Mission Of Honor – Snippet 14
Matthews closed his mouth and sat back in his chair, and Benjamin chuckled harshly.
“Don’t think that I wouldn’t appreciate the offer, if you’d ever been so lost to all sense of your legal and moral responsibilities as to make it. But even if I were tempted to encourage you to do any such thing, and even if it wouldn’t be both morally and legally wrong — which, granted, aren’t always exactly the same things — it would only blow up in our faces in the long run. After all, it’s not exactly like it would take a hyper physicist to realize just how damned big the League is. If we tried to pretend the Sollies couldn’t kick our posterior in the long run, we’d only look and sound ridiculous. Or, worse, like we were trying to carry water for the Manties. So I doubt you’d be able to do much good . . . in that respect, at least. ”
Matthews nodded slowly, but something about the protector’s tone puzzled him. He knew it showed in his expression, and Benjamin chuckled again, more naturally, when he saw it.
“I said I don’t want you to mislead anyone about the long-term threat the League could pose, Wesley. I never said I didn’t want you to underline your confidence in our short-term security, if you’re actually confident about it.”
“Of course, Your Grace.” Matthews nodded with no reservations. In fact, even though he’d scrupulously used the phrase “any known short-term threat” in his response to the protector’s question, in his own mind a better one would have been “any conceivable short-term threat.”
“Good.” Benjamin nodded back. “One thing we scheming autocrats realized early on, High Admiral, is that short-term threats have a far greater tendency to crystallize political factions, for or against, than long-term ones do. It’s the nature of the way human minds work. And if we can get through the next few months, the situation could certainly change. For example, there’s Lady Harrington’s mission to Haven.”
Matthews nodded, although he suspected he hadn’t succeeded in keeping at least a trace of skepticism out of his expression. As the Grayson Space Navy’s uniformed commander, he was one of the handful of people who knew about Honor Alexander-Harrington’s planned mission to the Republic of Haven. He agreed that it was certainly worth trying, even if he didn’t exactly have unbridled optimism about the chances for its success. On the other hand, Lady Harrington had a knack for accomplishing the improbable, so he wasn’t prepared to totally rule out the possibility.
“If we can manage to bury the hatchet with Haven, it should be a major positive factor where the public’s morale is concerned, and it would certainly strengthen our hand in the Conclave,” Benjamin pointed out. “Not only that, but if anyone in the Solarian League realizes just how steep our present technological advantage is, and couples that with the fact that we’re not being distracted by the Republic anymore, he may just figure out that picking a fight with Manticore is a game that wouldn’t be worth the candle.”
“Your Grace, I can’t disagree with anything you’ve just said,” Matthews said. “On the other hand, you and I both know how Sollies think. Do you really believe there’s going to be a sudden unprecedented outburst of rationality in Old Chicago, of all places?”
“I think it’s possible,” Benjamin replied. “I’m not saying I think it’s likely, but it is possible. And in some ways, this makes me think about a story my father told me — an old joke about a Persian horse thief.”
“Excuse me, Your Grace?”
“A Persian horse thief.” Matthews still looked blank, and Benjamin grinned. “Do you know what ‘Persia’ was?”
“I’ve heard the word,” Matthews admitted cautiously. “Something from Old Earth history, wasn’t it?”
“Persia,” Benjamin said, “built one of the greatest pre-technic empires back on Old Earth. Their king was called the ‘shah,’ and the term ‘checkmate’ in chess comes originally from ‘shah mat,’ or ‘the king is dead.’ That’s how long ago they were around.
“Anyway, the story goes that once upon a time a thief stole the shah’s favorite horse. Unfortunately for him, he was caught trying to get off the palace grounds with it, and dragged before the shah in person. The penalty for stealing any horse was pretty severe, but stealing one of the shah’s was punishable by death, of course. Still, the shah wanted to see the man who’d had the audacity to try and steal a horse out of the royal stables themselves.
“So the shah’s guardsmen brought the thief in, and the shah said, ‘Didn’t you know stealing one of my horses is punishable by death, fellow?’ And the thief looked at him and said ‘Of course I knew that, Your Majesty. But everyone knows you have the finest horses in all the world, and what horse thief worthy of the name would choose to steal any but the finest?’
“The shah was amused, but the law was the law, so he said ‘Give me one reason why I shouldn’t have your head chopped off right this minute.’ The horse thief thought about it for a few moments, then said, ‘Well, Your Majesty, I don’t suppose there’s any legal reason why you shouldn’t. But if you’ll spare my life, I’ll teach your horse to sing.’
“‘What?’ the shah demanded. ‘You claim you can actually teach my horse to sing?’ ‘Well, of course I can!’ the thief replied confidently. ‘I’m not just a common horse thief, after all, Your Majesty. I don’t say it will be easy, but if I can’t teach your horse to sing within one year, then you can chop off my head with my blessings.’
“So the shah thought about it, then nodded. ‘All right, you’ve got your year. If, at the end of that year, you haven’t taught the horse to sing, though, I warn you — a simple beheading will be the least of your problems! Is that understood?’ ‘Of course, Your Majesty!’ the horse thief replied, and the guards hauled him away.
“‘Are you crazy?’ one of them asked him. ‘No one can teach a horse to sing, and the Shah’s going to be even more pissed off when he figures out you lied to him. All you’ve done is to trade having your head chopped off for being handed over to the torturers! What were you thinking?’ So the thief looks at him and says ‘I have a year in which to do it, and in a year, the Shah may die, and his successor may choose to spare my life. Or the horse may die, and I can scarcely be expected to teach a dead horse to sing, and so my life may be spared. Or, I may die, in which case it won’t matter whether or not the horse learns to sing.’ ‘And if none of those things happen?’ the guard demanded. ‘Well, in that case,’ the thief replied, ‘who knows? Maybe the horse will learn to sing!'”
Matthews chuckled, and the protector’s grin broadened. Then it slowly faded, and he let his chair come back upright, laying his forearms on his desk and leaning forward over them.
“And in some ways, that’s where we are, isn’t it?” he asked. “We’ve been too closely allied with Manticore for too long, and we’ve already had personnel involved in active combat with the SLN. If the League decides to hammer the Star Kingdom over something that was clearly the League’s fault in the first place, what makes anyone think they’ll hesitate to hammer any of the uppity neobarbs’ uppity neobarb friends, at the same time? What’s one more star system when you’re already planning on destroying a multi-system empire, with the largest independent merchant marine in the entire galaxy, just because you can’t admit one of your own admirals screwed up by the numbers?”
Matthews looked back at his protector, wishing he could think of an answer to Benjamin’s questions.
“So that’s where we are,” the protector repeated quietly. “In the long term, unless we’re prepared to become another nice, obedient Frontier Security proxy and go around bashing other ‘neobarbs’ for the League, I’m sure they’ll decide one of their flag officers should have another unfortunate little accident that gets our Navy trashed along with Manticore’s before we turn into a threat to them. So all I can see for us to do is the best we can and hope that somewhere, even in the Solarian League, someone’s going to be bright enough to see the shipwreck coming and try to avoid it. After all,” Benjamin grinned again, this time without amusement, “the horse really may learn to sing.”
* * *
“All right, boys and girls,” Commander Michael Carus said. “It’s official. We can go home now.”
“Hallelujah!” Lieutenant Commander Bridget Landry said from her quadrant of his com display. “Not that it hasn’t been fun,” she continued. “Why I haven’t enjoyed myself this much since they fixed that impacted wisdom tooth for me.”
Carus chuckled. The four destroyers of the Royal Manticoran Navy’s Destroyer Division 265.2, known as “the Silver Cepheids,” had been sitting a light-month from Manticore-A for two weeks, doing absolutely nothing. Well, that wasn’t exactly fair. They’d been sitting here maintaining a scrupulous sensor watch looking for absolutely nothing, and he was hardly surprised by Landry’s reaction.
No, I’m not, he admitted. But somebody had to do it. And when it comes to perimeter security for the entire star system, better safe than sorry any day, even if it does mean somebody has to be bored as hell.
DesDiv 265.2 had been sent to check out what was almost certainly a sensor ghost but which could, just possibly, have been an actual hyper footprint. It was extraordinarily unlikely that anyone would have bothered to make his alpha translation this far out, be his purposes ever so nefarious, since his impeller signature would certainly have been detected long before he could get close enough to the Manticore Binary System to accomplish anything. But Perimeter Security didn’t take chances on words like “unlikely.” When a sensor ghost like this one turned up, it was checked out — quickly and thoroughly. And if the checker-outers didn’t find anything immediately upon arrival, they stayed put for the entire two T-weeks SOP required.
Several threads are coming together. Honor’s trip to Haven, Grayson’s understanding of reality regarding alliances, and Oyster Bay is on the way.
Hopefuly that opposition within the Steadholders won’t do anything significant if Oyster Bay delivers presents to Graysons, and thus ruins their defenses. Because these cyclic Steadholder threats are starting to get on my nerves.
That reminds me. Would you want to see the face of SL admiral that assaults Grayson, when he realizes that this neobarb has 3rd strongest fleet in Heaven sector. You can bet SL will be briefed on Graysons using the same info that was given to Honor back in second book, so 100+ SDPs will be quite a surprise.
I mean one thing is losing a battle or two to Heaven or Manticore, but Grayson?
All this ‘In the long-run we’re all doomed if we fight the SL.’ kinda gets on my nerves. On one hand they do have a point they’re outnumbered, but it could also be said that the SL is doomed to collapse because of decadence corruption and invading barbarians in the “long-run”. In fact the only thing that might save the SL is an outside threat that they can rally it’s member worlds against. Humanity is going to keep expanding and every generation that passes means that the “neo-barbs” grow larger, more numerous, and more powerful while the Sollies grow more stagnant and decadent and corrupt.
@3 Sigh
I suspect that, sooner or later, they’re going to realize that winning against the Solarian League is only going to be possible if there is no more Solarian League, and start thinking about how to make that happen. Of course, we know some things are going on that they don’t, but that isn’t going to last once Cachet and Zilwiki get back and brief the powers that be on what they’ve discovered.
I don’t know exactly where David is planning on taking it, but it should be an interestingly bumpy ride.
Another interesting point: so far I haven’t seen anything that shows they’re actually going to attack Grayson. I know they’re planning on it, but I haven’t seen it the same way we’ve seen the start of the Oyster Bay attacks on Manticore.
I just hope Grayson doesn’t send the Francis to check out the sensor ghost.
It was specifically mentioned that Oyster Bay was to hit Grayson and Manticore in Storm From the Shadows page 443. There was never any setup for the attack on Grayson like their was for Manticore, so it is possible that it was changed to happen after, or cancelled to concentrate on Grayson. Cancelling the attack seems like a bad idea though.
And Honor did describe how to fight the League by allowing any planet that wishes to separate themselves from the League to do so. And then be friendly to those worlds, sectors. So they know it is possible to when, likely or not is still in question.
@2 I don’t think the SL will be fighting Heaven :)
Losing to a Grayson which Intel puts at pre-Manty intervention levels would indeed be glorious reading and humiliating for everyone in the SL involved.
It just occurred to me that in nearly every other space opera book or series I’ve read, I’ve wanted Earth to win. Funny how they (we at present?) are some of the bad guys on this occasion.
@7 Daryl
That’s the “us versus aliens” scenario. In the “colonies grow up and break away” scenario, it’s usually Earth that’s the bad guys, and that’s what David is writing in this series.
@4 “I just hope Grayson doesn’t send the Francis to check out the sensor ghost.”
Got a nice smile out of me with that one…. I love that story.
Sorry if this is out of date, I have not been reading snerkers threads as I have not read the e-arc
Supposed the Manti’s manage a pearl harbor vs the SLN, and really have them on the ropes. At that point, they could demand as part of a peace treaty some new mechanism whereby any planet could secede.
Technically thats always been the case, but in reality not so much. Especially as each planet made the decision alone and thus felt vulnerable.
What if there was a unified empire wide vote, with pre-vote polling, suddenly all the small planets would not be afraid to leave, as they would see ahead of the vote just how many other planets were leaving at the same time. Its much easier to be brave when you are not alone.
The main problem would be the time it would take to implement this, giving the Sollies time to try to weasel out of it.
Suppose the Manti’s manage a pearl harbor vs the SLN, and really have them on the ropes. At that point, they could demand as part of a peace treaty some new mechanism whereby any planet could secede.
Technically thats always been the case, but in reality not so much. Especially as each planet made the decision alone and thus felt vulnerable.
What if there was a unified empire wide vote, with pre-vote polling, suddenly all the small planets would not be afraid to leave, as they would see ahead of the vote just how many other planets were leaving at the same time. Its much easier to be brave when you are not alone.
The main problem would be the time it would take to implement this, giving the Sollies time to try to weasel out of it.
Knowing that bunch of idiots, they are bound to accidentally ram a Shark :D
Uhmmm, yeah. The last one was a response to @9 and @4.
I don’t think core worlds are that eager to cede. What Honor is planing is to use threat of blowing all their industry to make them cede.
If not for what oyster bay is about to do, I would say that it would be possible to cripple the Solarian League for at least generations to come maybe even permanently. They would have to first crush the shipping yards and then the SLN. The next step would be to blockade all former SL worlds and seize all merchant shipping going in and out of those worlds. With no ships there is no communication, no organization, no effective resistance. This option is far from ideal however, because it’s going to take a great deal of effort and create a massive amount of resentment.
Umm shipping yards = shipyards ^
I am starting to think just, by looking at the stagnation, corruption, and sheer beaurucratic stranglehold on the Solarian League, that they are pretty much doomed even without the machinations of Mesa. Nothing that large can last in such a state indefinitely. The Maya sector is a prime example of what is likely to start happening elsewhere in the league, assuming of course it hasn’t already.