Mission of Honor

know, but she was glad Isabel had caught the traitor before he'd managed to pass whatever it had been on to anyone else. For that matter, taking out Zilwicki and Cachat was going to hurt the other side badly down the road. And she could appreciate the way the disaster could be used as a public relations weapon against Torch and the Ballroom. But the price . . . .

'I'm sorry, Aldona.' She looked up, surprised by the gentleness in Albrecht's voice. She was almost as surprised by that as she was to feel the tears hovering behind her eyes. 'I know you and Isabel had grown quite close,' he said. 'She was close to me, too. She had her sharp edges, but she was also a very clear thinking, intellectually honest person. I'm going to miss her, and not just on a professional level.'

She met his eyes for a second or two, then nodded and inhaled deeply.

'I imagine she's not the only person we're going to lose, now that everything is coming more or less into the open,' she said.

'I imagine not,' Albrecht agreed quietly. Then he gave himself a shake and smiled at her. 'But in the meantime, we have a lot to do. Especially since, as you put it, 'everything is coming more or less into the open'. So, could you please go on with your report?'

'Of course.' She settled back in her chair, forcing her focus back on to the report she'd come here to give in the first place, and cleared her throat.

'Things went essentially as planned,' she began. 'Byng reacted almost exactly as his profile had indicated he would, and the Manties cooperated by sending three of their destroyers, not just a single ship. WhenGiselle blew up, Byng instantly assumed the Manties had attacked the station and blew all three of them out of space. Personally, I suspect there may actually have been a fourth Manty out there, given how quickly Gold Peak responded. Someone must have told Khumalo and Medusa what happened, at any rate. The turnaround time suggests it had to be either a warship or a dispatch boat, and I'm inclined to wonder if a dispatch boat would've had the capability to monitor and control current-generation Manty recon platforms. No one in Byng's task force or on New Tuscany ever saw any additional Manties, but Gold Peak arrived with detailed sensor information on the entire first incident, and someone must have provided it to her. Just as someone must have been there in order to get their response force back so fast.

'That's actually the part of the operation I'm least satisfied with,' she said candidly. 'I didn't think there was anyone else out there at the time, either, and I'd hoped I'd have a little more time to work on tying New Tuscany more securely into our plans. I didn't, so when the Manties did turn up, New Tuscany pretty much left Byng to sink or swim on his own.'

She shrugged.

'He managed to sink quite handily, actually, although I could wish Gold Peak had pushed him under a little more enthusiastically. She settled for blowing up just his flagship, and from everything I could see before Captain Maddox hypered out, it looked as if Sigbee was going to comply with all of Gold Peak's demands without further resistance.'

'That's exactly what happened,' Benjamin told her. Her eyebrows rose, and he chuckled grimly. 'The Manties released their version of what happened at New Tuscany—both incidents—nine days ago. I'm sure it's all over Old Terra by now. According to the Manties, they got everything from Sigbee's secure databases.'

'Oh, my,' Anisimovna murmured, and it was Albrecht's turn to chuckle.

'Exactly,' he said cheerfully. 'Hopefully, this whole thing is going to spin out of the Manties' and the Sollies' control without any more direct interference on our part—aside from whatever we can milk out of Green Pines, that is. But, if it looks like it's not, we can always start leaking some of that secure information ourselves, as well. So far, the Manties seem to be trying to respect the confidentiality of anything from the databases that doesn't pertain directly to their own problems with the Sollies. I don't know if those arrogant idiots in Old Chicago have even noticed that, but I'm sure they'll notice if the 'Manties' suddenly start leaking all of those embarrassing contingency plans of theirs to the media.'

'That would be . . . discomfiting for everyone concerned, wouldn't it?' Anisimovna observed with an almost blissful smile.

'It most certainly would. Of course, so far, it doesn't look like we're going to need to do very much more to fan that particular flame. At the moment, Kolokoltsov and his colleagues don't seem to have missed very many things they could have done wrong.' Albrecht's smile was evil. 'And our good friend Rajampet is performing exactly as expected.'

'And Crandall?' Anisimovna asked.

'We can't be positive yet,' Benjamin replied. 'We couldn't give Ottweiler a streak drive, so it's going to be a while before we hear anything from him. I don't think there's much need to worry about her response, though. Even without our prompting, her own natural inclination would be to attack as soon and hard as possible. And'—his smile was remarkably like his father's—'we happen to know her appreciation of the Manties' technology is every bit as good as Byng's was.'

'Good.' Anisimovna made no effort to hide her own satisfaction. Then she frowned. 'The only other thing that still worries me is the fact that there was no way for me to hide my fingerprints. If New Tuscany's looking for some way to appease Manticore, they're damned well going to've told Gold Peak about our involvement. Or as much about it as they know, at any rate.'

'Unfortunately, you're exactly right,' Albrecht agreed. 'They did roll over on us, and the Manties have broadcast that fact to the galaxy at large. On the other hand'—he shrugged—'it was a given from the outset that they were going to find out in the end. No one could have done a better job of burying his tracks than you did, so don't worry about it. Besides,' he grinned nastily, 'our people on Old Terra were primed and waiting to heap scorn on the 'fantastic allegations' and 'wild accusations' coming out of Manticore. Obviously the Manties are trying to come up with some story—any story!—to justify their unprovoked attack on Admiral Byng.'

'And people are really going to buy that?' Anisimovna couldn't help sounding a bit dubious, and Detweiller gave a crack of laughter.

'You'd be astonished how many Sollies will buy into that, at least long enough to meet our needs. They're accustomed to accepting nonsense about what goes on in the Verge—OFS has been feeding it to them forever, and their newsies are used to swinging the spoon! Their media's been so thoroughly coopted that at least half their reporters automatically follow the party line. It's almost like some kind of involuntary reflex. And even if John Q. Solly doesn't swallow it this time for some reason, it probably won't matter as long as we just generate enough background noise to give the people making the important decisions the cover and official justification they need.' He shook his head again. 'Like I say, don't worry about it. I'm completely satisfied with your performance out there.'

Anisimovna smiled back at him and nodded in mingled relief and genuine pleasure. The assignment she'd been handed was one of the most complicated ones she'd ever confronted. It hadn't come off perfectly, but it hadn't had to come off perfectly , and from everything they'd said, it sounded as if the operation had accomplished its goals.

'And because I am satisified,' Albrecht told her, 'I'm probably going to be handing you some additional hot potatoes.' She looked at him, and he snorted. 'That's your reward for pulling this one off. Now that we know you can handle the hard ones, we're not going to waste you on easy ones. And, frankly, the fact that we've lost Isabel is going to have us looking harder than ever for capable high level troubleshooters.'

'I see.' She put as much confidence and enthusiasm into her voice as she could, but Albrecht's eyes twinkled at her.

'Actually,' he told her, 'now that you've reached the center of the 'onion,' you'll find that, in a lot of ways, my bark is worse than my bite.' He shook his head, the twinkle in his eyes fading. 'Don't misunderstand. There are still penalties for people who just plain fuck up. But, at the same time, we know the sorts of things we're assigning people to do. And we also know that sometimes Murphy turns up, no matter how carefully you plan, or how well you execute. So we're not going to automatically punish anyone for failure unless it's abundantly obvious they're the reason for the failure. And, judging from the way you've handled this assignment, I don't think that's likely to be happening in your case.'

'I hope not,' she replied. 'And I'll try to make sure it doesn't.'

'I'm sure you will.' He smiled at her again, then leaned forward in his chair, crossing his forearms on the edge of the desk in front of him.

'Now, then,' he continued more briskly. 'It's going to be another couple of T-weeks before anyone can