Mission of Honor

He paused, inviting anyone to disagree with anything he'd just said. Queen Elizabeth clearly didn't, and as much as Grantville would have liked to, he couldn't. Sir Anthony Langtry seemed torn between a diplomat's responsibility to find an option short of war and an ex-Marine's bloodthirsty belligerence. Sir Thomas Caparelli and Admiral Patricia Givens, on the other hand, were in obvious agreement with White Haven.

'All right,' the earl continued when no one accepted his invitation. 'Since the Sollies're going to decide, as the Queen put it before Crandall actually showed up, that the Star Empire's a nail and the thing for them to do is reach for the biggest damned hammer they've got, there's not much point kowtowing to that jackass Kolokoltsov and his pain-in-the-ass, equally arrogant buddies. The way they've been viewing that Green Pines crap with alarm and calling for 'an impartial interstellar investigation'—by Frontier Security , of all people!—into 'the Star Empire's apparent involvement in terroristic actions' is a pretty fair indicator of where their brains—such as they have, and what there is of them—were headed even before Mike kicked Crandall's arse! So I think our best option is to tell them flat out that the entire mess is the result of the way their people have fu—ah, screwed up by the numbers, and that we're all done putting up with it. Send them the tac recordings from Spindle and ask them how many more superdreadnoughts they want our cruisers to kill before we even bring up our battlecruisers—much less our own wallers — and get down to the main event. And while we're doing that, we go ahead and activate Case Lacoцn, too.'

Faces tightened around the table with his last sentence. Case Lacoцn was the Royal Manticoran Navy's plan to close all wormhole nexii under its control to Solarian traffic. Or, rather, that was the first phase of Lacoцn. The second phase included active commerce raiding and the extension of de facto Manticoran control to every wormhole nexus within its reach, regardless of who that nexus nominally belonged to.

'I realize what we're talking about here,' White Haven said grimly, 'and I know the Sollies're going to scream bloody murder about our 'interference with free trade' even before we decide to move to Lacoцn Two. But the realization of just how much we can hurt them economically, coupled with what happened at Spindle, may actually be a big enough clue stick to get through even to Sollies. It's the biggest one we've got short of launching a general offensive, at any rate, so I think we have to see whether or not it's big enough to do the trick. It's not like we've got all that much to lose, anyway. Worst case, the League goes ahead and does what it was going to do anyway and we get to find out whether or not Honor's right about how fragile it is. Best case—though I'm not going to suggest anyone hold his breath waiting for it—somebody in Old Chicago suddenly sprouts an IQ higher than his body temperature and they decide it just might not be a good idea after all to get a couple or three million of their spacers killed.'

He shrugged.

'I'm not saying it's a good idea. But I am saying that, just like Mike, we're fresh out of good alternatives. So it's time we stop trying to avoid the inevitable and position ourselves to fight the League as effectively as humanly possible if—when— it comes to that.'

The silence in the Mount Royal Palace conference room was intense, and White Haven leaned back in his chair, his face hard.

'I don't really like saying it,' Langtry said finally, 'but I think Hamish has a point. Nobody's ever captured a Solarian ship-of-the-wall before, far less blown twenty-three of them out of space. And unless I'm mistaken, no one's ever killed anyone's superdreadnought using nothing but heavy cruisers. Talk about rubbing salt into the wound!'

He shook his head, contemplating the way Solarian arrogance was likely to react to the insult of being that casually—and totally—trounced by someone who hadn't even used a capital ship in the process.

'We're in uncharted territory,' he continued, 'and, unfortunately, the one thing I think we can all agree on is that the League isn't going to . . . take the news well, shall we say? That being so, the only modest change to Hamish's proposal I'd suggest would be to include a diplomatic note which basically tells Kolokoltsov we consider Crandall's actions at Spindle yet another act of war and that if they're not repudiated—publicly, and in the strongest possible terms—within two standard T-days of the receipt of our note, Her Majesty's Government will assume it represents the Solarian League' chosen policy vis-а-vis the Star Empire. In that case, given the existence of a state of war of the League's choosing between it and us, we will immediately close all nexii under our control to all Solarian traffic and inform all our station commanders that we're at war with the League and that they're to act accordingly.'

'I don't have a problem with that,' White Haven said. 'I don't expect it to do any good, but at least there won't be any questions about our prewar diplomacy this time around.'

'Wait.' Elizabeth raised one hand, and her expression was rueful. 'I don't believe I'm about to say this, but here goes. Don't you think it might be a good idea to find out whether or not we're going to get a treaty out of Pritchart before we go sending any ultimatums to the Solarian League?'

'With all due respect, Your Majesty,' Langtry said, 'the ultimatum's already been delivered—by the League, not us. It arrived in Spindle about two weeks ago. That's Hamish's entire point. Fortunately, judging from Duchess Harrington's dispatches, the chance of our getting a treaty out of Nouveau Paris is actually pretty good. I'm not counting any chickens before the eggs hatch, you understand, but we can't allow our policy towards the League to be dictated by concerns over our relations with the Republic. Obviously, we've got to bear concerns in mind, and they're going to influence one another heavily, but we can't afford to couple them too closely together when we start formulating policy and military strategy.'

'All right, I can see that,' Elizabeth said. 'But let's pursue this notion of sending them the tactical recordings a little farther. Is there really much chance they'll draw the proper conclusions from them? Pat?'

She looked at Admiral Givens, and the woman who headed the Office of Naval Intelligence flashed an unhappy smile that was almost a grimace.

'Your Majesty, I'm afraid that comes under the heading of 'nobody knows.' There's simply no way to predict the answer. Crandall obviously didn't draw the right conclusions from what happened to Byng, but I think we'd all agree she wasn't the sharpest stylus in the box. And, for that matter, the Battle of Spindle's a rather larger exclamation point than what happened at New Tuscany. On the other hand, Old Chicago's a lot further from Spindle than Meyers is from New Tuscany. And the truth probably is that their so-called intelligence analysts have been so insulated from reality for so long that no one's telling the bureaucrats who're actually calling the shots just how bad the balance of military capabilities really is from the SLN's perspective. Assuming, of course, any of the aforesaid analysts want to tell them in the first place.'

'Why shouldn't they want to?' Elizabeth asked. 'That's their job, isn't it? And it's their navy that's going to get reamed if they screw up!'

'Why didn't High Ridge's and Janacek's analysts tell them what was really happening, Your Majesty?' Givens countered sadly, almost gently. 'After studying what we've recovered from the databases Admiral Gold Peak captured at New Tuscany, I'm even more of the opinion that everyone in the League's been telling their superiors what those superiors wanted to hear for so long that it's unlikely any of them remember how to tell someone an unpalatable truth. And, truth to tell, I actually sympathize with them. A little, anyway.'

'Excuse me?'

Elizabeth's eyebrows rose, and Givens shook her head.

'Your Majesty, there's always a temptation, for any analyst, to choose the hypothesis she knows her superiors, or her government, or the people responsible for shaping policy want to hear. Telling them something else isn't the way to make herself popular, after all. But it's not necessarily even a matter of a self-serving refusal to rock the boat, either. Sometimes it's even a case of recognizing what their superiors are willing to hear—of avoiding truths that will simply get them disregarded or fired, because they know that if they go, they'll only be replaced by someone even less willing to risk flouting the party line. Of course, it can be a case of simple mental laziness, too. In fact, that happens a lot more frequently than most of us in the intelligence community like to admit. But even more often than that, probably, perfectly honest, hard-working analysts screw up by the numbers simply because they've gotten into a habit of thought. Because someone's allowed herself to become so firmly wedded to one view of the evidence—often