"I'm quite certain you didn't need me to tell you that," he continued calmly "I, on the other hand, needed to say it to you, personally and directly, because you deserve my assurances in that regard as your friend as well as in my official capacity as your liege. But also, I'm afraid, because you and I need to discuss how that entire sordid attack has affected Grayson's relations with the Star Kingdom."
"I know the effect hasn't been good," she said somberly. "You and I have corresponded enough on that topic."
"We have," he agreed. "But the fact that you're about to head off to Silesia isn't helping a great deal." He raised a hand as she started to protest. "I'm fully aware that you decided to accept this assignment because you feel a responsibility to the Sidemorians, and because you feel a duty to Elizabeth and the Star Kingdom which transcends the way the current Government's treated you. I admire your ability to reach that decision, and I don't disagree with it. But there's an element here on Grayson, particularly among the Keys who've been pressuring me to reconsider our status under the Alliance, which is openly viewing this assignment as a way for the High Ridge Government to 'run you out of town' without ever admitting that that's what it's doing."
"I was afraid there would be," she sighed. "Unfortunately, I don't really see a way around that."
"Neither do I. And I'm certainly not second-guessing your decision. As I say, I think that in many ways it was the right one, although I deeply regret the potential personal consequences for you if the situation in Silesia goes as badly as I'm afraid it's going to."
"Do you have some particular reason for those fears?" she asked intently.
"Not concrete ones." Benjamin shook his head. "But Gregory and I have been mulling over the reports from ONI and our own intelligence people, and we don't like the picture that seems to us to be emerging."
"I wasn't particularly happy over what Admiral Jurgensen's briefers had to say to me, either," Honor told him. "But you sound as if you and Greg are seeing something even worse than I saw from them."
"I don't know about 'worse,' but I've got a hunch that we're seeing more."
"What do you mean, 'more'?" Honor's frown was more than merely intense now. Gregory Paxton had been her staff intelligence officer when she'd commanded her first battle squadron here at Yeltsin's Star. He held multiple doctorates, and was one of the more brilliant analysts she'd ever worked with. More to the point, Benjamin and his murdered chancellor, Lord Prestwick, had nabbed Paxton from the Navy when they required a new director for Sword Intelligence, and from everything she'd heard since, he'd done an even more impressive job there than he had for her.
"I haven't wanted to say anything about it in my letters to you," Benjamin admitted, "because, frankly, you've had enough to worry about in the Star Kingdom without my adding still more, possibly groundless concerns to it. But before Admiral Givens . . . went on vacation, she and Greg had arranged for us to see the raw take from her sources, as well as her analysis of the data. Since she left the Admiralty, what we're getting is much more restricted."
"How?"
"We're not seeing any of the raw data anymore. Officially, ONI is concerned about maintaining security, and to be perfectly honest, that concern—which started the day Admiral Jurgensen arrived on the scene—has struck a lot of our intel people as fairly insulting."
Benjamin's tone was light, but Honor could taste the anger behind it and knew his intelligence people weren't the only ones who'd found the shutdown of information flow insulting.
"To the best of our knowledge," he continued, "and Admiral Jurgensen hasn't provided any evidence that our knowledge is incomplete, we've never had a breach of security where shared intelligence material was concerned. The same can't be said for ONI, where the evidence is very strong that in at least two cases information we provided them somehow ended up in Peep hands. And while Jurgensen hasn't quite come out and said so, he's made it clear enough that his real concern is the 'Peep turncoats' in our service."
Honor's nostrils flared, and sudden anger sparkled in her eyes.
"Alfredo and Warner are two of the most honorable, reliable men I've ever met!" she said roundly. "And for someone like Jurgensen to—!"
"Calmly, Honor. Calmly!" Benjamin shook his head wryly. "I knew you were going to explode when I got to that part. And, frankly, I don't disagree with you. But please believe me when I say that Jurgensen's paranoia doesn't mean a thing to anyone in this star system. We have absolutely no qualms at all about trusting our 'turncoats.' "
"I should hope not!" Honor snorted. Then she made herself sit back in her chair. Nimitz flowed from his high chair into her lap and stood up on his true-feet like an Old Terran prairie dog, leaning his back against her, and she wrapped her flesh-and-blood arm around him.
She knew Alfredo Yu and Warner Caslet far too well to doubt for a moment that both of them had been overjoyed by the changes taking place in the Republic of Haven under Eloise Pritchart and Thomas Theisman. Both of them had known Theisman well. Indeed, in many ways, Yu had been as much Theisman's mentor and exemplar as Raoul Courvosier had been for Honor, and both he and Caslet had felt the heart-yearning to return to their homeland to share in its rebirth.
But she also knew they were the honorable men she'd just called them. They'd given their allegiance to Grayson and to the Manticoran Alliance. Indeed, Yu had been a Grayson citizen for over three T-years. The decision of whether or not to remain loyal to Grayson, even if that risked pitting them someday against the Republic once more, had not come easy for either of them, yet there'd never really been any question of how they would choose.
And the fact that High Ridge's refusal to negotiate a genuine peace treaty means they're still technically traitors during time of war didn't make things any easier for them, she thought grimly, still quivering inwardly with fury that a political cretin masquerading as a naval officer like Jurgensen should dare to impugn their honor.
"At any rate," Benjamin went on once he was certain she had her temper back under control, "he's openly disparaged—politely, of course!—our security systems while studiously ignoring or denying the failures in his own. In light of the difference in our track records, and the sheer arrogance of the man, a lot of Greg's senior people, and especially the ones who've worked most closely with Alfredo since we organized the Protector's Own, are deeply affronted by his insinuation that somehow we're less security conscious than the Star Kingdom is.
"The problem though, in practical terms, is less about our hurt feelings than it is about the reliability of what they are sharing with us. Speaking purely as head of state of Grayson, I don't need the additional friction this is generating—not at this particular moment. It's bad enough to have the lunatic element in the Keys pressing for us to go it alone in the wake of the Star Kingdom's 'insults' to Grayson and to one of our steadholders in particular. I don't need to have senior officers of my own Navy pissed off, if you'll pardon the language, with their RMN counterparts, as well. But I can live with that, within limits, at least, because my officer corps knows how to take orders, including orders to get along with idiots like Sir Edward Janacek and his flunkies."
The Protector's tone remained almost whimsical, but there was a savage, cutting edge buried in the whimsy, and Honor once more realized how rare it was for him to be able to show his true feelings at moments like this to anyone outside his own family and the innermost circles of his Council.
"As I say," he continued, "our primary concern is that what we're getting from the ONI reports doesn't match what we're getting from our own sources. We realize Manticore has spent decades, or even longer, setting up its intelligence-gathering nets, whereas we're still very new to the game, but we also know exactly where our information is coming from. We don't have any way to know that where Jurgensen's synopses are concerned, and he won't tell us. The end result is that knowing our data's pedigree automatically makes it seem more reliable to us. And, frankly, the fact that so much of what we seem to be getting from ONI these
days is pure fluff only aggravates that."
"I don't think I like what I'm hearing, Benjamin," Honor said quietly. "And not just because it's insulting to every officer in a Grayson uniform. Tell me if I'm wrong, but it sounds to me as if what you're saying is that the reports Jurgensen is sharing with you are not only incomplete but . . . slanted."
"I think that's exactly what they are," Benjamin told her flatly. "I don't know if his people are going as far as deliberately falsifying information, but it seems very evident to me and to Greg that at the very least they're disregarding evidence which doesn't support the conclusion they wanted to reach from the beginning."
"Do you have specific examples of that?" she asked very seriously.
"Obviously, we can't show you a smoking gun when we've never seen the original data in the first place. But I'll give you two possible examples, both of which I find particularly disturbing.
"First, Silesia. Everything in the official ONI reports suggests that Emperor Gustav is still in the process of deciding what policy to pursue towards the Confederacy. At the same time, until the last month or so, ONI showed absolutely no concern about possible increases in the Andermani's naval tech base. But according to our sources in the diplomatic community, both in the Confederacy and on New Potsdam, the Emperor made his mind up months ago. Possibly as long as a full T-year ago. We can't positively confirm that, of course, but the aggressive moves they've been making and the generally more confrontational attitude of their naval forces in and around Marsh all seem to us to confirm that thesis.
"Greg's conclusion, and mine, is that the Empire has decided this is the time to push in Silesia. The Andermani haven't issued any formal demands or ultimatums to the Silesians, and they certainly haven't sent any formal communiques on the subject to Lady Descroix, but we think that's because they're still testing the waters and getting themselves positioned. Once they're satisfied the Star Kingdom won't push back—or isn't in a position to do any pushing—they'll make their demands clear enough. And they'll be prepared to use military force to support them.
"Which brings us to our second concern about Silesia, which is the fact that we believe ONI is seriously underestimating the extent to which the Andermani have improved their naval capabilities. Our hard and fast observational data is pretty thin, but there's enough to convince us that we're looking at a major increase in their compensator efficiency, that they've made substantial improvements in the range and targeting capability of their missiles, and that they've been experimenting with their own LACs. We don't think their LAC technology, in particular, is anywhere near our own—not yet—but we can't rule out the possibility that they've been putting the LACs they do have onto carriers. The thing that makes this particularly disturbing is that we know they're fully aware of what Eighth Fleet did to the Peeps, and one thing the IAN isn't is stupid. They wouldn't be picking a fight with someone they know just kicked the Peeps' butts if they didn't think their own hardware was good enough to even the balance. And unlike us, they have a pretty good idea of exactly what kind of hardware they'd have to go up against, because their observers have seen ours in action."
He paused and cocked an eyebrow at Honor. She gazed back at him, her expression a mask while she considered what he'd just said. The implications were frightening. She'd suspected that the briefings Jurgensen and his staffers had laid on for her had been overly optimistic, but she hadn't suspected that they might actually be ignoring or even actively suppressing the sort of evidence Benjamin was implying existed. She wished she could feel confident that the Graysons were wrong, but she'd worked too closely with them to underestimate their abilities.
Which, she reminded herself, was definitely not the case where Sir Edward Janacek and Francis Jurgensen were concerned.
"Now I know I don't like what I'm hearing," she told him after a moment. "I hope you and Greg will share your own information and analyses with me."
"Of course we will!" Benjamin sounded testy, and she tasted his sudden flash of anger, almost as if he felt insulted that she should even wonder about such a thing for a moment. She waved her right hand in a small gesture of apology, and he continued to eye her sternly for a handful of heartbeats, then made a face and snorted.
"Sorry. I know you didn't mean it like that, but the fact that I even considered taking it that way is probably a sign of how hard High Ridge and Janacek and their cronies are making it for us to work with them. Trust me, the last thing I want is to let my frustration with them spill over onto you, Honor!"
"I know. And I know it's hard, too. Especially when I'm sort of caught between two stools the way I am. You'd have to be superhuman to forget that I was a Manticoran first, Benjamin, and right now you've got every reason in the universe to be irritated with all Manticorans."
"But not with one of them who happens to be not only a Grayson but the person who's catching the most grief from both sides," he pointed out.
"Trust me, compared to what I've been putting up with on the other side of the line, any 'grief' any Graysons have been giving me is a pillow fight!"
"Maybe," he conceded, then brushed that aside and returned to his original topic.
"I said there were two areas we were concerned about, and Silesia is only one of them. And, if we're going to be honest about it, Silesia is the lesser of the two."
"The lesser?" Honor tilted her head to one side and frowned. "It sounds more than bad enough to be going on with to me!"
"I didn't mean to imply that it wasn't, but compared to what we're hearing out of the Republic of Haven, it's definitely secondary."
"Out of Haven?" Honor sat bolt upright in her chair, and Nimitz stiffened in her lap as her sudden stab of anxiety went through him.
"Out of Haven," Benjamin confirmed grimly. "Again, we don't have a great deal of hard evidence and Jurgensen's refusal to share sources with us contributes to a major uncertainty factor, but there are three things we think his reports have significantly understated or overlooked completely.
"First, is his analysis of what the fighting against the StateSec holdouts and the regular Navy officers has meant for Theisman's officer corps."
"I think I know where you're going with this one," Honor interrupted, "and if I'm right, I agree with you completely. You're about to say that Jurgensen's view is that the fighting has constituted a steady drain on their experienced personnel. That it's left them weaker."
"That's exactly what I was going to say," he agreed.
"Well, only an idiot—or a political admiral, if there's a difference—could think anything of the sort," Honor said roundly. "Of course they've lost some people and some ships along the way. But a lot more of their officers and crews have survived, and they've spent the last few T-years picking up experience. During the war, we managed to keep their officer corps trimmed back, for the most part, although Giscard and Tourville were turning that around before Operation Buttercup. Now, though . . ." She shrugged. "I don't know any way to quantify what it's done for them, but I'm absolutely convinced that it's improved their combat worthiness by an uncomfortably large factor, not reduced it the way Jurgensen argues that it has."
"So are we." Benjamin nodded. "Which is one reason we're concerned about the second point I was going to raise. You know that Pierre's financial reforms actually brought about a significant improvement in the Havenite economy."
He made the statement almost a question, and Honor nodded back.
"Well, we've been doing our best to evaluate just how much their economy has improved. Obviously, it's a matter of guess piled on top of conjecture, particularly given the fact that any officially published figures on the Peep economy were completely fabricated to hide the rot for at least four or five decades before the war. But we've run our models backward and forward, and they all agree that there ought to be more cash in the Republic's budgets than is being publicly reported."
Honor looked a question at him, and he shrugged.
"We know what their tax structure is, a
nd we've managed to come up with a ballpark figure for their total economy which we feel is probably within ten or fifteen percent of accurate. And even taking the lower limit we've been able to postulate, the revenues they say they're collecting and spending are low to the tune of several hundred billion Manticoran dollars per year. And if our higher limit is closer to correct, the discrepancy gets much, much worse."
"Several hundred billion?" Honor repeated very carefully. She tried to remember if any of the High Ridge Government's intelligence types had ever expressed any qualms about the announced budgetary figures of the new Republic to any member of Parliament. Right off the top of her head, she couldn't think of a single time they had. For that matter, she admitted, it had never occurred to her to ask them about it or to suggest that anyone run the sort of analysis Benjamin was suggesting Grayson had made.
Which, she reflected, was uncommonly stupid of me.
"At an absolute minimum," Benjamin told her. "We haven't been able to find out where the money's actually going—not with any degree of certainty, at any rate. Part of the problem is that the Republic's so large and constitutes such a huge internal market that virtually all of it could be being plowed back into the domestic economy. More to the point, so much of their economy's been so distressed for so long that it's literally impossible to single out all of the perfectly legitimate places they could be pumping funds back into it. Unfortunately, we don't think that's the case. Or, rather, we're afraid it is the case, but that we wouldn't like the place they're spending all of that money if we could confirm it."
"And that place is?" Honor prompted as he paused.