She chuckled quietly at the thought, and Mercedes Brigham-standing beside her and watching the master plot with her-looked at her with a raised eyebrow.
"Nothing, Mercedes." Honor shook her head. "Just a passing thought."
"Of course, Your Grace."
Brigham's slightly mystified tone almost set Honor off on another chuckle, but she suppressed the temptation sternly.
"Anything yet from Vizeadmiral Hasselberg, Andrea?" she asked instead, turning her head to look at Jaruwalski.
"No, Your Grace. I think it's still a little early. His recon drones can't be fully into position yet."
"I realize that," Honor said quietly, pitching her voice low enough so that only Jaruwalski and Brigham could hear her, "but his first wave platforms have to be close enough by now to be picking up at least the outer edge of Alistair's screen."
"You think he's waiting until he has a more fully developed picture?" Brigham asked.
"I think so, yes." Honor nodded. "The question is why he's waiting. Is it strictly because he wants to watch the situation develop a little more, get a better feel for it himself, before he reports it to the flagship? And if that's why he's waiting, is it because he's exercising intelligent initiative or because he resents being tied so tightly to our apron strings?"
"And which do you think it is, Your Grace, if I can ask?"
"Honestly, if it were Morser, I'd call it a tossup," Honor admitted. "In this case, though, I think it's probably the former. And that's good. But we need to find a way to tactfully suggest to him that it's more important to inform us immediately, even if he has only partial information."
"Kapitan der Sterne Teischer is a tactful sort," Brigham said. "I could probably have a little discussion with him-one chief of staff to another. He's pretty good at post-exercise analysis, too."
"That's an excellent idea, Mercedes," Honor approved. "I'd much rather have any suggestions come to him in-house, as it were, rather than sound as if I'm stepping on his toes. Especially when he's pulling out all the stops to make this work the way he is."
"I'll see to it, Your Grace."
"Astro Control reports that Hexapuma and Warlock are making transit, Admiral," Lieutenant Commander Ekaterina Lazarevna, Sebastian D'Orville's communications officer announced.
"Very good." D'Orville turned from the main plot to the screen which showed his flagship's captain. "Let's get it right, Sybil," he said.
"We'll get it done, Sir," Captain Gilraven assured him.
"Good."
"Junction transit completed, Admiral," Lazarevna said.
"Very good. Send the first message, Katenka."
"Aye, aye, Sir. Transmitting... now."
D'Orville watched his chrono carefully as his message congratulating Aivars Terekhov and his surviving personnel for their accomplishments in the Battle of Monica flashed across to HMS Hexapuma. The two damaged heavy cruisers' icons blinked on his plot, accelerating slowly out of the Junction, and D'Orville felt something he hadn't felt since the day he'd watched the broken and crippled light cruiser HMS Fearless limp painfully home from Basilisk station.
Odd, he thought. The second time, and Warlock was involved in both of them. But a bit differently this time. I'm glad. She needed her name cleared.
"Now, Sybil," he said quietly, and the hundred and thirty-eight starships and seventeen hundred LACs of the Home Fleet detachment brought up their impeller wedges in perfect sequence. The impeller signatures radiated outward from Invictus, but Invictus wasn't in the traditional flagship's slot at the center of that stupendous globe.
That space was occupied by HMS Hexapuma and HMS Warlock.
"Second message for Hexapuma," Fleet Admiral Sebastian D'Orville said quietly. "'Yours is the honor.'"
"Aye, aye, Sir," Lazarevna said, equally quietly, and Home Fleet moved steadily in-system around the two battered, half-crippled heavy cruisers which had saved their Star Kingdom from a two-front war it could not possibly have won.
"Admiral Fisher's task force just came in, Sir," Captain DeLaney said.
"I see. Thank you, Molly. I'll meet you on Flag Bridge in fifteen minutes."
"Yes, Sir. DeLaney, clear," she said, and broke the com connection.
Lester Tourville sat at his desk for several seconds, looking around his day cabin, feeling the massive megaton bulk of RHNS Guerriere around him. At that particular moment, his flagship felt oddly small, almost fragile.
He stood and walked across to the view screen configured to show him the diamond-studded depths of space. He gazed deep into it, seeing the dim sparks of reflected light from the nameless star system's red dwarf primary.
Each of those specks of light was a starship, most of them as massive and powerfully armed as Guerriere herself. Now that Fisher had arrived on schedule, the reinforced Second Fleet was complete, as was Admiral Chin's Fifth Fleet, and both were under Tourville's command. Three hundred and thirty-six SD(P)s, the flower of the reborn Republican Navy, and by any standards, the most powerful battle force ever assembled for a single operation by any known star nation. They lay all about him, floating in distant orbit around the star system's second gas giant, waiting for his orders, and he felt a shiver of apprehensive anticipation flow through him.
I never really thought it would all come together, even after Tom told me. But it has. And now it's all mine.
It should have been Javier Giscard's command, he thought. Javier should have had Second Fleet and overall command, while he had Fifth, but Javier was gone, and so the task had fallen to him.
He thought about his orders, the different sets of contingency instructions, the planning and coordination and incredible industrial effort his huge fleet represented. The Republic's defenses had been unflinchingly reduced everywhere, despite the Manties' widespread scouting activities. Hopefully, however, the enemy wasn't aware of that. Not yet. All of his units had been left where they were, each drilling relentlessly in the simulators, until the operation actually began expressly to keep the Manties blissfully unaware of what was coming.
He hadn't liked that. In fact, it was the one part of the operational plan which he'd actually protested. Simulations were all well and good, but no one had ever put a fleet this size together before. He'd needed to practice coordinating with Chin, needed to drill the actual units, put the subunit commanders physically through their paces where he could watch them, evaluate their strengths and weaknesses. He'd asked-almost pleaded-for the chance to do that, but his request had been turned down. And even though he was the one who'd asked for it, he'd understood why Thomas Theisman had refused it.
It wasn't because Theisman didn't understand exactly why Tourville had made the request in the first place. It wasn't because Theisman disagreed with him, either. But for Operation Beatrice to succeed, complete strategic surprise was an absolute prerequisite. Indeed, surprise was so important it had trumped even the need to conduct extensive hands-on training exercises. Given the activity of the Manty scouting forces, they'd dared not withdraw their picket forces early. Even more, they hadn't dared to combine Tourville's units somewhere where a Manty reconnaissance drone might have picked them up and started their Office of Naval Intelligence wondering just why the Republic might have concentrated such a huge percentage of its total battle fleet in one place.
But we still have over a week before we sortie, plus the transit time, he thought. It won't be as good as I would have preferred, but we can do a lot in that much time. And we'd better, because at the end of it....