Mission of Honor

Security's favorite means for removing 'inconvenient' individuals. Given the strength of the war party in Congress, the fact that we couldn't prove any of it, and the enormous suspicion which was going to be produced throughout the entire Republic by the way in which Grosclaude and Giancola had died, we couldn't simply present our theory and expect Congress to go along with an admission that it was someone in the Republic —not the Republic itself, but a rogue element in the very highest levels of our administration—who'd manipulated our correspondence. Who'd manipulated us—manipulated me— into calling for a resumption of hostilities because we honestly believed the government of our adversaries was not simply using diplomacy for its own cynical ends but then lying about our diplomatic notes.'

There was an edge of raw appeal in her quiet voice, and Elizabeth paused long enough to be sure she had control of her own voice.

'How long have you known—or suspected, at least?' she asked then.

'Giancola was killed in September 1920,' Pritchart replied unflinchingly. 'We already suspected what had happened, but as long as he was alive, it was an ongoing investigation. There was always the chance we might find the real evidence we needed.'

'But you've known—known for almost two T-years —that we were telling the truth. That it was your man who'd falsified the correspondence! And you said nothing !'

Elizabeth glared at Pritchart, and some of the other Havenites stirred angrily as her accusatory anger flooded over them, but their president only nodded.

'In his much as we 'knew' anything, yes,' she said. 'And that, Your Majesty, was the reason I proposed the summit meeting between us. Because it was time, once it became evident we'd never be able to find proof of what had happened, to end the fighting however we had to do it, even if that meant admitting the truth to you—to you, personally, where you and your treecat could evaluate my truthfulness. We still couldn't have gone public with the information back home, any more than you could remove High Ridge before the war,' her eyes hardened ever so slightly as she reminded Elizabeth of her own experience with the limitations political considerations could impose, 'but I was willing to tell you— and to surrender considerable military advantages on our part—to achieve peace. And so, when your Captain Terekhov sailed off to Monica, I sent your cousin home to you to do just that. And we both remember what happened then.'

She held Elizabeth's angry eyes steadily, and a cold shock went through the Manticoran queen as she remembered. Remembered her fury, her rejection of the summit—her decision to resume military operations instead of talking.

Silence fell, fragile and singing with its own tension, and Pritchart let it linger for several seconds before she spoke again.

'When you attacked Lovat,' she said quietly, and Elizabeth's eyes flickered as she remembered who'd been killed there, 'we knew your new targeting system gave you a decisive military advantage. Or that it would, assuming you could get it into general deployment. So we—Thomas and I—' she nodded in Theisman's direction, 'mounted Operation Beatrice. Thomas planned it, but I asked for it. Neither of us expected it to be as bloody—on both sides—as it finally was, but I won't pretend we thought the cost in lives would be cheap. Yet since the summit had been killed, since you were pushing the offensive against us, and since your new combat advantage was going to be so overwhelming, we felt our only hope was to strike for outright military victory before you could get your new systems deployed throughout your navy. And from our own analysis of the Battle of Manticore, we almost succeeded.'

She paused for just a moment, then shrugged.

'When we lost the Battle of Manticore, we lost the war, Your Majesty. We knew that. But then, to our surprise, you sent us Admiral Alexander-Harrington. You'll never know how tempted I was to tell her the truth then. Not at first, but after I'd come to know her. Yet I couldn't. Partly, that was because of more of those domestic political constraints. When an administration's been as badly damaged as mine was by the Battle of Manticore, managing the internal dynamics gets just as hard as fighting an external enemy, but that was only part of it. Maybe the rest of it was simply because we'd kept it secret for so long. Maybe I would have told her, if she hadn't been recalled so precipitously. I don't know. But when your home system was attacked, there were those on our side who saw it almost as an act of divine intervention. An opportunity to win after all—or, at least, to avoid losing.'

She made the admission without flinching, and Elizabeth nodded slowly. Of course there had. If what had happened to the Star Empire had happened to the Republic, exactly the same thought would have occurred to any number of Manticorans.

Including me , she admitted to herself.

'Obviously,' she heard her own voice say, 'that wasn't the option you chose to pursue.'

'No, it wasn't. In fact, it was the last thing I wanted to do, for a lot of reasons. Including the fact that, as Admiral Alexander-Harrington had pointed out to us, if there's ever going to be an end to the cycle of violence between Haven and Manticore, it has to be achieved on some sort of equitable basis, not because one of us simply pounds the other into such bloody ruin that she has to yield.

'But, what I never anticipated for a moment was what happened when Officer Cachat and Mr. Zilwicki turned up in Nouveau Paris last month.'

'Excuse me?' Elizabeth blinked at the apparent non sequitur , and Pritchart smiled. It was not a pleasant expression. In fact, it reminded Elizabeth forcefully of one she'd seen in her own mirror upon occasion.

'We have reason to believe we now know why events in Talbott were orchestrated the way they were,' the president said. 'Moreover, we know—or we think we do—at least approximately how the attack on your home system was carried out, and by whom. And we believe we know who's been supplying the advanced bio-nanotech which has been turning people into programmed assassins . . . or suicides. And'—she looked deep into Elizabeth's eyes once more—'we think we know who Arnold Giancola was working for, who manipulated me into going back to war against you, and who manipulated you into going back to war against me.'

Elizabeth stared at her, brain whirling, unable to believe what she was hearing.

'Your Majesty, the Republic of Haven—not just the current Republic, but the Old Republic—and the Star Empire of Manticore have been on the same list for centuries. We have a common enemy— one which has manipulated us into killing millions of our own for its own purposes. One which has reached a critical point in its own plans, set events in motion which require the destruction—not the defeat, the destruction— of both the Star Empire and the Republic. And for the better part of a T-century, the two of us have been doing exactly what that enemy wanted.'

Pritchart paused once more, then shook her head slowly.

'I think it's time we stopped,' she said very quietly.

* * *

'More coffee, Your Majesty?'

Elizabeth looked up at the murmured question, then smiled and extended her cup. James MacGuiness poured, then moved on around the table, refilling other cups, and she watched him go before she sipped. It was, as always, delicious, and she thought yet again what a pity it was that MacGuiness made such splendid coffee when Honor couldn't stand the beverage.

The familiar reflection trickled through her brain, and she set the cup back down and gave herself a mental shake. No doubt her staff back at Mount Royal Palace had its hands full covering for her absence, but they were just going to have to go on coping for a while longer. Despite the grinding fatigue of far too many hours, too much adrenaline, and far too many shocks to the universe she'd thought she understood, she knew she and Eloise Pritchart were still far from finished.

She looked across the table at the Havenite president, who'd just finished a serving of MacGuiness' trademark eggs Benedict and picked up her own coffee cup. Despite a sleepless night, following a day even longer than Elizabeth's had been, the other woman still looked improbably beautiful. And still radiated that formidable presence, as well. Elizabeth doubted anyone could have intentionally planned a greater physical contrast than the