Pritchart felt an almost overwhelming urge to lick her lips, but she suppressed it sternly and made herself sit motionless, waiting, her expression as tranquil as she could make it.

"I don't have instructions to do this," Alexander-Harrington continued, "but before I leave, I'll have a copy of Elizabeth's official message to me made for you. In the meantime, I'll summarize."

She inhaled again, and squared her shoulders.

"Approximately one week ago, in Manticore . . . " she began.

"So that's what happened, as best we can make out at this point."

Thomas Theisman looked around at the other members of Eloise Pritchart's cabinet, and his expression was grim.

"At the moment, no one has any idea how it was done," he continued. "I'm sure our current damage estimates are going to change—whether they're going to get better or worse is more than I can say at this point, but they're so preliminary change is inevitable. What worries me more, however, is the fact that we don't have a clue about what whoever did it used or what his ultimate objectives are."

"I don't want to sound callous," Tony Nesbitt said after a moment, "but do we really care what their 'ultimate objectives' may be?" It was his turn to look around at his colleagues' faces. "From our perspective, isn't the most important thing that someone has just kicked the Manties' legs out from under them? Surely they'd find it a lot more difficult to bring the war to us the way Admiral Alexander-Harrington was prepared to now that their home system and most of their industry's been trashed behind them."

"I have to admit the same thought's been occurring to me." Rachel Hanriot looked almost regretful—or possibly a bit ashamed—as she admitted that.

"And me," Henrietta Barloi said. The secretary of technology shrugged. "At the very least, doesn't this put us in a much stronger negotiating position?"

Unlike Hanriot, Pritchett noted, Barloi didn't look a bit regretful. In fact, she couldn't conceal a certain satisfaction at the thought . . . assuming she was trying to in the first place.

"Allow me to point out that changes in negotiating postures are two-edged swords," the president observed. "No one on Admiral Alexander-Harrington's negotiating team ever tried to pretend Elizabeth Winton's magically become one of the Republic's greater admirers. She offered to resume negotiations from a position of strength . In many ways, that was a statement of her confidence—her faith in her ability to control the situation if we chose not to be 'reasonable.' If she sees that margin of strength disappearing, if she finds herself with her back against the wall and faced by multiple threats, I'd say she's likely to ruthlessly destroy those threats in the order she can reach them. And guess who she can reach a lot sooner than she can reach the League or somebody she hasn't even been able to identify yet?"

Barloi didn't look convinced, but Nesbitt's expression became more thoughtful, and Hanriot nodded.

"My own feeling from the negotiations," Leslie Montreau offered, "is that Manticore—assuming the Admiral's attitude reflects the Star Empire's true desires—would rather have a negotiated settlement. I think they truly want one that comprehensively addresses the differences between us as the first step in a genuinely stable relationship with us. I'd have to agree Queen Elizabeth still doesn't like us very much, but despite her famous temper, she's also pragmatic enough to recognize that having a peaceful neighbor at her back is a lot safer than turning her back on someone she's beaten to her knees. But I have to agree that you're right, Madam President. Pragmatic or not, she's also demonstrated she can be as ruthless as any head of state I can think of. If she can't have a peaceful neighbor, she'll settle for an enemy she's thoroughly neutralized."

"And there's another aspect to this, too," Denis LePic observed. "Obviously Tom and his people are a lot more qualified to speak to the purely military implications of this attack, but Wilhelm Trajan's people over at Foreign Intelligence have been kicking it around, as well. They're looking less at what kind of hardware might have been used and more at why it was used in the first place . . . and by whom. They've come to the conclusion that it couldn't have been the Sollies, for a lot of reasons, including the timing. And we know it wasn't us. That leaves the famous 'parties unknown,' and based on what's been happening in the Talbott Cluster, suspicion's focusing on Manpower. Unfortunately, that raises at least as many questions as it may answer.

"For example, where did a transstellar corporation—or the Mesa System's official government, for that matter—get its hands on the military muscle to do something like this? And assuming it had the capability in the first place, why aim it at Manticore? And if Manticore is its target, and it had this sort of capability, why try to maneuver the Sollies into the mix? And if it turns out that Manpower—or whoever Manpower's fronting for—has ambitions where Manticore's concerned, how do we know those are the only ambitions it has out here in the 'Haven Quadrant'?"

He leaned back in his chair and looked around the table.

"We don't have answers to any of those questions. Given that, I'd be extraordinarily cautious about concluding that my enemy's enemy must be my friend."

"Those are all valid points, Denis," Nesbitt acknowledged after a moment. "Still, given the size of the Manty merchant fleet and the huge advantages the Manticoran Wormhole Junction provide to it, I can think of a lot of reasons that wouldn't have anything to do with us for someone to be interested in picking off Manticore."

"Maybe," Stan Gregory said. "On the other hand, don't forget the real reason the Manties and Manpower have been busting each other's chops for so long. They're probably the only people in the galaxy, outside of Beowulf, at least, who're every bit as serious as we are about enforcing the Cherwell Convention. In regard to which, let's all remember what happened in Congo five months ago. And Mesa's Green Pines fantasy. Not to mention who most probably tried to kill Queen Berry, since we know damned well it wasn't us ."

"A very good point," Theisman agreed. "Of course, it raises another question. If Manpower has, or even just has access to, the hardware that let them get in and out of the Manticore Binary System without even being detected, why did they use a bunch of ex-StateSec 'mercenaries' against Torch? Why not just blitz the Congo System and then send in a couple of conventional cruisers and a brigade of Marines to sweep up the pieces?"

"To preserve secrecy until they were ready to pull the trigger on Manticore itself?" Nesbitt suggested. "To try to point the Manties' suspicion at us, because of the StateSec connection?

"Either of those might make sense," Theisman acknowledged, "although, frankly, the first seems a lot more likely to me. After all, they know the Manties aren't idiots and that Admiral Givens has to've figured out someone was hiring and supporting SS refugees, so it seems a lot less plausible they'd think they could implicate us. Still, it's possible, I suppose. And the fact that we can't rule out even your second suggestion only emphasizes what the President and Denis are both saying. We don't know anything about the thinking behind this. My own view is that we can't afford to assume anything about anything at this point. Certainly, speaking as Secretary of War, I can't offer any assurances about our ability to prevent the same thing from happening to us. And given our abysmal ignorance about this entire episode, the fact that I can't think of any good reason for someone to do it to us as well doesn't exactly fill me with confidence."