But he hadn’t been, and he still wasn’t. A huge part of that, he knew with bleak honesty, was simple self-preservation and ambition. Disgrace and a total, irrevocable fall from power would be the very least he could expect. Trial and imprisonment were far from unlikely, however strongly he might argue that he’d actually violated no laws. Neither of those was a fate he was prepared to embrace.

Yet there was more to it than that. He hadn’t planned on this, no; but that didn’t necessarily make what was happening a disaster. Certainly he’d manipulated the Manties’ diplomatic correspondence, but the fact that he might have changed their words didn’t mean he’d misrepresented their ultimate goals. Weak and unprincipled High Ridge and his associates might be, but the expansionist trend of Manticoran policy remained, and another Manty regime—one with a spine and the will to make its policies effective—would inevitably have embraced those same goals in time. And so, perhaps, this was in fact the best of all possible outcomes. To strike now, when the Navy’s advantage over the Manties was at its strongest… and when the current Manticoran government was at its weakest.

And, he acknowledged, when Thomas Theisman had displayed a degree of strategic imagination and willingness to take the war to the enemy which Giancola had never imagined for a moment he might possess.

The Secretary of State opened his eyes, looked at the chrono once again, and felt the decision make itself, once and forever.

It was too late to stop what was going to happen. Confessing his true part in the events which had set Operation Thunderbolt in motion could only destroy him without stopping anything. And so he would not admit it.

He turned to his private computer station and brought it online. Half a dozen keystrokes were all it took to erase the record of the original Manticoran notes he had stored “just in case.” Another three keystrokes and that portion of the Department of State’s molycirc memory core where those notes had been stored was reformatted with a “document shredding” program guaranteed to make the data permanently non-recoverable.

Grosclaude, he knew, had already destroyed all of his records on Manticore, as well as every other sensitive file which might fall into enemy hands, in anticipation of Thunderbolt. The thought held a certain ironic satisfaction, even now, because no one—not even the Manties, when the discrepancy in the diplomatic record became public knowledge—could accuse Grosclaude of destroying incriminating records in the name of self-preservation. Not when he’d had specific orders to do so from the President of the Republic herself.

And that’s that, he thought. No tracks, no fingerprints. No proof.

Now, if only the Navy gets it done.

· · • · ·

Javier Giscard looked at the bulkhead date-time display, and his bony face was expressionless.

It was very quiet in his day cabin, but that was going to change in little more than three hours. That was when Sovereign of Space’s general quarters alarm would sound and First Fleet would clear for battle.