"David Weber - Honor 09 - Ashes of Victory" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weber David)

tartly, and he chuckled. But then his face and his emotions sobered.

"In all honesty, Milady, and all jesting aside, Grayson was thrown into far
more disorder by the report of your death than the Star Kingdom was. We have
scores of earls and countesses in the Star Kingdom; there are less than ninety
steadholders on Grayson. There were all sorts of repercussions there, and
that's why I agreed with Admiral Kuzak and Governor Kershaw that you ought to
return to Grayson first."

Honor nodded yet again. Although White Haven's Eighth Fleet was based on
Trevor's Star while it prepared for operations elsewhere, Theodosia Kuzak was
the system's military CO. She was junior to White Haven, but her Third Fleet
was still tasked as the system's primary defensive unit.

Governor Winston Kershaw was her civilian counterpart: the Manticoran
Alliance's official administrator and head of the commission overseeing the
organization of San Martin's post-liberation planetary government. He was also
a younger brother of Jonathan Kershaw, Steadholder Denby, and one of Benjamin
IX's stronger supporters, and he'd been quite . . . firm about how best to
handle the political aspects of Honor's return. In particular, he'd been
adamant in insisting that word of her return must remain completely
confidential until she'd had a chance to meet personally with Benjamin.

"I still don't know if I completely agree with the Governor," she said after a
moment, but White Haven shook his head.

"I think he's absolutely correct," he disagreed. "The political and diplomatic
consequences of your escape are going to be enormous, and Grayson deserves to
know the full details first. We'll send a courier boat ahead to both Yeltsin
and Manticore, but the dispatches will be classified at the highest level
available to us. Not even the courier boats' crews will know what they say,
and we're clamping a security blackout on the story here. I can't guarantee
it, but I doubt very much that Her Majesty will allow a hint of the
information to leak into the system data nets until the Protector's government
has had an opportunity to debrief you in person and decide how to deal with
it."

"Are you certain about that, My Lord?" Honor asked him. "I don't question the
basic logic, but why not send me in a courier boat rather than a dispatch? And
why the long way around instead of by way of Manticore? It's going to take
over three weeks for me to get to Grayson without using the Junction. That
seems like an awful long time to try to keep the arrival of so many people on
San Martin a secret!"

"As far as keeping secrets is concerned, there's no real problem. Oh, I doubt
the secret will keep very long in local space. The story's just too good. It's
bound to get out, sooner probably rather than later, but we control both
termini of the Junction. That means nobody outside this system will hear a
thing about it until we let the word out through Manticore or somebody carries
the news elsewhere through a regular hyper trip. Which means no one on the