War Of Honor

weren't, it's possible you and I would both be wrong about Theisman. Even if we're not, neither he nor Pritchart is operating in a vacuum.'

'No. And even if they were, it would make perfect sense for them to be looking for ways to offset our tactical advantages. In fact, they'd be derelict in their duty if they weren't looking for them.'

'Absolutely. That's what has me and Greg so worried. Well, that and the fact that so far no one—including our sources—has seen a single improvement in their pre-truce hardware. It's been the better part of four T-years, Honor. Do you really think that much time could have passed without a navy which knows exactly how badly outclassed it was by Eighth Fleet introducing even one new weapon improvement?'

'No,' Honor said quietly, and kicked herself for not having wondered the same thing already as she read Jurgensen's confident reports about the technological gap between the Star Kingdom and the Republic.

'That's the real reason Wesley and I have been continuing to push the naval budget so hard,' Benjamin told her. 'We're beginning to catch some fairly powerful opposition, especially in the Keys, but we're determined to go right on building up the Fleet as long as we can. The problem is that we estimate we can only keep it up for another two T-years, three at the outside. After that, we'll simply have to cut back on our building programs. We may even have to suspend them entirely.'

Honor nodded. Altogether too many of the Star Kingdom's politicians shared the Government's ill-concealed opinion that Benjamin's obsession with continuing to build up the Grayson Navy now that the war was 'over' was a reflection of megalomania on his part. After all, no single-planet system like Yeltsin's Star could possibly match the sort of fleet a star nation like the Star Kingdom or the Republic of Haven could build. But Benjamin hadn't seemed to realize that, and the GSN was up to a strength of very nearly a hundred ships of the wall. Not only that, virtually all of them were SD(P)s. And that didn't include the CLACs which had been built or ordered from Manticoran yards to support them. Only the vast increases in onboard automation which had been accepted in the newer designs made it possible for Grayson to man its new construction, even with all of the demobilized Manticoran naval personnel it had managed to attract and even with the scandalous, steadily increasing number of women entering the planetary work force. But she hadn't needed Benjamin to tell her that the financial strain of that continued buildup was ruinous.

'Have you shared this information with Jurgensen?' she asked after a moment.

'We've tried to,' Benjamin said bitterly. 'Unfortunately, he seems to suffer from a bad case of 'not made here' where anything he doesn't want to hear about is concerned.'

'And he's not going to want to listen to me, either,' Honor observed.

'I wouldn't imagine so,' Benjamin agreed with mordant humor.

'Of course,' she went on, thinking aloud, 'the most likely explanation for why we haven't seen any new hardware in the Peep fleet is that they haven't managed to produce it in useful quantities yet. One thing I do feel certain about where Thomas Theisman is concerned is that he's not likely to make the mistake of introducing it in dribs and drabs.'

'Which only means that when he does get around to introducing it, he's going to do it in style,' Benjamin pointed out.

'You do have a way of coming up with pleasant prospects, don't you, Benjamin?'

'I try. And while I hesitate to mention it, there's another one I suppose I ought to bring up.' To Honor's surprise, he sounded almost hesitant, and Nimitz pricked his ears as both of them tasted a certain unhappiness— almost a sense of betraying a confidence—in his mind-glow.

'Which is?' she prompted gently when he continued to hesitate, and he sighed.

'None of this is official,' he warned her, and waited for her to nod in understanding. 'With that understood, I probably ought to tell you that we've been picking up a few worrisome diplomatic indicators. More like hints, really.'

'Hints about what?' she said when he paused once more.

'About Erewhon,' he said finally. 'You know they were almost as angry as we were about High Ridge's unilateral acceptance of Saint-Just's truce offer, of course.'

Honor nodded again. In fact, Benjamin was probably understating the Erewhonese reaction—not least because Erewhon had been forced to live under the shadow of Peep conquest for far longer than Grayson had. The fact that the Erewhonese government had elected to cut its treaty relationship with the Solarian League in order to sign on with the Manticoran Alliance had only exacerbated that anger, too. The perception had been that it had sacrificed a longstanding security arrangement with the most powerful political and economic entity in the history of the human race in order to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Manticore only to be stabbed in the back by its own treaty partners.

'Well, neither Greg nor I have any proof of it, but in the last few weeks, we've started picking up hints that Erewhon is . . . rethinking its relationship with Haven.'

'Rethinking?' Despite herself, Honor's voice sharpened, and her eyes narrowed. 'Rethinking it how?'

'Remember that this is at least ninety percent conjecture from very limited evidence,' Benjamin cautioned her, and she nodded again, with just a hint of impatience.

'Bearing that in mind,' the Protector went on then, 'what seems to me and Greg to be happening is that the current Erewhonese president and his cabinet believe Pritchart and Theisman are genuine about their intention to resurrect the Old Republic. And that they've genuinely renounced the Legislaturalists' and the Committee's expansionist foreign policy. Erewhon's a lot closer to the Republic than it is to Manticore, as well. And unlike us, it controls a wormhole junction of its own which connects it—and anyone it allies itself with—directly to the Solarian League.'

'You're suggesting that Erewhon might be considering a . . . closer relationship with Haven?' Honor said sharply, and he nodded.

'As I say, we have no proof of it, but we've been conducting quiet, one-on-one negotiations with several of the Alliance's smaller members.' She regarded him intently, and he shrugged with a curious mixture of apology and irritation. 'No one's interested in sneaking around behind the Star Kingdom's back, Honor. Not really. But let's face it. Thanks to High Ridge's idiotic foreign policy, the Alliance is in serious disarray at the moment, and we've been doing our best to try to put out the various fires before they get entirely out of hand and bring the entire structure down.'

'I see.' Honor understood exactly what he meant, and she felt a dull throb of shame at the thought of how hard Benjamin had obviously been working to preserve the vital alliances High Ridge equally obviously never wasted a single night's sleep worrying about.

'At any rate,' Benjamin went on after a moment, 'some of the things the Erewhonese ambassador's said in those discussions sound a lot more like the sort of temporizing and qualifying that usually go on between states that don't entirely trust one another—or who have something to hide—than the way allies are supposed to speak to each other. I don't think it's his idea, either. I think he's acting on formal instructions from his government, and that makes me wonder just why they're holding not just the Star Kingdom but all of us at arm's length. And one possibility which suggests itself to me is that they might be considering jumping the other way.'

'My God, but I hope you're wrong!' Honor said fervently after two or three heartbeats. 'After Grayson, Erewhon has the largest navy in the Alliance.'

'And access to all of our new hardware,' Benjamin pointed out grimly. Honor inhaled sharply, and he shrugged. 'Their industrial base isn't as good as ours is because it was never as completely modernized and overhauled as ours was. But at the very least, they have examples of everything short of Ghost Rider—and some of that technology, too, I think. And if the Peeps get a chance to reverse engineer that . . .'

Honor shivered as the possibility Benjamin had just evoked blew through her bones like the breath of space itself.

'I was going to try pressing the Admiralty to increase the force levels they're projecting for Sidemore Station on the basis of your first little bombshell,' she told him after a long, thoughtful moment. 'Now I'm not at all sure that would be a good idea. Not if the Peeps—I mean, not if the Republic —is likely to be taking the wraps off something Shannon Foraker came up with after they gave her a big budget to play with! And if there's even the possibility that you're right about what the Erewhonese might be considering, that only makes the situation even worse.'

'I'd have to agree that thinning out the RMN even further probably wouldn't be a very good idea,' Benjamin