"The Prime Minister," he informed her, as if she didn't already know perfectly well who he was. "I crave a few minutes of Her Majesty's time to attend to affairs of government."
"Yes, Sir," the captain said, never removing her right hand from her pulser, and her left hand moved in a precisely metered arc to activate her com.
"The Prime Minister is here to see Her Majesty," she announced, and High Ridge's jaw muscles clenched. Usually, he rather enjoyed the formalities, the time-polished procedures and protocols which underscored the dignity and gravity of the office he held and the Star Kingdom he served. Today, each of them was a fresh grain of salt rubbed into the wound which brought him here, and he wished they could just get on with it. It wasn't as if his secretary hadn't scheduled the appointment before he ever came, or as if sophisticated security systems hadn't identified him and kept him under direct observation from the instant he entered Mount Royal Palace's grounds.
The sentry's eyes held him with unwavering, impersonal concentrationstill flawed by that cold little core of contemptas she listened to her earbug. Then she took her hand from her pulser and pressed the door activation button.
"Her Majesty will receive you, Sir," she said crisply, and snapped back into her original guard position, gazing once more down the hall as if he no longer existed.
He inhaled again and stepped through the door.
Queen Elizabeth waited for him, and his jaw tightened further. She'd received him in this same formal office many times over the past four T-years. Not happily, but with at least a pretense of respect for his office, however poorly she'd concealed the fact that she despised the man who held it. In those same four years, she'd never seen him a single time except for the unavoidable requirements of government and her constitutional duties, yet both of them, by mutual unspoken assent, had used the mask of formal courtesy when she had.
Today was different. She sat behind her desk, but unlike any other time he'd entered this office, she did not invite him to be seated. In fact, there was no chair in which he might have sat. The coffee table, the small couch which had faced it, and the conversational nook of comfortable armchairs, had all vanished. He had no doubt at all that she'd ordered their removal the instant his secretary screened the Palace for an appointment, and he knew his furyand dismayshowed through his own masklike expression as the unspoken, coldly intentional insult went home.
Even if his own emotions hadn't shown, and even if the Queen had greeted him with smiling affability rather than the cold-eyed silence in which she watched him cross the office, the treecat on the back of her chair would have been a sure and certain barometer of the hostility coiled in that office. Ariel's tufted ears were more than half flattened and his bone-white claws sank deep into the upholstery of the Queen's chair as his green eyes watched High Ridge.
The baron came to a halt before her desk, standing therelike, he thought from a lava field of resentment, an errant schoolboy and not the Prime Minister of Manticoreand she regarded him as coldly as her treecat did.
"Your Majesty," he managed to get out in very nearly normal tones. "Thank you for agreeing to see me so promptly."
"I could hardly refuse to see my own Prime Minister," she replied. The words could have been courteous, even pleasant. Delivered with the tonelessness of a computer they were something else entirely.
"Your secretary indicated that the matter had some urgency," she continued in that same chill voice which pretended that she didn't know precisely what had brought him here.
"I'm afraid it does, Your Majesty," he agreed, wishing passionately that the unwritten portion of the Star Kingdom's Constitution didn't require the formality of a face-to-face meeting between a prime minister and the monarch at a time like this. Unfortunately, there was no way to avoid it, although he'd toyedbriefly, at leastwith the thought that since this was technically only a violation of a truce and not a formal declaration of war he might have evaded it.
"I regret," he told her, "that it is my unhappy duty to inform you that your realm is at war, Your Majesty."
"It is?" she asked, and he heard his own teeth grinding together at the proof that she intended to spare him no smallest fraction of his humiliation. She knew precisely what had happened at Trevor's Star, but...
"Yes, unfortunately," he replied, forced by her question to formally explain the circumstances. "Although we've received no notification that the Republic of Haven intended to resume active military operations, their Navy violated Manticoran space this morning at Trevor's Star. Their task force was engaged by our own forces and driven off after suffering relatively light casualties. Our own forces suffered no damage, but the Republic's action in violating the Trevor's Star territorial limit can only be construed as an act of war."
"I see." She folded her hands on her desk and looked at him steadily. "Did I understand you to say, My Lord, that our own forces drove the intruders off?"
The emphasis on the possessive pronoun was subtle but unmistakable, and High Ridge's eyes flickered with rage. But, again, still trapped by the prison of formality and constitutional precedent, he had no choice but to reply.
"Yes, Your Majesty. Although, to be more precise, they were driven off as a result of the joint action of our forces and those of the Protectorate of Grayson."
"Those Grayson forces being the ones which made unauthorized transit through the Junction yesterday?" she pressed in those same, chill tones.
"Yes, Your Majesty," he made himself say yet again. "Although, it would be more accurate to call their transit unscheduled rather than unauthorized."
"Ah. I see." She sat there for several seconds, regarding him levelly. Then smiled with absolutely no trace of warmth or humor. "And how do my ministers recommend that we proceed in this moment of crisis, My Lord?"
"Under the circumstances, Your Majesty, I see no option but to formally denounce our own truce with the Republic of Haven and resume unrestricted military operations against it."
"And are my military forces in a fit state to pursue that policy in the wake of this attack, My Lord?"
"They are, Your Majesty," he replied a bit more sharply, despite everything he could do to control his tone, as her question flicked him unerringly on the raw. He saw her satisfactionnot in any flicker of an expression on her own face, but in the treecat's ears and body languageand fought to reimpose the armor of his formality. "Despite the Republic's incursion into our space, we suffered no losses," he amplified. "Effectively, the military position remains unchanged by this incident."
"And is it the opinion of my Admiralty that this incident was an isolated one?"
"Probably not, Your Majesty," High Ridge admitted. "The Office of Naval Intelligence's estimate of the enemy's current order of battle strongly suggests, however, that the forces which violated the Trevor's Star limit constituted virtually the entirety of their modern naval units. That clearly implies that any other operations they may have carried out, or attempted to carry out, must have been on a much smaller scale."
"I see," the Queen repeated. "Very well, My Lord. I will be guided by the views of my Prime Minister and my First Lord of Admiralty in this matter. Are there other measures which you wish to propose?"
"Yes, there are, Your Majesty," he replied formally. "In particular, it's necessary that we inform our treaty partners of the state of affairs and notify them that we intend to formally reinvoke the mutual defense clauses of our alliance." He managed to get that out without even gagging, despite the gall and bile of suggesting any such thing. Then he drew a deep breath.
"In addition, Your Majesty," he continued, "given the significance and extreme gravity of the Republic's actions, and the fact that the entire Star Kingdom is now forced, however unwillingly, to take up arms once again, it is my considered opinion as your Prime Minister that your Government must represent the broadest possible spectrum of your subjects. An expression of unity at this critical moment must give our allies encouragement and our enemies pause. With your sovereign consent, I believe that it would be in the Star Kingdom's best interests to form a government of all parties, working together to guide your subjects in this moment of crisis."