“Willie and Sir Anthony are already in the process of coming up with what’s going to amount to a massive bribe,” he went on with an expression of distaste. “Together with Gustav, they’re going to buy the existing government off. Most of its members will do very well out of the deal. But the hook they don’t know about is that we’re going to be serious about requiring them to obey the law afterward. We may pay them off now and effectively amnesty them for past crimes, but we’ll come down on them like the Hammer of God the first time they try to go back to business as usual under new management.” He shrugged. “I’m not too sure how I feel about the methodology, but the final outcome is going to be that we get an ally we desperately need, a problem which has been a source of tension between us and the Empire for the last sixty or seventy T-years gets resolved once and for all, and—maybe most important of all—we finally bring an end to a situation which has been costing literally hundreds of thousands of lives every single year in Silesia.”

“And along the way, we become the Star Empire of Manticore,” Honor replied with a troubled expression.

“I don’t see that we have any choice,” White Haven said. “And what with Trevor’s Star and the Talbott Cluster, we’re already moving in that direction.”

“I suppose so,” Honor said pensively. “I guess maybe what worries me the most about it is that it could be seen as validating the Republic’s charges that we were already expansionist. That that’s the reason High Ridge never had any intention of negotiating with them in good faith for the return of the occupied systems.”

“That’s my greatest concern, too,” Emily put in, then moved her right hand in the gesture she used for a shrug as Honor and White Haven both looked at her. “Interstellar relations are so often a matter of perceptions rather than realities,” she said. “If the Republic is trying to convince someone else—like the Sollies—that we’re the villains of the piece, then this could play straight into their hands. They’ll treat it as proof that we were expansionist all along, exactly as Honor has just suggested they will, and that in effect they had no choice but to attack us in self-defense.”

“You may be right,” her husband said after a few moments’ thought. “Unfortunately, I don’t think it changes the imperatives Willie and Elizabeth have to deal with. The bottom line, again, is that we have to have the Andie fleet if we’re going to survive. There’s not much point in worrying about anything else if we don’t do that, after all. If we do,” he shrugged, “then we can worry about other PR problems then.”

Honor sat back in her chair, gazing at him intently, and then, finally, nodded. Her reservations hadn’t disappeared, but as Hamish said, the imperatives of survival trumped them.

“Well,” Emily said into the brief silence which followed, “I think that’s quite enough politics for tonight.”