“We’ll just have to deal with that as it arises,” Theisman said. “I realize it can create an awkward situation, and I’ll try not to let my paranoia pressure me into maintaining secrecy longer than is actually warranted. But I truly don’t think I can overemphasize the importance of building up to a level capable of deterring any Manty temptation towards preemptive action before we go public about the new ships.”

“As I said, I’m not prepared—or even tempted—to overrule you in this particular area. I just wish the Manties would stop providing Arnold with fresh grist for his mill. And truth to tell, I think they’re up to something, myself. There has to be a reason they keep refusing even to seriously discuss the return of the occupied star systems, and if they’re not planning to hang onto them permanently, then what the hell are they doing?”

Chapter Three

MS. Midshipwoman Zilwicki saw the familiar green-on-green uniform before she caught sight of Duchess Harrington. Everyone on Saganami Island knew that uniform, because it was the only non-Navy or Marine uniform allowed on the RMN academy’s campus. Helen Zilwicki wasn’t supposed to know about the resentment and outrage certain august personages tended to very privately vent behind the scenes over its presence here, but she wasn’t her father’s daughter for nothing. Anton Zilwicki might have started his naval career as a “techno weenie,” but before that career had come to a screeching halt four T-years before, he had more than completed his transition to a full-time intelligence type, and a good one. He wasn’t the sort who talked down to anyone, far less to his motherless daughter, and he’d always emphasized how important it was to actually listen to anything she heard.

Of course, his… relationship with Lady Catherine Montaigne, Countess of the Tor, also offered Helen a certain insight denied to her fellow midshipmen. Helen never actually tried to eavesdrop on the conversations between her father and Lady Cathy, but the countess was as effervescent and compulsively energetic as Anton Zilwicki was methodical and disciplined. Her exclamation point-punctuated conversations usually seemed as if they were going off in all directions at once, with a sort of high-energy trajectory that left the unwary feeling somewhat as if they’d been run over by a ground lorry… or possibly a small fleet of them. In fact, there was always an underlying structure and cohesiveness for anyone who had the wit to stay in shouting distance of Lady Cathy’s scalpel-sharp intelligence. And one thing the Countess of the Tor had never possessed was anything like Anton Zilwicki’s instinctive respect for authority and tradition. “Irreverent” was far too mild a term to describe her, and her comments on the current Government started at scathing and went rapidly downhill from there.

Which had made it inevitable that Helen would hear Lady Cathy’s opinion of the ill-considered attempt Sir Edward Janacek had made to revoke Duchess Harrington’s special permission to bring armed personal retainers into the sacred precincts of the Naval Academy.