Mission of Honor

eight-hundred-kilo gorilla, and any fundamental change could only jeopardize their position, or at least require them to duplicate the new technology themselves, quite possibly at the expense of throwing away the huge numerical superiority they've spent literally centuries building up.

'But Manpower, on the other hand—' The earl shook his head again. 'However uncomfortable the conclusion may be, I think just about all of us have decided Mike and Honor are right about Manpower's responsibility for everything that's happened in Talbott. Which means that whatever we may have thought Manpower was for the last few centuries, it isn't just 'an outlaw outfit.' I still don't have a clue in Hell what it is , but I know it's more than that. And, like Tom, I know it's managed to keep anyone from guessing it was. What I can't even begin to speculate meaningfully on is how long it's been more than that, but I'm sure as hell not prepared to assume the leopard just decided to change its spots the day before yesterday. So given that someone's already demonstrated that he's developed both the intent and the capability to maneuver us into open warfare with the Solarian League, I think that someone is a much more likely candidate to have orchestrated this attack. And I also think someone who's apparently spent a long time planning and building up capabilities he didn't want the rest of the galaxy to know about is a much more likely candidate to have very quietly embraced a brand-new, completely destabilizing military technology.

'If you know anyone that description fits better than Manpower, please tell me who it is.'

Grantville gazed at his brother for several seconds, then sat back in his chair.

'I can't,' he said quietly.

'Neither can I.' Elizabeth's grim voice drew all eyes back to her. Her own attention was fixed on White Haven and Caparelli, however.

'Am I correct in assuming you and Sir Thomas believe Manpower—or whatever the hell we should start calling these people—wouldn't have hit us and left our allies alone?'

'I doubt very much that they would have,' White Haven said heavily. 'I suppose it's possible they left the Andermani out. They have to be aware the Emperor's more than a little unhappy about this confrontation of ours with the League, and the Andermani have always had that reputation for . . . pragmatism, let's say. And there's got to be a limit on their current capabilities—how far they could stretch their attack when they started planning it—as well. So they may well have figured Gustav would recognize a sinking ship when he saw one. For that matter, they may have figured he's smart enough and cautious enough to figure there's no reason they couldn't do the same thing to him later if he didn't decide to step aside.

'But anyone smart enough to put all of this together is going to understand Benjamin Mayhew better than that, Your Majesty. They're going to've had a page or two in their plans for him. I'm very much afraid our dispatch boat telling him about what's happened here is going to cross one from him telling us the same thing already happened at Yeltsin's Star.'

'I agree entirely with Hamish, Your Majesty,' Caparelli said. 'And I'd add one other point. The Andermani still don't have their military hardware fully up to our standards. The Graysons do. I don't believe anyone would launch an attack like this on us without trying to make certain he took out the people most likely to help us rebuild, as well.'

Elizabeth looked at him for several more seconds, then nodded.

'That was about the conclusion I'd reached myself, unfortunately, Sir Thomas.'

'I would like to make one additional point if I may, however, Your Majesty,' the first space lord said quietly.

'Of course.'

'I realize that at this moment what we're all most aware of is the damage we've taken and the fact that we don't have a clue how the attack was pulled off. Frankly, from a military perspective, the most frightening thing is that none of our sensor systems saw a single thing coming.

'My own feeling, and Admiral Hemphill's tentative analysis supports the same conclusion, is that what we have to be looking at is some radically new propulsive system. The missiles used in this attack were essentially conventional weapons—variants on our own MDMs. Analysis of their maneuvers from the moment they brought their drives up further suggests they were delivered in pods, probably coasted ballistically in to their launch points at a velocity of about point-two cee. The weapons that were used on the space stations were another case entirely. At this point, it looks like they were probably some sort of throwaway, disposable version of our own Shrikes , although nobody in Admiral Hemphill's shop has the least clue how Manpower —excuse me, how whoever launched this attack—managed to cram a weapon that powerful into a remote platform. Or how they gave its graser that sort of pulse endurance. For all intents and purposes, though, it's basically only a longer-ranged version of our own Mistletoe, probably using whatever new drive technology their ships use instead of relying completely on stealth the way Mistletoe does.

'So, so far, the only fundamentally destabilizing thing we've seen—or, rather, not seen—is the drive technology itself. That's scary enough, but I suspect it's an advantage that's going to be considerably less valuable the second time it's used against someone who knows it's out there, even if he doesn't know how it's done. And whatever it may let them do in sublight maneuvering, unless the laws of physics have been repealed, they still have to radiate a hyper footprint when they leave hyper-space. Admiral Hemphill tells me she feels quite confident she'll eventually be able to identify whatever trace footprint or hyper ghost we failed to spot or identify properly at the time the ships which deployed this attack's weapons dropped in on us.

'My point is, Your Majesty, that it's going to be much more difficult for this adversary to launch a second attack on this star system—or, for that matter, on Grayson or New Potsdam—without our at least spotting their arrival from hyper. If we spot any unidentified hyper footprint or ghost, we'll immediately saturate the space around it with grav-pulse com-coordinated scout ships and deploy remote sensor platforms in a shell dense enough for someone to walk across. Even without our knowing exactly what we're looking for, it's extremely unlikely any significant force of starships could penetrate that kind of surveillance wall without our detecting something . And unless these people have been able to build an awfully large fleet of SD(P)s with Apollo capability of its own, 'something' is all Home Fleet or the system- defense Apollo pods are going to need.'

'So a second, similar attack is unlikely to succeed?' Grantville asked.

'Obviously no one can absolutely guarantee it won't, Mr. Prime Minister,' Caparelli said with unaccustomed formality. 'I think 'unlikely to succeed' would be putting it mildly, however.'

The first space lord shrugged, and looked back at Elizabeth.

'Your Majesty, I fully realize that what I'm talking about here is, at best, an argument that we can defend ourselves against similar attacks. I'm not even remotely trying to suggest that until we know how it was done, and until we're completely confident we know exactly who did it, we'll be in any position to take offensive action. And one thing we've learned against the Havenites is that the side which can't take effective offensive action ultimately loses. But barring the need to expend a large percentage of our limited missile supply against either the Republic or the League before we can get new production lines set up, I believe we ought to be able to protect ourselves against whoever this was until we do know what we need to know to go after them.'

Elizabeth started to speak, but White Haven raised an index finger, requesting attention. She looked at him for a moment, then nodded.

'I'd just like to add something to what Tom's said, Your Majesty,' he said. 'First, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the people who did this did it in hopes that either the League or the Republic will finish us off before we can recover. Frankly, I don't know how likely they are to succeed, if that was their intention; there are too many political and diplomatic elements tied up in that kind of decision tree for me to offer any kind of meaningful opinion. But, secondly, the one thing that's struck me about this—in addition to what Tom and Sonja have said about new drive technologies—is that the people behind it can't have a very large navy.'

'What?' Grantville blinked at his brother, and most of the other people around the table looked either surprised or downright skeptical. Caparelli, on the other hand, nodded firmly.

'Think about it, Willie,' White Haven said. 'If someone had anything like the number of capital ships we have, and if all of them had this kind of technology, they wouldn't have had to raid our infrastructure . They could have simply arrived, demonstrated their invisibility, and