At All Costs

More than one of her listeners grimaced at mention of the Cherwell Convention, and Anisimovna smiled thinly.

"For the last seventy T-years, the one thing-the only thing-the Star Kingdom of Manticore and the People's Republic of Haven have agreed on is the suppression of the genetic slave trade. And let's be realistic-historically, their efforts have been much more effective than those of anyone else. We have zero market penetration in either of them, and although we've historically had major penetration in some areas of the Silesian Confederacy and Midgard, the Manties and the Peeps have made life hard on us even there. To be honest, it's really only since the two of them started concentrating on one another that we've been able to regain ground we'd been steadily losing in both of those areas. The Andermani Empire is another sore point, particularly since it happens to lie in such close proximity to the other two, but the Andies have never been as aggressive about attacking our interests outside their own territory.

"While the Manties and the Peeps were actively at war with one another, we managed to expand our enfluence and markets on the peripheries of their spheres. And their concentration on one another also made it easier for us to acquire a degree of penetration-of enfluence, not sales-which we'd never had before in both the Star Kingdom and the Republic themselves. Things, in other words, were looking up.

"Then along came the Manties' 'Operation Buttercup,' Pierre's assassination, the so-called 'Manpower Incident' on Old Earth, the cease-fire, and the overthrow of the Saint-Just version of the Committee of Public Safety. In combination, they produced three serious consequences for us."

She made a face and shrugged, then began ticking off points on her fingers as she summarized them.

"First, the end of the fighting would have been bad enough all by itself, given the way it was bound to free up their resources and attention for other concerns-like us. But, second, the overthrow of the Committee of Public Safety and the effective dismantlement of State Security hurt us badly in Haven. Not only did we lose the majority of the contacts we'd managed to make with the SS, but the new r‚gime-Theisman, Pritchart, and their bunch-are almost fanatical in their hatred of everything we stand for. And, third, the 'Manpower Incident' happened before Theisman's coup, but its main effects weren't felt until afterward, when Zilwicki and Montaigne got back to Manticore with the records Zilwicki managed to hack. We were able to manage at least some damage control in the Star Kingdom, but let's not fool ourselves; we took a real body blow there, too. And the fact that that lunatic Montaigne has managed to pull us and our operations back into the limelight for the Manty public hasn't helped.

"Fortunately, our best and highest surviving contact in Manticore wasn't in Zilwicki's files and remained in place. She wasn't really what we could consider a reliable asset-she was using us as much as we were using her, and she definitely had her own agenda-but Descroix was willing to do what she could to mitigate Manty operations against us and assist with damage control domestically in the wake of the 'Manpower Incident' in return for our financial support and the intelligence we could provide her. Unfortunately, she was completely unwilling to do the main thing we wanted out of her."

"Which was?" Sandusky prompted, as if he didn't already know the answer to his own question, when she paused.

"Which was to get rid of the damned cease-fire," Aldona said flatly. "We wanted Manticore and Haven shooting at each other again. To be frank, at that time, the Strategy Committee was actually more concerned about Haven than Manticore. Manticore has the bigger merchant fleet, and the stronger tradition of arrogating some sort of interstellar police power to itself, even to the extent of locking horns with the League. But the Republic is much larger, and the new r‚gime there clearly has a 'crusading spirit,' whereas the High Ridge r‚gime in Manticore was about as venal-and shortsighted-as we could have asked for. Unfortunately, neither side, each for its own reasons, wanted to resume hostilities. And initially, at least, it looked like something of a tossup as to whether or not Theisman and Pritchart could make their new Constitution stand up. For at least a few years, they were going to be involved in what amounted to a civil war, even if they managed to win it in the end.

"About two T-years ago, however, it became evident they were going to win, and quite handily. In addition, one of the handful of contacts we'd managed to hang onto in the Republic-your contact, as a matter of fact, Jerome-informed us that the Havenite Navy was secretly in the process of some sort of major rebuilding program. The notion of a Theisman-Pritchart government, firmly in control of a star nation and an economy the size of the Republic, with a resurgent navy under its command, didn't make anyone on the Committee happy. Nor was anyone enthralled with what Montaigne and Zilwicki were up to in the Star Kingdom. You may recall the rather spectacular failure of our attempt to remove Montaigne by direct action. That was primarily the result of Zilwicki's active alliance with the Audubon Ballroom, and then Klaus Hauptman and his daughter climbed onto the bandwagon and began building actual light warships for those butchers."

She shook her head.

"So far, it was all straws in the wind, but it was pretty obvious which way the breeze was blowing in both star nations. And they still weren't shooting at each other.

"The only bright spot was the High Ridge Government's total diplomatic tone deafness. They might not want active military operations, but they didn't want a formal peace settlement, either, which produced steadily growing frustration in the Republic. The same source which had warned us about the existence of Bolthole-even though he didn't know exactly what was going on there-also kept us informed about Pritchart's rising anger and the public opinion which agreed with her. While we knew we couldn't get Descroix to actively seek to derail the negotiating process, we were able to feed her certain selected information which helped move her at least a bit in the direction we wanted. So the Committee saw a situation which was growing rapidly less stable and offered the possibility of producing the result we were after.

"That's where Verdant Vista entered the picture. We knew High Ridge had managed to seriously alienate several key allies, including the Republic of Erewhon and, we hoped, Grayson. We didn't have very high expectations where Grayson was concerned, but Erewhon seemed to offer possibilities. In addition, certain of our friends in the League-specifically, Technodyne Industries-really wanted access to the Manties' new technology, and Erewhon had that.

"So the idea was to use Verdant Vista to worry Erewhon. We knew the Cromarty Government had promised the Erewhonese the Star Kingdom's assistance in their efforts to eject us from Congo. But we also knew the High Ridge Government was completely and totally-one might almost say vehemently-disinterested in the project. And we knew this was an area in which we could count on Descroix's support behind the scenes.

"With all that in mind, we abandoned our relatively low profile and started deliberately drawing attention to our presence there. We planted a few stories in the Erewhonese 'faxes about 'atrocities' on Verdant Vista, and we encouraged an upswing in 'piracy' in the area. The cruisers that were destroyed at Tiberian were part of that strategy. The idea was to draw the Erewhonese Navy into committing additional light units to piracy suppression in the vicinity, then to pounce on those units with modern Solarian heavy cruisers and wipe them out. Whether the Erewhonese decided we were directly involved in backing the 'pirates' or not, they were bound to become even more furious with the Star Kingdom when they started suffering losses among their warships as well as their merchant traffic. Given the peculiarities of the Erewhonese honor code, it was likely that if we continued to provoke them long enough, and if the Manties continued to ignore their demands for assistance, the Erewhonese would eventually withdraw from the Manticoran Alliance."