Mission of Honor

There was silence in the Cabinet Room. Describing the Battle of Manticore as the 'worst military defeat' the Republic of Haven or the People's Republic of Haven had ever suffered—in a single engagement, at least—while accurate, was definitely a case of understatement. Nor had Pritchart tried to conceal the scope of the disaster. Some details remained classified, but she'd refused to change her policy of telling the Republic's citizens the truth or abandon the transparency she'd adopted in place of the old Office of Public Information's propaganda, deception, and outright lies. Some of her political allies had argued with her about that—hard—because they'd anticipated a furious reaction born of frustration, fear, and a betrayed sense of desperation. And, to some extent, they'd been right. Indeed, there'd been calls, some of them infuriated, for Pritchart's resignation once the public realized the magnitude of the Navy's losses.

She'd rejected them, for several reasons. All of her cabinet secretaries knew at least one of those reasons was a fear that Giancola's unprovable treason would come out in the aftermath of any resignation on her part, with potentially disastrous consequences not just for the war effort but for the very future of the constitution all of them had fought so hard to restore.

Yet they also knew that particular reason had been distinctly secondary in her thinking. The most important factor had been that the President of the Republic was not simply its first minister. Under the constitution, Pritchart was no mere prime minister, able to resign her office and allow some other party or political leader to form a new government whenever a policy or decision proved unfortunate. For better or worse, for the remainder of her term, she was the Republic's head of state. Despite allthe criticism she'd taken, all the vicious attacks opposition political leaders (many of them longtime Giancola allies) had launched, she'd refused to abandon that constitutional principle, and all the muttered threats of impeachment over one trumped up charge or another had foundered upon the fact that a clear majority of the Republic's voters and their representatives still trusted her more than they trusted anyone else.

Which, unfortunately, wasn't remotely the same thing as saying they still trusted her judgment as much as they once had. And that, of course, was another factor she had to bear in mind where any sort of negotiations with Manticore might be concerned.

And where any admission of what Giancola had done might be concerned, as well. Which was going to make things distinctly sticky, given that it was one of the two points upon which the Manticorans were going to demand concessions.

'I doubt very much,' she continued in that same level voice, 'that anyone in this room—or anywhere on the face of this planet —could possibly regret the outcome of the Battle of Manticore more than I do. But you do have a point, Tony. After what happened there, and given the fact that there's no reason they can't do the same thing to us again whenever they choose to—which, I assure you, Admiral Alexander-Harrington didn't hesitate to point out to me, in the most pleasant possible way, of course—I see little point in their attempting some sort of negotiating table treachery. And unlike the rest of you—except for Tom, of course—I've actually met the woman now. She's . . . impressive, in a lot of ways. I don't think she's got the typical politician's mindset, either.'

'Meaning what, Madam President?' Leslie Montreau asked, her eyes narrowing slightly.

'Meaning I think this is the last woman in the universe I'd pick to sell someone a lie,' Pritchart said flatly. 'I don't think she'd accept the job in the first place, and even if she did, she wouldn't be very good at it.'

'I'd have to say that's always been my impression of her, Madam President,' Theisman said quietly.

'And everything the Foreign Intelligence Service's been able to pick up about her suggests exactly the same thing,' LePic put in.

'Which doesn't mean she couldn't be used to 'sell us a lie' anyway,' Nesbitt pointed out. 'If whoever sent her lied to her , or at least kept her in the dark about what they really had in mind, she might very well think she was telling us the truth the entire time.'

'Ha!' Pritchart's sudden laugh caused Nesbitt to sit back in his chair, eyebrows rising. The president went on laughing for a moment or two, then shook her head apologetically.

'I'm sorry, Tony,' she told the commerce secretary, her expression contrite. 'I'm not laughing at you, really. It's just that . . . . Well, trust me on this one. Even if all the wild rumors about treecats' ability to tell when someone's lying are nonsense, this isn't a woman I'd try to lie to, and Javier and I lied with the galaxy's best under StateSec! I have to tell you that I had the distinct impression that she could see right inside my skull and watch the little wheels going round and round.' She shook her head again. 'I don't think anyone could sell her a bill of goods that would get her out here to play Judas goat without her knowledge.'

'Pardon me for saying this, Madam President,' Walter Sanderson, the Secretary of the Interior, said slowly, 'but I have the distinct impression you actually like her.'

Sanderson sounded as if he felt betrayed by his own suspicion, and Pritchart cocked her head, lips pursed as she considered what he'd said. Then she shrugged.

'I wouldn't go quite that far, Walter. Not yet, anyway. But I'll admit that under other circumstances, I think I would like her. Mind you, I'm not going to let her sell me any air cars without having my own mechanic check them out first, but when you come down to it, one of the first rules of diplomacy is picking effective diplomats. Diplomats who can convince other people to trust them, even like them. It's what they call producing 'good chemistry' at the conference table. I know she's not a diplomat by training, but Manticore has a long tradition of using senior naval officers as ambassadors and negotiators. It's paid off for them surprisingly well over the years, and I'm sure that was part of their thinking in choosing her, but I also think it goes deeper than that.'

'Deeper, Ma'am?' Montreau asked.

'I think they chose her because she wanted to be chosen,' Pritchart said simply. She looked across at Theisman. 'Now that I've had a chance to actually meet her, Tom, I'm more convinced than ever that your notion of inviting her to the summit we proposed was a very good one. Wilhelm's analysts got it right, too, I think. Of everyone in Elizabeth's inner circle, she probably is the closest thing we've got to a friend.'

'Friend! ' Nesbitt snorted harshly.

'I said the closest thing we've got to a friend, Tony. I don't think anyone could accuse her of being a 'Peep sympathizer,' and God knows this woman's not going to hesitate to go right on blowing our starships out of space if these negotiations don't succeed! But she genuinely doesn't want to. And I don't think she feels any need to insist on unduly punitive terms, either.'

Nesbitt glanced around at his fellow cabinet secretaries, then turned back to Pritchart.

'With all due respect, Madam President,' he said, 'I have a sneaking suspicion you've already made up your mind what 'we're' going to do.'

'I wouldn't put it quite that way myself,' she replied. 'What I've made my mind up about is that we're going to have to negotiate with them, and that unless their terms are totally outrageous, this is probably the best opportunity we're going to get to survive. And I'm not talking about the personal survival of the people in this room, either. I'm talking about the survival of the Republic of Haven . . . and of the Constitution. If we ride this one down in flames, we won't 'just' be taking thousands, possibly millions, of more lives with us.' Her eyes were cold, her voice grim. 'We'll be taking everything we've fought for with us. All of it—everything we've done, everything we've tried to do, everything we've wanted to accomplish for the Republic since the day Tom shot Saint-Just—will go down with us. I'm not prepared to see that happen without doing everything I can to avoid it first.'

Silence fell once more. A silence that agreed with her analysis yet remained intensely wary, even frightened, of what she proposed to do to avoid the outcome she'd predicted.

But there was more than wariness or fear in the wordless, intense glances being exchanged around that table, Pritchart realized. Even for those like Nesbitt and Barloi who most disliked and distrusted Manticore, there was a blazing core of hope, as well. The hope that an eleventh-hour reprieve was possible, after all.

'How does Admiral Alexander-Harrington propose to conduct the negotiations, Madam President?' Montreau asked after several moments.

'I think she's willing to leave that largely up to us.' Pritchart's voice was back to normal, and she shrugged.