Bit of Analysis: Honor Harrington III

[Batman]

And we all know Weber never makes typos-like, for example, confusing gees and kps squared when quantifying acceleration figures

[Simon_Jester]

I'm just going to come out and say it, the failure of this book is that we've hardly seen the Andermani in the series, we know so little about them. Chinese colonists rescued by the eccentric Gustav Anderman, adopting the German language and several traditions, forming an Empire. But we understand so little of what drives them, of what specifically they want here in Silesia. Is it money? Land? Border security? We don't really see the Andy daily life or their planning sessions the way the Ominous Council of Haven let us. The book seems unwilling to introduce us properly to the Andies, but I'm just not as invested in them as I was with Haven, I need more to consider them a threat or villains, or people, anything but a narrative convenience.

Frankly, yes. We never see more than a little of the Andermani, they're this... thing... off in the distance. If they'd even received as much exposition as the League did in the first few books it was seriously discussed in, that'd be something. All we really know is "they're hardcore monarchists and they can more or less compete with Manticore and Haven in terms of ability to build a modern fleet."

"Got her, Skipper!" Harris announced, and Ferrero looked back down at her plot as a bright red icon abruptly appeared. It was no more than ten million kilometers behind Jessica Epps, only a little over half a light-minute, and Ferrero swore mentally. No matter how good the Andies' new stealth systems might be, there was no way Hellbarde should have been able to get in that close without being detected on passives even with Jessica Epps under complete em-con!

Well this looks bad. Helbarde ninjas Sittich. Half million klicks is an area in which they are very confident they can detect a stealthed ship even on passives.[/quote]Uh, that's ten million, not half a million. Half a million is too close to avoid energy engagement. That would be really impressive. Half a light-minute is the distance light travels in thirty seconds.

Christ, you made your bed, Ferreo, now everyone has to lie in it.

I forget what ship class Epps is, if it's ever said.

Without provocation? They fired on the Sittich, as far as Gortz knew, an Andy merchantman. Gortz had no way of telling she was a ringer, and they keep forgetting or glossing over that only the Manticorans knew the ship was a slaver.

I think they are assuming that Gortz 'should have' done a cursory search of his own database on his own country's merchant marine and concluded that the ship claiming to be Sittich is in fact half Sittich's size and (as I recall) a couple of hundred light years from the real Sittich's stomping grounds.

Now, is it reasonable for them to assume that the Andermani should automatically check their databases to avoid that sort of mistake? I don't know.

"At the same time, Chantilly—with merchant-grade sensors and from almost as far away as Hellbarde—was able to clearly identify the 'Sittich' Captain Ferrero was intercepting as at least two m-tons smaller than the ship that transponder code actually belongs to. Surely Hellbarde's ship list for the Empire's merchant marine is at least as up to date as ours is! I find it very difficult to believe that a merchant ship would be more capable of identifying her correctly than an IAN heavy cruiser."

Finally someone raises the issue of Hellbarde's defending the freighter, and it is possible they simply didn't think to check the mass readings, because Ferreo never told them to.

Yes. Again, in their minds that "check the logs to match this ship to our database" is probably a 'well of course they should have done that!' thing. Hindsight being 20/20 and all.

Alpha 2, the Rules so important they weren't even mentioned in the war warning given to Manty commanders right before the shooting started a decade ago.

...Could you expand on that bit?

"More precisely, Your Grace, according to Ellis—and George's first run at the data agrees with him—those are half missile pods. It looks like they sawed a conventional pod in half lengthwise and bolted the resulting abortion onto the ship right at the upper turn of the hull..."

Flatback pods, 5 missiles and they can be tractored flat onto the hull, letting any old CA carry 60-80 half-pods with no loss of accel. A clever innovation that slipped entirely past Manticore. And being inside the sidewalls protected by the many ships' defenses, takes a lot of the "use it or lose it" pressure off, like a pod-layer.

True. On a side note, I don't think they're "tractored on;" it's more like they're physically bolted in place with explosive bolts. Otherwise you'd have to design a whole new ship class with several times more tractor beams than they'd normally have needed a few years ago.

Limits of the links, a cruiser can control 50-60 missiles at once. The pods on the ship are blocking some of the backup sensors and fire-control links, but they can be easily dropped to clear them.

True, but once you drop them you're back into "use it or lose it" territory.

Captain Ellis bluffs the 8 Andy cruisers into leaving the Walther system, rather than tangle with 2 BCs heavy with 24 pods each. Apparently decoys can look like pods.

Four cruisers.

Schiller system dust-up. Unless the Andies were deliberately holding back, like the Manties just before Buttercup, their best missile range is 12 million klicks, (knowing velocities would help a lot) and their active combat EW still has a lot of catching up to do.

I'm honestly not sure if Weber had settled on this, but the light combatants Manticore has in Silesia at this time should not be MDM-capable. Supposedly Manticore has an extended-range single drive missile for light combatants, and it may well be that the Andermani have developed something similar to that.

"You're right, of course," Brigham agreed. "But Sternhafen's response to your message doesn't strike me as a good sign. If he's so unwilling to consider even the possibility that his man could have made a mistake that he's officially rejected any board of inquiry, it doesn't sound like he's very interested in containing the situation, does it?"

"No," Honor agreed somberly, remembering the uncompromising communique Admiral Sternhafen had released to the Silesian and interstellar media in response to her message to him.

Sternhafen's response to the Zoraster Incident and Honor's message to him about it.

Which is frankly moronic. "We don't CARE if the ship our cruiser was protecting was obviously not the real Sittich, shut up you assholes!"

That makes every dumb move the RMN's made in this crisis look smart and reasonable by comparison, in my opinion.

I must also assume that it would have been possible for Hellbarde's sensors to establish that that same vessel was squawking a false transponder code . . . and thus violating the sovereignty of our flag in contravention of solemn interstellar law. Given those facts and deductions, I see no reason to doubt the remainder of Duchess Harrington's analysis and explanation. In short, Herr Graf, your 'heroic' Kapitän der Sternen Gortz managed to kill virtually his entire crew and the complete company of a Manticoran heavy cruiser out of sheer, incompetent stupidity, and all in the name of allowing a vessel engaged in the filth and perversion of the interstellar genetic slave trade to escape interception and capture!"

Chien-lu knows the score.

For some reason I always hear him in this scene and imagine him speaking with a (sarcastic) Ah-nuld accent. It makes the whole thing sound more authoritative and makes Sternhafen sound dumber.

[Ahriman238]

"Got her, Skipper!" Harris announced, and Ferrero looked back down at her plot as a bright red icon abruptly appeared. It was no more than ten million kilometers behind Jessica Epps, only a little over half a light-minute, and Ferrero swore mentally. No matter how good the Andies' new stealth systems might be, there was no way Hellbarde should have been able to get in that close without being detected on passives even with Jessica Epps under complete em-con!

Well this looks bad. Helbarde ninjas Sittich. Half million klicks is an area in which they are very confident they can detect a stealthed ship even on passives.

Uh, that's ten million, not half a million. Half a million is too close to avoid energy engagement. That would be really impressive. Half a light-minute is the distance light travels in thirty seconds.[/quote]

D'oh!

Christ, you made your bed, Ferreo, now everyone has to lie in it.

I forget what ship class Epps is, if it's ever said.

By the name, and previous mention when introduced, it was a Saganami. Not the newer B or C variants, the original Edward Saganami-A.

Without provocation? They fired on the Sittich, as far as Gortz knew, an Andy merchantman. Gortz had no way of telling she was a ringer, and they keep forgetting or glossing over that only the Manticorans knew the ship was a slaver.

I think they are assuming that Gortz 'should have' done a cursory search of his own database on his own country's merchant marine and concluded that the ship claiming to be Sittich is in fact half Sittich's size and (as I recall) a couple of hundred light years from the real Sittich's stomping grounds.

Now, is it reasonable for them to assume that the Andermani should automatically check their databases to avoid that sort of mistake? I don't know.

Ferreo could have easily prevented the destruction of her command by just telling the Andermani to check their files. Instead she assumes, as Honor's staff does, that Gortz must know and is trying to horn in on the capture of the slavers the way he did the pirates earlier, and provoke her further.

"More precisely, Your Grace, according to Ellis—and George's first run at the data agrees with him—those are half missile pods. It looks like they sawed a conventional pod in half lengthwise and bolted the resulting abortion onto the ship right at the upper turn of the hull..."

Flatback pods, 5 missiles and they can be tractored flat onto the hull, letting any old CA carry 60-80 half-pods with no loss of accel. A clever innovation that slipped entirely past Manticore. And being inside the sidewalls protected by the many ships' defenses, takes a lot of the "use it or lose it" pressure off, like a pod-layer.

True. On a side note, I don't think they're "tractored on;" it's more like they're physically bolted in place with explosive bolts. Otherwise you'd have to design a whole new ship class with several times more tractor beams than they'd normally have needed a few years ago.

I may be confusing them with the later Manty flatbacks that include a tractor in the pod, though it makes little difference beyond ease of release.

Limits of the links, a cruiser can control 50-60 missiles at once. The pods on the ship are blocking some of the backup sensors and fire-control links, but they can be easily dropped to clear them.

True, but once you drop them you're back into "use it or lose it" territory.

Oh the terrible sacrifices that must be made to make every ship a podlayer.

Captain Ellis bluffs the 8 Andy cruisers into leaving the Walther system, rather than tangle with 2 BCs heavy with 24 pods each. Apparently decoys can look like pods.

Four cruisers.

Two groups of four cruisers. They split up to flank him so he flew to meet the nearest group with the fake pods.

"You're right, of course," Brigham agreed. "But Sternhafen's response to your message doesn't strike me as a good sign. If he's so unwilling to consider even the possibility that his man could have made a mistake that he's officially rejected any board of inquiry, it doesn't sound like he's very interested in containing the situation, does it?"

"No," Honor agreed somberly, remembering the uncompromising communique Admiral Sternhafen had released to the Silesian and interstellar media in response to her message to him.

Sternhafen's response to the Zoraster Incident and Honor's message to him about it.

Which is frankly moronic. "We don't CARE if the ship our cruiser was protecting was obviously not the real Sittich, shut up you assholes!"

That makes every dumb move the RMN's made in this crisis look smart and reasonable by comparison, in my opinion.

Man is clearly frustrated with Manticoran high-handedness (and who isn't, these days?) and assumes they're trying to cover up. I don't see how he can say a joint investigation is an insult to Andy sovereignty with a straight face, though

I must also assume that it would have been possible for Hellbarde's sensors to establish that that same vessel was squawking a false transponder code . . . and thus violating the sovereignty of our flag in contravention of solemn interstellar law. Given those facts and deductions, I see no reason to doubt the remainder of Duchess Harrington's analysis and explanation. In short, Herr Graf, your 'heroic' Kapitän der Sternen Gortz managed to kill virtually his entire crew and the complete company of a Manticoran heavy cruiser out of sheer, incompetent stupidity, and all in the name of allowing a vessel engaged in the filth and perversion of the interstellar genetic slave trade to escape interception and capture!"

Chien-lu knows the score.

For some reason I always hear him in this scene and imagine him speaking with a (sarcastic) Ah-nuld accent. It makes the whole thing sound more authoritative and makes Sternhafen sound dumber.

I... have trouble picturing that. The indignant speech sounds pretty much nothing like Arnold.

[Terralthra]

Christ, you made your bed, Ferreo, now everyone has to lie in it.

I forget what ship class Epps is, if it's ever said.

Both Hellbarde and Jessica Epps are heavy cruisers.

Without provocation? They fired on the Sittich, as far as Gortz knew, an Andy merchantman. Gortz had no way of telling she was a ringer, and they keep forgetting or glossing over that only the Manticorans knew the ship was a slaver.

I think they are assuming that Gortz 'should have' done a cursory search of his own database on his own country's merchant marine and concluded that the ship claiming to be Sittich is in fact half Sittich's size and (as I recall) a couple of hundred light years from the real Sittich's stomping grounds.

Now, is it reasonable for them to assume that the Andermani should automatically check their databases to avoid that sort of mistake? I don't know.

It's said explicitly in Honor Among Enemies that while most navies acknowledge false transponders as being a legitimate ruse de guerre, but the Andermani Empire have never ever subscribed to that view, and view falsely using Andermani transponder codes as an act of war. if you're going to have that view, it's probably standard procedure to verify that a ship using Andermani transponders is actually the ship it claims to be.

"You're right, of course," Brigham agreed. "But Sternhafen's response to your message doesn't strike me as a good sign. If he's so unwilling to consider even the possibility that his man could have made a mistake that he's officially rejected any board of inquiry, it doesn't sound like he's very interested in containing the situation, does it?"

"No," Honor agreed somberly, remembering the uncompromising communique Admiral Sternhafen had released to the Silesian and interstellar media in response to her message to him.

Sternhafen's response to the Zoraster Incident and Honor's message to him about it.

Which is frankly moronic. "We don't CARE if the ship our cruiser was protecting was obviously not the real Sittich, shut up you assholes!"

That makes every dumb move the RMN's made in this crisis look smart and reasonable by comparison, in my opinion.

Well, it seems that Sternhafen was ordered to escalate tension so as to front-burner the issue of Manticoran/Andermani policing of Silesia. Immediately dismissing the RMN's attempt to defuse the situation would fit, if, as Rabenstrange points out, it's not the best way from a goal-oriented point of view.

[Batman]

I... have trouble picturing that. The indignant speech sounds pretty much nothing like Arnold.

I'm seconding that. No way does Von Rabenstrange sound like the Governator.
And while I'll happily agree that Ferrero should have told Hellbarde to check their sensor profiles because 'this can't possibly the real Sittich you morons' instead of simply assuming the Andies knew that, she had ample reason to assume they would know...and apparently decided to interfere anyway so reminding them of that little factoid likely wouldn't have made much of a difference.
And that would have been with Ferrero thinking clearly when the woman was furious at the time (and rightly so).

[Simon_Jester]

By the name, and previous mention when introduced, it was a Saganami. Not the newer B or C variants, the original Edward Saganami-A.

Hm. The Saganami-A flight has a fourteen-missile broadside and twenty antimissile weapons per broadside (ten countermissile tubes, ten laser clusters)

Ferreo could have easily prevented the destruction of her command by just telling the Andermani to check their files. Instead she assumes, as Honor's staff does, that Gortz must know and is trying to horn in on the capture of the slavers the way he did the pirates earlier, and provoke her further.

She could have, she's wrong, but my point is that Gortz is being MORE negligent, because he's the one who fires nuclear missiles because of a slaver's lies.

I may be confusing them with the later Manty flatbacks that include a tractor in the pod, though it makes little difference beyond ease of release.

Well, it kinda does, because the Manty flatpack pods don't have to be physically in contact with the hull as far as I can tell.

Man is clearly frustrated with Manticoran high-handedness (and who isn't, these days?) and assumes they're trying to cover up. I don't see how he can say a joint investigation is an insult to Andy sovereignty with a straight face, though

Well, I get his motives, my point is that they're really stupid. It's much easier to justify Ferrero's irritation than Sternhafen's, among other things because Sternhafen is sitting in an office while Ferrero is on a belligerent warship in a combat zone.

I... have trouble picturing that. The indignant speech sounds pretty much nothing like Arnold.

It works for me, not for everyone. It's mostly just that I find the deep voice and Austrian accent, combined with berating someone for stupidity, to be effective.

It's not the character of Ah-nuld himself that I feel is appropriate here, it's the sound. If we didn't know Ah-nuld as an empty-headed muscleman, it would seem less incongruous. Though, yeah, still incongruous.

I... have trouble picturing that. The indignant speech sounds pretty much nothing like Arnold.

I'm seconding that. No way does Von Rabenstrange sound like the Governator.

I don't know, I don't normally think of him sounding that way. But that particular speech just amuses me when I imagine it delivered in that accent.

[Ahriman238]

"I'm not really sure, Skipper," Gruber replied in a tone which made the simple statement answer at least half a dozen questions. Like "Why do you think we're so interested in a pair of Havenite destroyers?" or "Why do you think we've sat here in orbit for the last four days, piling up penalty fees for late delivery?" or "What in the galaxy do you think is going on in your captain's putative mind?"

Bachfisch's lips hovered on the edge of a smile as the thought passed through his brain, but it was a fleeting one.

"One of them is staying exactly where she's been ever since we got here," Gruber continued. "But the other one is headed out-system."

Bachfish takes an interest in two Haven destroyers.

The Havenite destroyer loped steadily onward with the lean, greyhound grace of her breed, apparently oblivious to the cart horse of a freighter rumbling stolidly along behind her. It was unlikely that she was genuinely unaware of Pirate's Bane's presence. On the other hand, grav waves were the broad, gleaming highways of the ships which plied the depths of hyper-space. Given the sheer immensity of the universe, it was unusual for two ships not actively in company to find themselves within sensor range of one another even in a grav wave, but it was scarcely unheard of. After all, if two ships were headed in the same direction, they were bound to chart their courses to use the same grav waves. And some freighter skippers made it a point to ride the coattails of a transiting warship, whatever navy it belonged to, as a way to acquire a sort of jury-rigged escort through dangerous space.

Merchies often race a bit to try and follow after warships heading in the same direction, and ships can sometimes meet on a grav wave, all reasons Bachfish thinks he might be able to get away with following the destroyer.

Havenite warships had always been rare in Silesia. Most of those currently in the Confederacy, unfortunately, were crewed by fugitives who had turned to an unauthorized life of crime now that the officially approved brigandage which StateSec had waged against the People's Republic's own citizens had come to a screeching halt.

But those outlawed vessels wouldn't normally have been found in a system like Horus. Unlike altogether too many other star systems in the Saginaw Sector, Horus had that rarest of Silesian phenomena: an honest system governor. The sector had enjoyed more than its share (even for Silesia) of corrupt and venal sector governors, and the current holder of that office was no exception to the rule. But Horus had lucked out somehow in the man sent to administer its internal affairs. Pirates, smugglers, and slavers found a most unpleasant welcome in Governor Zelazney's jurisdiction. Besides, these two ships—obviously operating in company—were much too new to be pirates. Neither of them could have been more than one or two T-years old, at most, which meant they'd been launched and commissioned only after Thomas Theisman overthrew the Committee of Public Safety.

So what were a pair of brand spanking new destroyers of the Republican Navy doing in a parking orbit around the planet of Osiris?

Planet Osiris in the Horus system. Lots of Havenite marauders, former StateSec and loyalists to the old regime.

"First," Bachfisch said reasonably, "like you, I can't think of a single reason for a Havenite warship to be headed for any of the inhabited systems out this way. Second, he's angling steadily across this grav wave, heading roughly southwest. If he maintains his present course, he's going to separate from the wave in the middle of nowhere, Jinchu. He's not headed to pick up another wave, and according to our charts, there's not an inhabited system within a good seven or eight light-years of where he'll leave this one. Which suggests to me that he's probably headed right about here."

He tapped another light code on the display. It was the small red-orange starburst that indicated a K-class main sequence star, but it lacked the green circle which denoted an inhabited system, and no name appeared beside it. Instead, there was only a catalog number.

You've found the system Tourville's Second Fleet is hiding in. Tell the good Captain what he's won.

"And I suppose it's not fair to our people for me to be doing it in the interests of my own kingdom. None of them signed on to be Preston of the Spaceways. But I can't just sit there and watch something like this happen."

Ferreo mentioned her XO "playing Preston of the Spaceways" by maybe taking a pinnace to disable the fleeing Sittich. I'm starting to get curious about this Preston fellow. Is he a historical figure or just pop culture?

"You did say local sensor conditions are bad?"

"Yes, Sir. In fact, they pretty much suck, and they're getting worse. Particle count is way up, and that grav eddy at three o'clock is funneling them straight over us."

"In that case, I can think of two possible explanations for her behavior," Dumais said. "The one I like better is that she is riding our heels as cover against pirates and she wants to stay close enough to be sure we'll notice if anyone hits her."

"And the other one is that she's closing up to hold us on her own sensors?" Singleterry asked, then tugged at the lobe of her left ear as Dumais nodded. "I guess that might make sense. But that would suggest she really has been deliberately shadowing us."

Peeps Havenites wondering why a merchantman is following them into the rear-end of nowhere.

"You think she might be a warship?"

"It's certainly possible. Play a few games with your nodes, and you can make a warship's impeller wedge or Warshawski sails look like a merchie's."

"A Manty?" Singleterry suggested unhappily.

"Possibly. On the other hand, it's more likely to be an Andie out here. For that matter, it could actually be a Silly. This is officially their territorial space, after all, even if everyone else seems inclined to forget that. One of them could have noticed us hanging around in Horus and gotten curious."

"I guess an Andie or a Silly would at least be better than a Manty," Singleterry said. "But either way, I don't think the Admiral is going to be very happy if there's anything to your suspicions."

Reasonable guess, we've some of the games people can play with impellers, if not sails.

"We don't have any idea of what his sensor capabilities might be, do we?" he asked Singleterry after a moment.

"Assuming he's hanging back at the very edge of his ability to hold us on his scanners," the tac officer replied, "I'd say that they aren't quite as good as ours are."

"Which would seem to suggest that there's a better chance it's a Silly than an Andy," Dumais mused aloud.

"Or," Singleterry countered, "that it's a merchie with a really good commercial-grade sensor suite. Given how risky a neighborhood this can be, a lot of the merchant ships that spend time out here have much better sensor packages than anything we'd see closer to home."

So nice to see professionals thinking things through carefully after the multi-sided debacle of Ferreo and Gortz.

"I don't think we can risk making any assumptions where this bird is concerned, Stephanie. I suppose it still possible that it's pure coincidence that he's back there, but it strikes me as unlikely. And the one thing we can't do is lead anybody straight to the Fleet. Unfortunately, we're already close enough to the Fleet rendezvous that anyone with half a brain should be able to narrow the volume down without much difficulty. So we'd better go see who it is."

"What do we do if it turns out it is a warship?" Singleterry asked.

"If it's a warship, then it's a warship." Dumais sighed. "There's provision in the ops order for the Admiral to shift to another star system if he has to. We don't want to do it, because it's always possible that the jump off order could reach Horus before we got Ambassador Jackson and Hector informed as to the new rendezvous point. Unfortunately, if this is a warship, we won't have much choice, unless I want to risk creating a fresh interstellar incident by opening fire."

-snip-

"And if it turns out this really is a merchie?" Singleterry asked.

"In that case, our options are a little broader," Dumais pointed out. "First of all, a merchie isn't going to argue with a warship if it tells him to heave to and be boarded. Secondly, we could put a prize crew aboard her and hand her over to Admiral Tourville. He could hold her at the fleet rendezvous indefinitely, if he had to, and the assumption when she didn't turn up at her destination as scheduled would simply be that one of the pirates operating out here had picked her off. If we're ordered to carry out the attack, he can release her after the fact with an apology and probably a fairly stiff reparations payment from the Government."

"And if we're never ordered to attack?" Singleterry asked very quietly, and Dumais grimaced again. He knew what she was really asking, because their orders had made it crystal clear that if no attack was ever launched, then Second Fleet had never been here. Exactly what the Republican Navy might be expected to do with a merchant ship full of people who knew Second Fleet had been here wasn't something he really wanted to consider. Even so, he knew it would be far better for that to be a merchantman rather than a warship.

"We'll just have to cross that bridge when we come to it," he told his tac officer after a moment.

Again, reasonable.

Unfortunately, he'd forgotten about Honor's artificial arm. The move he'd just attempted had depended upon its victim's reaction to leverage against her elbow joint. Which hadn't worked out quite the way his reflexes had assumed it would in this particular case. Honor's counter had caught him out of position and completely by surprise, and he'd hit the mat hard. In fact, he'd hit it rather harder than she'd intended, because her reflexes hadn't assumed that he'd be left quite as open as he had by her left arm's failure to flex properly.

Another advantage to the artificial arm. It doesn't always respond the normal way to holds or strikes.

"Tim says Pirate's Bane just passed the perimeter patrols, My Lady," the armsman replied, using the flag lieutenant's first name instead of the more formal rank titles he was usually careful to employ out of deference to a young man's dignity. Now he met his Steadholder's eyes, and his expression was taut. "He says she's damaged—badly."

I suspect so, if they had to overcome a destroyer to come back.

"And she ordered you to stand by for boarding?"

"Yes." Bachfisch grimaced. "I wouldn't have been too crazy about that under the best of conditions, but out in the middle of nowhere, dealing with a Havenite warship, I really didn't want an armed boarding party to discover that the 'merchie' who'd been shadowing them was armed to the teeth. Besides, there wouldn't have been much point in following her if we'd just let ourselves be hauled off and incarcerated."

"Assuming they'd been willing to simply incarcerate you, Captain," Lieutenant Commander Reynolds put in quietly.

"That thought did occur to me, Commander." Bachfisch grimaced again. "I know there's been a change of government in the People's Republic, but I'm inclined to take that with a grain of salt where the safety of my own people is concerned. Besides, if they're here covertly, it might be . . . inconvenient for them if witnesses to their presence ever turned up."

Suppose I can't blame him for that attitude, the new and shiny Republic has a ways to go before anyone, it's own people most of all, will trust it.

"But either way, I didn't want a Havenite boarding party aboard the Bane. If Hecate had been a pirate, it would have been easy enough. Just let them come in close to drop their pinnace, then run out the grasers and blow her to hell." He shrugged. "We've done that often enough.

"But this wasn't a pirate, and I didn't want to kill anyone I didn't have to. Maybe I was too squeamish. Or maybe I was just stupid. Anyway, I refused to be boarded."

"Was that when she opened fire?" Honor asked quietly when he paused.

"Yes and no," Bachfisch replied. Then he sighed. "She certainly did fire," he said. "The only problem is that I'm still not sure it wasn't intended solely as a warning shot to encourage us to cooperate. We were so close by that point that her captain may simply have chosen to use an energy mount instead of a missile, and the shot did miss. But it didn't miss by very much, and I didn't feel I could take a chance—not with a regular warship already in energy range. And besides," he admitted, "I was nervous as a cat." He shook his head. "At any rate, I jumped. I didn't pull the trigger, perhaps, but I did stop requesting him to stand clear and order him to. And I also ordered the plating over our weapons bays jettisoned."

"At which point," Gruber put in harshly, "they definitely opened the ball."

-snip-

"The entire 'engagement' lasted about twenty-seven seconds," Bachfisch said. "As nearly as I can determine, Hecate hadn't even cleared completely for action. Her people weren't even in skinsuits, and only four of their broadside laser mounts appear to have been manned. As soon as they saw our weapons, they opened fire with those four and blew the ever living hell out of two of our main cargo holds, three of our starboard graser mounts, and our backup enviro plant. They also killed eleven of my people and wounded eighteen more."

"Nineteen," Gruber corrected grimly. Honor glanced at him, and he jabbed a finger at Bachfisch.

What happened to Pirate's Bane after the last chapter ended. And this is why you never half-ass calling the crew to battle stations nor readiness.

"No, Your Grace," Gruber agreed. "But you're not the government that warship belonged to. At any rate, we're prepared to present the evidence of our own sensor logs before any admiralty court and to stand by an impartial verdict on our actions. At the moment, however, any court would be considering the actions of a Silesian-flag vessel holding a warrant as a Silesian Navy auxiliary merchant cruiser. As such, we could argue that we had a legitimate Silesian security interest in investigating Hecate's actions and intentions. If we hand them over to the Manticoran authorities, however, we bring the Star Kingdom officially into all of this. From all we've heard out here about the current relations between the Star Kingdom and the Republic, I wasn't at all sure that would be a good idea."

Pirate's Bane will hold on to their forty-odd prisoners for the moment, the only survivors.

"Fritz says Captain Bachfisch will recover fully," Honor told her assembled staff and senior flag officers two hours later in the briefing room aboard Werewolf. "Unlike some of us," she added wryly, "the captain responds quite well to regeneration. It will take him a while to grow new legs, but he should be fine. And under the circumstances, I believe he and all the rest of his wounded personnel are definitely entitled to have the Navy pick up the tab on their medical bills."

Wonders of regen.

"With all due respect, Dame Alice," Reynolds replied, "we do know at least a little. For one thing, there's a fragment of a report which refers to the fact that Hecate was assigned to this Second Fleet's third task group. If it's organized into at least three task groups, then it's obviously a fairly good-sized force. And since Hecate's survivors are being so intensely uncooperative with us, I think we have to assume that whatever reason it was sent out here for has something directly to do with us. And I'm very much afraid that I can think of only one scenario which would send a large Havenite fleet to an uninhabited star system this close to Marsh in complete secrecy."

They have an idea that there's a large Haven fleet nearby, probably for nefarious purposes.

"There may something to that," Yu said slowly. Of all the officers in the compartment, he was probably the least happy. "On the other hand," he continued with stubborn integrity, "much as I would prefer for my old homeland not to be the heavy of the piece, there's no way they would sent a force as heavy as the one Commander Reynolds is postulating this far if they didn't seriously intend to use it. They may be waiting for orders from home to kick off the attack, and they may actually be hoping they'll get recall orders, instead. But the mere fact that they've sent an attack force into a region where they know the Star Kingdom is already confronting a possible war scenario indicates all sorts of things I'd really rather not think about."

Yu is a practical man like that, if they're ordered to attack, they will, conscience be damned. The question isn't are these people hoping they'll get recall orders and get to go home, no fuss, no mess, it's what to do now that they know the fleet is here.

"Actually," she said, "I have made up my mind. Alice," she turned to Truman, "I'm going to pull Werewolf out of your task group to hold her here. I'll swap you the Glory from the Protector's Own to replace her; she's a little bigger, but her emissions signature is close enough that I doubt anyone who sees her will realize she's Grayson and not Manticoran. Then I want you to take your entire group and run a LAC sweep through the star system Hecate was headed for. And I want you to be obvious about it."

There was a moment of silence, then Truman cleared her throat.

"May I ask why you want me to be obvious, Your Grace?" she asked quietly and a bit more formally than usual.

"First," Honor told her with a tight smile, "I don't want any more accidents. If we seem to be sneaking LACs into the middle of their fleet under stealth, then there's entirely too much chance that they might mistake it for a serious attack. We don't need that when things are already this tense with the Andies." Several heads nodded, and she went on. "Second, I want them to know that we know they're here."

Gunboat diplomacy, in the most literal possible sense.

Lester Tourville frowned as he contemplated the unhappy implications of DeLaney's reminder. There could be any number of reasons for Hecate's failure to arrive as scheduled. Unfortunately, he couldn't think of one of them that he liked. And whatever it might have been, his orders were clear. It seemed extremely unlikely that anything could have given away Second Fleet's presence, but extremely unlikely wasn't the same thing as impossible. Nor was it impossible, however unlikely, that Hecate's nonarrival was the result of something besides the normal hazards of navigation.

"All right, Molly," he sighed. "Pass the movement instructions. I want to pull out for the alternate rendezvous within the hour."

Ships disappear sometimes. Truth is, they were incredibly lucky that Bachfish stumbled over the tin cans, which were only separated from the Fleet on courier duty because the Haven embassy that was to pass on their go orders had no dispatch boats. As it is, Tourville is relocating.

"No, Ma'am." Captain Goodrick shook his head. "We've swept the system pretty thoroughly. I suppose it's remotely possible that there could be one or two stealthed pickets hiding out there somewhere. After all, any star system is a mighty big haystack. But there's no way there's anything I'd call a fleet inside the system hyper limit."

No trace of Second Fleet.

George Reynolds had finished his systematic dissection of every fragment Captain Bachfisch's people had been able to extract from Hecate's mangled computers. It was unpleasantly evident from those fragments that Thomas Theisman's navy was extremely good at maintaining operational security. No one aboard Hecate had been in a position to initiate any sort of data purge—not while Pirate's Bane was blowing their ship apart around them. And Reynolds had confided to Honor that it was fairly evident that Lieutenant Ferguson, the "civilian" electronics specialist Gruber had sent across to Hecate's wreck to tackle her computers, was not merely military in background but extremely familiar with Peep naval hardware and software for some reason. Despite the catastrophic damage the destroyer had suffered, it seemed evident that Ferguson had gotten everything that was left in her computers, and there was actually a great deal of background information.

But there was very, very little about the organization and nature of this "Second Fleet" . . . and none at all about its purpose in Silesia.

The best crypto and computer security in the world isn't as good as simply not writing down anything truly important. Ok, so that's unfeasible in a military, or with space navigation. You get my meaning.

She sighed heavily, her face creased with a worry she was careful never to allow anyone else to see, and faced the most unpalatable conclusion of all. If the Republic of Haven was prepared to launch an attack clear out here, then they must be simultaneously prepared to do the same thing much closer to home. Committing an isolated act of war on the scale represented by an attack on Sidemore Station in a region so far away from the front line between them and the Manticoran Alliance would be an act of lunacy. This had to represent only a single aspect of a far larger operations plan . . . and the ships committed to it, however many of them there were, likewise had to represent a force Thomas Theisman felt he could afford to divert from the truly critical theatre of operations.

-snip-

But there was nothing she could do about that from here. She'd made every defensive adjustment within her own command area that she could think of in the absence of any fresh instructions from home. All she could do now was to report the scraps of information they'd managed to recover from Hecate to the Admiralty and hope someone back home drew the appropriate conclusions.

Good luck with that.

And the discrepancies truly were tiny, he reflected. High Ridge and Descroix had reacted almost precisely as he'd anticipated. All he'd had to do was to remove a half dozen minor connective words to make their response sound even more uncompromising. Best of all was the way they'd reacted to the one critically ambiguous sentence he'd managed to get included in the Pritchart-approved draft of the Republic's own communique.

More creative editing of the mail. Giancola has now enlisted Grosclaude, the ambassador to Manticore, in his scheme.

"Exactly." Theisman nodded. "They're specifically asking whether or not we intended to include Trevor's Star in our demand that they acknowledge in principle our sovereignty over the occupied star systems. It seems obvious to me that we didn't, but I suppose, looking back at our own note, that I can see how its wording might have been misconstrued. If they believe we're upping the ante by demanding the return of a star system which they've formally annexed, then I'd have to call that a fairly ominous development."

"In the greater scheme of things, it's only one of several strands that worry me," Pritchart told him. "And if they'd ever actually sit down to talk with us in good faith, we could tie up all of the confusion in a day or two. On the other hand, I see your point."

"But there's another side to it, too," Denis LePic said. The Attorney General tapped the hardcopy of Descroix's note where it lay on the conference table in front of him. "They're asking for clarification," he pointed out. "I think that's significant. Especially when you couple it with this part at the end where they're talking about the need to 'break the logjam of mutually antagonistic positions.' "

-snip-

"On the other hand," she made herself say, "Tom and Denis are right to point out that there's at least a potential opening in their question about Trevor's Star. So I propose that we send them a reply specifically and definitively ceding sovereignty over that single system to them."

Several of Giancola's longest term supporters looked rebellious, but the Secretary of State himself nodded with every appearance of approval.

"What about their closing section?" LePic asked. "Should we take some notice of it and express our own desire to break this 'logjam' of theirs?"

"I'd advise against that, actually," Giancola said thoughtfully. LePic looked at him suspiciously, and the Secretary of State shrugged. "I don't know that it would be a bad idea, Denis; I'm just not sure it would be a good one. We've been to some lengths to establish our impatience with the way they've been fobbing us off for so long. If we send them a very brief note, possibly one which responds only to a single point from this one, " he tapped his own hardcopy of the Descroix note, "and does so in a way which makes it obvious that we're attempting to address their legitimate concerns—their legitimate concerns, Denis—but ignoring what Tony just called 'eyewash,' then we make it clear we're willing to be reasonable but not to retreat from our insistence that they negotiate seriously. In fact, the briefer the note, the more likely it is to make those points for us, particularly after how lengthy our previous notes have grown."

-snip-

"Very well, then," Pritchart said. "Let's see just how brief and concise—in a pleasant way, of course—we can be."

The reply note ends up saying "The Republic of Haven does not claim sovereignty over Trevor's Star." Simple. Impossible to miscommunicate, misinterpret or misconstrue.

He'd made only one, very small change in it—deleted a single three-letter word—and for the first time, he felt a definite flicker of uncertainty.

At least, until Giancola strikes the word 'not' from that sentence.

It was odd, he reflected, that he should come to this point . . . and that even now, he'd broken no laws. Perhaps there ought to be a law specifically requiring a secretary of state not to make any further adjustments to the agreed-upon language of a diplomatic note. Unfortunately, there wasn't. His quiet but detailed examination of the relevant law had made certain of that point. He'd broken at least a dozen State Department regulations dealing with the filing of true copies, but a good defense attorney could argue that they were only regulations, without statutory authority from Congress, and that as the Secretary of State, his own department's regulations were subject to his own revision. He'd need a sympathetic judge to make it stand up in court, but he happened to know where he could find one of those.

Up until, he could justify the alterations, maybe survive in court even if he'd inspire Prichart to begin that legal battle to clarify that she can fire or demand the resignation of her cabinet members. This, however, is not clarifying or stiffening their position, it is a total reversal.

Yet even as he thought that, he knew he wasn't going to allow any doubts, any uncertainty, to deflect him. Not now. He'd come too far, risked too much. Besides, whatever Pritchart might think, it was obvious to him that the High Ridge Government would never agree to negotiate in good faith. He was in the process of educating the rest of the Cabinet to recognize that. In fact, he thought with grim amusement, he was actually educating Pritchart. But the truth hadn't gone fully home.

No. He needed one more lesson. One more Manticoran provocation. Hanriot, LePic, Gregory, and Theisman remained committed to the idea that somehow, some way, there had to be an accommodation which could be reached if only the Republic looked hard enough, waited long enough, possessed its soul in sufficient patience. The rest of the Cabinet was coming steadily around to Giancola's own position . . . and so, for that matter, was Eloise Pritchart, unless he missed his guess. But her present frustration was no substitute for the strength of will to look the Royal Manticoran Navy in the eye with the defiance that would make High Ridge recoil. She would still flinch if that happened, still fumble the chance to achieve her own goals. All he needed was one more push to generate the proper sense of crisis, reveal her weakness, and consolidate the Cabinet behind his solution to it.

The sheer arrogance of the man beggars belief. I rate him as 0.7 High Ridges. And he continues to see politics and diplomacy purely as a dick-measuring contest, where High Ridge and Prichart shall both inevitably fall to his sheer manliness.

Janacek's dropped jaw closed with a beartrap-click, and the disbelief in his eyes turned into something much hotter as he took in the newcomer's appearance. White Haven had every right to appear at Admiralty House in uniform, and Janacek had no doubt at all that the sight of the four gold stars on the earl's collar and that glittering galaxy of ribbons explained his yeoman's failure to simply send the intruder about his business. Much as he wanted to, the First Lord really couldn't fault the man for that, and his jaw clenched even tighter as that same uniform's impact washed over him. It was a somewhat different emotion in his own case, because had they both been in uniform, his collar would have borne only three stars. And when last he'd been on active duty, it would have borne only two.

Heh. White Haven drops in on Janacek at Admiralty House.

" 'Private correspondence' from Admiral Harrington, I presume." Janacek's eyes were hard as flint. "Correspondence divulging sensitive information to an officer who not only had no compelling security need to know but isn't even currently on active duty!"

"Security considerations don't come into it," White Haven retorted. "The information Duchess Harrington shared with me isn't classified and never has been. Even if it were, My Lord, I believe you would discover that all of my security clearances are still in effect. And that as a member of the Naval Affairs Committee of the House of Lords, I have a 'need to know' which transcends the normal uniformed structure of Her Majesty's Navy."

"Don't you split technical hairs with me, 'My Lord'!" Janacek glared.

How petty. Pretty sure Hamish in in the right on this one.

"That's not your affair, My Lord," Janacek replied.

"You're in error," White Haven said flatly. "I realize you report to the Prime Minister, not directly to the Queen. But Her Majesty is also in possession of this information." Janacek's eyes went wide, and the earl continued in that same flat, almost robotic tone. "I'm here at her behest, as well as my own. If you doubt that, My Lord, I invite you to com Mount Royal Palace and ask her about it."

"How dare you?" Janacek rose at last, planting both knuckled fists on his desk and leaning over it. "How dare you attempt to blackmail me?!"

"Who said anything about blackmail?" White Haven demanded. "I simply informed you that the Queen also wishes to know what her Admiralty is prepared to do about the situation in Silesia."

"If she wants to know, there are proper channels through which she may inquire," Janacek snapped. "This isn't one of them!"

"Unfortunately," White Haven said icily, " 'proper channels' seem to be somewhat . . . constricted these days." He smiled again, his eyes cold. "Think of this as the Gordian knot and me as another Alexander, My Lord."

"Fuck you!" Janacek snarled. "Don't you dare come walking into my office and demand information from me! You may think you're God's gift to the fucking Navy, but to me you're just one more pissant admiral without a command!"

"I find myself singularly unimpressed by your view of me," White Haven replied contemptuously. "And I'm still waiting for an answer I can deliver to the Queen."

"Go to Hell," Janacek growled.

That's not a great message to be sending your monarch.

"At the moment, the Admiralty's official reaction is that the Sidemore Station commander's report contains far too little detail for any definitive conclusions to be drawn."

"Excuse me?" White Haven's eyebrows rose.

"All that we—or Admiral Harrington—know," Janacek retorted, "is that a single Republican destroyer engaged—or was engaged by—an armed merchant auxiliary of the Silesian Navy commanded by a half-pay Manticoran officer who was dismissed his ship for cause forty T-years ago. That virtually the entire crew of the destroyer was massacred in the ensuing action. And that the captain of the armed auxiliary in question handed over fragmentary records which he claimed to have obtained from the wrecked destroyer's computers."

-snip-

"To convince us of exactly what Admiral Harrington was convinced of," Janacek said with the patience of someone speaking to a very small child. "Our relations with the Republic are deteriorating steadily. You know that as well as I do. And despite all of his public statements of confidence in his navy's abilities, Theisman isn't at all certain of his ability to stand up to us. So he sent his two destroyers off to Silesia with orders to draw our attention there in order to convince us he was sending forces to threaten Sidemore. Obviously what he wants is for us to divert still more of our strength to Silesia, thus weakening ourselves at the decisive point if the cease-fire should fail."

Claw at sand with foot, insert head.

"Do you seriously believe any of that?" White Haven asked almost conversationally, and Janacek swelled with fury.

"Of course I do!" He shook his head angrily. "Oh, I'm sure we have some of the details wrong, but there's no way—no way in the universe—Theisman would even contemplate genuinely sending a force as powerful as the one Harrington is postulating that far away from the decisive theater at a time like this! I don't doubt that their ops plan came apart on them. Certainly I don't believe they deliberately sacrificed an entire destroyer crew just to convince us their information was genuine! But the only thing that makes any sense is that this was intended as some elaborate diversionary effort."

All of which assumes Haven has no more ships than they publicly announced, which Honor has already concluded must be false if they'd send any number of ships to Silesia.

"Will you at least put our system pickets and station commanders on a higher state of readiness and reinforce Trevor's Star?" White Haven demanded.

"Our system pickets and station commanders are always at a high state of readiness," Janacek shot back. "As for Trevor's Star, the system picket—as you're perfectly well aware—is already extremely powerful, and the terminus forts are online and fully ammunitioned. To further reinforce Third Fleet at this particular moment would only increase tensions between the Republic and the Star Kingdom without providing any practical increase in the system's security."

"So you're telling me that alerting our commanders and reinforcing Third Fleet are politically unacceptable options?"

"In essence, yes," Janacek said unflinchingly, and White Haven gazed at him for several silent seconds. It was obvious that the First Lord had no intention of being swayed, and finally, the earl shook his head.

"Do you know," he said in a conversational, almost pleasant tone, "if I hadn't heard it with my own ears I wouldn't have believed it was possible for you to get even stupider."

Wow, just wow.

"I reiterate, Edward. In my opinion as First Space Lord, we either have to reinforce Sidemore significantly, or else we have to draft new instructions for the station commander, reducing the scope of what we expect her to do with the forces she has."

"I don't think that's politically possible," Janacek said slowly. "Not right now. Not when we're already in such a delicate position with the Republic. Even if it's not exactly what Theisman has been trying to convince us to do, it would be too great a concession of weakness."

"It would be an admission of reality," Chakrabarti replied crisply.

"No, it's out of the question," Janacek said firmly.

"In that case," Chakrabarti said, "I see no option but to tender my resignation as First Space Lord."

Janacek stared at him in utter disbelief.

"You can't be serious!"

"I'm afraid I can, Edward." Chakrabarti shook his head. "I won't pretend I'm happy about it, because I'm not. But I've been telling you for months that we've got too many forest fires. In my opinion, we have got to reduce our obligations and consolidate our forces. In fact, I deeply regret having earlier supported such deep reductions in our naval strength."

First Spacelord Chakrabarti goes on a journey of personal discovery and learns that he always had a heart, brain and spine.

"But there isn't anywhere else!"

"There's always Grayson," Chakrabarti said flatly.

"No! No, I refuse to beg those neobarb bastards for help!"

"I know you don't trust them, and I know you don't like them. Hell, I don't like them myself!" Chakrabarti barked a laugh. "But they've got the naval strength to reinforce our pickets in the occupied systems sufficiently to give the Republic pause . . . if they'll do it."

Janacek's jaw clamped, and he glared furiously at the First Space Lord. The confrontation with White Haven had left his emotions lacerated and raw. It had also left him determined to prove once and for all to that superior, sanctimonious, supercilious son-of-a-bitch that he wasn't fucking infallible after all. And that he and his precious "Salamander" weren't going to call the tune for the Admiralty's piping the way the two of them had when Mourncreek was First Lord.

And now this. All very well for Chakrabarti to suggest at this late date that they go crawling to Benjamin Mayhew and his precious High Admiral Matthews. He wasn't the one who'd had to deal with the insufferable, arrogant, religious fanatic barbarians and put them in their places! No, that had been Janacek's job. So of course it was easy for Chakrabarti to propose that the First Lord eat dirt and beg Grayson to save their bacon now!

Janacek has made no such discovery.

"Kuzak!" Janacek spat out the name like a fishbone. Theodosia Kuzak was the one senior fleet commander he'd been unable to get rid of. He'd had to choose between her or White Haven, given the way the citizens of San Martin worshiped the pair of them. White Haven might have liberated the system, but Kuzak had commanded the fleet which protected Trevor's Star for almost ten T-years. He'd wanted desperately to fire her right along with her precious friend White Haven, but High Ridge had overruled him. The Prime Minister had been unwilling to expend the political capital involved in firing both of the flag officers the San Martinos held in such high regard.

How Theodosia Kuzak remained in active service despite being both smart and competent and not remotely a bootlicker.

"I don't think you and I are going to agree on this," Chakrabarti said after a moment. "So let me ask you one more time. Will you agree to ask the Prime Minister to modify our Silesian policy so that we can bring sizable portions of Task Force Thirty-Four home, or else to explore the possibility of seeking Grayson reinforcements for our system pickets?"

"No," Janacek said flatly.

"Very well." Chakrabarti stood. "In that case, I submit my resignation, effective immediately."

"You can't do this!"

"Yes, I can, Edward."

"You'll be ruined!"

"Perhaps I will. It's certainly possible. But in my judgment, it's far more likely that I'd be 'ruined' if I simply sat by and watched the shuttle crash."

Chakrabarti resigns, effectively removing the only sane man from Admiralty House, even if he was something of a toady, when he saw serious problems on the horizon, he did try and warn his boss.

[Ahriman238]

By the name, and previous mention when introduced, it was a Saganami. Not the newer B or C variants, the original Edward Saganami-A.

Hm. The Saganami-A flight has a fourteen-missile broadside and twenty antimissile weapons per broadside (ten countermissile tubes, ten laser clusters)

Apparently the Epps was winning until the Hellbarde took out a fusion plant with a lucky hit.

Ferreo could have easily prevented the destruction of her command by just telling the Andermani to check their files. Instead she assumes, as Honor's staff does, that Gortz must know and is trying to horn in on the capture of the slavers the way he did the pirates earlier, and provoke her further.

She could have, she's wrong, but my point is that Gortz is being MORE negligent, because he's the one who fires nuclear missiles because of a slaver's lies.

Everyone is at fault and everyone is negligent. People are still dead, and more will die because Sternhafen is hardly better than the captain's in that.

[Mr Bean]

It's sometimes jarring how Weber writes his characters. We get three dimensional figures like Robert Pierre or even Samuel Mueller who you can see his slide to the bad so easily and quickly. Both of them have goals and go about them in terrible ways while Pierre is much more sympathetic than Mueller but in each you can see men who in a different time and place could have been good. While those like Oscar Saint-Just or Seth Chernock have no personality development but feel like real people.

Then you get those like Ransom, or Burdette or Janacek who seem like cardboard cutouts to be knocked down. Even Descroix while we get next to nothing has hints of a personality. Likewise so does High Ridge but there are bare hints for what we get out of them. Heck even Elaine Komandorski (The short lived wife of North hollow and former slave) has character if only by contrasting her against the nutcase North Hallow family.

Which makes those like Janacek all the more jarring. He has to have SOME good points besides birth to reach as a high as he has. Something... anything throw me a bone here Weber.

[Ahriman238]

"So much for suggesting that there might be some way to move forward with negotiations!" Elaine Descroix snarled.

For once, not even Marisa Turner seemed inclined to argue with her. The latest communique from Eloise Pritchart had arrived less than six hours earlier, and the entire Cabinet had been stunned by its terse, brutal rejection of any possibility of compromise.

They got the note. The one that now says "The Republic of Haven does claim sovereignty over Trevor's Star."

"This whole thing is sliding out of control," New Kiev objected. "Someone has to show at least some vestige of restraint, Michael!"

"Maybe someone does, but it's not us!" Descroix snapped, and thumped her fist on the hard copy of the note Grosclaude had delivered. "We can't, Marisa! You and I have had our differences in the past, and I'm sure we'll have them in the future. But Pritchart has to know that what she's done is to reject the absolute minimum we would have to demand under any peace agreement. If we allow it to stand, it renders the final conclusion of any treaty absolutely impossible. As Michael says, no government—not even one led by Allen Summervale's resurrected ghost!—could concede this point and survive."

"Someone's got to be reasonable!"

"Not it!"

"Do you suppose," New Kiev suggested hesitantly, "that it might be worthwhile to suggest the possibility of a direct ministerial level conference? If we were to invite Secretary of State Giancola to personally visit the Star Kingdom, then perhaps it might be possible to put the brakes on even at this late date."

"I can't fault your motives for suggesting the possibility, Marisa," High Ridge replied heavily. "But I think that before we issue any such invitations, we have to make it plain we're not prepared to be dictated to. The first step is to make it absolutely clear to Pritchart and her administration that this outrageous escalation of her demands is completely unacceptable. Once we've pruned their expectations back to something which might conceivably be acceptable to us, it would make an enormous amount of sense to invite Giancola—or possibly even Pritchart herself—to visit Manticore in a bid to restart the peace process on a new basis."

And Manticore's considered response is... to assert their dominance clearly before making nay sort of conciliatory gesture. Valen, I hate the HRG. Not because of their evil or corruption, but for stupid they are and how their endless conferences bloat the story and weigh it down. Oh well, let's check in on Grayson for a little sense.

"Actually," Paxton said quietly, "the deterioration you refer to started well over a T-year and a half ago, My Lord." White Haven looked at him, and the intelligence director shrugged. "There was never any real hope of a treaty, but it's only been in the past eighteen T-months or so that Pritchart began really pushing the Star Kingdom for some sort of significant progress."

Has it been eighteen months of story-time already? It must be 1920 then.

"In all fairness to Janacek," Matthews said in the voice of a man who manifestly found it very difficult to be anything of the sort, "he doesn't have a great deal he could reinforce with. I'd imagine that he's hoping desperately that everything will blow over without ever coming to actual fighting. If the Republic does attack, he probably figures he can do a repeat of your relief of Basilisk from Trevor's Star using units of Home Fleet direct from Manticore."

"Then he's dreaming," White Haven said flatly. "Even if he had Home Fleet sitting out on the Junction, which would leave Manticore and Sphinx effectively unprotected, he couldn't get them through the Junction and into support range of Theodosia's fleet before an attacking force could pin her against San Martin and force her into action." He laughed harshly, the sound cold and ugly. "I found that out when I couldn't stop Giscard from blowing the entire Basilisk infrastructure to Hell!"

"Oh, I know that," Matthews snorted. "The problem is that I don't think Janacek does."

Home Fleet can be at Trevor's Star in a day, mind the wormhole could still put them pretty far from the action, and an awful lot can happen in a day.

"Do you think Janacek would accept a squadron or two of our SD(P)s to support Third Fleet?"

"I doubt it very much, Your Grace," Paxton said before White Haven could respond. Everyone looked at him, and he shrugged again. "Janacek has made his attitude towards Grayson abundantly and unfortunately clear. He doesn't like us, he doesn't trust us, and he finds the very thought of asking us for help humiliating and demeaning. I'm sure he'll find some other justification for turning the offer down. He'll probably convince himself that moving Grayson warships into the disputed area would constitute a provocative escalation. But if that's not his reason, he'll find another one."

Which is exactly the excuse Janacek uses.

"But at the same time, I don't really expect an early attack on us here."

"Why not, Your Grace?" Matthews asked. It wasn't a challenge, only a question.

"Because they've been trolling diplomatic bait in front of us for the last six months in an effort to get us to withdraw from the Alliance," Benjamin said.

White Haven jerked upright in his chair, and even Matthews looked astonished, but Paxton only sat there looking inscrutable.

"Their efforts haven't succeeded, Hamish," Benjamin told the earl with just a hint of a smile. "And they certainly never suggested that military operations were imminent. But it's fairly evident to me that they've been attempting to split the Alliance for some time, and I really couldn't tell you how successful they may have been elsewhere. We've been politely noncommittal, but you may have noticed that we didn't exactly blow the whistle on them to the rest of the Alliance and the galaxy at large, either. Hopefully, they think that's because we're covering our bets by keeping the door open for a possible future agreement. That there's at least the possibility that we're pissed off enough with High Ridge to cut our losses and sign up with them—or at least agree to stay out of their way—if the austen drops.

Even Grayson, they try this with.

"That's all problematical, of course. But what matters just now is that I read their diplomacy as implying that they're very tightly focused on the Star Kingdom. Unless I'm very mistaken, they see Manticore's defeat as the only means by which they're going to be able to reclaim their occupied territory. They don't want to fight anyone else. For that matter, I don't think they want to fight the Star Kingdom; they just don't think they have any other option.

Truth, and possibly they're correct about having no other way of getting their former systems back. Because the moment peace concludes, there goes the state of emergency, general elections, the HRG will lose the Commons for sure, lose their emergency income and possibly dissolve altogether.

"No. If I commit forces to Trevor's Star at all, I'm not going to ask anyone if I can send them. I'm just going to send them."

White Haven blinked as Benjamin's statement drove home to him once again the difference between the personal authority the Protector wielded and that which the Constitution allowed to Elizabeth.

Yeah, Benjamin can do that.

"But how could we get them there?" Matthews sat back in his chair and rubbed his chin. "It's going to take us at least a few days—probably a week, minimum—to organize and plan the kind of movement it sounds like we're talking about. And it's over a hundred and fifty light-years from Grayson to Trevor's Star. That's over three weeks' voyage time. Do we have an entire month to get into position?"

"I don't know," White Haven replied, "but I don't think we can assume we do. Not if they've already deployed forces to Silesia."

"In that case, we won't assume it," Benjamin said. "And we won't spend three weeks getting there, either. We'll use the Junction."

"The Junction?" White Haven looked at the Protector. "How are you going to do that, Your Grace? If Janacek and High Ridge won't request your assistance, what makes you think they'll let you go sailing through the Junction in front of God and everybody? At the very least they'd be deeply humiliated, and if they've convinced themselves that strengthening Trevor's Star with Manticoran units would be 'provocative,' they certainly won't want you reinforcing it with Graysons!"

"Actually," Benjamin said grimly, "I don't much care what the two of them would like, Hamish. And as for their trying to prevent us from using the Junction, I don't think that would be very wise of them. Under Article XII of the Manticoran Alliance Charter, any treaty partner has free and unlimited access to the Junction for its warships. If I decide I want to send the entire damned Navy through the Manticoran Wormhole Junction, I have the legal right to do so and be damned to anyone who tries to stop me."

Travel time from Grayson to Trevor's Star, 3 weeks to cover 150 LY. Also, all signatories to the Manticoran Alliance have free and unlimited access to the Junction, at least their warships do. Someone is about to get a heck of a wake-up call when two squadrons of Gryson podnoughts and screen cruise up to the Junction and hare off to Trevor's Star without so much as a 'by your leave.'

Thomas Theisman sat in his own chair at the conference table, as shocked and almost as furious as Pritchart herself as he looked back down at the critical passage of the latest note from Manticore.

"I don't understand it," LePic muttered. "Why would they do this? We told them our territorial demands didn't include Trevor's Star. We told them that in so many words."

Theisman nodded almost unconsciously, for he shared his friend's confusion fully. Why, when the Republic had outright announced its willingness to renounce all claim of sovereignty over Trevor's Star had the Manties effectively threatened to unilaterally withdraw from the peace negotiations on the grounds that the Republic had demanded that sovereignty be returned to it?

This is a better time to be asking questions than to be getting furious.

" 'In response to the Star Kingdom's request for clarification as to the Republic's view of the status of the Trevor's Star system,' " she read aloud in a hard, tight voice, " 'the Republic specifically does not claim sovereignty over that star system.' " She slammed the note back down on the tabletop. "Not claim sovereignty, Walter! I fail to see how we could possibly have been any clearer than that!"

Sorry, I was incorrect about the specific text of the message.

"I'm afraid there's one very simple possible explanation," Tony Nesbitt said. All eyes swung to him, and he shrugged. "This is about as bald faced a misrepresentation of the truth as anyone could possibly have presented. It's not a misunderstanding; it's a lie. It's an effort to shift the full responsibility for the failure of the negotiations onto us. The only reason I can see for them to do that is because they intend to break off those negotiations, and they want their people and the rest of the galaxy to believe it was our fault."

Sadly, a reasonable thing to believe in these circumstances.

"There's always time to let reason have its say, Madame President," Giancola replied. "That's the most important single fundamental principle of diplomacy. And it's not as if we have to respond to this immediately. No one outside the Cabinet, with the exception of Ambassador Grosclaude, knows anything about the specific content of this note. If we keep a lid on this, at least to the extent of not waxing publicly furious over it, then we've got a chance to cool tempers down and work our way through it."

"No, we don't," Pritchart said flatly, and Giancola felt his smile congeal ever so slightly as something about the President's iron tone sounded warning bells.

"Madame President—"

"I know all about the gentleman's agreement about respecting the confidentiality of official diplomatic communications," Pritchart grated. "But as far as I'm concerned, it no longer applies."

"Madame President—!"

"I said it no longer applies, Arnold!" She shook her head. "The only reason they could possibly have drafted this piece of crap," she said, "was to justify exactly the scenario Tony's just described. Which means that at some point, probably after they attack us, they're going to publish their version of our diplomatic correspondence. And judging from this," she thumped the Manticoran note again, "their version of it isn't going to bear very much resemblance to reality. Well, if that's what they have in mind, I'll damned well see the truth released to the newsies and the galaxy at large first!"

So Prichart is going to release the note she thinks they sent and the reply, to an obviously opposite message, to the public and call the HRG out as a gang of filthy liars. And while the HRG has swept one inconvenient note under the rug and edited it to moderate it's tone, the bulk of the chop-work has been done by their own Giancola who is now learning the lesson of the man who pulled the tiger's tail, namely that some forces and events are a lot easier to set in motion than to restrain after you've accomplished what you wanted.

Don't you just hate it when you outsmart yourself?

But he hadn't counted on the sheer, fiery passion of Pritchart's anger. And that, he suddenly realized, had been remarkably stupid of him. She'd fooled him. She'd insisted on being so calm, so magisterial. On thinking things through and 'giving peace a chance.' And because she'd been and done those things, he'd expected her to go on doing them. He'd counted on at least one more round of notes in which he would magically soothe away the tension over Trevor's Star. But that was because he'd forgotten that before she was ever President Pritchart, before she was ever People's Commissioner Pritchart, Eloise Pritchart had been "Brigade Commander Delta" . . . one of the three top field commanders in the most effective single guerrilla movement to have fought against the Legislaturalists before the Pierre Coup.

Arnold Giancola felt a sudden, icy sinking sensation as he realized just how completely he'd misread her probable response to his carefully engineered Manticoran "provocation."

"As far as I am concerned," she said in a voice of hammered iron, "this travesty, this . . . farrago of lies, constitutes a unilateral decision to break off negotiations with us. I intend to lay it before a joint session of Congress, and on the basis of its obvious dishonesty and transparently disguised justification for the Star Kingdom to permanently annex planets occupied by our citizens regardless of those citizens' desires, announce my intention to resume active military operations!"

That is a problem with thinking of everything in terms of "balls," damn sure the former Aprilist and StateSec Commissioner, Saint-Just's fair-haired girl even as she led an underground movement against him, has a lot more balls than you do. And off we go once more to war.

"While I'm being diplomatic," Georgia said, "allow me to congratulate you both on your election to the House of Commons and on the power base you seem to be building there. I trust you'll forgive me if I don't repeat those congratulations in public, since Stefan and the Prime Minister would never speak to me again if they caught me exchanging pleasantries with the enemy. And, of course, Countess New Kiev would probably do something far worse than that."

"I'm sure she would," Montaigne said with a blinding smile. "Indeed, I spend the occasional evening contemplating the degree of irritation I must be causing both of them. Well, all three, I suppose, counting your husband. Of course, I have to wonder if anyone does count him. Including yourself."

"I beg your pardon?" Georgia stiffened, coming upright as abruptly as the luxuriously enfolding chair allowed. Her voice projected both surprise and an edge of anger, but there was another emotion behind those she'd deliberately allowed herself to show. A sudden, abrupt tingle of anxiety. A suspicion that perhaps Montaigne's cheerfulness might turn out to have been a very bad sign indeed.

"Oh, I am sorry!" Montaigne said, with every appearance of sincerity. "I did say my social graces leave something to be desired, didn't I? I certainly didn't mean to denigrate your husband. I simply meant that it's fairly well known in political circles that the Earl depends heavily on your . . . advice, shall we say? I wouldn't want to be tacky enough to go about using phrases like 'the power behind the throne' or anything equally cliché-ish, but surely you know that no one in Landing doubts that Earl North Hollow follows your guidance very closely."

Cathy Montaigne meeting Georgia Young, now whatever shall they talk about?

"I doubt that will be necessary," Zilwicki told her. He smiled, but the smile, Georgia noticed, never touched his eyes at all. Nor did he look at Montaigne. His attention was completely focused upon their guest, and it was difficult for Georgia not to shiver under its weight.

"The reason we invited you here," he told her after a moment, "was to offer you a certain opportunity. One I think you'd probably be wise to accept."

"Opportunity?" Georgia repeated calmly. "What sort of opportunity?"

"The opportunity," Montaigne replied in a voice which was suddenly calm, almost cold, and very, very focused, "to withdraw from politics and leave the Star Kingdom."

"Excuse me?" Georgia managed not to blink in surprise, but it wasn't easy.

"It's really a very good opportunity," Montaigne told her in that same chill voice. "Especially the bit about leaving the Star Kingdom. I'd recommend that you do it as tracelessly as possible, too. If you agree with us, we're prepared to give you up to three days' headstart . . . Elaine."

Ah, one of those talks.

Unfortunately, as accomplished as you are, you're also merely mortal. I'm afraid you missed the odd witness along the way. I have three very interesting depositions, actually."

"Depositions which, I feel sure," Georgia said, still much more calmly than she felt, "must amount to no more than hearsay. Partly, of course, because I never had anything to do with the events Ms. Montaigne is describing. But also because if I had had anything to do with them, I would have been certain that I had no accomplices who might have been able to testify against me of their own first-hand knowledge."

"I'm sure you would have," Zilwicki conceded, and in someone else, Georgia might have thought she'd seen a twinkle in his eyes. Of course, the thought of "twinkle" and Anton Zilwicki were two concepts which were mutually contradictory, especially at a moment like this. There was too much Gryphon bedrock in the man. "Of course, as Duchess Harrington and Earl White Haven discovered not so very long ago," he continued, "hearsay testimony can be quite devastating in the court of public opinion."

Just kidding, this isn't about blackmail.

"I think," she said, in a flatter, harder voice, "that you may be underestimating my . . . influence with the Prime Minister."

"Ah! So he is in the files," Montaigne observed. "I always suspected he was. Still, Elaine, you'd have to have a very strong hold on him to convince him to stand loyally by you. Especially now, with the diplomatic situation deteriorating the way it is." She shook her head mournfully. "I'm afraid my reading of Baron High Ridge's character suggests that, under the circumstances, he'd be inclined to do the right thing and, however regretfully, disassociate himself from anyone who might once have been involved in such improper acts, however peripherally. After all, whatever you might want to do with the information on him in the files, there'd be any number of powerful people who'd feel compelled to stop you. I mean, think of how many people's careers and political agendas depend on his remaining in power. Unless, of course, you have enough on all of them to convince the entire Government to commit seppuku to save your own neck. Because—just between us—I don't think I'd count on them to do it out of loyalty and the goodness of their hearts."

Seems Dmitri Young had dirt even on the leader of his party. Explains a lot about the lemming-like intensity of focus the Conservative Association put into sparing Pavel's neck back in the day.

"Well, 'libelous' is a very value-laden term," Zilwicki said. "For example, if someone were to go to the LCPD and provide them with evidence that a certain Elaine Komandorski, shortly before she vanished and one Georgia Sakristos appeared on the scene, was involved in the murder of one of the PD's own criminal fraud investigators, I'm sure they wouldn't consider that libel. Not until they'd investigated very thoroughly, at any rate."

"I see." There was nothing at all pleasant about her voice now, but it was warmer than her eyes as she glared at him. "On the other hand, when it turned out that it was impossible to prove those allegations—because, of course, they would be completely false—I'm sure the courts would be inclined to consider it libel, given that the allegations would have originated with a political opponent. The Crown looks with a certain disfavor on people who attempt to use the courts as a political weapon, Captain."

"They certainly do," he agreed. "And while it pains me to admit it, it's entirely possible that there are enough judges in your famous files for you to survive even with the interesting odds and ends of evidence I've already managed to assemble. On the other hand, it doesn't really matter. I don't need to go anywhere near the police. Or the courts."

Judges too, wow the Youngs have really had a lock on Manticoran politics for a long time. Also the Crown take an interest in suit and counter-suit between political opponents, ensuring the courts aren't used for muckraking or scrabbling for advantage.

"Meaning that I found your first biosculpt technician," Zilwicki told her very, very softly. "The one who rekeyed the genetic sequence on your tongue."

So it is possible to remove the barcodes!

"Of course," Zilwicki went on, "there's no law against having the number removed, is there? Most freed slaves don't have the resources to pay for it, but having it removed certainly isn't a crime. But he kept the record of the original number, Elaine. The number of a slave the Ballroom has been looking for for years. The slave who sold out an entire freighter full of escaped slaves in return for her own freedom and a half-million Solarian credits. Do you know what they intend to do with that slave when they find her?"

Her history, selling out brother slaves to get out. Nasty, nasty, and the Ballroom has been looking for her ever since. Hey, Anton, Cathy? You wouldn't happen to know anyone associated with that famed group of outlaws, would you? Naturally, fixing the bar code is prohibitively expensive.

"What . . . what are you offering?" she asked hoarsely.

"Seventy-two standard-hours' headstart," he said bluntly. "I won't promise not to hand the evidence I've assembled over to the Ballroom. Cathy's 'butler' would never forgive us if I did. But Isaac will give me those three days, as well. He and Jeremy are reasonable men. They'll be unhappy with me, but they recognize the realities of horse-trading, and they know what sort of political stakes we're playing for here in the Star Kingdom. They'll settle for knowing where to start looking for you again."

In exchange for destroying the infamous blackmail files and quietly disappearing, she gets a three-day headstart.

"And think about this," Zilwicki told her. Her eyes snapped helplessly back to him, and the smile he gave her would have suited any shark. "Even if I didn't have the stomach in the end to turn you in to the Ballroom, I don't have to. I found the middleman you used to contact Denver Summervale. I have his deposition, too. I doubt very much that it would stand up in a court of law, but it wouldn't have to. I'd simply send it to Duchess Harrington."

Her last gasp effort "I don't think you could turn anyone over to Jeremy X, knowing what he'd do." fails. Hard. Not only are they resolved to this, Anton's last deposition is the one linking her to the murder of Paul Tankersley, and we all know what happened to everyone else involved with that affair, don't we?

[Terralthra]

"And think about this," Zilwicki told her. Her eyes snapped helplessly back to him, and the smile he gave her would have suited any shark. "Even if I didn't have the stomach in the end to turn you in to the Ballroom, I don't have to. I found the middleman you used to contact Denver Summervale. I have his deposition, too. I doubt very much that it would stand up in a court of law, but it wouldn't have to. I'd simply send it to Duchess Harrington."

Her last gasp effort "I don't think you could turn anyone over to Jeremy X, knowing what he'd do." fails. Hard. Not only are they resolved to this, Anton's last deposition is the one linking her to the murder of Paul Tankersley, and we all know what happened to everyone else involved with that affair, don't we?

On that point...didn't Elaine/Georgia arrange for Ramirez and the rest of Honor's former/current subordinates to find Denver Summervale, interrogate him, and so on? It was, if I recall correctly, an anonymous call, but she at least has something she could give the good Duchess as some sort of appeasement. Not that I think it would work, mind you, but she should at least have a response. "Denver Summervale...the man I gave up to Colonel Ramirez's torture?"

[Simon_Jester]

Ferreo mentioned her XO "playing Preston of the Spaceways" by maybe taking a pinnace to disable the fleeing Sittich. I'm starting to get curious about this Preston fellow. Is he a historical figure or just pop culture?

From the context, I think pop culture- someone whose exploits are simply too improbable to be real, and are presented as a sort of 'this is what no real person would actually get up to.' Something that bears the same resemblance to real naval affairs that the Horatio Hornblower novels did to the real Napoleonic Wars.

"Assuming they'd been willing to simply incarcerate you, Captain," Lieutenant Commander Reynolds put in quietly.

"That thought did occur to me, Commander." Bachfisch grimaced again. "I know there's been a change of government in the People's Republic, but I'm inclined to take that with a grain of salt where the safety of my own people is concerned. Besides, if they're here covertly, it might be . . . inconvenient for them if witnesses to their presence ever turned up."

Suppose I can't blame him for that attitude, the new and shiny Republic has a ways to go before anyone, it's own people most of all, will trust it.

Plus, the crew of the Havenite destroyer were discussing exactly that question of "well what will we do with the witnesses" the scene before.

Claw at sand with foot, insert head.

True although it's actually at least plausible- if Theisman were a little shorter on modern warships he might say "damn, we can't spare the forces to tackle Honor at Sidemore, add Second Fleet to the units attacking Trevor's Star, but send some light forces over to Silesia to stir up some shit and keep her pinned there until after the war starts, just in case High Ridge recalls her to help defend the Star Kingdom."

It's not a great plan, but it's a plausible plan if you think Theisman feels a bit... underequipped to take on the RMN's full strength.

"Of course I do!" He shook his head angrily. "Oh, I'm sure we have some of the details wrong, but there's no way—no way in the universe—Theisman would even contemplate genuinely sending a force as powerful as the one Harrington is postulating that far away from the decisive theater at a time like this! I don't doubt that their ops plan came apart on them. Certainly I don't believe they deliberately sacrificed an entire destroyer crew just to convince us their information was genuine! But the only thing that makes any sense is that this was intended as some elaborate diversionary effort."

All of which assumes Haven has no more ships than they publicly announced, which Honor has already concluded must be false if they'd send any number of ships to Silesia.

Actually not necessarily.

Remember, concentrating your forces at the decisive point is a core tenet of basic military strategy. If Haven is in fact planning a sneak attack on the RMN, with the aim of seizing territory, the decisive point is most likely Trevor's Star (which is the single most valuable holding Manticore has because of how easily it lets them push their forces further into Havenite space). Maybe Manticore if Theisman's somehow got his hands on so many ships he thinks he can win the whole war in a single battle by beating up the infrastructure of the Manticore Binary System.

Of course, Operation Thunderbolt was actually planned with the intent of destroying modern warships, to force Manticore back to the peace table. Not so much about seizing territory... but Janacek might reasonably suppose the Havenites would want to concentrate their modern forces at Trevor's Star or Manticore or other high-value targets, rather than waste a couple of squadrons of their modern wall going after Honor's ten modern ships.

And, in the event, arguably Theisman would have been better off massing Tourville's forces to hit Trevor's Star, because with a few more squadrons Giscard might have taken his chances and actually tried to take the system.

"Someone's got to be reasonable!"

"Not it!"

To be fair, as far as they know Haven just sent them a completely unreasonable demand: "We want Trevor's Star back" in unambiguous terms. Hard to imagine anything much more provocative, or much more indication that Haven is done with the talks.

Even Grayson, they try this with.

Trying to convince people to not fight is cheap compared to fighting them. It's kind of a Hail Mary maneuver, sure, but what can you do?

Theisman nodded almost unconsciously, for he shared his friend's confusion fully. Why, when the Republic had outright announced its willingness to renounce all claim of sovereignty over Trevor's Star had the Manties effectively threatened to unilaterally withdraw from the peace negotiations on the grounds that the Republic had demanded that sovereignty be returned to it?

This is a better time to be asking questions than to be getting furious.

The problem is that "someone's been editing our diplomatic notes" is almost unthinkably weird and treacherous. It's the sort of thing that only happens in bad novels.

I mean, put yourself in Pritchart's shoes. High Ridge sends you a batshit crazy response asserting his dominance that makes no sense in light of your previous note. Which is more likely: that someone in your own government is deliberately sabotaging the agreed wording of diplomatic notes in order to provoke a war...

...Or that High Ridge is an arrogant moron?

Because seriously, High Ridge IS an arrogant moron. You already knew that to be true, so it is by far the most likely explanation.

That is a problem with thinking of everything in terms of "balls," damn sure the former Aprilist and StateSec Commissioner, Saint-Just's fair-haired girl even as she led an underground movement against him, has a lot more balls than you do. And off we go once more to war.

Yes, or to borrow a quote from Shadow of Freedom, "Why is it people like you always think you're more ruthless than people like me?"

There are lots of precedents in real life for morons deciding to play a game of chicken, assuming that they'll win because they're braver than the other party. Sometimes it works, but when it fails it fails disastrously.

Judges too, wow the Youngs have really had a lock on Manticoran politics for a long time. Also the Crown take an interest in suit and counter-suit between political opponents, ensuring the courts aren't used for muckraking or scrabbling for advantage.

On the other hand, we get a pretty strong idea of what's wrong with Manticoran politics: everyone and their cousin Fred is corrupt and has potential Monica Lewinsky scandals or bribery cases or whatever lurking in the wings.

I mean, not literally everyone, but lots of people, so many that there's an obvious disconnect between the official values of the culture (which is what would blow these people out of the water if the North Hollow Files ever came to light) and the actual conduct of its aristocracy. It's not made explicit but it's obvious that there has to be a certain amount of decadence and hypocrisy going on among the Manticoran establishment for North Hollow's blackmail to have worked.

"Meaning that I found your first biosculpt technician," Zilwicki told her very, very softly. "The one who rekeyed the genetic sequence on your tongue."

So it is possible to remove the barcodes!

Well, if you can get someone to rewrite the DNA in your tongue, yeah... of course, that is going to be a bitch to do.

Her last gasp effort "I don't think you could turn anyone over to Jeremy X, knowing what he'd do." fails. Hard. Not only are they resolved to this, Anton's last deposition is the one linking her to the murder of Paul Tankersley, and we all know what happened to everyone else involved with that affair, don't we?

*BLAM!*

Yeah, that's a good move. And this is the story of why you do NOT fuck with Captain Zilwicki.

[Mr Bean]

Is is not mentioned in this very chapter Simon that the North hall files are something like 30% legitimate, 20% conjecture and 50% slanderous lies? The first Earl of North Hallow by all accounts must have hired a legion of private investigators targeting everyone in hopes of finding SOMETHING that would let him influence A to do B letting him be able to drop hints to C. I dunno maybe Manticore is enough of an old boys network that he can land multiple members of the nobility with one tidbit like that Crown Prince who recently took a bunch of people hunting an endangered species. The mentions in the files indicate a lot of corruption however as that one Liberal Judge and High Ridge both have possible fraud charges in their background and in the files.

[Simon_Jester]

I haven't read the book in something like five to ten years, sorry, I missed the detail.

That said, even if the files are 'only' 30% accurate that's still a very large number of corrupt individuals, especially if a substantial fraction of the other 20% of 'conjectures' are accurate things like "Gee, I wonder if Georgia Young is really Elaine Komandorski, who disappeared right around that time yada yada..."

I suppose saying "everyone and their cousin Fred is corrupt" is strictly inaccurate, but the success of the Files still requires a LOT of corruption going on behind the scenes that nobody else ever bothered to find out and punish.

[Ahriman238]

Is is not mentioned in this very chapter Simon that the North hall files are something like 30% legitimate, 20% conjecture and 50% slanderous lies? The first Earl of North Hallow by all accounts must have hired a legion of private investigators targeting everyone in hopes of finding SOMETHING that would let him influence A to do B letting him be able to drop hints to C. I dunno maybe Manticore is enough of an old boys network that he can land multiple members of the nobility with one tidbit like that Crown Prince who recently took a bunch of people hunting an endangered species. The mentions in the files indicate a lot of corruption however as that one Liberal Judge and High Ridge both have possible fraud charges in their background and in the files.

More like 30%, and large parts of the Manticoran nobility are exactly that much of an Old Boys network.

Here:

"You want the files for yourself, don't you?"

"No." It wasn't Zilwicki. It was Montaigne, and her level voice was like liquid helium. Georgia looked at her in disbelief, and the ex-countess shrugged. "I won't pretend that a part of me isn't tempted. But those files have done enough damage already. Oh, I could probably convince myself that the real criminals, the bastards who've broken the law and gotten away with it, deserve to be turned in and brought down in public, as spectacularly as possible. But the other temptation . . . the temptation not to turn them in." She shook her head. "It would be too easy to turn into another New Kiev and convince myself that the nobility of my purpose justified whatever tool I chose to use."

"Not to mention," Zilwicki rumbled, "the fact that a good third of the 'evidence' contained in those files was probably manufactured in the first place."

"Not to mention that," Montaigne agreed.

[Ahriman238]

"Do you think the Andies know Haven is sticking a thumb into the Silesian pie?" McKeon asked.

"I don't see how they could," Honor replied after a moment. "We only know about them because Captain Bachfisch told us. Unless they've been a lot sloppier somewhere else, I can't quite imagine their letting the Andies get a peek at them."

"I don't know," McKeon half-argued. "Pirates' Bane spotted their destroyers in Zoraster, and we know Andie naval intelligence is pretty damned good. I'd think there was at least a chance that they'd notice a pair of brand-new Peep destroyers hanging around here in Silesia."

Another typo, it was Horus not Zoraster.

But it's a good question, do the Andies know that Haven is around?

"When you were wondering whether or not the Andies knew the Republic was fooling around out here."

"What about it?" McKeon asked, cocking his head and frowning in thought.

"Well, it's just that if I were the Andies, I wouldn't be very happy about their presence. Especially not given how unhappy the Empire already seems to be about our presence out here."

"Forgive me, My Lady," Yu objected mildly, "but if I were the Andies, I might not be very upset at all by the prospect of having the Republic attack the people I'm already trying to squeeze out of Silesia. Worst-case scenario, either we beat them, or they beat us, and the winner is much weaker than he was before the engagement. Which means the Andies can basically either simply order the 'victor' out of the region, or move in with the virtual certainty that they can take whatever he has left."

"That's all true enough," Honor agreed. "But hasn't it occurred to you, Alfredo, that whatever the Andies are up to in Silesia may be the result of an error on their part."

"What error?" Truman asked. Honor looked at her, and the golden-haired admiral shrugged. "I can think of several errors they could have made. Which one did you have in mind?"

"The same mistake High Ridge and Descroix have been making for years, in a sense," Honor told her. "Maybe they've been assuming the war between us and the Republic was effectively over, as well."

It might just be a good idea to inform Chien-lu of Second Fleet's presence.

"With all due respect, why should they care whether or not the war is over?" Truman inquired. "The new management in Nouveau Paris doesn't seem especially interested in conquering the known galaxy, and the Empire is all the way on the far side of the Manticoran Alliance from Haven. Under the circumstances, I don't see Gustav and his advisors considering the Republic much of a threat to the Empire, whatever happens to the Star Kingdom. In fact, they'd probably be just as happy to see us involved in a shooting war with Haven again, because it would prevent us from reinforcing against them out here. For that matter, that's what the mere threat of renewed hostilities with Haven is already doing!"

"I understand all of that," Honor said. "And you may very well be right, Alice. But if Thomas Theisman is prepared to go back to war with the Star Kingdom under any circumstances, or for any reason, then he and Shannon Foraker between them must have done a lot more to equalize our technology advantage than anybody in Jurgensen's ONI is prepared to admit they could have. And if that's the case, then whatever balance of power equation Gustav may have been contemplating is probably pretty badly out of date. And whatever the new management in the Republic might really want, Gustav Anderman is not the sort of ruler to rely on the good intentions of a powerful neighbor. Especially not a powerful neighbor which, up to four or five T-years ago was into the conquest game in a really big way."

So maybe telling them accomplishes nothing, and maybe it just stirs up the pot a little. But maybe, just maybe, it changes everything.

"The Empire is a great believer in playing the balance of power game as the best long-term way to promote its own security," Honor said. "But if the Republic, which is already so much larger than the Star Kingdom, succeeds in destroying or at least seriously crippling the Manticoran Alliance, there is no balance of power. And the star nation which would suddenly emerge—or reemerge, perhaps—as the premier military power in this entire region would be governed by a system an Andermani monarch would be naturally inclined to distrust and fear."

"And one which had yet to demonstrate that it has the legs to last," Yu agreed.

More speculation. Apparently the Andermani are big believers in a stable long-term balance of power in the region.

"According to Perimeter Security, Sir," Kapitän der Sternen Isenhoffer said in the tone of a man who wasn't quite certain he believed his own report, "it's a single Manticoran ship of the wall. She's identified herself as HMS Troubadour, one of their Medusa-class SD(P)s. According to our current Intelligence appreciations, Troubadour is the flagship of their Rear Admiral McKeon."

"And this ship has arrived here at Sachsen all by herself?"

-snip-

"Forgive me, Sir," Isenhoffer said. "It's just that, on the face of it, it's so absurd that—" He stopped and seemed to give himself a mental shake. "Sir," he said, "according to Troubadour, she has Duchess Harrington aboard. And the Duchess has formally requested to speak personally to you."

A message might be hard to believe, so Honor is going to share her concerns with Chien-lu in person.

"As for what Troubadour's sensors might be able to tell her about our strength, my concerns are strictly limited. In fact, in some respects, I'd prefer for her to have an accurate appreciation of our strength. The sorts of 'mistakes' which have plagued us since that idiot Gortz got himself killed in Zoraster are dangerous, Zhenting. And more than just in terms of the additional people they've already killed.

"The Emperor may fully intend to secure our frontiers, and he may even be willing to go to war with the Star Kingdom in order to accomplish that if he must, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't prefer to do it without any more bloodshed. Nor do I care to be responsible for any more deaths that can possibly be avoided. Let her deliver whatever message she wishes me to have. And let her see what strength we have. If there is some way we can prevent further loss of life, then by all means let us explore the possibilities. And if knowing how powerful our forces are makes her more cautious or encourages her to press her own superiors for authority to concede the Emperor's demands, so much the better."

Chien-lu runs roughshod over his chief of staff, who insists that this is all some sort of trick, either to stall for time for reinforcements or to get a good look at their strength.

"But, Herr Herzog," Isenhoffer protested, "she's a Grayson steadholder. She'll insist upon bringing her armsmen to any meeting, and you know what the Emperor's feelings about anything like that have been since the Hofschulte affair."

"I do, indeed." Rabenstrange frowned again. Then he shrugged. "Explain the Emperor's conditions to her, Zhenting. If she can't accept them, then we'll be limited to an electronic meeting."

No weapons in the presence of someone a few heartbeats from the throne, Honor can bring her armsmen, but only if they leave their arms. AT least she keeps Nimitz.

Gustav Anderman had never been noted for his warm and trusting nature, but it was difficult to blame him for being even less so in this instance. Gregor Hofschulte had risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Andermani Marines. A man of impeccable loyalty, who had served his Emperor well for almost thirty T-years. And a man who had, with absolutely no warning, drawn his sidearm and opened fire on Prince Huang, the Emperor's younger brother, and his family. The Prince and his wife had survived; one of their children had not.

Precisely why and how Hofschulte had done such a thing remained unknown, because the lieutenant colonel hadn't survived the attack. Prince Huang's bodyguards had reacted almost instantly, and Hofschulte's body had been very badly mangled by the fire that killed him. According to ONI, at least some members of the Andermani security services believed Hofschulte had been "adjusted" to carry out the attack. Which, in a way, worried them much more than the possibility that a man who had been considered completely loyal might have snapped "naturally" and gone berserk with no warning at all. The Andermani military, like the Manticoran military, was supposed to be protected against things like adjustment. If someone had managed to crack those safeguards once, there was no guarantee they couldn't do it twice. Which, in turn, undoubtedly explained Gustav's draconian, across-the-board prohibition on arms in the presence of any member of the Imperial Family.

Huh. In hindsight, it's obvious what happened here, but I must not have thought too hard on it at the time, regarding it as a fluff incident. The Mesans have a nano-weapon that multiplies then waits for a signal or preprogrammed circumstances to jack the nervous system and seize crude control of the body, turning the infected into a sort of 'lone gunman' (that's a Kennedy assassination reference, not the X-files or spin-off.)

Military officers protected from personality adjustment, read: brainwashing.

"I assure you, Kapitän Isenhoffer, that I don't feel insulted in the least," she reassured the Andermani officer. "However, there is one small additional item I should deal with before meeting with the Herzog. Excuse me a moment."

Isenhoffer looked puzzled, but the confusion in his expression was nothing compared to LaFollet's expression as she urged Nimitz down from her shoulder and passed him to Simon Mattingly. Then she unsealed her uniform tunic and handed it to LaFollet. Her personal armsman gave her a very old-fashioned look, indeed, as he took the garment from her, and his look became even more old-fashioned as she rolled up the left cuff of her uniform blouse. The smile she gave him mingled impishness with just a hint of apology, and then she told her prosthetic hand to flex in a movement which should have brought the tip of her index finger into contact with the tip of her little finger. But the neural impulses which would have moved the fingers of her original hand in that pattern did something completely different now, and a rectangular patch of skin on the inside of her forearm, perhaps two centimeters long and one and a half across, suddenly folded back. A small compartment in the artificial limb opened, and as she closed her fist, a thirty-round pulser magazine ejected itself.

She caught it in midair with her right hand while LaFollet stared at her in disbelief, then smiled at Isenhoffer—who, if possible, looked even more astonished than her armsman.

"Forgive me, Kapitän," she said. "As you may know, I've experienced more than one assassination attempt of my own. When my father helped me design my prosthesis, he suggested a few small . . . improvements. This," she handed Isenhoffer the magazine, "was one of them."

She raised her hand between them and sent its artificial muscles another command. In response, her left index finger snapped abruptly and rigidly straight, and the hand's other fingers folded under, almost as if they were gripping the butt of a nonexistent pulser.

"I'm afraid I'd have to have the tip of the finger rebuilt if I ever used it," she told him with a whimsical smile. "But Daddy insisted that it would be worthwhile."

Honor's artificial arm has a pulser, with her pointer finger as the barrel and 30 rounds. One she casually walked past their rigorous security scanners before politely disarming herself before actually meeting the Imperial Prince. That's cool. And a definite show of trustworthiness, almost counter-productive in it's flamboyance.

"So, Zhenting, what did you think?"

Herzog von Rabenstrange and his chief of staff stood on Campenhausen's flag bridge, watching the glittering icon of HMS Troubadour as the Manticoran superdreadnought accelerated steadily towards the hyper limit.

"I thought—" Kapitän der Sternen Isenhoffer paused, then shrugged ever so slightly. "I thought that in many ways it all sounded very . . . convenient for Duchess Harrington, Sir."

There is that small issue.

"Perhaps so," Rabenstrange replied. "But consider this, Zhenting. The Republic has encouraged us to pursue our objectives in Silesia. True, they've done so only in private conversations, not publicly, but you and I have both read the Foreign Ministry's synopses of Ambassador Kaiserfest's discussions with their Secretary of State. Even allowing for a certain degree of corruption in transmission, Secretary Giancola was remarkably specific. And very encouraging."

He paused for a long moment, watching Troubadour's icon, then looked back up at Isenhoffer.

"Yet for all his specificity, Zhenting, he never once mentioned the possibility of Havenite operations in the Confederacy. Even more to the point, he specifically informed Kaiserfest that it would be impossible for the Republic to offer us even verbal support openly because of the Republic's internal public opinion."

"You think that he was attempting to maneuver us into a false position?" Isenhoffer frowned.

"I think it's certainly possible. At the very least, he obviously hoped to use us as a cat's paw, yet another way to distract the Star Kingdom while his own navy prepared its offensive. That much, of course, I'm sure the Foreign Ministry had already considered. But the fact that he never so much as hinted—as far as I can tell from the synopses, at least—that Haven was preparing to resume active operations strikes me as significant. Indeed, I would judge that he went out of his way to avoid even the least suggestion that such operations were being contemplated. Some, at least, of that could be no more than the maintenance of operational security. But the decision to send their own naval forces into the Confederacy without so much as mentioning it to us at the same time as they were encouraging us to embark upon an adventure here was at best . . . reckless."

That's because Giancola and the Haven government are operating at cross-purposes.

"On the face of it, it would seem ridiculous," Rabenstrange admitted. "But you've seen the same intelligence reports I have. For all of our inability to penetrate 'Bolthole's' security, it's perfectly obvious that Theisman and Pritchart have been able to build a substantially larger and more modern fleet even than the one they've admitted to possessing. Perhaps they've accomplished even more than we believe they have. Don't forget that for decades the Legislaturalists' foreign policy was based on a timetable of first the Star Kingdom, then Silesia, and then the Empire. If Pritchart and Theisman feel they have sufficient naval power, might they not to be tempted to revert to that policy now?"

"Nothing any of the analysts have reported would suggest that President Pritchart's mind works that way, Sir," Isenhoffer pointed out.

"Analysts can be wrong. Perhaps more importantly, Pritchart doesn't operate in a vacuum. I've never felt comfortable with our grasp of the internal dynamics of her government. It's impossible for us to know all of the factions and counter-factions she might find herself forced to cope with. And even if she was as reluctant to resort to active operations against Manticore as our analysts and her own public statements would seem to suggest, she certainly seems to have decided to do so anyway. And if she feels herself compelled to go back to war, then perhaps she also sees an opportunity to accomplish the traditional Havenite goal in this sector once and for all."

Ah the cold calculus between states, with intelligence on each other but still forced more of ten than not to speculate on the other party's motives.

"I don't think they even suspected Captain Conagher had deployed the drones, Ma'am." She smiled thinly. "Whatever else they've done, it doesn't look like they've solved our EW capabilities just yet."

-snip-

"At any rate," she continued after a moment, "we got good visuals on several of their ships. Admiral Bachfisch was right about their new battlecruisers, too. They have at least one pod-based design in service; we got confirming visual imagery on three of them."

"I wish I could say it was a surprise," Honor observed.

"You and I both, Your Grace," Brigham agreed. "But after seeing those strap-on pods of theirs, a surprise is one thing it isn't. As a matter of fact, I'd have been delighted if that were the only thing the drones had confirmed."

Honor crooked an eyebrow at her, and the chief of staff shrugged.

"They definitely have at least one SD(P) class in commission, Ma'am. We're not positive how many of them they have in Sachsen. For that matter, neither Captain Conagher's tac people nor George and I are prepared to give you any definitive estimate on their total ship strength in Sachsen. They'd clearly dispersed their units and gone to emissions control before we got far enough in-system to spot them all. But we picked up at least twenty superdreadnoughts, and the drones say that at least five of the twenty were SD(P)s."

"Darn," Honor said with a mildness which deceived neither Brigham nor herself.

"We didn't pick up any sign of CLACs," Brigham told her. "That doesn't prove anything, of course. And we did see an awfully high number of LAC drive signatures scattered around the system." She shrugged. "Call me paranoid, but to my suspicious mind, the existence of pod-based main combatants suggests that they have to have solved the problems of building something as simple as a LAC carrier."

So looks like the Andies have fully caught up to the Manties, perhaps not with Ghost Rider but they've amply compensated with the flatback pods. And there's still the question of whether they didn't spot the recon drones, or just pretended they didn't.

Lieutenant Commander Sybil Dalipagic watched the data code of the Silesian Confederacy diplomatic courier blink out of existence as it disappeared into the Junction's central terminus on its way to Basilisk. As she'd informed Starlight's astrogator, the dispatch boat's flight path had been nominal, but that hadn't kept her from sweating the transit, anyway. Diplomatic couriers were the one type of vessel with which Astro Control could not establish direct telemetry links. Dalipagic shuddered to think what would have happened if she'd even suggested to Starlight that she could have handled the entire transit much more safely and efficiently from her own console. The very idea would have violated at least half a dozen solemn interstellar accords, although in Dalipagic's professional opinion, those solemn accords were pretty damned stupid. It wasn't as if establishing an interface and an override with the ship's maneuvering computers would have in any way compromised the sacred integrity of its diplomatic files. Or, not at least if the people the dispatch boat belonged to had an IQ recorded in double digits.

Diplomatic couriers can't slave their controls to Astro Control to go through the Junction, for fear that any computer contact could somehow be used to hack the secure mail. Even if there should be zero physical or electronic contact between the ship's controls and the mail database. That may be more pointed in this case, Starlight is the courier carrying the 'go' order to Silesia and Tourville.

The comfortable, well worn rhythm of Dalipagic's thoughts faltered abruptly as the master plot suddenly altered. She stared at the thick rash of icons which had dropped unannounced out of hyper and begun decelerating towards the Junction. There were at least forty of them, and alarms began to whoop and wail as the ACS sensor platforms identified them as warships.

There was a brief, breathless pause—a break in the quiet background chatter of controllers in contact with transiting merchantmen—as the crimson-banded light codes of potentially hostile superdreadnoughts and battlecruisers headed directly for the terminus. The icons of the standby forts, far less numerous than they once had been, changed color, flashing almost instantly from amber to the blood-red of combat readiness, and the two battle squadrons assigned to support them changed color almost as rapidly.

It couldn't be an attack, Dalipagic's brain insisted. No one would be stupid enough to try something like this! But even as a part of her mind insisted on that, another part reminded her that there were no military transits at all scheduled for today.

The transitory instant of silence vanished as suddenly as it had come. Urgent, priority directions went flashing out over the communications and telemetry links as Astro Control reacted to the sudden, unanticipated threat. Merchantmen already on final held their courses, but anyone more than fifteen or twenty minutes back in the transit queue was already being diverted. Not without massive confusion and protests, of course. The last thing any merchant skipper wanted was to find herself stuck in the middle of a shooting confrontation between a fleet that size and the Junction's active forts. And the way that every one of them wanted to avoid that possibility was by making her own transit through the Junction. They could always take refuge from whatever might be about to happen in the Junction's vicinity by retreating into hyper-space, but if they didn't make their transits now, they might be delayed for weeks, or even months, with catastrophic consequences for shipping schedules.

Their protests at being diverted were vocal, imaginative, and frequently profane. Intellectually, Dalipagic understood and even sympathized with them. Emotionally, all she wanted was for them to get the hell out of the way.

She was explaining that, in a tone of complete, courteous professionalism, to a particularly irate and vituperative Solly, when the master plot changed yet again. The crimson bands disappeared from around the incoming warships, replaced by the friendly green of allied units.

Well, Dalipagic thought as she recognized the data codes of units of the Grayson Space Navy, this should be interesting.

GSN, coming through, going to help the Manties whether the Manties like it or not.

"Emergency transits," Stokes grated, "are one thing. Just turning up unannounced, sashaying into the middle of my transit patterns, and screwing an entire day's work all to hell is another. I'm not about to interrupt the normal traffic through the Junction just to allow you to carry out some sort of training exercise, Admiral!"

"Yes, you are, Allen," another voice said. Stokes' mouth froze in the open position, then closed with an almost audible click as another officer leaned forward into the field of MacDonnell's pickup. The newcomer wore the black-and-gold of the Royal Manticoran Navy, not the GSN's blue-on-blue. His ice-blue eyes were hard, and he smiled thinly as he saw the stunned recognition in Stokes' expression.

"Admiral MacDonnell," Hamish Alexander said coldly and precisely, "is acting under the direct orders of High Admiral Matthews and Protector Benjamin, himself. He is requesting transit instructions in strict accordance with Article V of the treaty of alliance between the Star Kingdom of Manticore and the Grayson Protectorate. If you require it, I'm sure he will be most happy to transmit the relevant section of the treaty for your perusal. In the meantime, however, the first elements of his task force will be arriving at the Junction threshold in approximately twelve minutes. They will be anticipating an immediate departure, via the Junction, for Trevor's Star. If they aren't assigned priority transit vectors upon arrival, I suspect that the repercussions will be . . . interesting."

There's something about Ham's way of dealing with bureaucrats I admire.

"Look," Stokes half-snarled, "I don't really give a good goddamn about all of that crap! If you want to use the Junction, fine. But you'll damned well take your own slot in the transit queue instead of coming through here and bumping anybody in your way!"

"We'll make transit as we arrive," White Haven replied coldly, "or there will be a formal protest from Protector Benjamin on Foreign Secretary Descroix's desk by this time tomorrow." He showed his teeth briefly. "Admiral MacDonnell brought it with him in case it might be needed. And that protest will be accompanied by a report from Admiral MacDonnell specifically listing the names of the Manticoran officers who refused to honor the Star Kingdom's solemn obligations under interstellar covenant. A covenant from which the Protectorate will offer to withdraw if the Star Kingdom finds its reciprocal obligations under it odious. Somehow, Allen, I don't think you want to be named in Admiral MacDonnell's report."

They brought their own protest letter. Nice. Poor Stokes, either he helps the people most on Janacek's shitlist or e gets to bear personal responsibility for an incident that could drive Grayson from the alliance on the eve of war, either way he's screwed.

[Simon_Jester]

Chien-lu runs roughshod over his chief of staff, who insists that this is all some sort of trick, either to stall for time for reinforcements or to get a good look at their strength.

I like Rabenstrange in this book; he operates from a position of confident badassery at all times, knowing perfectly well that he has the means to do the things he intends to do, willing to pick a fight with the most formidable navy in known space and one of its premier admirals if necessary... but confident enough that he can talk with her as an equal rather than piling a lot of bullshit conditions and nonsense on it.

Which makes him a nice contrast to basically every other antagonist in the book.* Unlike, say, Giancola, or High Ridge, or Janacek, Rabenstrange is a man with a plan and enough personal honor and dignity that you can respect him even if the plan itself is not admirable.

*I interpret the Havenite government as actually being a group of protagonists.

Huh. In hindsight, it's obvious what happened here, but I must not have thought too hard on it at the time, regarding it as a fluff incident. The Mesans have a nano-weapon that multiplies then waits for a signal or preprogrammed circumstances to jack the nervous system and seize crude control of the body, turning the infected into a sort of 'lone gunman' (that's a Kennedy assassination reference, not the X-files or spin-off.)

Military officers protected from personality adjustment, read: brainwashing.

True. Adjustment has been used in assassination attempts in the past. One of the anthology stories features an attempt on the life of Princess Adrienne circa 1650 PD, with an adjusted assassin who of course shows up on a treecat's telepathic radar like a flare.

It's a bit unclear how adjustment actually works, though; it seems to be sort of like very advanced hypnosis, possibly with a side-order of drugs or nanotechnology or something. But the Mesan body-control nanites are a major step up from that, because they can be introduced into the body without the subject's knowledge in a hurry... whereas adjusting someone can take weeks and often leaves very detectable side effects on their personality.

Honor's artificial arm has a pulser, with her pointer finger as the barrel and 30 rounds. One she casually walked past their rigorous security scanners before politely disarming herself before actually meeting the Imperial Prince. That's cool. And a definite show of trustworthiness, almost counter-productive in it's flamboyance.

It is also amusing to reflect that she can now literally point her finger at someone and... well, bang, you're dead.

On the other hand, note that since prosthetics and cybernetics are not uncommon in known space, there might be quite a few people walking around with concealed weapons in prosthetics, or cyborg-soldiers with weapons that can be grafted onto prosthetics. This helps to explain why the SS has a standard procedure of disabling people's cybernetic implants before taking them into custody; it's hard to blame them if something like that is within the realm of the technologically possible.

So looks like the Andies have fully caught up to the Manties, perhaps not with Ghost Rider but they've amply compensated with the flatback pods. And there's still the question of whether they didn't spot the recon drones, or just pretended they didn't.

Close. On the other hand, we have evidence from the dance of the cruisers between Ferrero and Gortz that Manticorans can still locate Andermani drones more easily than the Andermani can locate Manticoran drones. And later we get textual evidence that the Andermanis' new long range capital MDM is only a two stage missile, in which case its range and closing velocity are sharply inferior to its Manticoran counterpart. They may have become significantly more capable, but they aren't all the way there yet.

They brought their own protest letter. Nice. Poor Stokes, either he helps the people most on Janacek's shitlist or e gets to bear personal responsibility for an incident that could drive Grayson from the alliance on the eve of war, either way he's screwed.

His one hope is that something will happen to Janacek...

[Ahriman238]

The ferocious explosion which had rocked one of Landing's most luxurious suburbs had left a smoking crater where the Young's capital residence had once been and administered an equally savage shock to the political establishment. The existence of the North Hollow Files had been one of the open dirty little secrets of Manticoran politics for so long that even those who'd most detested the tactics they reflected were temporarily disoriented. Of course, just as the Earls of North Hollow had never officially admitted to their files' existence, Stefan Young wasn't about to admit that his enormous behind-the-scenes political leverage had blown up along with his mansion. And it was going to take some time—and a lot of cautious probes and tests—before the Star Kingdom's political leadership was prepared to believe it truly had been. Especially for the people who had been the subjects of that leverage over the years.

The First Lord of Admiralty knew that the implications of the North Hollow explosion were only just beginning to ripple through the establishment. As those implications went more and more fully home, the consequences for the High Ridge Government might well prove profound. Janacek wasn't really certain exactly how many of High Ridge's "allies" had been coerced into giving him their support, but he had no doubt that some of them—like Sir Harrison MacIntosh—were in extremely important, if not vital, positions. What might happen once they realized the evidence of their past misdeeds no longer existed was anyone's guess, but he didn't expect it to be good. Apparently, the Prime Minister shared his expectations, which probably helped to account for his waspish tone.

Looks like Georgia/Elaine followed through, and the HRG takes another body blow, the loss of the blackmail material that held much of their network together.

"What?" Janacek stared at him in disbelief. "Benjamin and his precious Navy have just openly defied us in our own space, and you say 'it may not be all bad'?! My God, Michael! Those neobarb bastards have just put their thumb right in our eye in front of the entire galaxy!"

That's really your priority at the moment?

"Still," he continued in a stronger voice, "the fact that they've seen fit entirely on their own to send such a substantial reinforcement to Trevor's Star may not be entirely a bad thing. At the very least, the fact that they did so so openly is going to have to give Pritchart and her war party pause. And God knows anything that does that can't be all bad!"

Janacek made an irate, wordless sound of angry agreement. He might enormously resent Benjamin Mayhew's actions, and Hamish Alexander's part in them might only add fresh fuel to the First Lord's smoldering hatred. But with the diplomatic situation so rapidly going to hell in a handbasket, any factor which might slap Pritchart and Theisman across the face with a dose of reality had to be a good thing. Of course, it would take a while for news of the . . . call it 'redeployment' to reach Nouveau Paris. Once it did, however, even a lunatic like Pritchart would be forced to recognize that the Manticoran Alliance remained far too dangerous to casually piss off. A reminder, judging by the recent exchanges of diplomatic correspondence, of which she stood in serious need.

I don't think they're the one who need to slapped in the face to recognize reality. Not that I think that slapping, or rubbing your noses in it would accomplish anything.

The Government's official decision to grant the Talbott Cluster's request to be annexed to the Star Kingdom—contingent, of course, upon the approval of the full Parliament—had proven immensely popular. The worsening diplomatic situation with the Republic of Haven, on the other hand, had produced an almost equally powerful negative response. The current parlous state of the Navy was another factor on the negative side of the balance of public opinion. Still, a significant proportion of the public remained uncertain whether to take the Government or the Opposition view of the Navy's effective strength, and the somewhat belated resumption of construction on the suspended SD(P)s had blunted much of that criticism. By the same token, the Government's spending programs remained extremely popular with those who had benefitted from them . . . which meant their partisans resented the diversion of funds back to construction budgets. And, finally, the news accounts of the clashes with the Andermani in Silesian space had refocused public opinion on the precious "Salamander" and her supposedly glorious record in combat . . . not to mention fanning the fire for those concerned over the Star Kingdom's disintegrating interstellar relations.

The only good thing about Silesia, so far as Janacek could tell, was that the average voter really didn't consider the Confederacy a priority issue. Mister Average Voter was irritated and offended by the Andermani "insult" to the Star Kingdom, and extremely angry over the loss of Manticoran lives which had so far occurred. But he was also aware that there had been Andermani fatalities, as well, and for once Harrington's grossly inflated reputation was a plus. The man in the street had been told she had ample forces to restrain the Andermani, and he trusted her to do just that. It galled Janacek down to the very depths of his soul to admit that, but he knew it was true and that however much he resented it, he ought to be grateful for it.

The electorate is... confused. There are so many things going on, Haven, Silesia, Talbott. It's messing with the nice simple narrative of politics, making it hard to tell which is the party of wisdom and virtue.

"What do the polls look like now?" he asked.

"Not good," High Ridge admitted more candidly than he probably would have to almost anyone else. "The base trend lines are pretty firmly against us, at the moment. We score fairly high on several issues, but the increasing concern over the Peeps' belligerence is undercutting that badly. The fact that the Queen is scarcely even speaking to the Government at the moment is another serious problem for our public approval rating. And I suppose if we're going to be completely honest about it, the backlash from our campaign against Harrington and White Haven is still another negative factor. Especially now, when so many of the poll respondents are expressing their confidence in her ability to handle the Silesian situation if anyone can." He shrugged. "Assuming that we can hold the Cabinet together and weather the storm on the Peep front—without, of course, getting into a major shooting war in Silesia at the same time—we'll probably survive. Whether or not we'll be able to complete our domestic program, unfortunately, is another question entirely."

Well at least their confusion is trending against the HRG, and they're seeing some negative consequences from their smear job of Honor and White Haven.

"Do you think the Cabinet won't hold together?" the First Lord asked somberly.

"I can't really say," High Ridge admitted. He shrugged. "Without the proper . . . leverage, MacIntosh is likely to prove much less controllable, and New Kiev is already very uncomfortable. Worse, that madwoman Montaigne is steadily eroding Marisa's authority within her own party, and she's doing it mainly by attacking her for 'prostituting' herself by joining our Cabinet. Marisa may decide that she has no option but to withdraw from the Government over some carefully chosen 'matter of principle' if she's going to fight effectively to retain control of her own Party Conference. If she does, she'll almost have to 'denounce' us in the process . . . and if we lose the Liberals, we lose the Commons completely. Not to mention our clear majority in the Lords." He shrugged again. "Unless the Liberals go completely over to the Centrists—which I think is unlikely, even if Marisa feels a need to clearly separate herself from us—then no one would have a clear majority in the Upper House, and I can't begin to predict what sort of power-sharing agreement might have to be worked out in that case."

Why do these people consistently refer to their political enemies as lunatics and madpeople? Especially when they're doing something clever and it's working. The Coaltion Government is splintering, but this won't be the end, no.

The two of them looked at one another for several seconds in silence. There was one more question Janacek badly wanted to ask, but he couldn't quite bring himself to. "Can we at least make sure that any 'power-sharing agreement' contains a guarantee that none of us will be prosecuted?" wasn't exactly the sort of thing one asked the Prime Minister of the Star Kingdom of Manticore even in private. No matter how burningly it presented itself to one's own mind.

Then you really shouldn't have done the things you'd be prosecuted for.

"So," he said instead, "should I assume that no formal protest of MacDonnell's actions will be addressed to Grayson?"

"You should," High Ridge replied. He, too, seemed almost grateful for the change of subject. "That's not to say that we won't be speaking to Protector Benjamin about the high handedness with which he exercised his undoubted rights under his treaty with us. There are, as Admiral Stokes pointed out, proper procedural channels through which such a transit should have been arranged without causing such mammoth dislocation of normal Junction operations. But that, I'm afraid, is as far as we're going to be able to go under the current circumstances."

"I don't like it," Janacek grumbled. "And I'm especially not going to like having to pretend to be civil to their precious High Admiral Matthews after this, either. But if we don't have a choice, then I suppose we don't have a choice."

"If we survive in power, we may be able to find a way to make our displeasure felt at a later date," High Ridge told him. "But to be completely honest, Edward, even that's unlikely. I think this is just one of those insults we're going to have to swallow in the name of political expediency. Not," the Prime Minister assured the First Lord grimly, "that I intend to forget it, I assure you."

Your pettiness under pressure is noted already. Geez, Weber, couldn't you slip them some brans or redeeming features?

He could have stopped it, he admitted to himself. He could have stopped it before it ever began. Could have stopped it before Pritchart ever appeared before Congress in the blazing majesty of her righteous indignation, laid the Manties' "duplicity" before it, and carried her request for what amounted to a declaration of war by a majority of over ninety-five percent. Could have stopped it even after that, if he'd been prepared to confess his actions and accept the consequences before the final activation order had been sent to Javier Giscard.

But that would mean admitting what he (Giancola) did, and withdrawing from politics in disgrace. So we have a war that, whether anyone else knows it or not, is being waged almost solely to preserve Giancola's reputation and power. I hope you're at least enough of a man that this sticks in your craw, Arnie?

Yet there was more to it than that. He hadn't planned on this, no; but that didn't necessarily make what was happening a disaster. Certainly he'd manipulated the Manties' diplomatic correspondence, but the fact that he might have changed their words didn't mean he'd misrepresented their ultimate goals. Weak and unprincipled High Ridge and his associates might be, but the expansionist trend of Manticoran policy remained, and another Manty regime—one with a spine and the will to make its policies effective—would inevitably have embraced those same goals in time. And so, perhaps, this was in fact the best of all possible outcomes. To strike now, when the Navy's advantage over the Manties was at its strongest . . . and when the current Manticoran government was at its weakest.

Pure rationalization, the closest Manticore has ever been to expansionist is annexing Basilisk and building an Alliance to resist Haven.

Grosclaude, he knew, had already destroyed all of his records on Manticore, as well as every other sensitive file which might fall into enemy hands, in anticipation of Thunderbolt. The thought held a certain ironic satisfaction, even now, because no one—not even the Manties, when the discrepancy in the diplomatic record became public knowledge—could accuse Grosclaude of destroying incriminating records in the name of self-preservation. Not when he'd had specific orders to do so from the President of the Republic herself.

And that's that, he thought. No tracks, no fingerprints. No proof.

Now, if only the Navy gets it done.

So much for guilt. The evidence is destroyed.

The objective of Thunderbolt, Giscard knew, was to convince the Manties that they must negotiate in good faith and compel them to begin the process. Eloise had no ambitions beyond that point, as she had made crystal clear in her address to the Congress. But much as Giscard loved her, he wasn't blind to the blind spots in her own judgment. By and large, they were so minor, especially compared to her strengths, as to be completely negligible. But sometimes . . . sometimes her faith in the rationality of others betrayed her.

It seemed so obvious to her that all the Republic wanted was to be treated fairly, for the Star Kingdom to negotiate in good faith, that some essential part of her couldn't quite believe anyone else could fail to see that. She didn't want to conquer the Star Kingdom. She didn't want to reconquer Trevor's Star. All she wanted was for the Star Kingdom to talk to her. To once and for all negotiate an end to this ugly, festering, endless conflict. And so, because that was all she wanted and because it was so obvious to her that it was all she could want, she truly believed that the Manties would recognize both the justice of her demands and the realities of their hopelessly weakened position and allow her to achieve the equitable diplomatic solution she craved.

But Javier Giscard, as both the lover who knew her better than anyone else in the galaxy and as the senior field commander of her Navy, suspected she was wrong. Not in what she wanted, but in how likely she was to get it. Even if the High Ridge Government fell, no Manticoran successor government was going to simply roll over and quit—not without additional proof of how Thunderbolt had crippled them. Nor were the Manties likely to believe that peace was truly all she wanted. Especially not if Thunderbolt secured the level of advantage Giscard expected it to. The Star Kingdom would have no choice but to expect the opportunities Thunderbolt would offer to tempt the Republic into exploiting them. Into imposing a peace on its own terms, not negotiating for one equitable to both sides. And just as Eloise had been unwilling to accept such an imposition for the Republic, so any new Manty government would be unwilling to accept one for the Star Kingdom. Which meant the war that Eloise hoped would be both begun and ended with a single campaign wouldn't be.

Giscard knew that. Thomas Theisman knew that, and both of them had explained it to Eloise. More operations would be required, more people would be killed—on both sides. And, intellectually, Eloise had admitted the possibility that they were correct. It was a possibility she was prepared to face as unflinchingly as she had been prepared to defy the Committee of Public Safety as Giscard's people's commissioner. But it wasn't one she'd truly accepted on an emotional level, and he was frightened for her. Not because he expected Thunderbolt to fail, because he didn't. And not because he expected defeat after Thunderbolt, because he didn't expect that, either. Theisman's plan was too good, its objectives too shrewdly chosen, for that. If additional operations became necessary, the Republican Navy would be well-positioned, with the strategic momentum on its side and an ever increasing stream of powerful new warships coming forward from Bolthole to replace any losses.

But even now he doubted that Eloise was truly prepared for the casualties. Not for loss of money, or loss of hardware—of lives. The deaths of men and women, Manticoran as well as Havenite, which would stem directly from her decision to go back to war. The deaths Javier Giscard firmly expected to continue for months, possibly even years, beyond the end of Operation Thunderbolt.

Yeah, Manticore isn't going to want to return to the table after a "cowardly sneak attack" doesn't really matter whose in charge at the moment. Nor are they likely to trust Haven to leave things as they stand after one operation where Haven is winning. But Prichart can't see that, she's so frustrated that any way forward seems like an improvement, particularly where it seems clear to her that the HRG is preparing to break off the talks, resume operations and blame Haven for being unwilling to compromise.

[Ahriman238]

Unfortunately, al-Salil had better things to do with his time than to waste it on boring, "routine" training ops. And if the group absolutely had to train, it made so much more sense to him to rely on the simulators. The fact that no more than a quarter of the group could fit into the available simulators at any one time (which made exercises in things like full-group coordination impossible) was not, in his opinion, a particularly significant drawback.

Sarah Flanagan disagreed. Her last posting had been to HMS Mephisto, a CLAC assigned to Home Fleet. Even there, the LAC training tempo had slackened noticeably from the pace Eighth Fleet had maintained under Admiral Truman during Operation Buttercup, but it remained far more demanding than anything al-Salil seemed to feel was necessary.

The slackened training of LAC jockeys from the perspective of a woman who cut her teeth skippering a Shrike during Buttercup. Mephisto seems to break the "monsters of myth" theme for Manty carrier names. Finally, I wonder if al-Salil is Zanzibaran? Sounds it, but Manticore is diverse enough it need not be true.

She supposed it made at least some sense to economize on starships, especially given the way the Admiralty and Government had built down the Navy's strength. And certainly a LAC group could cover far more space, and do it more efficiently, than a like tonnage of light cruisers or destroyers could. But that wasn't a great deal of consolation to the unfortunate souls assigned to crew the LACs in question. Especially not when among the starships being economized upon was the carrier they ought to have been operating from.

Her Majesty's Space Station T-001 had never even attained the dignity of a formal name. Known to its denizens as "the Tamale" for reasons Flanagan had never been able to divine, T-001 offered absolutely no amenities. About the only good thing anyone could say about it was that an ex-Peep cargo transfer space station modified to play orbital mothership to a standard group of a hundred and eight LACs was big enough that at least there was ample personnel space. Of course, that personnel space had been carved out of the previous owners' temporary cargo stowage decks, and no one had bothered to do much to make it particularly pleasurable to inhabit. Still, Flanagan had to admit that her cabin gave her at least twice the cubage she'd enjoyed aboard Mephisto, and she didn't even have to share it with anyone.

Tequila, the high water mark of the Allied advance, is being held by just two wings of LACs based in two dinky little converted cargo stations?

She muttered a weary, heartfelt curse at the familiar thought, then punched up the next report in her queue and grimaced as she read the header. Lovely. Now The Powers That Were wanted her squadron's crews to run a complete inventory of all emergency survival stores. She wondered why that was. The group's maintenance personnel were fully capable of performing such inventories. In fact, it was part of their job description. So why exactly were the LAC flight crews supposed to do exactly the same job behind them? Had someone been pilfering e-rats? Was this somehow supposed to catch the arch thief at her work? It seemed unlikely that anyone so incredibly capable that she could actually make a profit selling emergency survival stores was likely to be trapped by any merely mortal agency.

Just amused me.

Flanagan heard them opening equipment lockers and dragging out their skinsuits. Suits weren't usually stored aboard LACs, but "the Tamale's" conversion had been a bit on the crude side. It worked—most of it, usually—but no one had bothered with any frills. And since the flight crews' battle stations were aboard the LACs, the decision had been made to keep the skinsuits there, as well. It had led to a few problems with personnel with more extreme nudity taboos, but it worked better than a lot of T-001's arrangements, and, besides, Flanagan had other things on her mind just then.

Normally skinsuits stay with their wearer, in this case they're stored on the LACs.

At least Vice Admiral Schumacher had decent in-system FTL sensor capability. The big passive arrays which had once been planned to cover the system perimeter and watch for hyper footprints far beyond it had never been emplaced . . . of course. Too expensive in this era of austere naval budgets. That probably didn't matter in this case, though. It didn't look as if the intruders were attempting anything particularly subtle. They'd simply sent in a squadron of superdreadnoughts with cruiser escorts. Given the power of the Shrike-Bs' graser armament, they were going to take damage even on superdreadnoughts, but nothing to compare to the damage the LACs were going to take. Even Peep SDs were going to tear unsupported light attack craft apart when they closed to energy range.

The attacking force: 8 or so SDs and screen.

"Time till launch?" she asked, and he checked the launch clock on his console.

"Thirty-one minutes," he said. "Station Engineering started bringing the nodes up on remote as soon as GQ sounded. They'll be optimal in another twenty-eight minutes."

30 minutes to cold-start and scramble LACs.

"What about missile loadout?"

"Nothing on my screen, Skip," Benedict replied with a shrug. "Looks like we're going to launch with a standard package."

Flanagan managed not to stare at him in disbelief, which would undoubtedly have been terrible for morale, but it wasn't easy. The standard missile package consisted of a little bit of everything and not enough of anything. It was intended as a standby weapons load, one that gave at least limited capability under almost any circumstances. But it was effectively an emergency load. Standard tactical doctrine assumed that any COLAC would tailor his missile loads to the tactical mission—deleting the ordnance he wouldn't need to make room for the weapons he did—unless he found himself forced to launch under emergency conditions at minimal range. That wasn't the case here. Even if the Peeps had been able to match the extended range of the RMN's capital ship missiles, it would have taken them the better part of three hours to get into effective attack range of "the Tamale." That was plenty of time for the 1007th to strip the standby packages off of its LACs and replace them with a load that made sense, especially since the high-speed magazine tubes were the one part of T-001's conversion which had always worked perfectly.

LACs at rest are given a standby load with a little of everything, so if they have to scramble in a hurry they can be sort of ready for anything. On the other hand, it doesn't take that much time to swap out the missiles, if they have even a bit of time they can customize their missile loads.

"Override Group's ammunitioning instructions," she told Benedict flatly. The exec looked at her, and she shrugged. "We've got time if you get right on it," she said. "Use the squadron interlinks to the station magazine queue. I want a Lima-Roger-Two package loaded to all ships ASAP. Anybody in the station crew asks any questions, refer them to me."

"Aye, aye, Ma'am!" Benedict said sharply, and she nodded and reached for her own skinsuit.

-snip-

Lima-Roger-Two—or "Standard Missile Load, Long-Ranged Intercept, Mod Two"—was hardly a tailor-made armament package, but it would give Flanagan's LACs at least some chance of penetrating the envelope of a superdreadnought's defensive fire. It was designed to help LACs which had to go out and meet heavy combatants from outside the supporting missile range of their own wall of battle. As such, it was EW-heavy, with emphasis on counter missiles, jammers, and decoys.

It wasn't much, she thought harshly as she sealed the skinsuit. It was simply all she could offer her people under the circumstances.

"Missile reload complete in approximately nine minutes, Ma'am," Benedict reported formally. "Time to launch now eleven-point-three minutes." He looked up from his displays. "It'll be tight, Skip," he said much more informally, "but we'll make it."

9 minutes to swap out the missiles, compared to half an hour to launch, hence why the COLAC is screwing up by not having his wing swap out their birds. LR-2 is an EW heavy load meant to get some missiles in against serious missile defense and boost LAC survivability when engaging without support.

De Groot had approached Operation Thunderbolt with less than total enthusiasm. Not because she didn't want to get some of the Navy's own back from the Manties. And not because she didn't agree with President Pritchart that the Star Kingdom of Manticore damned well deserved to have its ass kicked up between its ears over its diplomatic doubledealing and chicanery. Not even because she disagreed with the ops plan's underlying assumptions or strategy.

No, de Groot's reservations had stemmed from the fact that the Staff had expressly ruled out any pre-attack reconnaissance of Tequila.

Agnes de Groot had risen to flag rank in a fleet which had experienced a seemingly unending series of drubbings—interrupted only occasionally by something like Operation Icarus—at the hands of the Manticoran Alliance. In light of that experience, she'd found it . . . difficult to accept NavInt's estimates of the enormous decline in the efficiency of the Royal Manticoran Navy. She'd been certain that the spooks had to be overestimating the degree to which the Manties had lost their edge. Or thrown it away, if there was a difference. Which meant that she had also found it difficult to accept that they could have been stupid enough to reduce their picket in Tequila to the levels NavInt insisted they had.

She knew all about the reports the intelligence types had generated. But she also knew that the data on which those reports were based had come solely from the civilian-grade sensors of merchantmen passing through the system. It wouldn't have been hard for any navy, and especially not for one with the Manties' EW capabilities, to hide an entire fleet from a merchie's sensor suite, and de Groot had been privately certain that that must be what had happened.

It seemed she'd been wrong.

I'd have trouble believing it too.

Her own recon drones were twelve million klicks—over forty light-seconds—ahead of her screen, with a secondary shell thrown out to cover her flanks and rear. While she was always prepared to recognize the Manticorans' supremacy in the field of electronic warfare, she found it difficult to believe that she wouldn't have gotten at least a sniff of any heavy units closing to missile range of her own command. Of course, there was missile range, and then there was missile range. Judging from their performance immediately before the cease-fire, Manty multi-drive missiles had a powered attack range of somewhere around sixty-five million klicks, which was at least eight million more than the RHN's new weapons could manage. But not even Manties were going to score many hits against alert targets at ranges of better than three and a half light-minutes. To be effective, they were going to have to come a lot closer than that, and her platforms should have started getting a sniff of them well before they got within five light-minutes of the outer shell, much less her actual starships.

17 million klick detection range around the ships with recon drones. Manty MDMs have a constant accel range of 65 million klicks, though they can just coast between drive stages for longer, and the hit rates really suffer after the first 18 mil. Haven MDMs can get 'only' 57 million klicks.

She supposed whoever was in command over there was being brave enough, but Lord God was she stupid! What NavInt's estimates insisted was the entire LAC strength based on the system, allowing for four or five down for routine maintenance, was coming straight at the invaders with absolutely no attempt to maneuver for advantage. It looked like the Manty CO intended to charge straight down de Groot's throat, possibly in an effort to avoid the Republican broadsides and sidewalls. Of course, that would also expose her LACs to the fire of de Groot's entire squadron's chase armament as she closed, but maybe she figured she could survive that long enough to get into range. If so, she was an idiot . . . or even more unaware of the improvements in the Republic's naval hardware—including the new classes' bow walls—than de Groot would have believed was possible.

Haven has bow walls too now, lack of subtlety or maneuver on al-Salil's part.

She supposed, in fairness (although she had very little interest in being fair to al-Salil under the circumstances), that he had specified an attack plan . . . of sorts. Unfortunately, like the missile loads his LACs were carrying, Attack Plan Delta-Three, was purely generic, little more than a vague set of objectives and procedures. It had been obvious to Flanagan for months that neither al-Salil nor Schumacher had believed, even as the diplomatic situation worsened, that the Peeps would dare to attack Tequila. So neither of them had spent much time or effort thinking about serious defensive plans.

-snip-

She watched the Peep icons change color on her own tactical repeater as al-Salil's tactical officer designated missile targets. The escorting cruisers turned crimson, one by one, as the COLAC assigned a massive overkill to them. In some respects, it was an admission of despair, a concession that the cruisers were the only ships they had the firepower to kill, although Flanagan doubted that al-Salil would have admitted it. Delta-Three called for a converging attack, taking out the flank guards first, to clear a path for the graser-armed Shrikes to execute a minimum-range attack on the core of any enemy force. Which would have been all well and good if their targets had been battlecruisers, or even battleships. Against superdreadnoughts with their sidewalls up and their weapons on-line, the Shrikes would be impossibly lucky to inflict damage that was more than merely cosmetic.

Attack Plan Delta-Three.

The large green beads of three of her "superdreadnoughts" were suddenly surrounded by clouds of smaller green fireflies, dashing away from them, as they launched full groups of Cimeterre-class LACs. NavInt's sources all confirmed that the Manties had stuck with their original, basically dreadnought-sized CLACs. Given the compensator advantages which the Manticoran Alliance had enjoyed for years, it gave them the best combination of LAC capacity and acceleration. But the Republican Navy had adopted a different philosophy. Its CLACs were visualized as primarily defensive platforms, mobile bases for the LACs intended to protect the wall of battle from long-range Manty LAC strikes. As such, there was no reason to make them any faster than the superdreadnoughts they would be protecting, and all of that lovely tonnage advantage could be put into additional LAC bays.

Which meant that whereas a Manty CLAC could pack approximately one hundred and twelve LACs into its bays, a Republican Aviary-class carried well over two hundred.

Now seven hundred-plus Cimeterres went charging outward to meet less than a third that many Manty LACs which were far too close at far too high a closing speed to even hope to evade them.

Another show of, not exactly brute force engineering, but how the different technical constraints Haven operates under requires different priorities or creative solutions to the Manties' edge. It makes sense for Manticore to use a DN sized carrier, because with their compensators it can outrun any wallers, drop it's LACs and move to the system edge if need be, or keep plinking away with MDMs from impressive range. Haven sees their CLACs as basically fleet escorts, protecting their wall from LAC swarms, so it makes sense for them to build them bigger, with double the carrying capacity of Manty carriers.

De Groot grimaced as a single Manty LAC squadron launched every bird it had. The rotary launchers which were the central feature of modern LAC design couldn't be "flushed" in a single salvo the way the old-style box launchers could be. But they could come close, and that single squadron got every offensive missile away before her own squadrons reached launch range.

That fire reached deep into her LACs' formation. Eighteen of them were destroyed outright. Seven more were crippled, five so badly that there wouldn't be any point in repairing them. Another eight took lighter damage.

But then it was the turn of the remaining seven hundred and sixty Cimeterres.

Commander Clapp's "triple ripple" roared outward. The magazines of two hundred of the Republican vessels fed that onrushing wave of missiles. The other five hundred and sixty held their fire, waiting.

Agnes de Groot watched the first wave of ferocious detonations sweeping away Manty EW drones like a broom of brimstone. Even from here, she could almost feel the despair enveloping the enemy as they realized what was happening, but it was far too late for them to do anything about it.

The second wave of explosions lashed at the Manties, hashing their sensors, crippling their onboard electronics ever so briefly. And then, exactly as Clapp had predicted, the third wave of missiles swept through the hopelessly disorganized Manticoran defensive envelope.

Thirty-three Manticoran LACs survived the triple ripple.

None of them survived the single massive salvo which followed it up.

De Groot's total losses were less than forty.

Thus concludes Second Tequila, losses of the two Manty LAC wings: total. Losses of the attackers: 40 LACs. The Triple Ripple proves it's effectiveness. 778 LACs launched from 3 CLACs, which actually gives me 260 LACs to an Aviary- class carrier.

[Simon_Jester]

Looks like Georgia/Elaine followed through, and the HRG takes another body blow, the loss of the blackmail material that held much of their network together.

Aaaaand this kind of thing is why you always back up your hard drive, preferably at a physically separate location.

Then again, Georgia/Elaine was also the Youngs' chief of security and has been for about twenty years, maybe more. She may have been in position to easily neutralize the backups.

[snip Janacek freaking out at the 'thumb in eye' of Grayson transiting the Junction]

That's really your priority at the moment?

Yeah. Janacek's problem extends to the whole High Ridge government. They're so preoccupied with questions of prestige and political damage control that they spend very little time actually thinking about how to run a country effectively. Everything else about them would be manageable if only they'd quit having these damn repetitive "oh my God our prestige might take a hit!" freakouts every time they make a decision.

I don't think they're the one who need to slapped in the face to recognize reality. Not that I think that slapping, or rubbing your noses in it would accomplish anything.

The heart of the problem there is that almost no one in the High Ridge government (Janacek included) has real, direct experience and awareness of what it means to fight a large war against even a primitive, limited opponent.

[It's frustrating that basically every senior military officer the RMN has who has actual combat experience is apparently a Centrist]

So they just assume Manticore has somehow scored infinity points in the 'beat everyone else' game. They don't understand how that was done or why someone else might do the same things Manticore did, they don't really understand how, and a significant fraction of them are so insular and ignorant (the Conservative leadership) that they will never understand anything except the House of Lords politics they've been living for the past century or so.

Why do these people consistently refer to their political enemies as lunatics and madpeople? Especially when they're doing something clever and it's working. The Coaltion Government is splintering, but this won't be the end, no.

Well, High Ridge is kinda-sorta-semi-sociopathic, so he may honestly have trouble grasping the idea that his political opponents are even real human beings rather than bizarro machines designed to make trouble for him when all he wants is total freedom to do exactly how he pleases.

Plus, well, Weber villain. Weber villains almost always think everyone who opposes them is crazy and have trouble processing the idea that their opponents are smart or logical.

Pure rationalization, the closest Manticore has ever been to expansionist is annexing Basilisk and building an Alliance to resist Haven.

Are you kidding me? They just swallowed the Talbot Cluster (which admittedly jumped into their mouths). They are like one year from making an arrangement in which they basically divide up Silesia with the Andermani.

While Giancola is blatantly rationalizing his own unjust and warmongering acts, he's not actually wrong to think the Manticorans have become expansionist.

Yeah, Manticore isn't going to want to return to the table after a "cowardly sneak attack" doesn't really matter whose in charge at the moment. Nor are they likely to trust Haven to leave things as they stand after one operation where Haven is winning. But Prichart can't see that, she's so frustrated that any way forward seems like an improvement, particularly where it seems clear to her that the HRG is preparing to break off the talks, resume operations and blame Haven for being unwilling to compromise.

To be fair, I think Pritchart is... sorta able to see the costs of a major war (she is a veteran of one, after all). But she's underestimating the Manticorans' ability to stand up in the face of offensives that actually hurt them, assuming they have a glass jaw. Or she's sort of... mentally assuming that this war will go as well for her as the last round did for the Manties, who didn't get hurt that badly in the grand scheme of things.

The slackened training of LAC jockeys from the perspective of a woman who cut her teeth skippering a Shrike during Buttercup. Mephisto seems to break the "monsters of myth" theme for Manty carrier names...

Mephisto(pheles) is a legendary devil, so it's not entirely out of line.

Tequila, the high water mark of the Allied advance, is being held by just two wings of LACs based in two dinky little converted cargo stations?

To be fair, Tequila isn't really all that valuable or desirable a star system. There's not much there there, so to speak.

LACs at rest are given a standby load with a little of everything, so if they have to scramble in a hurry they can be sort of ready for anything. On the other hand, it doesn't take that much time to swap out the missiles, if they have even a bit of time they can customize their missile loads.

Also, al-Salil is such a complete bozo that he doesn't even make an effort to choose a more optimal weapons loadout for his LACs. Since LACs are broadly similar to fighters or bombers in terms of how they're manned and operated, weapons loadout choice is critical. There is a big difference between loading the same plane with four lightweight air to air missiles, two big cluster bombs, or two medium-sized antiship missiles.

I find it hard to comprehend how al-Salil can be this worthless and useless as a commanding officer given that logically he MUST have spent much of his career in a wartime navy. It's remotely possible he was 'shuffled off' to Tequila given that the system appears to be on the ass end of irrelevant nowhere by RMN standards during the interwar period... but how would someone so completely unwilling to actually do his job even make it to a high enough rank to command a LAC wing? There are a lot of LAC wings around, but not so many that you can't put a vaguely competent human in charge of each of them.

Haven has bow walls too now, lack of subtlety or maneuver on al-Salil's part.

Bow walls are actually very simple, so yeah, as long as you can design a ship to have them it's easy to mount them. It would probably be damn near impossible to retrofit an existing ship with them, though... which may be one of the factors making the 'older' ships so obsolete. Having a bow wall probably means your ship can tank... I dunno, 25 or 50% more laser-head missiles without blowing up, on average. Those are rough estimates, but given that the 'throat' of a wedge is the biggest vulnerable spot and that all those laser heads are designed to home in on it, I don't think they're unreasonable estimates.

Thus concludes Second Tequila, losses of the two Manty LAC wings: total. Losses of the attackers: 40 LACs. The Triple Ripple proves it's effectiveness. 778 LACs launched from 3 CLACs, which actually gives me 260 LACs to an Aviary- class carrier.

That's actually a lot more than I'd expect them to be able to fit on even an SD-sized ship, unless:

1) The Havenite LACs are smaller than their RMN counterparts, and/or
2) The modern Havenite SD hulls are really big, so that carriers built to the same scale are larger than typical RMN superdreadnoughts.

[Mr Bean]

I find it hard to comprehend how al-Salil can be this worthless and useless as a commanding officer given that logically he MUST have spent much of his career in a wartime navy. It's remotely possible he was 'shuffled off' to Tequila given that the system appears to be on the ass end of irrelevant nowhere by RMN standards during the interwar period... but how would someone so completely unwilling to actually do his job even make it to a high enough rank to command a LAC wing? There are a lot of LAC wings around, but not so many that you can't put a vaguely competent human in charge of each of them.

Your forgetting something, this is the peacetime war. Janacek and his administration have beached dozens of officers and up until the war ended the RMN was having issues finding enough war bodies to make LAC commanders. Before the war with Haven and thanks to prolong there were probably over a hundred patronage offices who had desk jobs or served as commanders of smaller ship or XO of large ones in Home Fleet. After all the XO of a super dreadnaught in Home fleet is mostly an administrative job and personnel job you can farm out to people. Being the captain of a cruiser lets you put work on your XO. Look at Pavel and understand that's likely repeated a dozen times in the peace time Navy.

Now every Reginald the third or Percy the 15th has come back from desk work or Space Pentagon work and needs a command. Combine Janacek downsizing of fleet officers who don't agree with him and toss in people just leaving because Janacek is in charge and you have a recipie for hundreds of war time Captains resigning their commissions to go back to civilian life. Which leaves room for al-Salil to get a sweet prestige gig in Tequilia which is otherwise utterly quiet.

[VhenRa]

Oversteegen is a member of the Conservative Party.

And yeah, modern Havenite SD Hulls are REALLY big. The improved compensator tech? That allows the previous upper limit (Of roughly 8.5 Megatons) to be closer to 9 Megatons now.

And throughout the series average sizes for ships in a category have been creeping upwards. Solarian SDs are actually smaller then the last types of Manticorian DNs. (6.8 mt for Solarian Scientist-class while 6.985 for the Bellerophon class DNs)

[Simon_Jester]

Oversteegen is a member of the Conservative Party.

He's not a senior officer (flag rank): not senior enough to be incorporated into Admiralty discussions.

It's like, did Janacek fire all the fighting admirals and commodores in the RMN? Because it sure seems like it.

And yeah, modern Havenite SD Hulls are REALLY big. The improved compensator tech? That allows the previous upper limit (Of roughly 8.5 Megatons) to be closer to 9 Megatons now.

Yeah, but the Invictuses are about that big too. My point is that even a nine million ton ship... well, OK, actually if a six million ton carrier could carry 112 LACs, a nine million ton carrier probably could handle 260 or something close if you play enough screwy games with the hull configuration. It would help if Cimeterres are smaller than Shrikes and Ferrets, but I doubt they can be given Havenite technical limitations.

[Batman]

I think it's doable, especially with the Havenite 'defensive' CLAC doctrine. Bigger hull, and they'd likely as not have no offensive armament vs the Mantie 1st generation CLACS carrying MDMs.
Yeah, it's still a stretch, but the bigger hull/no offensive armament/smaller LACs combo might do the trick.

[VhenRa]

I think it's doable, especially with the Havenite 'defensive' CLAC doctrine. Bigger hull, and they'd likely as not have no offensive armament vs the Mantie 1st generation CLACS carrying MDMs.
Yeah, it's still a stretch, but the bigger hull/no offensive armament/smaller LACs combo might do the trick.

Well, deleting the armaments from the Minotaurs in the 2nd-class of Manty CLACs got them another 8 LACs IIRC.