Chapter 22

Author's Notes: The end of the chapter is a cliffhanger, but it's not pure cliffhangers in this chapter. Also, 23 is written.

Shannon knocks at the door, like she said she would, and pokes her head in, "Hello, Admiral Harrington. There's a few options for dinner tonight for all of us. First, we could just stay here, and just have my steward, Charlotte, cook for us. Second, we head out to eat, to one of the great restaurants around here. Third, we get takeout from a local place. Fourth, we go try the great local street food vendors, if your bodyguards would be okay with it. I just messaged Admiral Hemphill and Caroline of the potential options that might be happening, but thought I'd let you pick. What sounds best?"

Honor replies, "I'm interested in trying the local food. How about we try a restaurant, Shannon." Oh, good, Shannon thinks.

"Yes, ma'am. How fancy of a place do you want to try?" Shannon replies.

"I don't mind going for something casual, given that your aunt already wants to invite us to dinner at least once later on." Honor replies. Oh, good. I don't really want to wear mess dress if I can help it, Shannon thinks.

Honor walks out in the hallway, and closes the door behind her, "Shannon, I understand if you don't feel comfortable with me, but we'd all appreciate it if you actually explained things. I'm not going to try to blackmail you with the information, but I'd appreciate not just being constantly kept in the dark on everything."

"Really?" Shannon asks. Diana leaps off Shannon's shoulder, and types a message for Shannon. Dances on Clouds doesn't want to hurt you. You can trust her. She then jumps back up on Shannon's shoulder, and puts a furry paw on Shannon's cheek, like she'd done earlier to help Shannon when her bad memories got bad.

"You've got the right idea, Diana, it's your human that just needs some work on remembering to explain stuff, and knowing that she shouldn't leave things and just hope they'll stay hidden."

Shannon manages to hide her embarrassment and tries to ask, "Thank you. Anyway, ma'am, is it okay if I go round up everyone else, and we all meet up in the lobby?" She's hoping Honor says yes, partly so she can go, and partly because otherwise they might not even all end in the lobby for way too long.

"Go ahead." Honor replies.

The group of them, all wearing their navies' version of service dress (instead of the formal mess dress), exit Victory Tower and get into the waiting aircar, which is being driven by one of Shannon's bodyguards. Diana is perched on Shannon's shoulder, looking out into the colorful sunset.

Shannon, when she looks into the back rows of the aircar, notices that the former POWs who were sent by Admiral Trenis seem to be confused, and finally the senior officer of the group dares to ask, "Permission to speak freely, ma'am?"

Shannon, trying to set everyone at ease, replies, "Go ahead."

"Why do you have bodyguards, ma'am, and did I just hear them address you as milady?" Hazel asks.

"Um, I'm bad at explaining this, but have you heard about Elvana's Queen Cadhla?" Shannon attempts to explain her past.

Hazel nods, "A little bit, ma'am. Or should I be calling you milady?"

"Well, the Queen's my aunt, and I'm… in line for the throne. As for your second question, well, I'm the Grand Duchess of Elvana. I never was good at explaining stuff like this, because, well, Elvana was taken over by the Legislaturalists when I was five, and Eimear here, who's a duchess, and also in line for the throne,", she playfully elbows her cousin, " was three. It kinda meant we didn't really get as much training to be a royal. It wasn't good for anybody." Shannon explains.

"How did you manage to survive StateSec, milady?"

"By being very lucky, normally pretty careful, and sticking with my cover story." Shannon explains, choosing her words carefully.

"When did you get your bodyguards, milady? I don't recall seeing them last time we met." Hazel asks, as she doesn't remember seeing Admiral Foraker have bodyguards the last time they met, after she'd been captured in the Confederacy, just after the start of the second war.

"Just recently. I was using some loopholes to keep me from having to have them at Bolthole, but after running off… Well, my aunt got more persistent in making me have them, though I negotiated some things out of her." Shannon explains.

"Why didn't you say anything sooner, milady?" Hazel asks.

"Good question. It was safer to do so, under the Republic, you know, Shannon." Michelle agrees.

"Guys, I spent years undercover, claiming I was from a Dolist, or sometimes barely off the Dole, family. I didn't want to bother explaining, if I could help it, and I didn't want to have bodyguards, at the time. Also, trying to explain why I'd made ESDF Rear Admiral in '15, with my RHN promotion to Commodore, wasn't on my priority to-do list." Shannon explains.

"You made Rear Admiral in your SDF in 1915?" Michelle asks, wanting the details.

"Yes, because… well, it's a long story." Shannon says, not really wanting to explain the craziness that was 1915 for her, the year she jumped from being Admiral Tourville's ops officer, as a Commander, to making flag rank, as a Commodore, in the RHN, but willing to try to at least give a partial explanation. She continues, not going into details on her deployments, but giving some other useful details, "Admiral Tourville told me, years later, that if he'd been able to promote me to Captain earlier, without basically all but signing my death warrant for StateSec, he'd have. Thus, with the removal of the Commissioners from the Navy, and the name change, among other things," she laughs, "he decided to catch my promotions up to where he and Admirals Theisman and Giscard thought they should be. That's how I made RHN Commodore by the end of the year, because I just had one deployment as a Captain, and again, as a Commodore."

"Details, please." Michelle asks. This sounds insane. Then again, she was a staff officer to Citizen Admiral Cowboy, so that might have been normal.

"Fine. Have you heard of the People's Navy's 'tradition' of 'obtaining loaner officers'?" Mike nods, and Shannon continues, "Well, 'loaner' really meant 'stolen'. If you got a deal, it wasn't ever very good. Like at best, maybe only some of your family gets shot if you don't go along with being stolen. And that's if your political reliability doesn't suck, like mine did." Many of the RMN officers gasp at Shannon's matter-of-fact descriptions, as she continues, trying not to let the trauma of her past give her flashbacks, "A better translation would be 'stealing the best officers, and smartest brains out of the SDFs, sending them for three years of training on Haven and demoting them a rank', to help ensure your family and world stayed loyal. It wasn't good, I'll say that much." Whoa. No wonder Shannon got along so poorly with the PubIn propaganda. I didn't know it was that bad, Honor thinks. This was worse than I heard about, Mike thinks.

"That's… like as stupid as Battle Fleet." Mike replies, trying to process the sometimes nervous flag officer with the junior officer who was stolen and demoted, and the tactical witch, as well as the techno nerd who ran the RHN's tech development.

Shannon nods, and continues again, "So, I started out, when I graduated from the People's Republic of Haven's Naval Academy, as an Ensign, in 1903, before making Lieutenant Senior Grade late in 1904. However, in the ESDF, I'd made Lieutenant Senior Grade the year before I was stolen, and was on track for making Lieutenant Commander early next year, because I was on the fastest promotion track, officially because of my skills, that someone felt were abnormal, and unofficially, being royal, just like Eimear, when she graduated the PN Academy in '05."

"Why did you tell Admiral Tourville?" Sonja asks.

"I'm gonna decline to comment on that. My career as a staff officer was… insane, and I don't want to talk about it now. Maybe later, though. Let's just say it had to do with political matters." Shannon says, not wanting to explain her insane career and her stories in front of Honor. The aircar lands, and everyone gets out.

Shannon takes a second to reorient herself to a part of Elvana she hasn't been to in years, before asking Orla, "Is the really good crepes place still around, Orla? The place we used to go, and where we celebrated my getting Nemesis. It was called something like Crepe House."

Orla nods, and she winks at Shannon, "I was thinking of that, too, milady." Shannon nods back at Orla.

The group starts walking towards House of Crepes, which had been a popular ESDF (and later RHN) hangout, mainly for junior officers, because many flag officers ended up going to the steakhouse, a few blocks farther down the street.

Shannon explains, "This was a popular hangout for us, as junior officers. They give a military discount, but, as flag officers, we should probably tip very generously, to make sure they can keep doing this, especially for junior officers."

"When did you get Nemesis? You didn't seem to have much time after leaving the academy to getting stolen. I know you were on a fast promotion path, but…" Honor asks.

"I got her in 1899, ma'am, along with my ESDF promotion to Lieutenant Senior Grade. She was an aging destroyer, assigned to our version of Capital Fleet." Shannon explains, like she's been explaining stuff since very shortly after the Grand Alliance.

Despite the group's best effort to sneak in quietly, someone calls the room to attention, despite the fact that they're off-base. Honor tells them to carry on, and everyone pretends not to notice the holo-cams discreetly snapping a few pictures. After all, as long as the press isn't around, it's tolerable, given how good the food is.

After dinner, everyone heads back to Victory Tower, and everyone in the group, minus Michelle's former staff officers and Hazel, heads to a secure conference room, to get briefed on Dragonfly. Admiral Lockley is waiting on the couch, and smiles at Shannon. Shannon dims the lights, sits down, and presses play on the movie she cobbled together, quickly, because she wanted to do something creative.

The screen fades to black, with the text saying two words that they'd all heard. Project Dragonfly.

The camera pans down to Bolthole, where it pans over some schematics on Shannon's desk, before heading to the main bridge and stopping at a console. It then pans up, revealing Shannon, in her Vice Admiral's uniform, with an impressive medal rack, with some less PubIn-friendly medals on it, because Shannon knew when she made this, that PubIn wouldn't see it.

Shannon, standing on something to give her several more inches for the cameras, says a few words, "Today, marks an epic day. Fire." The missiles launch from a pod, towards the almost-junk battleship, which had been nearly mission-killed, and far too badly damaged to repair, and receive the FTL transmissions to them on their gravitic sensors, while transmitting their data back to the FTL-com LACs, which were trying to hide as to the target as they would have been able to do with an RMN ship. After the missiles send their data via com laser, the LACs transmit it at FTL speeds back to Forge One. The old battleship had been programmed, by Shannon, to fire a couple of EW shots, so the missile could demonstrate its abilities to transmit data back, have it processed, and receive the data.

Shannon watches the FTL transmissions come in, and observes the hit of the warheadless missile, and nods approvingly.

The footage cuts before she had said a few lines about this being in memory of Admiral Giscard, but she remembers them, all the same.

She, in the movie, starts narrating, "So, the way Dragonfly works, is that the FTL signals are transmitted out to the missiles via the FTL com, and they receive it on the standard gravitic sensors. However, getting data back is harder. We send the data back, via com laser, to the FTL-com LACs, and they rapidly send it back to the SD(P). However, we need a lot of FTL-com LACs, because we know they'll have a high loss rate, despite the improved walls."

Shannon pauses the movie, and explains, "Thanks to Admiral Hemphill arranging to gift me some tech, we now don't have the whole bandwidth issue, because of signal contamination, that we used to have, which means I can skip the next 5 minutes of this."

Several minutes later…

As the quickly cobbled together credits roll, Shannon asks, "Any questions?"

"How many variants were there?" Sonja asks.

"There are, for the one series, or the alpha design, two SD(P) versions, one with 2 drives, that's normal missile size, and a three drive one that is bigger, and a four drive system defense variant. There's a one point one series, the beta designs, that got three longer ranged drives on the SD(P) version. The beta system defense missiles had four or five drives, I'm not sure because they were arguing about it when I ran off, and I haven't checked yet, because I've been busy. They should also have better sensors and a few tweaks."

"Whoa. What do you have in Elvana, Shannon?" Honor asks.

"Right now, in this polity's system defense networks, we have a mix of beta tri-drives and the alpha official system defense quad-drives. We got the first network of alpha tri-drives, that were meant to be for SD(P)s, but were diverted after Lovat, and the presumed need to protect our core systems, and would have arrived just after Beatrice, if I recall the deployment patterns right. However, those were removed when we got the beta birds." Shannon replies. Whoa, good memory. She knows it as well as I do, and she's barely been home for a week, and has been working most of that time, Stephanie thinks.

"Do you know when or if you'll be getting the beta system defense missiles?" Mike asks.

"No, I'm not sure." Shannon replies.

"How'd you guys manage to make the podlayer pods work long term as system defense birds?" Mike asks, because normal podlayer designs had a much shorter time between ejection from the podlayer and firing, thus meaning their designed service life was on the order of hours, not the months or years that a system defense pod might have.

Stephanie speaks up and says, "A jury-rigged package of mods, that required tons of refurbishment, constantly. We had to convert some DDs and CLs as pod refurbishment ships."

Then, Charlotte walks in with a very fancy large chocolate cake and plates for everyone. Shannon looks surprised, but happy, as she hadn't been expecting Charlotte to make a fresh dessert, and hadn't asked her to make one.

"Milady, I just thought you and your guests might want some dessert." she says, smiling, but nervous, because she hadn't asked her Admiral if she was interested in having a cake appear, and instead just quietly walked in.

"Thank you, Charlotte. I'm not going to ask about the details now, but, good job." Shannon replies, smiling. Charlotte looks relieved that her Admiral isn't upset.

Mike asks, half jokingly, "Did you plan this, to keep the questions short?", as Charlotte starts cutting the pieces of cake.

Shannon shakes her head, "No, I had no idea."

After everyone gets some and they start dining on it, Shannon gets very few questions on her projects, as everyone is distracted by the rich chocolate cake.

"Thanks, Shannon." Honor replies, enjoying the surprise cake.

"Do we all want to go get some sleep and resume our meetings tomorrow?" Sonja asks, after the cake's been consumed. Everyone seems to agree, and the officers split up, with Shannon and her cousins heading back to the Palace, and the rest of the officers mainly heading back to the SD(P)s.

The Next Day…

Shannon wakes up, and like she always does, she checks her datapad. This time, she sees a flagged email from Admiral Lockley. She opens it and reads.

Hello, Shannon,

I just thought I'd tell you that the media has arrived. PubIn wants to talk to every RMN flag officer on the planet, and any ESDF flag officers involved, as well as Orla. Here's their list of interview topics for everyone:

You:

- Battle of Manticore

- Bolthole

- Elvana

- The RHN's disasters in Silesia

- Time as POW

- Why you decided to "misbehave" (their wording for standard naval behavior around the press) around PubIn in the past

- Every embarrassing incident they can dig up (they've found quite a bit)

Honor:

- Battle of Manticore

Michelle:

- Her time as a POW

- Every embarrassing incident they can dig up

- The whole canceled peace negotiations

Sonja (she's got the least questions):

- Every embarrassing incident they can dig up

Eimear:

- Every embarrassing incident they can dig up

- Her being stolen

- Her being assigned to Jennifer

Me (and Orla):

- Every embarrassing incident they can dig up

Everyone doing press interviews must do them in full mess dress uniform, according to PubIn. I'm trying to slow them down and make the interviews about the battle only, but it's not working, sorry, milady. I'm holed up in Victory Tower, as PubIn is waiting outside, like vultures. The naval press, and the Elvanian press are being respectful, however.

List of people PubIn hates, and why:

- You (for getting away with what you did, and being "stupid enough" to get captured)

- Michelle (for being protected by quite a bit of the RHN, from having to talk with them)

- Honor (they're trying to hide this one)

- Eimear and Orla (for being your cousin)

She reads it and thinks, Yikes, the press have arrived. I'd almost forgotten about them, and we don't have any press statements put together. And the press hate me, like I suspected.

She finishes getting ready, but when she goes to do her medal rack, she puts together the "PubIn version", which removes any medals over things they might blackmail her over, like her POW medal and her Silesian commerce raiding operation medal.

When she finishes putting it together, she has, among other things, the First Havenite-Manticoran War Award, Second Havenite-Manticoran War Award, her War on StateSec Award (all with the combat star), her operations medals for Scylla, Icarus, Stalking Horse and Dagger (again, all with combat star), and a few other medals, including a Distinguished Service Medal (with cluster) and a Good Conduct Medal with its knot for a second award (or, as it was known, the "I didn't get caught" medal, especially given that the first one was from when she was a staff officer), on her ESDF dress uniform. She skips a few medals for blackmail purposes, and almost skips the Stalking Horse and Dagger pair, but puts them on, after a second of hesitation.

She then messages everyone to head to Oakhampton Palace, but not to answer press questions until after they've worked out a PR protection plan, to protect themselves from PR's intrusive questions.

She manages to sneak into the Palace, which is being mobbed by reporters from Haven, and "only" gets five microphones shoved in her face, before her security team manages to escort her inside.

She manages to get some coffee, which helps wake her up considerably, and some breakfast, and attempts to write press notes before everyone else arrives.

A little while later…

Once the whole group (including some people who were busy yesterday) shows up, and has eaten, the group of officers migrates into a large room, which appears to have quite a bit of tech stuff in it.

"So, as you've probably figured out, PubIn– oops, I meant PR's here. They hate the Navy, and have hated us for a long time."

"When did the Navy and the press last get along?" Honor asks, wondering if they'd ever got along.

Shannon explains, "Admiral Chin told me a story, at one point, that when she was a Lieutenant, and was Flag Lieutenant for some Admiral, the Admiral told her that, at the beginning of his career, he'd been assigned for some ceremonial duty, and saw the Press Secretary and the CNO and Secretary of Defense sitting next to each other, and not even glaring at each other. It hasn't happened since, minus maybe once under the Republic, during the ceasefire."

Sonja replies, "What?" Whoa, it was that bad?, Sonja thinks.

"I know, low standards. But the Navy at least, at the time when Admiral Abadie told her that story, at least wasn't constantly under threat of being merged in with StateSec, as second-class citizens, like it was at the PRH's worst." Shannon replies, in the same matter-of-fact tone from last night.

"Were there press problems during the second war?" Honor asks, wondering.

"I mean the death threats stopped obviously, but the press was still a problem. Not nearly as bad as it was under the PRH, though. I dared to wear my 2nd war Silesian medal to an evening event with PR, once. They still tried to harass me for wearing it, of course, but the harassment ended at the end of the event. And we were able to say no to them, which helped a lot. Also, Michelle, the press did try to talk to you, but the navy said no. That means they'll be very aggressive about getting an interview with you now, so just be careful." Shannon explains.

"Who in the Navy was involved, ma'am?" Michelle asks.

"I can give you a list of the Haven-based brass easily enough. However, getting the list of everyone involved would take quite a bit longer." Shannon says, trying to cover up her involvement in the plot.

"Is this called 'someone trying to hide their involvement'?" Honor asks. How'd she guess correctly so fast?, Shannon thinks.

Because Shannon doesn't lie completely to superiors (although she may give them 'edited' info), she explains, while trying to hide the surprise on her face, "Officially, I'm going to decline to comment. As for the real, unofficial, and off-the-record story, um, maybe. The same type of 'maybe', as the legends of reports being forged by me when I was a staff officer. Nobody heard that, right?" The room nods.

Shannon, how many other insane things did you get involved in?, Honor thinks.

Diana types slowly, pecking letters on the digital keyboard with her pen-turned-stylus, before pressing play on her jury-rigged text-to-speech datapad, That translates to: My two-legs does not wish to officially admit her involvement in schemes like this. However, she was most definitely involved. Just officially admit it, Walks Through Mountains. She then tucks the datapad under an arm, and gets up on to her back legs, crosses her top pair of arms, and looks at Shannon.

Shannon tries to hide her embarrassment at being called out on the plot, and semi-playfully glares at Diana, before scolding her, "Diana! Can you please try to be at least semi-careful around RMN officers, especially senior RMN officers?" Honor looks understanding, while Shannon tries to act confident.

"For what it's worth, thank you. How many other things did you get involved in that we don't know about?" Michelle replies.

Well, I knew that question was coming for me at some point. Let's see if I can run a diversion maneuver, Shannon thinks.

"You're welcome, Michelle. I don't know for sure how good your ONI is, so I can't answer that question, but most of the big incidents, you'd have likely heard about. Anyway, we need to get ready to talk to the press. The Elvanian press are very respectful to me and my cousins, so I'll talk to them with Eimear and Orla. The naval press is much better than PR, and some people need to talk to them, and I should probably make an appearance for them. As for PR, maybe Abigail, and Jennifer, because they're hated the least?" Shannon replies.

"That sounds fine." Honor replies. Abigail and Jennifer both look even more nervous than normal.

"Also some incidents have special notes over what to say and not say. I tried to put that in the press notes packet for us, but was really rushed, so, just, if in doubt, decline to comment, and just don't do anything that will make the press hate you more than they already do, though if it comes to navy or press hating you, pick the media." Shannon tries to quickly explain, before the groups split up and go talk to the media.

"Your Grand Grace, how did you manage to get the extra SD(P)s from the RMN?" a male Elvanian reporter asks, and politely moves his microphone a little closer to Shannon, not just shoving the microphone in Shannon's face.

"I managed to get them from the RMN, by having my liaison officer, Sonja, contact Admiral Harrington." Shannon explains.

"Your Grace, Duchess Selenice, what were your thoughts on the mass-letter-writing campaign to captured RHN officers?" a female reporter asks Eimear.

"I felt that it was a good idea on the morale side, assuming the RMN didn't try to block communication in revenge."

"Your Grand Grace?" the reporter asks, wondering about Shannon's thoughts on the question.

"Um, I replied to a handful of them, to try to not go insane. They were very nice. I agree with Eimear's response."

"Do you know if any RHN officers are dating any RMN officers?" yells a reporter from PR at Admiral Bellefeuille. The pair of officers are standing on a balcony, so they don't get trampled, as the reporters stand on the sidewalk and try to yell questions up at them.

An irritated Jennifer Bellefeuille replies coldy (despite the brutal heat),"No, I don't, and such a question is inappropriate, regardless of who's dating who. You were told that this interview would be covering the recent battle of Elvana only, not whatever gossip you wanted. Don't ask Abigail, either." It's too hot in these dammed mess dress uniforms! I wish I didn't have to wear the hat and thick uniform outside. If I could, I'd have you idiots out of your jobs, and replaced by Navy personnel, she thinks.

"How close is Admiral Foraker to Admiral Hemphill?" another reporter asks.

"Do not test my temper, such a question is inappropriate. If you ask me one more stupid question, I will stop answering questions altogether."

"What is the plan for the captured SLN personnel?" a reporter asks.

Rather upfront, but it's at least better than the relationship gossip, Jennifer thinks.

"The plan is to keep them either in RHN or ESDF hands, and to treat them in accordance with the Deneb Accords."

The same reporter follows up with, "Then why did Admiral Foraker ban having SLN captains wipe their databases?"

Any hope at these reporters not being idiots because the Committee fell is gone, Jennifer thinks angrily.

"I can't always talk about a superior's actions, nor will I always offer my opinions on them." Jennifer replies, trying to protect Shannon's career.

"Do you have any blackmail tapes?" another reporter asks her.

Admiral Bellefeuille stands on her tiptoes, crosses her arms and glares a death glare at the reporters, "That's it. This interview is over. I will be recommending to Admiral Foraker that she not talk to you, and I recommend that you leave, before I'm tempted to ask my CO to ask her aunt to remove you from Elvana." She turns to Abigail, with a much kinder look on her face, "Abigail, we're going in." The two walk inside.

"Ma'am, what are your thoughts about Admiral Roberts comparing the RHN to Mesan pirates?" the young RHN officer, who has been trained as a naval journalist, asks.

Why do these reporters act like they were Intel officers trained by Admiral Lewis? I hope President Pritchart isn't watching this with her colleagues, Michelle thinks.

Michelle replies, "In my opinion, Admiral Roberts, who was appointed by the High Ridge government, wasn't very smart. I do not support that statement of his, and am speaking for my government, when I say that such a statement won't be approved now, and should never have been approved."

"Ma'am, what are your thoughts on the Grand Alliance?" the other officer asks her.

Wasn't expecting that as a question. Now, I have to think up a positive response on the fly. Amazing. At least I started getting press training as a kid, Michelle thinks.

"I think it is a very much needed alliance, especially given that the second war started because of manipulated diplomatic correspondence, aided by Manpower. That it was one of the few things we agreed about taking down, even when the wars were happening, only means we need to work harder to ensure its removal."

"Would you like to go to the new tech museum with me, tonight, Sonja? It'd just be us two." Shannon asks, hoping Sonja will say yes. They're sitting on the couch in one of the Palace's many rooms, both working on their datawork.

"Sure." Sonja says, eagerly. Shannon smiles.

After dinner, the two, with a small detail of Shannon's bodyguards, head out of the Palace for the new tech museum. Shannon and Sonja are both wearing dresses and hats, in proper formal Elvanian fashion.

When they get to the museum, Shannon says, "Because the thing got named after me, and the press are in town, we're going in the back entrance." Sonja nods, as she's learned to dislike reporters after having to talk to Manticorian reporters, as a public affairs officer, a handful of times. Shannon's going to think Manticorian newsies are easy, after her experiences with Havenite press, Sonja thinks.

Shannon grabs a map, at the front desk, after they've snuck in, and starts quickly scanning it, before rapidly noticing the hacking lab in the basement, as a tech nerd. Sonja sees the mentioned hacking lab at the same time, and the two look at each other, and nod.

"Hacking lab?" Shannon asks, smiling.

"Hacking lab." Sonja replies, also grinning.

The two head down to the basement on the turbolift and walk down the hallway together, and open the door. Shannon immediately looks concerned.