"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 thatManpower 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.
"I admire you, and I respect you, both as my monarch and as a person and a friend, Elizabeth, but you're wrong. Whatever you may think, the real threat to the Star Empire at this moment isn't in Nouveau Paris or Old Chicago at all. It's in the Mesa System . . . and it's in the process of destroying the Star Kingdom you're responsible for ruling."
The tension hovering in the conference room was hard enough to chip with a knife as the two women locked eyes. And as those two sets of brown eyes met, Elizabeth Winton realized something emotionally that she'd long since recognized intellectually. Something Honor's analysis of any possible confrontation with the Solarian League had driven home in this very room only three T-weeks earlier.
Honor Alexander-Harrington had become the closest thing Elizabeth III had to a true peer. Admiral, Countess, Duchess, and Steadholder, the third ranking member of the Star Empire's peerage, a ruling head of state in her own right, and someone who had been born to none of those titles and identities. Someone who had won them. Who'd paid for them in the cold, hard cash of combat, in the loss of people for whom she cared deeply, in all the thousands of deaths—enemy and friend alike—she had taken onto her own conscience in the service of Elizabeth's kingdom, and in her own blood. Someone who had received many of those titles and honors from Elizabeth's own hands because she damned well deserved them.
And that peer—the person, Elizabeth realized now, whose absolute integrity and whose judgment on every other question she most trusted—disagreed with her on this one.
For several endless seconds, it felt as if the people around the table had forgotten to breathe, but then Elizabeth inhaled sharply, deeply, and shook her head like a boxer shaking off a hard left jab.
"I know you and I haven't seen eye-to-eye where the Peeps are concerned for a long time now, Honor," she said quietly. "I've tried to pretend we did. I've tried to ignore the fact that we didn't. And when I couldn't do that anymore, I've concluded that your personal acquaintance with people like Theisman and Tourville has affected your judgment. I still think that's possible, as a matter of fact. But—"
She paused, and silence hovered once more for several heartbeats before she spoke again.
"But," she continued, "maybe I'm the one whose judgment has been affected. You know why that might be true—better than anyone else, I suspect. And you're right, we do know things now that we didn't know then. As you say, there's still the problem of how they could have set up something like this so quickly—just the distances involved should have made it impossible. But"—her expression was that of a woman whose stubborn integrity was at odds with deeply held beliefs—"the explanation really could be as simple as their having someone close enough to Pritchart to know what she was thinking ahead of time. I still don't know how they could have known I'd pick Torch for the site of the summit, but if you're right—if it was a case of someone trying to manipulate me because they knew how I'd react to an assassination attempt anywhere—Torch would have been a logical target for Manpower. It could just have been serendipity that it was also the prospective site for the summit."