A Rising Thunder-ARC (67 page)

“And if the Manties don’t roll over that way?”

“In that case, I would imagine, our fleet commander negotiates a withdrawal from the star system. Probably on the grounds that the orders which sent him there in the first place had misread the true sentiments of the Beowulfers. Now that he’s had the opportunity to observe firsthand that the decision to secede enjoys genuine popular support, of course he’s prepared to acknowledge that and retire from the lists. Of course, if Manticore is so unreasonable as to deny a negotiated, peaceful withdrawal with no further combat, our commander can’t be held responsible for any collateral damage that might befall the system infrastructure—and population, unfortunately—in the course of an unprovoked Manticoran attack upon his peaceably departing forces.”

Teague scooped up another forkful of salad, chewed slowly, and swallowed, all without taking her incredulous gaze from al-Fanudahi. Then she shook her head.

“That may be less totally insane than Rajampet’s attack on the Manty home system, but that’s not saying a hell of a lot, is it?” she observed caustically.

“No. On the other hand, they’re in a hell of a crack at the moment,” al-Fanudahi pointed out. “I think they figure they’ve got to do
something
, and I’m afraid they may decide this is the best option they’ve got. And there’s actually at least a chance—a remote
one, I’ll grant you, but still a chance—they could pull this one off.”

He shrugged and popped an olive into his mouth.

“Personally, I wouldn’t want to make any heavy bets on our ability to get away with it, but the Manties
are
going to be cautious about inflaming Solarian public opinion any more than they have to, especially if Kingsford can get this up and running before any of the other Core Worlds choose to follow Beowulf’s example. The question would be whether Manticore would decide it would look more like an outside tyrant intervening to protect a collaborationist clique or like a liberator intervening to prevent the reimposition of an illegitimate, unconstitutional tyranny of bureaucrats.”

He chewed and swallowed, then inspected his salad plate for another olive before he looked back up at Teague.

“Interesting choice, don’t you think?”