Ashes of Victory

Chapter Forty-Eight

"I can't believe this," Michelle Henke, Countess Gold Peak, muttered balefully, glaring out across Jason Bay from the third-floor window of her suite in Honor's East Shore mansion. "What the hell is Beth thinking?"

"That she hasn't got a choice," Honor said somberly from behind her.

She had extended her stay on Manticore at Elizabeth's request, splitting her time between her mansion, Mount Royal Palace, and the Grayson embassy. Her unique status as a noblewoman of both star nations gave her an equally unique perspective, and despite the fact that virtually every member of the High Ridge Government hated her—and pretty much vice versa, she admitted—she was too valuable a conduit for anyone on either side to pass up. Benjamin knew she had Elizabeth's ear, Elizabeth knew Benjamin trusted her implicitly, and even High Ridge knew that if he wanted to hear what Benjamin truly thought about an idea, she was the best source available.

All of which meant she'd been granted a far better vantage point than she'd ever wanted from which to witness one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the Star Kingdom of Manticore.

But, then, she'd seen a lot of things she'd never wanted to see of late, she thought, and turned to Henke.

Michelle had become the Countess of Gold Peak with the deaths of her father and older brother, but her ship had been assigned to Eighth Fleet. There'd been no way Edward Saganami could be spared, and the trip home would have taken so long she was bound to miss the funerals anyway. So she'd remained at the front, burying her grief in her naval duties, until White Haven picked her to carry Saint-Just's truce offer back to Manticore. Caitrin Winton-Henke was eminently capable of running the earldom which had just become Michelle's, and Honor knew both women had seen the press of their responsibilities as their only anodyne against sorrow.

But Michelle had been home for only a few hours. This was the first time she and Honor had been alone, aside from LaFollet and Nimitz, and Honor drew a deep breath.

"Mike, I'm sorry," she said softly, and Michelle stiffened and turned quickly from the window as she heard the pain in that soprano voice.

"Sorry?" Her eyebrows arched in surprise, and Honor nodded.

"I could only stop one missile," she said. "I had to choose, and—"

She stopped, her face tight, unable to finish the sentence, and Henke's expression softened. She stood very still for two or three breaths, eyes gleaming as she fought back the tears, but when she made herself speak, her husky contralto sounded almost normal.

"It wasn't your fault, Honor. God knows I'd've made the same decision in your place. It hurts—God how it hurts—to know I'll never see Dad or Cal again, but thanks to you my mother is still alive. And my cousin. And Protector Benjamin." She reached out and gripped Honor's upper arms, then shook her head vigorously. "No one could have done more than you did, Honor. No one. Don't ever doubt that!"

Honor gazed into her eyes for a moment, tasting the sincerity behind them, then sighed and nodded. Intellectually, she'd known Henke was right from the beginning, but she'd been terrified Henke wouldn't see it that way. And, she admitted, until she knew Henke didn't blame her for the deaths of her father and brother, she hadn't quite been able not to blame herself for them. But now she could let them go, and she drew a deep breath and nodded again.

"Thank you for understanding," she said quietly, and Henke clicked her tongue in exasperation.

"Honor Harrington, you are probably the only person in the universe who'd be afraid I wouldn't understand!" She gave her taller friend an affectionate shake, then stood back and returned her gaze to the cobalt waters of Jason Bay.

"And now that that's out of the way, just what did you mean that Beth doesn't have a choice?"

"She doesn't," Honor said, accepting the return to a less painful subject. "The entire Cabinet is united. Her only alternatives are to accept their policy... or reject the united recommendations of all her constitutionally appointed ministers. Theoretically, she has the power to do that. As a practical matter, it would be catastrophic. At the very least, it would produce a prolonged constitutional crisis just when we can least afford one. And once we get into those waters, who knows where it would end? Creating constitutional precedents is always a scary proposition, and there's no way to positively predict whether the new precedent would favor the Crown or the Cabinet... which means the Lords."

"Jesus, Honor! I thought you didn't like politics!" Henke said only half humorously, and Honor shrugged.

"I don't. But ever since Elizabeth got back to Manticore, I've been stuck in a sort of advisory role. I'm not comfortable with it, and I don't think I'm very good at it, but when she insisted she needed me, I could hardly say no. Not after everything that's happened. Besides—" her mouth quirked in a smile which held no humor at all "—at least this way Benjamin has someone he absolutely trusts reassuring him Elizabeth hasn't gone crazy, whatever the Government is up to."

"So they really are going to accept this truce? When we're only one stop short of the Peep capital?"

Henke sounded as if she still couldn't believe it, and Honor didn't blame her. But—

"That's exactly what they're going to do," she said quietly.

Oscar Saint-Just looked up at Citizen Secretary Jeffery Kersaint and did something Kersaint would have flatly denied was possible.

He smiled.

The huge grin looked wildly out of place on that perpetually emotionless face. But under the circumstances, Kersaint understood it perfectly, for the Citizen Chairman—with Kersaint's help, of course—had just pulled off the impossible.

"They bought it?" the PRH's dictator demanded, as if he hadn't quite been able to believe Kersaint the first time around. "They went for it? For all of it?"

"Yes, Citizen Chairman. They've agreed to a cease-fire in place, with both sides to retain systems they currently occupy, pending comprehensive negotiations to end the war. They request—" he glanced at his memo pad "—that we immediately send a delegation to confirm the details of the truce and begin formal talks within two standard months."

"Good. Good! We can tie them up for months with talks. Years if we have to!" Saint-Just actually rubbed his hands, looking like a man who'd just received a new lease on life... or at least a temporary stay of execution.

"At least years, Sir. And we may even be able to negotiate an actual treaty."

"Ha! That I'll believe only when I see it," Saint-Just said skeptically. "But that's all right, Jeffery. All I really need is time to get my own house in order and figure out how to cope with these new weapons of theirs, and Citizen Admiral Theisman already has some interesting suggestions in that regard. Well done. Very well done, indeed!"

"Thank you, Sir," Kersaint said.

"Get together with Mosley and rough out a communique. I want something as optimistic as possible. And tell Mosley to set up an interview with Joan Huertes ASAP."

"Yes, Sir. I'll get on it at once," Kersaint agreed, and moved briskly out of Saint-Just's office.

The Citizen Chairman sat gazing into infinity at something only he could see, and this time he smiled faintly at whatever he found there. But then he shook himself. Time to get his house in order, he'd told Kersaint. He had that now, and he keyed his intercom.

"Yes, Citizen Chairman?"

"Get me Citizen Admiral Stephanopoulos. And requisition a StateSec courier boat for Lovat."

"Citizen Admiral, I have a com request from Citizen Admiral Heemskerk," Citizen Lieutenant Fraiser announced, and Lester Tourville looked up from the tactical exercise on Shannon Foraker's plot with a sudden chill. His raised hand interrupted his conversation with Foraker and Yuri Bogdanovich, and he turned to his com officer.

"Did the Citizen Admiral say what he wants?" he asked in a voice whose apparent calmness astonished him.

"No, Citizen Admiral," Fraiser said, then cleared his throat. "But a StateSec courier boat did enter the system about forty-five minutes ago," he offered.

"I see. Thank you." Tourville nodded to Fraiser and looked back at Bogdanovich and Foraker. "I'm afraid I'll have to take this call," he said. "We'll get back to this later."

"Of course, Citizen Admiral," Bogdanovich said quietly, and Foraker nodded. But then the tac officer inhaled sharply, and Tourville glanced back at her.

"Alphand's sidewalls just came up, Citizen Admiral," she said. "So did DuChesnois' and Lavalette's. In fact, it looks like Citizen Admiral Heemskerk's entire squadron has just cleared for action."

"I see," Tourville repeated, and managed a smile. "It would seem the Citizen Admiral's message is more urgent than I'd anticipated." He looked across the flag bridge at Everard Honeker, and saw the matching awareness in his people's commissioner's eyes, but Honeker said nothing. There was nothing, after all, that anyone could say.

Foraker was tapping keys at her console, no doubt refining her data, as if it were going to make any difference. Even if Tourville had been tempted to resist the order he knew Heemskerk was about to give, it would have been futile. With Heemskerk's squadron already at full battle readiness, it would have been an act of suicide to even begin bringing up his flagship's own sidewalls or weapon systems.

"I'll take it at my command chair, Harrison," he told the com officer. After all, there was no point trying to conceal the bad news from any of his staff.

"Aye, Citizen Admiral," Fraiser said quietly, and Tourville crossed to the admiral's chair. He settled himself into it, then touched the com stud on its arm. The display before him came alive with the stern, jowly face of Citizen Rear Admiral Alasdair Heemskerk, State Security Naval Forces, and Tourville made himself smile.

"Good afternoon, Citizen Admiral. What can I do for you?" he inquired.

"Citizen Admiral Tourville," Heemskerk replied in a flat, formal voice, "I must request and require you to join me aboard my flagship immediately, pursuant to the orders of Citizen Chairman Saint-Just."

"Are we going somewhere?" Tourville's heart thundered, and he discovered his palms were sweating heavily. Odd. The terror of combat had never hit him this hard.

"We will be returning to Nouveau Paris," Heemskerk told him unflinchingly, "there to consider the degree of your complicity in Citizen Secretary McQ—"

His voice and image cut off, and Tourville blinked. What the—?

"Jesus Christ!" someone yelped, and Tourville spun his chair in the direction of the shout, then froze, staring in disbelief at the main visual display.

Twelve glaring spheres of unendurable brightness spalled the velvety blackness of deep space. They were huge, and so hellishly brilliant it hurt to look at them even with the display's automatic filters. And even as he stared at them, he saw another ripple of glaring light, much further away. It was impossible to make out any details of the second eruption, but it appeared to be on the approximate bearing of Javier Giscard's flagship... and the StateSec battle squadron which had been assigned to ride herd on him.

Lester Tourville wrenched his eyes back to the fading balls of plasma which had been the ships of Citizen Rear Admiral Heemskerk's squadron. The silence on his flag bridge was total, like the silence a microphone picked up in hard vacuum, and he swallowed hard.

And then the spell was broken as Shannon Foraker looked up from the console from which she had just sent a perfectly innocent-seeming computer code over the tactical net to one of the countless ops plans she'd downloaded to the units of Twelfth Fleet over the last thirty-two T-months.

"Oops," she said.

Oscar Saint-Just finished yet another report, scribbled an electronic signature, and pressed his thumb to the scanner. It had been a productive morning, he thought, checking the time readout in the corner of his display, and not just for him.

Kersaint was doing wonders on the diplomatic front. He'd talked the Manties into holding the first round of negotiations here on Haven, and he had the fools High Ridge and Descroix had sent tied up in endless discussions over the shape of the damned conference table! The Citizen-Chairman allowed himself a rare chuckle and shook his head. At this rate, it would take six months to get anywhere close to a substantive issue, and that was fine with him. Just fine. Much of the PRH was in a state of shock at the abrupt pause in hostilities, and some people were probably going to be upset, at first, at least, over the Republic's "surrender," which was how the Manties and the interstellar news services all seemed to view what was happening. But those upset individuals were going to discover very shortly that what was really happening was that the Manties were no longer slicing off Republican star systems virtually at will.

And in the meantime, the People's Navy—or, rather, the unified armed services which would absorb and supplant all the regular services under SS command—was already making some progress on ways to handle the new Manty weapons. Or at least to mitigate their effectiveness. In fact, Citizen Admiral Theisman was about due for the regular Wednesday conference, and Saint-Just permitted himself a brief moment of self-congratulation. Theisman had turned out to be an inspired choice for Capital Fleet. He'd reassured the regulars, his obvious lack of political ambitions had calmed the frenzied speculation about yet another coup attempt, and he understood perfectly that he would remain in command of Capital Fleet, and alive, only so long as he kept Saint-Just happy.

Once Saint-Just got Giscard and Tourville home and tidied up those loose ends, he could turn to the general military housecleaning, and—

The universe heaved madly.

It was like nothing Saint-Just had ever experienced. One moment he was seated in his chair behind his desk; the next, he was under his desk, without any memory of having gotten there. And then the roar of the explosion crashed over him, battering his eardrums even in his soundproofed office, and the universe heaved again. And again, each time with its own deafening cacophony.

He struggled to his feet, clinging to his desk to stay there, and an entire series of lesser shocks jolted his body. They seemed to be running away into the distance, and he coughed on the haze of dust suspended in his office's air. It must have come out of the carpet, he thought, amazed his brain could function well enough to figure that out. And there was a second band of dust, higher up, which must have come from the ceiling. How fascinating. He watched the upper band drift downward, settling towards the lower one.

He didn't know how long he'd stood there before a sudden, fresh disturbance yanked him out of his semistupor. Something crashed into the side of the building, sending a fresh shock through the structure. This one was much weaker than the others, but it was repeated again and again, at least a dozen times, and then he heard the whine of pulse rifles and the lethal, hissing roar of tri-barrels, and he knew what those weaker shocks had been.

Assault shuttles. Assault shuttles blowing breaches through the tower's outer skin and then crunching into the holes to disgorge assault troops.

He spun to his desk and yanked the drawer open, snatching out the pulser he kept there for emergencies, then turned and raced for the office door. He had no idea what was happening, but he had to get out of here before—

The door vanished in a cloud of splinters a moment before he could reach it. The force of the explosion hurled him backwards, sending him sprawling, and the pulser flew out of his hand as he lost his grip on it. The weapon thudded into the wall and tumbled to the carpet beside the doorway, and Saint-Just shook his head and levered himself back up onto his hands and knees. Blood coated his face, oozing from the countless shallow cuts and scratches the disintegrating door's fragments had clawed into his skin, but there was no time for that. He began to crawl doggedly towards the pulser. His entire universe was focused on reaching the gun, then getting to his feet, and from there escaping down the corridor outside his secretary's office to the secret lift shaft to the roof hangar.

A foot slammed into the floor before him, and he froze, for the foot was in battle armor. He crouched there, staring at it, and then, against his will, his eyes traveled up a soot-black leg of synthetic alloy. His gaze reached a point twenty-five centimeters above his head, and there it stopped, focused on the muzzle of a military-issue pulse rifle.

He knelt before the foot, unable to comprehend what was happening, and more feet crunched through the wreckage of his office door. Smoke was blowing in from the outer office, and he heard distant shouts and screams, all overlaid by the unmistakable sounds of small arms and heavy weapons fire, but the sound of those feet seemed to flow straight into his brain with a perfect, crystal clarity that didn't even need his ears. There were more sets of the feet this time: three more in battle armor, and one in regulation Navy boots.

An exoskeleton whined, and a battle-armored hand twisted itself in Saint-Just's collar. It picked him up effortlessly and set him on his feet, roughly but without brutality, and he wiped blood from his face and blinked, trying to clear his vision. It took several seconds, but he managed finally, and his mouth tightened as he looked into Thomas Theisman's eyes.

The Citizen Admiral was flanked by four towering sets of the People's Marines' battle armor, and Saint-Just's eyes narrowed as he saw the pulser in Theisman's hand. It was the same weapon the Citizen Chairman had dropped, and his fingers curled, as if trying to close around the butt of the gun he no longer held.

"Citizen Chairman," Theisman said levelly, and Saint-Just bared his teeth in a gore-streaked grimace.

"Citizen Admiral," he got out in return.

"You made two mistakes," Theisman said. "Well, three actually. The first was choosing me to command Capital Fleet and not assigning a different commissioner to keep an eye on me. The second was failing to have Admiral Graveson's data base completely vacuumed. It took me a while to find the file she'd hidden there. I don't know what happened when McQueen made her move. Maybe Graveson panicked and was afraid to move when McQueen didn't get you along with Pierre in her initial sweep. But whatever happened, the file she left behind told me who to contact in Capital Fleet when I decided to pick up where McQueen left off."

He paused, and Saint-Just stared at him for a heartbeat, then tossed his head.

"You said three mistakes," he said. "What was the third?"

"Ending hostilities and ordering Giscard and Tourville home," Theisman said flatly. "I don't know what's happened at Lovat, but I know Tourville and Giscard. I imagine they're both dead by now, but I doubt very much that either of them just rolled over and played dead for your SS goons, and I imagine you've suffered a few losses of your own. But more importantly, by issuing those orders, you warned every regular officer that the purges were about to begin all over again... and this time, we're not standing for it, Citizen Chairman."

"So you're replacing me, are you?" Saint-Just barked a laugh. "Are you really crazy enough you actually want this job?"

"I don't want it, and I'll do my best to avoid it. But the important thing is that the decent men and women of the Republic can't let someone like you have it any longer."

"So now what?" Saint-Just demanded. "A big show trial before the execution? Proof of my 'crimes' for the Proles and the newsies?"

"No," the citizen admiral said softly. "I think we've had enough of those sorts of trials."

His hand rose with Saint-Just's pulser, and the Citizen Chairman's eyes widened as the muzzle aligned with his forehead at a meter's range.

"Good-bye, Citizen Chairman."