Mission of Honor

by David Weber

  But if there was an undeniable element of fear, there was an even more undeniable—and overwhelming—feeling of outrage. Things like this weren't supposed to happen to the Solarian League. The League's invincibility was a physical law, like the law of gravity, and just as inevitable. Which meant that if it had happened, someone was to blame.

  At the moment, much of that outraged anger was directed at the Manties. The way Abruzzi's propagandists had milked Mesa's Green Pines allegations had helped there, since they'd managed to get public opinion aimed at the Ballroom "baby killers" and their "Manticoran paymasters." Personally, Kolokoltzov figured there might have been as much as one actual fact in the Mesan reports, There sure as hell hadn't been two of them, as far as he could tell, but the spectacular charges had been useful grist for Abruzzi's mill.

  Except, as MacArtney had suggested, inasmuch as they'd whipped up too much heat. The public anger against Manticore—here on Old Earth, at least—was attained near hysterical levels, and the fear bound up in it in the wake of New Tuscany only fanned its heat still higher. Yet there were already at least a few voices whose owners were looking for someone to blame closer to home than the Manticore Binary System. The ones who wondered how the people in charge of the League's security could have been so soundly asleep at the switch that they hadn't even seen this coming. And other voices which wanted to know just what those same people in charge had been doing to let a loose warhead like Sandra Crandall plunge the SLN into such a disastrous fiasco.

  Those were the dangerous ones, and not simply because of the threat they posed to Innokentiy Kolokoltsov's personal power and prestige. He wasn't going to pretendpersonal considerations didn't play a major part in his own attitude and decision-making processes, but they weren't the end-all and be-all of his concerns. Not by a long chalk. The far more dangerous problem was that any thorough and open investigation of the disastrous decisions leading up to the Battle of Spindle would open some very nasty cans of worms. Any inquiry like that would lead directly to Kolokoltsov and his colleagues, and while the personal consequences were likely to be highly unpleasant, the institutional consequences might well prove fatal to the entire system which had governed the Solarian League for centuries.

  He'd actually considered calling for an inquiry himself, anyway. There'd been enough blue-ribbon panels and "impartial investigatory boards" which had obediently produced the necessary conclusions to hand-wave away other embarrassing little problems over the years. This time, though, in the wake of such anger and such stunning and public disclosure of disaster, he wasn't at all confident any inquiry could be properly controlled. And one that couldn't be controlled would be even more catastrophic than what had happened at Spindle.

  Like it or not, there was no political structure to replace the bureaucratic one which had evolved over so many years. The very language of the League's Constitution foreclosed the possibility of such a structure, especially in light of the centuries of unwritten constitutional law and traditions which had settled into place. Kolokoltsov strongly doubted that any political structure could ever be created, under any circumstances, to truly govern something the size of the League. But even if he were wrong about that, even if it had been possible to create such a structure under ideal circumstances and conditions, it most definitely would not be possible under the ones which actually obtained.

  Which meant he and his colleagues had to come up with a response. They were squarely on the back of the tiger, and the best they could hope for was that the beast came equipped with some sort of saddle and reins.

  So far, he hadn't seen any sign of them, unfortunately.

  "Let's face it," he told the other three. "It's too late for any sort of diplomatic settlement, and the two things we absolutely can't afford are to have the League's ability to deal with something the size of Manticore or our own ability to control the situation called into question."

  "I don't disagree with you, Innokentiy," Wodoslawski said after a moment. "Unfortunately, I'd say the League's ability to deal with Manticore's already been pretty thoroughly 'called into question'."

  "In the short term, you're right," Kolokoltsov agreed. "Rajani can dance around it all he wants to, but the truth is that until we figure out how the Manties did what they did—and how we can duplicate the same technology—we can't fight them."

  "Then how—?" Abruzzi began.

  "I said we can't fight them. That's why Rajani's idea of burying them under battlecruisers won't work."

  "Actually, you know, it might," MacArtney said slowly. "Oh, we'd lose a hell of a lot of battlecruisers, but we could afford that more than the Manties could afford what would happen to their star systems."

  "No," Kolokoltsov said firmly. "It won't work, Nathan. Even if it did 'work' in the sense of so thoroughly shooting up the Manties' industrial base and rear areas that they had to surrender, the cost would be catastrophic. What we'd be doing—and what there wouldn't be any way to keep people from figuring out we were doing—would be to use battlecruisers to run the Manties out of missiles. Do you really want to have someone like that bitch O'Hanrahan and her 'muckraking' friends baying at our heels over that once the smoke clears? Can't you just hear her now? Hear her explaining how we deliberately used warships—and their crews, Nathan—as missile sponges, as targets that couldn't even hope to shoot back effectively, until the Manties literally ran out of ammunition?"

  MacArtney looked as if he wanted to argue, but the temptation faded quickly as he pictured exactly what Kolokoltsov was describing.

  "And even if that weren't true," Kolokoltsov continued, "it would probably be even more disastrous in the long run than simply giving in to the Manties' demands right this minute. God only knows how many ships and how many people we'd lose, but despite everything Rajani's been saying, I strongly suspect casualties would only get worse, not better, and there comes a point when phrases like 'favorable rates of exchange' lose their meaning. If we managed to 'defeat' Manticore only at the expense of casualties ten times, or twenty times—or a hundred times—as great as theirs—and right now, the ratio is even worse than that, by a considerable margin—we'd've set exactly the precedent we wanted to avoid all along. Sure, Manticore would be history, but do you think the example of what they'd done to us first would just disappear in the minds of all those people out there in the Verge—or the Shell, for that matter—who don't like us very much? Not to mention the possibility that we'd take so much damage against Manticore that someone else—maybe someone who's not even on our radar horizon at the moment—saw an opportunity to come at us from behind. I don't know about you, but I can think of at least a couple of System Defense Forces whose loyalty might be just a tad less than totally reliable under those circumstances."

  "So what can we do?" MacArtney demanded.

  "At the moment, I think we don't have any choice but to play defense," Kolokoltsov said frankly. "The bottom line is that even if we can't afford to go after Manticore until we figure out how to match their weapons, they can't realistically come after us, either. They've got to worry about the Republic of Haven, and even if they manage to settle with Haven somehow, it's going to take time.

  "What we have to do is use that time to accomplish two things. First, we have to make it clear to everyone here in the League that what's happening is the result of Manticoran decisions, not ours. The only way to stay ahead of the mob this time around is to run even faster and shout even louder, so I say we keep right on bearing down on Green Pines and endorse that recording someone sold O'Hanrahan as the real version of what happened at New Tuscany. As for what happened to Crandall at Spindle, we can't conceal our losses, but we don't have to confirm that the Manties did it to her with cruisers and battlecruisers."

  "What about the newsies' reports?" Wodoslawski asked skeptically.

  "We don't challenge them directly," Abruzzi said, his eyes narrowed in intense thought as he considered what Kolokoltsov had just said. "We point out that none of the newsies were aboard eit
her side's ships during the actual battle. Oh, sure, some of them were allowed aboard a couple of the surrendered superdreadnoughts afterward, but none of them had access to the raw sensor data of the battle, and none of them have been allowed aboard any of the Manty ships to see firsthand whether they were really cruisers and not ships-of-the-wall. They're taking other people's word for what happened when you come right down to it, aren't they? So we take the position that our analysts 'strongly doubt' the Manticoran version—the only one that's been 'leaked' to the media—of what happened. We should be properly open to all possibilities, including the possibility the Manties are telling the truth, but insist the available evidence is far too sparse to confirm the truth either way at this point."

  "Exactly." Kolokoltsov nodded, and Wodoslawski's skepticism eased visibly. After all, this was a game they'd played many times.

  "In the meantime," Kolokoltsov went on, "we point out that everything that's happened in the Talbott Cluster is the result of Manticoran imperialism. We've had our concerns over their actions and intentions for some time, and what they did at New Tuscany, and their attack on Admiral Byng, have made us even more concerned. After all, the mere fact that they've changed their name officially to the Star Empire of Manticore is surely an indication of their expansionism and ambitions! And the reports of their backing for outright acts of terrorism and mass murder by the Audobon Ballroom—the fact that they're clearly using the Ballroom as a weapon against someone they've unilaterally decided is their enemy—only underscores the kind of lunatic excesses their territorial ambitions and arrogance produce.

  "As for what happened at Spindle, there are a couple of ways we might come at it. We could always toss Crandall to the wolves, exactly the way she deserves, especially since she's not around to dispute anything we say. We could observe more in sorrow than in anger that while her intentions were good, and her suspicions about Manticoran imperialism were undoubtedly justified, she approached the situation far too impetuously. Or we could argue that the only records we have of her conversations with the Manties come from Manticoran sources . . . just like the falsified sensor recordings from New Tuscany. In reality, she was nowhere near as confrontational and bloody-minded as the Manties' version indicates. I'm sure someone over at Rajani's could create a much more reasonable version of her conversations with O'Shaughnessy and Medusa for domestic consumption. And the fact that she's so conveniently dead, under mysterious circumstances, would be only logical if the Manties were going to falsify the official record of what she'd said to them. After all, it would never do for them to have left her alive to tell the galaxy they were lying, would it?

  "The first possibility—laying the blame off on Crandall—could blow up in our faces if it leads to a demand that we acknowledge her fault and more or less accept the Manties' demands in full. That would push us back into that unacceptable outcomes area. The second possibility has risks of its own, of course. The biggest one is that eventually, someone—like O'Hanrahan—is going to start screaming that we knew the truth all along and suppressed it. If that happens, we might be looking at exactly the sort of domestic witch hunts we most need to avoid. On the other hand, the majority of the public's so jaded where conspiracy theories are concerned that we could probably fob off any inquiry with a suitable cover story . . . unlike what would happen if the wrong people started nosing around our actual immediate post-New Tuscany decisions."

  "And the reason we're doing all of this is—?" Wodoslawski asked.

  "We're doing it because, in the end, we're going to have to go to war with Manticore, no matter what we want," Kolokoltsov said flatly. "And under the circumstances, given the fact that we can't go to war right now, the groundwork has to be set up carefully. We have to explain why the war is their fault and why we can't just go smack the hell out of them the way they deserve right this minute."

  "Sounds like a tall order to me," she said dubiously, and he nodded.

  "It is. But I think we've got at least a decent shot at it, if we handle things right. First, we go ahead and admit that, however many ships of whatever classes they deployed at Spindle, they've clearly demonstrated that at least some of their weaponry is, in fact, superior to anything we have currently deployed. Obviously, the Navy's been pursuing similar weapons developments for some time, but has declined to put them into service because the League was unwilling to take responsibility for such a dramatic escalation in the lethality of weapons of war. Which, by the way, also helps buy us a little time. Because of that unwillingness to pursue such an escalation, we didn't press the R&D on it, and there's going to be an inevitable delay before we can bring our own systems fully up to operational status and start getting them deployed.

  "In the meantime, however, the Manties have become aware both of their current superiority and also of the fact that it's a fleeting one, and they've decided to push their imperialist agenda while they still have a decided edge in combat. Clearly, the way in which they've distorted what happened in both incidents at New Tuscany—and probably what happened at Monica, as well—is all part of an elaborate deception plan. It's intended to erect a façade of Solarian aggression in order to create a peace lobby here in the League which will agitate in favor of allowing their new 'Empire' to retain its ill-gotten gains rather than risk a lengthy, expensive war to force them to surrender those gains. That's probably why they're insisting on this nonsense about Manpower being behind it all, too."

  "So you don't think there's anything to that?" Abruzzi asked.

  "To the idea that a single corporation, no matter how rich and well-connected, could arrange to throw entire battle fleets around the galaxy? Please!" Kolokoltsov rolled his eyes. "Oh, I don't doubt for a minute that Manpower is involved in this thing up to its eyebrows, and everybody knows how all the Mesan transtellars scratch each other's backs. For that matter, all that nonsense about the Manties being involved in what happened in Green Pines is an obvious crock . . . thar came out of the official Mesan 'system government.' So, sure, Manpower's involved, and we all know how much Manpower's hated Manticore—and vice-versa—for centuries. But there's no way a single corporation could be pulling the sorts of strings the Manties are insisting it is! On the other hand, Manpower is the poster child for corrupt transstellars, and thanks to people like O'Hanrahan, 'everybody knows' the transstellars are involved in corruption and sweetheart deals all over the Shell and the Verge. The Manties are tryint to take advantage of that."

  "You really believe that?" MacArtney soundedskeptical again, and Kolokoltsov shrugged.

  "You probably know more about that sort of thing that I do, given what goes on with Frontier Security. I'm not casting any stones when I say that, either. I'm just saying you're probably better informed about conditions in the Shell and Verge than I am. But I'm pretty sure that's what the Manties are doing. It's what I'd be doing, in their place, at any rate. Whether they really have ambitions beyond the Talbott Cluster or not, and whoever's really to blame for what happened at Spindle, they really do have all sorts of powerful motivations to create exactly the kind of 'peace lobby' I'm talking about. I think they've decided to wave Manpower's involvement under the collective noses of our do-gooders here in the League—can anyone say 'Beowulf'?—to undercut public support for further military operations against them."

  "And just how will we go about defeating this nefarious Manticoran plan?" Wodoslawski asked, frowning intently.

  "One thing we're going to have to do is make sure there are no more Crandalls," Kolokoltsov said. "And I know Rajani's already begun activating units from the Reserve. In fact, I suspect he's already begun redeploying his active units, as well, under Article Seven. Mind you, he hasn't told us that, but I'll be damned surprised if he hasn't. So as part of our 'No More Crandalls' policy, one thing we're going to have to do is get him back under control, whatever happens."

  "I think between us we can do that," MacArtney said. "Go on."

  "All right. The most important thing is that we don't even
try to seek a formal declaration of war. Especially with this bogus Manpower issue running around, someone would be certain to veto the declaration even if we asked for one, and any debate in the Assembly would have too much chance of triggering the sort of witch hunt the League can't afford. Besides, we don't want to find ourselves pushed into conducting some sort of offensive operations, and that could happen if we somehow managed to get a formal declaration after all. So instead, we go right on activating the Reserve while we push—hard—on R&D to figure out what the hell they've done with their missiles and how to duplicate it. Rajani isn't going to like it, but we settle into a defensive military posture while we work on the tech problems and take the offensive diplomatically and in the media. We take the position that despite the horrible provocation Manticore has offered us, we aren't going to charge forward into a bloodbath—ours or anyone else's. Instead, we make it clear we're pursuing the diplomatic option, trying to find a negotiated solution that will get Manticore back out of the Talbott Cluster, where it belongs and, ultimately, hold it responsible for its provocative actions at New Tuscany and Monica and, probably, Green Pines, too."

  "Sort of an offensive short of war, you mean?" Wodoslawski asked.

  "Exactly. What we're really doing is playing for time while we find a way to compensate for these new missiles of theirs. We keep up a barrage of diplomatic missions, news releases, that sort of thing, to keep things simmering along below the level of outright combat, until we've managed to equalize the hardware equation. We don't need to have weapons as good as theirs; we just need to have weapons close enough to theirs to make our quantitative advantage decisive again. Once we reach that point, we regretfully conclude that diplomacy isn't going to work and we have no choice but to pursue the military option after all. Which we then do under Article Seven, without seeking a formal declaration."

  "And you really think this is going to work?" Wodoslawski asked.