3 The Short Victorious War by David Weber

Author:David Weber [Weber, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Fiction, Fantasy, Harrington; Honor (Fictitious character), Space warfare, Women soldiers
ISBN: 9780743408240
Publisher: Earthlight
Published: 2000-07-30T23:00:00+00:00

It was impressive, Honor thought, standing at Sarnow's elbow and staring down into the display with him. Very impressive. But all that ponderous firepower was headed away from them, and Battlecruiser Squadron Five's handful of emission sources seemed shrunken and forlorn as they were left to defend Hancock Station alone. She felt the chill of abandonment in her heart, and took herself sternly to task for it.

"Well, there they go," Captain Corell said quietly, and Commander Cartwright grunted agreement beside her.

"At least he left us the pods and the minelayers," the ops officer remarked after a moment, and it was Sarnow's turn to grunt. The admiral brooded down on the sphere for a long, silent minute, then sighed.

"Yes, he left them, Joe, but I don't know how much good they're going to do." He turned his back on the display, the gesture somehow deliberate and almost defiant, and looked at Honor. His mustache twitched as he smiled, but his face looked wearier and far more worn than she'd ever seen it before.

"I'm not knocking your input, Honor," he said quietly, and she nodded. He didn't omit the honorific "Dame" often. Whenever he did, she listened very carefully, for she'd learned it meant he was speaking to his tactical alter ego, not simply his flag captain.

"That was a brilliant idea about the minelayers," he went on, "and you and Ernie were right to suggest we might be able to modify our fire control to handle the pods, too. But even though Houseman may be an asshole—hell, even though he is an asshole—he was right, too. We may dazzle them with our footwork at the start, even get in a few good licks they don't expect. But if they bring in ships of the wall and keep coming, we're dead meat."

"We could always abandon the system, Sir," Cartwright suggested wryly. "After all, if Admiral Parks is willing to give up Zanzibar, he shouldn't have much room to complain if we make an, um, tactical withdrawal from Hancock."

"Mutinous sentiments if ever I heard them, Joe." Sarnow smiled again, tiredly, and shook his head. "And I'm afraid it's just not on. The Admiral overlooked a couple of points, you see—like how we evacuate the base personnel if we withdraw."

A deeper, colder chill touched Honor's heart, for that was a thought she'd tried hard not to consider. The ongoing expansion of Hancock's facilities had swelled the station's work force enormously, and the ungainly repair base was home to almost eleven thousand men and women.

The squadron and its screening units might squeeze sixty or seventy percent of them aboard—assuming none of the ships were lost or badly damaged in action first—but only at the expense of ruinously overloading their environmental services. And even if they did, thirty or forty percent of the yard dogs would simply have to be left behind. And she knew one officer who would insist that it was his duty to remain if any of his people did.

"He did sort of miss out on that one, didn't he?" Captain Corell murmured, and this time Sarnow chuckled.

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