"Oh, marvelous," Medusa muttered. Then she produced a wan but genuine smile. "Well, Her Majesty never promised me it was going to be easy!"
She drummed her fingers on the table, thinking hard for several seconds, then looked back up at Khumalo.
"Admiral, I want you and Captain Shoupe to begin contingency planning. We can't make any hard and fast decisions at this point, but I want to know exactly what our resources and capabilities are if, in fact, President Tonkovic does ask for help. I'd also like recommendations from you and Commander Chandler, Gregor, on what levels of support we want to offer if it's requested. I want the best appreciations the two of you can put together of the most effective kinds and levels of assistance we could offer. And I want your best estimates as to how the Kornatian public's liable to react to each of the different levels. And the same for the Kornatian political leadership. I know any 'estimate' you put together at the moment can't be more than a guesstimate. But get started now, and integrate any additional information as it comes in."
She paused, and her expression turned bleak and hard.
"Understand me, People," she said then, in a voice just as cold and focused as her expression. "I don't want to escalate anything that doesn't have to be escalated. And I certainly don't want us to look like-what did you call them, Gregor? Imperial storm troopers?" Her mouth twisted on the words, but she didn't flinch. "Our job isn't to support, or to give the appearance of supporting, repressive local regimes. But if the legitimate government of any star system in the Cluster requests our assistance, we will provide it. We may make our own judgments about the most effective way to do so, but we have a moral obligation to support the legally elected governments who've requested that we take them under the Queen's protection… and, especially, their citizens . And if it turns out we have to land Marines and kick down doors to do that, then we'll land Marines with great big nasty boots. Is that clear?"
She was the smallest person at the table by a considerable margin, but every head nodded very quickly indeed.
"Good," Dame Estelle Matsuko said quietly.
Chapter Sixteen
Nuncio was a poverty-stricken star system, even for the Verge. Which was particularly ironic, given the system's potential, Aivars Terekhov thought as Hexapuma decelerated smoothly towards her parking orbit and he listened to the soothing routine of his bridge.
The G0/K2 binary system boasted two remarkably Earth-like planets, thoroughly suitable for human occupation with only a little development. Basilica, the habitable world of the G0 primary component, orbited its star at a distance of twelve light-minutes, and boasted a planetary environment any resort world might have envied. With a planetary mass ninety-seven percent of Old Earth's, a hydrosphere of eighty percent, rugged mountains, gorgeous volcanic atolls, sandy beaches, endless rolling plains, and an axial inclination of less than three degrees, Basilica was as close to climatically idyllic as any home for humans outside man's original star system could hope to be. Unfortunately, the planet's successful colonization had called for a degree of subtle genetic manipulation of the terrestrial plants and food species to be introduced there. Had Nuncio been colonized today, or even as recently as the last couple of T-centuries, it would have been a snap. Even at the time the system actually was settled, making the necessary alterations would have been relatively straightforward for a good Solarian genetic lab.
Unfortunately, the colonists' analysts had missed the data in the initial planetary survey which should have told them before they set out that the changes were needed. By the time they realized what they actually faced, all of the "good Solarian genetic labs" and their capabilities had been light-centuries behind them… which explained why it was Pontifex, the habitable planet of the secondary component which had actually been settled.
Not that the original colonists hadn't tried to make a go of Basilica first. That was the main reason for Nuncio's current tiny system population and extraordinarily backward infrastructure. Like the original inhabitants of Grayson, the Nuncians' ancestors had been religious emigres who'd deliberately sought a new home, far beyond the reach of their hopelessly secular fellow humans. That had made them the first colony expedition into what had since become the Talbott Cluster, just as the Graysons had settled their homeworld long before the starship Jason delivered the first colonists to a planet named Manticore.
Unfortunately for those first Nuncians, they had encountered a trap almost as deadly, although in quite a different way, as the one which had met Austin Grayson's followers, and they'd been operating on a considerably tighter budget when they organized their exodus. They hadn't shared the Church of Humanity Unchained's prejudice against technology, but they hadn't been able to afford as much of it as other, more successful colonizing expeditions, and what they'd managed to bring with them hadn't been up to managing the required genetic modifications. That simple fact had almost wiped them out when their crops failed and sixty-five percent of their food animals died within one generation. Somehow, they'd managed to retain enough space flight capability (barely) to transfer about half of their surviving population-and what remained of its food supplies-to Pontifex, a much colder, dryer world, six light-minutes from its cool primary and with far more extreme seasonal changes, but without Basilica's subtle genetic trap.
None of the people left behind on Basilica had survived, and over half of those they'd managed to transfer had died during their first winter on Pontifex. The half which survived-less than sixteen percent of their original expedition-had fought desperately to cling to the technology they still had, but it had been a long, bitter struggle, and the dreadful death toll of the colony's first few years had killed too many trained technicians, too many teachers. They'd regressed to an early steam-powered level before they managed to arrest the agonizing slide downward, and there they'd stayed for generations. Now, six centuries after mankind first landed on Pontifex, and two centuries after the Nuncians had been rediscovered by the rest of humanity, the planetary population was barely three hundred and fifty million, and its technological capabilities and educational system were far inferior to the ones Grayson had attained before joining the Manticoran Alliance.
And, Terekhov mused as Hexapuma settled into her assigned orbit around Pontifex, they didn't exactly react to their difficulties the way the Graysons did. Planet names notwithstanding, according to Commander Chandler's intelligence package, these people are as aggressively atheistic as it's possible for human beings to be. Which is something I'd better remind all our people to keep in mind.
"Incoming message, Sir," Lieutenant Jefferson Kobe, the com officer of the watch reported, and Terekhov turned his chair to face the communications section. "It's from their planetary president's office, Sir," Kobe said after a moment.
"Put it on my terminal, please, Mr. Kobe," Terekhov requested, tapping the key to deploy the larger of his two com screens.
"Aye, aye, Sir," Kobe acknowledged, and a moment later, Terekhov's screen blinked to life with the hawklike face of a man who was probably in his mid-thirties, bearing in mind the primitive medical establishment of the planet.
"Greetings, Captain-?" The caller paused, and Terekhov smiled.
"Captain Aivars Terekhov, commanding Her Majesty's Starship Hexapuma , at your service, Mr.-?" It was his turn to pause interrogatively, and the hawklike face returned his smile.
"Alberto Wexler, at your service, Captain Terekhov," he said. "I'm President Adolfsson's personal assistant. He's requested me to welcome you to Nuncio and to invite you-and some of your officers, perhaps-to meet with him and Commodore Karlberg, the commander of our Space Force. He wondered if you might care to join the two of them for dinner this evening?"