A Rising Thunder

someone else going to react? That’s going to be the key to the way this whole thing shakes out in the end, Jacques.”

“And to how many more people we have to kill before it’s all over.” Honor’s mouth tightened as the chill of her own words touched the warmth and pleasure of the day, and Nimitz made a soft sound and stirred on her shoulder.

“And that,” her husband agreed, putting an arm around her and hugging her tightly. “I’d like to tell you we wouldn’t have to kill — or lose — anybody else, but it’s not going to work out that way.”

“I know.” She hugged him back and sighed. “I know. And I promise I’ll try not to rain all over Roger and Rivka’s party.”

“Oh, your credit’s pretty good with the happy couple, Honor,” Emily told her with a chuckle. “I don’t think they’ll hold a minor drizzle or two against you. No cloudbursts, now, though!”

“No, Ma’am,” Honor promised obediently with a demure little smile, and her uncle laughed.

“You three deserve each other,” he said, smiling warmly at all of them. “And I’m glad you’ve got each other. Hang onto it, because, trust me, it’s something special.”

“I agree,” Honor said softly, reaching down to touch Emily’s working hand, then looked up as the orchestra stopped playing and another round of official toasts began. It was Chyang Benton-Ramirez’s turn to propose the first toast, and afternoon sunlight burned golden in the heart of his wine as he raised his glass. Their sheltered little nook was too far away for any of them to hear his actual words, but they heard the applause when he finished.

“What?” she heard, and looked at her uncle.

“What ‘what’?” she asked, cocking her head slightly.

“You’re thinking deep thoughts again,” Jacques Benton-Ramirez y Chou accused her. “Getting ready to find something else to worry about, if I know you!”

“I am not!” she protested.

“Oh, yes you are,” he shot back. “Nimitz?”

He, Hamish, and Emily all looked at Nimitz, who gazed back thoughtfully for a moment…and then nodded.

“Oh, you traitor!” she told the ’cat.

“Come on, out with it!” Jacques commanded. “Let’s get it all out in the open and get rid of it before you have to go back over and do some more of that matron of honor stuff.”

Honor glared at him for a moment, then shrugged.

“You may actually have a point, although I find it hard to believe I hear myself saying that.”

“I always have a point,” her uncle replied with dignity. “It is, alas, simply my fate to be surrounded by people unable to fully appreciate the needle sharpness and rapier quickness of my intellect. Now trot it out!”

Honor made a face at him, then sighed.

“All right. I was just watching Chairman Benton-Ramirez, looking at how cheerful and unconcerned he seems, and thinking about the vote on Reid’s motion.”

The others looked at her. Simultaneity was a slippery concept when applied to interstellar distances, but the vote on Tyrone Reid’s motion to investigate Beowulf’s “treason” against the Solarian League would be occurring on far off Old Earth in less than twenty-four hours.

“There’s not much point worrying about it,” her uncle said after a second or two. “We all know how the vote’s going to come out, after all. And Felicia has her instructions for what to do when it does.” He twitched his shoulders. “And it’s not as if there’s much question about how the electorate’s going to respond in the end. Every single opinion poll and electronic town meeting we’ve held underscores that, Honor. And you’ve seen the editorials and the public postings!”

“I know. Remember, I am half-Beowulfan, Uncle Jacques. But it’s just such a big step, and I’m worried about how the Mandarins are going to react.”

“There’s not a lot they can do about it,” Jacques pointed out.

“The problem is whether or not they realize that,” Honor countered, “and their track record to date doesn’t exactly inspire me with confidence in their judgment. I keep reminding myself that they’re not really stupid. Blind, arrogant, bigoted, and so far out of touch with us uppity ‘neobarbs’ that they act stupidly, but within the limits of their worldview, they truly aren’t idiots. And that means they have to be able to see the writing on the wall when their nose gets rubbed in it hard enough, doesn’t it?”

“Probably.” Jacques nodded. “You’d think so, at any rate, wouldn’t you?”

“And that’s what worries me,” Honor said frankly. “It’s obvious to me — to us— where Beowulf’s actions are going to lead. I think we have to assume it’s going to be obvious to them, too. And if it is, based on their actions to date, I think we have to assume they’ll try to do something about it before that happens.”

“I don’t think there’s a great deal they can do about it, in the short term, at least,” her uncle replied.

“Maybe not, but I’d feel a lot better if we had a couple of dozen Invictus-class wallers in Beowulf orbit.”

“I’m not sure I disagree with you,” Jacques said slowly, “but that was a political decision, and I can see their point. It’s one thing for us to call on Manticoran assistance to prevent Tsang from forcibly seizing control of the Beowulf Terminus. And I don’t think anyone on Beowulf has any problem with the notion that your Navy is going to make damned sure it hangs on to the terminus and deploys however many ships it has to to do it. But if we start putting Manty ships-of-the-wall in orbit around the planet, it’s going to look coercive as hell. Beowulfers who have reservations about our joining the Alliance — and there are some of those, after all — are likely to feel threatened, and that’s not what we want in the run-up to the vote. For that matter, if we had Manty wallers orbiting Beowulf, it could only make Reid and Neng’s job in the Assembly even easier. A lot easier to convict us of treason under those circumstances, don’t you think?”

“But as you just pointed out, we already know how that vote’s going to come out in the end, anyway,” Honor shot back.

“I said I wasn’t sure I disagreed with you.” Benton-Ramirez y Chou shook his head. “But there’s another consideration to it, as well. Felicia’s going to drop her little nuke in the Assembly as soon as the votes are tallied on Reid’s motion, and we can’t afford to let the Mandarins or their mouthpieces cast doubt on the legitimacy of her actions or of the vote. If there’s anything but Beowulfan warships in orbit around the planet, you know they’re going to claim that whatever the Board of Directors says or however the electorate votes, it was all coerced by the threat of Manticoran warheads.”

“I hate to say it, but I think they’ve got a point, Honor,” Hamish pointed out, and even Emily nodded in agreement.

“I didn’t say they didn’t have a point, Hamish,” Honor said a bit tartly. “What I said is that I question whether or not it’s a good enough point to park all of our modern wallers too far from the inner system to intervene if something…untoward happens.”

“Which is why we’re working on Mycroft,” Hamish pointed out, and Honor was forced to nod in acknowledgment. Sneaky of him to use Mycroft, since she was the one who’d first suggested the concept to Sonja Hemphill.

One of the problems the Alliance was bound to face if the situation continued to deteriorate was the need to free up capital ships for mobile operations rather than tying them down in static defenses. Honor, as the unwilling beta tester for Shannon Foraker’s Moriarity system, had developed a profound respect for the effectiveness of massed MDM pods in the system defense role. Michelle Henke’s success at Spindle had reconfirmed that respect even before Filareta’s spectacular demise. Which was why Honor had devoted quite a bit of thought to ways in which Moriarity’s system-wide network of dispersed sensor and fire control stations could be updated to take advantage of the Mark 23 and the Mark 23 E. The answer Hemphill had come up with was Mycroft, named for a character out of the same pre-space detective fiction which had given Foraker Moriarity in the first place.

Essentially, Mycroft was simply a couple of dozen Keyhole-Two platforms parked at various points in a star system. It was a little more complicated than that, since the platforms were designed to operate on beamed