David Weber - The Shadow of Saganami

He shook his head, his expression an odd mixture of emotions, including both guilt and frustration and more than a touch of relief.

"Well, I wasn't there," Leo Stottmeister said slowly, "but every single word he said about how close we are to the League, and about Mesa, and about the shipping which is already moving through Lynx is absolutely true. And I may never have dealt with Frontier Security myself, but my Uncle Stefan's ship pissed off an OFS paper-shuffler, once. They didn't do anything wrong, but by the time the dust settled, that Solly bastard had condemned and confiscated their entire ship and its cargo. Uncle Stefan always figured the son of a bitch got a cut of the ship's value, but he said the profit was just icing on the cake for him. Their ship's real crime was that they'd snagged a profitable cargo out from under the nose of a Solly shipping line that had a sweetheart deal with Frontier Security."

The tall midshipman shrugged, his face unwontedly serious.

"I know Ragnhild has relatives in the shipping industry, but I don't know about any of the rest of you. I can tell you this, though-Uncle Stefan isn't the only person I've heard talk about how much some of the Solly freight lines hate us. And Frontier Security thinks of us as a bunch of neobarbs with delusions of grandeur. You mix that all up into a single ball of snakes, and God knows what you'll get out of it! Just don't expect it to be good."

"Leo's got a point," Ragnhild said, her expression more worried than it had been. "We're used to thinking of the Star Kingdom as a star nation, a military and economic power, and it is. But compared to the League, we're tiny . It wouldn't take much for some overconfident, greedy, bigoted Solly-wouldn't even necessarily have to be an OFS stooge, either-to do something outstandingly stupid."

"And if that happens," Paulo d'Arezzo put in quietly, "it's likely to have all sorts of ramifications."

All of them turned to look at him in surprise. After more than two months aboard, he was still the aloof, keep-to-himself denizen of Snotty Row. The fact that he'd been released from at least a part of the normal duties associated with a snotty cruise because of Lieutenant Bagwell's need for an understudy had actually increased his isolation, and they were surprised to hear him speaking up now. But he only looked back at them and shook his head slowly.

"If you were the captain of a Queen's ship in Silesia, and a Manticoran merchant or merchant skipper told you he'd been robbed, or cheated, or mistreated, or threatened by a Confederate Navy captain, how would you react?"

"But- " Aikawa began, only to be cut off by Helen.

"Paulo's right," she said, although it irritated her to admit it. "The situations probably wouldn't be at all the same, but that's exactly the way it would seem to an SLN skipper. Because Leo's right about how the Sollies think of us. I've been to Old Earth and seen it myself. In some ways, it's even worse than for the 'neobarbs' who don't have such close contact with Sol." She grimaced. "You know my dad was still in uniform when we were there, right?"

Heads nodded, and her grimace turned even sourer.

"Well, we were at a party one night, and I overheard this woman-I found out later she was a Solly assemblywoman, no less-pointing Daddy out to one of her friends and saying 'Look at that. He looks just like he belongs to a real navy, doesn't he?'"

"You're shitting us," Aikawa protested.

"I wish I were," she told him. "We just aren't real to most of them, even people who damned well ought to know better. And Leo's shipping lines and OFS flunkies aren't all we have to worry about out here. Don't forget how much closer we are to Mesa, because I'll guarantee you they aren't going to!"

"You may be right," Aikawa said, obviously unwillingly. But then he gave his head a little toss and grinned at her. "And while we're on the subject of Mesa and your esteemed parent, Ms. Midshipwoman Princess Helen, suppose you finally tell all of us just what went down at Congo?"

"Yes!" Leo agreed instantly. He jabbed an irate finger at Aikawa and Ragnhold. "I bet you already told your loyal henchmen all about it."

"Not all about it," Ragnhild protested with a chuckle, "or Aikawa wouldn't be asking." She turned to look at Helen herself. "Actually, I'd like to hear all of it."

"There's not really all that much to tell-" Helen began, but Aikawa laughed.

" Sure there isn't!" he said. "Now give!"

She looked around the compartment for a second, wondering exactly how to respond, and felt their eyes on her. All of them were obviously intensely curious-even d'Arezzo-and she knew she was going to have to satisfy that curiosity eventually, whatever she wanted. On the other hand, there were some aspects of that entire business she didn't fully understand herself, and others she did understand which were going to stay on a strictly Need to Know basis for a long, long time. On the other hand…

"Okay," she said finally. "First, a couple of ground rules. There are some things I can't tell anyone, not even you guys. So you're going to have to settle for what I figure I can give you. No probing questions, and no little tricks to try and get more out of me. Agreed?"

They looked back at her, their expressions slightly sobered, and then Aikawa nodded.

"Agreed," he said.

"All right, here's the short version. Back last Seventeenth Month, about six T-months before the shooting started back up with the Peeps, my dad-you know, Mr. Super Spook-and my sister Berry got tapped by the Queen to be her representatives at the Stein funeral on Erewhon. High Ridge and his stooges weren't sending anyone, and Her Majesty was a bit irritated with them about that. I don't think she really likes the Renaissance Association all that much, but they are the closest thing to a grass-roots reform party in the League, so she figured someone from the Star Kingdom should attend its leader's funeral. Anyway, she decided to send her niece, Princess Ruth, as her personal representative, and she asked Daddy to go along, both to ride herd on the Princess and also because of his relationship with Cathy Montaigne and the Anti-slavery League. She figured that would make the point that she was putting her thumb into High Ridge's eye even more strongly."

And, she thought, because the Queen and Ruth decided between them that the House of Winton needed a resident spook of its own, and they wanted the best teacher for Ruth they could find. Which happened to be my own dear Daddy.

"Everything seemed to be going pretty much to plan, when Daddy got called away to Smoking Frog."

She saw a sudden additional curiosity in several of her listeners' eyes, but she had no intention of explaining what that particular bit of business had been about. The Star Kingdom was still buzzing with speculation about the mysterious disappearance of Countess North Hollow, and she intended for it to stay that way.

"While he was gone, as I'm sure you all know from the 'faxes, a bunch of Masadan lunatics tried to abduct the Princess when she was aboard the main Erewhonese civilian space station."

Where she was disguised as Berry, while Berry was disguised as her, which is how they got the wrong person, which is how the entire ridiculous situation came about in the first place.

"They managed to get her, but her security detachment killed most of the terrorists before they went down, and the surviving terrorists got themselves pinned down aboard the space station."

Which is almost accurate. We'll just leave out any mention of Havenite secret agents, Ballroom terrorist gunmen, and Solarian League Marine officers.

"Not all the Masadans had been involved in the actual abduction; another batch of them had managed to hijack a Jessyk Combine transport that happened to have an entire consignment of genetic slaves on board, and they threatened to blow up the freighter, with those thousands of slaves, unless their surviving buddies and the Princess were delivered to them. Unfortunately, by that time all of their buddies were already dead, although they didn't know that. So the Princess-" meaning my sister , the little idiot! "-decided it was her responsibility to hand herself over to them. Which she did."