"We'll continue the pursuit." Her soprano was calm, giving no more hint of her intense frustration than it did of the pain of her own losses. "Alistair, I want you to reprioritize our missile fire. We're not going to be able to hammer our way through those defenses by saturating them, so I want you to slow your rate of fire and pick your targets carefully. Use delayed activation launches to thicken your broadsides while the pods last and try to concentrate on SDs with undamaged impellers. If we can slow some more of them down, our older ships of the wall can take them out as we overhaul, or else we can commit Alice's LACs to deal with them as we go by."
"Yes, Ma'am," McKeon acknowledged.
"Alice, I know you're frustrated by not getting your LACs into this yet," Honor went on, "but at least half a dozen of those Havenite ships are going to be too slow and too beat up to get away from you. When you're free to commit to go in after them, I want you to be sure to offer them the chance to surrender first. They're a long way from home and badly hurt, and I don't want to kill anyone who wants to give up."
"Of course," Truman agreed.
"Very well then." Honor sat back in her command chair and nodded to both of her senior subordinates. "Harper will pass similar instructions to Alfredo. In the meantime, we have a battle to finish up. So let's be about it, People."
Chapter Fifty Nine
The planet of Manticore was a blue-and-white-swirled beauty as the pinnace from GSNS Seneca Gilmore swooped into its outermost atmosphere. Admiral Lady Dame Honor Harrington, Duchess and Steadholder Harrington, sat in its large passenger compartment, alone but for her three-man security team, and watched the seas of featureless white turn into fluffy, wind-textured billows of cloud as the pinnace swept lower and lower towards the City of Landing.
It was a short flight, the last leg of the journey home from Sidemore which had begun two weeks earlier when the Protectors' Own was finally recalled to Grayson by way of Manticore, and she sat very still, feeling the emptiness and the tension within her as the pinnace banked gracefully onto its final heading and settled towards the private landing pad behind Mount Royal Palace.
Queen Elizabeth had wanted to welcome Honor home in the manner in which she insisted Honor deserved to be welcomed, but Honor had managed to avoid that ordeal, at least. It was already obvious to her that there would be other ordeals, just as public and just as exhausting, which she would not be able to avoid. She'd seen the HD of the cheering crowds, celebrating wildly in the capital's streets when news of the Second Battle of Sidemore was announced, and she dreaded what would happen when those same crowds learned "the Salamander" was home. But in this instance, her monarchwell, one of her monarchs, she supposedhad agreed to relent, and so there was no huge honor guard, no crowd of newsies, to observe her arrival once again upon the soil of her birth-kingdom's capital planet.
There was a greeting party, however. One that consisted of four humans and three treecats. Queen Elizabeth herself and her consort, Prince Justin, headed the small group of two-footed people awaiting her. Ariel rode on Elizabeth's left shoulder, while Monroe rode on Justin's right shoulder. Behind them stood Lord William Alexander and his brother, the Earl of White Haven, with Samantha standing high and proud on his shoulder, eyes glowing as she tasted the mind-glow of her mate for the first time in far too long. Colonel Ellen Shemais stood alertly to one side, overseeing the small squad of Palace Security and Queen's Own personnel guarding the perimeter of the landing pad, but that was their only function here. There were no bands, no flourishes and salutes. There were only seven people, friends all of them, waiting for her as she came home once more.
"Honor." Elizabeth held out a hand to her, and Honor took it, only to find herself enveloped in a fierce hug. Five or six T-years before, she wouldn't have had a clue how to respond to her Queen's embrace. Now she simply returned it, tasting the equally fierce welcome which came with it.
Other emotions washed over her, flooding through her as she, too, sampled the mind-glows of those about her. Samantha's spiraling joy and delight as she rose still higher on White Haven's shoulder and began signing to Nimitz in joyous welcome. Prince Justin, as glad to see her, in his own way, as Elizabeth, and William Alexander, her friend, political mentor, and ally.
And then there was Hamish. Hamish, standing there, looking at her with his soul in those ice-blue eyes from the heart of a firestorm of welcome and joy that turned even Elizabeth's into a candle's glow by comparison. She felt herself reaching out to himnot physically, not moving as much as a centimeter in his direction, yet with all of the irresistible power of a stellar gravity well. And as she looked into his eyes over the Queen of Manticore's shoulder, she saw the echo of that same reaching out. Not with the same sharpness or acuity as her own empathy. Not even with any conscious recognition of what it was he felt. It was...blinder than that, and she suddenly realized it must be what treecats saw when they looked at their mind-blind people. A sense of a presence that was asleep. Unaware yet immensely powerful and somehow linked to them. Yet not totally unaware. He had no idea what he was feeling, yet he felt it anyway, and a part of him knew he did. She tasted that confused, groping sensitivity in the sudden flare of his mind-glow, and saw Samantha stop signing to Nimitz and turn to stare in wonder at her person.
Honor had never felt anything quite like it. In some ways, it was like her link to Nimitz, but weaker, without the strength anchored by a treecat's full-blown empathic sense. And yet, it was also far stronger, for its other end was not a treecat, but another human mind. One that matched her own. That...fitted on levels that hers and Nimitz's would never be able to fully share. There was no "telepathy," no sharing of thoughts. Yet she felt him there, in the back of her brain as he had already been in her heart. The other part of her. The welcoming fire ready to warm her on the coldest night.
And with it the knowledge that whatever else might have happened, the impassable barriers which held them apart still stood.
"It's good to see you home," Elizabeth told her, her voice slightly husky, as she stood back, still holding Honor's upper arms, and looked up into her face. "It's very good."
"It's good to be here," Honor replied simply, still tasting Hamish, still feeling his amazement as the echo of her awareness flowed through him, however faintly, as well.
"Come inside," Elizabeth urged. "We have a lot to talk about."
"so as soon as word came in about Grendelsbane, High Ridge had no choice but to resign," Elizabeth said grimly.
Honor nodded, her own expression equally grim. She, her hostess, and Elizabeth's other guests all sat in deep, old-fashioned, comfortable chairs in Elizabeth's's private retreat in King Michael's Tower. It was a welcoming, cheerful room, but Honor could taste the tangled flow of conflicting emotions deep inside Elizabeth. Emotions which stood in stark contrast to their surroundings.
Horror and dismay over the disastrous defeat the Navy had suffered at Grendelsbane. An awareness of how brutally the Fleet's strength had been wounded that terrified even the woman treecats called "Soul of Steel," especially in light of what the new Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence had reported about the probable strength of the Republican Navy. And mingled with all of that, the savage, vengeful joy she'd felt when the merciless requirements of formal protocol ground High Ridge's face into the totality of his ruin and disgrace as he surrendered his office.