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Mission of Honor: Retold

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oddhack said:
We're not even to the Ploorans yet, much less Gharlane.
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Very true. I'm not even sure we're at the Voice of Boskone - the Detweiler clones are, definitely, no Helmuth of Kalonia, though they are more or less trying to be in that position. So, we still have, likely, Helmuth, the Eich, Thrale, Ploor, and Eddore to go... unless there are even more parallel and serial leadership structures :).
 
Space Friend said:
if all the Alignment wants is the opportunity to build their own ideal society, there's nothing stopping them from just loading up some colony ships with as much advanced biomed tech and as many genetically-enhanced ubermensch colonists as they want, then zipping off to some more out-of-the-way corner of the galaxy to do whatever they want for centuries or millennia before the normal pace of expansion catches up to them
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Their Darius colony is arguably in the ballpark. It's actually got a larger population than Manticore, IIRC.

(In the original books, the population's the same, except the Mesans openly and impotently shake their fists at how their inefficient slavery system renders their industry far less productive than Manticore's, to make it clear their worldview is bullshit :V )
 
Ralson said:
Their Darius colony is arguably in the ballpark. It's actually got a larger population than Manticore, IIRC.

(In the original books, the population's the same, except the Mesans openly and impotently shake their fists at how their inefficient slavery system renders their industry far less productive than Manticore's, to make it clear their worldview is bullshit :V )
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Wow, why did Weber even put that in there. They are obviously less efficient and productive than Manticore.

Darius doesn't have nobles.
 
I half-suspect it was more a way to talk up Manticoran Free Thinking and Deregulation than to condemn slavery. Like, slavery is bad, but my critique of slavery would probably not begin with (or even depend on) 'slaves do not make a good skilled labor force.' Slavery would still suck if it were super productive and efficient! I nerve stapled every one of my colonies in Alpha Centauri and took over the whole planet but nerve stapling is still godawful.

Anyway I bet you those super productive Manticoran workers aren't in unions.

A good chunk of the epilogue is done, I've been delayed by actual professional writing (sorry I need it to buy food)
 
Ralson said:
Their Darius colony is arguably in the ballpark. It's actually got a larger population than Manticore, IIRC.
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Darius is pretty close to other existing colonies though, close enough that its whereabouts can become known.

When I say "the Alignment could easily just start their own civilization if all they wanted was the chance to practice their social engineering freely" I'm thinking something more distant and more remote. We know Weber could have thought of this, since Safehold is a whole book series about doing it.
 
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Epilogue/Prologue
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    • EPILOGUE/PROLOGUE​

    The Eleventh Fleet of the Solarian League Navy crashed across the Grayson hyper limit like an avalanche of steel. Missile colliers, fleet tankers, transports hauling perimeter arrays, mobile repair ships, megaton-range freighters packed with foodstuffs from every system around Tasmania. And warships. Indefatigable-class battlecruisers by the dozens, silver darts that flashed into reality in sprays of transit ejecta. Superdreadnoughts by the hundreds. Four hundred and eighty-eight Scientist and Vega-class units, dark-shining in the remote light of Yeltsin's Star. Even a squadron of the brand-new Sinaloa-class, their missile tubes completely replaced by remote drone host systems. The single greatest assembly of force in human history.

    And all here, Massimo Filareta thought, on a mission of mercy. Incredible that it would take so much raw power. But this was the promise of the Solarian League. If they mess with you, they've messed with us.

    So he could not help but feel a swell of pride as the Aegis link came back up and the squadrons of his wall confirmed their position. The only way to navigate in hyperspace was through the hyper log, essentially an inertial-navigation record of all the maneuvers you'd made since you left realspace. The journey from Tasmania to Grayson was therefore a blind, no-instruments shot across lightyears of realspace, and the slightest source of error could lead to catastrophic deviations in your realspace arrival point. If you, for example, failed to correctly account for time dilation and relativistic spatial contraction (which both still applied in hyperspace), you might find yourself attempting to return to realspace inside a star's hyper limit…which would end in a blast of gravity shear and more than three million MIA notices dispatched to next of kin.

    But both Admiral Uruguay's astrogation and the maneuvers of his wall were both as close to perfect as a commander could ask. Everyone had arrived intact and, roughly, on target.

    Of course, Crandall's astrogation had been perfect too. But he wasn't going to make any of the same mistakes. "Start the sixteen-minute clock," he ordered. "If I haven't given the sierra code by then, everyone hypers back out and awaits further orders." If anything went wrong, from a sudden stroke (rest in vitriol, old Kashaul) to a pulser-aided change of command, he would fail to provide the correct code and the entire fleet would withdraw. There would be no catspaw attacks on Grayson by his command. Sixteen minutes was the minimum time required for a Solarian superdreadnought to recycle its hyper generator (twelve minutes) and then carry out an upward translation (four minutes), and if he could've gone any lower, he would've.

    "Radio greeting away, sir," reported Thomasina Tsang, his staff comm officer. "Commencing wedge blink."

    Though Filareta didn't have any genuine FTL communications capability, the gravitic signatures of superdreadnought wedges were perfectly serviceable, if crude, transmitters. After all, Warshawski sensors read ripples in the alpha wall, just like an FTL comm. Now the units of Eleventh Fleet lowered their wedge strength in a series of simple dots and dashes. With four hundred and ninety six 'bits' at his service, there was plenty of bandwidth for a short message.

    HELLO GRAYSON 11TH FLEET SLN AT YOUR SERVICE — FOOD AID AND SENSOR ARRAYS — PLEASE TRANSMIT FLIGHT PLAN — COMPLIMENTS FLEET ADMIRAL FILARETA

    The response was nearly instantaneous. "Receiving a broadcast from a…it looks like a buoy, sir," Tsang called out. "Grav pulses on the Warshawskis suggest it's an FTL com relay."

    Filareta tugged his uniform straight. He'd ordered no skinsuits on the bridge, to avoid the appearance that they were ready for battle. "Let me see it, Thoma."

    The face of a very pained and sternly furious man resolved on the main viewer. Benjamin Mayhew IX was a young man by the standards of prolong, but Grayson—despite a history as long as the Solarian League—had only received prolong in the last twenty years, and it had been too late for the Protector. He was square-faced, grey-haired, and dirty: he was still stripping off soil-smeared gardening gloves.

    "I'd open with 'welcome to Grayson,'" he said, in the smooth and twangy voice of a steppe singer, "but I'd be lying." He finished the fingers on his left glove, stripped it off, and threw it on the floor below the pickup' view. "There have been four major space battles around Yeltsin's Star in recent years, and on each of those four occasions, a superior attacking force has been routed. I understand you're here to do what you've always done, Admiral Filareta. But it will not go the way it has always gone. Leave Grayson now. You are not welcome here."

    Filareta stifled a frustrated sigh. "Protector Mayhew, I think there's been a misunderstanding. This is the Eleventh Fleet of the Solarian League Navy Battle Fleet. We don't perform interventions. We're here to uphold the Eridani Edict by providing no-obligation aid and military support to your world."

    "I understand that, Fleet Admiral. I only wish Admiral Crandall had been so clear with herself about her purpose before she declared she would drop marines and orbital strikes on Spindle." Benjamin began to tug his left glove off, with absolutely no pretense of trying to keep his hands clean. "So I'm afraid my patience with administrative distinctions between one flavor of League Navy officer and the other is exhausted. Much unlike our system defense pods. Grayson is fully capable of feeding and protecting itself, and neither of us would be happy if I were forced to demonstrate that to you. My advisors tell me you'll be ready to hyper out in fifteen minutes or so. Do so."

    Now Filareta glanced for just a moment at the tactical plot. The wedges of ninety superdreadnoughts burnt bright and clear in clusters around the planet Grayson itself. Thirty of the dreadnought-sized vessels that Crandall's ill-fated task force had identified as LAC carriers kept wider stations around the system. Those ninety superdreadnoughts alone would be enough to give him serious pause, despite his nearly six-to-one advantage; Crandall had faced a more favorable ratio at Spindle. But nowhere at all on that plot were the system defense pods which would make up the bulk of Grayson's defensive firepower. And those were the real threat.

    If he went in shooting, he was steering his command straight into Charybdis. But pods were just pods…immobile, unprotected, and, ultimately, vulnerable. So long as you could find them.

    This time he did not disguise his sigh. "Protector Mayhew, we received a diplomatic note from your world's planetary legislature. I assumed that you were fully in agreement with that legislature."

    "I was not." The physical pain in Benjamin's pale face broke through his stern composure. "But I am the Protector of this planet, and in matters of interstellar relations, my word is sovereign and final. I think you can understand, as a military man, why I am currently reluctant to allow an entire fleet of foreign shipping into my system. After all, any food deliveries will have to be transshipped through our orbital infrastructure. And all that remains of that infrastructure is our fortresses. It would be extremely convenient for our enemies if a number of containers full of grain actually contained fusion warheads."

    The man had been wounded, recently. And he had been avoiding painkillers in order to keep his mind clear. He was obviously formidable, and just as obviously at the limits of his personal endurance. "I understand the security concerns, Protector. But surely we could leave our containers in orbit and let you check them over at your convenience? Again, this is a donation, an act of charity. We are not taking any kind of position in your domestic economy. Although if you do require assistance rebuilding your infrastructure, we have yardships and several units of expert—"

    Benjamin's face became a snarl of pain, and, a moment later, a mask of discipline so stubborn and old that it seemed to bear all of Grayson's broken history. "The answer is no, Fleet Admiral. That is final. If you do not remove your ships from the sovereign space around Yeltsin's Star, as dictated and by interstellar law, then I will be forced to conclude you are seeking another provocative incident, just like Byng and Crandall."

    "I don't believe you," Filareta said. He almost apologized. "It's not that I don't respect your independence, Protector, but I can't believe you'd open fire on the Solarian League Navy for the grave sin of bringing you food."

    "It's not the food that worries me." Mayhew smiled, a big aw-shucks grin. "I went to college on Earth. I loved it. But I know exactly what the League thinks of 'neobarb' powers like Grayson. And so I know you wouldn't bring a quarter of Battle Fleet all this way if you hadn't realized exactly what's happened out here while you weren't looking. If you're hoping to bring the Verge in line, Fleet Admiral, you picked the wrong system to start." He finished his right-hand glove and threw it on the floor, in the metaphorical space between them. "Grayson out."

    The sword-and-bible insignia of the Protector replaced the man's image. Massimo Filareta sat back in his chair and growled.

    "I suspect, sir," his chief of staff Esmerina Burrows murmured, "you're considering exactly how it'll look back home when they realize you took off for Grayson after you knew Isotalo was coming to take command…and then failed to actually deliver relief."

    "I can honestly tell you, Esmerina, that the future of my career is the last thing on my mind. Right now I'm much more concerned with what's happening on Grayson. I mean, their legislature sends us a request for relief, and then the Protector turns up wounded to refuse us on all terms? It sounds like…"

    He turned to Ulysses Sobolowski, his staff intel officer. "Ulysses, I know you're sick to death of telling me we don't have much on Grayson's sociopolitical structure. But it's a violent religious patriarchy, yes?"

    "I think that'd be a fair assessment, sir. Most of their history was dominated by sectarian strife and struggle between the various Steadholders, and their recent history has been characterized by the 'Mayhew restoration', which is a reassertion of the total power of the executive. There's been at least one instance of the legislature actually being massacred on the grounds…and another, more recently, of a legislator executed by sword by the Protector's champion after he was accused of treason."

    The sixteen-minute time limit was almost up when the signal arrived. With Grayson's orbital current position, the round-trip signal lag from Eleventh Fleet to the planet itself was almost twenty minutes. But someone planetside with a Warshawski sensor must have detected Eleventh Fleet's initial impeller semaphore, and fired off a transmission within minutes.

    And as Massimo Filareta listened, his frown only deepened.

    "Apparently the situation is more complicated than we realized," he told Burrows and Sobolowski. "This transmission is from the steadholding of one of the political opposition leaders. A moderate named Thomas Guilford. According to him, the Protector attainted every member of the legislature who voted in favor of requesting our aid as a traitor, and then attacked a man named Mueller with a sword. The Protector was wounded in the scuffle, and that put him out of action long enough for the legislature to pass the resolution that reached us. Since then, however, Protector Mayhew has cracked down on the steadholders and pushed his authority far past what the Constitution grants him. People are talking about impeachment. There's speculation that Manticore has some kind of hold on him and…well, I'll send you the recording for analysis. But we're apparently dealing with a domestic power struggle."

    "Sir," Esmerina said, "does that mean we need more time?"

    "To figure out whether Mayhew's a legitimate head of state, or a hereditary dictator who attacked his legislators with a sword? Yes, I think so." Filareta could not deny that he felt a little tremble of relief. Still a chance to avoid going home in disgrace, having stolen Eleventh Fleet to achieve absolutely nothing. "Thomasina, send the sierra code, inform all squadrons we'll be holding here for the moment. Admiral Daniels, start trying to find those pods, will you?"

    "Yes, sir." William Daniels was new to his command, having arrived with the shipment of new missile pods from Technodyne. But he seemed efficient, he was an expert in shifting workload and command authority across the Aegis network, and he knew the cutting-edge systems on the Sinaloas better than anyone else. "We'll stick to passive sensors and a standard drone shell for now, to avoid provoking the Graysons. But since they don't actually know our standard protocols, I think we can get away with some more aggressive deployments while still pleading 'routine defensive awareness.' And in any case, this is exactly the kind of situation the OPAR distributed array is perfect for…"

    His excitement was infectious. Filareta found it reassuring. Maybe there would be time for a staff dinner, and a chance to get to know Daniels. If nothing went wrong first. Holding the largest fleet in human history on the edge of one of the most heavily defended systems ever known to the League was intrinsically unstable, like leaving a vat of fluorine next to your bathtub. It would take just one wrong move to topple the entire situation into a cataclysm: either the absolute humiliation and permanent defeat of Battle Fleet, or the Solarian League's conquest of a system they were constitutionally obliged to protect and support.

    It was his job to be sure no one under his command made that move.

    * * *​

    "Did you leak Honor's strategy against the League to O'Hanrahan?"

    "What?" William Alexander's stein of beer sloshed into his lap. "Hamish, are you serious? I'm the goddamn Prime Minister!"

    "I'm sorry." His older brother's blue eyes were full of a genuine vulnerability William hadn't seen in years. "I had to ask in front of Samantha. In case you were…they get to people, you know."

    The 'cat blinked at William from her perch, safely meters away from the White Haven estate's pool. The two brothers had agreed to meet during one of Emily's physical therapy sessions, and William had assumed the worry in his brother's eyes, the absent note in his speech, came from his careful monitoring of his wife's progress. That worry, and the empathy it induced, was all that let William hold his temper down.

    "We're all fairly certain the leak was a bug," he assured Hamish. "Probably something that StateSec managed to get into place during the first war. There's just no way anyone in that cabinet could conceal that level of betrayal from all the 'cats in that room! Between Samantha, Nimitz, and Ariel, I figure we're about as lie-proof as any group of people has ever been."

    "I've been talking to Samantha about that." Hamish looked back fondly at his 'cat. Samantha's eyes were happy slits, but her ears twitched in alarm at the sudden tension between the brothers. "She's worried that someone who's completely calm about their actions—someone for whom it's not nervewracking, just business as usual—could walk right past the 'cats without tripping any alarms. And Emily insists that a good actor with the right training could absolutely do that. She says that when she was at her peak, she could beat any biometric test she ever met."

    Emily reached the far end of the pool, touched, and made a careful turn back. Her nurse paced her on the poolside. The sight of his brother's wife actually moving again closed up William's throat with gratitude and with guilt. He'd spent so much of his life (more than Hamish, he sometimes brooded) teaching himself to think of Emily in her chair as a whole person that it actually felt like a betrayal to celebrate the therapy. But she'd chosen it. It was her careful decision, after a moral inventory which went far beyond anything William himself thought he could conduct in her place.

    "If it's not a bug," he said, "then you're asking me to consider that someone in my Cabinet is leaking to the press. And not just speaking on deep background, but actually divulging classified conversations that could directly lead to a state of war."

    "I know. And I'm trying to figure out who it could be." Hamish's roaming eyes found his armsman, Tobias Stimson. He offered the gentle man a nod and a lift of his beer stein. All of Honor's armsmen had acculturated to the existence of swimming pools, which were nearly unthinkable on Grayson, but Tobias still stiffened up a little at women in swimsuits. "I haven't told him, if you're worried."

    "Well, I wasn't!" William groaned and tossed his head back. "Hamish, I can't think this way about my people!"

    "But I can. I have to, now. The Mesans already took a shot at Honor." Hamish took a long swallow of stout. "I think it's Francine Maurier."

    "That's fucking ridiculous," William hissed. "Baroness Mourncreek? The Chancellor of the Exchequer? She's unimpeachable!"

    "I know. Think about it. She was First Lord of the Admiralty under Cromarty. She personally selected Thomas Caparelli as First Space Lord, replacing James Bowie Webster, who went on to serve as Ambassador to the Solarian League. And Webster's assassination last year was blamed on Haven, which played a huge role in preventing any mid-war cease fire."

    "But it's not like she fired Webster—Hamish, this is conspiracy thought! You think because a woman has vague secondhand connection to an assassination, she's an enemy agent?"

    "No. I think that a woman with financial, military, and political experience, and a history of sending our very best to serve as ambassadors to Old Terra, knows exactly how vital it is to maintain good relations with the League. I think she saw Websters' death as her personal fault. And I think she leaked Honor's strategy to O'Hanrahan because she wanted people to know how insane and destructive that war would be. That's why she never gave any tells to the 'cats. She's at peace with her choice. Or at least she was, back when she thought she'd helped deter any war. Now, after the Yawata Strike, everyone's looking for reasons to support war. So I wonder if she's starting to regret adding that extra bit of kindling to the fire."

    "Hamish, I think this is a completely unhealthy line of thought. You're grasping at seeds here."

    "I know. But there's one other thing. She was the one who ordered Lucien Cortez to place Honor in command of Nike, which is as good as marking an officer for greatness. She's had her eye on Honor for a long time. She played a major role in getting Honor to a position where she might even consider a strategy of offensive action against the League. And I think she might have felt a need to step in and…control what she created."

    "That's fucking ridiculous," William snorted. "You played a much bigger role in supporting Honor's career. Am I supposed to think you leaked her speech? Hamish, I know how much strain you've been under lately, but I also know you're at least as tough as me, and I haven't started inventing conspiracies against my wife!"

    "That's because you don't have one, you ugly bastard."

    "Hamish, I'm serious!"

    But whatever argument they were about to have was cut off by the buzz of Hamish's unilink. He leapt to his feet. "You better clear out. Honor's home."

    Samantha bleeked in excitement. William had to smile. "And I can't say hello?"

    "William, after the letters I've read, I sincerely believe that if you get between her and Emily you're going to be injured."

    He frowned at his brother. "Uh-oh. Trouble in the marriage?"

    "You completely misunderstand me," Hamish said, with a voice that was half wry and half alarmed. "Do you have any idea what kind of things an actress and a writer can do to an empath? Even at a range of light-years?"

    * * *​

    Emily Alexander-Harrington sat at the table in a sheer white bathrobe, legs crossed, reading a script. There were no armsmen, no 'cats, When one of the double doors opened and Honor Harrington poked her head inside, Emily raised one brow severely. "You're late."

    "Emily?" Honor gaped. "Where's your—Emily, your chair!"

    Emily took a sip of coffee. The arched brow did not so much as quiver. "I see my husband can keep a secret. And your parents. And Elizabeth. I'm surprised Nimitz didn't give it away."

    "He's in the garden with Samantha…" Honor's daze broke into tears of joy. She shut the door behind her with a trembling hand. "How did they…? No, never mind that—how do you feel?"

    "Oh, I'm still weak." The musical edge of a Nouveau Paris accent crept into her voice. "But I suppose that's not what you asked, is it? I can feel everything again. And even weaker women can still hold sway over you, can't they, Duchess Harrington? Come here." She beckoned with her fingertips. "You have unfaithful thoughts to confess."

    Honor's voice came husky. "Do I?"

    "Yes you do. But I can be generous." She stood. The gown slithered over her shoulders, fell to her elbows. "If it's Eloise you want, then Eloise I shall be." She leaned against the long dinner table, hands propped behind her. "You've stood on your aristocratic airs long enough. It's time to make a few concessions on the negotiating table. Climb here and kneel, and do nothing at all until I tell you."

    They had two hours to themselves, and Hamish chivalrously kept himself scarce until his wives called for him. He and Emily had been reacquainted already, a gentle and often tearful reunion after years of mutually imposed isolation; all that weeping was done. For Honor they had only love and appetite. And she found that in their arms and hands and skin she could forget, for entire minutes on end, what had happened to her family and her nation, what she knew was still coming, and what she would have to do to end it.

    When they told Hamish about Pritchart's effect on Honor, he blanched. "Honor, she's here! She's in negotiations with the Queen right now! You can't—"

    "Can't what, dear?" Honor murmured. "Maybe you'll get a chance to meet the woman. She's not seductive, she's…oh, you'll see what I mean."
    ​
    "She's a foreign head of state!"

    "Oh dear. Is she?" Honor lifted her head from Emily's stomach to grin up at her wife. "I hope she doesn't find out about this. It'd be a scandal."

    * * *​

    Queen Elizabeth Winton III's solemn, strong-jawed face appeared on every HD screen in the Manticore binary system. She was live. Dispatch boats would carry copies to Trevor's Star, Silesia, and the Lynx Terminus, but when it came to the rare occasion of an address by the monarch, the people of the Old Star Kingdom were still more equal than their fellow citizens abroad.

    "Good evening," she said. "I speak to you tonight because our Star Empire faces what is undoubtedly the greatest challenge in its history. The events of the past fifteen months have been the most traumatic period in our lives. No one could have imagined the Battle of Manticore would be merely the prelude to a greater confrontation, and a far greater loss of life. All of you know that we are now balanced on the edge of war with the Solarian League. And while there has been real progress on the diplomatic front, we are no closer to true justice for the League's murder of our citizens in Spindle—or for the unconscionable betrayal of their own Constitution that is their failure to recognize the Yawata Strike as a clear Eridani Edict violation.

    "In fact, even while the Solarian League speaks of diplomatic engagement and escalation, we have learned that the largest fleet in human history has gathered in the Tasmania Sector, three weeks' travel from Manticore. It is my duty as your Queen to warn you that this force may be engaged against us if negotiations break down. In fact, it may already be on its way.

    "But this will not be a second Yawata Strike. It is also my duty as your Queen to see to the defense of our Star Empire. And I can say with the greatest confidence that if the largest fleet in human history assaults Manticore, it will meet the greatest defeat in human history. Critics may point out, quite fairly, that no one in our intelligence or political establishment predicted the Yawata Strike. This is true. But even if the authors of the Yawata Strike return, we now believe that we are prepared to detect and defeat them. We believe the attack was made possible through the development of a radically new starship drive technology. After painstaking analysis of Perimeter Security's records, we believe we have identified the hyper footprint of the attackers' arrival. We also believe it would be extraordinarily difficult, if not outright impossible, for a similar operation to be repeated without the attackers being detected and engaged far short of their targets.

    "Yet despite all that, the truth remains—we were attacked. The attack was totally successful. Millions of our citizens, thousands of visitors to our star system, and an unconscionable percentage of the intelligent species native to Sphinx died in a deliberate, callous attack whose very nature precluded the notice to evacuate orbital infrastructure required under the universally recognized rules of warfare. It was, by any standard anyone might choose to apply, the most successful, most devastating, and bloodiest surprise attack in the history of human warfare, and it left our industrial infrastructure in ruins."

    She paused once more, and throughout the Manticore Binary System literally billions of other human beings sat silent with her, staring at her face, wondering what she could say next.

    "We do believe we know who was behind the attack upon us." Her eyes hardened. "There is a clear and discernible pattern to the events of the past year. We know without doubt that we have only scratched the surface of the forces arrayed against our Star Empire. But I am completely confident that we'll find the proof we require. We will discover the origins and motives of this attack. And when we've proven these things beyond any doubt, we will force the League to acknowledge that it has acted as the willing pawn of our enemies. It has done so out of a desire for vengeance for the defeats it's suffered at our Navy's hands. It cannot tolerate the example of a 'neobarb' star nation which refuses to comply with the League's whims. It has done so out of the basest greed as it contemplates the potential revenue of the Manticoran Wormhole Junction."

    Her shoulders squared and her head rose proudly.

    "There is still hope of dissuading the Solarians from their chosen course," she said slowly and distinctly. "The Solarian League, for all its past glories and high achievements, has become an appetite, a voracious hunger, and trillions of its citizens, living safe, satisfied, self-centered, and secure lives on its core worlds, have no concept of what routinely happens to the weak and the helpless along its frontiers. But those people may yet awaken and demand an end to the predatory policies of their rulers. They may realize what is done in their name. And if they do not, then it is time for them to be taught.

    Her eyes glittered with a sudden fire, and Ariel half-rose on the back of her chair, lips curling back from his fangs in challenge.

    "The Star Empire of Manticore has been wounded as we've never been wounded before. But a hexapuma is most dangerous when it's wounded. Despite the damage we've suffered, Home Fleet remains intact. Despite the damage to our production lines, Home Fleet's magazines are fully loaded. Our system-defense missiles are untouched. If the Solarian League wants a war, the Solarian League will have one. If that is the choice the League makes, then the war which began at New Tuscany and continued at Spindle will resume right here. Whatever they may think, the fleet they've dispatched against us is no match for our remaining combat power. If they choose to send a second, equally large, fleet after this one, the Admiralty is confident we have sufficient strength to defeat it as well. No doubt the League believes we'll refuse to fight because of the vast difference between our ultimate capabilities. The League is wrong.

    "We are well on our way to reestablishing our military production capabilities far sooner than we anticipated. This new capacity will be sufficient to guarantee the security of our own star systems against any ships or weapons currently in the Solarian League Navy's inventory. You have my word—and the word of the House of Winton—that I am telling you the absolute truth when I say that."

    She paused once more, letting that soak into her audience's minds. Then she smiled thinly.

    "There is, of course, a vast difference between being able to guarantee our own security in the near term and being able to head off a behemoth like the Solarian League in the long term. I don't pretend to have a magic bullet to guarantee our ultimate victory. But I do have this. I have the courage of the Manticoran people. I have the determination of all Manticorans—those of the Old Star Kingdom and those of the Star Empire who have newly and freely joined us—to live in freedom. I have the skill and the high professionalism and the dauntless determination of the men and women of the Manticoran armed forces. And I have the absolute certainty that those things will never fail me . . . or you.

    "There is no magic bullet. There is no simple escape. I make no promises of easy triumphs, because there will be no easy triumphs. I promise you only the truth, and the truth is that the price we will ultimately pay will be even higher than the one we've already paid. The cost of the battle which waits for us will be sacrifice, loss, backbreaking toil, blood, and grief. But I also promise you this one more thing. I promise you victory. For seventy-plus T-years, the Star Empire has lived under sentence of death, yet we're still here. And we will still be here when the smoke finally clears. However long it takes, whatever sacrifice it entails, wherever the battle takes us, and no matter what foe we may face, we will triumph.

    "And those who have wrought such destruction and suffering upon us, who have butchered our civilians, who have attacked us from the shadows like assassins, will discover to their infinite regret that in the defense of our homes, our families, and our children, we can be just as merciless as them."

    It was a rousing speech, right through to that final line: perhaps the most ill-timed rhetorical flourish in the history of civilization.

    * * *​

    Tenth Fleet of the Royal Manticoran Navy slashed across the alpha wall and into the Mesa system like silent razors. The flash of their arrival from hyperspace was as bright and obvious as noon sun off a rifle's scope, but they streaked away from those telltale coordinates on stealth-shrouded wedges. Only the whisker-thin lasers of their intership network let Michelle Henke keep track of her command as they hurtled in-system on a mission that might have defined the phrase 'violence of action.'

    She had Michael Oversteegen's BatCruRon 108 ("In Boldness, Victory"), her own BatCruRon 106, and one of Rear Admiral Stephen Enderby's carriers with a fully replenished load of LACs. All those ships were veterans of the Battle of Spindle and the lightning raid they'd launched on Meyers. Their 'interview' with OFS Commissioner Verrocchio had confirmed not only that he was in Manpower's pocket, but that several other major Mesan corporations were under Manpower's control. Even if the Queen hadn't ordered a response to the Yawata Strike, Michelle suspected she would've made a move on her own initiative anyway. Everything pointed to Mesa.

    Including Queen Elizabeth's orders to move in force on Mesa and, if the board of Manpower had not yet been extradited to the League for trial, carry out a 'kinetic investigation' of the slave traders' headquarters. Was it a destabilizing act? Maybe. Was Mesa part of the Solarian League? Absolutely not. If Manticore wanted to declare war on Mesa, it would've been perfectly legal.

    But they didn't. What they wanted here was proof. So the marines of her task force waited in their pinnaces and assault boats for the plunge into Mesa's atmosphere and their power-armored free landings right on the roof of several corporate structures in Mendel, the capital of Mesa. And those marines were not just the complements of Michelle's sixteen battlecruisers. She still had the ammunition ships allocated to her…and the ships they were meant to rearm. Battle Squadron 16's six Invictus-class superdreadnoughts, with full Apollo capability. Apollonia Muning's Insuperable, Incredible, Instrumentality, Inexorable, Inalienable, and Incipient were possibly the most powerful warships in the known universe. And if Mesa's ninety-strong System Defense Force outnumbered Tenth Fleet, not a single one of the Deregulated System's warships massed larger than a battlecruiser.

    "It seems we've caught them off guard," Dominica Adenauer remarked. "Or perhaps this is 'on guard,' and we can't tell the difference."

    "I guarantee that one of the dispatch boats which fled Meyers came straight here to warn them of the danger to their shareholders. But unless they've hired a lot of extremely well-equipped mercenaries in the past few weeks, I think this is everything they've got. Their navy issues shareholder reports, after all." Michelle rocked on her feet, thinking. "Right now, the only way I can see this going wrong is if we land in Manpower HQ and find the well-kept records of a perfectly legitimate and profit-driven genetic slavery corporation."

    Pegasus had deployed her LACs. The three surviving destroyers of DesRon 301, Gawain, Gaheris and Tristram, had made their own stationary downward translations hours earlier and accelerated in-system to deploy Ghost Rider drones. One of those drones relayed the first transmission from Mesa, an omnidirectional broadcast from a Lagrange-point platform: "Unknown vessels, you are in violation of sovereign space as defined by interstellar law. Squawk your transponders and return immediately to the hyper limit for traffic control. If you do not comply, we will assume you have hostile intentions. No further warning will be provided."

    "Cynthia, record me," Michelle ordered her chief of staff. "This is Admiral Michelle Henke, commanding Tenth Fleet, Royal Manticoran Navy. We are here to conduct unilateral arrests and seizures in response to the Eridani Edict violation of February 26th. We request your full cooperation, and in exchange we guarantee the safety of all Mesan nationals and property that fall outside the remit of this investigation. If the Mesa System Navy attempts to—"

    "Missile separation," Dominica Adenauer said, in a tone of absolute mechanical calm. "Multiple missile separations. Range ten light-minutes. Count…two hundred and forty thousand. Repeat, two four zero thousand. Time of flight—correction, time of flight unknown. The missiles are targeted on Mesa."

    * * *​

    MAN(D) Mako was the only spider-drive ship remaining outside the Darius system. Admiral Topolev had received the 'final flourish' assignment directly from Albrecht Detweiler. The pods themselves had been emplaced by Manpower and Jessyk Combine freighters moving in and out of the system on routine commerce. Mako's role was purely command and control. Multiple clusters of missile pods had been emplaced on likely approach vectors around the hyper limit; the only bottleneck on deploying even more was the ability to 'launder' the pods out of Erewhon. The pod clusters numbered in the tens of thousands, but they were nothing compared to the density of much larger MDM pods deployed in Manticore.

    These were not Cataphracts, after all. They were Mk. 16 dual-drive missiles, the lighter equivalent of the full-up Mk. 23 MDM. Erewhon had been a member of the Manticoran Alliance in the first war against Haven, but when that relationship disintegrated during the High Ridge government, Erewhon had retained the transferred missile technology for its own uses. Erewhon was a state originally incorporated for the purposes of money laundering, and espionage operatives like Anton Zilwicki and Victor Cachat had used that capability enthusiastically in their work against Manpower. In fact, their arrival on Mesa had taken advantage of stolen IDs and cover money provided by Erewhon.

    The Alignment had become aware of Erewhon's Mk. 16 production only recently. The missiles were produced in enormous quantities for use in arsenal ships, essentially freighters converted into makeshift SD(P)s—minus the fire control, armor, military wedge, and active defenses of an actual warship. But once the Alignment realized that Erewhon and its Maya Sector allies were stockpiling these missiles for a future armed conflict against the Solarian League Navy, it had been a matter of basic corruption and sleight-of-hand to reroute some of the stockpiles intended to resupply the arsenal ships into Alignment hands.

    Admiral Topolev had observed dispassionately as the Manticoran destroyers arrived, so heavily stealthed that they registered only as diffuse smears of heat—Mako could detect their presence, but not localize them well enough to achieve a target lock. Any one of the three destroyers could have detected one of the pod clusters. But there were only three of them, the missile pods were completely stationary and passive, and the destroyers' attention was aimed fully in-system.

    When the moment came, and Henke's ships arrived, all that remained was to activate the cluster of pods closest to the Manticoran fleet. Targeting data had already been pre-programmed. Admiral Topolev gave the order. But he could not help but murmur the famous words that had accompanied the first atomic bomb test, millennia ago: "Now we are all sons of bitches."

    Configured for half acceleration and maximum impeller endurance, the Mk. 16 DDM had a terminal velocity of 0.83 C.

    * * *​

    "Intercept those missiles!" Michelle snapped. "Defense Plan—oh, shit." Only a few defense plans anywhere in their preloaded files involved the intercept of missiles headed away from them, and all of those were variants of convoy defense. But none of the would work; the vampires were already far beyond countermissile range. "Get Apollo online and knock down as many as you can!"

    "Mam, the Mk. 23s aren't intercept-capable—"

    "Steer them in manually if you have to! Ram their wedges! Order Admiral Muning to roll pods and fire as they come online! Command the LACs to barrier defense mode. And signal the Hermes beacon closest to Mesa, warn them they've got inbound targeted on the planet!"

    "They've seen the wedges by now." Cynthia Lecter's voice was taut with fear. "They know what's coming. Let's just pray they've got block ships ready."

    But it was impossible, and even Cynthia knew it. A block ship could defend a point target like a platform. But an entire planet? There was no chance. And no matter how well-prepared the Mesan Space Navy might be, they were facing a salvo twenty times larger than the pod strike that had overwhelmed Sandra Crandall's fully prepared, Halo- and Aegis-equipped wall of battle.

    "Mam, we've got additional contacts," Dominica reported, in that same machine calm. "Coming out from behind the planet. I have five squadrons of battlecruiser-mass wedges, total count three-zero. t looks like there was a Frontier Fleet squadron on station. They are signaling us to stand down and destroy our missiles, or they will immediately attack."

    "Transmit all our targeting data on the missiles." Anything, anything at all, to at least prove they hadn't done this—even if a part of her screamed that she was a coward for caring about that when so many were about to die.

    It was New Tuscany all over again. Someone else's script.

    "Missile burnout," Dominica called. "Vampires are now ballistic."

    That was good. Unless the missiles had a partial second stage, like the AIMs and Cataphracts the SLN had employed, they were now unable to conduct any evasive maneuvers. "Get their final trajectories over to the Solarians immediately!" she snapped. "And keep rolling pods until we're out of time."

    After a point, even the Mk. 23s would be unable to catch up before their targets impacted Mesa. And even before that point of no return, it would look an awful lot like her Tenth Fleet was firing more missiles at the planet.

    Minutes crawled past. Pods of Apollo-guided Mk. 23s caught the dark hurtling shapes of the enemy missiles and slashed them apart with their wedges. Huge cutting-torch sprays of ejected particles painted the void. Each Invictus could drop six pods every twelve seconds, and each pod carried nine missiles. Together, the six superdreadnoughts generated a sixteen-hundred missile salvo every minute. Under real-time Apollo guidance and configured for maximum acceleration, each missile could ram and zero-sum one target: even if it survived the collision, it was impossible to cancel out its vector and maneuver to strike another missile. Mesa was fifteen minutes away.

    In the first ten minutes of the missiles' flight, Apollo killed nearly ten thousand of the two hundred and fifty thousand vampires targeted on Mesa. Nothing. A scratch. But the Apollo guidance missiles also gathered and relayed highly accurate tracking data on the position of every one of those missiles, and they were totally ballistic. If the Solarians and the Mesans would just listen, position their own ships and defense pods to intercept, recruit every civilian ship with a wedge and use tractors to hurl junk, garbage, ball bearings in the path of the inbounds—

    Then something changed on the tactical plot, and Michelle's stomach sank. Dominica Adenauer's voice cracked like cold metal. "Second stage ignition on all vampires. Vampires are now accelerating again and performing terminal attack maneuvers. Whoever these people are, they have MDMs."

    * * *​

    The planet Mesa was by almost all accounts an improvement on Earth, with more land mass, a very slight tilt and a mild climate. It had (for the moment) a population of nearly six billion people, seventy percent of which were either genetic slaves or the descendants of emancipated slaves. Its beaches were famously scenic, whether for the clear seas or the human terrain, and centuries of divestment movements and protests had not badly affected its tourist industry. There were a hundred worlds where you could wander down to the beach and meet a willing partner for a night of debauchery. But only on Mesa would the statuesque wonder eyeing you from the shallows need you not for your trade but to satisfy the intense, compulsive craving to please that had been engineered into them. To some kinds of people, the difference between consent for mutual gain and 'consent' out of desperation and addiction made all the difference.

    Now, in the dark skies above those beaches, white scratches cut the sky. Lovers raised their eyes and murmured in delight. Audubon Ballroom operatives fencing weapons to local fighters checked for any warning of police activity. The smart glass of corporate ballrooms smeared the hard scratches into long pennants of light. Children took pictures as their parents stared at their links in dawning horror.

    The first Mk. 16s to reach Mesa's atmosphere carried neither fusion warheads nor laser heads. Their payload was ten tons of sand, and a shattering charge to break the ninety-ton missile itself into fragments. Sandcasters had no effect on starships, which could absorb individual relativistic particles on shielding and wedge. But as the missiles puffed into expanding cones of shrapnel and dust at 0.83 lightspeed, something very different happened.

    Mesa's gentle atmosphere welcomed the incoming sand with concrete-thick insistence. Each sand particle and scrap of debris was ablated by billions of molecular collisions, tearing it apart into individual ions which decelerated into the atmosphere's rest frame. But that deceleration meant the massive kinetic energy of the inbounds had to go somewhere. It was stolen by the same random molecules it collided with, distributing itself throughout the atmosphere as heat.

    The first ninety thousand missiles to disintegrate in Mesa's atmosphere were enough to raise the temperature by 50 K. The sky glowed an angry coal-red, veined by violet lines and huge expanding shock fronts. It would have been gorgeous if things were not bursting into flame. The next ninety thousand pushed the temperature of Mesa's atmosphere well above the boiling point of water. The sky became a uniform white. Global humidity soared to one hundred percent as the oceans steamed off. In Mendel, asphalt liquefied. Firestorms swept the native jungles and the transplanted deciduous forests. Huge scarves of steam billowed and coiled in an atmosphere suddenly rotting like a carcass. There was time to take shelter and pray before the surface temperature matched the white sky above; and then human bodies cooked from the skin inward. More than six billion souls writhed and screamed in the wet hell of an atmosphere that blistered and boiled their lungs with every breath. Those who made it into sealed compounds with their own air survived the firestorm and atmospheric superheating. It was not a mercy.

    Then the ground-impact cratering ingots struck. Fractures slipped, releasing epochs of pent-up seismic energy. Quakes shattered continents. Vaporized limestone and anhydrite rock filled the atmosphere with sulfur, methane, and carbon monoxides. Droplets of molten rock scattered from the gunshot-wound impacts, arcing out of Mesa's atmosphere on suborbital trajectories. Megatons of molten rock. As the droplets fell, they hardened into teardrops of glass—impact tektites. And as those tektites re-entered the atmosphere, they vaporized, returning their own mass and kinetic energy as more heat.

    The white sky continued to brighten. In places of peak heat, it was far too hot to burn. Molecules were shredded, electrons torn from atoms: chemistry was impossible.

    In the void above, thousands more missiles slashed between the forces battling over a murdered world. The cries of horror and denial broadcast from Mesa's orbital and near-space platforms, desperate pleas from those stranded above to those doomed below, were torn to hash by jamming. Syllables of anguish surfaced between the monotone of emergency warning systems and the shrieks of Dazzlers.

    There had been a point of no return. It was now past.

    * * *​
    "Love, you're crying," Evelina Detweiler whispered.

    On the observation deck of Genesis, Albrecht Detweiler brushed his cheek against the lapel of his suit. "I was just thinking about West Beach, behind the house. How many times do you think we went there? I mean, sixty years...it must've been hundreds of times."

    "I don't know," she murmured. "But it's gone now, love. It's time to leave it in the past."

    "I know. I know." He took a ragged breath. "But I'll miss it. Those sunsets...I'm sorry I made you leave."

    "Oh, Al." She turned his chin to face her. "Can you think of anything, even one thing, you've ever made me do?"

    "I can't," he admitted. "I don't know what I did to deserve you, Evelina."

    "Oh, tosh." She flicked his nose. "You know exactly what you did to deserve me. The same thing I did to deserve you. We made ourselves for each other."
     
  • Threadmarks
    • I would be uh, very interested to know what Beowulf's reaction would be in the aftermath.

    Because my initial impression is "everyone who shilled for Manticore are going to have their heads roll"
     
    I actually fudged the relativity math a lot, the figures I was getting suggested each 100-ton impact would raise the whole planet's temperature by >1 K. That seemed preposterously high, but relativity is preposterous, so I genuinely don't know. Maybe I was really overestimating the efficiency of the kinetic energy to heat conversion.
     
    This is the first time I find myself joining the frequent calls to implement a "horror" writing.
     
    General Battuta said:
    "And those who have wrought such destruction and suffering upon us, who have butchered our civilians, who have attacked us from the shadows like assassins, will discover to their infinite regret that in the defense of our homes, our families, and our children, we can be just as merciless as them."

    It was a rousing speech, right through to that final line: perhaps the most ill-timed rhetorical flourish in the history of civilization.
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    Yeeaaaaah, That's gonna make saying "We didn't order that, we swear!" very awkward.
     
    Epilogue/Prologue
    So, @General Battuta , will you just copy-paste this chapter into the sequel? As the opening chapter, or some later chapter without comment?

    Also this was once again expertly done. Others will probably comment on the Mesa scene, and the speeches, and all that, but I just want to comment on this for now:
    And he had been avoiding painkillers in order to keep his mind clear.
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    This sentence right here. I do not know for certain whether you had the intent do so so, but it shows so well how cultural narratives of strength and willpower can just utterly screw you over.
    Because yes, obviously Benjamin should have the clearest possible head right now.
    But as anyone with personal experience with severe, ongoing pain can tell - pain really clouds the mind much more than all but the most severe painkillers do.
    I really like the job that sentence does there
     
    General Battuta said:
    I actually fudged the relativity math a lot, the figures I was getting suggested each 100-ton impact would raise the whole planet's temperature by >1 K. That seemed preposterously high, but relativity is preposterous, so I genuinely don't know. Maybe I was really overestimating the efficiency of the kinetic energy to heat conversion.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Half of it would radiate out - at those energies atmospheric effects woukd be rounding errors. You missed having a bunch of orbitals become radioactive slag.
     
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