War Of Honor

sheer size and mass of the juggernaut which had been assembled to smash the Alliance.

'We're not dead yet, Honor,' Hamish told her almost gently, and she shook her head as if she could physically banish her sense of doom.

'What do you mean?' she asked after a moment.

'First of all, what you managed to accomplish at Sidemore seems to have had a profound impact on their thinking. Obviously, they don't know exactly what happened yet—it's going to take their commander on the spot a lot longer to get home, since he can't use the Junction. But they know they got reamed, if only from news reports of what we've already announced. Willie and I have discussed it with Elizabeth, and we're going to go ahead and announce their loss figures officially tomorrow morning, as well. I doubt that we're going to really astonish anyone, after the rumors have already been flying for so long. But when we confirm that you managed to destroy well over half of their attack force and damage most of the rest of it, I think it will give them even more pause. Not to mention what it's already done for our own civilian—hell, not just civilian!—for our civilian and military morale. What you pulled off out there is the only really bright spot in this entire disaster.'

'What about what you and Niall managed at Trevor's Star?' she challenged.

'What we managed there was a negative event,' he replied. She started to say something else, and he shook his head. 'I'm not trying to be falsely modest, Honor. And I'm not trying to downplay what we accomplished, or to pretend that the public as a whole and the San Martinos in particular don't realize that what we staved off would have turned the Peep offensive into a total and complete disaster for the Alliance. But the fact remains that the fleet we had a shot at escaped intact, with nothing worse than the loss of a few LACs. The fleet that you had a shot at didn't just retreat—it was destroyed. I'm prepared to admit that in a strategic sense Sidemore is infinitely less vital to the Star Kingdom than Trevor's Star, and even that the ships they committed to the attack there seem to have included a higher percentage of obsolescent types which, in the final analysis, they could afford to lose much more readily than they could have afforded to lose the ships they committed to Trevor's Star. All of that may be true, but it's also beside the point.

'Given the increases in their technical capabilities, especially now that Erewhon is on their side of the line, the moral ascendancy we established before the cease-fire is even more vitally important. Frankly, they've just demonstrated that we don't have a right to that ascendancy any longer, but they may not realize it. For that matter, our people may not realize it . . . if we're lucky. The fact that you defeated them so decisively in the one place where effectively equal forces stood and fought is what we want them to remember. It's what we want our own people to remember, too, but it's even more important where the Peeps are concerned.

'The fact that they refused to engage at roughly equal odds at Trevor's Star is also going to loom in their thinking, I hope, of course. But that refusal takes on an entirely new light in the wake of what happened at Sidemore. Now it could be seen not simply as prudence—which, between you and me, is precisely what it actually was—so much as cowardice. Or, at least, an admission of their continued inability to meet us on equal terms.'

'I suppose I can follow your argument,' Honor said a bit dubiously. 'It all seems very thin to me, though.'

'Oh, it's certainly that,' White Haven agreed with feeling. 'But there's a second string to our bow, as well. And, to be honest, you created the preconditions for it, as well.'

'I did? And what sort of 'second string' are you talking about?'

'Sir Anthony has already been in touch with the Andermani,' White Haven told her. 'Given the Gregor terminus, we can communicate back and forth with New Berlin faster than the Havenite fleet could retreat from Trevor's Star to the Haven System, and Willie and Elizabeth didn't lose any time taking advantage of that.

'The Andermani are as shocked by what happened as we were. No one outside the Republic of Haven so much as guessed this was coming, or would have believed how completely their initial offensive would succeed even if they'd seen it coming. The Andermani certainly never anticipated anything like it. And, to be honest, I think it frightened them. Badly, in fact. You know how little Emperor Gustav trusts 'Republican' forms of government in the first place. I think that predisposed him to believe our side when we explained that Pritchart and Giancola manufactured the diplomatic correspondence they're busy publishing to the galaxy. In addition, he's admitted to us that Pritchart deliberately encouraged them to pursue an aggressive policy in Silesia at the same time she was turning up the heat on us at the truce negotiations. My impression from what Willie's said is that the Peeps' obvious willingness to use the Empire as one more cat's paw in what was obviously a very carefully planned policy of deception has had a profound effect on the Emperor's view of the galactic balance of power.

'At any rate, it looks very much as if the Andermani Navy is about to come in on our side.'

Honor stared at him in disbelief.

'Hamish, we were shooting at each other less than two months ago!' she protested.

'And your point is?' he asked, and chortled at her expression. Then he sobered. 'Honor, 'real politik' is the guiding deity of the Anderman Dynasty. What Gustav Anderman is seeing right this minute is that the Peeps are unpredictable, that they attempted to use him, and that they're lying to the entire galaxy. Oh, and that they once again have the biggest Navy this side of the Solarian League.' He shrugged. 'On that basis, they're obviously a much greater danger to him than we are. Remember, the Andermani never really thought of us as a threat to their own security. What they resented was our interference in their efforts to secure what they regarded as their 'natural frontiers' in Silesia. Everybody, on the other hand, regarded the old People's Republic as a threat. And now that the new Republic has demonstrated that it has the same leopard spots as the old one, the Andermani see it in very much the same light.

'So since they never had anything personally against us in the first place, they're suddenly much more receptive to the notion that their enemy's enemy is their friend. Especially when Willie and Elizabeth agreed to sweeten the pot just a bit.'

'How?' Honor asked, regarding him suspiciously now, rather than disbelievingly.

'With a little real politik of our own,' White Haven told her. 'The Conservative Association and the Liberal Party are effectively nonexistent at the moment. You haven't been to the Lords recently, so you can't begin to appreciate just how completely the entire Parliament is supporting Willie's new government right now. To give you some idea, the Lords have already agreed to take up a bill to transfer the power of the purse to the Commons over a five-T-year transition period. Unless something very drastic happens, it will be passed on third reading next week.'

Honor was too astonished even to speak, and he shrugged.

'I know. Stupid, isn't it? The very issue that High Ridge was able to ride into power. The huge political bogeyman the entire peerage was so terrified of that a majority of them actually signed off on High Ridge's manipulations and dirty little deals. And now, in less than a month from the time shooting resumes, something on the order of an eighty percent majority is prepared to give it all up. If the stupid bastards had just been willing to consider making the same concession three years ago, none of this would've happened. Or, at least, if it had, it would've happened in a way which would have deprived Pritchart of the fig leaf of justification she's manufactured.

'But as far as the Andermani are concerned, the Lords' support for domestic finance reform is beside the point. What's going to bring the Empire in on our side is the fact that all of that ideological resistance to anything smacking of 'imperialism' went down the toilet along with High Ridge and New Kiev. Something like it would probably have materialized again soon enough, except for the fact that it's not going to have the chance to. Because later this week, Willie is going to propose to a joint session of Parliament that the Star Kingdom and the Andermani Empire finally bring an end to the incessant bloodletting and atrocities in Silesia.'

'Oh, my God. You can't be serious!'

'Of course I can. I don't say it would have been my first choice of how to proceed, but I certainly understand the logic. And the Peeps haven't left us very much choice, either. We need the Andies to survive, Honor, and their price is the extension of their frontier into Silesia.' He shrugged. 'Well, if we're going to be in for a penny, we may as well be in for a dollar.'

'And if the Confederacy government objects to being partitioned between two foreign powers?' Honor demanded.