Mission of Honor-ARC (89 page)

There was an edge of raw appeal in her quiet voice, and Elizabeth paused long enough to be sure she had control of her own voice.

"How long have you known—or suspected, at least?" she asked then.

"Giancola was killed in September 1920," Pritchart replied unflinchingly. "We already suspected what had happened, but as long as he was alive, it was an ongoing investigation. There was always the chance we might find the real evidence we needed."

"But you've known—known for almost
two T-years
—that we were telling the truth. That it was
your
man who'd falsified the correspondence! And you said
nothing
!"

Elizabeth glared at Pritchart, and some of the other Havenites stirred angrily as her accusatory anger flooded over them, but their president only nodded.

"In his much as we 'knew' anything, yes," she said. "And that, Your Majesty, was the reason I proposed the summit meeting between us. Because it was time, once it became evident we'd never be able to find
proof
of what had happened, to end the fighting however we had to do it, even if that meant admitting the truth to you—to you, personally, where you and your treecat could evaluate my truthfulness. We still couldn't have gone public with the information back home, any more than you could remove High Ridge before the war," her eyes hardened ever so slightly as she reminded Elizabeth of her own experience with the limitations political considerations could impose, "but I was willing to tell
you—
and to surrender considerable military advantages on our part—to achieve peace. And so, when your Captain Terekhov sailed off to Monica, I sent your cousin home to you to do just that. And we both remember what happened then."

She held Elizabeth's angry eyes steadily, and a cold shock went through the Manticoran queen as she remembered. Remembered her fury, her rejection of the summit—
her
decision to resume military operations instead of talking.

Silence fell, fragile and singing with its own tension, and Pritchart let it linger for several seconds before she spoke again.

"When you attacked Lovat," she said quietly, and Elizabeth's eyes flickered as she remembered who'd been killed there, "we knew your new targeting system gave you a decisive military advantage. Or that it would, assuming you could get it into general deployment. So we—Thomas and I—" she nodded in Theisman's direction, "mounted Operation Beatrice. Thomas planned it, but I asked for it. Neither of us expected it to be as bloody—on both sides—as it finally was, but I won't pretend we thought the cost in lives would be cheap. Yet since the summit had been killed, since you were pushing the offensive against us, and since your new combat advantage was going to be so overwhelming, we felt our only hope was to strike for outright military victory before you could get your new systems deployed throughout your navy. And from our own analysis of the Battle of Manticore, we almost succeeded."

She paused for just a moment, then shrugged.

"When we lost the Battle of Manticore, we lost the war, Your Majesty. We knew that. But then, to our surprise, you sent us Admiral Alexander-Harrington. You'll never know how tempted I was to tell her the truth then. Not at first, but after I'd come to know her. Yet I couldn't. Partly, that was because of more of those domestic political constraints. When an administration's been as badly damaged as mine was by the Battle of Manticore, managing the internal dynamics gets just as hard as fighting an external enemy, but that was only part of it. Maybe the rest of it was simply because we'd kept it secret for so long. Maybe I
would
have told her, if she hadn't been recalled so precipitously. I don't know. But when your home system was attacked, there were those on our side who saw it almost as an act of divine intervention. An opportunity to win after all—or, at least, to avoid losing."

She made the admission without flinching, and Elizabeth nodded slowly. Of course there had. If what had happened to the Star Empire had happened to the Republic, exactly the same thought would have occurred to any number of Manticorans.

Including me
, she admitted to herself.

"Obviously," she heard her own voice say, "that wasn't the option you chose to pursue."

"No, it wasn't. In fact, it was the last thing I wanted to do, for a lot of reasons. Including the fact that, as Admiral Alexander-Harrington had pointed out to us, if there's ever going to be an end to the cycle of violence between Haven and Manticore, it has to be achieved on some sort of equitable basis, not because one of us simply pounds the other into such bloody ruin that she has to yield.

"But, what I never anticipated for a moment was what happened when Officer Cachat and Mr. Zilwicki turned up in Nouveau Paris last month."

"Excuse me?" Elizabeth blinked at the apparent
non sequitur
, and Pritchart smiled. It was not a pleasant expression. In fact, it reminded Elizabeth forcefully of one she'd seen in her own mirror upon occasion.

"We have reason to believe we now know why events in Talbott were orchestrated the way they were," the president said. "Moreover, we know—or we think we do—at least approximately how the attack on your home system was carried out, and by whom. And we believe we know who's been supplying the advanced bio-nanotech which has been turning people into programmed assassins . . . or suicides. And"—she looked deep into Elizabeth's eyes once more—"we think we know who Arnold Giancola was working for, who manipulated
me
into going back to war against you, and who manipulated
you
into going back to war against me."

Elizabeth stared at her, brain whirling, unable to believe what she was hearing.

"Your Majesty, the Republic of Haven—not just the current Republic, but the
Old
Republic—and the Star Empire of Manticore have been on the same list for centuries. We have a common enemy—one which has manipulated us into killing millions of our own for its own purposes. One which has reached a critical point in its own plans, set events in motion which require the destruction—not the defeat, the
destruction—
of both the Star Empire
and
the Republic. And for the better part of a T-century, the two of us have been doing exactly what that enemy wanted."

Pritchart paused once more, then shook her head slowly.

"I think it's time we stopped," she said very quietly.

* * *

"More coffee, Your Majesty?"

Elizabeth looked up at the murmured question, then smiled and extended her cup. James MacGuiness poured, then moved on around the table, refilling other cups, and she watched him go before she sipped. It was, as always, delicious, and she thought yet again what a pity it was that MacGuiness made such splendid coffee when Honor couldn't stand the beverage.

The familiar reflection trickled through her brain, and she set the cup back down and gave herself a mental shake. No doubt her staff back at Mount Royal Palace had its hands full covering for her absence, but they were just going to have to go on coping for a while longer. Despite the grinding fatigue of far too many hours, too much adrenaline, and far too many shocks to the universe she'd thought she understood, she knew she and Eloise Pritchart were still far from finished.

She looked across the table at the Havenite president, who'd just finished a serving of MacGuiness' trademark eggs Benedict and picked up her own coffee cup. Despite a sleepless night, following a day even longer than Elizabeth's had been, the other woman still looked improbably beautiful. And still radiated that formidable presence, as well. Elizabeth doubted anyone could have intentionally planned a greater physical contrast than the one between her own mahagony skin and dark eyes and Pritchart's platinum and topaz, and they'd been producd by political and social systems which were at least as different as their appearances. Yet she'd come—unwillingly, almost kicking and screaming—to the conclusion that the two of them were very much alike under the surface.

"So," she said, sitting back from the table she shared with only Honor, Pritchart, and Theisman, "is Simões telling the truth or not, Honor?"

The two Havenites looked at Honor with slightly surprised expressions, and Honor smiled. Nimitz was sound asleep on his perch, and after the night which had just passed, she saw no point in waking him up.

"There's a reason Her Majesty's asking me, instead of Nimitz or Ariel," she told her guests. "As it happens, I've been hanging around with treecats long enough to have caught to at least some of their abilities. I can't read minds, but I can read emotions, and I know when someone's lying."

It was astonishingly easy for her to make that admission to the leaders of the star nation she'd fought for her entire adult life.

Pritchart blinked at her, then those topaz eyes narrowed in thought, and the president began nodding—slowly, at first, then more rapidly.

"So
that's
why you make such a fiendishly effective diplomat!" she said with something very like an air of triumph. "I couldn't believe how well a total novice was reading us. Now I know—you were
cheating!
"

The last word came out in something very like a laugh, and Honor nodded back.

"Where diplomacy's concerned, according to my mentors in the Foreign Office, there
is
no such thing as 'cheating,' Madam President. In fact, one of those mentors quoted an old axiom to me. Where diplomacy is involved, he said, if you aren't cheating, you aren't trying hard enough."

Elizabeth snorted in amusement, and Theisman shook his head.

"In this instance, however," Honor continued more seriously, "what Her Majesty is asking me is whether or not I can tell if Dr. Simões is telling the truth. I already informed her"—she looked directly at Pritchart "—that I knew
you
were, Madam President. On the other hand, I also assumed you would have expected from the beginning that Nimitz would have been able to tell me and that I would have passed his observations on to Her Majesty, so I didn't feel any particular scruples about that."

Pritchart nodded again, and Honor shrugged.

"What I can tell you about Simões is that his anger—his outrage—at this 'Alignment' is absolutely genuine. The
pain
inside that man is incredible."

She closed her eyes for a moment, and her nostrils flared.

"Everything I can 'taste' about his 'mind glow' tells me he's telling us the truth, in so far as he knows the truth. Whether or not McBryde might have been passing along disinformation is more than I could say, of course. But, on balance, I think he was telling the truth, as well. It all fits together too well with what we've already seen, and with what Simões can tell us about their hardware."

"And there are still so
damned
many holes in it," Elizabeth half-snarled.

"Yes, there are," Honor agreed. "On the other hand, I'd say the Star Empire knows infinitely more than we knew yesterday, Elizabeth . . . given that we didn't know
anything
at that point."

Elizabeth nodded slowly, then looked at Pritchart.

"So I guess what it comes down to," she said slowly, "is where we go from here. Whatever happens, I want you to know I'm enormously grateful for the information you've provided us. And I think we can both agree that the war between Haven and Manticore is over."

She shook her head, as if, even now, she couldn't quite believe what she'd just said. Not because she didn't want to, but because it seemed impossible, like something which couldn't possibly be true because of how badly everyone
wanted
it to be true.

"Mind you," she continued, "I don't expect everyone to be delighted about that. For that matter, a few days ago, I probably would have been one of the people who wasn't delighted myself," she admitted.

"Trust me, there's the odd couple of billion Havenites who probably feel exactly the same way," Pritchart said dryly.

"And that's the sticking point, isn't it?" Elizabeth asked softly. "Stopping shooting at each other—that much I'm sure we can manage. But it's not enough. Not if Simões' and McBryde's story is true after all."

"No, it's not," Pritchart agreed quietly.

"Well," Elizabeth smiled with very little humor at all, "at least I can feel confident now that you'll keep the Republican Navy off our backs long enough for us to deal with this Admiral Filareta."

"Actually," Pritchard said, "I had something else in mind."

"Something else?" Elizabeth's eyebrows rose.

"Your Majesty—Elizabeth—the Mesan Alignment wants both of us destroyed, starting with the Star Empire. I don't know if it honestly believes the SLN can do the job where you're concerned, or if it was anticipating
we'd
do it when we recognized the opportunity it had given us. But it doesn't really matter. What
matters
is that this Solarian attack on you is simply one more step in a strategy directed against
both
of us. So I think something a bit more pointed than simply stopping shooting at each other might be in order."

"Such as?" Elizabeth asked slowly, eyes slitted in concentration.

"I understand your missile production facilities have been taken off-line," Pritchart said. "Tom here tells me you've undoubtedly got enough of those ungodly super missiles in your magazines to thoroughly kick the ass of this Filareta if he really insists on following his orders. But that's going to cut into your reserves, and given that the Alignment managed to rip the hell out of your home system, I think it would be a good idea for you to conserve as much ammunition as you can in hopes we'll find someone a bit better suited to playing the role of target."

"And?" Elizabeth's eyes were opening wider in speculation.

"Well, it just happens that Thomas here has a modest little fleet—two or three hundred of the wall, I believe—waiting approximately eight hours from Trevor's Star in hyper. If you're willing to trust us in Manticoran space, perhaps we could help you encourage Filareta to see reason. And while I'm well aware our hardware isn't as good as
yours
, every indication I've seen is that it's one hell of a lot better than anything the
Sollies
have."