“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But this is Beowulf, Pierre. The rest of the League may see the Manties as neobarbs, but Beowulf’s right on the other side of their Junction. Beowulfers have been marrying Manties for centuries, and they do one hell of a lot of business with each other. That’s bound to shape how they see Manticore. Worse, they’re probably the only people in the explored galaxy who’re even more paranoid about Mesa than Manticore is! You know they’ve rejected Mesa’s version of Green Pines, and from what Caddell-Markham just said, their government officially buys this Manty fantasy about some kind of plot coming out of Mesa. So, yeah, I think it is possible—remotely possible—they might order their wallers to fire on us if we try to carry out our orders.”

“If you say so, Ma’am.” It was obvious from Takeuchi’s tone that he found it difficult to wrap his mind around the possibility that she might have a point. “If they do, though, what do we do?” he asked.

“Well,” she said, thinking about that secret clause yet again…and of the catastrophic consequences to the career of any flag officer who failed to carry out Fleet Admiral Rajampet Rajani’s orders at this juncture in the Solarian League Navy’s history, “given the disparity in combat power between the task force and the BSDF, there’s no way in hell they could actually stop us. They have to know that as well as we do. So if it looks like they’re genuinely contemplating forcible resistance, we’ll give them their choices: stand down or be fired upon. And if they choose not to stand down, then we will fire on them.”

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Fifteen

“You know,” Elizabeth Winton said conversationally, “just the other day I was saying to Willie, ‘Willie,’ I said, ‘we need to get some regularization into this business of visiting heads of state.’” She shook her head. “Somehow I suspect we’re still behind the curve on that.”

“No! You think?” Honor replied with a grin.

She and the Empress stood watching a sting ship-escorted shuttle drop towards the Mount Royal Palace pad, and her smile faded as she brought up her artificial left eye’s telescopic function and zoomed in on the shuttle’s boldly emblazoned Bible and crossed swords. It was the first time that blazonry had ever been seen outside the Yeltsin System.

“Fair’s fair,” she said after a moment, turning back to Elizabeth. “At least this head of state didn’t just turn up totally unannounced.”