War Of Honor

"Indeed they have," High Ridge agreed with a dangerous calm. "On the other hand, Edward, your refusal to invite Grayson to do precisely what it's just done unilaterally was called to my attention during my visit yesterday to Mount Royal Palace." He smiled thinly. "Her Majesty was not amused by it."

"Now, wait a minute, Michael," Janacek said sharply. "That decision was endorsed by you and by a majority of the entire Cabinet!"

"Only after you'd already rejected White Haven's arguments in favor of seeking their assistance," High Ridge pointed out icily. "And only, or so I hear, after Admiral Chakrabarti had made essentially the same argument to you. That was before he resigned, of course."

"Who told you something like that?" Janacek demanded around the sudden sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach.

"It wasn't Chakrabarti, if that's what you're wondering," High Ridge replied. "Not that the source changes the implications."

"Are you telling me that you disapproved of the decision not to ask Grayson for help?" Janacek shot back. "Because it certainly didn't sound that way to me at the time. And I don't think the minutes of our meeting or the memoranda in the files sound that way, either."

The two of them glared at one another, and then High Ridge inhaled sharply.

"You're right," he admitted, although he clearly didn't enjoy doing it. "I may not have thought it was the best decision possible, but I'll concede that I didn't protest it at the time. Partly that was because you'd already effectively committed us to it, but if I'm going to be honest, it was also because I don't much care for Graysons—or for the thought of owing them some sort of debt of gratitude—either.

"Still," he continued in a stronger voice, "the fact that they've seen fit entirely on their own to send such a substantial reinforcement to Trevor's Star may not be entirely a bad thing. At the very least, the fact that they did so so openly is going to have to give Pritchart and her war party pause. And God knows anything that does that can't be all bad!"

Janacek made an irate, wordless sound of angry agreement. He might enormously resent Benjamin Mayhew's actions, and Hamish Alexander's part in them might only add fresh fuel to the First Lord's smoldering hatred. But with the diplomatic situation so rapidly going to hell in a handbasket, any factor which might slap Pritchart and Theisman across the face with a dose of reality had to be a good thing. Of course, it would take a while for news of the . . . call it 'redeployment' to reach Nouveau Paris. Once it did, however, even a lunatic like Pritchart would be forced to recognize that the Manticoran Alliance remained far too dangerous to casually piss off. A reminder, judging by the recent exchanges of diplomatic correspondence, of which she stood in serious need.

"Whatever good it may do us with the Peeps," he said after a moment, "it's going to have unfortunate domestic consequences, though." High Ridge just looked at him, and he shrugged. "At the very least, this is going to embolden Alexander and his crowd. They're going to argue that we were too stupid or too stubborn to take 'prudent precautions' ourselves, so our allies were forced to do it for us."

"If they do, then whose—?" High Ridge cut himself off before he reopened the blame game, but the flash of fresh anger in Janacek's eyes was proof enough that the First Lord knew what he'd been about to say.

"If they do, they do," he said instead. "There isn't a great deal we can do about that just now, Edward. And to be brutally frank about it, the domestic political situation is so . . . confused at the moment that I don't really know how much of an impact it will have even if they do."

Again, Janacek found himself forced to concede the Prime Minister's point. The Government's official decision to grant the Talbott Cluster's request to be a

The only good thing about Silesia, so far as Janacek could tell, was that the average voter really didn't consider the Confederacy a priority issue. Mister Average Voter was irritated and offended by the Andermani "insult" to the Star Kingdom, and extremely angry over the loss of Manticoran lives which had so far occurred. But he was also aware that there had been Andermani fatalities, as well, and for once Harrington's grossly inflated reputation was a plus. The man in the street had been told she had ample forces to restrain the Andermani, and he trusted her to do just that. It galled Janacek down to the very depths of his soul to admit that, but he knew it was true and that however much he resented it, he ought to be grateful for it.

"What do the polls look like now?" he asked.

"Not good," High Ridge admitted more candidly than he probably would have to almost anyone else. "The base trend lines are pretty firmly against us, at the moment. We score fairly high on several issues, but the increasing concern over the Peeps' belligerence is undercutting that badly. The fact that the Queen is scarcely even speaking to the Government at the moment is another serious problem for our public approval rating. And I suppose if we're going to be completely honest about it, the backlash from our campaign against Harrington and White Haven is still another negative factor. Especially now, when so many of the poll respondents are expressing their confidence in her ability to handle the Silesian situation if anyone can." He shrugged. "Assuming that we can hold the Cabinet together and weather the storm on the Peep front—without, of course, getting into a major shooting war in Silesia at the same time—we'll probably survive. Whether or not we'll be able to complete our domestic program, unfortunately, is another question entirely."

Janacek felt an icicle run lightly down his spine. Despite the steadily rising anxiety level of every member of the High Ridge Government, this was the first time the Prime Minister had sounded so openly pessimistic. No, not pessimistic. There'd been moments of that before. This was simply the first time Janacek had heard him admitting his pessimism in an almost resigned tone. As if a part of him had finally come to expect disaster.

"Do you think the Cabinet won't hold together?" the First Lord asked somberly.

"I can't really say," High Ridge admitted. He shrugged. "Without the proper . . . leverage, MacIntosh is likely to prove much less controllable, and New Kiev is already very uncomfortable. Worse, that madwoman Montaigne is steadily eroding Marisa's authority within her own party, and she's doing it mainly by attacking her for 'prostituting' herself by joining our Cabinet. Marisa may decide that she has no option but to withdraw from the Government over some carefully chosen 'matter of principle' if she's going to fight effectively to retain control of her own Party Conference. If she does, she'll almost have to 'denounce' us in the process . . . and if we lose the Liberals, we lose the Commons completely. Not to mention our clear majority in the Lords." He shrugged again. "Unless the Liberals go completely over to the Centrists—which I think is unlikely, even if Marisa feels a need to clearly separate herself from us—then no one would have a clear majority in the Upper House, and I can't begin to predict what sort of power-sharing agreement might have to be worked out in that case."