Yet there were other unpleasant truths about the current Admiralty administration, and although she hadn’t planned on going into them—not yet, at least—Rafe was going to be her flag captain. Her tactical deputy and right hand. Which meant she had no choice but to share her concerns with him. Not only was it absolutely essential for him to understand at all times what she was thinking and why she was thinking it, but she owed him that openness and honesty.

“This stays in this room unless I tell you differently, Rafe,” she said after a moment, and watched him settle deeper into his chair. It was a subtle thing, more sensed through her empathic link than seen, but his shoulders squared ever so slightly and his eyes narrowed intently.

“I don’t trust our intelligence assessments,” she said quietly, meeting his gaze levelly. “Just between the two of us, Admiral Jurgensen isn’t the right man for ONI. He’s always been an administrator, a bureaucrat and not an actual ‘spook.’ And my impression is that he has a tendency to… shade, let’s say, his analyses to suit his superiors’ needs. Or desires.”

She raised her artificial left hand, palm uppermost and slightly cupped in a questioning gesture, and Cardones nodded slowly.

“I’m not comfortable about the sources our assessments are apparently based on, either,” she went on. “ONI is always reticent about naming sources, and rightly so. But from reading between the lines, and especially from looking at what isn’t there to be read at all, it looks to me like our human resources are thin on the ground in both Silesia and the Empire right now. Admiral Jurgensen has assured me that my concerns in that area were unnecessary, and I certainly don’t have any hard evidence that he was wrong. But I’ve deployed to Silesia several times, Rafe, and there’s a distinctly different feel between these assessments and the ones my captains or I were given then. I can’t explain the difference exactly, but they feel… unfinished. Incomplete.

“The Foreign Office assessments aren’t a lot better, either. In their case, however, it’s not because of any lack of sources. Actually, it’s almost a case of information overflow. There’s too much detail, too much minutiae and not enough hard indicators of what it is the Andermani are up to. The official Foreign Office position at this moment is that the Andies themselves aren’t certain just what they have in mind. That they’re testing the waters, as it were, with these shows of force around Sidemore Station. The official opinion is that the Empire’s position hasn’t yet hardened, and that there’s an opportunity for us to shape the ultimate Andermani intentions by demonstrating ‘firmness and consistency.’ ”

“Excuse me, Ma’am,” Cardones said, “but have any of these Foreign Office types ever actually been to Silesia? Or the Empire?”

Honor’s lips twitched at his plaintive tone, and even more at the emotions behind it. But she ordered herself sternly not to smile and shook her head at him.