“So you actually have confidence in the ops plan?” Honeker sounded almost surprised, and Tourville gave a short, sharp bark of a laugh.

“I’ve got a hell of a lot of confidence in the plan, Sir,” he said. “I think we’ll probably lose some ships—the Manties may be out of position, but anyone who’s ever fought them knows they won’t go easy—but their forces are too light to stop us from getting in and doing one hell of a lot of damage. We’ll take out more of their ships than they’ll knock out of ours, and that doesn’t even count the potential damage to their infrastructure… or their morale.” He shook his head. “If this succeeds even half as well as Citizen Secretary McQueen hopes, it will have a tremendous effect on the future course of the war.”

And, he added silently, McQueen is also avoiding the other two mistakes Thurston made. She’s staying the hell away from Yeltsin’s Star… and she’s not sending us up against Honor Harrington.

“I hope you’re right, Citizen Admiral,” Honeker said quietly. He still looked anxious, but he seemed less so than he had, and Tourville decided not to broach the subject of whether or not the people’s commissioner’s superiors might decide to consider the two of them members of any “McQueen Faction” if it came to fresh purges.

Let the poor bastard worry about one thing at a time, the Citizen Vice Admiral thought.

“Well, Sir, we’ll know one way or the other in about three T-weeks,” he said instead, and he smiled.

Chapter Thirty-One

“SO here we are… at last.”

Earl White Haven knew the words sounded almost petulant, but he couldn’t help himself. Admiral Caparelli’s two-month delivery time for Eighth Fleet’s Manticoran superdreadnoughts had turned into five, which meant White Haven was almost exactly fifteen months late assembling his assigned striking force. Or would be, when the last two RMN SDs actually arrived the day after tomorrow.

And I wouldn’t be up to strength now if the GSN hadn’t anted up three more of its SDs to replace Manticoran ships which won’t be arriving at all, he thought, looking at the staffers assembled around the briefing room table. Well, I suppose I should be grateful for small favors. At least it means I got the Harrington and one of her sisters.

He glanced at the plot of his assembled fleet displayed on his terminal, eyes automatically seeking out the icons of the Grayson contingent. The GSN had worked like demons to get the Harrington ready to christen on schedule. There had been a delay in the fabrication of her beta nodes, and they’d had to divert half a dozen from one of her sisters to meet their deadline, but they’d met it… and a noticeably pregnant Allison Harrington had pressed the button that detonated the champagne bottle affixed to the ship’s prow on the first anniversary, to the minute, of Grayson’s receipt of INS’s broadcast of Honor Harrington’s execution.

I doubt the symbolism was lost on anyone, White Haven reflected with an edge of grimness. It certainly wasn’t lost on me, at any rate, or on Judah Yanakov when he chose the Harrington as his flagship. But I’m delighted to have her. And I might as well admit I’m eager to see how the concept actually works out in action.