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But blame flowed downhill, Boardman reminded himself. And it would be much easier for Citizen Secretary Boardman to divert blame to an underling—to, say First Deputy Assistant Younger—than it had been for Second Deputy Assistant Boardman to avoid the blame someone else wanted to divert to him.
He chuckled at the thought and decided he had time to watch the execution just one more time before he left for the night.
As a concession to her new job description, she wore sober and severely tailored civilian clothing, not the admiral's uniform to which she was entitled, but the workload hadn't changed, and she pushed her chair back and rubbed her eyes wearily as she reached the end of the most recent report. There was another one awaiting her, and another after that, and another, in a paperwork queue which seemed to stretch all the way from her Octagan office here on Haven to the Barnett System. Just thinking about all those other reports made her feel even more fatigued, but she also felt something she had not felt very often in the last eight years: hope.
It remained a fragile thing, that hope, yet it was there. Not evident to everyone else, perhaps, and certainly not to her civilian overlords, but there for eyes that knew (and had access to all the data) to see.
The Manticoran Alliance's momentum had slowed... possibly even faltered, if that wasn't too strong a verb. It was as if they'd gathered all their resources for the final lunge at Trevor's Star but now, having taken that vitally important system away from the Republic, they'd shot their bolt. Before her recall to Haven, she had expected Admiral White Haven to keep right on coming and cut the Barnett System off at the ankles, but he hadn't. Indeed, current reports from the Naval Intelligence Section of StateSec had him still in Yeltsin trying to organize a brand-new fleet out of whatever odds and ends the Star Kingdom's allies could contribute. And given all the other reports she now had access to, she could see why.
The door to her office hissed open, and she looked up with a wry smile as Ivan Bukato stepped through it with a folder of data chips under his arm. Under the old regime, Bukato would have been the People's Navy's chief of naval operations, but the CNO slot had been eradicated along with the other "elitist" trappings of the Legislaturalists. Under the New Order, he was simply Citizen Admiral Bukato, who happened to have all the duties and very few of the perks Chief of Naval Operations Bukato would have had.
He paused just inside the door, eyebrows rising as he found her still behind her desk. He wasn't really surprised, for like her other subordinates, he'd long since realized she routinely worked even longer and harder hours than she demanded of anyone else, but he shook his head chidingly.
"You really should think about going home occasionally, Citizen Secretary," he said in a mild voice. "Getting a good night's sleep every once in a while would probably do your energy levels a world of good."
"There's still too much crap to be hosed out of the stables," she told him wryly, and he shrugged.
"That's as may be, but I tend to doubt that you cut yourself this short on sleep at the front."
She grunted like a moderately irate boor in acknowledgment of a direct hit. But there were major differences between running the Republic's entire war office and commanding a front-line fleet. A fleet commander could never be positive when an enemy task force might suddenly appear out of hyper and come slashing in to attack her command area. She always had to be alert, ready for the possibility and with enough reserve energy in hand to deal with it. But a secretary of war was weeks behind the front line. By the time a decision was bucked all the way back to her, there was seldom any point in shaving a few minutes, or hours—or even days—off her response time. If the problem was that time-critical, then either the people at the front had already solved it, or else they were dead, and either way, there was damn-all she could do to reassemble Humpty-Dumpty from here. No, McQueen's job was to provide general direction, select officers she thought had the best shot at carrying out the missions assigned to them, pick the targets to aim them at, and then figure out how to keep those homicidal idiots at StateSec off their backs and get them the material support they needed while they got on with said missions. If she could figure out, in her copious free time, how to rebuild the Navy's morale, offset the technological inferiority of its weapon systems, magically replace the dozens of battle squadrons it had lost since the war began, and find a way to divert Manty attention from taking the rest of the Republic away from the Committee of Public Safety, that was simply an added benefit.
She smiled wryly at the thought, tipped her chair back, and folded her arms behind her head as she regarded Bukato with bright green eyes. She was still getting to know him—Rob Pierre and Oscar Saint-Just hadn't been so foolish as to let her shake up the existing chain of command by handpicking her senior subordinates herself—but they worked well enough together. And as his teasing tone had just indicated, he appeared to have begun feeling reasonably comfortable with her as his boss. Not that anyone would be stupid enough to let any discomfort with a superior show in the current People's Republic. Especially when that boss was also a junior member of the Committee of Public Safety.
"I probably should try to keep more regular hours," she agreed, unfolding one arm long enough to run a hand over her dark hair. "But somehow or other, I've got to get a handle on all the problems my predecessor let grow like weeds."
"With all due respect, Citizen Secretary, you've already cut through more of the undergrowth than I would have believed possible a few months ago. That being the case, I'd just as soon not see you collapse from overwork and leave me with the job of breaking in still another Secretary of War."
"I'll try to bear that in mind," she said dryly, and smiled at him. Yet even as she smiled, that hidden part of her brain wondered where his personal loyalties lay. It was damnably hard to tell these days... and critically important. On the surface, he was as hardworking, loyal, and reliable a subordinate as a woman could ask for, but surface impressions were dangerous. In fact, his apparent loyalty actually made her uneasy, for she was perfectly well aware that most of the officer corps regarded her as dangerously ambitious. She didn't blame them for that—since she was ambitious—and she normally managed to win over her direct subordinates despite her reputation. But it usually took longer than this, and she couldn't help wondering how much of his seeming ease with her was genuine.
"In the meantime, however," she went on, letting her chair snap forward and reaching out to rest one hand on the heap of data chips on her desk, "I still have to get the overall situation and its parameters fixed in my mind. You know, I'm still more than a little amazed to discover how true it really is that the people at the sharp end of the stick are too close to the shooting to see the big picture."
"I know." Bukato nodded. "Of course, it's also true that the COs at the front usually do have a much better grasp of their own separate parts of the 'big picture.'"
"You're right there," she agreed feelingly, remembering her own mammoth frustration—and fury—with her superiors when she'd been the one fighting desperately to hang onto Trevor's Star. "But the thing that surprised me most was that the Manties aren't pushing any harder than they are. Until I got a chance to review these—" she tapped the data chips again "—and realized just how thinly stretched they are."
"I tried to make that same point to Citizen Secretary Kline before his, um, departure," Bukato said. "But he never seemed to grasp what I was trying to tell him."
He slid his own chip folio into her In basket, walked over to the chair facing her desk, and cocked an eyebrow in question, and McQueen nodded for him to be seated.
"Thank you, Citizen Secretary," he said, folding his long, lanky body into the chair, then leaned back and crossed his legs. "I have to admit," he went on in a much more serious tone, "that was one reason I was glad to see you replace him. Obviously, the civilian government has to retain the ultimate authority over the People's military forces, but Citizen Secretary Kline didn't have any military background at all, and sometimes that made it a bit difficult to explain things to him."
McQueen nodded. Privately, she was more than a little surprised by Bukato's willingness to say anything that could be taken as a criticism of the former citizen secretary. To be sure, Kline's removal from office was a sign he'd fallen out of favor, but Bukato had to be as aware as she was that StateSec must have bugged her office, and anything that even hinted that a senior officer harbored doubts about or contempt for a political superior could have dire consequences. Of course, he had covered himself with his pious observation about civilian authority, she reminded herself.
"I'd like to think that that's one difficulty you won't experience in our working relationship," she told him.
"I certainly don't expect to, Citizen Secretary. For one thing, as a serving officer in your own right, you know just how big the galaxy really is... and how much defensive depth we still have."
"I do. At the same time, however, I also know that we can't afford to keep on giving ground forever if we don't want morale to crumble," she pointed out. "And that applies to the civilians, as well as the military. The Fleet can't win this thing without the support of the civilian sector, and if the civilians decide there's no point in supporting people who just keep falling back—" She shrugged.
"Of course we can't," Bukato agreed. "But every system we lose is one more the Manties have to picket, and every light-year they advance inside the frontiers is another light-year of logistical strain."
"True. On the other hand, capturing Trevor's Star has already simplified their logistics immensely. Sooner or later, that's going to show up in their deployments."
"Um." It was Bukato's turn to grimace and nod. The capture of Trevor's Star had given the Manticoran Alliance possession of every terminus of the Manticore Wormhole Junction, which meant Manty freighters could now make the voyage from the Star Kingdom's home system to the front virtually instantaneously... and with no possibility of interception.
"No doubt it will show up eventually, Citizen Secretary," he said after a moment, "but for the moment, it's not going to help them a whole hell of a lot. They still have to cover the same defensive volume with the same number of available warships. Maybe even more importantly, they have to make certain they hold Trevor's Star after all the time and trouble they spent taking it in the first place. From my own reading of the intelligence reports, that's the real reason they sent White Haven off to organize an entirely new fleet at Yeltsin. They're keeping almost all of his old fleet right there at Trevor's Star to protect it."
"You're right," McQueen agreed. "For now, at least, it is distracting them from more offensive activities. But it's a dynamic situation, not a static one. By holding the system, they remove the threat of an invasion of the Manties' home system down the Junction. And that means they can start standing down those damned forts they built to cover the central terminus, which is going to free up one hell of a lot of trained manpower."
"But not immediately," Bukato countered with a smile, and McQueen smiled back. Neither of them had yet said anything astonishingly brilliant or insightful, but this sort of brainstorming had become a rarity in the current People's Navy. "Even if they shut the forts down tomorrow—or yesterday, for that matter—they can't actually use the fresh manpower against us until they build the ships for those people to crew."
"Exactly!" McQueen's eyes sparkled. "Of course, they can still build ships faster than we can. But we still have a lot more building slips than they do and our construction rates are going up. It may take us longer to build a given ship than it takes them, but as long as we can work on building more of them at the same time we've got a shot at matching their construction rate in total numbers of hulls. Add that to the fact that we can crew as many ships as we can build, whereas they have a hell of a lot smaller population base, and the 'big battalions' are still on our side... for now. But that infusion of additional crewmen from the forts is going to fuel one hell of a growth spurt in their front-line strength a year or so down the line. What we have to do is find a way to use the distraction aspect of their commitment at Trevor's Star against them before they can use the benefits of its possession against us."
"Ah?" Bukato cocked his head. "You sound as if you have a way to use it in mind," he observed slowly.
"I do... maybe," McQueen admitted. "One of the things I've just been reading over was the availability numbers on our battleships." Bukato grimaced before he could stop himself, and she chuckled. "I know—I know! Every single time someone's come up with a brilliant idea about how to use them, we've ended up with less battleships when the wreckage cooled. And, frankly, we lost an awful lot of them in the run up to Trevor's Star simply because we had no choice but to commit them to defensive actions against dreadnoughts and superdreadnoughts. But I was surprised to see how many we have left. If we strip the eastern sectors down to bedrock, we could assemble quite a fleet of them to support a core of real ships of the wall."
"You're thinking in terms of a counterattack," Bukato said quietly.
"I am," McQueen agreed. It was the first time she'd said a word about it to anyone, and intense interest flickered in Bukato's dark, deepset eyes. "I'm going to keep the exact point where I want to launch it my own little secret for a while longer," she told him, "but one of the jobs Citizen Chairman Pierre gave me was to improve the Fleet's morale. Well, if we can knock the damn Manties back on their heels at a place of our own choosing, even if it's only briefly, we should make a running start on that particular chore. It wouldn't hurt civilian morale, either, and that doesn't even count what it would do to Manty morale... or their future deployment considerations."
"I'd certainly have to agree with that, Citizen Secretary," Bukato said. "The tech transfers from the Solarian League have helped shake some of our people loose from their sense of inferiority, but most of them are still too defensive minded for my taste. We need more admirals like Tourville and Theisman, and we need to give them the support they require, then turn them loose."
"Um." McQueen nodded, but she couldn't hide a frown of displeasure as mention of Lester Tourville and Thomas Theisman reminded her of the whole Honor Harrington episode. She saw a flicker of concern flash across Bukato's face as her expression altered and quickly banished the grimace before he could decide it was directed at him for some reason.
And it's not as if the affair was a total disaster, she reminded herself. You know damned well Ransom was going to purge Tourville and his entire staff—if not Theisman as well—for trying to protect Harrington from StateSec. At least the paranoid bitch managed to get her worthless ass killed before she did any more damage to the Fleet! And it also means I don't have to fight her tooth and nail over every tiny move I make, either. On the other hand, StateSec is treating Tourville and his people as if they were the ones who killed her! Count Tilly's been back from Cerberus for almost four months now, and her entire crew's still sequestered while Saint-Just's security goons "investigate" the episode. Idiots!
"I realize Citizen Admiral Theisman is still a bit... old-fashioned," Bukato said, responding to her frown, "but his record in combat is exemplary, Citizen Secretary, and the same is true of Tourville. I hope you don't intend to let any rumors or partial reports keep you from—"
"Relax, Citizen Admiral," McQueen said, waving a hand in the air between them, and he shut his mouth quickly. "You don't have to sell me on Tourville or Tom Theisman—not as fleet commanders, anyway. And I have no intention of making them any sort of fall guys for what happened to Citizen Secretary Ransom. Whatever anyone else might think, I know—and I've seen to it that Citizen Chairman Pierre and Citizen Secretary Saint-Just know, as well—that none of what happened was their fault." Or I think I've made certain of that, at any rate. Saint-Just says he's more worried about keeping Tilly's crew "out of the public eye until we make Cordelia's death official," at least. Whether he actually means it or not, though...
She studied Bukato a moment, then shrugged mentally. She was doing all she could for Tourville, and it wasn't the very smartest thing she could discuss with Bukato. But perhaps the time had come to test the waters with him in a different way.
"I only wish I could have convinced the Committee to countermand Citizen Secretary Ransom's plans for Harrington," she said. "We might have avoided the entire mess if she'd been willing to let the Navy have custody of Harrington instead of dragging her off to Camp Charon to hang her!"
Bukato's eyes widened at the genuine vitriol in the last sentence. The new Secretary of War was taking a major chance in offering a subordinate access to her inner thoughts—especially if those thoughts were critical of the Committee of Public Safety or any of its members, present or past. Of course, it could also be—in fact, it almost certainly was—a test of him as well. The problem was that he didn't know exactly what he was being tested for. Loyalty to the Committee, which might be demonstrated by denouncing her? Or loyalty to the Navy and his service superior (assuming that those weren't actually two quite different things), which might be demonstrated by keeping his mouth shut?
"I wasn't privy to that decision, Citizen Secretary," he said very slowly, choosing his words with exquisite care. Then he decided to throw out a feeler of his own. "Nonetheless, it did seem... questionable to me."
"Not to me," McQueen snorted. She saw a flash of anxiety in his eyes and grinned tightly. "It seemed goddamned stupid to me," she said, "and I told Citizen Chairman Pierre and Citizen Secretary Saint-Just as much at the time."
Surprised respect showed in Bukato's expression, and she hid a chuckle. She hadn't expressed herself quite that candidly to them, but she'd come close to it. If StateSec listened to the audio chips she was sure they were making, her version would be near enough to Saint-Just's recollections (or the chips he might have made of that meeting, assuming he was sufficiently paranoid for that—and he was) to stay on the safe side of accurate. And from the look on Bukato's face, her willingness to be candid with him on such a topic had just raised her stock with him considerably.
"Mind you, it wasn't their idea, and I don't think they cared for it, either," she went on, always conscious of those hidden microphones. "But she was a member of the Committee, and she'd already dumped the story and her intention to execute Harrington into the Solly news feeds. And that whole Leveler business was barely four T-months old at the time. I don't have to tell you how that had shaken things up, and they felt their only choice was to back her up rather than risk having the rest of the galaxy think we had potentially serious divisions at the top or invite another coup attempt from our domestic enemies. Which is also why they had Public Information fake up that whole hanging scene."
"I have to admit, I didn't quite understand the reasoning behind that," Bukato said. "I hope you'll pardon me for saying this, but it seemed gratuitous to me."
"'Gratuitous,'" McQueen snorted. "In some ways, that's not a bad word for it, I suppose. And I imagine it will motivate at least some of the Manties to seek revenge. But the decision was made over at Public Information, and I'd have to say that PubIn was the proper place for it to be made. They're in a better position to judge its effect on civilian and neutral opinion than those of us in the Navy are."
Somehow the bitter twist of her mouth didn't quite match her thoughtful, serious tone, and Bukato was surprised by the sparkle of laughter he felt deep inside. No doubt anyone listening to the chips would hear exactly what she wanted them to, but she did have a way of getting her actual meaning across anyway.
And I suppose there was a little rationality in faking Harrington's execution, he thought. At least this way we don't have to admit that—what? thirty?—POWs staging an unsuccessful jail break managed to completely destroy an entire battlecruiser all by themselves! God only knows what making that public knowledge would do to our morale, even if it was only a StateSec ship. Not to mention what the damage to StateSec's reputation for invincibility might do the next time they got ready to suppress some poor bastards. And whether we hanged her or not, she's still dead. We couldn't bring her back even if we wanted to, so I guess we might as well get a little propaganda mileage out of it if we can. And assuming it was the sort of mileage we wantedin the first place. If it was.
He shook free of his thoughts and looked at the new Secretary of War again, trying to read what was going on behind those green eyes of hers. He knew her reputation, of course. Everyone did. But so far he'd seen remarkably little evidence of her famed political ambition, and she'd accomplished more to straighten out the Navy's mess in the bare six T-months since being officially named Secretary of War than Kline had managed in over four T-years. The professional naval officer in Ivan Bukato couldn't help admiring—and appreciating that—yet he sensed a crossroads looming in his own future. She hadn't just happened to come out of her shell tonight. She really was testing him, and if he let himself be drawn into a feeling of loyalty to her, the consequences could prove... unfortunate. Even fatal.
And yet...
"I understand, Ma'am," he said quietly, and saw her eyes flicker. It was the first time he'd used the traditional, "elitist" courtesy instead of calling her "Citizen Secretary." Technically, she was entitled to it as a member of the Committee of Public Safety, but staying away from the form of address the Navy had been denied among its own ever since the Harris Assassination had seemed the better part of valor.
"I'm glad you do, Ivan," she said after a moment, and saw the answering understanding in his eyes as she used his given name for the very first time. The first step of the intricate dance had been accomplished. Neither of them could be certain yet where the dance would end, but the first step was always the most important one. Yet it was also time to cover her backside just a little more, and she smiled sardonically at Bukato even as she made her voice come out seriously and thoughtfully. "We're going to have to make some pretty tough decisions of our own when it comes to recommending purely military policy. I realize political and diplomatic decisions are going to have an impact on the military equation, but frankly, until we get our own shop up and running properly, I'm delighted that I don't have to concern myself with nonmilitary policy. Time enough to worry about fine-tuning our coordination with the diplomats once we're confident we can hold the Manty bastards where they are!"
"Of course, Ma'am," Bukato agreed, and the two of them smiled thinly at one another.
Chapter Three
He chuckled at the thought and decided he had time to watch the execution just one more time before he left for the night.
* * *
Esther McQueen was also working late.As a concession to her new job description, she wore sober and severely tailored civilian clothing, not the admiral's uniform to which she was entitled, but the workload hadn't changed, and she pushed her chair back and rubbed her eyes wearily as she reached the end of the most recent report. There was another one awaiting her, and another after that, and another, in a paperwork queue which seemed to stretch all the way from her Octagan office here on Haven to the Barnett System. Just thinking about all those other reports made her feel even more fatigued, but she also felt something she had not felt very often in the last eight years: hope.
It remained a fragile thing, that hope, yet it was there. Not evident to everyone else, perhaps, and certainly not to her civilian overlords, but there for eyes that knew (and had access to all the data) to see.
The Manticoran Alliance's momentum had slowed... possibly even faltered, if that wasn't too strong a verb. It was as if they'd gathered all their resources for the final lunge at Trevor's Star but now, having taken that vitally important system away from the Republic, they'd shot their bolt. Before her recall to Haven, she had expected Admiral White Haven to keep right on coming and cut the Barnett System off at the ankles, but he hadn't. Indeed, current reports from the Naval Intelligence Section of StateSec had him still in Yeltsin trying to organize a brand-new fleet out of whatever odds and ends the Star Kingdom's allies could contribute. And given all the other reports she now had access to, she could see why.
The door to her office hissed open, and she looked up with a wry smile as Ivan Bukato stepped through it with a folder of data chips under his arm. Under the old regime, Bukato would have been the People's Navy's chief of naval operations, but the CNO slot had been eradicated along with the other "elitist" trappings of the Legislaturalists. Under the New Order, he was simply Citizen Admiral Bukato, who happened to have all the duties and very few of the perks Chief of Naval Operations Bukato would have had.
He paused just inside the door, eyebrows rising as he found her still behind her desk. He wasn't really surprised, for like her other subordinates, he'd long since realized she routinely worked even longer and harder hours than she demanded of anyone else, but he shook his head chidingly.
"You really should think about going home occasionally, Citizen Secretary," he said in a mild voice. "Getting a good night's sleep every once in a while would probably do your energy levels a world of good."
"There's still too much crap to be hosed out of the stables," she told him wryly, and he shrugged.
"That's as may be, but I tend to doubt that you cut yourself this short on sleep at the front."
She grunted like a moderately irate boor in acknowledgment of a direct hit. But there were major differences between running the Republic's entire war office and commanding a front-line fleet. A fleet commander could never be positive when an enemy task force might suddenly appear out of hyper and come slashing in to attack her command area. She always had to be alert, ready for the possibility and with enough reserve energy in hand to deal with it. But a secretary of war was weeks behind the front line. By the time a decision was bucked all the way back to her, there was seldom any point in shaving a few minutes, or hours—or even days—off her response time. If the problem was that time-critical, then either the people at the front had already solved it, or else they were dead, and either way, there was damn-all she could do to reassemble Humpty-Dumpty from here. No, McQueen's job was to provide general direction, select officers she thought had the best shot at carrying out the missions assigned to them, pick the targets to aim them at, and then figure out how to keep those homicidal idiots at StateSec off their backs and get them the material support they needed while they got on with said missions. If she could figure out, in her copious free time, how to rebuild the Navy's morale, offset the technological inferiority of its weapon systems, magically replace the dozens of battle squadrons it had lost since the war began, and find a way to divert Manty attention from taking the rest of the Republic away from the Committee of Public Safety, that was simply an added benefit.
She smiled wryly at the thought, tipped her chair back, and folded her arms behind her head as she regarded Bukato with bright green eyes. She was still getting to know him—Rob Pierre and Oscar Saint-Just hadn't been so foolish as to let her shake up the existing chain of command by handpicking her senior subordinates herself—but they worked well enough together. And as his teasing tone had just indicated, he appeared to have begun feeling reasonably comfortable with her as his boss. Not that anyone would be stupid enough to let any discomfort with a superior show in the current People's Republic. Especially when that boss was also a junior member of the Committee of Public Safety.
"I probably should try to keep more regular hours," she agreed, unfolding one arm long enough to run a hand over her dark hair. "But somehow or other, I've got to get a handle on all the problems my predecessor let grow like weeds."
"With all due respect, Citizen Secretary, you've already cut through more of the undergrowth than I would have believed possible a few months ago. That being the case, I'd just as soon not see you collapse from overwork and leave me with the job of breaking in still another Secretary of War."
"I'll try to bear that in mind," she said dryly, and smiled at him. Yet even as she smiled, that hidden part of her brain wondered where his personal loyalties lay. It was damnably hard to tell these days... and critically important. On the surface, he was as hardworking, loyal, and reliable a subordinate as a woman could ask for, but surface impressions were dangerous. In fact, his apparent loyalty actually made her uneasy, for she was perfectly well aware that most of the officer corps regarded her as dangerously ambitious. She didn't blame them for that—since she was ambitious—and she normally managed to win over her direct subordinates despite her reputation. But it usually took longer than this, and she couldn't help wondering how much of his seeming ease with her was genuine.
"In the meantime, however," she went on, letting her chair snap forward and reaching out to rest one hand on the heap of data chips on her desk, "I still have to get the overall situation and its parameters fixed in my mind. You know, I'm still more than a little amazed to discover how true it really is that the people at the sharp end of the stick are too close to the shooting to see the big picture."
"I know." Bukato nodded. "Of course, it's also true that the COs at the front usually do have a much better grasp of their own separate parts of the 'big picture.'"
"You're right there," she agreed feelingly, remembering her own mammoth frustration—and fury—with her superiors when she'd been the one fighting desperately to hang onto Trevor's Star. "But the thing that surprised me most was that the Manties aren't pushing any harder than they are. Until I got a chance to review these—" she tapped the data chips again "—and realized just how thinly stretched they are."
"I tried to make that same point to Citizen Secretary Kline before his, um, departure," Bukato said. "But he never seemed to grasp what I was trying to tell him."
He slid his own chip folio into her In basket, walked over to the chair facing her desk, and cocked an eyebrow in question, and McQueen nodded for him to be seated.
"Thank you, Citizen Secretary," he said, folding his long, lanky body into the chair, then leaned back and crossed his legs. "I have to admit," he went on in a much more serious tone, "that was one reason I was glad to see you replace him. Obviously, the civilian government has to retain the ultimate authority over the People's military forces, but Citizen Secretary Kline didn't have any military background at all, and sometimes that made it a bit difficult to explain things to him."
McQueen nodded. Privately, she was more than a little surprised by Bukato's willingness to say anything that could be taken as a criticism of the former citizen secretary. To be sure, Kline's removal from office was a sign he'd fallen out of favor, but Bukato had to be as aware as she was that StateSec must have bugged her office, and anything that even hinted that a senior officer harbored doubts about or contempt for a political superior could have dire consequences. Of course, he had covered himself with his pious observation about civilian authority, she reminded herself.
"I'd like to think that that's one difficulty you won't experience in our working relationship," she told him.
"I certainly don't expect to, Citizen Secretary. For one thing, as a serving officer in your own right, you know just how big the galaxy really is... and how much defensive depth we still have."
"I do. At the same time, however, I also know that we can't afford to keep on giving ground forever if we don't want morale to crumble," she pointed out. "And that applies to the civilians, as well as the military. The Fleet can't win this thing without the support of the civilian sector, and if the civilians decide there's no point in supporting people who just keep falling back—" She shrugged.
"Of course we can't," Bukato agreed. "But every system we lose is one more the Manties have to picket, and every light-year they advance inside the frontiers is another light-year of logistical strain."
"True. On the other hand, capturing Trevor's Star has already simplified their logistics immensely. Sooner or later, that's going to show up in their deployments."
"Um." It was Bukato's turn to grimace and nod. The capture of Trevor's Star had given the Manticoran Alliance possession of every terminus of the Manticore Wormhole Junction, which meant Manty freighters could now make the voyage from the Star Kingdom's home system to the front virtually instantaneously... and with no possibility of interception.
"No doubt it will show up eventually, Citizen Secretary," he said after a moment, "but for the moment, it's not going to help them a whole hell of a lot. They still have to cover the same defensive volume with the same number of available warships. Maybe even more importantly, they have to make certain they hold Trevor's Star after all the time and trouble they spent taking it in the first place. From my own reading of the intelligence reports, that's the real reason they sent White Haven off to organize an entirely new fleet at Yeltsin. They're keeping almost all of his old fleet right there at Trevor's Star to protect it."
"You're right," McQueen agreed. "For now, at least, it is distracting them from more offensive activities. But it's a dynamic situation, not a static one. By holding the system, they remove the threat of an invasion of the Manties' home system down the Junction. And that means they can start standing down those damned forts they built to cover the central terminus, which is going to free up one hell of a lot of trained manpower."
"But not immediately," Bukato countered with a smile, and McQueen smiled back. Neither of them had yet said anything astonishingly brilliant or insightful, but this sort of brainstorming had become a rarity in the current People's Navy. "Even if they shut the forts down tomorrow—or yesterday, for that matter—they can't actually use the fresh manpower against us until they build the ships for those people to crew."
"Exactly!" McQueen's eyes sparkled. "Of course, they can still build ships faster than we can. But we still have a lot more building slips than they do and our construction rates are going up. It may take us longer to build a given ship than it takes them, but as long as we can work on building more of them at the same time we've got a shot at matching their construction rate in total numbers of hulls. Add that to the fact that we can crew as many ships as we can build, whereas they have a hell of a lot smaller population base, and the 'big battalions' are still on our side... for now. But that infusion of additional crewmen from the forts is going to fuel one hell of a growth spurt in their front-line strength a year or so down the line. What we have to do is find a way to use the distraction aspect of their commitment at Trevor's Star against them before they can use the benefits of its possession against us."
"Ah?" Bukato cocked his head. "You sound as if you have a way to use it in mind," he observed slowly.
"I do... maybe," McQueen admitted. "One of the things I've just been reading over was the availability numbers on our battleships." Bukato grimaced before he could stop himself, and she chuckled. "I know—I know! Every single time someone's come up with a brilliant idea about how to use them, we've ended up with less battleships when the wreckage cooled. And, frankly, we lost an awful lot of them in the run up to Trevor's Star simply because we had no choice but to commit them to defensive actions against dreadnoughts and superdreadnoughts. But I was surprised to see how many we have left. If we strip the eastern sectors down to bedrock, we could assemble quite a fleet of them to support a core of real ships of the wall."
"You're thinking in terms of a counterattack," Bukato said quietly.
"I am," McQueen agreed. It was the first time she'd said a word about it to anyone, and intense interest flickered in Bukato's dark, deepset eyes. "I'm going to keep the exact point where I want to launch it my own little secret for a while longer," she told him, "but one of the jobs Citizen Chairman Pierre gave me was to improve the Fleet's morale. Well, if we can knock the damn Manties back on their heels at a place of our own choosing, even if it's only briefly, we should make a running start on that particular chore. It wouldn't hurt civilian morale, either, and that doesn't even count what it would do to Manty morale... or their future deployment considerations."
"I'd certainly have to agree with that, Citizen Secretary," Bukato said. "The tech transfers from the Solarian League have helped shake some of our people loose from their sense of inferiority, but most of them are still too defensive minded for my taste. We need more admirals like Tourville and Theisman, and we need to give them the support they require, then turn them loose."
"Um." McQueen nodded, but she couldn't hide a frown of displeasure as mention of Lester Tourville and Thomas Theisman reminded her of the whole Honor Harrington episode. She saw a flicker of concern flash across Bukato's face as her expression altered and quickly banished the grimace before he could decide it was directed at him for some reason.
And it's not as if the affair was a total disaster, she reminded herself. You know damned well Ransom was going to purge Tourville and his entire staff—if not Theisman as well—for trying to protect Harrington from StateSec. At least the paranoid bitch managed to get her worthless ass killed before she did any more damage to the Fleet! And it also means I don't have to fight her tooth and nail over every tiny move I make, either. On the other hand, StateSec is treating Tourville and his people as if they were the ones who killed her! Count Tilly's been back from Cerberus for almost four months now, and her entire crew's still sequestered while Saint-Just's security goons "investigate" the episode. Idiots!
"I realize Citizen Admiral Theisman is still a bit... old-fashioned," Bukato said, responding to her frown, "but his record in combat is exemplary, Citizen Secretary, and the same is true of Tourville. I hope you don't intend to let any rumors or partial reports keep you from—"
"Relax, Citizen Admiral," McQueen said, waving a hand in the air between them, and he shut his mouth quickly. "You don't have to sell me on Tourville or Tom Theisman—not as fleet commanders, anyway. And I have no intention of making them any sort of fall guys for what happened to Citizen Secretary Ransom. Whatever anyone else might think, I know—and I've seen to it that Citizen Chairman Pierre and Citizen Secretary Saint-Just know, as well—that none of what happened was their fault." Or I think I've made certain of that, at any rate. Saint-Just says he's more worried about keeping Tilly's crew "out of the public eye until we make Cordelia's death official," at least. Whether he actually means it or not, though...
She studied Bukato a moment, then shrugged mentally. She was doing all she could for Tourville, and it wasn't the very smartest thing she could discuss with Bukato. But perhaps the time had come to test the waters with him in a different way.
"I only wish I could have convinced the Committee to countermand Citizen Secretary Ransom's plans for Harrington," she said. "We might have avoided the entire mess if she'd been willing to let the Navy have custody of Harrington instead of dragging her off to Camp Charon to hang her!"
Bukato's eyes widened at the genuine vitriol in the last sentence. The new Secretary of War was taking a major chance in offering a subordinate access to her inner thoughts—especially if those thoughts were critical of the Committee of Public Safety or any of its members, present or past. Of course, it could also be—in fact, it almost certainly was—a test of him as well. The problem was that he didn't know exactly what he was being tested for. Loyalty to the Committee, which might be demonstrated by denouncing her? Or loyalty to the Navy and his service superior (assuming that those weren't actually two quite different things), which might be demonstrated by keeping his mouth shut?
"I wasn't privy to that decision, Citizen Secretary," he said very slowly, choosing his words with exquisite care. Then he decided to throw out a feeler of his own. "Nonetheless, it did seem... questionable to me."
"Not to me," McQueen snorted. She saw a flash of anxiety in his eyes and grinned tightly. "It seemed goddamned stupid to me," she said, "and I told Citizen Chairman Pierre and Citizen Secretary Saint-Just as much at the time."
Surprised respect showed in Bukato's expression, and she hid a chuckle. She hadn't expressed herself quite that candidly to them, but she'd come close to it. If StateSec listened to the audio chips she was sure they were making, her version would be near enough to Saint-Just's recollections (or the chips he might have made of that meeting, assuming he was sufficiently paranoid for that—and he was) to stay on the safe side of accurate. And from the look on Bukato's face, her willingness to be candid with him on such a topic had just raised her stock with him considerably.
"Mind you, it wasn't their idea, and I don't think they cared for it, either," she went on, always conscious of those hidden microphones. "But she was a member of the Committee, and she'd already dumped the story and her intention to execute Harrington into the Solly news feeds. And that whole Leveler business was barely four T-months old at the time. I don't have to tell you how that had shaken things up, and they felt their only choice was to back her up rather than risk having the rest of the galaxy think we had potentially serious divisions at the top or invite another coup attempt from our domestic enemies. Which is also why they had Public Information fake up that whole hanging scene."
"I have to admit, I didn't quite understand the reasoning behind that," Bukato said. "I hope you'll pardon me for saying this, but it seemed gratuitous to me."
"'Gratuitous,'" McQueen snorted. "In some ways, that's not a bad word for it, I suppose. And I imagine it will motivate at least some of the Manties to seek revenge. But the decision was made over at Public Information, and I'd have to say that PubIn was the proper place for it to be made. They're in a better position to judge its effect on civilian and neutral opinion than those of us in the Navy are."
Somehow the bitter twist of her mouth didn't quite match her thoughtful, serious tone, and Bukato was surprised by the sparkle of laughter he felt deep inside. No doubt anyone listening to the chips would hear exactly what she wanted them to, but she did have a way of getting her actual meaning across anyway.
And I suppose there was a little rationality in faking Harrington's execution, he thought. At least this way we don't have to admit that—what? thirty?—POWs staging an unsuccessful jail break managed to completely destroy an entire battlecruiser all by themselves! God only knows what making that public knowledge would do to our morale, even if it was only a StateSec ship. Not to mention what the damage to StateSec's reputation for invincibility might do the next time they got ready to suppress some poor bastards. And whether we hanged her or not, she's still dead. We couldn't bring her back even if we wanted to, so I guess we might as well get a little propaganda mileage out of it if we can. And assuming it was the sort of mileage we wantedin the first place. If it was.
He shook free of his thoughts and looked at the new Secretary of War again, trying to read what was going on behind those green eyes of hers. He knew her reputation, of course. Everyone did. But so far he'd seen remarkably little evidence of her famed political ambition, and she'd accomplished more to straighten out the Navy's mess in the bare six T-months since being officially named Secretary of War than Kline had managed in over four T-years. The professional naval officer in Ivan Bukato couldn't help admiring—and appreciating that—yet he sensed a crossroads looming in his own future. She hadn't just happened to come out of her shell tonight. She really was testing him, and if he let himself be drawn into a feeling of loyalty to her, the consequences could prove... unfortunate. Even fatal.
And yet...
"I understand, Ma'am," he said quietly, and saw her eyes flicker. It was the first time he'd used the traditional, "elitist" courtesy instead of calling her "Citizen Secretary." Technically, she was entitled to it as a member of the Committee of Public Safety, but staying away from the form of address the Navy had been denied among its own ever since the Harris Assassination had seemed the better part of valor.
"I'm glad you do, Ivan," she said after a moment, and saw the answering understanding in his eyes as she used his given name for the very first time. The first step of the intricate dance had been accomplished. Neither of them could be certain yet where the dance would end, but the first step was always the most important one. Yet it was also time to cover her backside just a little more, and she smiled sardonically at Bukato even as she made her voice come out seriously and thoughtfully. "We're going to have to make some pretty tough decisions of our own when it comes to recommending purely military policy. I realize political and diplomatic decisions are going to have an impact on the military equation, but frankly, until we get our own shop up and running properly, I'm delighted that I don't have to concern myself with nonmilitary policy. Time enough to worry about fine-tuning our coordination with the diplomats once we're confident we can hold the Manty bastards where they are!"
"Of course, Ma'am," Bukato agreed, and the two of them smiled thinly at one another.
Chapter Three
Long experience had taught Petty Officer first-class Scott Smith to collect his battered locker from the heap outside the personnel shuttle's cargo tube, activate its counter-grav, and tow it safely out of the way before he did anything else. Only after accomplishing that did he look for the directions board. His searching eyes found it, and he crossed the concourse to it, then kept one hand resting lightly on the locker as he studied the flashing information. There it was: HMS Candice, the same name as on his transfer orders. He grimaced. He still didn't have the least damned idea what a "Candice " was, but he didn't like the ring of it.
Sounds like the candied-apple kind of name that should belong to some damned armed merchant escort, he snorted mentally. Or maybe a tender. A tug? He shrugged irritably. Hell of a name for a warship, anyway. And why the hell couldn't they just leave me aboard Leutzen? It took me three damned T-years to get that slot, and now they yank me out of it for God knows what.
He grimaced again, but orders were orders. He double-checked the display for the right color-coded guide strip and set glumly off through the bowels of Her Majesty's Space Station Weyland for his destination.
But that was all right with Gearman. After nineteen months of regen therapy, he'd had about all the leave he could stand. He was eager to get back to work, and whatever his commiserating friends might have to say about Manticore-B's being the armpit of the Manticore Binary System, he suspected his new assignment might be far more interesting than they expected. It had become traditional over the last twenty or thirty T-years for the Royal Navy to assign its more sensitive R&D prototypes to Weyland's technical support teams, mainly because the secondary component of the binary system saw so much less foreign shipping traffic. Manticore-B's massive asteroid belts supported a very heavy industrial presence, and huge freighters hauled both finished components and massive loads of raw materials from its orbital smelters to Manticore-A. But the main freight transshipment points for the Star Kingdom orbited either Manticore or Sphinx, and that was where the vast majority of the out-kingdom shipping stayed. For the most part, Gryphon was served even in peacetime by short-haul Manticoran-flag freighters which plied back and forth between it and the rest of the Star Kingdom, and the Navy had made the complete prohibition of non-Manticoran hulls in Manticore-B space official once the shooting started.
Which was why BuShips and BuWeaps liked building and testing prototypes at Weyland. The Office of Naval Intelligence still couldn't guarantee secrecy, but at least the Fleet didn't have to worry about which putatively neutral freighters in the area were actually spying for the Peeps. Not that Gearman had any hard evidence that his assignment was to any such hush-hush project. On the other hand, he'd checked the last available ship list when he got his new orders, and there was no "HMS Candice" on it. Of course, the names of new construction were pretty much classified since the war had begun, and someone of his rank hardly had access to the latest, most up-to-date information. But the fact that the name didn't appear on any of the prewar lists suggested that whatever else Candice was, she had to be less than eight years old. (Or, a corner of his mind insisted upon adding, a merchant conversion bought in after the war began. Bleh.) Add that to the fact that his orders had given him absolutely no hint of what his duties aboard her would be (which was, to say the least, unusual), and all sorts of interesting possibilities began to trickle through his mind.
He grinned at his own imagination and walked briskly onward.
"Scooter!"
PO Smith looked up in astonishment as someone shouted his nickname, and then he grinned widely as a familiar face blended out of the crowd. The short, hairy, apelike, amazingly ugly man looked as if he ought to walk on his knuckles. He also wore undress coveralls like Smith's own, with the same three chevrons on his sleeve, and the name patch above his breast pocket said "Maxwell, Richard."
"Well, well! If it isn't the Man Who Dropped the Spanner!" Smith observed, reaching out to shake a hirsute paw, and Maxwell grimaced.
"Give me a break, Scooter! That was—what? Six damn T-years ago?"
"Really?" Smith's gray eyes glinted devilishly. "It seems like just yesterday. Maybe that was because the results were so... spectacular. And expensive. I don't get to see a drive room main bus bar short out everyday, you know."
"Oh, yeah? Well, one of these days I'm gonna be there when you screw the pooch, Scooter!"
"In your dreams, Silver Spanner. In your dreams."
"Pride goeth, buddy," Maxwell said darkly.
"Ha!" Smith deactivated his locker's counter-grav and let it sink to the deck, then looked around curiously. He'd expected the deck guide to lead him to Candice's slip; instead, it had deposited him in a cavernous boat bay gallery, which indicated his new ship wasn't currently docked with the space station, and he cocked an eyebrow at Maxwell.
"You got any idea what it is we're up to, Maxie?" he asked much more seriously. "I asked around, but the people I talked to knew zero-zip about it."
"Dunno," Maxwell admitted, removing his black beret to scratch the right side of his head. "Friend of mine in BuShips told me the Candice is a new, long-range repair ship—a high-speed job, like maybe she's designed to go in the fleet train for a cruiser raiding force or something. Aside from that, I don't know a damned thing. Hell, I don't even know what I'm gonna be doing once I get aboard!"
"You neither, huh?" Smith frowned. RMN personnel orders usually contained at least a brief section on the duty slot one was to be assigned to, not just a ship name with no additional information. Leaving that out of one set of orders could have been simple bureaucratic sloppiness; leaving it out of two started sounding a lot more like a deliberate security measure. But if Candice was only a repair ship, even some new, hot-shot model, then what was there to be secretive about? And if—
"Attention Personnel Draft Seven-Seven-Six-Two," the voice of the boat bay officer crackled suddenly from the gallery speakers. "First call for transportation to HMS Candice. The shuttle will depart in fifteen minutes from Personnel Tube Blue Four. Repeat. Transportation to HMS Candice will depart in fifteen minutes from Personnel Tube Blue Four."
"Guess we better get going," Maxwell observed, and the two of them set off down the gallery, towing their lockers behind them. Smith was in the lead as they approached the designated personnel tube, and he groaned aloud as he saw what rested in the docking buffers on the other side of the thick armorplast wall.
"What?" Maxwell asked, unable to see around his taller friend, and Smith sighed.
"It's a damned trash hauler," he said glumly. "Crap! You'd think they could at least give us a shuttle with windows! "
"A shuttle's a shuttle," Maxwell said with a dismissive shrug. "I don't need windows. I've already seen a space station, and I've already seen a repair ship. All I hope is the run over is long enough for me to get a little shuteye."
"Maxie, you're a cretin," Smith said sourly.
"'Course I am!" Maxwell agreed cheerfully, then frowned in sudden suspicion. "What's a cretin?" he demanded.
Captain Alice Truman watched the remote view on her briefing room display as the knife-edged command cut through the confused hum which had filled the gallery of HMS Minotaur's Boat Bay Three. The newest draft of enlisted and noncommissioned personnel for Project Anzio snapped to attention along the lines painted on the deck with spinal reflex suddenness, their speculations about their new assignments slashed off by the familiar command. The woman who had given it had three chevrons and three rockers on the sleeve of her immaculate uniform. The golden anchor of a boatswain's mate floated between them, instead of the star most branches used, and the uppermost rocker carried the embroidered crown which marked her as a senior master chief, the highest noncommissioned rank the RMN offered. Now she looked the block of silent men and women over with an utterly expressionless face, then folded her hands behind her and paced slowly down the length of the block's front row. She reached the end, paused rocking on her heels, then stalked back to the center of the row and smiled thinly.
"Welcome aboard your new ship," she told them in a pronounced Gryphon accent. "My name is McBride. Bosun McBride." Her audience was silent, digesting the fact that she had just announced that she was the senior noncommissioned member of their new ship's company and, as such, the direct designated representative of God, and she smiled once more. "For those of you who have not already figured this out, you are not aboard a repair ship. Nor will you be aboard a repair ship. No doubt this is deeply disturbing to you, and I know all you poor little lost lambs are confused and curious about what you're doing here. Well, I'm sure the Skipper feels nothing in the universe could possibly be more important than explaining it all to you. Unfortunately, she has a ship to run, and she's just a little busy at the moment, so I'm afraid you're going to have to make do with me, instead. Does anyone have a problem with that?"
A falling pin would have sounded like an anvil in the silence that answered her, and her smile became something like a grin.
"I didn't think anyone would." She raised her right hand and snapped her fingers, and half a dozen petty officers stepped forward with memo boards under their arms. "When you hear your name called, answer to it and fall in behind whoever called it," she went on more briskly. "They'll get you logged into quarters and give you your slots on the watch bill. Don't drag ass about getting yourselves squared away, either, people! There will be an orientation briefing for all new personnel at twenty-one-hundred, and I will be checking attendance."
McBride gazed out over the newcomers for another ten seconds, then nodded, and a brawny senior chief stepped up beside her and keyed his board alive.
"Abramowitz, Carla!" he read.
"Yo!" A woman near the rear of the formation raised a hand and stepped forward with her locker while people moved apart in front of her to let her pass.
"Carter, Jonathan!" the senior chief read, and Truman switched off the display and looked up as her executive officer ushered two lieutenants, one a JG, and a lieutenant commander into her briefing room.
"Our new arrivals, Ma'am." Like the Bosun, Commander Haughton was from Gryphon, although his accent was less severe, and Truman cocked her golden-haired head as the three officers formed a line in front of the clear-topped briefing room conference table and came to attention. She could see burning curiosity in all three sets of eyes and hid a small, amused smile.
"Lieutenant Commander Barbara Stackowitz, reporting for duty, Ma'am!" the gray-eyed, brown-haired woman at the end of the line said crisply, and Truman nodded to her, then looked at the next officer in line.
"Lieutenant Michael Gearman, reporting for duty, Captain," he said. He was dark-haired and eyed, thin and just a little stooped looking, and there was an aura of intensity about him. Truman nodded once more and cocked an eyebrow at the final newcomer.
"Lieutenant Ernest Takahashi, reporting for duty, Ma'am!" Takahashi was small, even darker than Gearman, and wiry, with eyes so dark brown they looked black. He was also the most junior of the three new arrivals, and though his curiosity was as evident as that of the other two, there was a sort of relaxed confidence in his body language. Not complacency, but the look of someone who was used to getting things right the first time.
"At ease, people," Truman said after a moment, and watched their shoulders relax. She smiled and glanced at the exec. "Paperwork all in order, John?"
"Yes, Ma'am. Your yeoman has it now."
"Good." Truman smiled. "I feel confident that Chief Mantooth will dispose of it with all her customary efficiency." She looked back at the newcomers, then waved a hand at the chairs facing her from the far end of the table.
"Sit," she said, and they obeyed.
She tipped her own chair back and let herself consider them afresh while her mind went back over the personnel uploads she'd already studied.
Stackowitz was a tac branch officer who was supposed to be some sort of missile genius. The fact that she'd served a hitch as CO of a light attack craft was icing on the cake. She was earmarked for a slot on Captain (Junior-Grade) Jacquelyn Harmon's staff, but Truman planned to borrow her quite often. Her oval face was strong boned, with a firm mouth and level eyes. At the moment, she seemed a little tense, almost edgy, but that was understandable enough. Not one of these people had been given the slightest hint of what their new assignments were all about, and though the shuttle's lack of view ports had kept them from getting a glimpse of their new ship on approach, they had to have begun to realize they were aboard a most unusual vessel.
Gearman, on the other hand, was almost calm looking. He was clearly curious, but his intensity was a deeper thing, not a reflection of anxiety. Perhaps it would be more accurate to call it focus, Truman mused. He was also deeply and darkly tanned—thanks, no doubt, to the rehab camp to which Bassingford Medical Center's physical therapists had sent him to complete his recovery. She'd watched him carefully when he walked into the office, and there was no limp at all to indicate the left leg he'd lost when Peep fire put the superdreadnought Ravensport permanently out of the war at First Nightingale. He'd been Ravensport's third engineer, but before that, as a JG, he'd spent almost a year as a LAC engineering officer.
And then there was Takahashi. Only a lieutenant (junior-grade), he was here because he'd graduated number one in his class from Kreskin Field Flight School (despite an awesome award of demerits over a certain incident concerning the Kreskin flight simulators) and then displayed a dazzling natural ability at the controls of every small craft he'd touched since leaving the Academy. His last post had been as an assault shuttle section leader aboard the big Marine attack transport Leutzen, where his piloting virtuosity had no doubt been properly appreciated. Under other circumstances, he would probably have stayed there for at least another year, but Truman and Project Anzio had first call on his talents.
"All right," she said finally, breaking the silence before it became intimidating, "first, allow me to welcome all of you aboard the Minotaur." Stackowitz blinked, and Truman smiled crookedly. "There is indeed an HMS Candice," she assured them, "but I very much doubt any of you will ever set foot aboard her. She's also a prototype of sorts, but a repair ship, not a warship. She's currently assigned to Weyland for evaluation and to serve as the training vessel for similar follow-on units, but she's usually out swanning around somewhere else in the local system to give her trainees lots of practice. She also has a complement of around six thousand, which, coupled with her erratic movement schedule, makes her an excellent cover for us. People don't wonder why new drafts have to be shuttled out to her, and her crew's big enough—and transient enough—that we can cycle quite a lot of people through without anyone noticing it."
Truman let that sink in, and the three junior officers glanced at one another, eyes busy with speculation. She watched them calmly, comparing their reactions to those of all the other officers with whom she'd had this same discussion. So far, they were about standard.
"There really is a reason for all the secrecy, people," she told them quietly after a moment. "In a few minutes, Commander Haughton—" she nodded at the blond, brown-eyed exec, who had seated himself at her right hand "—will see to it that each of you gets introduced to your department heads, who will give you a more detailed description of what we're doing and what your specific duties will be. Given the nature of our job here, however, I prefer to handle my new officers' initial briefings myself, so make yourselves comfortable."
She smiled as they settled back in their chairs. Takahashi was the only one who looked anything like genuinely relaxed, but the other two made a good show of obeying her injunction, and she let her own chair come back upright and folded her hands on the table before her.
"Minotaur is the first unit of a new, experimental class," she told them. "I realize you didn't get a look at her before you came aboard, so here she is now." She pressed a button on the keyboard at her data terminal, and a razor-sharp holo image appeared above the table. Heads turned as her newest subordinates looked, and she saw Stackowitz's eyes narrow in surprise.
Truman didn't blame her, for no one had ever seen another ship quite like HMS Minotaur. She was obviously a warship—she had the telltale hammerhead ends—and she massed almost exactly six million tons. That put her in the upper third of the dreadnought range, yet even a casual glance was enough to tell anyone that whatever Minotaur might be, she was certainly no dreadnought. The rows of enormous hatches on her flanks were much too big to be normal broadside weapons bays, and they were arranged in a pattern whose like none of them had ever before seen.
"People," Truman said softly, "you have just become members of the crew of the first LAC-carrier of the Royal Manticoran Navy." Gearman's head whipped back around. He stared at her, and she smiled crookedly. "That's correct, Mr. Gearman. A LAC-carrier. May I assume you've at least heard rumors about the light attack craft our Q-ships have been using in Silesia?"
"Uh, yes, Ma'am," the lieutenant said after a brief glance at his fellow newcomers. "But 'rumors' are all I've heard. Nobody ever said anything about anything like... this." He gave a tiny wave towards the holo image, and Truman chuckled, but then her smile faded.
"If anyone had mentioned it to you, Mr. Gearman, he or she would have been in violation of the Official Secrets Act. A restriction, by the way, which now applies to each of you. You are now officially assigned to Project Anzio, and our job is to get Minotaur —and her LAC wing—on-line, and then to prove the concept. In order to even further safeguard security on this endeavor, we will be leaving for Hancock Station as soon as our first two squadrons of LACs have come on board. The fleet base there will support our efforts, and since ours are the only people with any interest in Hancock these days, sending us there should keep 'neutral' eyes from seeing us and running home to Nouveau Paris to tattle. Clear?"
Sounds like the candied-apple kind of name that should belong to some damned armed merchant escort, he snorted mentally. Or maybe a tender. A tug? He shrugged irritably. Hell of a name for a warship, anyway. And why the hell couldn't they just leave me aboard Leutzen? It took me three damned T-years to get that slot, and now they yank me out of it for God knows what.
He grimaced again, but orders were orders. He double-checked the display for the right color-coded guide strip and set glumly off through the bowels of Her Majesty's Space Station Weyland for his destination.
* * *
Lieutenant Michael Gearman watched the tallish, fair-haired PO 1/c walking down the color guide in front of him and cocked an eyebrow in speculation. He and the noncom had arrived on the same shuttle, and he wondered if they were headed for the same destination. It seemed probable, but Weyland was a big place—not as large as Vulcan or Hephaestus, but still the better part of thirty kilometers long. It was also tucked away orbiting Gryphon, otherwise known as Manticore-B-V, which had caused a few of Gearman's hospital buddies to groan in sympathy when they heard about his travel orders. Gryphon was the least Earth-like of the Manticore System's three habitable planets. It had required far more terraforming than Manticore or Sphinx, and its extreme axial tilt gave its weather an unenviable reputation among the inhabitants of its sister planets. Worse, from the viewpoint of certain Navy hotshots, its sparsely scattered population was noted for regarding the sissies who lived on the Star Kingdom's other worlds with a certain contempt. That attitude, unfortunately, carried over into the local civilians' attitude towards visiting military personnel in search of diversion and, coupled with the lack of anything like real cities, left those same military personnel with a limited selection of off-duty entertainment possibilities.But that was all right with Gearman. After nineteen months of regen therapy, he'd had about all the leave he could stand. He was eager to get back to work, and whatever his commiserating friends might have to say about Manticore-B's being the armpit of the Manticore Binary System, he suspected his new assignment might be far more interesting than they expected. It had become traditional over the last twenty or thirty T-years for the Royal Navy to assign its more sensitive R&D prototypes to Weyland's technical support teams, mainly because the secondary component of the binary system saw so much less foreign shipping traffic. Manticore-B's massive asteroid belts supported a very heavy industrial presence, and huge freighters hauled both finished components and massive loads of raw materials from its orbital smelters to Manticore-A. But the main freight transshipment points for the Star Kingdom orbited either Manticore or Sphinx, and that was where the vast majority of the out-kingdom shipping stayed. For the most part, Gryphon was served even in peacetime by short-haul Manticoran-flag freighters which plied back and forth between it and the rest of the Star Kingdom, and the Navy had made the complete prohibition of non-Manticoran hulls in Manticore-B space official once the shooting started.
Which was why BuShips and BuWeaps liked building and testing prototypes at Weyland. The Office of Naval Intelligence still couldn't guarantee secrecy, but at least the Fleet didn't have to worry about which putatively neutral freighters in the area were actually spying for the Peeps. Not that Gearman had any hard evidence that his assignment was to any such hush-hush project. On the other hand, he'd checked the last available ship list when he got his new orders, and there was no "HMS Candice" on it. Of course, the names of new construction were pretty much classified since the war had begun, and someone of his rank hardly had access to the latest, most up-to-date information. But the fact that the name didn't appear on any of the prewar lists suggested that whatever else Candice was, she had to be less than eight years old. (Or, a corner of his mind insisted upon adding, a merchant conversion bought in after the war began. Bleh.) Add that to the fact that his orders had given him absolutely no hint of what his duties aboard her would be (which was, to say the least, unusual), and all sorts of interesting possibilities began to trickle through his mind.
He grinned at his own imagination and walked briskly onward.
"Scooter!"
PO Smith looked up in astonishment as someone shouted his nickname, and then he grinned widely as a familiar face blended out of the crowd. The short, hairy, apelike, amazingly ugly man looked as if he ought to walk on his knuckles. He also wore undress coveralls like Smith's own, with the same three chevrons on his sleeve, and the name patch above his breast pocket said "Maxwell, Richard."
"Well, well! If it isn't the Man Who Dropped the Spanner!" Smith observed, reaching out to shake a hirsute paw, and Maxwell grimaced.
"Give me a break, Scooter! That was—what? Six damn T-years ago?"
"Really?" Smith's gray eyes glinted devilishly. "It seems like just yesterday. Maybe that was because the results were so... spectacular. And expensive. I don't get to see a drive room main bus bar short out everyday, you know."
"Oh, yeah? Well, one of these days I'm gonna be there when you screw the pooch, Scooter!"
"In your dreams, Silver Spanner. In your dreams."
"Pride goeth, buddy," Maxwell said darkly.
"Ha!" Smith deactivated his locker's counter-grav and let it sink to the deck, then looked around curiously. He'd expected the deck guide to lead him to Candice's slip; instead, it had deposited him in a cavernous boat bay gallery, which indicated his new ship wasn't currently docked with the space station, and he cocked an eyebrow at Maxwell.
"You got any idea what it is we're up to, Maxie?" he asked much more seriously. "I asked around, but the people I talked to knew zero-zip about it."
"Dunno," Maxwell admitted, removing his black beret to scratch the right side of his head. "Friend of mine in BuShips told me the Candice is a new, long-range repair ship—a high-speed job, like maybe she's designed to go in the fleet train for a cruiser raiding force or something. Aside from that, I don't know a damned thing. Hell, I don't even know what I'm gonna be doing once I get aboard!"
"You neither, huh?" Smith frowned. RMN personnel orders usually contained at least a brief section on the duty slot one was to be assigned to, not just a ship name with no additional information. Leaving that out of one set of orders could have been simple bureaucratic sloppiness; leaving it out of two started sounding a lot more like a deliberate security measure. But if Candice was only a repair ship, even some new, hot-shot model, then what was there to be secretive about? And if—
"Attention Personnel Draft Seven-Seven-Six-Two," the voice of the boat bay officer crackled suddenly from the gallery speakers. "First call for transportation to HMS Candice. The shuttle will depart in fifteen minutes from Personnel Tube Blue Four. Repeat. Transportation to HMS Candice will depart in fifteen minutes from Personnel Tube Blue Four."
"Guess we better get going," Maxwell observed, and the two of them set off down the gallery, towing their lockers behind them. Smith was in the lead as they approached the designated personnel tube, and he groaned aloud as he saw what rested in the docking buffers on the other side of the thick armorplast wall.
"What?" Maxwell asked, unable to see around his taller friend, and Smith sighed.
"It's a damned trash hauler," he said glumly. "Crap! You'd think they could at least give us a shuttle with windows! "
"A shuttle's a shuttle," Maxwell said with a dismissive shrug. "I don't need windows. I've already seen a space station, and I've already seen a repair ship. All I hope is the run over is long enough for me to get a little shuteye."
"Maxie, you're a cretin," Smith said sourly.
"'Course I am!" Maxwell agreed cheerfully, then frowned in sudden suspicion. "What's a cretin?" he demanded.
* * *
"Ten-hut! "Captain Alice Truman watched the remote view on her briefing room display as the knife-edged command cut through the confused hum which had filled the gallery of HMS Minotaur's Boat Bay Three. The newest draft of enlisted and noncommissioned personnel for Project Anzio snapped to attention along the lines painted on the deck with spinal reflex suddenness, their speculations about their new assignments slashed off by the familiar command. The woman who had given it had three chevrons and three rockers on the sleeve of her immaculate uniform. The golden anchor of a boatswain's mate floated between them, instead of the star most branches used, and the uppermost rocker carried the embroidered crown which marked her as a senior master chief, the highest noncommissioned rank the RMN offered. Now she looked the block of silent men and women over with an utterly expressionless face, then folded her hands behind her and paced slowly down the length of the block's front row. She reached the end, paused rocking on her heels, then stalked back to the center of the row and smiled thinly.
"Welcome aboard your new ship," she told them in a pronounced Gryphon accent. "My name is McBride. Bosun McBride." Her audience was silent, digesting the fact that she had just announced that she was the senior noncommissioned member of their new ship's company and, as such, the direct designated representative of God, and she smiled once more. "For those of you who have not already figured this out, you are not aboard a repair ship. Nor will you be aboard a repair ship. No doubt this is deeply disturbing to you, and I know all you poor little lost lambs are confused and curious about what you're doing here. Well, I'm sure the Skipper feels nothing in the universe could possibly be more important than explaining it all to you. Unfortunately, she has a ship to run, and she's just a little busy at the moment, so I'm afraid you're going to have to make do with me, instead. Does anyone have a problem with that?"
A falling pin would have sounded like an anvil in the silence that answered her, and her smile became something like a grin.
"I didn't think anyone would." She raised her right hand and snapped her fingers, and half a dozen petty officers stepped forward with memo boards under their arms. "When you hear your name called, answer to it and fall in behind whoever called it," she went on more briskly. "They'll get you logged into quarters and give you your slots on the watch bill. Don't drag ass about getting yourselves squared away, either, people! There will be an orientation briefing for all new personnel at twenty-one-hundred, and I will be checking attendance."
McBride gazed out over the newcomers for another ten seconds, then nodded, and a brawny senior chief stepped up beside her and keyed his board alive.
"Abramowitz, Carla!" he read.
"Yo!" A woman near the rear of the formation raised a hand and stepped forward with her locker while people moved apart in front of her to let her pass.
"Carter, Jonathan!" the senior chief read, and Truman switched off the display and looked up as her executive officer ushered two lieutenants, one a JG, and a lieutenant commander into her briefing room.
"Our new arrivals, Ma'am." Like the Bosun, Commander Haughton was from Gryphon, although his accent was less severe, and Truman cocked her golden-haired head as the three officers formed a line in front of the clear-topped briefing room conference table and came to attention. She could see burning curiosity in all three sets of eyes and hid a small, amused smile.
"Lieutenant Commander Barbara Stackowitz, reporting for duty, Ma'am!" the gray-eyed, brown-haired woman at the end of the line said crisply, and Truman nodded to her, then looked at the next officer in line.
"Lieutenant Michael Gearman, reporting for duty, Captain," he said. He was dark-haired and eyed, thin and just a little stooped looking, and there was an aura of intensity about him. Truman nodded once more and cocked an eyebrow at the final newcomer.
"Lieutenant Ernest Takahashi, reporting for duty, Ma'am!" Takahashi was small, even darker than Gearman, and wiry, with eyes so dark brown they looked black. He was also the most junior of the three new arrivals, and though his curiosity was as evident as that of the other two, there was a sort of relaxed confidence in his body language. Not complacency, but the look of someone who was used to getting things right the first time.
"At ease, people," Truman said after a moment, and watched their shoulders relax. She smiled and glanced at the exec. "Paperwork all in order, John?"
"Yes, Ma'am. Your yeoman has it now."
"Good." Truman smiled. "I feel confident that Chief Mantooth will dispose of it with all her customary efficiency." She looked back at the newcomers, then waved a hand at the chairs facing her from the far end of the table.
"Sit," she said, and they obeyed.
She tipped her own chair back and let herself consider them afresh while her mind went back over the personnel uploads she'd already studied.
Stackowitz was a tac branch officer who was supposed to be some sort of missile genius. The fact that she'd served a hitch as CO of a light attack craft was icing on the cake. She was earmarked for a slot on Captain (Junior-Grade) Jacquelyn Harmon's staff, but Truman planned to borrow her quite often. Her oval face was strong boned, with a firm mouth and level eyes. At the moment, she seemed a little tense, almost edgy, but that was understandable enough. Not one of these people had been given the slightest hint of what their new assignments were all about, and though the shuttle's lack of view ports had kept them from getting a glimpse of their new ship on approach, they had to have begun to realize they were aboard a most unusual vessel.
Gearman, on the other hand, was almost calm looking. He was clearly curious, but his intensity was a deeper thing, not a reflection of anxiety. Perhaps it would be more accurate to call it focus, Truman mused. He was also deeply and darkly tanned—thanks, no doubt, to the rehab camp to which Bassingford Medical Center's physical therapists had sent him to complete his recovery. She'd watched him carefully when he walked into the office, and there was no limp at all to indicate the left leg he'd lost when Peep fire put the superdreadnought Ravensport permanently out of the war at First Nightingale. He'd been Ravensport's third engineer, but before that, as a JG, he'd spent almost a year as a LAC engineering officer.
And then there was Takahashi. Only a lieutenant (junior-grade), he was here because he'd graduated number one in his class from Kreskin Field Flight School (despite an awesome award of demerits over a certain incident concerning the Kreskin flight simulators) and then displayed a dazzling natural ability at the controls of every small craft he'd touched since leaving the Academy. His last post had been as an assault shuttle section leader aboard the big Marine attack transport Leutzen, where his piloting virtuosity had no doubt been properly appreciated. Under other circumstances, he would probably have stayed there for at least another year, but Truman and Project Anzio had first call on his talents.
"All right," she said finally, breaking the silence before it became intimidating, "first, allow me to welcome all of you aboard the Minotaur." Stackowitz blinked, and Truman smiled crookedly. "There is indeed an HMS Candice," she assured them, "but I very much doubt any of you will ever set foot aboard her. She's also a prototype of sorts, but a repair ship, not a warship. She's currently assigned to Weyland for evaluation and to serve as the training vessel for similar follow-on units, but she's usually out swanning around somewhere else in the local system to give her trainees lots of practice. She also has a complement of around six thousand, which, coupled with her erratic movement schedule, makes her an excellent cover for us. People don't wonder why new drafts have to be shuttled out to her, and her crew's big enough—and transient enough—that we can cycle quite a lot of people through without anyone noticing it."
Truman let that sink in, and the three junior officers glanced at one another, eyes busy with speculation. She watched them calmly, comparing their reactions to those of all the other officers with whom she'd had this same discussion. So far, they were about standard.
"There really is a reason for all the secrecy, people," she told them quietly after a moment. "In a few minutes, Commander Haughton—" she nodded at the blond, brown-eyed exec, who had seated himself at her right hand "—will see to it that each of you gets introduced to your department heads, who will give you a more detailed description of what we're doing and what your specific duties will be. Given the nature of our job here, however, I prefer to handle my new officers' initial briefings myself, so make yourselves comfortable."
She smiled as they settled back in their chairs. Takahashi was the only one who looked anything like genuinely relaxed, but the other two made a good show of obeying her injunction, and she let her own chair come back upright and folded her hands on the table before her.
"Minotaur is the first unit of a new, experimental class," she told them. "I realize you didn't get a look at her before you came aboard, so here she is now." She pressed a button on the keyboard at her data terminal, and a razor-sharp holo image appeared above the table. Heads turned as her newest subordinates looked, and she saw Stackowitz's eyes narrow in surprise.
Truman didn't blame her, for no one had ever seen another ship quite like HMS Minotaur. She was obviously a warship—she had the telltale hammerhead ends—and she massed almost exactly six million tons. That put her in the upper third of the dreadnought range, yet even a casual glance was enough to tell anyone that whatever Minotaur might be, she was certainly no dreadnought. The rows of enormous hatches on her flanks were much too big to be normal broadside weapons bays, and they were arranged in a pattern whose like none of them had ever before seen.
"People," Truman said softly, "you have just become members of the crew of the first LAC-carrier of the Royal Manticoran Navy." Gearman's head whipped back around. He stared at her, and she smiled crookedly. "That's correct, Mr. Gearman. A LAC-carrier. May I assume you've at least heard rumors about the light attack craft our Q-ships have been using in Silesia?"
"Uh, yes, Ma'am," the lieutenant said after a brief glance at his fellow newcomers. "But 'rumors' are all I've heard. Nobody ever said anything about anything like... this." He gave a tiny wave towards the holo image, and Truman chuckled, but then her smile faded.
"If anyone had mentioned it to you, Mr. Gearman, he or she would have been in violation of the Official Secrets Act. A restriction, by the way, which now applies to each of you. You are now officially assigned to Project Anzio, and our job is to get Minotaur —and her LAC wing—on-line, and then to prove the concept. In order to even further safeguard security on this endeavor, we will be leaving for Hancock Station as soon as our first two squadrons of LACs have come on board. The fleet base there will support our efforts, and since ours are the only people with any interest in Hancock these days, sending us there should keep 'neutral' eyes from seeing us and running home to Nouveau Paris to tattle. Clear?"