Honor Harrington (№5) - Flag In Exile

But neither, she realized abruptly, was he obeying Trailman's orders! The plot seemed to swoop sideways as BatDiv Eleven went to full military power and snapped through a howling course change with absolutely no warning. The division and its entire screen swerved like a single ship, in a flawlessly coordinated maneuver, and her eyes widened with astonished respect as she realized Yu must have been busy passing directions of his own even as he acknowledged Trailman's totally different orders.

The abrupt course change completely surprised Trailman. She heard him yelp in dismay, but she herself chuckled in sudden delight. Yu had acknowledged Trailman's orders, all right, yet he'd done it less to deceive Trailman than to deceive Yanakov! The aggressor force commander had already demonstrated his cunning with his EW drones, but he'd gone one better even than that. He'd used his com section to tap Trailman's command net, as well!

It wasn't something he could expect to do against real Peeps, but that wasn't the point. A good officer took every advantage he could find, then manufactured more of them any way he could, and it was as audacious as the rest of his plan. But it had just backfired, because Alfredo Yu was even more cunning than he was. Yu couldn't have known what Yanakov was doing, yet he'd allowed for the possibility. Trailman had used omnidirectional transmissions to keep all units simultaneously updated on his plans, and Yanakov's com section would have found it fairly easy to tap those. But Yu must have been using tight, directional whisker lasers to coordinate his own units, and Yanakov's people had never noticed. Why should they, when they already knew what his orders from Trailman were? The flag captain’s maneuver might have worked even without the added element of deception; with it, his sudden move changed from possibly effective to certainly devastating.

BatDiv Thirteen's heading changed again, shifting crazily as Yanakov realized he'd been out-sneaked, but it was too late, for Yu had timed his turn perfectly. True, the range was too great for his energy weapons to burn through BatDiv Thirteen's sidewalk, but Yanakov had been too sure of what his opponents intended to consider what else they might do. He'd let his ships' sterns point just a bit too close to Yu, secure in the knowledge BatDiv Eleven was heading away from him; now his overconfidence betrayed him as BatDiv Eleven cleared its broadsides and, for one fleeting moment, two superdreadnoughts, four heavy cruisers, six light cruisers, and six destroyers had perfect "up the kilt" shots through the wide open after-aspect of his impeller wedges.

Lasers and grasers clawed at their targets in brief, titanic fury, with no sidewalls to stop them, and the superdreadnought Courageous blew up in a spectacular boil of light. Admiral Yanakov went with his flagship, and more hits ripped into her consort. A wounded Furious rolled frantically, twisting through a radical skew turn that snatched her stern away from Yu and interposed the top of her wedge against the incoming fire. But Honor heard Trailman's suddenly exultant voice snapping fresh orders as BatDiv Twelve laid into her with missiles, and the only course that could protect her from Yu's fire turned the open throat of her wedge barely thirty degrees away from Trailman. She went to full military power as she fought to crab away from her enemies, but she was already badly hurt, and without Courageous’s support, her point defense was too weak. A quarter of Trailman’s laser heads detonated squarely in front of her, and debris and atmosphere vomited into space. Eight minutes after Courageous blew up, Furious followed suit, and Honor drew a deep breath of approval.

"All right, Fred. Kill the sim."

The plots died, and she rose and stretched. The visual display showed her the other ships of her squadron, and she grinned at the two SDs which had just been "destroyed," still riding placidly in Grayson orbit as they ran through the computer-generated simulation.

Commander Bagwell shook himself, still a bit dazed by how ruthlessly Yanakov, and Yu, she thought with a broader grin, had violated the exercise's parameters. Walter was going to be upset with himself, she thought, but he wasn't the sort to hold it against Yanakov. Or, for that matter, to let himself be suckered a second time. And Yanakov was going to be miffed with himself, too. He'd pulled off a brilliant ambush, then let his initial success go to his head, and Yu had exacted a devastating price for his overconfidence. He'd waited a bit too long to make his move, if Yanakov had changed heading even a few seconds sooner BatDiv Eleven would have lost its chance for an up the kilt shot, and the range had been too long for anything else to work, but she'd make that point to him in private. It had worked, after all, and he deserved the respect it was going to earn him from the rest of the squadron.

As a matter of fact, Yanakov deserved a pat on the back, too. He might have blown it at the last minute, yet he'd shown imagination and nerve, as well as skill, in even attempting the ambush. All in all, she was pleased. There'd been too many mistakes, but mistakes were what people learned from. Better they should make them in sims than against the enemy, and she was delighted by the independence Yanakov and Yu had displayed. Too much initiative could be disastrous, but too little was more dangerous... and far more common. She vastly preferred officers she might need to rein in occasionally to being stuck with ones too timid to act on their own.

She turned away from the visual display.

"Well, that was certainly exciting," she said to Bagwell, and Nimitz bleeked a quiet laugh from his perch on the back of her command chair.

"Ah, yes, My Lady, it was," the commander replied, and Honors eyes gleamed. Bagwell was just as correct and precise, and tactically formal, as her initial impression had suggested, and he still sounded bemused by it all.

"Indeed it was... and I can hardly wait to hear your analysis at the debrief," she said, and her chuckle echoed Nimitz's fresh laugh at the ops officer's expression.

William Fitzclarence, Steadholder Burdette, glowered as Deacon Allman stepped into his office. Burdette House was even larger than Protectors Palace, and far older, as befitted the capital of one of Grayson’s original steadings. It was a massive structure of native stone, built when fortresses were needed against fellow Steadholders as well as a hostile environment, and his office mirrored its stark, uncompromising presence. One of his first orders as Steadholder had been to strip away the tapestries and paintings the last two steadholders had allowed to soften the office's spartan simplicity. He'd loved his father and grandfather, but they'd let themselves be seduced away from the iron simplicity God expected of His people, and William Fitzclarence had no intention of repeating their error.

Deacon Allman's heels clicked on bare stone as he crossed to Burdette's desk, and something flickered in his otherwise mild eyes as the Steadholder remained seated. Official protocol didn't require a Steadholder to rise to greet even a deacon of the Church, but courtesy was something else. Lord Burdette's refusal to stand was a calculated insult, and Allman’s exquisitely correct half-bow returned it with interest.

"My Lord," he murmured, and Burdette's nostrils flared. The Sacristy messenger’s bland voice offered no overt cause for complaint, but he heard bared steel within it.

"Deacon," he returned shortly, and Allman straightened. The Steadholder didn't offer him a chair, and the churchman folded his hands behind him as he studied the man he'd come to see.

Burdette had the Fitzclarence look, tall for a Grayson, broad shouldered and square, and he'd succeeded to his dignities at an early age. His strong-jawed, handsome face and hard, ice-blue eyes bore the confident stamp of a man accustomed to command... and of one unaccustomed to being thwarted.

The silence stretched out, and despite the moment's tension, Allman was tempted to smile. His high church office had brought him into contact with too many steadholders to be awed by Burdette's birth, and the man's obvious attempt to disconcert him with that steely blue glare amused him. Or would have, he thought more somberly, had the situation been less serious.

"Well?" Burdette growled finally.

"I regret, My Lord, to inform you that the Sacristy has denied your petition. The decision to bar Brother Marchant from his offices will not be rescinded until such time as he makes public acknowledgment of his errors."

"His errors!" Burdette's fists clenched on the desk, and his jaw tightened like a steel trap. "Since when has it been a sin for a man of God to speak God's will?"

"My Lord, it is not my place or wish to debate with you," Allman replied calmly. "I am simply a messenger."

"A messenger?" Burdette barked a laugh. "A lap dog, you mean, yapping the 'message' you were ordered to deliver!"

"A messenger," Allman repeated in a harder voice, "charged to deliver the decision of God's Church, My Lord."

"The Sacristy," Burdette said coldly, "is not the whole body of Father Church. It consists of men, Deacon, men who can fall into error as easily as anyone else."

"No one claims otherwise, My Lord. But the Tester requires men to do their best to understand His will... and to act upon that understanding."

"Oh, indeed He does." Burdette’s smile was thin, cold, and ugly. "The pity is that the Sacristy chooses to forget that in Brother Marchant’s case!"

"The Sacristy," Allman said sternly, "has not forgotten, My Lord. No one has attempted to dictate to Brother Marchant's conscience. The Sacristy has found him in error, but if he cannot in good faith agree with the judgment of the Church, then his refusal to do so does him credit. Matters of personal faith are the most difficult Test any of God's children, even those who serve His Church, must face, and the Sacristy is well aware of that. Yet Father Church also has the duty to expose error when it perceives it."

"The Sacristy has been seduced by political expedience," Burdette said flatly, "and it, not Brother Marchant, has set itself in opposition to God's will." The Steadholder's voice went harsher and deeper, and his eyes glared. "This foreign woman, this harlot who fornicates outside the bonds of holy marriage and poisons us all with her ungodly ways, is an abomination in the eyes of God! She and those who would turn our world into no more than an echo of her own degenerate kingdom are the servants of evil, and the Sacristy seeks to spread their unclean ways among the true children of God!"

"I will not debate your beliefs with you, My Lord. That is not my function. If you disagree with the Sacristy's ruling, it is your ancient right, both as Steadholder and as a child of Father Church, to argue your case before it. It is also the Sacristy's responsibility, as the elected, ordained stewards of Father Church, to reject your arguments if they conflict with its understanding of God's will." Burdette snarled something under his breath, and Allman continued in the same dispassionate tone. "The Sacristy regrets its inability to grant your petition, but the Elders cannot turn aside from their joint understanding of God's will for any man. Not even for you, My Lord."

"I see." Burdette’s eyes, harder, and more contemptuous, than ever, surveyed Allman from head to toe. "So the Sacristy and Protector command me to strip Brother Marchant of the offices God has called him to."

"The Sacristy and the Protector have already removed Edmond Marchant from the offices he held in trust from God and Father Church," Allman corrected without flinching. "Until he heals the breach between his own teachings and those of Father Church, someone else must discharge those offices for him."

"So you say," Burdette said coldly. Allman made no reply, and he bared his teeth. "Very well, Deacon, you may now bear my message. Inform the Sacristy that it may be able to drive a true man of God from his pulpit and publicly humiliate him for remaining true to Faith, but it cannot compel me to join its sin. In my eyes, Brother Marchant retains every office of which he has been wrongfully deprived. I will nominate no replacement."

The cold blue eyes glittered as a flash of anger crossed the deacon's face at last. Allman clenched his hands behind him, reminding himself he was a man of God and that Burdette was a steadholder, and clamped his teeth on a hot retort. He took a moment to be sure he had command of his voice, then spoke in the calmest tone he could manage.

"My Lord, whatever your differences with the Sacristy, you, too, have a responsibility. Whether the Sacristy is in error or not, you have no right as a ruler anointed by God to leave the offices of His Church unfilled and His children unministered to."

"The Sacristy has done that by removing the man of my choice, and God's, from those offices, Deacon. For myself, I, as the Sacristy, have a duty to act as I believe God wishes me to act. As you say, I am a steadholder, and, as such, as much His steward as the Sacristy. To defy God's manifest will is a sin in any man, but especially in one called to carry the steadholder's key, and I refuse to do so. If the Church wishes those offices filled, the Sacristy has only to return them to the man God wishes to hold them. Until the Sacristy does so, however, I will never nominate a man repugnant to God to hold them! Better that my people should have no priest than a false one!"

"If you refuse to nominate anyone to the pulpit of Burdette Cathedral, then Father Church will make its own choice, My Lord," Allman said in a voice of steel, and Burdette lunged to his feet at last.

"Then do it!" he shouted. He planted his fists on the desk and leaned over it towards the deacon. "Tell them to do it," he hissed in a voice more deadly still for its sudden icy chill. "But they cannot compel me to attend services there or to accept any man not of my choosing as my chaplain, Deacon! We'll see how the people or Grayson who remain true to God react when a steadholder spits on whatever gutless weakling the Sacristy chooses to foist upon Father Church's holy offices!"

"Beware, Steadholder." Allman's voice was less passionate but equally cold. "God denies no man who seeks Him with an open heart. The only path to Hell is that of a man who chooses to cut himself off from God, but that path exists, and you set your feet upon it at your peril."

"Get out," Burdette said in a flat, frozen voice. "Go back to your boot-licking masters. Tell them they may fawn on this foreign whore and attempt to pervert the order God has ordained if they will, but that I refuse. Let them profane their own souls if they so choose; they will never take mine into damnation with them!"

"Very well, My Lord," Allman said, and bowed with frozen dignity. "I will pray for you," he added, and strode from the office while Burdette glared after him in fury.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

It was late, and Honor wore a silk kimono over her pajamas as she finished the final report, closed the file on her terminal, and tipped back in her comfortable chair with a pensive expression. She rubbed the tip of her nose for a moment, then reached for the cup of cocoa MacGuiness had left on her desk. He'd given her a severe look, then glanced pointedly at the chrono before he withdrew, and she smiled in memory as she sipped the thick, sweet beverage, swiveling her chair back and forth, but she was far from ready for sleep.

Battle Squadron One remained far short of anything she could consider battleworthy, but her own staff was becoming a crisp, responsive machine. Mercedes Brigham's calm, quietly competent personality was exactly the right balance wheel between Commander Bagwell's humorless detail consciousness and Commander Sewell’s freewheeling irreverence. Coupled with Paxton's sharp, analytical intelligence, Mercedes, Bagwell, and Sewell, as the staffs senior members, were proving a formidable instrument, responsive to Honor's orders and able to carry out the tasks delegated to it with smooth efficiency.

But a squadron depended on more than its commander's staff, and this one's COs were still making mistakes no one of their seniority should. Which was understandable, since every one of them had been forced up under glass and required to assume ranks for which they simply didn't have the experience. They were still feeling their way into the potential and power of their ships, and the time their flagship was spending in the slip wasn't helping. Lieutenant Commander Matthews and Terrible's engineers were working hard, but she'd displayed an alarming number of minor post-refit problems, just as Yu had half-predicted, and her repairs had restricted the squadron to too many sims and too little time on actual exercises. Add a squadron commander who still woke herself with nightmares upon occasion, and one had an excellent prescription for disaster in combat.

And yet...

She took another sip of cocoa and made a face. Terrible as things might be, they were infinitely better than they had been, and they were getting steadily better. What she needed to do was make certain they kept on getting better, and she ticked off considerations in the orderly files of her memory.

Yu, Matthews, and the Office of Shipbuilding were doing wonders with Terrible. There was still a major glitch in her graser fire control, probably because she'd retained her original Havenite energy armament but acquired a brand-new, Manticoran-designed, Grayson-built fire control suite to go with it, yet the yard assured Honor they'd find it in the next few days. The entire experience made her even more deeply appreciative of how patient Mark Sarnow had been with her in Hancock, and she was determined to pass that same patience along to Alfredo Yu and the yard dogs laboring on Terrible.

Once the last problem was finally rectified, however, she could buckle down to a solid exercise schedule, and she needed to do just that, badly. She'd worked her people hard in the sims and formed some fairly definite impressions of them, but even the best simulations fell short of actual exercises because everyone knew they were sims. She knew she herself tended to react differently, however convincing the computers were, and she was firmly convinced that the only way to evaluate any officers performance was to watch her actually perform, live, in space. She wanted to see just that where her junior admirals were concerned. More, she wanted them to see her under the same circumstances, and not just because they needed to develop the "feel" for her tactical thinking that only hard, concentrated drilling could produce.

She wondered, sometimes, if someone who threw tantrums might have gotten faster results. She'd served under admirals who gave their thespian talents free rein, playing the role of screaming martinet to goad their juniors, and for some of them, at least, it had worked. But Honor believed the RMN adage Raoul Courvosier had taught her so long ago: that people performed on an entirely different plane for officers who led them. That was one reason she wanted to pry Terrible free of the yard. She couldn't fault how hard her people were working, but they needed that esprit de corps, that sense of a corporate identity, which only sweat and the chance to prove their competence to one another could provide... and that came only when their admiral had proven her competence to them, as well. Most of her officers were too new to have witnessed, much less participated with her in, the Battle of Blackbird or Second Yeltsin, and all of them knew the RMN had beached her. Until she showed them she still knew her stuff, she would remain an untried quantity, whatever her reputation, and she needed to resolve any lingering doubts.

She still had to watch herself in her dealings with her Grayson officers, as well. Rear Admiral Trailman, for example, clearly harbored some religion-based reservations about the whole notion of women in uniform, but there, at least, her reputation as the woman who'd saved Grayson from Masada was an enormous help. Honor felt a nagging guilt at trading on that reputation, it seemed cynical and calculating, yet she recognized an effective tool when she saw one, and she needed all the tools she could get for this assignment. And it worked. Trailman might find it difficult to treat most female officers as "real" ones, but he accorded Honor a degree of respect few people jumped from captain to admiral in a single bound could expect.

Of course, respect and authority weren't quite the same thing. All properly brought up Grayson men respected women, but that didn't mean they accepted that a woman knew what she was doing in a "man's" role. She rather thought that was how Trailman had been prepared to see her... until Yanakov suckered him in the sim, at least. Trailman had been livid over the way the junior admiral had rewritten the "rules," and he hadn't much liked the fact that Yu, a mere captain, and an ex-Peep, had saved his bacon. But Honor had to give the balding Grayson his due. However furious he might have been, he'd honestly admitted his own mistakes, and the fact that she hadn't jumped down his throat hadn't hurt. She'd made a point of praising both Yanakov and Yu (though her praise for the former had been tempered by a few trenchant observations on what happened to admirals who were too clever), but she'd delivered her analysis of Trailman's response as dispassionately as she could. There'd been no way to avoid criticizing his decisions, yet she'd refused to denigrate him, either before his fellows or in private. He'd made mistakes, and it was her job to tell him so, but she'd always loathed officers who rubbed subordinates' noses in their errors, and her own experience as Mark Sarnow's flag captain had strengthened her views in that regard. The object was to learn from mistakes, not look for whipping boys. If an officer proved truly incompetent, then it was up to her to remove him; in the meantime, she would make darn sure she had a good reason before she came down on anyone hard.

Still, Trailman was probably the weakest link, she mused. He had a reputation as a fighter, but he was short on finesse, and she couldn't decide whether that was simply part of his personality or reflected an underlying lack of confidence. An officer who distrusted her own capability was often inclined to bull right in, preferring to get to close grips where tenacity was at a premium and the ability to think and maneuver became proportionately less important. Trailman's tendency to react first according to The Book also concerned her, but that was hardly grounds for relieving him, and he was an excellent administrator. More than that, his staff and his COs liked and respected him. That both made him more effective and meant they'd resent his removal, and despite any reservations he might retain about her, Honor liked him, too. He was forthright and honest, and if she couldn't count on him for brilliance, he possessed bulldog determination in plenty.

Walter Brentworth, for his part, had proven just as dependable and reliable as she'd expected, and if he'd screwed up by seeing what he expected to see once, he'd taken the lesson to heart since. Unlike Trailman, he was completely comfortable serving with female officers in general, not simply Honor herself, and he operated with a precise attention to detail. His failure to keep BatDiv Twelve in closer company before Yanakov sprang his surprise in the sim might have indicated a failure to appreciate the need to rein in Trailman's attack mentality, but if that had been the case, he'd rectified it since. In fact, if he had a weakness at all, it was his very attention to detail. She suspected that was part of what had happened in the sim. He'd been too fixated on lesser responsibilities he should have delegated to his ops officer or his flag captain to stand back and wonder why Yanakov had tried such a seemingly clumsy initial approach.

If he learned to delegate a bit better, he'd go from very good to outstanding, she judged. Even now, she was eminently satisfied with him as her senior division CO, and she'd been right about his reaction to her critique of the sim. He'd been fully aware of his own mistakes, and he'd resented neither Yanakov's part in creating his problems nor Honor's decision to cut him out of the circuit to see how Trailman would respond. More than that, he'd applied the lessons in their next simulated exercise with telling effect, and he seemed to grow progressively more confident with every passing day.

Yet satisfied as she was with Brentworth's performance, she'd found she had a distinct tendency to gloat over the possession of Rear Admiral Yanakov. Judah Yanakov could have been specifically designed as Trailman's antithesis, both physically and temperamentally. He was the youngest of her divisional commanders, short and wiry, with thick auburn hair and gray eyes, and he moved with a sort of half-tamed energy that the taller, stockier Trailman lacked. He had plenty of aggressiveness, but it was balanced by the cold calculation of a professional gambler. He was also a nephew of Bernard Yanakov, Wesley Matthews' predecessor as High Admiral, which made him a cousin of Protector Benjamin, and he seemed to have no sex-based reservations about her capabilities.

Honor despised officers who played favorites, so she made a deliberate effort to avoid doing so in Yanakov's case, yet she trusted his instincts more than Trailman's, or, for that matter, Brentworth's. As he'd proven in the sim, he could get just a bit too inventive, but he was settling down, and seemed to be losing none of his sense of initiative in the process. In fact, the only real problem she had with him was that he had problems with Alfredo Yu.

Honor sighed and rubbed her nose again as she frowned at her now blank terminal. All her Grayson officers had their own reasons for eyeing in askance the man who'd virtually destroyed their pre-Alliance navy, but Walter and Trailman seemed to have overcome theirs. Yanakov hadn't, yet, though he worked hard to keep it from affecting him professionally, and she was guiltily aware that his reasons were all too much akin to her own. She'd blamed Yu for Admiral Courvosier's death; Yanakov blamed Yu for killing his uncle, which probably wasn't very surprising. Honor regretted more and more deeply with passing time that she and the previous high admiral had never had the chance to get past their cultural differences, for everything she'd learned of him only seemed to emphasize what a remarkable man he'd been.

But however outstanding High Admiral Yanakov had been, both as an officer and a man, Honor regretted the wedge his death might be driving between his nephew and Alfredo Yu. She'd been a bit surprised when she first realized she felt that way, yet she did. She still felt a lingering personal ambiguity towards Yu, and part of her despised herself for it. She ought to be able to overcome it, she told herself yet again. She thought she was getting on top of it, gradually, but it was taking too long, and it was entirely her own fault.

Her frown deepened as she admitted that. Alfredo Yu was one of the most competent officers she'd ever met. His reaction to Yanakov's ambush had been no flash in the pan; that combination of calm refusal to panic and quick thinking was typical of him, and Honors professional side recognized what an asset he was. Worse, she had a treecat who let her feel the emotions behind his impassive facade. She knew his regret for what his orders had required of him in Operation Jericho was genuine, just as she'd come to know Mercedes was right about his part in what happened to Madrigal's people. And because she knew those things, she couldn't quite forgive her own inability to forgive him.

She sighed, and her eyes softened as she raised them to Nimitz. The cat snored softly on his perch, but she knew how he would have reacted if he'd been awake. Nimitz had no reservations about Alfredo Yu, yet he saw no reason his person should blame herself because she did, and no doubt he would have scolded her, again, for her sense of guilt. Which changed nothing. Yu was an outstanding officer, as capable a flag captain as any admiral could want... and probably more qualified than she for flag rank. More, he was a good and decent man, who deserved better of her, and she couldn't give it to him. Not yet. And she didn't like being that small and petulant a person.

She sighed again, then stood and lifted Nimitz from his perch. She carried him towards her sleeping cabin, and he stirred sleepily in her arms, half-opening his eyes and reaching up to pat her cheek with one true-hand. She felt his half-awake satisfaction that she was finally turning in and smiled and rubbed his ears with her free hand. She was tired enough she expected no dreams, good or bad, to trouble her tonight, and the squadron and its admiral, were in for a long day tomorrow. It was past time she was asleep herself, and she yawned as she turned out the lights behind them

Three men sat in the comfort of a library lined with endless shelves of old-fashioned books, and the wine in their long-stemmed glasses glowed blood red as their host set the decanter on a sideboard. The moonless night beyond the library windows was spangled with stars and the small, bright jewels of Grayson’s orbital farms, and the massive bulk of Burdette House was quiet about them. It was a calm, even a tranquil scene, but there was nothing tranquil about Lord Burdette's blue eyes as he turned from the sideboard to face them.