Uncompromising Honor - eARC

by David Weber

  If he could have, Theisman would have put him back on a flag deck in a moment, “back on the horse,” as Honor put it. But that, in a sense, was what his command of Home Fleet had been, and the Yawata Strike was barely seven months in the past. Putting him back into space so quickly would have pushed him too hard, too fast.

  Besides, we damned well need him right where he is!

  “Well, now that our footloose and fancy free fleet commander component is here,” he said, “perhaps we can get down to business.”

  Honor snorted, yet there was some truth to his description. Not the “footloose and fancy free” bit, perhaps, but as the commander of Home Fleet, she did hold a seat on the Joint Chiefs, although she was the only fleet commander who did. Her position—Vice Chief of Staff (Operations)—was a bit anomalous, since she was technically senior to Higgins but wasn’t one of the rotating chiefs of staff and had no formal responsibility to the JCS. She wasn’t certain she approved of that arrangement, but her command represented the Grand Alliance’s mailed fist. Keeping her fully informed of the Joint Chiefs’ intentions—and soliciting her input into those intentions—was essential, and as long as Grand Fleet remained based on the Manticore Binary System, it was at least workable.

  “All right,” Theisman continued, turning to Patricia Givens, who now rejoiced in the title of Assistant Chief to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Intelligence), as well as Second Space Lord, “the floor is yours.”

  “Thank you, Sir.”

  Givens touched a control, the lights dimmed, and a file heading appeared on the table’s smart top in front of each attendee.

  “As you’ll see, Ladies and Gentlemen,” she began, “we now have confirmation of the attack on the Maize System.” Her expression was grim. “Casualties were minimal, thank God, but the destruction of the Maize infrastructure was pretty much total. That brings to seven the number of ‘Buccaneer’ attacks of which we know—that includes Hypatia on the ‘Buccaneer’ list, rather than as a special one-off political operation—beginning with Cachalot.”

  She paused, looking up and letting her eyes circle the table.

  “We have no reason at this time to believe we won’t be hearing about still more of them shortly.”

  She gave that a moment to sink in, then tapped the control in front of her again, and the file header disappeared into neatly tabulated columns of data.

  “These are the best numbers we’ve been able to generate, at this point, for the actual physical damage in each star system,” she began. “Commander Lassaline is still working to refine them, but they’re still based on a lot of estimating anc computer modeling. More concrete numbers are stll incoming, and Terry will see that all of you are updated as more definite data becomes available. I doubt that what we have so far is likely to change dramatically, however. It’s certainly close enough for us to begin evaluating the overall impact, and as I’m sure you’ll notice—”

  * * *

  “So what do you think?” Theisman asked much later that evening, sitting back much more informally with Honor and Judah Yanakov.

  Caparelli had been scheduled to join them for supper at Harrington House, but the Royal Orchestra was performing Hammerwell’s “Saganami Rising” that evening. It was a tradition for the First Space Lord and First Lord to attend whenever that happened, which was why he and Hamish alike were running late. Honor hadn’t known it was scheduled when she invited the others to supper, and she’d used the fact that her movements were more or less classified to avoid it. Only a handful of people knew she was on-planet, and much as she loved Hammerwell’s music, she’d decided she needed a restful night “at home” worse. She would have preferred spending it at White Haven, actually, but it turned out that Grand Fleet’s CO’s “restful night at home” was a bit more tightly scheduled than most. And since Hamish did have to attend the performance…

  Theisman suspected Caparelli would have joined them, as well, cheerfully dumping the public appearance duties on his civilian superior. The First Space Lord, Theisman had discovered, was not a fan of classical music at the best of times. Dianna Caparelli, unfortunately for him, was, and she’d put her foot down—hard—when her spouse tried to weasel out on her.

  Now Theisman sipped from his beer stein—he’d developed a decided partiality for a brew called Old Tillman—and swallowed appreciatively.

  “Is there another flight of ‘Buccaneers’ inbound?” he continued.

  “I don’t know.” Honor shook her head, gazing down into her own stein. “I’m inclined to think we’ve heard about all their ‘first flight’ strikes by now, despite how slowly news travels. I don’t see any reason they couldn’t have launched a lot more than just seven if they’d wanted to, though.” She looked back up with a shrug. “By our best estimate, they’ve still got somewhere around four thousand battlecruisers, and they only used eight hundred or so of them between all the strikes we know about. They could’ve thrown a lot more than that at us.”

  “Maybe not, Honor,” Yanakov said. Unlike the other two, he nursed a glass of Alfred Harrington’s prized Delacorte. Now he waved it—gently, with the respect it deserved—for emphasis. “I think Commodore Lessem’s point about the implications of the League’s ability to produce so many missile pods so quickly is valid, but there’s got to be a bottom somewhere, even to Solly productivity. I’m not surprised they can turn them out by the million—or even the billion—once they have a finalized design. Look at the rate at which we could churn them out before the Yawata Strike, or the way Beowulf’s started gearing up to produce the Mark Twenty-Three now. But there has to be a limit, and in addition to simply building the things, they have to physically distribute them once they’re manufactured. That ties up shipping and takes up time. Lots of time, actually, thanks to Lacöon. For that matter, unless we’re prepared to assume Kingsford is as big an idiot as Byng or Crandall, they have to have prioritized the accumulation of enough of them to equip their equivalent of Grand Fleet, and that would take a good sized bite off the top of their stockpiles, too.”

  “So you’re endorsing Pat’s argument that they may have exhausted their initial ammunition loadout—or as much of it as they were prepared to expend on offensive operations—and need to pause to restock?” Theisman asked.

  “I’m saying I think that could be a factor in a decision to pause,” Yanakov replied. “I think there could be others, too, though, and like Honor says, if there were more strikes in their first tranche, we should’ve heard about them by now. That suggests to me that they have decided to pause.”

  “And I can think of several other reasons why they might have,” Honor pointed out. “For one thing, if they’re hoping to pull us off strategic balance, they have to give us time to redeploy. And they probably want to give other potential targets the opportunity to think things through, for that matter. The purpose of shooting someone as an object lesson is to convince other people to pay attention to it, and that takes time.”

  “I think that’s a very valid point.” Theisman nodded. “Besides, I wouldn’t be surprised if they want see how this plays to their own electorate. They can dance around the point all they want, but even though they’ve managed not to kill several million people yet—thank God for Admiral Kotouč and Commander Petersen!—there’s no way ‘Buccaneer’ is anything but an Eridani violation waiting to happen. This isn’t like what we were doing to each other, Honor, especially with ‘Parthian Shot’ built into the matrix. I wouldn’t be surprised if they want to bring Solly public opinion up to the point of accepting a genuine Edict violation in stages.”

  “You think they’re really stupid enough to push it that far?” Yanakov’s expression was grim, and his voice suggested he found Theisman’s analysis only too plausible.

  “I think it would be difficult to overstate the stupidity—from our perspective at any rate—of which the Mandarins are capable,” Theisman said flatly. “If it were, they wouldn’t be in such a deep hole already. The only reaction they’ve shown so
far is to dig the damned thing deeper! What makes you think they’re likely to abandon that now?”

  “I can’t think of anything,” Honor acknowledged. “On the other hand, and much as I hate saying this, in a lot of ways ‘Buccaneer’ plays directly into our own overall strategy. I can’t imagine anything more likely to engender universal revulsion in the Fringe—or to generate Core World backlash, for that matter, once the inner systems start really understanding what’s happening.”

  Theisman nodded, his expression thoughtful. He couldn’t think of anything more likely to delegitimize the Mandarins—eventually, after far too much destruction and far too many deaths—than Operation Buccaneer, either. Of course, that presupposed it was physically possible to get Core Worlders to actually think about what they were being told by Malachai Abruzzi’s shills.

  So far, the signs were less than encouraging in that regard.

  “What really worries me,” Honor went on, “is that Beowulf finally votes on the plebiscite week after next. I can’t help wondering if they’re waiting for the vote tally before they launch Buccaneer Two.”

  “You think they’d go after Beowulf directly? With Admiral Truman sitting on the wormhole and Mycroft operational?” Theisman’s skepticism was evident, and Honor shook her head.

  “Even assuming they don’t know about Mycroft—and I’m not about to assume they don’t—Kingsford, at least, is smart enough to avoid tangling with Alice and her podnoughts. I suppose the Mandarins might overrule him. I could see MacArtney doing that—or trying to, anyway—but I really doubt Kingsford would go along with something that suicidal. On the other hand, all the indications are that they plan to spin Beowulf the same way they did Hypatia—an unforgivable act of treason, committed in blatant defiance of the Constitution, by a dishonest and corrupt system oligarchy eager to throw in its lot with the Star Empire and its neobarb allies in order to share in the loot when the Evil Manties invade the League and burn Old Chicago to the ground!”

  She grimaced in distaste, and Nimitz flattened his ears in her lap.

  “I’m sure they’d have done that anyway,” she said, “but their entire justification for ‘Buccaneer’ is that they’ve been driven to it. When Beowulf bails—and they know as well as we do that that’s exactly what’s going to happen—it’ll give them the biggest ‘proof’ yet of how we’re the ones driving the entire confrontation. And with that justification in hand, do any of us really see them not pushing ‘Buccaneer’ to even bigger and better things?”

  Naval Station Ganymede

  Ganymede Orbit

  Sol System

  Solarian League

  Winston Kingsford stood on the observation deck, watching Jupiter’s Great Red Spot sweep across below him, and his lips twitched in amusement as he contemplated the huge storm’s longevity. The entire planet of Old Terra could have disappeared into its maw, and the amount of energy its outermost winds dissipated every single day was staggering. Yet the vortex stubbornly continued to survive, siphoning additional colder and hotter gases to provide fresh energy even after all these T-centuries. It had shrunk somewhat over the last six or seven of those centuries, however, and current models suggested it might actually disappear forever, after all…in another two or three hundred years. In a way, Kingsford was grateful that even with prolong, he wouldn’t be here to see it go.

  Ganymede’s smaller companion, Europa, with an orbital period only half as great, sped past between his current perch and Jupiter, and Io, the innermost of the four Galilean moons had just come over the gas giant’s flank. The galaxy of constructs orbiting both Ganymede and Jupiter glittered in the reflected light of the planet, and he drew a deep breath and turned from the panorama.

  “Never get tired of seeing that,” he admitted to Willis Jennings, his chief of staff. “Not the same watching recorded video of it, either.”

  “No, Sir,” Admiral Jennings said, although, for himself, there was no difference at all. Except that it felt colder somehow, perhaps. That had to be purely psychological, given the comfortable twenty degrees at which all SLN habitats were held. For some reason, though, he couldn’t shake a sense that the temperature aboard Naval Station Ganymede’s platforms was lower than that, as if the surface temperature of the moon—better than two hundred degrees below freezing—had crept outward into the sprawling base.

  Nonsense, of course.

  “Well,” the CNO said, nodding to the commander who’d been assigned as his escort for the visit, “I suppose we should get to it. Lead the way, Commander.”

  * * *

  Naval Station Ganymede was the largest of the Solarian League Navy’s installations, larger even than Naval Station Mars, despite the fact that the Jovian subsystem was less convenient to Old Terra than Mars. Even when Mars was in inferior conjunction with Jupiter, NSG was 550,000,000 kilometers—better than 30 light-minutes—farther from Old Chicago. At its nearest approach, NSM was a mere 46.8 million kilometers from Old Terra, whereas Ganymede was over 558 million away, almost twelve times as distant. One of the Navy’s fast dispatch boats could reach Mars through normal-space in less than two hours, given that geometry; the trip to Naval Station Ganymede required well over six. The same dispatch boat could have cleared Sol’s hyper-limit in little more than three hours, translated into the Alpha bands, and micro-jumped across the 35 LM between that point and Jupiter’s 4.6-LM hyper-limit in only fifteen minutes. It would arrive at the Jovian limit with a relative velocity of effectively zero, however, and need two hours-plus to rendezvous with Ganymede, so the total flight time would actually have been over forty-five minutes longer.

  There were times, Kingsford reflected, following his guide, when the old phrase “you can’t get there from here” still applied.

  Despite that, Ganymede had become a critical node for the SLN long ago. Jupiter’s hyper-limit was far shallower than the system primary’s, but that didn’t explain NSG’ primacy. Mars was much closer to the Solarian limit than Old Earth, after tall. A battlecruiser arriving at the Jovian limit was two hours and thirty-five minutes from a dock at NSG; the same ship arriving at the Solarian limit was only eight minutes farther from a dock at NSM, and Mars was an enormous population node, which Ganymede most certainly was not. Jupiter, however, was the SLN’s primary source of reactor fuel, and with such a superabundance of that fuel at hand, it had made sense to locate the Navy’s major asteroid refineries and fabrication center in the same place. Ganymede’s endless oceans of liquid water had been another major consideration. The “moon” was bigger than many of the galaxy’s planets—it was the ninth largest body in the Solarian system, for that matter—with a fully differentiated interior, a molten metallic core, and more liquid water than Old Terra itself. Getting to it through so many miles of ice had been a significant engineering challenge in the early days of system exploration but posed no particular difficulty these days. And with access to liquid water and plentiful fuel, came an effectively unlimited supply of oxygen and hydrogen.

  Given all of those factors, the Navy had decided T-centuries earlier to make Ganymede its primary base for both construction and interstellar deployments while Mars had become a subsidiary, responsible for supporting operations inside the system hyper-limit. That didn’t mean the SLN had no other in-system bases or facilities. Given the sprawling nature of the Sol System’s orbital infrastructure, there were nodes of naval activity scattered across an enormous volume. The system’s civilian-oriented industry tended to be located around Mars, with relative proximity to both the belter refineries and to its consumers, who were heavily concentrated on Old Earth, Mars, and the orbital habitats around those two planets and Venus. There was plenty of additional civilian industry scattered around the asteroid belts, but it did tend to cluster around Mars. Military heavy industry, on the other hand, had long since co-located with NSG in order to be close to its primary consumer. Technodyne of Yildun, for example, employed upwards of a hundred and forty thousand roboticists, cyberneticists, nanocists, and
construction workers on its Ganymede I platform, alone, without even counting the large R&D component the transstellar maintained where it would be handy to NSG…or vice versa.

  Personally, Winston Kingsford had concluded—somewhat cynically, perhaps—that it was more a case of the latter than the former. Technodyne’s relationship with the Solarian League Navy had been the dictionary definition of a “sweetheart deal”—or perhaps “incest”—for as long as any current-duty officer could recall. Up until that unpleasantness at Monica, Technodyne’s management had tended to think of the Navy as one of its subsidiaries, rather than the other way around. In fact, if he was going to be honest, the admiral had to admit that the one thing about the disastrous current situation that warmed the cockles of his heart had been seeing so many Technodyne VIPs sent to prison and then watching their successors scurry around, frantically pursuing the technology the Navy needed not so much out of patriotism as out of their need to stay out of prison.

  Now, Winston, he told himself. Be nice. At least they’ve come up with the Cataphracts. Of course, you’d be a little happier about that if you didn’t suspect they must’ve had a clearer notion all along of what the Manties and Havenites were up to than your own people did. They came up with that response just that little bit too quickly for them not to have seen something like this coming. Which does present the question of why they didn’t warn you about it.

  In fairness—on those rare occasions when he was inclined to be fair to Technodyne—he had to admit that even if Technodyne had warned the Navy, someone like Martinos Polydorou, the recently (and forcibly) retired CO at Systems Development, would have ignored it. For that matter, he wasn’t certain he wouldn’t have ignored it himself, given the dearth of intelligence reports on the new technology being introduced out in the Haven Sector. The SLN had been focused on maintaining the technological status quo for a long, long time. When one had ten thousand superdreadnoughts in commission or reserve and every other navy in the galaxy combined possessed less than one thousand, one was unlikely to be interested in technology shifts that would make one’s existing wall of battle obsolete.