War Of Honor

"But when those messages do get here," Marisa Turner pointed out anxiously, "the events in them will be over two weeks old. There's absolutely no way for us to tell how far Harrington may have pushed the Andies even as we sit here."

"Now, just a moment, Marisa," Janacek replied strongly. "Everyone in this room knows my opinion of 'the Salamander.' I'm not about to change it at this late date, either. But, much as I may distrust her judgment, in this instance she's certainly showed far more restraint than I would ever have anticipated."

He tapped the hardcopy of Harrington's report, where it lay on the conference table in front of him. An identical copy lay in front of each of them, and he wondered for a moment if New Kiev had even bothered to read hers.

"To be perfectly honest, my initial fear when I read her account of the incident was that she was likely to head for Sachsen cleared for action to demand satisfaction from Admiral Sternhafen. Instead, to my considerable surprise, she actually seems to be working actively to reduce tensions. Of course, there's no way to tell how Sternhafen reacted to her suggestion of a joint investigation, but the fact that she came up with the idea at all has to be taken as a good sign, I think."

"On the surface," she agreed. Then she shook her head and made a face. "No, you're right," she admitted. "It's just that I worry about her temper. Her first reaction has always seemed to be to resort to force immediately—or, at least, to meet force with greater force. I suppose it's just . . . difficult for me to conceive of her in the role of peacemaker."

"For you and me both," Janacek admitted. "Nonetheless, that does seem to have been her initial response, at least, in this case."

"If so," North Hollow observed acidly, "it's undoubtedly for the first time in her entire life!"

"I won't disagree with you there, Stefan," Janacek replied.

"But you say there's no way to predict how Sternhafen reacted to her proposal," High Ridge pressed, and Janacek shrugged.

"Obviously not. If this really was an accident, an unintended confrontation, then the man would have to be a bigger lunatic even than Harrington not to seize this opportunity to back off and cool things down. Of course, given the provocative behavior the Andies have been evincing out there, it's impossible to say whether or not it really was accidental. Admiral Jurgensen, Admiral Chakrabarti, and I, are currently inclined towards the view that it was unintended. If the Andies had intended to begin a war with us, then surely they would have done it by attacking more than a single, isolated heavy cruiser. Moreover, it seems fairly evident that their ship took Jessica Epps by surprise. Whether that's the case or not, they'd at least managed to get into attack range well before Jessica Epps initially ordered this suspected slave ship to heave to. What that suggests to us, is that the Andies didn't go into this looking for a fight. If that had been their objective, then it's virtually certain that they would have fired sooner—probably before Jessica Epps even knew they were there."

"So you think they were responding to our effort to intercept this slaver, this Sittich," Elaine Descroix said.

"It certainly looks that way," Janacek agreed. "Precisely why they responded the way they did is more than we can say at this point. If Harrington's report's conclusions about the ship and the to

"And very properly so," New Kiev put in. "But as you say, Edward, given that history of theirs, then surely their captain should have acted to assist Jessica Epps, not fired on her!"

"I believe that's approximately what I just said, Marisa," Janacek observed.

"I realize that," she said a bit snippily. "My point was that perhaps his reaction suggests that Harrington's suspicions about this particular ship weren't as well founded as she believes. Or, at least, as her report suggests."

"The same thought had occurred to me," Janacek replied. "But Admiral Jurgensen pulled the central file copy of the real Sittich's emissions fingerprint and compared it to the sensor data from Chantilly." He shook his head. "There's no question, Marisa—the ship squawking Sittich's transponder code wasn't Sittich. I can't say for certain who she was, but she wasn't who she claimed to be."

"I must say," Descroix observed, "that I'm afraid Harrington may have put us all in a false position with this quixotic crusade of hers."

"What 'quixotic crusade'?" New Kiev asked.

"This 'Operation Wilberforce' of hers," Descroix said.

"I may question her judgment and temper, and even at times her motivation," New Kiev said sharply, "but I hardly think it's appropriate to call the Star Kingdom's long-standing commitment to the suppression of the interstellar genetic slave trade a 'quixotic crusade.' "

Descroix glared at her and opened her mouth to fire back, but High Ridge interrupted before she could.

"Marisa, no one is suggesting that we ought to abandon that policy. For that matter, no one is suggesting that it was inappropriate for Harrington to act in accordance with it."

And we're especially not going to suggest it, he reflected, with that maniac Montaigne holding our feet—and yours—to the fire over the entire slavery issue in the Commons!

"Nonetheless, Elaine may have a point. Obviously, this entire incident only occurred because Harrington decided to act on the basis of testimony from a criminal caught in the act of committing an offense punishable by death. I think one might arguably call it a 'quixotic' decision to act so precipitously on the basis of such legitimately questionable 'evidence.' "

Janacek started to point out that, questionable or not, the fact that the suspected ship obviously had been squawking exactly the false transponder code Harrington's informant had told her it would seemed to suggest the evidence had been sound. But he didn't. Whether she'd acted precipitously or not was really beside the point, after all.

"So, Edward," High Ridge said after a moment, when it became apparent that neither New Kiev nor Descroix was prepared to continue their confrontation, however sullen they might be about it, "what does the Admiralty suggest we do?"

"Nothing," Janacek said with a promptness which caused the others to look at him sharply.

"Nothing?" High Ridge repeated.

"Until we know more, there's no point trying to formulate a response," Janacek said. "We could respond by immediately scraping up additional reinforcements and rushing them off to Sidemore. Unfortunately, we don't know that those reinforcements are going to be required. My current feeling is that Sternhafen is very likely to take the out Harrington has offered him and agree to a joint investigation. If that is his decision—or, more probably, given the time lag in our communications, was his decision—then it's probable that this particular crisis is well along the way towards being defused.

"If, on the other hand, he's decided not to take her suggestion, then all of the data ONI has amassed on Andermani deployment patterns suggests that it will take some time, probably at least a couple of months, for the IAN to redeploy for offensive operations against Sidemore. They can probably push her back from the systems we've been patrolling in the Confederacy itself, but the Fleet base is a much tougher nut than that. Even with the delay in communications between here and there, we should know within no more than another week or so whether or not he decided to go along with her. At that point, we can think seriously about sending additional forces to Sidemore."