"Yes, Ma'am. Should I consider some sort of lottery for the evacuation lists?"

"I'll leave that up to you, at least until I see how they break down. As for the second list, I want all-volunteer crews for the warships if at all possible, but if we've got anyone with recent experience, I need them. Try and talk any reluctant heroes into volunteering. If you can't, give me a list of their names and let me have a go at them."

"Yes, Ma'am."

"Alistair, you and Jesus are in charge of accelerating the retraining program as much as possible, because Gaston is right; we do need to get in at least a quickie refresher for everyone. I want to cycle the current batch of trainees out of Krashnark and Bacchante within the next seventy-two hours, and I want the designed training cycle cut to one week."

"That's not very long," McKeon protested.

"No, but it's all the time we've got," Honor told him flatly. "Increase the percentage of people with recent experience in each cycle. They can help train the people who are completely out of date at the same time they dust off their own skill levels, and, frankly, I'll settle for half-trained companies to take over the escorts if we manage to capture them in the first place. We can arrange for additional training onboard the ships themselves later, if the Peeps give us the time, but I want them able to at least defend themselves— or run away, if the odds go to crap on us—ASAP."

"Understood," McKeon said.

"Good. Harry," she turned to Benson, "I wish I could leave you aboard Krashnark, but I need you for Control Central, at least for now. We need to start pushing training harder there, as well. We've let ourselves slow down once we had four complete watch crews trained, but the control consoles for the orbital weaponry are very similar to the weapons controls aboard the Peeps' warships. Let's get as many people trained on them dirtside as we can."

"Yes, Ma'am." Benson nodded sharply, and Honor turned to Caslet with another of her crooked smiles.

"As for you, Warner, I want you to make yourself available to everybody, everywhere, at every single instant, twenty-six hours a day. I realize we're talking about State Security and not the People's Navy, but you still know more about the ships and the procedures involved than any of the rest of us. I'm sure all of us will have specific questions for you in the next few days, and if you think of anything—anything at all—that could be a worthwhile suggestion, don't hesitate to make it."

"Yes, Ma'am." He returned her smile, and she felt a deep sense of personal satisfaction as she tasted the change in his emotions. The wounded anguish the "desertion" of his country had wakened at his core had diminished. It hadn't vanished, and she doubted it ever would, for he was a decent and an honorable man. But he had come to terms with it, accepted it as the price he must pay for doing what he believed to be right, and she could feel him reaching out to the challenge.

Admiral Lady Dame Honor Harrington let her eye sweep around the conference room one last time. Her entire plan was insane, of course... but that was nothing new. And crazy or not, she'd brought them all this far.

Yes, I have, she thought, and I will by God take every single one of them home with me in the end, as well!

"All right, then, people," she said calmly. "Let's be about it."

Chapter Forty-Five

Citizen Lieutenant Commander Heathrow leaned back in his command chair and smiled as Lois, the sole inhabited planet of the Clarke System, fell away astern. He hadn't enjoyed dealing with Citizen Colonel White, the system's senior StateSec officer, but at least there were other people on Lois. More to the point, perhaps, Lois had some of the most glorious beaches in the entire People's Republic. He and his crew had been made welcome in traditional Navy style by Citizen Captain Olson, CO of the small PN patrol detachment, and his engineering staff had managed a little creative reporting to justify a full extra twenty-three-hour day of sun and sand.

There were, he thought smugly, occasional advantages to courier duty after all.

Yeah, sure. "Join the Navy and see the Galaxy!" He snorted suddenly. You know, that's probably truer for the courier crews than it is for anyone else, now that I think about it!

He chuckled, but then he let his chair come back upright with a sigh as his mind reached out to their next destination. He wasn't looking forward to his stop in the Danak System. Clarke had a relatively small SS detachment, which spent most of its time fulfilling regular police functions. Personally, Heathrow suspected that the warm, languid tranquility of Lois had infected them, as well. The system's Navy personnel were crisp and efficient enough when onboard ship or crewing the planet's orbital HQ base, but they tended to go native, all crispness vanishing into a sort of planetwide, laid-back surfer culture, the instant they hit groundside, and the same seemed to be true of the SS.

Danak was different, however... and not just because of the weather. Granted, Danak Alpha, the inhabited half of the double-planet pair of more or less terrestrial worlds was considerably further out from its G8 primary than Lois was from its G1 primary. That gave it a much cooler climate, and its weather was characterized by clouds and rain liberally seasoned with various objectionable atmospheric compounds from volcanic outgassing. At that, it was a nicer place than Danak Beta. Beta was only technically habitable, and to the best of Heathrow's knowledge, no one had ever expressed any particular desire to visit it, much less live there.

But Danak, unlike Clarke, had been settled for four hundred years, and where Lois had been a resort world catering to the tourist trade before the Republic annexed it, Danak had been a heavily industrialized system for more than two T-centuries. More than that, its current population was up to something approaching four billion, which was extremely large for a system this close to the frontier. All of which meant that miserable as Danak Alpha was, and dour as people assigned here tended to become, the system was very important to the powers that were.

As a consequence, Danak System Command had always been home port to a largish fleet presence, and State Security had made Danak Alpha the HQ for its intervention forces here in the Danak Sector, just as Shilo was in the Shilo Sector. Needless to say, the presence in force of StateSec had not increased the attractiveness of gray and miserable Danak Alpha when it came to choosing someplace as a potential retirement address.

Or, for that matter, one to visit on courier duties.

Heathrow grimaced. Ah, well. We had our run ashore on Lois; I suppose it's inevitable that we pay for it on this end. I just hope Citizen General Chernock has been replaced.

He checked the time and date display on his console. His command was fourteen days, sixteen hours, and thirty-three minutes (base-time reckoning) out of Cerberus. Of course, given relativity's input into things, that worked out to only ten days, twenty-two hours, and some change for Heathrow and his crew, which seemed like a particularly dirty trick. The rest of the universe got to enjoy the full fourteen days between the time he touched base with two different groups of sourpuss, pain in the butt SS types, while his people got cheated out of almost three whole days.

Oh, well. No one had ever said the universe was fair.

Citizen Major General Thornegrave swung himself out of the personnel tube and into PNS Farnese's shipboard gravity. The StateSec ground forces citizen lieutenant assigned to greet him snapped to attention and saluted, and Thornegrave returned the courtesy brusquely.