Mission of Honor

Chapter Twenty-Six

"Well," Elizabeth Winton said dryly, "I suppose the question presently before us is 'Now what the hell do we do?'"

"I suppose so, Your Majesty," William Alexander replied. "On the other hand, our decision trees have just been rather brutally simplified. Once you're on the hexapuma's back, your only real options are to hang on or get eaten!"

"Not necessarily, Willie," his brother said. Baron Grantville looked at him, eyebrows rising, and Hamish Alexander-Harrington barked a laugh. There was no humor in the cold sound, and his blue eyes were even colder.

"You really think there's another option, Hamish?" the prime minister asked skeptically.

"Of course there is! If you can reach your pulser, you put a dart through the six-legged bastard's brain, instead," the Earl of White Haven replied harshly.

Grantville's face tightened as he heard the combined anger, vengefulness, and confidence in his brother's voice. The Alexander temper was famous throughout the Royal Manticoran Navy, and Grantville had enjoyed even more experience with it than most of White Haven's fellow officers. For that matter, he had it himself, in full measure. And he knew his brother well enough to understand exactly how a man who'd commanded the men and women of the Royal Navy in battle would feel about someone who'd cold-bloodedly set out to annihilate a handful of battlecruisers and heavy cruisers with an entire fleet of superdreadnoughts. The fact that things hadn't worked out the way Sandra Crandall had expected wasn't likely to do a thing to make White Haven any less angry, either. Nor, for that matter, should it.

After all, "it's the thought that counts," isn't it? Grantville reflected. On the other hand . . . .

"You know, Ham, I've been doing a little historical research of my own since Mike's first reports about New Tuscany got back to us," he said. "You were right when you suggested Lincoln to me, but there are some other interesting tidbits in Old Earth history, too. For example, I assume you're familiar with the term 'victory disease,' aren't you?"

"As a matter of fact, I am." White Haven's teeth flashed in something which bore a certain vague resemblance to a smile, and Samantha flattened her ears as she lay stretched tense and angry along the back of his chair. "On the other hand, we're the ones who were supposed to be the recipient of a Pearl Harbor attack this time around, not the ones stupid enough to launch it. And I'm not proposing any of us underestimate the scale of the threat, either. What I am pointing out is that there's no point pretending none of this has happened, or that the League's going to accept the outright destruction of twenty-three superdreadnoughts and the capture of forty-eight more—not to mention all Crandall's escorts, screening elements, and supply ships—without doing its damnedest to turn the entire Star Empire into rubble. In my opinion, Mike did exactly what she should've done under the circumstances, given an opposition force commander who obviously couldn't have poured piss out of a boot even if it did have instructions on the heel. But the fact that she chose the right option doesn't mean she chose a good one, since there weren't any good ones available to her."

He paused, inviting anyone to disagree with anything he'd just said. Queen Elizabeth clearly didn't, and as much as Grantville would have liked to, he couldn't. Sir Anthony Langtry seemed torn between a diplomat's responsibility to find an option short of war and an ex-Marine's bloodthirsty belligerence. Sir Thomas Caparelli and Admiral Patricia Givens, on the other hand, were in obvious agreement with White Haven.

"All right," the earl continued when no one accepted his invitation. "Since the Sollies're going to decide, as the Queen put it before Crandall actually showed up, that the Star Empire's a nail and the thing for them to do is reach for the biggest damned hammer they've got, there's not much point kowtowing to that jackass Kolokoltsov and his pain-in-the-ass, equally arrogant buddies. The way they've been viewing that Green Pines crap with alarm and calling for 'an impartial interstellar investigation'—by Frontier Security , of all people!—into 'the Star Empire's apparent involvement in terroristic actions' is a pretty fair indicator of where their brains—such as they have, and what there is of them—were headed even before Mike kicked Crandall's arse! So I think our best option is to tell them flat out that the entire mess is the result of the way their people have fu—ah, screwed up by the numbers, and that we're all done putting up with it. Send them the tac recordings from Spindle and ask them how many more superdreadnoughts they want our cruisers to kill before we even bring up our battlecruisers—much less our own wallers— and get down to the main event. And while we're doing that, we go ahead and activate Case Lacoцn, too."

Faces tightened around the table with his last sentence. Case Lacoцn was the Royal Manticoran Navy's plan to close all wormhole nexii under its control to Solarian traffic. Or, rather, that was the first phase of Lacoцn. The second phase included active commerce raiding and the extension of de facto Manticoran control to every wormhole nexus within its reach, regardless of who that nexus nominally belonged to.

"I realize what we're talking about here," White Haven said grimly, "and I know the Sollies're going to scream bloody murder about our 'interference with free trade' even before we decide to move to Lacoцn Two. But the realization of just how much we can hurt them economically, coupled with what happened at Spindle, may actually be a big enough clue stick to get through even to Sollies. It's the biggest one we've got short of launching a general offensive, at any rate, so I think we have to see whether or not it's big enough to do the trick. It's not like we've got all that much to lose, anyway. Worst case, the League goes ahead and does what it was going to do anyway and we get to find out whether or not Honor's right about how fragile it is. Best case—though I'm not going to suggest anyone hold his breath waiting for it—somebody in Old Chicago suddenly sprouts an IQ higher than his body temperature and they decide it just might not be a good idea after all to get a couple or three million of their spacers killed."

He shrugged.

"I'm not saying it's a good idea. But I am saying that, just like Mike, we're fresh out of good alternatives. So it's time we stop trying to avoid the inevitable and position ourselves to fight the League as effectively as humanly possible if—when— it comes to that."

The silence in the Mount Royal Palace conference room was intense, and White Haven leaned back in his chair, his face hard.

"I don't really like saying it," Langtry said finally, "but I think Hamish has a point. Nobody's ever captured a Solarian ship-of-the-wall before, far less blown twenty-three of them out of space. And unless I'm mistaken, no one's ever killed anyone's superdreadnought using nothing but heavy cruisers. Talk about rubbing salt into the wound!"

He shook his head, contemplating the way Solarian arrogance was likely to react to the insult of being that casually—and totally—trounced by someone who hadn't even used a capital ship in the process.

"We're in uncharted territory," he continued, "and, unfortunately, the one thing I think we can all agree on is that the League isn't going to . . . take the news well, shall we say? That being so, the only modest change to Hamish's proposal I'd suggest would be to include a diplomatic note which basically tells Kolokoltsov we consider Crandall's actions at Spindle yet another act of war and that if they're not repudiated—publicly, and in the strongest possible terms—within two standard T-days of the receipt of our note, Her Majesty's Government will assume it represents the Solarian League' chosen policy vis-а-vis the Star Empire. In that case, given the existence of a state of war of the League's choosing between it and us, we will immediately close all nexii under our control to all Solarian traffic and inform all our station commanders that we're at war with the League and that they're to act accordingly."

"I don't have a problem with that," White Haven said. "I don't expect it to do any good, but at least there won't be any questions about our prewar diplomacy this time around."

"Wait." Elizabeth raised one hand, and her expression was rueful. "I don't believe I'm about to say this, but here goes. Don't you think it might be a good idea to find out whether or not we're going to get a treaty out of Pritchart before we go sending any ultimatums to the Solarian League?"

"With all due respect, Your Majesty," Langtry said, "the ultimatum's already been delivered—by the League, not us. It arrived in Spindle about two weeks ago. That's Hamish's entire point. Fortunately, judging from Duchess Harrington's dispatches, the chance of our getting a treaty out of Nouveau Paris is actually pretty good. I'm not counting any chickens before the eggs hatch, you understand, but we can't allow our policy towards the League to be dictated by concerns over our relations with the Republic. Obviously, we've got to bear concerns in mind, and they're going to influence one another heavily, but we can't afford to couple them too closely together when we start formulating policy and military strategy."

"All right, I can see that," Elizabeth said. "But let's pursue this notion of sending them the tactical recordings a little farther. Is there really much chance they'll draw the proper conclusions from them? Pat?"

She looked at Admiral Givens, and the woman who headed the Office of Naval Intelligence flashed an unhappy smile that was almost a grimace.

"Your Majesty, I'm afraid that comes under the heading of 'nobody knows.' There's simply no way to predict the answer. Crandall obviously didn't draw the right conclusions from what happened to Byng, but I think we'd all agree she wasn't the sharpest stylus in the box. And, for that matter, the Battle of Spindle's a rather larger exclamation point than what happened at New Tuscany. On the other hand, Old Chicago's a lot further from Spindle than Meyers is from New Tuscany. And the truth probably is that their so-called intelligence analysts have been so insulated from reality for so long that no one's telling the bureaucrats who're actually calling the shots just how bad the balance of military capabilities really is from the SLN's perspective. Assuming, of course, any of the aforesaid analysts want to tell them in the first place."

"Why shouldn't they want to?" Elizabeth asked. "That's their job, isn't it? And it's their navy that's going to get reamed if they screw up!"

"Why didn't High Ridge's and Janacek's analysts tell them what was really happening, Your Majesty?" Givens countered sadly, almost gently. "After studying what we've recovered from the databases Admiral Gold Peak captured at New Tuscany, I'm even more of the opinion that everyone in the League's been telling their superiors what those superiors wanted to hear for so long that it's unlikely any of them remember how to tell someone an unpalatable truth. And, truth to tell, I actually sympathize with them. A little, anyway."

"Excuse me?"

Elizabeth's eyebrows rose, and Givens shook her head.

"Your Majesty, there's always a temptation, for any analyst, to choose the hypothesis she knows her superiors, or her government, or the people responsible for shaping policy want to hear. Telling them something else isn't the way to make herself popular, after all. But it's not necessarily even a matter of a self-serving refusal to rock the boat, either. Sometimes it's even a case of recognizing what their superiors are willing to hear—of avoiding truths that will simply get them disregarded or fired, because they know that if they go, they'll only be replaced by someone even less willing to risk flouting the party line. Of course, it can be a case of simple mental laziness, too. In fact, that happens a lot more frequently than most of us in the intelligence community like to admit. But even more often than that, probably, perfectly honest, hard-working analysts screw up by the numbers simply because they've gotten into a habit of thought. Because someone's allowed herself to become so firmly wedded to one view of the evidence—often without even realizing she's done so—that her own internal filters screen out anything that would challenge the existing interpretation.

"Frankly, that's a huge part of what's happened to the League, and it's happened because the League's been able to survive anyway. It hasn't bitten them on the butt the way Jurgensen's failures at ONI bit us when Theisman launched Thunderbolt. The League is so big and so powerful that to some extent, at least, the Sollies really have been able to make reality be what they wanted it to be. After all, who was big or nasty enough to pound them if they were wrong? So they've gone happily along, seeing themselves as the lords of all creation, literally for centuries. Of course it's going to be hard for any doomsayers to get through to the real decision-makers!"

"Even with the tactical records from Spindle in front of them?"

"Assuming the analysts themselves believe the records in question are genuine, they'd still have to get them past their own superiors, Your Majesty, and that's not likely to be as simple as it would be in an ideal galaxy. I'd say it's possible—even probable—someone higher than them in the food chain's going to be suppressing any unfortunate little evidence that she helped create the current fubar. I mean, the current situation. And even if that isn't the case, those superiors are going to have preconception filters of their own. And I'd estimate it's at least equally probable that someone's going to tone down the analysts' reports in the interests of cool reason and avoiding 'hysterical alarmism'."

"Pat's raised a couple of good points, Your Majesty," White Haven said, and Elizabeth returned her attention to him. "For one thing, she's absolutely right about the inertia quotient, the way the currently accepted wisdom—whatever it happens to be—has a tendency to throttle anything that challenges it." He snorted acerbically and shook his head. "I've had a little personal experience with that, if you remember that minor disagreement Sonja Hemphill and I had going on for so long. That much can happen to anybody, even someone who's making a genuine effort to be intellectually honest and fair, if he's not aware that he's investing too much confidence in what he already 'knows' is true without making enough allowance for the fact that things might have changed. But she's also right about the attitude we're likely to see out of the SLN's senior officers, too, because they're not going to be anywhere near as interested in intellectual honesty as they are in covering their arses. I never thought I'd say this about anyone, but compared to quite a few of the Sollies' most senior officers, Edward Janacek was competent, farsighted, and thoughtful."

"I wouldn't go quite that far, Hamish," Caparelli interjected dryly. "Almost, and I'll grant you the Sollies are probably even worse, but nobody could actually make Janacek look good ."

"All right." White Haven nodded, accepting the correction. "But my point stands. These people have been gaming the system for so long, without believing for a moment there could possibly be any realistic threat to the system, that their very first thoughts are going to focus on making sure nothing threatens their personal positions within the system. Some of them will be stupid enough to try and make it all go away by suppressing—what was it you called it, Pat? 'Any unfortunate little evidence'?—that could possibly implicate them when it comes time to play the blame game. And others are simply going to be so unaccustomed to thinking about external threats they literally don't recognize one when they actually see it. Or not until it's too late, at least."

"We do have Admiral O'Cleary's official report to support the data," Langtry pointed out, and it was Givens' turn to snort.

"Yes, we do, Mr. Secretary," she agreed when he raised an eyebrow at her. "But, first, the very fact that O'Cleary surrendered is going to be a severe blow to her credibility as far as the people back on Old Earth are concerned. Not only are they going to be thinking in terms of personal cowardice on her part, but I guarantee you someone's going to suggest she has a powerful interest in overstating the effectiveness of our weapons technology. After all, if we really have 'super weapons' at our disposal, then her cowardly decision to surrender looks a lot better, wouldn't it?

"That's not the only thing that's going to help people who want to undercut her credibility, either. There's also the matter of our willingness to transmit her report to them. That's suspicious in its own right, isn't it? We undoubtedly have our own sinister motives for getting it to them as quickly as possible, don't we? And, for that matter, there's the little question of why it was left up to her to do the surrendering and report-writing, isn't there?"

The brief silence which answered her was thoughtful, to say the least.

"I take it you don't incline to the theory that it was suicide after all?" Elizabeth said after a moment.

"At this point, I don't have a strong feeling either way, Your Majesty," Givens replied. "I'd have to say that if I were a Solarian admiral who'd managed to make the absolutely wrong call on every single decision and gotten twenty-plus ships-of-the-wall destroyed as an obvious consequence of my own abject stupidity, the temptation to just go on and shoot myself in the head would definitely be there. On the other hand, most people who decide to shoot themselves in the head, don't shoot themselves in the back of the head. For that matter, she could've used the overrides of her skinsuit's med panel to administer a lethal dose that would have put her painlessly to sleep. We don't like to talk about it, but every spacer knows how to do that, given all the nasty, lingering ends we can wind up facing."

"That sounds to me like you don't think it was suicide."

"Well, there's no question it was her pulser, Your Majesty, and it was in her hand when Admiral Gold Peak's Marines recovered her body. Judging from the Admiral's report, there's no forensic evidence to suggest anyone else fired the fatal dart, for that matter. Unfortunately, there aren't any witnesses who actually saw her do it, either, which is pretty suspicious in its own right. And given the fact that everyone on her flag bridge was skinsuited, there probably wouldn't be any forensic evidence, even under ideal conditions."

"But if it wasn't suicide, who killed her?" Grantville asked, frowning intently.

"From our perspective, that question's wide open," Givens said. "I don't want to sound too Byzantine, but one possibility that's occurred to me is that someone else on her flag bridge—probably one of her own staffers—was also working for Manpower and had orders to see to it she didn't have an opportunity to discuss her decisions and the reasons for them with us.

"The problem, though, is that our perspective isn't the important one at the moment. The important one is the one from Old Chicago, and it's likely to occur to someone back on Old Earth that Admiral Crandall's demise was arranged by some nefarious Manty."

"But . . . why?" the prime minister asked almost plaintively.

"Why, in order to make sure O'Cleary wrote the official dispatch, Mr. Prime Minister! Obviously, she's either turned her coat in return for some bribe on our part, or else we delicately informed her that the same thing that happened to Crandall could happen to her if her report didn't say what we wanted it to say. The fact that despite all the damage the Buckley took, Crandall was the only fatality on her flag bridge would be suspicious enough for some people, even without the possible irregularities of her 'self-inflicted wound' or the mysterious lack of witnesses."

"Wonderful."

Elizabeth reached up and lifted Ariel down into her lap. She sat stroking the 'cat for several seconds, then drew a deep breath.

"All right. We're basically spinning our wheels. That's not a criticism, either—only a reflection of how little chance we have of guessing how the Solly bureaucracy's going to spin this for its own internal consumption, much less the media. But I do have one other question I'd like all of you bright people to consider with me."

"Yes, Your Majesty?" Grantville asked just the least bit warily when she paused.

"I think we're all in agreement that, preposterous as it seems, the real prime mover in all of this has been Manpower and/or Mesa." The queen shook her head, as if even now she couldn't quite believe what her own voice was saying. "I know we don't have any direct evidence linking Crandall to what happened at New Tuscany, or, for that matter, proving Byng knew he was working for Manpower. We do know Manpower was behind Monica, and this Anisimovna's involvement at New Tuscany, as well, clearly demonstrates they were pulling the strings, whether he realized it or not. And the official Mesan version of what happened at Green Pines pretty clearly indicates that the system government itself is carrying water for Manpower where we're concerned.

"My point is that it seems to me we'd be just as guilty of filtering out 'inconvenient evidence' as we're accusing the Sollies of being if we didn't face the fact that all of our threat analyses have fallen seriously short of the mark where Manpower and Mesa are concerned. So, given that we have so much evidence of Manpower's involvement in both Monica and New Tuscany, do we go directly after Mesa?"

"As in taking direct military action against the system, Your Majesty?" Caparelli sounded like a man who wanted to be positive he was interpreting her correctly.

"That's one possibility," Elizabeth said grimly. "Frankly, it has a certain definite appeal, too. If Eighth Fleet can take out the Haven System's defenses and infrastructure, a couple of battle squadrons ought to be more than enough to do the same job on Mesa. But I was also thinking about making the point to the Sollies and demanding that they investigate the extent to which Manpower's been manipulating their military forces."

"From a purely military perspective, taking out Mesa wouldn't be that difficult, assuming they don't have a surprise for us even more fundamental than our surprises for the Sollies, Your Majesty," Caparelli said. "Of course, getting there could be a bit difficult, not to mention time-consuming. And if we took action unilaterally, I'd say there'd have to be at least a pretty fair chance some of Mesa's proxies in the League would point to it as yet another example of mindless Manticoran military aggression—this time directed at a star system well inside the Shell, even if it isn't formally a member of the League."

"I wouldn't have any fundamental objections to carrying out the strike, Tom," White Haven said thoughtfully. "Not if we have the situation with Haven under control, at least. Frankly, I don't see where it could make our relations with the League any worse, at any rate!"

"I think I'm inclined to be a little more cautious about that, Your Majesty," Langtry said. "I'm not going to shed any tears for anything we do to those Manpower bastards, and I could see a lot of pluses to pointedly suggesting to others who might wish the Star Empire ill that every action produces a reaction . At the same time, the propaganda version of Green Pines is still playing to the hilt with the mainstream Solly newsies. Except for O'Hanrahan and a couple of other muck rakers, no one seems to be choking on Mesa's version, and Abruzzi's working it for all he's worth over at Education and Information. If we act precipitously against Mesa, the people buying into that version are going to see it as an escalation of our 'earlier attacks' on the system and, probably, an effort to shut them up before they turn up something still more damaging about what 'really happened' at Green Pines."

"So are you suggesting that their cock-and-bull story should paralyze us militarily?" White Haven asked, a bit more caustically than he usually spoke to his old friend, and Langtry frowned.

"No, Ham, I'm not," the foreign secretary said. "But I am suggesting that Mesa isn't going anywhere. There's time to get around to dealing with Manpower—and Mesa—later, if we decide to, and I'd prefer not to complicate things with the League any more than we have to at this point."

"But our hitting Mesa might actually give the League an out, Tony," Elizabeth countered. He looked a question at her, and she shrugged. "If we were willing to commit to active military operations against Mesa, it would be pretty convincing evidence we really think they're responsible for what's been going on in Talbott. It's possible even Sollies would recognize the opportunity to back away from a direct confrontation with us at least long enough to find out whether or not our suspicions were justified."

"Possible, Your Majesty," Langtry conceded. "Frankly, though, I think 'likely' would be another matter entirely. Especially not with that damned Green Pines story clouding the issue. At least some of the talking heads are going to argue that backing the Ballroom in Green Pines is an example of our already conducting active operations against Manpower in what we hoped would be an untraceable fashion. Under that interpretation, open military action would only be more of the same. And since we've resorted to backing terrorist attacks, we're tarred with the same brush, aren't we? I mean, isn't there a moral equivalence between Anisimovna's blowing up the New Tuscan space station and our nuking a city full of civilians? Where to we get off trying to claim some sort of moral superiority over out enemies in that case?"

"Let's not reject the notion out of hand, Tony," Grantville said, then chuckled harshly at Langtry's evident surprise.

"I know I'm the one who's been most nervous about expanding our current unpleasantness with Haven into an even broader conflict," the prime minister continued. "But I think the Queen may have a point here, and it's not as if we have to make up our minds about it this afternoon. We've provided the Sollies—and their newsies, for that matter—with all our evidence about Manpower's involvement in both Monica and New Tuscany. If we go ahead and send them the tac data from Spindle as Hamish is suggesting—and which I think is a very good idea, by the way—we can also remind them about our belief that Manpower's at the bottom of what's been going on in Talbott.

"I don't imagine even Kolokoltsov and the others are going to decide overnight to formally declare war. First, because I have to thank it's at least possible simple disbelief and shock over what happened to Crandall is going to make even Sollies hesitate at least briefly while they try to find out what really happened. And, second, because even if that doesn't happen, getting a formal war declaration out of the Assembly's going to be the next best thing to impossible, Green Pines or not, given how their constitution's written. So even if they decide to throw the League Navy at us anyway, it's going to be a de facto state of war, not a de jure one. Which means that if we continue to insist Manpower's really to blame, and if we act consistently with that belief the road, they'll still be able to pull in their horns if and when they finally figure out—or decide to admit, at any rate—that we've been right about Manpower all along and that they've been had over Green Pines. In fact, if they get chewed up even remotely thie badly in a couple of more battles, they may find themselves looking desperately for some sort of 'statesmanlike' way to climb out of the hole they've dug for themselves. And much as what I'd really like to do is start shoveling dirt in on top of them, the smart thing to do would be to reach down and give them a boost when they start trying to climb. If they start trying to climb.

"In the short term, though, Tony, I'm inclined to agree with you. We can always decide to pursue the military option with Mesa later. There's no reason we have to add it to the pot right this instant and risk complicating our relations with the League even further."

"All right," Elizabeth decided. "I agree with both of you, so we'll set aside any immediate direct military action against Mesa. At the same time, though, Sir Thomas, I want the Admiralty to be working on the operational planning to do exactly that if and when the moment seems appropriate."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"And in the meantime," the queen continued more grimly, "you and Hamish are formally instructed that the Crown has determined that an effective state of war exists between the Star Empire and the Solarian League. You are authorized and directed to transmit the appropriate activation orders for Lacoцn One and to make any military movements you deem appropriate in its support. I want to avoid any additional provocations, if at all possible, but that desire takes secondary priority. The security of our ships, personnel, and citizens, and the accomplishment of Lacoцn's objectives are to be your primary consideration. And you are also instructed to take all necessary and prudent steps to prepare for the execution of Lacoцn Two, as well. Is that clearly understood?"

"It is, Your Majesty," White Haven replied quietly, and she met his eyes steadily for a handful of heartbeats, then nodded.

"Good."