“Basically, the Havenites cut a deal with the Manties,” Abruzzi responded. Her gray eyes widened in disbelief, and he chuckled harshly. “I’m sure Innokentiy’s Foreign Ministry sources and analysts can come up with all sorts of straws in the wind to justify it, but what obviously happened was that Manticore offered Haven a bargain. Clearly, Haven’s war-fighting technology has to be roughly on a par with Manticore’s for it to have survived this long. That means they’ve got a major tactical advantage—only a fleeting one, until our own Navy acquires matching weapons, of course—over the League, too. So Manticore’s offer was simple: let’s stop shooting at each other long enough for us both to rip off big, juicy mouthfuls of territory from the League and anyone else who gets in our way while we’ve still got the military edge to get away with it. Think of it as a variation on the old cliché about my enemy’s enemy being my friend. In this case, it’s a case of my enemy’s helpless victim being my helpless victim, too. Or that’s how Manticore sold it to Haven, anyway.”

“You’re saying that in this version of reality Haven saw the opportunity to throw in with Manticore for a piece of our pie and figured that was a better deal than trying to finish off the Manties and getting nothing out of it except a bunch more losses of their own and—maybe—control of the Junction at the end of it?” Wodoslawski said in a much more thoughtful tone.

“We’ve been explaining that the Manties are cold-blooded, cynical imperialists from the beginning,” Abruzzi pointed out. “This would be just more of the same on their part, wouldn’t it? And the fact that Haven, who’s always hated Manpower as much as Manticore in the first place, is the one who ‘confirmed’ this nonsense about the so-called Mesan Alignment fits in rather nicely.”

“You know, that’s what bothers me the most,” Wodoslawski admitted. “It was Pritchart who brought this to the Manties, not the other way around. I agree it’s nonsense, but if Haven really believes it…”