Mission of Honor-ARC (37 page)

He shook his head again, his eyes bleak with satisfaction.

"I don't doubt that they've increased their anti-missile capability from what it used to be, Tony," he said. "And it's going to take more missiles to kill their ships than it would have before they did it. But the end result's going to be the same, and if Admiral Gold Peak doesn't have Apollo, she's got at least four missile colliers stuffed full of Mark 23 flatpacks, her shipboard magazines are full of Mark 16s, mostly with the new laserheads, and every one of her
Nikes
has Keyhole One. Trust me. If this Solly admiral's stupid enough to ram her head into Spindle, Admiral Gold Peak will give her the mother of all migraines. She may not be able to keep Crandall from taking control of the planet's orbitals if she's willing to suck up the losses involved, but she'll be damned lucky if she has ten percent of her ships left when Tenth Fleet runs out of ammo."

"Which will only make this mess even messier from a diplomatic standpoint," Langtry pointed out. "Especially with this new story O'Hanrahan broke."

"Oh, thank you, Tony!" Grantville snorted. "I could have gone all week without thinking about
that
one!"

"It
was
a master stroke, wasn't it?" Elizabeth said sourly. "If there's one newsy in the entire Solarian League no one could ever accuse of being in Manpower's pocket, it's Audrey O'Hanrahan. In fact, the way she was beating up on Frontier Security, Manpower, and Technodyne over Monica only gives this new 'scoop' of hers even more impact."

"I still don't understand how they did it." White Haven shook his head. "It's obvious from her past accomplishments that she's got contacts that should have spotted any forged data, no matter how well it was done. So how did they manage to fool her this time around?"

"Well, Pat's own analysts have all confirmed that the data she's using in her reports carries what appear to be genuine New Tuscan Navy security and ID codes," Caparelli said. "It may've been doctored—in fact, we know what parts of it were, and we're trying to figure out how to demonstrate that fact—but it certainly looks like the official record of what happened. And to be fair to O'Hanrahan, she's never claimed that she's been able to confirm the accuracy of the
data
on the chips—only that all of her 'informed sources' agree it came directly from the New Tuscans and that it's been certified by the New Tuscan Navy . . . unlike the data
we've
supplied."

"Which only makes it worse, in a lot of ways," Langtry observed. "She's not the one beating the drums, just the one who handed them the drumsticks. In fact, in the last 'faxes I've seen from Old Terra, she's actually protesting—pretty vehemently—that other newsies and talking heads are reading a lot more into her story than she ever meant for them to."

"So she's got good intentions. Great!" White Haven said dourly. "If I recall correctly, Pandora wasn't all that successful at stuffing things back into the box, either."

"Fair enough," Langtry agreed. "On the other hand, I detect Malachai Abruzzi's hand in all this, as well."

"But there's no way this is going to stand up in the end," Elizabeth protested. "Too many people in New Tuscany know what really happened. Not to mention the fact that we've already got the New Tuscan Navy's sensor records for the period involved, complete with all the same security and ID codes—and time chops—and the real records don't begin to match the ones someone handed
her
."

"With all due respect, your Majesty," Langtry said, "we have exactly the same kind of evidence and substantiation where our prewar diplomatic correspondence with Haven is concerned. In fact, I have to wonder if our little disagreement with the Peeps isn't what suggested this particular ploy to Manpower. Or to Mesa, for that matter." The foreign secretary grimaced. "It's almost like some kind of'perfect storm,' isn't it? First Mesa drops Green Pines on us, and then O'Hanrahan, of all people, gives us the follow-up punch with this cock-and-bull story from New Tuscany."

"I think it was deliberately orchestrated," White Haven said grimly. "Both stories came out of—or at least
through
Mesa—after all. I'll lay you any odds you like that the whole business about dispatches from New Tuscany's a complese fabrication. Somebody in Mesa planned this very carefully, and I'll also bet you they deliberately set O'Hanrahan up to front for them exactly because she's always been so careful to be as accurate as possible. And the fact that she was one of the few Solly newsies questioning their version of Green Pines and demanding hard evidence to back up their claims only makes her even more damaging on
this
story, since no one in the galaxy could possibly accuse her of carrying water for Mesa in the past." The earl shook his head. "Playing
her
this way was probably a little risky from their perspective, but look at how it's paid off for them.

"And even if the truth is staring them right in the eye, people like Abruzzi and Quartermain and Kolokoltsov are capable of projecting perfect candor while they look the other way," Grantville added. "They'll swear the version that suits their purposes is the truth, despite any evidence to the contrary, and figure that when the smoke clears and it turns out they were wrong, they'll get away with it by saying 'oops'. After all, it was an honest mistake, wasn't it?"

He grinned savagely, and his tone was viciously scarcastic as he went on.

"I can hear them now. 'We're
so
sorry that our very best efforts to sort out the facts went awry, but in the meantime we just happen to have conquered a small, insignificant star nation called Manticore. It's all very unfortunate, but there it is, and you can't pour the spilled milk back into the glass, you know. So we'll just have to set up an interim government under the auspices of Frontier Security—only until the Manties get back on their feet and can elect a properly democratic government on the best Solarian pattern, so that misunderstandings like this don't arise in the future, of course. We'd never
dream
of interfering with their right of self-determination beyond that! Cross our hearts!'"

"I suppose you're right," Elizabeth said drearily. "And if Sir Anthony's right about Abruzzi and their Ministry of Information's involvement in pushing this story, it sounds as if that'se exactly what they're deciding to do."

"It's what they're preparing the groundwork to do, at any rate, Your Majesty," Langtry agreed quietly.

"And if those superdreadnoughts at Meyers actually do attack Spindle, then, especially against this backdrop of O'Hanrahan's story, they're almost certainly going to decide they're in too deep to back out," White Haven added.

"In that case, it's probably a good thing I finally listened to Honor." Elizabeth drew a sharp breath, then shook herself and smiled. It was a tense smile, and no one would ever have described it as a happy one, but there was no panic in it. "It looks like we're about to get a chance to see how sound her strategic prescription for fighting the Solarian League really is. And if we are, then it'll be a damned good idea to get the Republic of Haven off our backs while we do it. Do you suppose I ought to make that point to her when we send her her copy of Mike's dispatch?"

The smile turned almost whimsical with the last sentence, and White Haven chuckled.

"Trust me, Your Majesty. My wife's actually quite a bright woman. I'm pretty sure she'll figure that out on her own."

* * *

Fleet Admiral Sandra Crandall had never been a good woman to disappoint. She was a big woman, with a hard, determined face and what one thankfully anonymous subordinate had once described as the disposition of a grizzly bear with hemorrhoids trying to pass pinecones. In fact, Commander Hago Shavarshyan thought, that had been a gross libel against grizzly bears.

Shavarshyan was in a better position than most to appreciate that, since he had the dubious good fortune of having been added to Crandall's staff as a last moment afterthought. Apparently, it had occurred to her only
after
she'd decided to go to war against the Royal Manticoran Navy that it might, perhaps, be a good idea to have a staff intelligence officer who actually knew something about local conditions. Which was how Commander Shavarshyan found himself the single Frontier Fleet officer attached to a fleet whose staff , like every one of its senior squadron and division commanders, consisted otherwise solely of Battle Fleet officers, all of whom outranked him, and all of whom seemed to be competing to see who could agree most vehemently with their admiral.

Those thoughts floated through the back of Shavarshyan's brain as he stood behind the briefing officer's podium while Crandall and the other members of her staff settled down around the long briefing room table aboard SLNS
Joseph Buckley
.

"All right," Crandall growled once they were seated. "Let's get to it."

"Yes, Ma'am."

Shavarshyan squared his shoulders and put on his best professional expression, although everyone in the briefing room knew he'd received no fresh data in the thirty-five days since they'd left Meyers. That, unfortunately, wasn't what Crandall wanted to hear about.

"As you know, Ma'am," he continued briskly, "Admiral Ou-yang's people and I have continued our study of Admiral Sigbee's New Tuscany dispatches. We've combined their contents with all the information available to Frontier Fleet's analysts, as well, of course, and I've compiled a report of all our observations and conclusions. I've mailed copies of it to all of you, which should be waiting in your in-baskets, but for the most part, unfortunately, I'm forced to say we really don't have any startling new insights since my last report. I'm afraid we've pretty much mined out the available ore, Admiral. I wish I could offer you something more than that, but anything else would be pure speculation, at best."

"But you stand by this nonsense about the Manties' missile ranges?" Vice Admiral Pépé Bautista, Crandall's chief of staff, asked skeptically. Bautista's manner was more often than not caustic even with his fellow Battle Fleet officers, if they were junior to him. He clearly saw no reason to restrain his natural abrasiveness where a mere Frontier Fleet commander was concerned.

"Exactly which nonsense would that be, Sir?" Shavarshyan inquired as politely as possible.

"I find it hard enough to credit Gruner's report that the Manties opened fire on
Jean Bart
from forty million kilometers out." He grimaced. "I'd like to see at least some reliable sensor data before I jump onto
that
bandwagon! But even granting that's correct, are you seriously suggesting they may have even
more
range?"

"Sir, I'd like to have better data myself," Shavarshyan acknowledged, and that much was completely sincere. Lieutenant Aloysius Gruner was the commanding officer of
Dispatch Boat 17702
, the only unit of Josef Byng's ill-fated command to escape before Byng's death and Sigbee's surrender. Gruner had been sent off very early in the confrontation, which explained how he'd evaded the Manties to bring back news of the catastrophe in the first place. Apparently, Admiral Byng, in yet another dazzling display of incompetence, had seen no reason even to order his other courier boats to bring up their nodes, which meant they'd all still been sitting heplessly in orbit when Sigbee surrendered. They were fortunate the one boat he
had
ordered to get underway had still been close enough to receive Sigbee's burst-transmitted final dispatch—the one which had announced
Jean Bart
's destruction and her own surrender—but there'd been no time for her to send
DB 17702
detailed tactical reports or sensor data on the Manties' weapons. And, through no fault of Gruner's, he couldn't provide that information either, since courier boats' sensor suites weren't what anyone might call sophisticated. Although he'd been able to tell them
what
had happened, more or less, they had virtually no hard information on how the Manties had
made
it happen. Additional information might well have been sent to Meyers by now, but if so, it was still somewhere in the pipeline astern of Task Force 496.

Of course it is
, Shavarshyan thought bitingly.
Anything else would actually have suggested there was at least a smidgeon of
competence
somewhere among the people running this cluster-fuck
.

"At the same time, Lieutenant Gruner
was
there," he continued out loud. "He saw what actually happened, and even if we don't have the kind of data I'd prefer, he was very emphatic about the engagement range. Nothing in Sigbee's dispatch suggests he was wrong, either. And given the geometry of the engagement, forty million kilometers at launch equates to something on the order of twenty-nine or thirty million kilometers from rest. Now, nothing we have—not even those big, system-defense missiles Technodyne deployed to Monica—have that kind of range, that kind of powered endurance, but thirty million klicks from rest would work out pretty close to the consecutive endurance for two missile drives at the observed acceleration. So, the only conclusion I can come up with, is that they must really have gone ahead and put multiple drives into their missiles. And if they've put in enough drives to give them a powered envelope of
thirty
million kilometers, I just think it might be wiser to consider the possibility that they might have even more range than that."

His tone could not have been more respectful or nonconfrontational, but he'd seen Bautista's jaw tighten at the reference to Monica. Not, Shavarshyan felt confident, so much at the reminder of the Technodyne missiles' enhanced range as at the fact that the Manties' missiles had out-ranged even them. Which, of course, was the reason the Shavarshyan had mentioned it.

Bautista started to open his mouth angrily, but Vice Admiral Ou-Yang Zhing-Wei, Crandall's operations officer, spoke up before he could.

"I'm disinclined to think they could have a
great
deal more range Pépé, but Commander Shavarshyan is right. It's a possibility we have to bear in mind."

"Yes, it is," Crandall agreed, although she manifestly didn't like doing so. "All the same," she continued, "it really doesn't matter in the long run. Assuming Gruner's observations and Sigbee's report were accurate at all, we already knew we were going to be out-ranged by at least some of these people's missiles. On the other hand, I agree with Sigbee—and with you, Commander—that no missile big enough to do that could be fired from missile tubes the size of the ones we've actually observed aboard even those big-assed Manty battlecruisers. So they had to come from pods."