At All Costs

by David Weber

  Nimitz sensed it, too. He had leapt lightly from Honor's shoulder to Emily's float chair, joining Samantha, but now he looked up at his person, and she tasted his own curiosity.

  They're up to something, she thought. They've got some sort of surprise in store for me.

  She started to say something, then stopped. Whatever they had in mind, they were obviously looking forward to it with anticipation, and she wasn't about to do anything to spoil their surprise. And it was a surprise when they walked into Emily's atrium and found both her parents waiting for them.

  "Mother? Daddy?" Honor stopped dead in the doorway when she saw them. "What are you doing here?"

  "Always the diplomat," Allison Harrington said mournfully, shaking her head. "No soft soap from this girl. Brisk, business-like, and straight to the point. Always makes you feel so welcome, doesn't she Alfred?"

  "I think someone needs a spanking," her husband said tranquilly. "And not our daughter."

  "Ooooooh! Promise?" Allison demanded, smiling at him wickedly.

  "Mother!" Honor protested with a laugh.

  "What?" Allison asked innocently.

  "Filial piety precludes my answering that question the way it really deserves," Honor said repressively. "So, if you don't mind, and to return to my original question. What are you doing here? Not that I'm not delighted to see you both, of course. But having the entire Harrington family at White Haven at the same time doesn't exactly come under the heading of a discreetly low profile, now does it?"

  She glanced at Hamish and Emily as she spoke, but neither of them seemed particularly worried. In fact, they seemed inordinately pleased.

  "So you really were surprised," Emily said with immense satisfaction, confirming Honor's impression. "Good! You have no idea how difficult it can be to try to surprise someone who's an empath!"

  "I'd figured out you were up to something," Honor told her, "but it never occurred to me that Mom and Dad might be sitting in here waiting for us. Which, if no one especially minds," she added pointedly, "brings me back to my original question. Again."

  She swept the entire quartet-and the two obviously amused treecats, as well-with a demanding gaze, and Emily laughed. Laughed, Honor realized, around a bubble of intense joy. One which included her happiness at seeing Honor again, but which also partook of something else-something at least as powerful and even deeper.

  "No one could possibly object to their presence," Emily said. "After all, it's a matter of public record that I invited you to dinner-I thought it was rather clever of me to time the invitation for a moment when I knew you'd be in Tom Caparelli's office and then go through the switchboard. And it's perfectly reasonable, when I invite a friend to supper, for me to invite her parents, as well. Especially," her voice softened, "when one of those parents is my newest physician."

  "Physician?" Honor repeated.

  "Yes." Emily smiled with a curious serenity. One that felt somehow more... whole in some indefinable fashion. "Your mother and I had a very interesting discussion when she told me you wanted my voice, as well as Hamish's, for the Briarwood recordings. The fact that you did meant a lot to me. But, in some ways, what your mother had to say meant even more. Hamish and I have an appointment of our own over there next week."

  It took Honor an instant to realize what Emily had just said. Then the implications shot home.

  "Emily!" Somehow, Honor found herself on her knees beside the float chair, holding Emily's right hand to her cheek with both of her own hands. The tears which had pickled at the backs of her eyes when Hamish and Emily welcomed her "home" spilled free, and Emily blinked her own eyes hard.

  "That's wonderful!" Honor said. "Oh, Emily! I wanted to suggest the same thing so badly, but-"

  "But you thought I wasn't ready for the notion," Emily interrupted, the force of her happiness at Honor's instant and obvious joy at the news flooding through the younger woman. "Well, I thought I wasn't, as far as that goes. That was before I discovered where you get your stubbornness, of course."

  "I am not, and never have been, stubborn," Allison said with enormous dignity. "Determined, forceful, a compassionate healer-always a compassionate healer. Clearly committed. Insightful. Blessed with a unique ability to visualize the most successful possible outcome in any given situation. Always forging ahead in pursuit of-"

  "Definitely a spanking," Alfred decided.

  "Bully." Allison smacked him gently on the shoulder. "Bounder. Cad!"

  "'Stubborn' is a remarkably pale word to describe my esteemed female parent," Honor said, sitting back on her heels to look deeply into Emily's eyes, and wondering just how... forceful her mother's "suggestions" might have been. "I've often thought 'obstinate' would be a better fit."

  "I imagine that's part of what makes her such a successful physician," Emily replied, her happiness and deep satisfaction an unspoken answer to the question Honor hadn't asked.

  "Yes, it is," Honor agreed. "But this is really what you want? Truly?"

  "More truly than you can possibly imagine," Emily said softly.

  * * *

  "... so I called Briarwood and made the appointment," Emily said much later, as all five of them sat in her private dining salon looking out into the embers of sunset as they sipped after-dinner coffee or chocolate.

  "Who's your doctor?" Honor asked.

  "Illescue," Allison replied for Emily, and grimaced when Honor looked at her. "I really would have preferred Womack or Stilson, but it was probably inevitable that Illescue would assign himself. And I have to admit, he's very good at what he does."

  "Mother," Honor said in a semi-accusing tone, "when I met Dr. Illescue, I had the distinct impression I wasn't exactly his favorite person in the entire galaxy. Which I found peculiar, since I've never met the man before. Is there something you'd like to tell me? Something which, perhaps, you might have told me before I went to Briarwood myself?"

  "Don't look at me, dear," Allison said, and jabbed her husband in the ribs with a knuckle. "This overgrown adolescent is probably responsible for any slight hostility you might have detected."

  "Meaning what?"

  "Meaning the two of them were at medical school together on Beowulf, and they didn't exactly see eye to eye."

  "Daddy?" Honor leveled her gaze on her father, who shrugged.

  "It wasn't my fault," he assured her. "You know what an invariably easy-going, pleasant sort I am."

  "I also know where I get my temper," Honor told him tartly.

  "Never laid a finger on him," Alfred Harrington said virtuously. "I was tempted a time or two, I'll admit. It's hard to imagine someone who could have been a bigger snot than Franz Illescue at twenty-five. He comes from one of the best medical families here in the Star Kingdom-his family's been physicians ever since the Plague Years-and he wasn't about to let a mere yeoman from Sphinx forget about it. Especially not a yeoman who was being sent to med school by the Navy. He was one of those people who thought the only reason people joined the Navy was because they couldn't get jobs in the 'real world.' I understand he's mellowed a bit with time, but the two of us were like a leaking hydrogen canister and a spark when we were younger."

  "Tell her everything, Alfred," Allison admonished.

  "Oh, well, there was one other minor matter," Alfred said. "He'd asked your mother out once or twice before I came along."

  "Once or twice!" Allison snorted. "He'd been just a bit more persistent than that. I think he was trophy hunting-he always did think of himself as quite the ladies' man."

  "Maybe he was," Alfred acknowledged. "But if so, at least he had impeccable taste, Alley. You have to admit that."

  "Such a sweet man," Allison said, patting his cheek, and looked at Emily. "You see why I keep him?"

  "Does all that history mean you're going to have a problem working with him, Mother?" Honor asked with an edge of seriousness after the chuckles had subsided.

  "I've worked with him before," Allison told her calmly. "He's grown up quite a bit over the last h
alf-century. And, as I say, he really is very good in his area. He wouldn't be Briarwood's senior partner if he wasn't. Given what the two of us do, it was inevitable we'd wind up at least consulting from time to time, and both of us recognized that long ago. So while I'd really prefer one of the other docs, I don't foresee any difficulty working with Franz."

  "Good." Honor shook her head with a crooked smile. "The things one finds out about one's parents. And here for all these years I thought I was bad about picking up feuds."

  "Well, you've refined an inherited ability to a truly rarefied height," her mother said, "but I suppose you did come by it honestly in the beginning."

  * * *

  "Imperator, this is India-Papa-One-One, requesting approach instructions."

  "India-Papa-One-One, Imperator Flight Ops. Be advised our approach pattern is currently full. Please stand by."

  "Flight Ops, India-Papa-One-One. Understand approach pattern is currently full. However, be advised that I have Eighth Fleet flag on board."

  There was a moment of silence, and the pinnace's pilot grinned at his copilot.

  "Ah, India-Papa-One-One, Imperator Flight Ops." The controller aboard the flagship sounded suddenly much brisker. "Come to approach vector Able-Charlie. You are cleared for immediate approach to Boat Bay Alpha."

  "Thank you, Flight Ops. India-Papa-One-One copies approach vector Able-Charlie for immediate approach to Bay Alpha," the pinnace pilot acknowledged, without allowing even a trace of satisfaction to show.

  * * *

  "How was your visit to the Admiralty, Ma'am?"

  "Good, Rafe." Honor looked at her flag captain as the two of them, accompanied by Nimitz, Mercedes Brigham, her three armsmen, and Timothy Mears rode the lift car from the boat bay towards Flag Bridge. "That's not to say everything Sir Thomas had to tell me was something I wanted to hear, but at least we're all on the same page. And," her mouth tightened slightly, "it's more important than ever that we get Cutworm launched successfully."

  "Everything's ready, Ma'am," Cardones told her soberly.

  "I expected it would be." Honor brought up the time display in her artificial eye, then looked over her shoulder at her flag lieutenant.

  "Tim, general signal to all flag officers. They're all invited to supper. We should just about have time for that before we all pull out."

  Chapter Nineteen

  "Alpha translation in seventeen minutes, Ma'am," Lieutenant Weismeuller said.

  "Understood," Lieutenant Commander Estwicke acknowledged, and turned to her com officer. "Pass the final readiness signal to Skirmisher."

  "Aye, aye, Ma'am," Lieutenant Wilson acknowledged, and Estwicke nodded to her executive officer.

  "Bring the ship to general quarters, Jethro."

  "Yes, Ma'am." Lieutenant Jethro Stanton replied, and pressed the GQ button on his console. Alarms blared throughout the ship, although they were scarcely needed. HMS Ambuscade's crew had closed up to their action stations over half an hour ago, taking their time, making certain they'd done it right.

  Readiness reports flowed back to the bridge steadily, and Stanton listened carefully, watching the icons in his display's sidebar blink from amber to a steady, burning red.

  "All battle stations report manned and ready, Skipper," he reported formally as the last symbol turned red.

  "Very good." Estwicke swiveled her chair to face Lieutenant Emily Harcourt, her tactical officer. "Stand by to deploy the remotes."

  * * *

  "Unidentified hyper footprint! Correction-two hyper footprints! Range four-six-point-five light-minutes! Bearing one-seven-three by oh-niner-two!"

  Captain Heinrich Beauchamp looked up sharply, swiveling his chair to face the petty officer. The twin, rapidly strobing blood-red icons of unknown hyper translations glared in the depths of the master plot, and the chief of the watch was leaning forward over the shoulder of one of the other sensor techs, watching her display as she worked to refine the data.

  "What do we have so far, Lowell?" Beauchamp asked the petty officer who'd made the initial report.

  "Not a lot, Sir," the noncom said unhappily. "That far out, we don't have any of the FTL platforms close enough for a good look, and the sub-light-"

  He broke off as the crimson icons vanished as abruptly as they had appeared.

  "Did they translate out?" Beauchamp demanded.

  "Don't think so, Sir," Petty Officer Lowell replied.

  "Definitely not, Sir," Chief Torricelli said, looking up from where he'd been watching the sensor tech work the contacts. "Whatever they are, they've gone into stealth."

  "Damn," Beauchamp muttered. He let his chair swing back and forth in a tight arc for a few seconds, then shook his head. "All right, Chief. How much did we get?"

  "Not much, Sir," Torricelli admitted. "We only had them on sensors for about eight minutes, and like Lowell says, that's an awful long way out for any kind of detail. Best I can tell you is they weren't anything really big. Might've been a pair of light cruisers, but it looked more like destroyers, from the little we got."

  "If that's all we've got, it's all we've got," Beauchamp said, more philosophically than he really felt, and punched the com stud on the arm of his bridge chair.

  "System HQ, Commander Tucker," a voice responded in his earbug.

  "George, it's Heinrich," Beauchamp said. "I know the Commodore just turned in, but you might want to wake him."

  "This better be good," Tucker replied. "He was dead tired before I managed to chase him off to bed."

  "I know. But we just picked up two unidentified hyper footprints-destroyer or light cruiser range. We had them on sensors for a bit less than eight minutes, then lost them. Our best estimate is that they're still out there, just in stealth."

  "Shit." There was silence for several seconds, then Beauchamp heard Tucker inhale deeply. "Not good, Heinrich. I guess I really will have to wake him back up."

  * * *

  "Good light-speed telemetry on the arrays, Skipper," Lieutenant Harcourt reported, studying the readings coming back over the whisker lasers. "Deployment profiles look optimal."

  "Skirmisher reports good deployment as well, Ma'am," Wilson added from Communications.

  "Good," Estwicke replied to both officers simultaneously. "Any sign they got a hard read on us, Emily?"

  "Impossible to say, Ma'am," Harcourt replied in the respectfully formal tone she kept for those rare special occasions when her commanding officer asked a silly question. "We didn't pick up any active sensors, of course. But there's no way of knowing whether or not we came out close enough to one of their platforms for it to get a good read on passives."

  "Understood." Estwicke's wry smile acknowledged the ever so proper smack on the wrist the tac officer had just given her.

  "I haven't picked up any grav-pulse transmissions," Harcourt added. "Anything they did get on us, aside from our footprint itself, has to be coming in light-speed. So whatever it might be, they won't have it for another twenty-five minutes or so."

  "By which time we'll have cut even the laser links and be very tiny needles in a very large haystack," Estwicke said with a nod of satisfaction.

  "Exactly, Skip," Harcourt agreed. Then she cocked her head. "By the way, Skipper, there's something I've always meant to ask."

  "And what might that be?"

  "What the hell is a 'haystack,' anyway?"

  * * *

  "I don't like this, George," Commodore Tom Milligan said. "I don't like it a bit."

  The Commanding Officer, Hera System Command, and his chief of staff were hunched over the latest report from the Hera System's sensor arrays.

  "I don't either, Sir," Commander Tucker agreed. The chief of staff's face was tight with worry, but far less exhausted looking than Milligan's. Then again, he was sleeping better than Milligan was.

  Probably, he thought, because the ultimate responsibility is his, not mine.

  "Those damned ships have been hanging around for two frigging days," Milligan continue
d harshly.

  "We think they have, Sir," Tucker amended conscientiously.

  "Oh, of course." Milligan's irony was withering, although Tucker knew it wasn't actually directed at him. He was simply unfortunate enough to be in range. "Well, I think they're hanging around for a reason," the commodore continued in slightly less sarcastic tones. "And I don't like these readings, either."

  He tapped another paragraph of the report, and Tucker nodded silently.

  "They aren't very strong, Sir," he pointed out after a moment. Milligan looked at him, and the commander shrugged slightly. "I wish they were a little stronger. Maybe then we could at least have gotten a directional bearing for the LAC sweeps."