David Weber - Storm From the Shadows

She glared down at the hard copy of the report again for a heartbeat or two, then raised her eyes to White Haven once more.

"And where the question of timing is concerned, frankly, I won't exactly cry myself to sleep if we do have to send our ultimatum to Pritchard along with Honor. If they're too pigheaded to see reason and surrender, it'll be on their heads, not ours. And let's not forget that not only are they the people who started this war, but they're also the ones who sabotaged their own proposed summit and then launched an all-out attack on our home system." The Queen's brown eyes glittered fiercely. "I think we all know who the real enemy is, and it's a hell of a lot closer than the Sol System. Can we afford to allow a hypothetical fleet of superdreadnoughts, which might not really be there at all, to paralyze our strategic thinking and push us into taking our eye off the real enemy when we finally have the chance to finish the Peeps off once and for all?"

"I think we have to assume they are there," a soprano voice said. It was quiet, that voice, but there was something about its timbre, a hint of steely determination, and Elizabeth's eyes swiveled to the speaker.

"First, we have to assume that because it's our responsibility to make the most pessimistic assumptions," Honor Alexander-Harrington continued. "But, second, I think they really are. I think we've fundamentally underestimated Manpower's capabilities, and believe me, that's a much bigger surprise, as far as I'm concerned, than the fact that a stubborn, arrogant Solarian admiral wouldn't see reason and got his flagship's entire crew killed as an exercise in sheer stupidity. All of which makes me wonder—again—just how sure we really are about who the real enemy is."

"Honor, I know that you've thought—" Grantville began, but Honor cut him off with atypical brusqueness.

"Willie, I'm tired of people making allowances for what I think and why I think it. Yes, I've been in closer contact with the Ballroom—and with Anton Zilwicki and Victor Cachat"—Elizabeth's face tightened visibly at the second name, but Honor's voice didn't even pause—"than anyone else in this room. And, yes, my family history predisposes me to hate Manpower with every fiber of my being. All of that's true. But I am sick and tired of people who persist in using those facts to justify their refusal to look at the evidence because it doesn't suit their preconceptions."

"Meaning exactly what, Honor?"

Elizabeth's voice was sharp, and the look in her brown eyes was hard, as close to a glare as she had ever turned upon Honor Alexander-Harrington. But Honor looked back without flinching.

"Meaning, Elizabeth, that I've been telling you literally for months that it made absolutely no sense for the Havenites to assassinate Admiral Webster or try to kill Ruth and Berry. I'm not going to dispute with you over who did what to our prewar diplomatic correspondence, although I realize you know I don't think that's quite as open-and-shut as a lot of people seem to believe, either. But I'm telling you, Eloise Pritchart doesn't go around having people killed just for the fun of it, and she is not an idiot! If she'd actually wanted to derail her own summit meeting and killing Admiral Webster looked like the only way to do it, she would have found somebody one hell of a lot more deniable than her own ambassador's driver to pull the trigger."

White Haven managed not to cringe, but he didn't need Honor's empathic talent, or even Samantha's and Nimitz's soft hisses, to realize just how angry his wife truly was. She hadn't raised her voice, hadn't given the least indication of disrespect by tone or mannerism, but in a service not exactly noted for the pristine purity of its language, "the Salamander" was renowned for the fact that she never swore.

"That opinion isn't shared by the majority of the intelligence community," Elizabeth replied in a tone which made it obvious she was trying to throttle her own emotions.

"That isn't quite correct," Honor said flatly. Elizabeth's nostrils flared with anger, but Honor was no longer a mere cruiser captain meeting her monarch for the first time, and she continued without hesitation.

"That opinion wasn't shared by the majority of the intelligence community at the time and given what they knew then because they'd concluded that they couldn't think of anyone else with a motive.

"But we know things now we didn't know then , and not just the stuff Mike's just discovered at New Tuscany. There's Lester Tourville, for one thing. You know I know he was telling me the truth when he said that when Thomas Theisman originally briefed him for Operation Beatrice he told him no one in Pritchart's administration had expected to be resuming operations. That that was the reason they didn't start assembling his strike force until after we'd walked away from the summit talks. Of course Theisman could have lied to him, and of course it could still have been some kind of rogue operation launched by someone without Theisman's or even Pritchart's knowledge, assuming the someone in question had some personal reason to prevent the summit. So even granted that Tourville's been telling us the truth, and that Theisman told him the truth, there's still been the question of who else had a motive.

"Well, I submit to you that it's just been amply demonstrated— again— in New Tuscany that there is someone else with a perfectly good motive, and that someone is Manpower, Incorporated. Admiral Webster was hammering them on Old Terra; Berry is a symbol of everything they hate; the very existence of Torch is an affront to them; the weapon of choice for that attack was a bio-weapon ; and they're busy trying to get us—successfully, I might add, from all appearances—into a shooting war with the Solarian League. For that matter, according to Mike's report, one of their operatives just casually killed more than forty thousand people in New Tuscany to help their efforts along! And let's not forget that fleet of StateSec rejects that Manpower subsidized for an attack on Torch . I'll concede that I still don't know how they managed to respond that quickly to shoot down the summit, unless they've got enough penetration in Haven to have found out about it at least a couple of weeks before we did, but I'm not prepared to simply assume they couldn't have that kind of penetration. Not in the face of everything else we are finding out now! And do you think for one moment, Elizabeth, that Manpower isn't aware of how you feel about Haven? Or that they wouldn't be willing to play any card they could to get what they want?

"Yes, we're at war with the Republic of Haven. And, yes, they fired the first shot. And yes, they even launched the attack on our home system, and a lot of people have been killed. A lot of people I knew, people who weren't just professional colleagues but who'd been friends of mine for decades . Friends who'd literally risked their lives against impossible odds to save mine when they didn't have to, if you'll remember that little jaunt to Cerberus. So, believe me, I know all about anger, and I know all the reasons for distrust and hostility. But look at the evidence, for God's sake. Mike hit it exactly in her report—Manpower is operating like a hostile star nation , and we're the object of its hostility! Worse, it's got a hell of a lot more resources than we ever thought it did, even if it's hijacking some of them from the Sollies. And—" her almond-shaped, dark brown eyes pinned Elizabeth into her chair "—if there's anyone else in the galaxy who's even more inclined than the Legislaturalists or Oscar Saint-Just's State Security ever were to use assassination as a tool, it's Manpower.