David Weber - Honor 09 - Ashes of Victory

CHAPTER ONE

Admiral Lady Dame Honor Harrington stood in the gallery of ENS Farnese's boat

bay and tried not to reel as the silent emotional hurricane thundered about

her.

She gazed through the armorplast of the gallery bulkhead into the brilliantly

lit, perfect clarity of the bay itself, and tried to use its sterile serenity

as a sort of mental shield against the tempest. It didn't help a great deal,

but at least she didn't have to face it alone, and she felt the living side of

her mouth quirk in a wry smile as the six-limbed treecat in the carrier on her

back shifted uneasily, ears half-flattened as the same vortex battered at him.

Like the rest of his empathic species, he remained far more sensitive to

others' emotions than she, and he seemed torn between a frantic need to escape

the sheer intensity of the moment and a sort of euphoric high driven by an

excess of everyone else's endorphins.

At least the two of them had had plenty of practice, she reminded herself. The

stunned moment when her people realized their scratch-built, jury-rigged,

half-derisively self proclaimed "Elysian Space Navy" had destroyed an entire

Peep task force and captured the shipping to take every prisoner who wanted to

leave the prison planet of Hades to safety lay over three standard weeks

behind them. She'd thought, then, that nothing could ever equal the explosion

of triumph which had swept her ex-Peep flagship at that instant, but in its

own way, the emotional storm seething about her now was even stronger. It had

had longer to build on the voyage from the prison the entire People's Republic

of Haven had regarded as the most escape-proof facility in human history to

freedom, and anticipation had fanned its strength. For some of the escapees,

like Captain Harriet Benson, the CO of ENS Kutuzov, over sixty T-years had

passed since they'd breathed the air of a free planet. Those people could

never return to the lives they'd left behind, but their need to begin building

new ones blazed within them. Nor were they alone in their impatience. Even

those who'd spent the least time in the custody of the Office of State

Security longed to see loved ones once more, and unlike the escapees who'd

spent decades on the planet inmates called "Hell," they could pick up the

threads of the lives they'd feared they would never see again.

Yet that hunger to begin anew was tempered by a matching emotion which might

almost have been called regret. An awareness that somehow they had become part

of a tale which would be told and retold, and, undoubtedly, grow still greater

in the tellings . . . and that all tales end.

They knew the impossible odds they had surmounted to reach this moment, in

this boat bay gallery, in this star system. And because they did, they also

knew that all the embellishments with which the tale would be improved upon

over the years -- by themselves, as likely as not -- would be unnecessary,

peripheral and unimportant to the reality.

And that was what they regretted: the fact that when they left Farnese, they

would also leave behind the companions with whom they had built that tale's

reality. The unvoiced awareness that it was not given to human beings to touch

such moments, save fleetingly. The memory of who they'd been and what they'd

done would be with them always, yet it would be only memory, never again

reality. And as the heart-stopping fear and terror faded, the reality would

become even more precious and unattainable to them.

That was what truly gave the emotions whirling about her their strength . . .

and focused that strength upon her, for she was their leader, and that made

her the symbol of their joy and bittersweet regret alike.

It was also horribly embarrassing, and the fact that none of them knew she

could sense their emotions only made it worse. It was as if she stood outside

their windows, listening to whispered conversations they'd never meant to

share with her, and the fact that she had no choice -- that she could no

longer not sense the feelings of those about her -- only made her feel

perversely guilty when she did.

Yet what bothered her most was that she could never return what they had given

her. They thought she was the one who'd achieved so much, but they were wrong.

They were the ones who'd done it by doing all and more than all she'd asked of

them. They'd come from the military forces of dozens of star nations, emerging

from what the Peeps had contemptuously believed was the dustbin of history to

hand their tormentors what might well prove the worst defeat in the history of

the People's Republic. Not in tonnage destroyed, or star systems conquered,

but in something far more precious because it was intangible, for they had

delivered a potential deathblow to the terror of omnipotence which was so much

a part of State Security's repressive arsenal.

And they'd done it for her. She'd tried to express even a fraction of the

gratitude she felt, but she knew she'd failed. They lacked the sense she'd

developed, the ability to feel the reality behind the clumsy interface of

human language, and all her efforts had made not a dent in the storm of

devotion pouring back at her.

If only --

A clear, musical chime -- not loud, but penetrating -- broke into her thoughts

and she drew a deep breath as the first pinnace began its final approach.

There were other small craft behind it, including dozens of pinnaces from the

three squadrons of the wall which had come to meet Farnese and more than a

dozen heavy-lift personnel shuttles from the planet San Martin. They queued up

behind the lead pinnace, waiting their turns, and she tried not to let her

relief show as she thought about them. She and Warner Caslet, Farnese's exec,

had packed the battlecruiser, like all the other ships of the ESN, to the

deckheads to get all of the escapees aboard. The massive redundancy designed

into warship life-support systems had let them carry the overload (barely),

but it had done nothing about the physical crowding, and the systems

themselves were in serious need of maintenance after so long under such heavy

demand. The personnel shuttles outside the boat bay were but the first wave of

craft which would transport her people from the packed-sardine environment of

their battlecruiser to the mountainous surface of San Martin. The planet's

heavy gravity scarcely qualified it as a vacation resort, but at least it had

plenty of room. And after twenty-four T-days crammed into Farnese's

overcrowded berthing spaces, a little thing like weighing twice one's proper

weight would be a minor price for the glorious luxury of room in which to

stretch without putting a thumb into someone else's eye.

But even as she felt her crew eagerly anticipating the end of its confinement,

her own attention was locked upon the lead pinnace, for she knew whose it was.

Over two T-years had passed since she'd last faced the officer to whom it

belonged, and she'd thought she'd put her treacherously ambiguous feelings

about that officer aside. Now she knew she'd been wrong, for her own emotions

were even more confused and turbulent than those of the people about her as

she waited to greet him once again.

* * *

Admiral of the Green Hamish Alexander, Earl of White Haven and Commanding

Officer, Eighth Fleet, forced his face to remain immobile as GNS Benjamin the

Great's pinnace approached rendezvous with the battlecruiser his flagship had

come to meet. ENS Farnese -- and just what the hell is an "ENS?" he wondered.

That's something else I should have asked her -- was a Warlord-class unit. The

big ship floated against the needle-sharp stars, well out from San Martin,

where no unauthorized eye might see her and note her Peep origin. The time to

acknowledge her presence would come, but not yet, he thought, gazing through

the view port at the ship logic said could not be there. No, not yet.

Farnese retained the lean, arrogant grace of her battlecruiser breed, despite

the fact that she was even larger than the Royal Manticoran Navy's Reliant-

class. Small compared to his superdreadnought flagship, of course, but still a

big, powerful unit. He'd heard about the Warlords, read the ONI analyses and

appreciations of the class, even seen them destroyed in combat with units

under his own command. But this was the first time he'd ever come close enough

to see one with the unaided human eye. To be honest, it was closer than he'd

ever anticipated he might come, except perhaps in that unimaginable time

somewhere in the distant reaches of a future in which peace had come once more

to this section of the galaxy.

Which isn't going to happen any time soon, he reminded himself grimly from

behind the fortress of his face. And if I'd ever had any happy illusions in

that respect, just looking at Farnese would disabuse me of them in a hurry.

His jaw set as his pilot, obedient to his earlier orders, swept down the big

ship's starboard side and he studied her damage. Her heavy, multilayered armor

was actually buckled. The boundary layers of antikinetic armor seemed to have

slagged and run; the inner, ablative layers sandwiched between them were

bubbled and charred looking; and the sensors and antimissile laser clusters

which once had guarded Farnese's flank were gutted. White Haven would have

been surprised if half her starboard weapons remained functional, and her

starboard sidewall generators couldn't possibly have generated any realistic

defense against hostile fire.

Just like her, he thought moodily, almost angrily. Why in Christ's name can

the woman never bring a ship back intact? What the hell is it that makes her -

-

He chopped the thought off again, and this time he felt his mouth twist in

sardonic amusement. His was not, he reflected, the proper mood for an officer

of his seniority at a moment like this. Up until -- he glanced at his chrono -

- seven hours and twenty-three minutes earlier, he, like all the rest of the

Manticoran Alliance, had known Honor Harrington was dead. Like everyone else,

he'd seen the grisly HD of her execution, and even now he shuddered as he

recalled the ghastly moment when the gallows trapdoor sprang and her body --

He shied away from that image and closed his eyes, nostrils flaring while he

concentrated on another image, this one on his own com less than eight hours

earlier. A strong, gracefully carved, half-paralyzed face, framed in a short

mop of half-tamed curls. A face he had never imagined he would see again.

He blinked and inhaled deeply once again. A billion questions teemed in his

brain, put there by the raw impossibility of Honor Harrington's survival, and

he knew he was not alone in that. When word of this broke, every newsie in

Alliance space -- and half of those in Solly space, no doubt, he thought --

would descend upon whatever hiding places Honor or any of the people with her

might have found. They would ask, plead, bully, bribe, probably even threaten

in their efforts to winnow out every detail of their quarry's incredible

story. But even though those same questions burned in his own mind, they were

secondary, almost immaterial, compared to the simple fact of her survival.

And not, he admitted, simply because she was one of the most outstanding naval

officers of her generation and a priceless military asset which had been

returned to the Alliance literally from beyond the grave.

His pinnace arced down under the turn of Farnese's flank to approach the boat

bay, and as he felt the gentle shudder when the tractors captured the tiny

craft, Hamish Alexander took himself firmly in hand. He'd screwed up somehow

once before, let slip some hint of his sudden awareness that the woman who'd

been his protégée for over a decade had become something far more to him than

a brilliant junior officer and an asset of the Royal Manticoran Navy. He still

had no idea how he'd given himself away, but he knew he had. He'd felt the

awkwardness between them and known she'd returned to active duty early in an

effort to escape that awkwardness. And for two years, he'd lived with the

knowledge that her early return to duty was what had sent her into the Peep

ambush in which she had been captured . . . and sentenced to death.

It had burned like acid, that knowledge, and he'd watched the Peep broadcast

of her execution as an act of self-punishing penance. In an odd way, her death

had freed him to face his feelings for her . . . which only made things

immeasurably worse now that he knew she wasn't dead, of course. He had no

business loving someone little more than half his age, who'd never shown the

least romantic interest in him. Especially not while he was married to another

woman whom he still loved deeply and passionately, despite the injuries which

had confined her to a life-support chair for almost fifty T-years. No

honorable man would have let that happen, yet he had, and he'd been too self-

honest to deny it once his face had been rubbed sufficiently in it.

Or I like to think I'm too "self-honest" to lie to myself, he thought

mordantly as the tractors urged the pinnace from the outer darkness into the

illuminated boat bay. Of course, I had to wait until she was safely dead

before I got around to that sudden burst of honesty. But I did get there in

the end . . . damn it.

The pinnace rolled on thrusters and gyros, settling towards the docking

buffers, and he made himself a silent promise. Whatever he might feel, Honor

Harrington was a woman of honor. He might not be able to help his own

emotions, but he could damned well see to it that she never knew about them,

and he would. That much he could still do.

The pinnace touched down, the docking arms and umbilical locked, and Hamish

Alexander pushed himself up out of his comfortable seat. He looked at his

reflection in the view port's armorplast and studied his expression as he

smiled. Amazing how natural that smile looked, he thought, and nodded to his

reflection, then squared his shoulders and turned towards the hatch.

* * *

A green light glowed above the docking tube, indicating a good seal and

pressure, and Honor tucked her hand behind her as the gallery-side hatch slid

back. It was amazing how awkward it was to decide what to do with a single

hand when it had no mate to meet it halfway, but she brushed that thought

aside and nodded to Major Chezno. The senior officer of Farnese's Marine

detachment nodded back, then turned on his heel to face the honor guard drawn

up behind the side party.

"Honor guard, attennnnnn-hut!" he barked, and hands slapped the butts of ex-

Peep pulse rifles as the ex-prisoners snapped to parade-ground attention.

Honor watched them with a proprietary air and wasn't even tempted to smile. No

doubt some people would have found it absurd for men and women packed into

their ship like emergency rations in a tin to waste time polishing and

perfecting their ceremonial drill, especially when they all knew they would be

broken up again once they reached their destination. But it hadn't been absurd

to Farnese's ship's company . . . or to Honor Harrington.

I suppose it's our way of declaring who and what we are. We're not simply

escaped prisoners, huddled together like sheep while we run from the wolves.

We are the "wolves" of this piece, and we, by God, want the universe to know

it! She snorted in amusement, not at her Marines and their drill, but at

herself, and shook her head. I think I may be just a wee bit guilty of hubris

where these people are concerned.

The Navy side party snapped to attention as the first passenger floated down

the tube, and Honor drew another deep breath and braced herself. The Royal

Manticoran Navy's tradition was that the senior passenger was last to board

and first to exit a small craft, and she knew who she would see well before

the tall, broad-shouldered man in the impeccable black-and-gold of an RMN

admiral caught the grab bar and swung himself from the tube's weightlessness

into the gallery's one standard gravity.

Bosun's pipes twittered -- the old-fashioned, lung-powered kind, out of

deference to the traditionalists among the Elysian Space Navy's personnel --

and the admiral came to attention and saluted Farnese's executive officer,

standing at the head of the side party. Despite sixty years of naval service,

the admiral was unable to conceal his surprise, and Honor could hardly blame

him. Indeed, she felt an urchinlike grin threatening the disciplined facade of

her own expression at the sight. She'd deliberately failed to mention her

exec's identity during the com exchanges which had established her ships' bona

fides for the Trevor's Star defensive forces. The Earl of White Haven deserved

some surprises, after all, and the last thing he could possibly have expected

to see aboard this ship was a side party headed by a man in the dress uniform

of the People's Navy.

* * *

Hamish Alexander made his expression blank once more as the side party's

senior officer returned his salute. A Peep? Here? He knew he'd given away his

astonishment, but he doubted anyone could have faulted him for it. Not under

the circumstances.

His eyes swept the rainbow confusion of the ranks beyond the Peep as the

bosun's pipes continued to squeal, and another surprise flickered through him.

That visual cacophony had never been designed for color coordination, and for

just an instant, the assault on his optic nerve kept him from understanding

what he was seeing. But realization dawned almost instantly, and he felt

himself mentally nodding in approval. Whatever else Hades might have lacked,

it had obviously possessed fabric extruders, and someone had made good use of

them. The people in that bay gallery wore the uniforms of the militaries in

which they had served before the Peeps dumped them in the PRH's "inescapable"

prison, and if the confusion of colors and braid and headgear was more

visually chaotic than the neatly ordered military mind might have preferred,

so what? Many of the navies and planetary combat forces those uniforms

belonged to hadn't existed in well over half a T-century. They had gone down

to bitter defeat -- often clawing and defiant to the end, but still defeat --

before the juggernaut of the People's Republic, and again, so what? The people

wearing them had won the right to resurrect them, and Hamish Alexander rather

suspected that it would be . . . unwise for anyone to question their

tailoring.

The pipes died at last, and he lowered his hand from the band of his beret.

"Permission to come aboard, Sir?" he asked formally, and the Peep nodded.

"Permission granted, Admiral White Haven," he replied, and stepped back with a

courteous welcoming gesture.

"Thank you, Commander." White Haven's tone was equally courteous, and no one

could have been blamed for failing to realize it was an absent courtesy. But

then, no one else could have guessed at the emotions raging behind his calm,

ice-blue eyes as he glanced past the Peep to the tall, one-armed woman waiting

just beyond the side party.

They clung to her, those eyes, but again, no one could reasonably have faulted

that. No doubt people had stared at Lazarus, too.

She looks like hell . . . and she looks wonderful, he thought, taking in the

blue-on-blue Grayson admiral's uniform she wore instead of her Manticoran

rank. He was glad to see it for at least one intensely personal reason. In the

Grayson Space Navy, her rank actually exceeded his own, for she was the second

ranking officer of that explosively growing service, and that was good. It

meant that at least he would not have to address her from the towering

seniority of a full admiral to a mere commodore. And the uniform looked good

on her, too, he thought, giving her unknown tailor high marks.

But good as she looked, he could not pull his eyes away from the missing left

arm, or the paralyzed left side of her face. Her artificial eye clearly wasn't

tracking as it was supposed to, either, and he felt a fresh, lavalike burn of

fury. The Peeps might not actually have executed her, but it seemed they'd

come close to killing her.

Again.

She has got to stop doing this kind of thing, he thought, and his mental voice

was almost conversational. There are limits in all things . . . including how

many times she can dance on the edge of a razor and survive.

Not that she would pay him any attention if he said as much. Not any more than

he would have paid if their roles had been reversed. Yet even as he admitted

that, he knew it wasn't the same. He'd commanded squadrons, task forces, and

fleets in action, in an almost unbroken series of victories. He'd seen ships

blown apart, felt his own flagship shudder and buck as fire blasted through

its defenses. At least twice, he'd come within meters of death. Yet in all

that time, he'd never once been wounded in action, and not once had he ever

actually faced an enemy. Not hand-to-hand. His battles had been fought across

light-seconds, with grasers and lasers and nuclear warheads, and for all that

he knew his personnel respected and trusted him, they did not idolize him.

Not the way Honor Harrington's people idolized her. For once, the newsies had

gotten something exactly right when they dubbed her "the Salamander" from her

habit of always being where the fire was hottest. She'd fought White Haven's

sort of battle all too often for someone of her comparative youth, and she had

the touch, the personal magic, that made her crews walk unflinchingly into the

furnace beside her. But unlike the earl, she had also faced people trying to

kill her from so close she could see their eyes, smell their sweat, and God

only knew what she'd been doing when she lost her arm. No doubt he'd find out

soon enough, and, equally no doubt, it would be one more thing for him to

worry that she might be crazy enough to repeat in the future. Which was

irrational of him. It wasn't as if she actually went out looking for ways to

get herself killed, no matter how it sometimes seemed to those watching her.

It was just --

He realized he'd been motionless just a moment too long. He could feel the

curiosity behind the countless eyes watching him, wondering what he was

thinking, and he forced a smile. The one thing he couldn't have any of them do

was to actually figure out what had been going through his mind, and he held

out his hand to her.

"Welcome home, Lady Harrington," he said, and felt her long, slender fingers

tighten about his with the careful strength of a native heavy-worlder.

* * *

"Welcome home, Lady Harrington."

She heard the words, but they seemed tiny and far away, at the other end of a

shaky com link, as she gripped his extended hand. His deep, resonant voice was

just the way she'd remembered it -- remembered, in fact, with rather more

fidelity than she might have desired -- yet it was also completely new, as if

she'd never heard it before. And that was because she was hearing him on so

many levels. Her sensitivity to others' emotions had increased yet again.

She'd suspected that it had; now she knew it. Either that, or there was

something special about her sensitivity to his emotions, and that was an even

more disturbing possibility. But whatever the cause, she heard not simply his

words, or even the messages communicated by the smile in the blue eyes. No,

she heard all the things he didn't say. All the things he fought so hard, and

with such formidable self-control, against allowing himself even to hint that

he might want to say.

All the things he might as well have shouted at the top of his lungs yet

didn't even guess he was giving away.

For a fleeting moment of pure self-indulgence she let the emotions hidden

behind his face sweep her up in a dizzying whirl. She couldn't help it as his

joyous surprise at her survival swept over her. His soaring welcome came on

its heels . . . and his desire to sweep her into his arms. Not a trace of

those things showed on his face, or in his manner, but he couldn't possibly

hide them from her, and the sheer lightning-strike intensity of the moment

burned through her like an explosion.

And on its heels came the knowledge that none of the things he longed to do

could ever happen.

It was even worse than she'd feared. The thought rolled through her, more

dismal still for the moment of joy she had allowed herself to feel. She'd

known he'd stuck in her mind and heart. Now she knew that she had stuck in

his, as well, and that he would never, ever admit it to her.

Everything in the universe demanded its own price . . . and the greater a

gift, the higher the price it carried. Deep inside, in the secret places where

logic seldom treads, Honor Harrington had always believed that, and she'd

realized over the last two years that this was the price she must pay for her

bond with Nimitz. No other 'cat-human bonding had ever been so close, ever

spilled across to the actual communication of emotions, and the depth of her

fusion with her beloved companion was worth any price.

Even this one, she told herself. Even the knowledge that Hamish Alexander

loved her and of what might have been had the universe been a different place.

Yet just as he would never tell her, she would never tell him . . . and was

she blessed or cursed by the fact that, unlike him, she would always know what

he had never said?

"Thank you, My Lord," Lady Dame Honor Harrington said, and her soprano was

cool and clear as spring water, shadowed only by the slight slurring imposed

by the crippled side of her lips. "It's good to be home."

CHAPTER TWO

White Haven's pinnace, unlike the ones which had followed it into the boat

bay, was almost empty when it left. He and Honor, as befitted their seniority,

sat in the two seats closest to the hatch, but those seats were a virtual

island, surrounded by emptiness as their juniors gave them space. Andrew

LaFollet, Honor's personal armsman, sat directly behind them, and Lieutenant

Robards, White Haven's flag lieutenant, sat two rows back from there, with

Warner Caslet, Carson Clinkscales, Solomon Marchant, Jasper Mayhew, Scotty

Tremaine, and Senior Chief Horace Harkness scattered out behind him. Alistair

McKeon should have been there, but he had remained behind with Jesus Ramirez,

Honor's second-in-command, to help organize the transfer of her Elysians to

the planetary surface.

She really ought to have stayed aboard Farnese and organized that transfer

herself, but White Haven had been politely insistent about the need to get her

and her story on their joint way to higher authority. So Alistair had remained

behind, along with the other survivors who'd been with her since their capture

in Adler, and she glanced over her shoulder one more time at the handful of

people who would accompany her on the next stage of her journey, then returned

her attention to the man seated beside her.

It was easier than it had been. One thing about moments of tempestuous

emotion, she'd discovered: they simply could not be sustained. Indeed, the

stronger they were, the faster it seemed people had to step back to gather

their inner breath if they intended to cope with their lives. Which,

fortunately, both she and White Haven did. The murmuring undercurrent

remained, flowing between them even if she was the only one who could sense

it, but it was bearable. Something she could deal with, if not ignore.

Sure it is. I'll just keep telling myself that.

"I'm sure it will be months before we get all the details straight, Milady,"

the earl said, and Honor hid a wry mental grimace at his formality. He clearly

had no intention of calling her by her given name . . . which was probably

wise of him. "Lord knows we've only scratched the surface so far! Still, there

are a few things I simply have to ask you about right now."

"Such as, My Lord?"

"Well, for one thing, just what the devil does `ENS' stand for?"

"I beg your pardon?" Honor cocked her head at him.

"I can understand why they're not `HMS,' given that you've been acting in your

Grayson persona, not your Manticoran one," White Haven said, gesturing at the

blue uniform she wore. "But that being the case, I would have expected your

units to be designated as Grayson ships. Obviously they aren't, and I haven't

been able to come up with any other organization, except perhaps the Erewhon

Navy, to fit your terminology."

"Oh." Honor gave him one of her crooked smiles and shrugged. "That was

Commodore Ramirez's idea."

"The big San Martino?" White Haven asked, frowning as he tried to be sure he'd

fitted the right name to the right face on a com screen.

"That's him," Honor agreed. "He was the senior officer in Camp Inferno -- we

never would have been able to pull it off without his support -- and he

thought that given the fact that we were escaping from a planet officially

called Hades, we ought to call ourselves the Elysian Space Navy. So we did."

"I see." White Haven rubbed his chin, then grinned at her. "You do realize

you've managed to open yet another can of legal worms, don't you?"

"I beg your pardon?" Honor repeated in a rather different tone, and he laughed

at her obvious puzzlement.

"Well, you were acting as a Grayson, My Lady . . . and you're a steadholder.

If I remember correctly, the Grayson Constitution has a very interesting

provision about armed forces commanded by its steadholders."

"It -- " Honor broke off and stared at him, her single natural eye very wide,

and she heard the sudden hiss of an indrawn breath from the armsman behind

her.

"No doubt you're better informed than I am," White Haven said into her sudden

silence, "but it was my understanding that steadholders were specifically

limited to no more than fifty personal armed retainers, like the Major here."

He nodded courteously over his shoulder at LaFollet.

"That's correct, My Lord," Honor agreed after a moment. She'd been Steadholder

Harrington for so long that it no longer seemed unnatural to have somehow

become a great feudal magnate, yet she hadn't even thought about the possible

constitutional implications of her actions on Hell.

She should have, for this was one point on which the Constitution was totally

unforgiving. Every armsman in the service of Harrington Steading answered to

Honor in one way or another, but most did so only indirectly, through the

administrative machinery of her steading's police forces. Only fifty were her

personal liege men, sworn to her service, and not the steading's. Any order

she gave those fifty men had the force of law, so long as it did not violate

the Constitution, and the fact that she'd given it shielded them from any

consequences for having obeyed even if it did. She could be held responsible

for it; they could not, but those fifty were the only personal force

Steadholder Harrington was permitted.

Steadholders might command other military forces from within the chain of

command of the Grayson Army or Navy, but to satisfy the Constitution, the

command of those forces must be lodged in the established Grayson military

with the specific approval of the planet's ruler. And Protector Benjamin IX

had not said a word about anything called "the Elysian Space Navy."

She looked over her shoulder at LaFollet, and her armsman gazed back. His face

was calm enough, but his gray eyes looked a bit anxious, and she raised an

eyebrow.

"Just how badly have I stepped on my sword, Andrew?" she asked him, and

despite himself, he smiled, for "sword" had a very specific connotation on

Grayson. But then he sobered.

"I don't really know, My Lady. I suppose I ought to've said something about

it, but it never occurred to me at the time. The Constitution is pretty blunt,

though, and I think at least one steadholder was actually executed for

violating the ban. That was three hundred years ago or so, but -- "

He shrugged, and Honor chuckled.

"Not a good precedent, however long ago it was," she murmured, and turned back

to White Haven. "I guess I should have gone ahead and called them units in the

Grayson Navy after all, My Lord."

"That or the RMN," he said judiciously. "You hold legal rank in both, so the

chain of command would have covered you in either, I imagine. But it might be

just a little awkward the way things actually worked out. Nathan and I -- " he

flicked a small nod at the imperturbable young lieutenant behind them " --

discussed this on our way to Farnese. He actually went so far as to consult

Benjamin the Great's library. I don't believe there's been a precedent since

the one Major LaFollet just referred to, but the fact that a steadholder not

only held command in but actually created a military force not authorized by

the Protector could be a real problem. Not with Benjamin, of course." A casual

shooing gesture of his right hand banished that possibility to well-deserved

limbo. "But there are still those on Grayson who feel more than a little . . .

uncomfortable with his reforms and see you as the emblem of them. I have no

doubt that some members of that faction would love to find a way to embarrass

you -- and him -- by seizing on any weapon, even one as specious as that sort

of pettifogging legalism. I'm sure Benjamin's advisers will see the problem as

soon as I did, but I thought it might be as well to point it out to you now so

you could be thinking about it."

"Oh, thank you, My Lord," Honor said, and both of them chuckled. It was a

brief moment, but it felt good. At least we can still act naturally around one

another. And who knows? If we act that way long enough, maybe it will actually

become natural again. That would be nice. I think.

She brushed the thought aside and leaned back, crossing her legs and ignoring

Nimitz's mock-indignant protest as her lap shifted under him.

"I trust you haven't had any more interesting thoughts, My Lord?" she said

David Weber - Honor 09 - Ashes of Victory

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: