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"Not all about it," Ragnhild protested with a chuckle, "or Aikawa wouldn't be asking." She turned to look at Helen herself. "Actually, I'd like to hear all of it."
"There's not really all that much to tell-" Helen began, but Aikawa laughed.
" Sure there isn't!" he said. "Now give!"
She looked around the compartment for a second, wondering exactly how to respond, and felt their eyes on her. All of them were obviously intensely curious-even d'Arezzo-and she knew she was going to have to satisfy that curiosity eventually, whatever she wanted. On the other hand, there were some aspects of that entire business she didn't fully understand herself, and others she did understand which were going to stay on a strictly Need to Know basis for a long, long time. On the other hand...
"Okay," she said finally. "First, a couple of ground rules. There are some things I can't tell anyone, not even you guys. So you're going to have to settle for what I figure I can give you. No probing questions, and no little tricks to try and get more out of me. Agreed?"
They looked back at her, their expressions slightly sobered, and then Aikawa nodded.
"Agreed," he said.
"All right, here's the short version. Back last Seventeenth Month, about six T-months before the shooting started back up with the Peeps, my dad-you know, Mr. Super Spook-and my sister Berry got tapped by the Queen to be her representatives at the Stein funeral on Erewhon. High Ridge and his stooges weren't sending anyone, and Her Majesty was a bit irritated with them about that. I don't think she really likes the Renaissance Association all that much, but they are the closest thing to a grass-roots reform party in the League, so she figured someone from the Star Kingdom should attend its leader's funeral. Anyway, she decided to send her niece, Princess Ruth, as her personal representative, and she asked Daddy to go along, both to ride herd on the Princess and also because of his relationship with Cathy Montaigne and the Anti-slavery League. She figured that would make the point that she was putting her thumb into High Ridge's eye even more strongly."
And, she thought, because the Queen and Ruth decided between them that the House of Winton needed a resident spook of its own, and they wanted the best teacher for Ruth they could find. Which happened to be my own dear Daddy.
"Everything seemed to be going pretty much to plan, when Daddy got called away to Smoking Frog."
She saw a sudden additional curiosity in several of her listeners' eyes, but she had no intention of explaining what that particular bit of business had been about. The Star Kingdom was still buzzing with speculation about the mysterious disappearance of Countess North Hollow, and she intended for it to stay that way.
"While he was gone, as I'm sure you all know from the 'faxes, a bunch of Masadan lunatics tried to abduct the Princess when she was aboard the main Erewhonese civilian space station."
Where she was disguised as Berry, while Berry was disguised as her, which is how they got the wrong person, which is how the entire ridiculous situation came about in the first place.
"They managed to get her, but her security detachment killed most of the terrorists before they went down, and the surviving terrorists got themselves pi
Which is almost accurate. We'll just leave out any mention of Havenite secret agents, Ballroom terrorist gunmen, and Solarian League Marine officers.
"Not all the Masadans had been involved in the actual abduction; another batch of them had managed to hijack a Jessyk Combine transport that happened to have an entire consignment of genetic slaves on board, and they threatened to blow up the freighter, with those thousands of slaves, unless their surviving buddies and the Princess were delivered to them. Unfortunately, by that time all of their buddies were already dead, although they didn't know that. So the Princess-" meaning my sister , the little idiot! "-decided it was her responsibility to hand herself over to them. Which she did."
Accompanied only by what sounds like the scariest son of a bitch in the entire Havenite secret service.
"But it was actually all a trick. While the surviving terrorists were congratulating themselves on getting their hands on Princess Ruth, a boarding party-" and let's not even get started on where it came from "-got aboard the transport undetected. They managed to take out the terrorists, and handed the ship over to the slaves.
"But by that time, someone had come up with the bright idea of using the ship-which everyone else thought was still in the terrorists' possession-as a sort of Trojan horse against Congo. Which was probably the only thing in the universe we, the Erewhonese, and the Sollies-" and the Havenite secret service "-could possibly have agreed upon at that point, given how our relations with Erewhon had gone into the crapper. By the time Daddy got back from Smoking Frog and found out everything that had been going on while he was away, most of the decisions had already been taken. And somehow Berry got involved as a sort of liaison between the slaves and everybody else. Probably-" we'll just brush through this part as quickly as we can "-because for all practical purposes we're both Lady Montaigne's daughters (even if she and Daddy've never bothered to get married), and that made her someone the ASL and the Ballroom felt they could trust.
"Anyway, Princess Ruth got Captain Oversteegen and the Gauntlet involved, and, along with some Solly Navy types who had their own axes to grind, got the transport to Congo, along with an assault force made up mainly out of the liberated slaves and some Ballroom 'terrorists' Daddy just happened to know how to find, which boarded Manpower's space station and captured it."
She shrugged, her face suddenly grim.
"Without the space station to back them up with orbital fire support, the Manpower goons and the slave overseers on the planet didn't stand a chance. It was... pretty ugly. Lots of atrocities and lots of payback. And it would've been a lot worse without Berry. She managed to put the brakes on the worst of the massacres, and along the way, somehow, and I still don't understand exactly how it all worked, she got drafted to be their Queen."
She shrugged again, this time helplessly, and raised her hands, palms uppermost. She really didn't understand how it had all worked, even though Berry had done her best to explain it in her letters. All she knew was that the brutalized waif she'd rescued from the subterranean labyrinths of Old Chicago had become the reigning monarch of the planet Torch and a kingdom full of liberated slaves fanatically devoted to the destruction of Manpower and all things Mesan. With an ex-Solarian Marine lieutenant as her military commander in chief, a princess of Manticore as her chief of intelligence, the local Havenite intelligence service's chief of station as her conduit to the Republic of Haven, and a precarious balance of support from both Manticore and the Republic which seemed to be standing up despite the resumption of hostilities. And, of course, her very own wormhole junction.
With termini whose locations none of her people, so far, knew the least thing about, since Manpower either hadn't explored them itself or had managed to destroy the data before it lost Congo.
She shook off the familiar thought with a grimace, and looked up to see five sets of eyes looking at her in various stages of bogglement.
"Anyway," she said again, "that's the simple version of it."
"Excuse me," d'Arezzo gave her one of his rare smiles, yet there was something in his eyes that she couldn't quite identify, "but if that's the simple version, I'm glad I missed the complicated one!"
"You and me both," Leo agreed, nodding emphatically. Ragnhild only looked at Helen thoughtfully, but Aikawa leaned back and folded his arms.
"I know we all agreed not to try to drag any more out of you, so I'll just content myself with pointing out that your little explanation left quite a few loose ends floating around." She met his gaze with her best i
"Oh, sure. That's no secret," Helen replied. "What did you expect a planet inhabited almost exclusively by freed genetic slaves to do?"
"And they're using those frigates your father and mother-I mean, your father and Lady Montaigne-had built for the ASL for their fleet?" d'Arezzo asked, his expression intent.
"As the nucleus for it. At the same time, I understand they're negotiating with both us and the Peeps for heavier ships. Even 'obsolete' Allied designs are as good as anything Mesa or Manpower might have. And everyone on Torch figures it's only a matter of time until Manpower decides it's found a way to regain possession of Congo somehow. So building up a big enough fleet to discourage temptations is pretty high on the priority lists of 'Queen Berry's' senior advisers."
"I can see why it might be," Leo said dryly. "But, tell me, how does your dad think Mesa feels about the Star Kingdom's part in what happened to Congo?"
"He thinks Mesa's probably pissed off as hell," Helen said with a smile. "After all, Oversteegen and Gauntlet escorted the 'hijacked' Trojan horse to Congo in the first place. By now, they have to know Princess Ruth-the Queen's own niece-was involved in the entire thing up to her ears, too. Then there's the fact that it was Oversteegen who initially faced down the Mesan task group sent in to retake the system. Not to mention the fact that we've basically been at war with Manpower ourselves for the better part of four hundred T-years."
"And, like the Captain said," Leo murmured slowly, "the Cluster's only a couple of hundred light-years from Mesa."
"Exactly," d'Arezzo said. "We're one of the few Navies that actually enforce the Cherwell Convention like we mean it, and the Star Kingdom and Mesa have been locking horns for centuries now. Even when we were the better part of a thousand light-years apart."
"Damn straight." Ragnhild nodded. "Manpower's going to be pretty unhappy to suddenly find us with secure fleet bases that close to its home system. Which is why I think the Captain has a definite point about just how nasty things could turn. We've always had a tendency back home in the Star Kingdom to think of Manpower and Mesa as two separate entities-sort of like the Star Kingdom and the Hauptman Cartel, or Grayson and Sky Domes. But it doesn't really work that way. Manpower and a handful of other huge companies own Mesa, and Mesa has its own navy. Not too big compared to our Navy, maybe, but nothing to sneeze at, and equipped with modern Solly designs. Plus most of the companies headquartered there have at least some armed ships of their own. With us as distracted by Silesia and the front as we are, they'd almost have to be tempted to use that military capability in an effort to destabilize our a