A Rising Thunder

was. Unlike any of the others, she (and Emily) had already discussed this with their husband, and while she wasn’t certain she shared his and Emily’s logic completely, she was certain she agreed with what he was about to propose.

“Perhaps you’d care to explain that, My Lord?” Eloise Pritchart invited after a moment, topaz eyes narrowed intently.

“Of course, Madam President.” White Haven looked around the conference table. “It’s possible Filareta really does have a secret clause directing him to back off if it turns out he’s likely to get reamed. It’s also possible that even without any such clause, he’d be smart enough to do it anyway. But if he does, and he just turns around and sails back off homeward without a shot being fired, where does that leave us?”

“Well, to begin with,” Mikulin observed, “it leaves a lot of people alive who’d be dead otherwise. And it pretty conclusively demonstrates that their navy can’t stand up to Manticoran weapons technology.”

“Does it?” White Haven asked. “Demonstrate they can’t stand up to our weapons, I mean?”

“Excuse me?” Mikulin looked perplexed, not incredulous, and White Haven shrugged again.

“What happened to Crandall’s already demonstrated that to anyone with a working IQ,” he pointed out. “Despite which, they’ve sent this entire fleet all the way out here. The damned ‘Mandarins’ are still that willing to risk getting millions of people killed — and that unwilling to even consider admitting they might conceivably be in the wrong. The name they’ve assigned this abortion is proof enough of that! ‘Operation Raging Justice?’” The scorn in his voice was withering. “Pretty much shows how they plan on selling this to the League, doesn’t it? They’re still trying to game the system, and they don’t give a single solitary damn about the fire they’re playing with as long as it’s someone else who gets burned!”

He paused and looked around the table, his eyes like fiery blue ice.

“So what happens, what do they do, if the fleet they’ve sent after us turns around and goes home without anyone firing a shot?” he went on. “Do they suddenly decide to admit their entire so- called strategy was a recipe for disaster that they walked straight into with their eyes wide open? For that matter, do they admit they pulled back because they’ve figured out they can’t take us out? Do they even admit we let them back off instead of blowing their entire fleet into dust bunnies? No. What they’ll do is try their damnedest to pass it off as another example of their ‘restraint’ in the face of our belligerence. They didn’t turn around because they knew they’d get their ass kicked if they kept coming; they turned around because they realized our leadership was so hopelessly stupid and bloodthirsty it was really going to fight, despite the fact that we couldn’t possibly win, and they weren’t prepared to slaughter all our personnel. After all, none of our spacers are responsible for our government’s hopelessly corrupt and imperialistic policy. Isn’t that the way they’ve already been selling all this? Of course it is! So rather than press matters, once they realized Her Majesty here was perfectly prepared to throw away all of those lives, they’ve decided to exercise restraint.”

“That’s—” Grantville paused for a moment, looking at his brother, then shook his head. “I’m sorry, Ham, but that’d be too much for even the Solly public to swallow!”

“Maybe,” Vice Admiral Trenis said, her expression thoughtful. “In fact, probably. That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t try it, though, Mr. Prime Minister. As Earl White Haven says, it’s certainly compatible with the propaganda the Mandarins already have out there, anyway. And let’s face it, they’ve managed to sell their public a lot of things that were almost equally preposterous.”

“Tester knows that’s true enough,” Benjamin agreed. “I’d really prefer for Hamish to be wrong, too, Willie, but I’m very much afraid he isn’t.”

“And even if they couldn’t hope to sell it in the long run,” Mikulin said with a scowl, “they might figure they could make it stand up in the short run as long as all of them lied loudly enough with straight enough faces. Long enough for them to get a formal declaration of war through the Assembly, say.”

“All right, I’ll accept that they may be thinking that way, even if I don’t think they’d be likely to get away with it,” Grantville said, although his tone was still doubtful. “Having said that, though, what do you propose we do about it, Ham?”

“We don’t give them the choice,” White Haven said flatly.

“Hamish,” Elizabeth said, “given my reputation, I can’t quite believe I’m the one who’s about to say this, but I’d really prefer not to kill anyone we don’t have to kill.”

“I’m not proposing we slaughter them out of hand, Your Majesty.” White Haven smiled thinly. “Mind you, the notion does have a certain appeal, especially given how cynically they’re taking advantage of the Yawata Strike. Reminds you of a carrion hawk circling a sand buck with a broken leg, doesn’t it? Or maybe more of a dune slug getting ready to strip the carcass before it’s quite dead. But what I’m saying is that we need to create a situation in which whatever happens here represents an unambiguous, undeniable, decisive defeat for the SLN. Something no Solly spinmeister’s going to be able to convince even some credulous three-year-old was a ‘voluntary act of restraint’ on the League’s part. We don’t have to blow them all out of space to do that, either.”

“You’re thinking of forcing them to surrender, aren’t you, Milord?” Thomas Theisman said slowly, his eyes narrowed.

“That’s exactly what I’m thinking,” White Haven agreed. “After what happened at Spindle, they’d find the surrender of another four hundred or so ships-of-the-wall damned hard to explain. Well, to explain as anything except an admission of total military impotence, anyway.”

“There’s something to that, Your Majesty, Madam President,” Langtry said. “On the heels of Lacoon and Spindle, the fact that we’ve simply captured the biggest single fleet the Solarian League’s ever assembled — hopefully without firing a shot or harming a single hair on anyone’s head — would have to just about finish off any remaining public confidence in Battle Fleet. Not to mention taking another four hundred-plus ships-of-the-wall out of Rajampet’s order of battle. I don’t care how many obsolete wallers he’s got in the Reserve; even he’s got to eventually figure out he’s running out of ships. Or out of trained crews to put aboard them, anyway!”

“And if Filareta doesn’t have any ‘secret orders,’ or if he’s just plain too stupid to surrender without getting a lot of his ships blown out of space first?” From Theisman’s tone, he wasn’t disputing Langtry’s or White Haven’s analyses. He was simply a military man who wanted to be sure the civilians around that table fully understood what was being discussed.

“If we arrange things properly, Tom,” Honor said, entering the discussion for the first time, “we can create a tactical situation in which he’ll have to recognize the hopelessness of his position. In fact, you and I have already done that, haven’t we?” It was her turn to smile coldly. “The only change we’d have to make would be to wait a bit longer, let him actually cross the limit before we pull the trigger. If he’s not willing to surrender under those conditions, then he’s another Crandall, and he wouldn’t be willing to surrender under any conditions. And if that’s the case, he’d probably try to bull straight in until we stopped him the hard way, no matter what. Which means—”

“Which means we’d have to open fire on him, anyway,” Pritchart finished Honor’s thought for her.

“Exactly, Madam President.” Honor sighed. “Like Her Majesty, I don’t want to kill anyone we don’t have to kill. But if Fliareta’s determined to fight anyway, then I want the deck as heavily stacked in our favor as possible. And I want him hammered so hard even Sollies have to get the message that going after us is a really, really bad idea. That this isn’t just another of their business-as-usual manipulations or some kind of sporting event, with rules they can game any way they like or walk away from any time they choose. That it’s a war — their war — and that wars have consequences. We didn’t start it; they did, when Byng massacred Chatterjee’s destroyers. And we didn’t send a fleet to attack the Sol System; they’ve sent one to attack us. For that matter, the fact that so many of their people got killed at Spindle was Crandall’s fault, not ours, and she obviously meant to kill any of our people who got in her way.”

Honor’s eyes were hard, and even as she spoke, she wondered how much of the grim, cold determination she felt inside was aimed at the Solarian League and how much of it was aimed at any convenient target. Was her anger, her vengefulness, the product of New Tuscany and Spindle? Or were they the product of the Yawata Strike, directed at the Solarian League because she couldn’t get at the ones who’d actually murdered so many people she’d loved?