War Of Honor

"Welcome aboard Campenhausen, Your Grace," Chien-lu Rabenstrange said.

"Thank you, Your Grace," Honor replied, and Rabenstrange smiled ever so slightly. She could taste the caution of his emotions, but she also tasted curiosity. And, even more important, she did taste something very like trust. She'd hoped she would, but she hadn't allowed herself to count on it. Still, she and Rabenstrange had established a certain personal empathy which extended beyond their purely professional relationship during her last assignment to Silesia. Apparently, it was still there. He was obviously aware of the tension inherent in their meeting, under the circumstances, but he trusted her personal integrity. At least far enough for him to have agreed to meet with her in the first place, at least.

"I must confess," he told her, "to being somewhat . . . surprised by your presence here, Your Grace. Under the circumstances, given the tension and recent unfortunate events between our two commands, I would not have anticipated a direct contact at this level."

"I'll confess that I was rather counting on that, actually, Your Grace," she responded. He cocked his head questioningly, and she smiled. "I have something a bit unusual to discuss with you," she told him, "and I felt that this might be the most effective way to get your attention."

"Did you?" he murmured, and it was his turn to smile. "Well, Your Grace, I certainly can't guarantee that I'll find myself in agreement with whatever brings you here. But I will confess, that you have piqued my curiosity! So, why don't you begin?"

He waved gracefully at the chair at the foot of the conference table, and Honor seated herself in it and collected Nimitz in her lap.

"Certainly, Your Grace," she told him. "Now, I realize that tensions between the Empire and the Star Kingdom are ru

"Information?"

"Yes, Your Grace. You see . . ."

Chapter Fifty Two

"So, Zhenting, what did you think?"

Herzog von Rabenstrange and his chief of staff stood on Campenhausen's flag bridge, watching the glittering icon of HMS Troubadour as the Manticoran superdreadnought accelerated steadily towards the hyper limit.

"I thought—" Kapitan der Sternen Isenhoffer paused, then shrugged ever so slightly. "I thought that in many ways it all sounded very . . . convenient for Duchess Harrington, Sir."

" 'Convenient'?" Rabenstrange rolled the word across his tongue and cocked his head at the taller Isenhoffer. "An interesting choice of words, Zhenting. Not entirely without applicability, I suppose, but still . . ." He shook his head. "However 'convenient' it might be for her under some circumstances, it remains most in convenient under most of them. I believe the old cliche about rocks and hard places comes to mind."

"Unless she can convince us not to be the rock . . . or the hard place, Sir," Isenhoffer pointed out in tones of respectfully stubborn skepticism.

"Perhaps," Rabenstrange conceded, but his own voice was dubious. "Still, I suspect His Imperial Majesty would be quite impressed by the logic of her analysis. Assuming, of course, that the data upon which it's based has some basis in reality."

"I would certainly agree that the accuracy—or lack of it—of her basic information is the crux of the matter," Isenhoffer said. He started to say something else, then paused, and clearly reconsidered.

"Yes?" Rabenstrange prompted.

"I was only going to say, Sir," the chief of staff said after a moment, "that while I continue to cherish my own suspicions about Duchess Harrington's motives, I honestly don't believe she lied to you."

Isenhoffer was clearly uncomfortable saying that, and Rabenstrange smiled without humor. The kapitan der sternen, he knew, must have hated admitting that. It would have suited his purposes much better if he'd been able to argue that Honor Harrington had been less than truthful about what she had discovered about the Republic of Haven's activities in Silesia. Unfortunately, he had too much integrity for that. Which, the herzog admitted, only gave his suspicions of her motives even greater weight in some ways.

"I think," the small admiral said slowly, "that it would be as well to remember that hers are not the only suspect motives in this instance. For example, if we assume that the Duchess has, in fact, been truthful with us, and also that her intelligence officer's analysis is accurate, we must ask ourselves precisely what the Republic is actually up to."

"Forgive me, Sir," Isenhoffer said, "but in my opinion, the Republic's objectives are relatively clear and straightforward. If I were President Pritchart or Admiral Theisman, I would almost certainly have resorted to military operations in order to force a resolution of the negotiations long before this. Assuming, of course, that I had the capability to do so." He shrugged. "In that regard, I believe Duchess Harrington was probably completely correct as to the Republic's intentions, both in regard to its own occupied systems and in regard to Sidemore."

"Perhaps so," Rabenstrange replied. "But consider this, Zhenting. The Republic has encouraged us to pursue our objectives in Silesia. True, they've done so only in private conversations, not publicly, but you and I have both read the Foreign Ministry's synopses of Ambassador Kaiserfest's discussions with their Secretary of State. Even allowing for a certain degree of corruption in transmission, Secretary Giancola was remarkably specific. And very encouraging."

He paused for a long moment, watching Troubadour's icon, then looked back up at Isenhoffer.

"Yet for all his specificity, Zhenting, he never once mentioned the possibility of Havenite operations in the Confederacy. Even more to the point, he specifically informed Kaiserfest that it would be impossible for the Republic to offer us even verbal support openly because of the Republic's internal public opinion."

"You think that he was attempting to maneuver us into a false position?" Isenhoffer frowned.

"I think it's certainly possible. At the very least, he obviously hoped to use us as a cat's paw, yet another way to distract the Star Kingdom while his own navy prepared its offensive. That much, of course, I'm sure the Foreign Ministry had already considered. But the fact that he never so much as hinted—as far as I can tell from the synopses, at least—that Haven was preparing to resume active operations strikes me as significant. Indeed, I would judge that he went out of his way to avoid even the least suggestion that such operations were being contemplated. Some, at least, of that could be no more than the maintenance of operational security. But the decision to send their own naval forces into the Confederacy without so much as mentioning it to us at the same time as they were encouraging us to embark upon an adventure here was at best . . . reckless."

"What possible motive could they have?" Isenhoffer wondered aloud.

"I can think of at least one," Rabenstrange said grimly. "Suppose their intention—or, their hope, at least—was that we and the Manties would, indeed go to war, and that one of us would defeat the other. I believe that their strategists could confidently assume that whichever of us won, we would be severely damaged, possibly crippled, in the process. And if it were to happen that the Republic just coincidentally had a fresh, unbloodied fleet of its own in the vicinity . . ."