David Weber - At All Costs

"Yes, Sir," Abrioux said with unwonted formality. His hard eyes held hers for several seconds, and then he grimaced in satisfaction.

"Didn't mean to sound hard-assed about it," he said, "but this is one operation we literally cannot afford to have go public until we've dotted all the 'i's and crossed all the 't's."

"I see you haven't lost your gift for understatement, Boss," Abrioux said dryly. "But you were about to say something about the Manty authentication codes?"

"I was about to say that the fact the dispatches did carry proper Manty authentication actually tends to reinforce my original suspicions."

Abrioux looked confused, and he chuckled. It was a remarkably humorless sound.

"There are a lot of things I'm officially not supposed to know about, Danny," he said. "In particular, the President-and Congress-were remarkably clear about the cast-iron firewall they want between our domestic police agencies and our espionage activities. Hard to blame them, with InSec and StateSec's horrible examples. And, in principle, I couldn't agree with them more. That's why I'm being so careful to establish the official precedent of respecting that firewall. Whoever takes over this chair after me is going to be stuck with it, and rightly so. But given the incredibly tangled can of worms StateSec left us with, it's literally impossible to draw those neat dividing lines this soon. So I've got my unofficial and personal feelers spread as wide as I can get them, which is how I came across an interesting tidbit of information.

"Which was?" she demanded just a bit testily as he paused.

"Which was that shortly before Citizen Chairman Saint-Just had that unfortunate encounter with a pulser dart, StateSec actually managed to steal the Manties' Foreign Office key. Not the Foreign Secretary herself's, but they did get the departmental key."

"You're joking!"

"No, I'm not." He shook his head. "I'm just guessing, since I don't have access to the full case files on the operation, but I suspect StateSec had planted someone on Descroix years ago. God knows she was twisty enough she might actually have knowingly allowed them to, if she thought it might give her some advantage. New Kiev might be an idiot, but she's a principled idiot, and I doubt they could have gotten anyone deeply enough into her confidence to have the necessary access. But when High Ridge shuffled his Cabinet after accepting the cease-fire, whoever they already had in place on Descroix managed to get them a physical copy of the key."

"Which made it the current key," Abrioux said.

"Exactly. They changed keys when Descroix took over from New Kiev. And if Giancola had the right contacts, he could have found out we had the key. You know we've still got open back doors all through our security systems, Danny. There's no telling who he might know who might have had that information or been able to hack it for him."

"But you haven't established that someone did, have you, Boss?"

"No. Not yet. That's one of the entertaining little chores I had in mind to drop on you."

"Golly gee, thanks," she said, and her forehead creased in thought.

"Even if I manage to establish that," she went on after a moment, "the mere fact he had access to the key wouldn't prove he actually did anything with it."

"It might. Or, at least, it would be highly suggestive. Enough so for me to feel confident about showing probable cause."

"How?"

"Because the only key the original diplomatic note I saw carried was the one we've managed to compromise," Usher said grimly. "It's not unheard of for a note, even a high-level one, not to carry the Foreign Secretary's personal key, but it is unusual. So suppose we're able to establish that Giancola had, in his possession, the general key. And suppose we go back and examine all of the disputed correspondence and we find that none of the Manty originals carried Descroix's personal key?"

"Probable cause out the ying-yang," Abrioux said softly.

"Bingo." Usher raised his coffee cup in ironic salute, took a sip, and then smiled thinly at her.

"So, Special Senior Inspector Abrioux, just how do you plan to begin your totally unauthorized, off-the-record, rogue investigation?"

"Well, it's about time," Mercedes Brigham said with profound satisfaction as the superdreadnought Imperator grew steadily through the pinnace's viewport. "I was beginning to think we'd never get this fleet activated!"

Brigham sat beside Honor, next to the hatch, and Honor nodded in silent agreement with her chief of staff as she studied the ponderous mountain of battle steel drifting against the stars, glittering with the brilliant pinpricks of its own riding lights. HMS Imperator was a far cry from Honor's last flagship. The better part of two megatons larger, massively armored, without the hatch-studded flanks of a CLAC. One of the new Invictus-class ships, Imperator was one of the dozen or so most powerful warships in existence. Unfortunately, her class was also far smaller than originally projected, thanks to all the incomplete Invictuses which had been destroyed in their building slips in Grendelsbane.

The other five units of her squadron-two more Invictus-class ships, and three of the older but still formidable Medusa-class SD(P)s-orbited San Martin in company with the fleet flagship. Just beyond Imperator, she saw HMS Intransigent, Alistair McKeon's squadron flagship, and she smiled fondly at the sight. If anyone deserved a flag, it was certainly Alistair, she thought. And she couldn't think of anyone she would rather have watching her back.

Her pinnace decelerated to a halt relative to Imperator, then rolled on its gyros as the superdreadnought's boat bay tractors locked on. They drew the small craft steadily in, then deposited it with scarcely a tremor in the docking arms. The boarding tube ran out to mate with the hatch collar, and the service umbilicals extended themselves and locked into the proper receptacles aboard the pinnace as Honor gazed through the transparent armorplast of the boat bay gallery at the waiting side party.

"Good seal," the flight engineer informed the flight deck crew, studying her panel.

"Crack the hatch," the pilot replied, and the hatch slid open.

Brigham climbed out of her seat, moved into the aisle, then stood waiting while Honor got up, lifted Nimitz to her shoulder, and started for the hatch. The Royal Manticoran Navy's tradition that the most senior officer boarded last and disembarked first was ironclad... for most people, at least, she thought with a slight grimace. As usual, things weren't quite that simple for Steadholder Harrington, but she'd won at least one concession from LaFollet. She got to swim the tube first, then her armsmen broke into the traditional disembarkment queue.

She tasted Nimitz's excitement and anticipation, like an echo of her own, as she swept gracefully through the tube's zero gravity. She caught the grab bar at the far end and swung through the interface with the ship's gravity with the smoothness of decades of experience. She landed in precisely the right spot, just outside the painted line on the deck which indicated the official beginning of HMS Imperator.

"Eighth Fleet, designate, arriving!" the intercom announced as the electronic bosun's pipes began to wail, and the side party snapped stiffly to attention, Marines presenting their bayoneted pulse rifles with parade ground precision.

"Permission to come aboard, Ma'am?" Honor requested formally of the senior-grade lieutenant with the brassard of the boat bay officer of the deck.

"Permission granted, Ma'am," the lieutenant replied, saluting crisply, and Honor returned the salute then stepped past her, down the avenue between the rows of side boys to where Rafael Cardones stood waiting.