a nod.

"Experience dealing with occasionally murderous aborigines is probably standing her in pretty good stead just at the moment," Caparelli said with an alum-tart smile. "Still, whatever I may think of Khumalo, it's hard to fault him for the way he keeps screaming for more ships. His area of responsibility's actually considerably larger than Sarnow's, and he's spread awfully thin. Unfortunately, there's only so much butter for our bread. We've had to send him at least a few modern ships, but overall, he's just going to have to make do with what he has. And we're just going to have to hope the situation there doesn't get any worse."

Honor nodded again. That seemed to describe the only thing they could hope for in quite a few places, at the moment, she reflected.

"Well, Sir Thomas," she said after a moment, climbing out of her chair and lifting Nimitz onto her shoulder, "we'll just have to do what we can to reduce pressure here closer to home."

"Yes, we will." He rose behind his desk. "And at least it looks like you've got a good command team to do the reducing with."

"That I do. If we don't manage to pull it off, it's not going to be their fault."

Late afternoon sunlight lay heavy and golden on the emerald green lawns of White Haven as Honor's armored limousine settled on the parking apron. The sting ships lifted away, and she climbed out of the car and stood for a moment, filling her lungs with the crisp northern air while her eyes devoured the towering, ancient trees.

Breeze moved through the swaying branches and plucked at her hair with tiny, gentle hands, and a deep, unabashedly sensual pleasure seemed to purr in her bones and muscles. Part of it was the reaction she always had after spending time on shipboard. The artificiality of her normal working environment was an inescapable fact of her life, but she'd been born and raised in the wilderness of Sphinx. She was as much a child of mountain forests and the vibrant, sometimes wild energy of sailboats on Sphinx's deep, cold oceans, as an officer of the Queen's Navy. It was an odd, sometimes painful, dichotomy which made her appreciate both her worlds even more deeply.

Yet there was more to it than that this time. She felt Nimitz at the back of her mind, savoring her sense of... content. That was the word, she decided, reaching up to rub the 'cat's ears gently. In the deepest sense of the word, "home," for her, had always been her parents' house on Sphinx. The house Stephanie Harrington's parents had built so many centuries before, which had sheltered so many generations of her family. Harrington House on Grayson was also "home" these days, in another sense, of course. And she supposed her Manticoran mansion on Jason Bay was, too, although somehow it still seemed more her "house" than truly home. Perhaps that was why she'd gone along with MacGuiness and Miranda-and her mother-when they insisted on rechristening that "Harrington House" as simply "the Bay House" to distinguish it from her home on Grayson.

But this, she thought, letting the quiet sounds of stirring wind, birds, and the musical sounds of flowing water sweep through her, this had also become home. Certainly more than Jason Bay. More even than Harrington House on Grayson. Possibly as much so as the house in which she'd quite literally been born. Not because of the welcoming tranquility of the grounds, the sense of being welcomed and enveloped by the ancient house and its lovingly maintained grounds, although she certainly felt that, as well. But what made this truly home were the people who lived here.

Her three-man detail fell into formation about her even here as she headed up the graveled path. The door opened as they approached, and her heart leapt as Hamish Alexander stepped out of it. Nimitz's purr buzzed in her ear, rich with loving amusement as he tasted and shared her brilliant flash of joy, and then a float chair drifted smoothly and silently out of the door behind Hamish.

Samantha lay curled up on Emily's chest like a long, sinuous question mark, her chin resting on Emily's right shoulder, and Nimitz's purr abruptly redoubled. Honor laughed, but she couldn't really fault his reaction. Not when her own sense of homecoming had just redoubled, as well.

"Welcome home," Emily said softly, almost as if she'd been reading Honor's mind, as Honor climbed the steps.

"I can't believe how good it feels to be here," Honor replied, and then her eyes widened in surprise as Hamish put his arms around her. She stiffened for just an instant, in startlement, not resistance, looking over his shoulder at Emily. They had always been so careful to never openly embrace one another in front of her armsmen or the White Haven staff. In front of anyone, actually. And perhaps especially, by unspoken agreement, in front of Emily.