"Yes, Sir."
"Vincent," Parks swung back to his chief of staff, "I want you to work with Mark on his planning review, but first give me a new deployment here. Assume we'll be leaving a destroyer flotilla and a light cruiser squadron to patrol the system... and find the rest of these damned sensor platforms. If the Peeps have been watching us all along, the absolute first priority is to get ourselves concentrated again, so draw up the preliminary orders to get us underway as soon as my conference with the squadron COs is over."
"Yes, Sir."
"Very well." Parks laid his hands on the table and squared his shoulders. "Let's get started, then. And let's just hope to God we're in time."
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Honor closed the message file on her screen, tipped back her chair, and sipped her cocoa with a sense of mingled relief and regret. Yesterday's unexpected arrival of the light cruiser Anubis with dispatches from Admiral Danislav had brought Admiral Sarnow (and his flag captain) up to date on the latest information available to the Admiralty, and that information was downright frightening. There was no longer any doubt, in the Admiralty's view, that the PRH intended to launch an all-out attack... soon.
Honor agreed, and that agreement left her more worried than ever by Parks' dispersal. But at least Danislav had also confirmed that his dreadnought squadron, reinforced by an extra division the Admiralty had scared up, would arrive in a maximum of seventy-two hours. Unfortunately, Danislav had a reputation as an unimaginative, though determined, tactician... and he was senior to Sarnow.
She grimaced at the thought. Even with his ten dreadnoughts, Danislav was going to be far too weak to hold the system against serious attack. He'd need all the imagination he could find, and she hoped he'd have the sense to recognize Sarnows capabilities and rely upon them.
Unlike Parks.
She grimaced again and rolled another sip of cocoa over her tongue. Nimitz made a soft sound, and she smiled as he yawned, twitched his ears, and stretched along his perch, curling his tail in an oddly disdainful gesture to express his own opinion of Parks.
"My sentiments exactly," she told him with a chuckle. Much though she respected Nimitz's intelligence, she entertained no illusions about his ability to judge an admirals fitness for command. Except, of course, when his judgment matched hers.
She grinned at herself, then let her chair swing in a gentle arc, and her grin faded. The last few days had carried their own undertone of strain for her as Pavel Young settled in among the task force's officers. She'd been able to avoid much direct contact with him, but simply knowing he was there cast a pall over her spirits that even Paul and Mike had trouble lifting. At least she hadn't had to put up with him outside the bounds of formal conferences, though, and she was guiltily aware that Sarnow had handled Young's necessary background briefs through his staff channels, not her. Ernie Corell had been stuck with most of them, and while the chief of staff had been careful about her choice of words, her tone whenever she mentioned Young spoke volumes about her own opinion of him.
Honor frowned and rubbed the tip of her nose, wondering (far from the first time) how someone like Young had survived so long in the Queens service. She'd seen Corell's reaction to him mirrored in too many other officers, many of them male, to believe her own opinion of him was unique.
She sighed and tipped her chair further back. In light of her troubles with him, she'd researched his background more carefully than she cared to admit, and what she'd found appalled her. She'd always known a certain segment of the aristocracy (not all of them conservatives, by a long mark) believed the rules didn't apply to them, that they were above the constraints lesser beings had to accept, but the Young family was outstanding even among the scum element of the nobility. From all reports, Pavel's father, the current Earl of North Hollow, was as bad as Pavel himself... and the record suggested his grandfather might actually have been worse! Three entire generations of the same family had gone their self-centered way, as if determined to single-handedly prove the depths to which "nobility" could sink, and somehow they'd gotten away with it.
Wealth, birth, and political influence, she thought sourly. Power they took so completely for granted that the responsibilities which went with it had no bearing on their lives. Power they abused with a casual lack of concern that sickened her. That it revolted the majority of their peers, as well, did little to protect less eminent persons from them, and sometimes that made her wonder about her entire society. Yet even at her most depressed, a stubborn part of her insisted that the very reason they stood out so disgustingly was because they were the exceptions, not the rule.
She twitched her shoulders and took herself to task. Why Young acted as he did and how he got away with it were less important than the consequences, and one thing had become clear to her. Paul was right; Young was afraid of her. It showed in his eyes, now that she knew to look for it, on the rare occasions when he found himself within her reach, and she was a little ashamed by her intense satisfaction at that discovery. Not even the fact that he and Houseman obviously were doing their best to alienate Commodore Van Slyke from her could impair her grim pleasure—though it might have, she conceded honestly, if Van Slyke had been willing to pay them the least attention.
She smiled again, bleakly, and turned back to her terminal as thoughts of the commodore returned her attention to important things. She brought up a display of the system and the task group's current dispositions and felt herself nodding in slow satisfaction as she studied it.
Admiral Sarnow had rethought his deployments in the last week or so, and the task group was no longer clustered tightly about the base. He'd left the minelayers there, for he'd evolved a plan for their use that was both subtler and safer than the one Honor had envisioned, but he'd moved his battlecruisers and heavy cruisers to the far side of the primary from the base to cover the most probable approach vectors from Seaford Nine.
There was an element of risk in that, Honor acknowledged. If the bad guys came at them from the opposite direction, they might find themselves badly placed to meet the threat, but they were close enough in that they should have time to intercept short of the base. It would be tight on the least favorable approach, since towing the pods slowed them to a max accel of less than 359 gees, and the interception would come at a dangerously low range, yet the edge their FTL sensor capability gave them should make it possible. On the other hand, it was unlikely Admiral Rollins would get too tricky. If he believed he had the strength to take the system, he'd feel no real need for sneakiness; if he doubted that he could do it, then he'd have every reason for caution and conservatism in any attack he might launch.
She nodded again, then looked up at the admittance signal's chime. She checked her chrono, and her eyebrows rose as she pressed the stud. She hadn't realized it was quite so late in the morning.
"Yes?" she said.
"Executive Officer, Ma'am," her Marine sentry announced.
"Thank you, Corporal. Come on in, Exec."
The hatch slid open almost instantly, and Mike Henke grinned at her.
"Ready for the weekly reports, Ma'am?" Henke took the memo pad from under her arm and waved it, and Honor groaned.
"As ready as I ever am." She sighed, and pointed to a chair across from her desk. "Take a seat and let's see how quickly we can get through them this time."
"All right, then." Henke nodded and tapped a note into her memo pad. "That takes care of the hardware side of the engineering department. Now—" she scanned a fresh screen of data "—about those promotions. Chief Manton is definitely due for senior chief, but if we bump him up we'll be over establishment in electronics."