"Aye, Citizen Admiral," she replied, and he heard her passing the orders to the rest of the task group.
"What are you doing?" Dennis LePic hissed in his ear, and he turned his head to regard the citizen commissioner much more calmly than he felt.
"I'm thinking instead of simply reacting, Sir."
"Thinking?" LePic gasped, and Theisman nodded.
"Exactly. I'm thinking that running away may not be our best option." LePic stared at him in total disbelief, and Theisman smiled thinly. "That's Honor Harrington back there," he said conversationally. "Intelligence said she was here, and she's the only 'Grayson' officer with the guts and savvy to pull that off, but she's not a god, Citizen Commissioner. She got hurt, probably badly. Probably badly enough that we can still take her."
"Take her?" LePic's horror at the devastation of Meredith Chavez's task group was plain on his face. "Are you insane? You saw what she just did to twenty-four battleships, and we only have twelve!"
"That's correct, Citizen Commissioner, twelve undamaged battleships which now know what they're really up against."
"But she's got superdreadnoughts!"
"Yes, she does. But one of them was totally destroyed, a second's suffered obviously heavy damage, and the other four have almost certainly been hurt as well. And she's exhausted her missile pods. She can't swamp us like she did Citizen Admiral Chavez and Citizen Admiral Thurston. No, Sir," he shook his head, "the odds aren't as bad as you may think. Not nearly as bad."
LePic swallowed again, but the shock was fading in his eyes as he made himself consider what Theisman had said.
"Are you serious, Citizen Admiral?" he asked quietly.
"I am." Theisman turned his head to look at his ops officer. "Megan, what's your analysis?"
"Citizen Admiral, I can't give you one, not from this range. Our data's too poor."
"Based on what you have," Theisman pressed. He cut his eyes briefly sideways at LePic, and Megan Hathaway recognized the warning in that glance. She drew a deep breath and made herself speak slowly and deliberately, forcing any hint of panic out of her tone for the civilian's benefit.
"Well," she said, "you're right that they've lost an SD, and from what we can see from here, it looks like a second one's suffered enough drive damage that it's having trouble staying with the rest of her formation. She's lost six battlecruisers, as well, and more of them must be damaged." She paused and frowned, twisting a lock of hair around her right index finger, and she sounded almost surprised when she resumed. "You may be right, Citizen Admiral. Certainly her other SDs must've taken some damage. The question is how much."
"My own thought, exactly." He turned back to LePic. "Citizen Commissioner, we don't dare execute our part of Dagger with combat effective ships of the wall behind us. If we pull put for Endicott and they follow us, they can trap us between themselves and whatever ships are already picketing the system. But if they've taken as much damage as I suspect they have, if, in fact, they aren't combat effective anymore, we can engage and destroy them. And if we do that, then we can still achieve all of Dagger's objectives, because there won't be anything heavy enough to stop us."
"And just how do you propose to find out if they're combat effective, Citizen Admiral?"
"There's only one way to do that, Sir," Thomas Theisman said quietly.
"My Lady, Force Zulu has now reversed acceleration," Commander Bagwell said. "They're coming back in."
Honor felt her lips tighten. She gazed at Bagwell for a moment, then nodded and looked at Mercedes Brigham.
"What's our status, Mercedes?"
"Not good, Milady," Mercedes said frankly. "Glorious is gone, and the Gift's accel is less than a hundred gees, right on point-nine-six KPS squared. Magnificent can make about two fifty gees; Terrible and Courageous have impeller damage of their own, but they're both good for about three sixty. I wouldn't push them harder than that with so many shot-up nodes unbalancing their wedges, Milady." Honor nodded, and Mercedes rocked back in her chair. "Furious's drive is actually in the best shape, but she took a real pounding in that last exchange. She's lost half her energy weapons and three-quarters of her missile tubes, and Captain Gates says his starboard sidewall is 'iffy.'" Her lips twitched at Gates' choice of adjective, then she shrugged. "For all intents and purposes, Milady, Terrible and Courageous are all we've got, and neither of them is what I'd call healthy."
"Analysis, Fred?" Honor asked, switching her gaze back to Bagwell.
"My Lady, they can take us," he said flatly. "They're faster, they're undamaged, and they've got the force advantage. We can probably destroy six or seven of their battleships; the other four or five will destroy us while we're doing it, and that assumes we can get to energy range. We've lost so many tubes a missile engagement would be suicide."
"Recommendation?"
"We'll have to avoid action, My Lady." Bagwell didn't like saying that, yet he seemed surprised she even had to ask. "If we fall back to Grayson orbit now, they don't have the firepower to take us and the forts."
"I see." Honor turned her chair back to her console, hiding her face from her staff, and let her own desperate weariness and fear show for just a minute. Nimitz unhooked himself from his safety harness and slid down into her lap, then rose on his true-feet and turned to press his muzzle against her cheek. He purred to her, and she slipped an arm around him and hugged him close while she wondered who was in command of those Peep ships. Who'd kept his wits about himself well enough to realize what Bagwell had just so succinctly summed up? What officer had watched the brutal destruction of twice his own strength, yet had the courage to realize he could still reverse the verdict and win?
She bit her own lip and forced her exhausted brain to work. She could avoid action, but only if she started immediately, and even then she couldn't save Manticore's Gift. The battered SD lacked the acceleration to evade the incoming Peeps, so Honor would have no choice but to write her off. She might have to abandon Magnificent, as well, but Fred was right about Terrible, Courageous, and Furious. They could still avoid the enemy and reach the cover of the forts, and that would save half the squadron.
Yet would it? Would it save them? If that Peep CO was confident enough to come back in at all, he wouldn't give up. He could still retreat to the outer system, still send missiles in on ballistic courses. For that matter...
She inhaled deeply and squared her shoulders, then turned back to face her staff.
"I'm afraid that won't work, Fred," she said, and the ops officer stared at her. "If we break off, we lose the Gift and, probably, Magnificent. That's bad enough. But if we fall back, then whoever's in command out there will know, not just suspect, but know, we can't fight him. If he wants to, he can carry out a long-range cee-fractional bombardment of Grayson, and we can't stop him. I don't think he'd be crazy enough to go for the planet itself, but he could take out the forts, the shipyards... the farms."
She saw the stark understanding on the faces of her Grayson staff of what losing two-thirds of their world's food sources would mean, and nodded.