In the end, real politik had governed, as it had a tendency to do in the Empire’s foreign policy. Acquiring outright control of its legitimate sphere of interest in the Confederacy might have been nice, but joggling Manticore’s elbow while the Star Kingdom was fighting for its life against someone who would just love to gobble up the Empire, as well, might have been fatal. So the Andermani Empire had elected to be “neutral” in the Star Kingdom’s favor.

But the RMN’s abrupt, stunning victory over the People’s Navy had been even more complete than anyone had ever anticipated. So far as Glockauer knew, no one in Naval Intelligence had so much as suspected what sort of knockout punch the Manties had been preparing to deliver. Obviously, Intelligence had known at least a little about what Manticoran R&D had been up to. The recent and ongoing additions to the IAN’s own hardware were proof enough of that, especially in light of the reports Glockauer had read of the Manties’ new weapons and tactics. But he very much doubted that anyone in the Empire had realized the full magnitude of the RMN’s qualitative superiority over its foe until Admiral White Haven finally pulled the trigger.

By rights, the RMN should by now have reverted to its prewar stance throughout the Confederacy. It hadn’t, and in some ways, the situation was even worse than it had been before the war. The Manticorans hadn’t built their light forces back up to their traditional levels, which meant piracy continued to flourish largely unchecked in much of the Confederacy. Worse, some of the “pirates” out here had acquired rather more capable ships. None of them were bigger than cruisers, but so far the Manties and the IAN between them had destroyed at least three of those which had… left the service of the People’s Republic of Haven and fled to find greener pastures elsewhere. That meant that not only had the level of lawless activity increased, but so had its scope, with more planetary raids added to run-of-the-mill piracy. Intelligence’s most recent estimate was that as many as a quarter million Sillies had been killed in the last year alone. A pinprick against the total population of something the size of the Confederacy, but a horrifying number when it was considered in isolation.

But if the Manties hadn’t built their light forces back up, they had established a treaty relationship with the Sidemore Republic in the Marsh System. Over the past eight T-years, Sidemore had been built up into a fairly powerful fleet base, despite the Manticorans’ need to concentrate most of their effort against the Peeps. The Marsh System’s location, just outside the somewhat amorphous borders claimed by the Confederacy and on the flank of the Empire-to-Confederacy leg of the Manties’ “Triangle Route,” made it an ideal logistics base for the RMN’s operations throughout southwestern Silesia.

Other than a certain desire to do it for himself, Glockauer had no objection to watching the Manticorans swat pirates. And their Marsh-based flotillas had enabled them to do a remarkable job of pacifying something like a tenth of the entire Confederacy. But they’d done it by establishing a Manticoran presence in an area in which they had persistently refused to countenance an Andermani one. If any star nation had a legitimate interest in controlling the situation in Silesia to protect its own borders and territorial integrity, that nation was the Andermani Empire… not the Star Kingdom of Manticore. Worse, the Manties had based an entire task force, two understrength squadrons of the wall, with battlecruiser and cruiser support, at their new Sidemore Station.