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"My God, they'd never do it!" Langtry gasped. "A personal meeting between the Protector and a woman? A foreign naval officer who's a woman?! No, that's out of the question!"
"Then make it part of the question, Sir Anthony," Honor said grimly, and she was no longer seeking his guidance. She was giving an order, and he knew it. He stared at her, mind working in an effort to find a way to obey her, and she suddenly smiled.
"Commander Brentworth, you're about to not hear something. Can you do that? Or should I ask you to leave the room for real?"
"My hearing is pretty erratic, Ma'am," Brentworth said, and his grin was almost conspiratorial. Clearly nothing short of force could have gotten him out of that conference room.
"All right then. Ambassador, you're going to tell the Grayson government that unless I'm allowed a direct, personal meeting with Protector Benjamin, I will have no alternative but to assume that Grayson doesn't feel it requires my services, in which case I will have no option but to evacuate all Manticoran subjects and withdraw from Yeltsin within the next twelve hours."
Brentworth gawked at her, his enjoyment of a moment before turned suddenly to horror, and she winked at him.
"Don't panic, Commander. I won't really pull out. But if we put it to them in those terms, they won't have any choice but to at least listen, now will they?"
"Uh, no, Ma'am, I don't guess they will," Brentworth said shakenly, and Langtry nodded in reluctant approval.
"They've already got a military crisis. I suppose we might as well give them a constitutional one to go with it. The Foreign Minister will be horrified when he hears we've been issuing ultimata to friendly heads of state, but I think Her Majesty will forgive us."
"How soon can you deliver the message?"
"As soon as I get to my office com terminal, but if you don't mind, I'd like to spend at least a few minutes working on a properly grim delivery. Something formal and stiff with the proper overtones of laboring under the demands of a military hard case who doesn't understand she's violating every diplomatic precedent." Despite the tension, Langtry chuckled. "If I handle this right, I may even get away with holding a gun to a friendly government's head without chucking my career out the airlock!"
"You can make me as big an ogre as you like as long as saving your career doesn't slow us down too much," Honor said with another smile. She stood. "As a matter of fact, why don't you work on your delivery while we walk to your office?"
Langtry nodded again, gri
None of them even looked back at the diplomat still sobbing quietly in the shadow of the overturned table.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
"How dare they?!" Jared Mayhew glared around the council room as if hunting a Manticoran to attack with his bare hands. "Who do they think they are?!"
"With all due respect, Councilman Mayhew, they think they're the only people who can keep those fanatics on Masada from conquering this star system," Chancellor Prestwick replied far more calmly.
"God wouldn't want us to save ourselves at the cost of such ... such sacrilege!"
"Calmly, Jared. Calmly." Protector Benjamin touched his cousin's shoulder. "Remember that they don't see this as a sacrilegious demand."
"Perhaps not, but they have to know it's insulting, degrading, and arrogant," Howard Clinkscales, Grayson's Minister of Security growled. He and Jared Mayhew were the most conservative Council members, and his mouth worked bitterly. "It spits on all our institutions and beliefs, Benjamin!"
"Hear, hear!" Councilman Phillips murmured, and Councilman Adams, the Minister of Agriculture, looked like he wanted to say something even stronger. Barely a third of the faces present showed disagreement, and Prestwick looked around the long table despairingly.
He and Mayhew had been genial opponents for the five years since Benjamin had become Protector, sparring with elegant good ma
"At the moment, our concerns—" he began, but the Protector's raised finger stopped him.
"I know it looks that way to you, Howard," Protector Benjamin said, focusing on Clinkscales' face as if to exclude everyone else, "but we have to consider three questions. Do they truly realize how insulting this demand is? Will they really pull their warships out of this system if we reject it? And can we hold Grayson and preserve those institutions and beliefs if they do?"
"Of course they realize how insulting it is!" Jared Mayhew snapped. "No one could have put so many insults into one package by accident!"
The Protector leaned back in his chair and regarded his cousin with a mix of weariness, patience, disagreement, and exasperated affection. Unlike his own father, his Uncle Oliver had steadfastly refused to have any of his sons contaminated by off-world education, and Jared Mayhew was bright, talented, and the quintessential product of a conservative Grayson upbringing. He was also next in line for the Protectorship after Benjamin's brother and ten years older than Benjamin himself.
"I'm not at all sure `insult' is the proper word, Jared. And even if it were, surely we've given them just as many `insults' as they've given us."
Jared stared at him in astonishment, and Benjamin sighed mentally. His cousin was a gifted industrial manager, but he was so confident of the rectitude of his own beliefs that the notion anyone else might find his attitudes or behavior insulting was irrelevant. If they didn't like the way he treated them, then they should stay away from his planet. If they insisted on contaminating his world by their presence, he would treat them precisely as God wanted him to, and if they felt insulted, that was their problem.
"If you'll forgive me, Protector," a resonant voice said, "I rather think that whether they realize they're insulting us or not is somewhat less important than the last two questions you raised." The Reverend Julius Hanks, spiritual head of the Church of Humanity Unchained, seldom spoke up in Council meetings, but now he gave Prestwick a very hard look indeed. "Do you think they truly would withdraw and leave us to Masada's mercy, Chancellor?"
"I don't know, Reverend," Prestwick said frankly. "Were Admiral Courvosier still alive, I'd say no. As it is ..." He shrugged. "This Harrington woman is now in complete control of their military presence, and that means her policies are driving their diplomatic position. I doubt Ambassador Langtry would support any decision to withdraw, but I don't know if he could stop her from doing it. And—" he hesitated a moment, glancing at Clinkscales and Jared Mayhew "—I have to say the experiences on Grayson of Captain Harrington and the other women in her crews may well incline her to do exactly that."
"Of course she feels inclined to!" Clinkscales snorted. "What d'you expect when you put women in uniform? Damn it, they don't have the self-control and stability for it! She got her feelings hurt when she was here before, did she? Well, at least that explains why she's cracking the whip over us this way now! It's for revenge, damn it!"
Prestwick clamped his lips on a hasty retort, and the Protector hid another sigh. Actually, this one was more of a groan. His was the third Mayhew generation Clinkscales had served, and not just as Minister of Security. He was the personal commander of the Protectorate Security Detachment, the bodyguards who protected Benjamin and his entire family every hour of their lives.