New Kiev gazed at the Prime Minister for several seconds, then nodded thoughtfully. Descroix, on the other hand, confident that New Kiev was looking elsewhere, rolled her eyes cynically. “Repatriating prisoners of war” sounded very generous, but New Kiev ought to realize as well as she did that the Star Kingdom hadn’t proposed it out of the goodness of High Ridge’s heart or to demonstrate its willingness to be accommodating. Just getting out from under the expense of feeding and caring for the far more numerous Peep prisoners held by the Manticoran Alliance would have been worthwhile in its own right, and as for the enormous PR advantages in being the Government which had “brought our men and women home”…

“Surely they know as well as we do that the next major concession has to come from their side,” High Ridge continued earnestly. “And they must be aware that territorial adjustments to address our new security issues are inevitable. Yet every proposal Secretary Giancola has so far put forward has been based on the return of all occupied systems as a very first step. There’s no way any Manticoran government could accede to that sort of demand when our military personnel paid so high a price to occupy them in the first place.”

That wasn’t quite accurate, of course, though he had no intention of pointing that out. The Havenite position did, indeed, insist on the return of all occupied planets, but everyone in the Foreign Office recognized that as little more than the staking out of a bargaining position from which concessions could later be made. And High Ridge, unlike New Kiev, knew Descroix’s reports to the Cabinet had carefully not mentioned Giancola’s latest suggestion that perhaps plebiscites—overseen by the Republic, of course—might allow individual star systems to choose which side should retain control of them.

It was probably as well he hadn’t brought that up, he thought, watching New Kiev’s lips tighten ever so slightly at the words “military personnel.” She might not share the contempt which a Reginald Houseman felt for the Star Kingdom’s military, but like most of the Liberal leaders, she was at best ambivalent whenever it came to the use of military force. The fact that the Star Kingdom occupied any foreign star systems, regardless of how or why that had come about, offended every anti-imperialist bone in her body, and knowing political expediency forced her to actually support such an occupation, publically at least, only made it worse.

The fact that she was the only person in the office who felt that way became obvious a moment later, however.

“I agree, of course,” Stefan Young, Earl North Hollow, said. North Hollow had received the Office of Trade as the price of bringing the enormously potent secret files his father had assembled to the Government’s support. The power of those files was also the reason he was the fifth and final person present for this high-level strategy session despite his ministry’s relatively junior rank in the official Cabinet hierarchy. After all, they were what had provided the crucial leverage which had made High Ridge confident he could… constructively direct MacIntosh’s slavery investigation if that became necessary.