Honor Harrington (№9) - Ashes Of Victory

Yet the idea that anyone on Grayson might want to assassinate Benjamin or Elizabeth at this moment seemed ludicrous as she gazed out over the cheering, applauding, waving crowd filling the enormous square. There must be forty or fifty thousand people out there, all crushing together to get an eyewitness look at the Protector and his foreign ally when they could have been comfortably home watching on HD. And they were here because Grayson had always felt it owed a special debt to Elizabeth — to her, personally, not just to her government — for the warships which had saved them from Masadan conquest. And for the loans and technical assistance which had transformed their star system and their world. And now, and especially, for the steady chain of victories which had broken the back of the People's Navy at last.

The war was as good as won. For once, that was the verdict of the professionals and the pundits alike... and it was also the verdict of the Allied public. For that matter, it was Honor's view, and she felt a special swell of pride whenever she thought of the part Alice Truman, her LAC crews, and Operation Buttercup had played in bringing that to pass. And, she admitted, whenever she considered who'd commanded Eighth Fleet during its unstoppable advance. She wished passionately she could have been there herself, but if she couldn't, knowing the campaign was in the hands of Alice and Hamish Alexander, not to mention Alistair McKeon and all the others she knew so well who were serving in Alice's CLAC squadrons, was the next best thing.

And being stuck here on Grayson also meant that, unlike the people actually fighting the battles, she got to see the public's response first hand, as it happened.

Elizabeth and her party started up the final flight of steps, and Honor drew her attention back to the present. There would be time enough to daydream about Eighth Fleet. For the moment, she had other duties, and she stepped forward with the Sword of State to greet her monarch in the name of her liege lord.

* * *

"Tester, I'm glad that's over!" Benjamin Mayhew groaned as he dropped into a chair. Unlike Elizabeth, he'd shed his formal, eminently uncomfortable robes as soon as possible and wore a pair of slacks and an open-necked shirt without the ridiculous, anachronistic "necktie." Elizabeth had attended in Manticoran court dress, the first time in history that a woman had appeared in the sacred precincts of Steadholder's Hall in trousers. It had no doubt shocked the more fragile souls among the Keys, but it also had the advantage of being quite comfortable. She'd taken off her tail coat, but that was all, and now she smiled as Henry Prestwick handed her a tall, cold drink.

"Your people do seem to be on the... enthusiastic side," she observed, and Benjamin laughed.

"You mean they're raving lunatics!" He shook his head. "When I think about all the INS stories about the `dignified and reserved people of Grayson,' I have to wonder what planet the newsies were really covering!"

"It's hard to blame them at the moment," Honor put in from her own chair. She and Lord Prestwick were the only steadholders among the small gathering, and neither of them was present in her or his capacity as a steadholder. She was there as Benjamin's champion (and, at Elizabeth's request, as Duchess Harrington), and Prestwick was present as Benjamin's Chancellor, just as Allen Summervale was present as Elizabeth's Prime Minister. Now Benjamin cocked an eye at her, and she shrugged.

"INS just broke a fresh story on the chaos in Nouveau Paris," she said, and grimaced. "I can't say I'm happy at the thought of a butcher like Saint-Just running the PRH single-handed, and I doubt the public at large is, either, when it thinks about it. But people also figure that the way he got there indicates there's a lot more opposition to the Committee than anyone thought... and that a general Peep collapse may be the fastest way to end the war. Besides, the same broadcast released the declassified portions of Earl White Haven's latest dispatches."

"You mean you don't think it's all due to my eloquent speeches and sheer force of personality?" Elizabeth demanded plaintively, and everyone (except the armsmen and Colonel Shemais) laughed.

"Actually, I think both those factors have played a part," Benjamin said a moment later, his expression more serious. "This entire visit was a brilliant notion, Elizabeth, if you'll pardon my saying so. There are some on Grayson who'd managed to convince themselves, or perhaps it would be better to say comforted themselves with the notion, that you're actually just a mouthpiece. That the Star Kingdom isn't really run by anyone as silly and frivolous as a mere woman! Those people have built up this notion that some sort of male cabal is really hiding behind your throne, pulling the strings. Now that we Graysons have had a chance to see you in person, that idea is so obviously ludicrous that anyone who openly suggested such a thing would be laughed out of public life."

"And the timing is superb, Your Majesty," Prestwick put in. "Your arrival is associated in the public mind with the sudden turn in the course of the war. No one is foolish enough to attribute that turn to your visit. Not on an intellectual basis, at least. But the emotional impact has linked you and those victories indelibly in the impressions of our steaders. And quite a few of our steadholders, I suspect."

"And it's another nail in the coffin of the notion that women have no business getting involved in `serious' affairs," Benjamin added, and smiled. "Katherine and Elaine made that point to me — again — over breakfast. Sometimes I suspect they wish I were an old-fashioned chauvinist so they could gloat over my discomfiture. Fortunately, they can always gloat over everyone else's discomfiture in front of me, and that's almost as good."

"I can imagine," Elizabeth agreed with a laugh.

She and the Protector's wives had taken to one another instantly, and Rachel Mayhew had been deeply impressed to discover that the Queen of Manticore's 'cat companion was considerably younger than her own Hipper. And a better signer. Like Honor, the Mayhews were still adjusting to the sudden emergence of treecat conversation at the dinner table. But at least there was only one 'cat in Protector's Palace, she thought enviously. Well, two, now that Elizabeth and Ariel had arrived as houseguests. With Nimitz and Samantha home, there were thirteen at Harrington House, and every one of them, including the 'kittens, was signing away like mad. She doubted she would ever get over the sheer joy of experiencing true, two-way conversations with her six-limbed friends, but watching that many 'cats signing simultaneously (and with widely varying proficiency) was like being trapped inside an old-fashioned piston engine!

Nimitz bleeked a soft laugh from the back of her chair as he picked up her emotions, and she tasted his loving mental caress.

"I'm sure you can visualize it all perfectly," Benjamin said. "Still, Henry's right. You've got the conservatives in full retreat." He smiled with intense satisfaction. "Even Mueller's `media blitz' hasn't kept them from taking a beating in the polls. And his expression when he presented you and the Duke with those memory stones was priceless!"

"I know." Elizabeth's smile was less satisfied than Benjamin's, and he looked a question at her. She looked back for a moment, then shrugged. "There's just... something about him that bothers me. And Ariel," she added, and all eyes swiveled to the treecat in her lap. Ariel raised his prick-eared head and gazed back with grass-green eyes, and Shemais cleared her throat.

"Excuse me, Your Majesty, but what do you mean `bothers' you and Ariel?" The Queen looked at the head of her security team, and the colonel frowned. "The Queen's Own learned to take 'cats' `feelings' seriously a long time ago, Your Majesty. If there's something we should be bothered about, I'd like to know."

"I don't know that you should be," Elizabeth said slowly. "If I'd felt certain one way or the other, I would have told you before this. There's just... something. Ariel and I discussed it while Benjamin was changing, and he can't nail it down any better than that. Of course, we're still learning to sign, but I don't think that was the problem. According to him—" she ran one hand gently down the 'cat's spine "—Mueller has a lot on his mind right now. He's nervous and angry, and more than a little scared about something, and he doesn't care for me at all. But whatever he's angry or scared about isn't associated with me. Or, rather, it isn't directly associated with me. I'm mixed up in it somewhere, but more as an additional thing for him to be scared about than because of any threat he poses to me." She shrugged and grinned crookedly. "It's just a little humbling to discover that the 'cats aren't quite as all-knowing as some of us had imagined. Ariel can pick up a lot from other people's emotions, but he can't establish direct links between those emotions and specific individuals or thoughts unless those links are very strong... and in the forefront of the other person's mind, at that."

She looked at Honor, and it was Honor's turn to shrug.

"It's pretty much that way with me and Nimitz," she agreed, but she frowned as she said it. She hadn't really noticed it before, but now that she thought back, it struck her that Mueller had gone to some lengths to avoid her. It was almost as if he were deliberately staying away from her and Nimitz, and she wondered, suddenly, just how well briefed he truly was on 'cats in general... and on her and Nimitz in particular.

"It's a bit sharper and more specific in our case, I think," she went on, and heads nodded. Everyone in this room had been cleared for the truth about her bond with Nimitz. "But you're right. Unless it's a very strong link and one the other person is thinking about at that particular moment, specific connections are hard to make."

"Um." Benjamin sat back in his chair and rubbed his upper lip while he thought, then shrugged. "I can think of quite a few reasons Mueller would feel... uneasy in your presence, Elizabeth. Or yours, Honor. I'm not sure about this `scared' business, though. Unless it's the threat to his plans your visit has proven? You have brought down a lot of scheming and set a huge financial investment pretty much at naught in less than a week."

"I don't know." Elizabeth sighed. "I suppose that could be it, but Ariel says he felt scared, not just uneasy or frustrated or upset."

"Excuse me, Your Majesty," Major Rice put in diffidently, "but it may be that he's managed to piss off—" Rice stopped abruptly, glanced apologetically at Elizabeth, Honor, and Shemais, and went beet red.

"Excuse me, please," he repeated, with a rather different emphasis, then drew a deep breath as Shemais hid a smile behind a raised hand. "What I meant to suggest," he went on doggedly, "is that we—" a wave at the uniform he wore indicated who "we" was "—have been keeping an eye on him for a lot of reasons, and it could be that certain associates are turning out to be a little nastier than he thought." He glanced at the Protector, then looked back at Elizabeth as Benjamin gave an almost imperceptible nod.

"I'd planned to brief the Prime Minister and Colonel Shemais about this later this evening, Your Majesty, but since you've brought Mueller up, it might be better to go ahead and tell you, as well. We have several domestic concerns about Mueller, and there's an ongoing investigation into some of his activities."

Honor's eyes widened. Unlike any of the visiting Manticorans, she knew what was involved in investigating one of Grayson's Keys. It was hardly something the Sword would undertake lightly, both because of the evidentiary standards required to initiate such a move and the risk of political damage if it became known. But if Benjamin had issued a Sword finding of the probability that a Key was guilty of high treason, the only legal basis for a "black" investigation of a steadholder, then perhaps there was a very good reason for those bleak spikes of hatred she'd felt coming from him whenever Mueller's name was mentioned.

"One of the things we've been looking into is the huge amount of money he's spending," Rice went on. "We have strong evidence that he's funneling illegal campaign contributions to Opposition candidates in the upcoming elections. That's a serious offense, but it falls short of the Constitutional definition of treason. The Sword can preemptively remove a steadholder for treason, unless a two-thirds vote of the Keys overrides him. But for the misdemeanors and malfeasance we can actually prove, a full impeachment hearing, where it would take a two-thirds vote to remove him before he could face criminal charges, would be required. We'd like to avoid that, so we've been digging along several other lines, as well, though I feel confident we'll settle for impeachment in the end if we have to.

"But despite the progress we've made, we still haven't been able to ID some of the people who've been passing funds to him in the first place. Obviously, they represent a large, well-funded organization of some sort, though, and I suspect the Steadholder has just discovered that he doesn't control them as completely as he'd thought. We don't have any hard evidence to that effect, and our best information channel was shut down rather permanently a few months ago, but I've felt from the beginning that they were a lot more dangerous than he thought they were. And if they're unhappy about the effect your visit is having, they may just have decided to turn the heat up on him. He might well even see them as a physical threat. I'd like to think he might, anyway. Do you think that could explain what your friend's been picking up from him?"

Elizabeth looked down at Ariel, and the 'cat sat upright in her lap to sign briefly but energetically at her. She laughed and nodded, then looked back at Rice.

"Ariel says, `He's scared as a treehopper on hunting day,' Major."

"How sad," Rice murmured with a beatific smile.

"I must say, however," Cromarty put in, fingering the unfinished lump of nickel iron in the beautifully worked cage of golden filagree which hung from his belt, "that this `memory stone' custom of yours is a lovely one, Your Grace. I wish we had one like it back home, though I suppose we're too hopelessly secular for it. Whatever else he may be up to, I'm grateful to Steadholder Mueller for introducing me to it."

"Even Samuel Mueller has his moments I suppose," Benjamin conceded. "And you're right. It is a deeply meaningful ritual among us, and whatever I may think of Mueller, I owe him a debt for reminding me of it, as well. It's time I cast a memory of my own into the stars, I think. Especially now, when it's so fitting to remember all the people who have given their lives in this war."

"Absolutely," Elizabeth agreed, gently touching the matching memory stone at her own belt. "Absolutely."

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

"Bleek!"

Honor looked away from her heads-up display and grinned as Nimitz registered his protest. The 'cat was curled into his own, custom-designed flight couch, mounted beside hers on Jamie Candless' flight deck, and his ears were half-flat as the plaintive strains of one of her flight engineer's favorite songs wafted over the runabout's speakers.

"Mommas, don't let you babies grow up to be spacers..."

She listened for a moment, then sent a wave of agreement back to the treecat. Wayne Alexander had settled in quite nicely on Grayson. Better in some ways, in fact, than Honor would ever have anticipated. He seemed fascinated by the tenets of the Church of Humanity Unchained, and she suspected he might well convert to the Grayson faith in the not too distant future.

Not that he didn't retain a goodly number of rough edges. The intractability and stubborn intellectual honesty which had gotten him sent to Hell in the first place were still very much a part of him, and he loved a vigorous debate. That much the Graysons found good, for it was a fundamental part of their natures, too, as they applied the doctrine of the Test to their lives. What drove some of his new neighbors absolutely mad, however, was his ability to argue both sides of any question, often in the same debate, with perfectly good cheer, just to keep things moving in suitably lively fashion.

But one part of Grayson's culture which he'd adopted enthusiastically was its classical music, which was based on something from Old Earth which had once been called "Country and Western." Honor had been rather taken aback by it when she first met it, and it had taken her years to acquire any true taste for it. By now, she was actually quite fond of certain composers, but Alexander's allegiance was given to the Primitive School, and she'd never much cared for the Primitives.

"... spacers love smokey old bar rooms and clear crystal vacuum..."

"Sorry, Stinker," she told Nimitz under her breath, "but I did tell him he could program the entertainment banks." The 'cat gave her a pained look, and she grinned. "All right. All right! I'll talk to him about it, promise!"

Nimitz sniffed and groomed his whiskers at her, and she chuckled, then turned back to her controls.

The Jamie Candless had proven all she'd hoped for, though she'd had precious little time to play with her new toy. Despite her eleven thousand two hundred-ton mass, Candless was almost as maneuverable as a pinnace, and Silverman's had gotten permission from the Navy to build in a next-to-last-generation military compensator. They never would have gotten it if they'd been building the ship for anyone else, but this time Honor had decided to go right ahead and trade on who she was, and the result was a ship which could crank close to seven hundred gravities. Without one of the lightweight fission piles used in the new LACs, Candless had precious little internal volume to spare, and her maximum designed passenger load was only eight, but she was also designed with the latest system-management AIs. In an emergency, Honor could have managed the entire runabout by herself from the flight deck, but she was too experienced a spacer try it except in an emergency. Besides, Alexander would have had a fit if she'd tried to take "his" boat away from him!

She chuckled again, then leaned back and surveyed the jewel-speckled vista of eternity through the bubble armorplast canopy. That was a feature Silverman's — and Andrew LaFollet — had argued about. Silverman's had wanted the flight deck in its "traditional" place, which meant the approxiate center of ass, because their designers were traditionalists and that was where flight decks were supposed to be. LaFollet, on the other hand, had wanted it there because the much smaller cockpit Honor had insisted upon was too small to cram in a flight chair for anyone but Honor and Nimitz. Which meant, of course, that there was no way he could watch her back when she sat at the controls.

Honor had actually sympathized with her armsman rather more than with Silverman's, but she had been adamant. As she'd pointed out to Andrew, his presence could hardly affect anything which was likely to pose any sort of threat to her from inside her cockpit, so there was no real point in his standing guard over her while in flight. And much as she might have emphasized with him, she'd also pointed out rather sternly that a traditional flight deck would have restricted her view of the same displays which formed her work-a-day shipboard world. Candless was for her to play with, a way to get away from that same work-a-day world, and cramped as the runabout's passenger space might be, there was plenty of room for Andrew to ride along with Wayne. So she'd demanded the pinnacelike modification, and she was glad she had, even if Andrew had been on the grumpy side for days afterward.

The roof of Candless' wedge was clearly visible, stretching above and ahead of her and extending for kilometers to either side, and she watched the stars ahead of her abruptly shift position and color as the wedge's leading edge swept across them. The focused gravity of the impeller band clawed at photons with a force of almost a hundred thousand MPSCandless.

She checked her instruments again. For her, the current trip was play time, a treat she'd decided to give herself because she'd earned it, but for others it was anything but a vacation, and she looked at the two golden icons on her small plot. They were only a few hundred kilometers clear of Candless, but nothing else was anywhere close to either of them, and a sphere of Shrike-B LACs held station on them, two hundred thousand klicks out, to make certain nothing else could be.

Queen Elizabeth had announced her desire to tour the Blackbird Yard even before she left for Yeltsin's Star. There had been lots of reasons for her to make the trip out to Blackbird, most political, but some personal. Blackbird had been the site of the battle in which Honor's small squadron effectively wiped out the Masadan Navy eleven years earlier, which made it a logical place for the Queen of Manticore to visit. It was also the place where the survivors of HMS Madrigal's crew had been systematically raped and murdered by their Masadan captors, and that made it a place Elizabeth Winton the woman felt a deeply personal obligation to visit. And the yard itself was a cooperative venture, encouraged by the most-favored-nation status the Crown had extended to Grayson, between the Hauptman Cartel, Sky Domes of Grayson, and the Sword's Office of Financial Development, which made it a perfect symbol of all the Alliance had accomplished. Besides, Elizabeth had heard a great deal about the Blackbird Yard from William Alexander, and she wanted to see it for herself.

The original plan had been for her to make the trip along with Benjamin Mayhew aboard HMS Queen Adrienne, the yacht in which she had traveled to Yeltsin's Star. That scheme had been altered, however, in light of how extremely well the ministerial-level meetings were going. Cromarty and Prestwick had corresponded often, but this was the first time they'd actually met, and they'd quickly established a congenial relationship. The Earl of Gold Peak had established an almost equally good relationship with Lawrence Hodges, Benjamin's Councilor for Interstellar Affairs, and the four of them had been closeted with their staffs virtually nonstop since the Manticorans' arrival.

Elizabeth was glad she'd insisted Cromarty and her uncle bring along complete staffs, even if doing so had packed Queen Adrienne to capacity. The Prime Minister had argued, at first. Few people, even at the Admiralty, had counted on how rapidly and completely Eighth Fleet was going to break the Peeps' front or how deeply White Haven would cut. And even the handful of optimists who might have predicted anything of the sort had never expected the coup (or whatever it had been) which had brought Oscar Saint-Just to absolute power. Which meant none of them had counted on the number of military and foreign policy decisions the Alliance was going to have to make very, very soon. The fortuitous timing which had brought the two rulers universally regarded as the heart and soul of the Alliance into direct, face-to-face contact at such a moment could not be allowed to slip past unutilized, and that had turned Cromarty's and Gold Peak's "vacation" into an exhausting grind of meetings, conferences, and planning sessions.

In fact, it was obvious they weren't going to get to everything that needed attention within the time constraints of Elizabeth's planned visit however hard they tried, and they, like Prestwick and Hodges, resented every distraction from their workload. Both Manticorans were scheduled to accompany Elizabeth and Benjamin to Blackbird, however, and Elizabeth was determined that they would enjoy at least a small break. Some souls might have been hardy enough to argue with her, but the Duke of Cromarty was too wise for that so a compromise had been evolved. He, Gold Peak, Prestwick, Hodges, and their staffs would make the trip aboard Queen Adrienne, which would let them confer to their hearts' content en route, then break for a few hours to tour the yard.

That would keep everyone more or less happy. Unfortunately, it would also pack Queen Adrienne to the deckheads, so Benjamin had invited Elizabeth to make the trip as his guest aboard Grayson One, instead. The Grayson vessel was smaller than Queen Adrienne, and not quite so palatial, but she still had plenty of gold plating in the heads. And despite her smaller size, she actually had more room, since she wasn't going to be cluttered with secretaries, assistant secretaries, under-assistant secretaries, and special assistants to the assistant secretaries. Elizabeth and her Aunt Caitrin, who had accompanied her husband on the trip, had accepted the invitation. Although Duchess Winton-Henke had once been Elizabeth's regent and remained an important member of her inner circle of advisers, she no longer held official office and had been fervently grateful for the opportunity to escape the ministers' crushing workload for at least one afternoon. At this very moment, Honor felt certain, Benjamin and his guests were comfortably ensconced in one of Grayson One's luxurious salons enjoying themselves immensely. Elizabeth's cousin Calvin, alas, was not, for he was stuck aboard Queen Adrienne as his father's confidential secretary.

Honor had also been invited aboard Grayson One, and she'd been tempted to accept. She'd known both Caitrin and Anson Winton-Henke for decades, ever since Mike Henke had invited her home from the Academy on a visit, and she hadn't seen as much of either of them as she wished. But she'd begged off in the end. She'd had Candless for less than two months, and the opportunity to make the trip aboard her had been too much to turn down. One or two members of Benjamin's staff had been a bit miffed over the "insult to the Protector," but Benjamin had only laughed and shooed her off with orders to "Go play with your toy and enjoy yourself. But don't be late for the tour of the yard!"

She grinned now in memory. She'd done exactly as he'd told her to, like a dutiful vassal, especially the bit about enjoying herself. Candless was even more responsive than she'd hoped, with all the truly essential flight controls located on the military-style stick. Not only was that a configuration with which any Navy small craft pilot was intimately familiar, but it also allowed a woman whose left arm still disobeyed orders from time to time to fly her bird with her single natural (and reliable!) hand. It was also a configuration which simply begged any pilot to put the runabout through the same sort of maneuvers pinnaces routinely executed, and to Honor's delight, Candless came very close to matching the nimbleness of the much smaller craft. She had no doubt that the bridge crews of Queen Adrienne and Grayson One had watched her antics with amusement — and, she thought smugly, eat-your-heart-out envy —as she danced and cavorted about their base course. But they were getting close to Blackbird now. She just had time for one last tango with the stars before she had to slow back down and be good again, and she watched the gauges on the holographic HUD spin upward as she fed power to the nodes once more.

* * *

Captain Gavin Bledsoe sat in his own command chair, watching the icons on his plot move steadily closer, and an odd, euphoric terror gripped him. He, too, saw the shell of light attack craft maintaining careful watch on Grayson One and Queen Adrienne, and he'd heard enough about the recently declassified craft to know how lethal they were. He didn't know any details about armament, power plants, or electronics; the Alliance wasn't in the habit of handing out that sort of information in the middle of a war. But he knew his ore freighter could never evade them if they came after him.

And it was extremely likely that they would be coming after him very shortly.

It was knowing that which waked his terror, but it was the reason they would come after him which woke his euphoria. It was not given to many men to know, absolutely and without doubt, that they were about to die in the name of God. Bledsoe and his three-man crew had that knowledge. They had consecrated themselves to God's purpose twelve years before, when their home world was conquered, the true Faith was cast down, and the Abomination of the Desolation had come to their planet and people. The Harlot of Satan had triumphed over the children of God, but now she and her apostate Grayson puppet had come within Bledsoe's reach — within God's reach — at last, and if he and his comrades must die to strike down the leaders of the alliance of corruption which had perverted all which should have been good and holy, so be it. To die in God's service, bringing down the temple upon His enemies like Samson, was a priceless gift such frail and sinful vessels could receive only of His grace, for their own acts could never have earned the right to so glorious an end to their mortal existence.

In a way, it irritated Bledsoe that he and his fellows had been forced, even indirectly, to share this supreme moment with unbelievers, yet there'd never been much choice about that.