Storm From the Shadows

Chapter Fifty-Two

"I wish I could say I was surprised," Elizabeth III said in tones of profound disgust as she flipped her hard copy of her cousin's report of the Second Battle of New Tuscany onto the same conference table in the same conference room. The initial report had arrived three days ago, with the news of Josef Byng's stupidity and the destruction of his flagship. That had been bad enough, but the rest of what Michelle had turned up after the battle was even worse, and the queen shook her head, her expression tight with anger.

"The Sollies have resented us for years," she continued harshly, "and we've walked on tiptoe around them for as long as anyone can remember. I guess something like this had to happen sooner or later, even if the timing could have been a lot better. In fact, I suppose the only thing I'm really surprised about is who seems to have arranged this entire—what's that charming military phrase? Oh, yes. This entire cluster fuck."

The treecat on the back of her chair shifted, his ears half-flattened, his needle-tipped claws extending far enough to sink into the chair's upholstery, and everyone in the room could hear his soft hiss as his rage mirrored his person's. Obviously, whether Elizabeth was surprised or not, the events at New Tuscany—and the fact that there truly had been no survivors from Commodore Chatterjee's murdered destroyers—had been enough to whip her fury to a white-hot heat even before the confirmation of outside manipulation had reached her.

The other two treecats present were less overtly infuriated than Ariel was, but neither of them was immune to the human anger—and anxiety—swirling about them. They were, however, somewhat farther away, and Prime Minister Grantville, sitting beside the Queen, kept a wary eye on Ariel as he shook his own head.

"I don't think there's any such thing as 'good timing' for a confrontation with the Solarian League, Your Majesty," he said, speaking rather more formally than was his wont. "On the other hand, as you've just said, it's not exactly as if there were any tremendous surprises here, is it?"

"I can always be surprised by Solly stupidity, Willie," Elizabeth said bitingly. "I shouldn't be, I suppose, but every time I think I've seen the stupidest thing they could possibly do, they find a way to surpass themselves! At least this particular idiot's taken himself out of the gene pool. It's a pity he had to take so many others with him!"

"I agree, Your Majesty," anger of his own rumbled around in Sir Anthony Langtry's voice, "and the fact that those flaming idiots in Chicago still haven't officially responded to our initial note only proves your point."

He shook his head in disgust. The note in question had reached Old Terra three weeks before this meeting, yet there'd still been no response at all from the League's Foreign Ministry.

"Of course it does, Tony," Grantville acknowledged. "Still, I stand by my original point. This is something we've all seen coming—or at least as a serious probability—ever since we found out Byng had fired on Chatterjee in the first place."

"Oh, I don't know, Willie," his brother said, reaching out to stroke Samantha's soft ears as the 'cat pressed against the back of his neck, "I think this minor matter of the sixty or so Battle Fleet superdreadnoughts Vézien and Cardot were so eager to tell Mike about could probably come under that heading. Surprises, I mean."

"Assuming they're really there, Hamish," Grantville pointed out.

"Personally," Elizabeth said, "I'm less worried about sixty obsolete Solarian superdreadnoughts than I am about the several hundred modern, pod-laying superdreadnoughts the Peeps still have. You're right, Willie. We've discussed the Sollies almost to death. I'm not saying we've figured out what to do with them yet, even if I do feel a little bit better in that regard than I did a month or so ago, but I think we may have let ourselves get overly focused on them. I mean, whatever kind of threat the Solarian League may pose in the long term, it's the Peeps we have to worry about now. So while I'm perfectly willing to admit that the League may be the greater danger in absolute terms, I think we need to focus on removing the threat we can remove as quickly as possible."

She looked at White Haven, her eyes sharp.

"When we received our first report about Commodore Chatterjee, Willie asked you and Sir Thomas about our ability to hit Haven now, hard and fast, hurt them enough to make them realize they had no choice but to surrender outright. You seemed to think it would be feasible within a couple of months' time. I realize that was less than one month ago, but could we do it now? And could we hold off the Sollies in Talbott while we do it?"

For the first time in his naval career, Hamish Alexander-Harrington felt an almost overwhelming temptation to temporize and dodge a fundamental question. But however great the temptation, he was still Elizabeth Winton's First Lord of Admiralty, and he met her eyes squarely.

"I've deliberately kept my hands off of a lot of the operational details," he said. "The last thing Tom Caparelli needs is to think he's got a backseat driver—and one who's a civilian, now—trying to grab the controls away from him, so he and I have both tried very hard to respect one another's spheres of authority. Having said that, though, I think the answer is probably that, yes, we could punch out the Haven System with what we have available right now. If we want to do it before we find ourselves up against the Sollies, though, and considering transit times and everything else, we'd have to use Eighth Fleet, which would mean uncovering the Home System at least temporarily. I don't much care for that thought, but I think enough of the new construction would be available at or almost at combat readiness to cover the gap, and we've made better progress than I really anticipated in getting the system-defense variant of Apollo into service.

"In addition, however, there's another timing issue involved. If there really are Solly SDs in Talbott, we can't afford to have our main striking force weeks away from the home system when they finally make their presence felt. That means that if we decide firmly in favor of taking the military option against Haven first, we'd have to launch the op now—immediately, without any effort to talk to the Peeps first—and that it would have to be militarily decisive, in the shortest possible period of time. If we present any ultimatums, they'd have to be delivered from the flag bridge of a fleet actually in position to attack, with no time for the other side to think about them or digest the implications ahead of time. Which, frankly, makes it much less likely, in my opinion, that they'd be willing to stand down without a fight. Faced with the same situation, we'd certainly be more likely to fight than just roll over, so I suspect we'd have to pretty much wipe out Capital Fleet before they were ready to give in. And we might well have to actually go ahead and really take out most or all of their infrastructure, as well."

The fourth and final human being present for the conference stirred slightly in her chair beside him, but he kept his eyes resolutely focused on the Queen. He already knew exactly how his wife felt about the notion of turning the Haven System into a scrapyard.

"As I say," he continued, "we could punch out Haven. But you asked me a two-part question, and my answer to the second half of it—whether or not we can hold off the Sollies in Talbott while we do it—is that I simply don't know. That's why I say we can't afford to take the time to send diplomatic notes back and forth first, if we're going to set up to attack the Haven System at all.

"Having said that, however, I also have to say that, judging from my preliminary read of the technical appendices of this report, I think all our estimates about how outclassed the Sollies' deployed equipment is may actually have been overly pessimistic. But they've got a lot of ships, Elizabeth. And whatever our long-term prospects might be, if they've actually got that many superdreadnoughts deployed in proximity to the Talbott Quadrant, then Mike's and Khumalo's ability to fend them off with nothing heavier than battlecruisers is . . . doubtful, to say the least. If the Sollies have that many wallers available, and if they decide to respond the way it sounds very much like this Admiral Crandall would be likely to, we could find the new systems in the Quadrant burning to the ground at the same time we're off hammering Nouveau Paris."

"But as Willie just pointed out, we don't even know those superdreadnoughts exist," Elizabeth retorted. "All we have right now is what amounts to hearsay evidence from a bunch of New Tuscans who admit they were part of a strategy to smash the Quadrant before it truly has its feet under it. Forgive me if I find information they're offering as some sort of quid pro quo to keep us from leveling their system around their ears less than totally convincing. It certainly hasn't been confirmed yet!"

She glared down at the hard copy of the report again for a heartbeat or two, then raised her eyes to White Haven once more.

"And where the question of timing is concerned, frankly, I won't exactly cry myself to sleep if we do have to send our ultimatum to Pritchard along with Honor. If they're too pigheaded to see reason and surrender, it'll be on their heads, not ours. And let's not forget that not only are they the people who started this war, but they're also the ones who sabotaged their own proposed summit and then launched an all-out attack on our home system." The Queen's brown eyes glittered fiercely. "I think we all know who the real enemy is, and it's a hell of a lot closer than the Sol System. Can we afford to allow a hypothetical fleet of superdreadnoughts, which might not really be there at all, to paralyze our strategic thinking and push us into taking our eye off the real enemy when we finally have the chance to finish the Peeps off once and for all?"

"I think we have to assume they are there," a soprano voice said. It was quiet, that voice, but there was something about its timbre, a hint of steely determination, and Elizabeth's eyes swiveled to the speaker.

"First, we have to assume that because it's our responsibility to make the most pessimistic assumptions," Honor Alexander-Harrington continued. "But, second, I think they really are. I think we've fundamentally underestimated Manpower's capabilities, and believe me, that's a much bigger surprise, as far as I'm concerned, than the fact that a stubborn, arrogant Solarian admiral wouldn't see reason and got his flagship's entire crew killed as an exercise in sheer stupidity. All of which makes me wonder—again—just how sure we really are about who the real enemy is."

"Honor, I know that you've thought—" Grantville began, but Honor cut him off with atypical brusqueness.

"Willie, I'm tired of people making allowances for what I think and why I think it. Yes, I've been in closer contact with the Ballroom—and with Anton Zilwicki and Victor Cachat"—Elizabeth's face tightened visibly at the second name, but Honor's voice didn't even pause—"than anyone else in this room. And, yes, my family history predisposes me to hate Manpower with every fiber of my being. All of that's true. But I am sick and tired of people who persist in using those facts to justify their refusal to look at the evidence because it doesn't suit their preconceptions."

"Meaning exactly what, Honor?"

Elizabeth's voice was sharp, and the look in her brown eyes was hard, as close to a glare as she had ever turned upon Honor Alexander-Harrington. But Honor looked back without flinching.

"Meaning, Elizabeth, that I've been telling you literally for months that it made absolutely no sense for the Havenites to assassinate Admiral Webster or try to kill Ruth and Berry. I'm not going to dispute with you over who did what to our prewar diplomatic correspondence, although I realize you know I don't think that's quite as open-and-shut as a lot of people seem to believe, either. But I'm telling you, Eloise Pritchart doesn't go around having people killed just for the fun of it, and she is not an idiot! If she'd actually wanted to derail her own summit meeting and killing Admiral Webster looked like the only way to do it, she would have found somebody one hell of a lot more deniable than her own ambassador's driver to pull the trigger."

White Haven managed not to cringe, but he didn't need Honor's empathic talent, or even Samantha's and Nimitz's soft hisses, to realize just how angry his wife truly was. She hadn't raised her voice, hadn't given the least indication of disrespect by tone or mannerism, but in a service not exactly noted for the pristine purity of its language, "the Salamander" was renowned for the fact that she never swore.

"That opinion isn't shared by the majority of the intelligence community," Elizabeth replied in a tone which made it obvious she was trying to throttle her own emotions.

"That isn't quite correct," Honor said flatly. Elizabeth's nostrils flared with anger, but Honor was no longer a mere cruiser captain meeting her monarch for the first time, and she continued without hesitation.

"That opinion wasn't shared by the majority of the intelligence community at the time and given what they knew then because they'd concluded that they couldn't think of anyone else with a motive.

"But we know things now we didn't know then, and not just the stuff Mike's just discovered at New Tuscany. There's Lester Tourville, for one thing. You know I know he was telling me the truth when he said that when Thomas Theisman originally briefed him for Operation Beatrice he told him no one in Pritchart's administration had expected to be resuming operations. That that was the reason they didn't start assembling his strike force until after we'd walked away from the summit talks. Of course Theisman could have lied to him, and of course it could still have been some kind of rogue operation launched by someone without Theisman's or even Pritchart's knowledge, assuming the someone in question had some personal reason to prevent the summit. So even granted that Tourville's been telling us the truth, and that Theisman told him the truth, there's still been the question of who else had a motive.

"Well, I submit to you that it's just been amply demonstrated—again—in New Tuscany that there is someone else with a perfectly good motive, and that someone is Manpower, Incorporated. Admiral Webster was hammering them on Old Terra; Berry is a symbol of everything they hate; the very existence of Torch is an affront to them; the weapon of choice for that attack was a bio-weapon; and they're busy trying to get us—successfully, I might add, from all appearances—into a shooting war with the Solarian League. For that matter, according to Mike's report, one of their operatives just casually killed more than forty thousand people in New Tuscany to help their efforts along! And let's not forget that fleet of StateSec rejects thatManpower subsidized for an attack on Torch. I'll concede that I still don't know how they managed to respond that quickly to shoot down the summit, unless they've got enough penetration in Haven to have found out about it at least a couple of weeks before we did, but I'm not prepared to simply assume they couldn't have that kind of penetration. Not in the face of everything else we are finding out now! And do you think for one moment, Elizabeth, that Manpower isn't aware of how you feel about Haven? Or that they wouldn't be willing to play any card they could to get what they want?

"Yes, we're at war with the Republic of Haven. And, yes, they fired the first shot. And yes, they even launched the attack on our home system, and a lot of people have been killed. A lot of people I knew, people who weren't just professional colleagues but who'd been friends of mine for decades. Friends who'd literally risked their lives against impossible odds to save mine when they didn't have to, if you'll remember that little jaunt to Cerberus. So, believe me, I know all about anger, and I know all the reasons for distrust and hostility. But look at the evidence, for God's sake. Mike hit it exactly in her report—Manpower is operating like a hostile star nation, and we're the object of its hostility! Worse, it's got a hell of a lot more resources than we ever thought it did, even if it's hijacking some of them from the Sollies. And—" her almond-shaped, dark brown eyes pinned Elizabeth into her chair "—if there's anyone else in the galaxy who's even more inclined than the Legislaturalists or Oscar Saint-Just's State Security ever were to use assassination as a tool, it's Manpower.

"I admire you, and I respect you, both as my monarch and as a person and a friend, Elizabeth, but you're wrong. Whatever you may think, the real threat to the Star Empire at this moment isn't in Nouveau Paris or Old Chicago at all. It's in the Mesa System . . . and it's in the process of destroying the Star Kingdom you're responsible for ruling."

The tension hovering in the conference room was hard enough to chip with a knife as the two women locked eyes. And as those two sets of brown eyes met, Elizabeth Winton realized something emotionally that she'd long since recognized intellectually. Something Honor's analysis of any possible confrontation with the Solarian League had driven home in this very room only three T-weeks earlier.

Honor Alexander-Harrington had become the closest thing Elizabeth III had to a true peer. Admiral, Countess, Duchess, and Steadholder, the third ranking member of the Star Empire's peerage, a ruling head of state in her own right, and someone who had been born to none of those titles and identities. Someone who had won them. Who'd paid for them in the cold, hard cash of combat, in the loss of people for whom she cared deeply, in all the thousands of deaths—enemy and friend alike—she had taken onto her own conscience in the service of Elizabeth's kingdom, and in her own blood. Someone who had received many of those titles and honors from Elizabeth's own hands because she damned well deserved them.

And that peer—the person, Elizabeth realized now, whose absolute integrity and whose judgment on every other question she most trusted—disagreed with her on this one.

For several endless seconds, it felt as if the people around the table had forgotten to breathe, but then Elizabeth inhaled sharply, deeply, and shook her head like a boxer shaking off a hard left jab.

"I know you and I haven't seen eye-to-eye where the Peeps are concerned for a long time now, Honor," she said quietly. "I've tried to pretend we did. I've tried to ignore the fact that we didn't. And when I couldn't do that anymore, I've concluded that your personal acquaintance with people like Theisman and Tourville has affected your judgment. I still think that's possible, as a matter of fact. But—"

She paused, and silence hovered once more for several heartbeats before she spoke again.

"But," she continued, "maybe I'm the one whose judgment has been affected. You know why that might be true—better than anyone else, I suspect. And you're right, we do know things now that we didn't know then. As you say, there's still the problem of how they could have set up something like this so quickly—just the distances involved should have made it impossible. But"—her expression was that of a woman whose stubborn integrity was at odds with deeply held beliefs—"the explanation really could be as simple as their having someone close enough to Pritchart to know what she was thinking ahead of time. I still don't know how they could have known I'd pick Torch for the site of the summit, but if you're right—if it was a case of someone trying to manipulate me because they knew how I'd react to an assassination attempt anywhere—Torch would have been a logical target for Manpower. It could just have been serendipity that it was also the prospective site for the summit."

She inhaled deeply and shook her head.

"And you're right about what Mike's uncovered out at New Tuscany. Whether Manpower was involved in what happened to Admiral Webster and what happened on Torch or not, they're clearly on the brink of getting us into an actual war with the Solarian League. Yet even if my judgment's been less than perfect, and even if it is essential for us to regard that as a far greater long-term threat than Haven, that doesn't mean we don't have to deal with the Peeps before we can respond to the Sollies. And in addition to that, I have to think about how Pritchart is likely to respond when she finds out about what's happening in the Quadrant. When she realizes we're facing war with the Solarian League all over again, she's certainly going to realize we can't fight both of them at once, as well. After what happened in the Battle of Manticore, after that many dead, who knows what she's likely to demand—or do—under those circumstances? We don't even know what she was prepared to offer or demand at her proposed summit, far less what kilo of flesh she'll demand as her price for peace at this point. You say it's our duty to assume those superdreadnoughts really exist. Well, it's my duty to assume the Peeps would rather have victory than accept defeat, as well."

"Yes, it is," Honor agreed quietly. "But let's suppose you manage to impose peace on your terms. What are those terms going to be? Remember what we talked about here less than a month ago. Sir Thomas gave you the Admiralty's plan for defeating and occupying the Solarian League. Do you really think we could do the same thing to Haven, as well? Especially if we found ourselves trying to do both of them at once?

"We don't even know where Bolthole is, Elizabeth, so even if we demanded that they scrap their entire existing fleet, we can't take out their biggest and best yard with some sort of long-range strike. And it also means we can't picket it to make sure their fleet stays scrapped. So the Republic of Haven is still going to have a navy—and that navy's still going to be the only other major fleet with podnoughts—when we turn around to face the Sollies. We all know how well that worked out last time around. But let's suppose we do know where Bolthole is—that we demand its location as part of the surrender terms and then go blow the crap out of it. What happens then? If you impose punitive peace terms at knife-point because of the temporary advantage Apollo gives us, you've still got to come up with the hulls and ships to enforce those terms afterward . . . at the same moment when you're fighting for your life against the League.

"Do you really want to trust that we'll somehow be able to build a fleet big enough to handle both of those chores at once? And do you really think Pritchart—or, more likely, some other Havenite administration—wouldn't go right ahead and stab you in the back at the first opportunity? Or even simply offer 'technical assistance' to the Sollies to help them close the gap between their capabilities and ours even faster? And if you impose those terms by blowing the Haven System's infrastructure apart, and by killing thousands more of their naval personnel when they can't even shoot back effectively, I can absolutely guarantee you that any Havenite administration is only going to be licking its chops while it waits for the best possible moment to hit you from behind."

"So what do you suggest instead?" Elizabeth asked. Honor's eyes widened slightly at the queen's reasonable tone, and Elizabeth chuckled harshly. "Step up to the plate, as I believe they say on Grayson, Duchess Harrington. You've just done the equivalent of spanking me in public—well, in semi-public, at least—and I may have deserved it. But if you're prepared to tell me I've been wrong, then I'm prepared to tell you to suggest something better!"

"All right," Honor said after a moment. "I agree that we've got to be able to face one opponent at a time. I don't think anyone in this room, or anyone in the entire Navy, wants to fight the Sollies. Not if they have even the faintest conception of just how big, how powerful, the League is, anyway. I don't care what any of us said about potential Solarian weaknesses, or possible political strategies or opportunities. The truth is that none of us can know if any of that analysis was truly accurate, and only a lunatic would willingly risk the very survival of her star nation on possibilities if she had any other option at all!

"But, having said that, I think we have to position ourselves tofight the SLN, whether we want to or not. And that means reaching some sort of settlement, whether it's diplomatic or military, with the Havenites first. I've never disagreed with you there. But I think that rather than blowing still more of their ships out of space, and rather than destroying still more of their infrastructure, we ought to tell them we think it's time to talk. Hamish is right about the timing if we decide to launch what amounts to a preemptive strike, but remember what Pritchard did when she had the advantage because of what was happening in Talbott. She didn't shoot first, she offered to talk, and I genuinely believe she's telling the truth when she says she didn't set out to derail the summit.

"So I think it's time we show Haven we can forego an advantage in the interests of peace, as well. We defeated them decisively here in Manticore, despite our own losses, and they know it. By now, they know we could destroy the Haven System any time we chose to, as well. So I suggest that we hold Eighth Fleet right here, close to home, in case we do end up needing it in Talbott. Instead of sending me to Nouveau Paris to hold a pistol to their heads and make them sign on the dotted line, send an accredited diplomat, instead. Someone who can tell them that we know we can destroy them, too, and that we're prepared to do itif we have to, but that we don't want to unless we have to. Give them the option and let them have a little time to think, a little time to approach the decision with dignity, Elizabeth, not just because they're lying face down in the dirt with the muzzle of a gun screwed into the backs of their necks. Give them the chance to surrender on some sort of reasonable terms before I have to go out and kill thousands of more people who might not have to die at all."

"It's time, Admiral," Felicidad Kolstad said.

"I know," Admiral Topolev replied.

He sat once more upon Mako's flag bridge. Beyond the flagship's hull, fourteen more ships of Task Force One kept perfect formation upon her, and the brilliant beacon of Manticore-A blazed before them. They were only one light-week from that star, now, and they had decelerated to only twenty percent of light-speed. This was the point for which they had been headed ever since leaving Mesa four T-months before. Now it was time to do what they'd come here to do.

"Begin deployment," he said, and the enormous hatches opened and the pods began to spill free.

The other units of Task Force One were elsewhere, closing on Manticore-B. They wouldn't be deploying their pods just yet, not until they'd reached their own preselected launch point. Topolev wished that he'd had more ships to commit to that prong of the attack, but the decision to move up Oyster Bay had dictated the available resources, and this prong had to be decisive. Besides, there were fewer targets in the Manticore-B subsystem, anyway.

It'll be enough, he told himself, watching as the pods disappeared steadily behind his decelerating starships, vanishing into the endless dark between the stars. It'll be enough. And in about five weeks, the Manties are going to get a late Christmas present they'll never forget.