Uncompromising Honor - eARC

  And then there were the enormous Manticoran investments in the Solarian League. No one knew where that was going, either, and she was frankly surprised the League hadn’t simply seized their assets. There was no guarantee Quartermain and Wodoslawski wouldn’t get around to it eventually, but unless the League won an unambiguous victory—which wasn’t going to happen—one of Manticore’s key peace demands was going to be the return of all sequestered assets, and Sir Anthony Langtry had made certain through “neutral sources” that the League was made aware of that.

  Her own financial interests had taken a massive hit, although those had been centered far more in Grayson than here in Manticore. The Blackbird complex had represented a huge chunk of her portfolio there, but Blackbird had been almost exclusively a naval building complex. Ninety percent of the Grayson Space Navy’s suppliers and subcontractors had been located there, but virtually none of the system’s civilian industry had been affected. From Honor’s purely selfish perspective, that meant Skydomes of Grayson had been untouched, which put her in a strong position to recover, especially with her Skydomes labor force redirected to rebuilding Blackbird. From the Graysons’ perspective in general, it did nothing to lessen the brutal loss of human lives but provided a solid basis for reconstruction and recovery. And the Church of Humanity Unchained had thrown its stupendous resources into the recovery effort. There were entire star nations with less wealth than Reverend Sullivan commanded, and his instructions were clear. Where there was want, there also would be Father Church. Not one of the Tester’s children would be allowed to suffer alone and unaided. They would worry about the consequences to the Church’s investment portfolio later. And if they had to rebuild that portfolio from absolutely nothing, why they’d do that, too.

  The good news—the overwhelmingly good news—from the Star Empire’s perspective was that no financier in the galaxy failed to grasp that whatever happened politically, astrography wasn’t going to change. The Manticoran Wormhole Junction wasn’t going anywhere, and neither were its implications for the interstellar movement of goods, people, services, and data. That meant no one doubted the imperial government’s ultimate solvency—as long as it survived its confrontation with the League—and Baroness Morncreek, at the Exchequer, and Bruce Wijenberg at the Ministry of Trade had capitalized on that fact.

  The Exchequer had already instituted the largest program of low-interest government-guaranteed loans in Manticoran history, both to assist those whose losses hadn’t been covered by insurance and to help finance new and replacement ventures. A lot of Havenite money would be looking for a home postwar, as well, which didn’t even consider the opening of what had been closed Solarian markets in the Protectorates. For that matter, whatever the League might think about the Grand Alliance in military and diplomatic terms, economically it wouldn’t have much choice about doing business with the Star Empire, thanks to the Junction. It seemed unlikely to Honor that the Star Empire’s merchant marine would regain its totally dominant position within the League, but in absolute terms, it ought to recover fully to prewar levels.

  Manticore’s traditional fiscal challenge had been to find places to invest the revenues streaming into the Star Kingdom in a way that prevented a financial glut and its resulting inflation. Over the T-centuries, the government and private investors had learned to adjust that cashflow through out-system investment, most of it in the League. Their presence in Solarian markets wasn’t an unqualified plus at the moment, but that pattern helped explain how the Cromarty Government had managed to avoid genuine deficit spending until only a very few T-years before the outbreak of open hostilities between the Manticoran Alliance and the People’s Republic of Haven.

  Since then, for obvious reasons, that had changed, yet until the Yawata Strike, the Junction’s enormous revenue generation, coupled with the Star Kingdom’s huge investment portfolio, had held the national debt within easily manageable dimensions. For the next several years, that wouldn’t be true. Mourncreek’s analysts weren’t happy about that, and they projected that it would take twenty or thirty T-years—at least—to pay that debt down, assuming prewar revenue streams. Unlike almost any other star nation in the galaxy, however, the Star Empire could do it, which was why there was remarkably little panic here in the Manticore System.

  Which wasn’t to say there wasn’t a lot of pain or that the Manticoran economic safety net wasn’t under unprecedented strain. On the other hand, the need to rebuild—and the number of skilled technicians who’d been killed in the attack—meant overall unemployment rates were astonishingly low, considering what had happened to the shipping industry. The government was pouring enormous sums into wages for the workers rebuilding Hephaestus, Vulcan, and Weyland, which was a not insignificant factor in its deficit spending. Those sums were being paid as wages, however, not direct transfer payments, which meant they didn’t affect their recipients’ eligibility to vote and that they represented taxable income, which allowed at least some recapture.

  We’ve never—ever—been hurt this badly before, she thought. But I suspect the people who did it to us overestimated how badly it would hurt us by at least as big a factor as we did, right after the strike. And in the end, that’s going to hurt them one hell of a lot worse than they ever hurt us.

  She smiled up at that beautiful sky and the lights swarming across it with grim satisfaction…and more than a bit of proprietary pride. There were quite a few warships, freighters, transports, and naval auxiliaries to keep the rebuilding effort company, and all that overhead activity was directly or indirectly her responsibility, one way and another. But for tonight, she’d left it in the hands of her staff, with Admiral Alfredo Yu, her deputy CO in the Protector’s Own, riding herd upon it.

  The one good thing about being stuck here instead of out actually accomplishing something is that I get to nip home for visits every so often, she reflected, stirring the chocolate with an index finger and then licking it clean. Her mother had tried for years to break her of that particular habit before she’d finally thrown up her hands and admitted defeat. And it is a gorgeous night for sitting on the deck drinking chocolate. The land breeze, blowing out across Jason Bay’s cooling waters fluttered her kimono’s flowing sleeves and molded its silk against her and she inhaled deeply, gazing out over the bay’s gently moving surface. Wish there was time to spend tomorrow down here, too. I’d love to take the boat out after the front passes through, and I’m overdue for some time with Faith and James. They’d love that! But not with that exercise scheduled for Tuesday, I guess.

  “Excuse me, My Lady.”

  She turned her head as Major Hawke poked his head out onto the deck. That deck stood out from the seaward side of Harrington House, a good seventy meters above sea level, which made it totally inaccessible except through the house itself or from the air. Under the circumstances—given that Harrington House would have made an acceptable fortress on most planets and that Clifford McGraw and Joshua Atkins, the other members of her permanent detail, were undoubtedly parked in the shrubbery with shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles and the odd vest-pocket nuke or three—Major Hawke had graciously consented to allow her a modicum of privacy.

  “Yes, Spencer?”

  “The Earl just commed, My Lady. He asked me to tell you he’s about six minutes out. For some reason, he couldn’t seem to reach you.” Hawke raised an eyebrow. “Could it be you didn’t take your uni-link with you?”

  “Guilty as charged,” she admitted while Nimitz bleeked in amusement from the chaise lounge beside hers. “After I got out of the pool and climbed out of the shower, I just threw on my kimono and came straight out here.”

  “I see.”

  Hawke gazed at her for a moment, and she looked back innocently. No respectable traditional Grayson lady would have suggested to anyone other than her equally respectable husband that all she had on was a thin, billowy silk kimono. Hawke had been with her long enough to know when she was pulling his chain, howver, and his notion of just w
hat “respectable” meant had been…expanded by contact with Honor.

  And, especially, with Honor’s mother.

  “I’ll just send His Lordship right out when he gets here, then, My Lady,” the armsman said after a moment.

  “Please do. And please ask Lucie to tell Mistress Thorn we’re going to need a pot of coffee for him. For that matter, I’ll bet he missed supper again, so ask Lucie to see about having some sandwiches sent up, too. After all,” she smiled wickedly, “he’ll need his strength.”

  “Of course, My Lady,” Hawke replied just a bit repressively, and her smile grew broader as he withdrew. Then it faded again as she sat back, looking up at the stars, and thought about what she’d just requested. Or, rather, who she’d requested it of.

  She hadn’t wanted to fill the gaping wound Miranda LaFollet’s death in the Yawata Strike had left in her household. It had seemed…disloyal. Worse, just thinking about it had reminded her how horribly she missed Miranda, Farragut, and—especially and always—Andrew. Yet she’d really had no choice. Not only did she need someone to assume the host of duties Miranda had fulfilled for her, but there were certain Grayson norms even her deplorably nontraditional Harringtons wanted observed, and having their Steadholder provided with a proper “personal maid” was one of them.

  At only a hundred and fifty-seven centimeters and with brown hair and dark brown eyes, Lucie was very different physically from Miranda, for which Honor was grateful, but they were very much alike in other ways. Miranda had been far more than a “maid.” In fact, she’d been a female James MacGuiness, acting as the general manager of Honor’s affairs on Manticore whenever her Steadholder and MacGuiness were in space. Despite that, however, she’d always insisted on “looking after” Honor whenever Honor was home. Lucie, for all her social flexibility, was a chip off the same stubborn block of Grayson granite in that respect, and her feelings would have been hurt if Honor hadn’t asked her to see to it that Hamish was fed.

  And the chance to tease Spencer didn’t have a thing to do with it, either, did it? she asked herself.

  Herself chose not to answer, and she sipped her chocolate, enjoying the night, and waited for her husband.

  * * *

  “Sorry I’m running so late,” the Earl of White Haven said contritely as he stepped out onto the deck.

  The instant he opened the door, a dappled, tawny treecat launched from his shoulder, bounced off the deck flooring once, and landed with precision and style beside Nimitz. She wrapped both her upper sets of limbs—and her tail—around him, buzzing a delighted purr, and Honor laughed.

  “Way to go, Sam!” she congratulated the female ’cat. “Spacers don’t make port often enough to let any opportunities go to waste.”

  “Oh?” White Haven dropped onto the chaise lounge beside her and did a pretty fair job of hugging her, despite the handicap of having only four limbs. “Should I assume from that observation that I’m going to get lucky tonight?”

  “You should assume from that observation that I’d better get lucky tonight,” Honor told him, pausing halfway through to kiss him thoroughly. “I don’t know which is worse, to be in totally different star systems for months on end or to be in the same star system, just an hour or two apart, and unable to take advantage of it.”

  “The latter,” White Haven said promptly. “Definitely the latter.”

  He smiled and kissed her again, choosing not to mention that he could think of quite a few flag officers who would have found ways to “take advantage of it” every other night or so. He’d never been one of them, and neither had Honor.

  “Of course, when the opportunity does come along…” she murmured wickedly, nestling deeper into his embrace.

  “Well, when that happens,” he said with a pontifical air, “it’s clearly our responsibility to…to give Samantha and Nimitz the opportunity to spend quality time together while we find some way to occupy ourselves, as well.”

  He elevated his nose, then “oofed” as an elbow jabbed him in the ribs.

  “‘Occupy ourselves,’ is it?” She regarded him darkly. “If I hadn’t been stuck in space so long, somebody would be sleeping on the couch tonight for that one!”

  “Then thank God for sensory deprivation,” White Haven said fervently, and kissed her again.

  “Your Grace?” a voice said.

  “Yes, Lucie,” Honor replied, sitting up a bit straighter. “Come on out, we’re both decent.” She smiled at White Haven. “Your timing’s just about perfect, as always. He hasn’t even had time to muss my hair properly.”

  “I’m certain he’ll get around to it, My Lady,” Lucie Šárová said serenely.

  She guided a counter-grav float with a large pot of coffee, a tray loaded with sandwiches—on seedless rye, White Haven’s favorite bread—and a platter with one of Sue Thorn’s hallmark pound cakes. Unlike Spencer, she simply looked at her Steadholder and Steadholder Consort with an eye of benign approval. In fact, she’d made it clear to Honor that, in her opinion and speaking for Harrington Steading in general, it was time Raoul Alfred Alastair Alexander-Harrington had a younger brother to keep him company. Despite her flexibility on other issues, Lucie was a Grayson, and there were never enough boy babies to go around on Grayson. Especially where a steadholding’s succession was concerned.

  It was, perhaps, unfortunate that her Steadholder’s parents had provided additional grist for her mill, but at least Allison wasn’t expecting twins this time.

  Lucie parked the float between Honor’s chaise lounge and the one occupied by Nimitz and Samantha. Then she whipped the cover off a third platter, and the treecats buzzed with delight as she revealed the plate of stewed rabbit and a dozen sticks of celery.

  “You are a wicked influence, spoiling everyone shamelessly,” Honor told her, and she smiled. Then she nodded respectfully to White Haven and withdrew.

  “Your Grayson henchmen—and henchwomen—do take good care of us,” White Haven observed, sitting up to pour coffee. “And I hate to say this, given the delightfully salacious nature of our earlier conversation, but I’m starving.”

  “I figured you would be.” Honor swung her own feet back on to the decking and reached for one of the sandwiches. She seldom passed up the opportunity to stoke her genetically modified metabolism. “You really do need to stop putting in hours that keep you from eating, though,” she said more severely. “The last thing anyone needs is for the First Lord of Admiralty to work himself into a state of collapse.”

  “I’m a fair way short of that this far, love,” he replied with a twinkle. “Not that you don’t have a point, and I know it. For that matter, Emily’s been beating me about the head and ears over the same minor point.”

  “Good!”

  Honor’s voice showed her firm approval of their spouse’s attitude, but she also gave White Haven a thoughtful look. He was busy looking down to select a sandwich of his own and didn’t notice, but Samantha looked back at her with solemn eyes, and Honor’s lips tightened ever so slightly. Emily seldom visited Landing these days. She’d made an exception for the dinner party announcing Alfred’s return to active duty, but she always preferred to spend her time at White Haven, with the children. Besides, she said Landing always made her tired. That was true enough for all three of them, really, but she seemed to get tired even more rapidly than she’d used to, and—

  “I wish there’d been time to run home to White Haven tonight,” White Haven went on a bit wistfully as he picked out his sandwich.

  “So do I.” Honor agreed, and this time he heard the questioning note and looked back up quickly. She looked at him levelly, and, after a moment, he sighed.

  “I don’t know what to tell you, sweetheart,” he said. “You know her health’s been up-and-down for the last two or three years. She tells me she’s fine—‘all things considered’—and Sandra’s not telling me anything different. I don’t like how tired she seems to be all the time, but she and I have been through patches a lot worse than this on
e, over the years.” He sighed again and shook his head. “The one thing I can tell you for sure is that if either one of us starts ‘hovering,’ she’ll kick us squarely in the ass, and you know it.”

  “Yes, I do,” she said after a moment, and shook her own head with a smile. “In fact, she did just that the last time I seemed, um…overly solicitous.”

  “An experience we share,” he said wryly, then shook himself, and she felt him deliberately shifting mental gears. “And if we did run home, she’d be perfectly right to read us both the riot act. By the time we flew up we’d be lucky to get three hours of sleep before we had to load up to fly back for Pat’s intelligence brief tomorrow.”

  “Whereas here, we can get at least four or five hours of sleep…once I’ve had my way with you,” Honor agreed with a smile, accepting the change of mood.

  “Precisely!” He beamed at her, then took a bite out of the sandwich and sighed. “Does anything ever come out of Mistress Thorn’s kitchen that doesn’t taste good?”

  “Oh, yes. I remember once—seven years ago, I think, though it might have been eight—she actually scorched some rice.” Honor shuddered delicately. “Quite horrible, it was.”

  “I’m sure.” White Haven’s tone was dry, and he sipped coffee. Then he sat back with sandwich in hand and gazed up at the midnight sky. The light pollution of Landing’s distant towers, on the far side of the house, was scarcely noticeable, and he inhaled deeply.

  “Gorgeous, isn’t it?” he murmured, unaware he was voicing Honor’s earlier thought.

  “Yes, it is. Of course, I have a slightly unfair advantage when it comes to enjoying it.”

  “I know. I hope you’ll pardon me for saying I have somewhat ambivalent feelings over that particular advantage, though.”