“About two weeks behind your projected timetable,” Truman responded. Honor looked at her with one raised eyebrow, and the golden-haired rear admiral shrugged. “Hephaestus turned Werewolf loose ahead of schedule, and Rafe and Scotty have done really well at working up her LAC group. We’re at least a week behind on assembling the rest of the carrier force, though, and until we get all of the CLACs and all of the LACs gathered in one place, it’s going to be impossible to form any judgments on the LAC groups as a whole. I doubt they’ll be fully up to Werewolf’s standards, but that would be true of just about anyone they could send us. Scotty’s LAC jocks could use as much additional exercise time as we can steal for them, but at least two-thirds of them are veterans, and in my opinion, they’re shaping up very nicely. Would you agree, Alistair?”

“It’s certainly looks that way to me,” McKeon confirmed.

“I see.” Honor nodded and glanced at Jaruwalski. “And that other project we discussed, Andrea?”

“That much is on schedule, Your Grace,” Jaruwalski assured her. “The data is tucked away as per instructions, and Commander Reynolds and I have already had a few thoughts about it. We’re not quite ready to share them yet, but I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.”

“Good.” Honor smiled thinly. It was a strangely hungry smile, but it became broader and warmer as she tasted the puzzlement of her senior subordinates. Well, there would be time enough to enlighten them later. She didn’t expect any of them to have any objections at all to the little side project she’d codenamed Operation Wilberforce. But given the… sensitive nature of the intelligence data which would make Wilberforce possible, she preferred to restrict the details to the smallest possible circle until they were safely in Silesia.

“So you think the LAC crews are going to be up to snuff by the time we reach Sidemore?” she asked, turning her attention back to Truman, and her second in command raised one hand and waggled it back and forth in a maybe-maybe not gesture.

“I think they ought to be,” she said. “I’m confident that they’ll be up to Scotty’s standards eventually, but I won’t absolutely guarantee that ‘eventually’ will happen before we reach our station.”

“You’re the LAC expert here, Alice,” McKeon said, “but I think you may be being a bit overly pessimistic. To me, they look like they’re already starting to shape up nicely from what I’ve seen in the sims. But what do I know? As I understand it, Her Grace,” he grinned at Honor, “asked me along to ride herd on the old-fashioned side of things.”

“Not all that old-fashioned,” Honor demurred.

“More old-fashioned than you may have thought, Ma’am,” Jaruwalski said sourly. She grimaced when Honor glanced at her. “The latest from Admiral Chakrabarti’s office is that we’re going to have to leave one of our squadrons of Medusas here with Home Fleet. They’re going to give us two squadrons of the pre-pod types, instead. And according to my sources, at least two of the non-pod ships are going to be dreadnoughts, not superdreadnoughts.”