He tapped the hardcopy of Harrington’s report, where it lay on the conference table in front of him. An identical copy lay in front of each of them, and he wondered for a moment if New Kiev had even bothered to read hers.

“To be perfectly honest, my initial fear when I read her account of the incident was that she was likely to head for Sachsen cleared for action to demand satisfaction from Admiral Sternhafen. Instead, to my considerable surprise, she actually seems to be working actively to reduce tensions. Of course, there’s no way to tell how Sternhafen reacted to her suggestion of a joint investigation, but the fact that she came up with the idea at all has to be taken as a good sign, I think.”

“On the surface,” she agreed. Then she shook her head and made a face. “No, you’re right,” she admitted. “It’s just that I worry about her temper. Her first reaction has always seemed to be to resort to force immediately—or, at least, to meet force with greater force. I suppose it’s just… difficult for me to conceive of her in the role of peacemaker.”

“For you and me both,” Janacek admitted. “Nonetheless, that does seem to have been her initial response, at least, in this case.”

“If so,” North Hollow observed acidly, “it’s undoubtedly for the first time in her entire life!”

“I won’t disagree with you there, Stefan,” Janacek replied.

“But you say there’s no way to predict how Sternhafen reacted to her proposal,” High Ridge pressed, and Janacek shrugged.

“Obviously not. If this really was an accident, an unintended confrontation, then the man would have to be a bigger lunatic even than Harrington not to seize this opportunity to back off and cool things down. Of course, given the provocative behavior the Andies have been evincing out there, it’s impossible to say whether or not it really was accidental. Admiral Jurgensen, Admiral Chakrabarti, and I, are currently inclined towards the view that it was unintended. If the Andies had intended to begin a war with us, then surely they would have done it by attacking more than a single, isolated heavy cruiser. Moreover, it seems fairly evident that their ship took Jessica Epps by surprise. Whether that’s the case or not, they’d at least managed to get into attack range well before Jessica Epps initially ordered this suspected slave ship to heave to. What that suggests to us, is that the Andies didn’t go into this looking for a fight. If that had been their objective, then it’s virtually certain that they would have fired sooner—probably before Jessica Epps even knew they were there.”

“So you think they were responding to our effort to intercept this slaver, this Sittich,” Elaine Descroix said.

“It certainly looks that way,” Janacek agreed. “Precisely why they responded the way they did is more than we can say at this point. If Harrington’s report’s conclusions about the ship and the tonnage discrepancy our shipping list information indicated are correct, then I have to say I’m baffled by the Andy captain’s actions. We may not get along with the Andermani all that well, but as far as we’ve been able to tell, they don’t especially care for the slave trade, either. They don’t have the long-term standing commitment to its suppression which the Star Kingdom’s had, but they’ve certainly acted promptly to stamp on it whenever it’s reared its head in their backyard.”