I was hopeful that after getting past the battle of Tiberian, I could make progress more quickly with the rest of the story, but it hasn't turned out that way. Sorry for the delays.
Part 3: 1919 PD
7
Manticore System
"This is a bit much, don't you think?" Anton Zilwicki asked, straightening the mess dress uniform that he had worn only a handful of times in his naval career. If Edward Janacek had been named First Lord, Anton almost certainly would have been placed on half-pay after the incidents on old Earth. If Thomas Caparelli had retained his job, he might very well have been promoted. As it was… Admiral Kral had him hidden behind a senior analyst's desk in the middle of NavInt's headquarters. He couldn't say his work was unimportant, but it wasn't especially hands-on.
"Nonsense. You know as well as I do what's going on behind all this song and dance. Probably better than I do, actually." Cathy Montaigne replied.
"Even with your seat in the Lords back?"
"Especially with. If I'm going to accomplish anything with my position in the Lords, then I have to focus most of my attention on what's happening there, and to a lesser extent in the Commons. And as you are well aware, quite a lot of consequence occurs outside the Star Kingdom's Parliament. Besides, you're hardly going to turn down a personal invitation from the Queen."
[break]
"I see BuPers hasn't caught on to you yet." Rear Admiral Henke told her flag captain.
"And why should I need to resort to anything under the table to achieve this posting? You must admit we did good work on our last assignment. I should think Admiral Low Dehli and Admiral Webster would be disinclined t' break such a successful partnership up." Oversteegen said, his exquisitely tailored uniform sporting new senior captain's insignia. "Though I'm sure if you were inclined t' ask, they would take back the battle cruiser squadron."
"I'm not so sure of that. Not after Elizabeth, Honor, Lady Hemphill, and Admiral Webster all personally congratulated me on my promotion and told me exactly why I was being stubborn."
"Far be it from me t' disagree with such august personages." Oversteegen said.
HMS Agamemnon was the lead ship of the RMN's pod battle cruiser class, and it and its seven class-mates were Henke's new command. And its initial assignment seemed to confirm her suspicion that Admiral Hemphill seemed to be throwing the trickiest jobs the RMN had at present for a junior flag officer at one Michelle Henke. That the jobs in question had come with first-line hardware and equally first-line crews (even if some of them were as … difficult… as her flag captain in one way or another) was something she tended to overlook when her thoughts ran that way.
[break]
"Thank you for seeing me." Admiral Hemphill told Honor Harrington. In truth, with most of her friends outside of her staff at Saganami Island assigned outside of the home system, the First Lord of Admiralty's invitations every month or so had become welcome, and even pleasurable. Even if the primary reason for them was to ensure Queen Elizabeth and Protector Benjamin were properly informed on some subjects that the Prime Minister felt impolitic to discuss with their sovereign or their allies, Hemphill's staff set an excellent table and the company was hardly dull. Of course, the secondary reason for the nearly monthly dinner invitations was because Honor Harrington was one of the best tacticians in the Royal Navy, and there were threats out there that Hemphill had to worry about, even if High Ridge didn't.
"I'm afraid Jim and I may have to pull you out of the ATC." Sonja continued.
"You've managed to prevent that so far." Honor said.
"I've managed to keep your political enemies from getting you put on half-pay. However, if all of my intelligence reports agree serious trouble could be coming and I don't give you a fleet command, three quarters of the population of the Star Kingdom would think I was a fool, and I'd be among them myself."
"Haven or the Andies?" She asked.
"I'm not sure those are separate concerns anymore. And though we've done our best to avoid stepping on too many toes out past Lynx, there are elements in the League who are not happy with us."
Honor arched an eyebrow.
"Admiral Kral has sent me some disturbing reports. You'll get summaries as a member of the Naval Affairs committee in the Lords tomorrow. But if those reports are accurate, and relations with both Haven and the Empire continue to break down, next year we'll be handing you the first flight of San Martins."
"I thought they were slated to be spread among Home Fleet, 6th Fleet, and 8th Fleet." Of the RMN's three largest concentrations of wallers, only Home Fleet had any tube SDs. When the San Martins arrived, Medusas would move to stations currently served by pre-pod wallers, and the older ships retired. And because the San Martins would be the first ships to deploy the new Apollo targeting system and the defensive upgrades developed in tandem with it, they would make those formations far more formidable. Concentrating them in a single force, though, would suggest a need to use them offensively.
"They still are… for now. But I thought I should give you a heads-up of the alternative we're considering."
And seeing Lady Harrington's notion of contingency plans for war with Haven or the Empire or both couldn't hurt at all.
[break]
Lynx System
Commodore Eve Chandler had been prepared not to like Rear Admiral Augustus Khumalo. There was not any question, after all, of how well connected he was to the current government. He didn't have any major combat experience. And save for a grudging respect for Admiral Hemphill, Chandler, like most Naval officers without those connections, didn't have an especially high opinion of the High Ridge government. But he was an excellent administrator, and she could tell how hard he was working setting up Lynx Station.
The government might have shot down any plans for large-scale expansion of the Star Kingdom into the Talbott Cluster, but Lynx itself was another matter. Fortresses and sensor arrays were under construction both in the Lynx system and the terminus system a day and a half's journey away. And Khumalo had been very happy to see her and a squadron of brand-new Arthur-class light cruisers. He had a division of Medusas, a squadron of Sphinxes, and a carrier with its full LAC wing – Lynx was a member world of the Star Kingdom, after all. But ships of the wall were hardly the most useful things for the port visits and anti-piracy patrols Manticore needed to make to build relationships that would help the new terminus pay for itself. And Eve's squadron were easily the newest and most powerful ships below the wall that Khumalo had.
The Arthur class was roughly the size of the Star Knight-class heavy cruisers that had been the RMN's first-line heavy cruiser until more than halfway through the war with Haven, but it was officially listed as a light cruiser. And like the Hexapuma-class heavy cruiser and the Nike-class battle cruisers under construction, the Arthur's primary armament was the Mark 16 dual-drive missile. The larger designs had been approved first, as the Arthur required a radical offset missile tube design for its broadsides (an alternative proposal of stacking the missile tubes in the hammerheads having been dismissed as risking half the ship's broadside to a single hit), but an Arthur was half the mass of a Hexapuma, so the Arthurs had entered service first. The design was near the lower bound of what BuShips considered to be a viable hyper-capable warship in a galaxy where the Mark 16 or something like it was in the hands of Manticore's enemies, and perhaps its tonnage was too low. But it had been difficult enough for Admiral Hemphill to end production of new hyper-capable warships smaller than an Arthur-class ship; another fifty or a hundred thousand tons would never have made it past the Prime Minister. And even with the limitations keeping its mass at 'only' about 250,000 tons imposed, nothing Haven had short of a battle cruiser with heavy pods on tow had a chance against an Arthur.
[break]
Bernandus van Doort supposed he should be happy. The treaty between Manticore and the Rembrandt Union – the 'Trade' having dropped out as the four systems became a de jure star nation instead of merely a de facto one – almost certainly accomplished what had been his goal for most of his life. The Solarian League's Office of Frontier Security swept small polities with few friends and few resources along the League's borders into its loving arms. A four-system star nation with close ties to the Star Kingdom and a navy stronger than the nearest Frontier Fleet detachment – three squadrons of Prince Consorts and one of Star Knights might be surplus to the Star Kingdom, but they were a major upgrade for Rembrandt – was another matter entirely. It was no one else's fault that he'd hoped, with the discovery of the Lynx terminus, to do more.
"We should be able to keep OFS from moving in on the rest of the Cluster even without formally annexing them." Amandine Corvisart said.
"Probably. You'll set up anti-piracy patrols, build trade agreements, help the Union grow into a regional power, mediate disputes, and use your influence on Sol to discourage OFS from getting any more involved out here. But if they really push it, you'll let it go."
"There's far too much trouble brewing around the home system for us to court a war with the League. I don't think the SLN has any clue how badly we could hurt them, but going against two thirds of the human race seems like something we don't want to do unless we have to. If they push someone we've formally annexed like Lynx, or have a strong mutual defense treaty with like we now have with you, then we'll take that chance. But we'd rather not have to. I suspect what we are willing to do should be sufficient to discourage any OFS adventurism."
"Which still means it will take twenty or thirty years longer for the Cluster economies to modernize than it would have."
"But means they won't be outvoting good upstanding Manticorans, either." She understood the logic behind the government's position, and even agreed with it to a large extent. But that didn't mean it was without cost for the people out here. "It's probably for the best. I don't think any of the systems out here would have been truly happy with any annexation plan Descroix and her allies came up with. They'd accept almost anything to avoid OFS, but they wouldn't have liked it very much. And it's looking like there are some around the Cluster that would have objected very strongly to anything much beyond what we are doing."
8
Erewhon
"The Manties have brought quite an entourage to this show." Captain Luis Rozsack said.
"I'll say." Edie Habib told her commanding officer. "A brand new battle cruiser squadron with the queen's first cousin in command, the queen's brother on her cousin's staff, the Prime Minister's second cousin in command of the flagship, and her sister-in-law as the official envoy. In addition to the new royal yacht, which is of the same class as the BCs – albeit modified. One Agamemnon could make short work of our entire flotilla, whether they'd admit that in Old Chicago or not. Still, it shouldn't have anything to do with us."
"Countess Fraser and the official permanent Manty diplomatic presence on Erewhon are not the sharpest styluses in the drawer, but ONI and the Queen's Own are another matter entirely. And it really wouldn't do for anyone outside our little conspiracy to figure out what we're up to."
"Even if they did, they might leave well enough alone. It's not like the League is any friend of theirs. And we've declined to take any official notice of certain events on Smoking Frog; they should owe us."
"I'd rather not risk it all the same. The current Manticoran government may be less inclined to making a stand on principle than Manticorans normally are, but I could easily see the Centrists or the House of Winton deciding they didn't owe us that much."
"We could distract at least some of them with the Komandorski tidbit."
"It wouldn't pull off all of them, and I was hoping to get more use out of it, but I haven't got any better ideas."
[break]
"I don't know why we're bothering with this." Victor Cachat told his companion. "The Manties' relationship with Erewhon is as solid as it's been since High Ridge took office, and what they're doing here is only going to make it more that way."
"Kevin thinks they're up to something." Ginny Usher said. And the director of the new Republic of Haven's federal police – who most definitely did not have any role investigating things outside of Haven – had remarkably good instincts about that sort of thing. Kevin Usher's wife was an amateur intelligence agent (among other things), but hardly an inept one despite the role she played.
"Obviously. Even if the Centrists were in power in Manticore, they wouldn't send this much firepower – both military and political – to the Stein funeral unless they were working on something else. I'm not quite cold-blooded enough to sabotage liberating Congo, though."
"Could you backtrack a few steps? I'm not clear on the part where a cynical band of Manticoran aristocrats takes any kind of risk on behalf of genetic slaves."
"So assume they're not doing that."
"Oh. Right."
"A year and a half ago, Erewhon's powers that be were very unhappy with their relationship with the Star Kingdom. Six months after that, the sale of several top of the line Manticoran warships to the Erewhon Navy is approved, including a squadron of pod superdreadnoughts and a LAC carrier. Jeremy X and most of his faction of the Audubon Ballroom disappear, as does W.E.B. du Havel. The latter reappears here, now. At the same time, a Manticoran battle cruiser squadron and three members of the royal family attend an event most of the current government of Manticore would be inclined to ignore. Do you have any other way to add that up?"
"Not when you connect the dots like that, no. As far as High Ridge is concerned, this is all about keeping Erewhon happy, and keeping the Manticoran Alliance's technical secrets out of the hands of the Sollies and, directly or indirectly, us. And there's nothing we can do about it."
Bolthole System, Republic of Haven
"I know you've been doing great work out here, Shannon. And our Andermani partners have been a lot more helpful than the Sollies ever were. So why are you so worried?" Tom Theisman asked, though he thought he knew. He wasn't getting much sleep either.
"It's more Linda's department than mine. We've designed and built our new navy to fight what Manticore used against us, but that was what they had then, not now. The first year or so after the cease-fire they were building what looked like either more of what they used in their final campaign or incremental improvements over them. But they're not now, and we don't have anything more than guesses as to what's different." Vice Admiral Forraker replied.
"250 kiloton 'light' cruisers with offset broadside missile tubes for some reason, and similarly oversized heavy cruisers. Pod battlecruisers. Our scouts at McGregor have seen a new LAC design there. And for all the fanfare they announced the construction plans with, there's something going on with the San Martin-class SDs that's keeping the project very dark and no one knows anything about why except that Admiral Hemphill is very involved with the project herself." Trenis said. "And I understand Trajan's people haven't done any better than NavInt there."
Theisman had brought the latest from civilian intelligence reports with him; he was well aware of the holes. Neither the Legistlaturalists nor the Committee had ever had much success discovering the details of Manticoran hardware before it was declassified or actually used against them. The only solace he had was that the Manticorans were probably just as uninformed about what was going on out here. But only probably; Jason Kral had been when of Pat Givens' senior subordinates, no matter who he was related to.
"We don't have any choice but to make plans based our best guesses. I understand you have a proposal if things do go south." He said.
"We have to get them to draw down the force at McGregor. There's no system in the Republic that can hold against what White Haven has there now. So what I suggest is …"
It was risky, Theisman thought. But it could work, which was better than anything he'd come up with at the Octagon. He hoped he wouldn't have to find out if it would.
McGregor System
"… among other side effects of the current political situation, Sonja has requested a review of our contingency plans for a number of scenarios. Three of which would involve your fleet right now. So we're updating our plans for Yale, Brussels, and Rangnarock and your comments were requested." Jim Webster's recording ended.
Hamish Alexander wasn't surprised. Yale was the code name for renewed general war with Haven. Brussels for war with Haven and the Andermani Empire at the same time. Which had been the worst scenario worth bothering to plan for until recently.
And Rangnarock had only graduated from a worst-case scenario to an actual war plan in the last few decades. Until it became clear the SLN was almost entirely ignoring the technological advancements during the war, the idea of surviving a war with the League, let alone winning one, seemed insane. Now, it was merely crazy. If the SLN remained oblivious until most of the Alliance's wall of battle were San Martins or newer ... there were limits to how many horribly one-sided losses any navy could take, no matter how large. What he'd had in Buttercup against Havenite hardware had produced extremely one-sided battles. San Martins against Scientists would make that look like an even fight.
Meyers System
"Who do the Manties think they're fooling with this 'Rembrandt Union' front of theirs?" Commissioner Lorcan Verrochio said.
"They've been a de facto star nation for a long time before Manticore had anything out here beyond the odd freighter." Valery Ottweiler reminded him.
"But until the fucking Manties decided to prop them up, we could have swept them up whenever we wanted. Those 'surplus' cruisers they 'sold' to Rembrandt outmass the entire sector Frontier Fleet detachment, even if it is all neobarb crap."
It wasn't worth arguing the point, Ottweiler thought. Especially when his prejudices are leading him exactly in the right direction for our purposes.
"Still, if they're propping up Rembrandt instead of moving in on their own, they can't be expected to object if we move against them."
And anyone who believed that had obviously never met any Manticorans. Even the most short-sighted and isolationist wings of the present Manticoran government would respond to a direct attack on an ally. Especially if it was a star nation they had played a large role in creating. But until the Lynx terminus had been discovered, Manticorans were very rare in this part of the Verge. So it was possible that Verrochio was just uninformed. But it was more likely he was just an idiot, if a useful one.
"I understand Admiral Byng will have 3 battle cruiser squadrons in the area for an exercise in a few months." With luck, neither Byng nor the OFS governor nor anyone on their staff would remember that will three SLN battle cruiser squadrons might be up to handling four squadrons of surplus Many heavy cruisers, Manticore had three squadrons of the wall between the force at Lynx and the one at the terminus itself.
9
Erewhon
"I understand completely, Captain Zilwicki." Admiral Henke's staff intelligence officer said. "Obviously you'll need to go back to Manticore with Duke of Cromarty rather than continuing on with the squadron."
Information that could lead to the arrest of one of the most notorious criminals on Manticore certainly needed to be sent home. And for this particular tidbit… Commodore Jessica Binder wasn't in Web du Havel's league as political scientist, but she did possess a doctorate in the subject. Checking the assumptions of one agent or another's "brilliant" field op proposal against the standard models was a useful check against encouraging anything crazy. But if the information Zilwicki had uncovered became public, she was fairly certain it would be very disruptive to the political situation at home. Which from her perspective, as a life-long Centrist, could only be a good thing.
Congo
"What the hell is that?" The Manpower tech asked no one in particular. What was on his plot didn't make the slightest bit of sense.
"Looks like 8 2-megaton ships, one 7-megaton, and two 4-megaton." His jaded counterpart said. "Hypering in within seconds of each other, and positioned so they could intercept just about any remotely plausible attempt to leave the system."
"And that's larger than any single group that's ever shown up here. And pulling more acceleration than any battle cruiser I know about is capable of. Which makes it Manticoran, and military. And the Royal Manticoran Navy isn't going to make a friendly port visit here, you idiot."
"If you're the fucking genius, then explain that." The annoyed tech replied. The SD-sized ship had sprouted nearly a hundred smaller ships around it, moving to englobe the system with acceleration rates he would have called impossible if it wasn't on his plot.
His counterpart, though, had a hobbyist's interest in warship design. And the Havenite wars had been the most interesting thing to happen to that field in a century. "Hydra-class LAC carrier. Which did a number on Haven in the late stages of their war with Manticore. And now one of them is after us."
[break]
"Nothing is leaving this system without your say-so, ma'am." Captain Termaine told his admiral. The LACs from his carrier had made that all but impossible for any small, fast ship, at any rate. And anything more massive could be intercepted by one of the battle cruisers in time.
[break]
There had been no warning. A minute earlier, she had been composing a routine report for Mesa Pharmaceuticals senior management, which she had done every month for years. And then armored giants started falling from the sky and giving orders.
Some of the security forces had tried to resist, but they weren't equipped to fight Manticoran Marines in all-up powered armor. Scattered reports from Manpower's offices – and especially the slave breeding facilities – had suggested others even less capable of fighting back had tried there.
The officer in charge of rounding up her and her Mesan citizen co-workers, though, insisted that they were on the ground to ensure their safety.
[break]
Two years earlier
"If you want to avoid a bloodbath in this, you'll need to have a lot of boots on the ground, and fast. Manticoran boots." Web du Havel had told Cathy Montaigne when she'd played intermediary between the High Ridge government and the professor.
"Admiral Hemphell and Admiral Webster made it clear to me that they understand that. If everything falls out how we hope, the long-term peacekeeping force here will be a combination of native and Erewhonese forces with only a token Manticoran element, but we understand that for the first part it will need to be us to get the necessary respect from the slave population and fear from the Mesans."
"Do they? Protecting slavemasters from rebellious slaves is not something Manticoran Marines signed up for."
"I suspect knowing that Manpower's employees will not be going anywhere they'll enjoy will be of some solace to them."
[break]
The orbital station had at least some warning. They'd received the panicked transmission from astro control when the Manticoran force had dropped out of hyper. To prevent an impromptu uprising, they had not broadcast anything to the surface. It had, after all, been quite clear that the Manticorans were not letting anyone leave the system. But with as much firepower as the Manticorans had brought with them, there wasn't any point in trying to resist. Whether they'd still think this was a good idea after the home office shaped the League's official response was another matter.
[break]
"And that, as they say, is that." Admiral Henke told Oversteegen.
She'd lost some Marines on the ground. And one LAC when a task force of the Mesan Navy had hypered in for a scheduled visit. It had taken only seconds for the LACs consorts to demonstrate why tangling with Manticoran LACs was unwise for anything below the wall, but if a missile did make it past their wedge, sidewalls, and counter-missiles then they were still LACs. Considering the scope of the operation, there were remarkable few Manticoran casualties. But none was a feat almost impossible to pull off.
"It shouldn't be long before we can turn the local government over to du Havel's people. And then it will be time t' return home until the next task Her Majesty has in mind for us."
The second of the two Manticoran fast Marine transport ships accompanying Henke's squadron had sailed to Congo empty. Unlike the rest of the Manticoran ships, though, it would be only passing through the home system. It had been decided to drop the 'free' residents of Congo not directly involved in the genetic slave trade off at Visigoth. As for those that were … Jeremy X had argued for leaving them to face trial on what seemed like it would be called Torch. But du Havel had agreed with Michelle and the mission planners that they would face trial on Manticore.
Manticore
"I don't know how this will play out, but I think this may be the break we've been looking for." Cathy Montaigne told Admiral Hemphill.
"It should be." Hemphill said. "But getting this to play out how we would prefer is going to take some time. And the rest of the galaxy will keep on moving despite whatever we do here on Manticore."
Haven
"From what you and Arnold are telling me about the state of our negotiations, I don't think we have any choice but to begin preliminary deployments for Linda's brainstorm." Thomas Theisman told Eloise Pritchart. "But it's going to make it a lot easier for something to go wrong."
"What else can we do? Arnold's taken to dropping hints about Bolthole to his cronies, both from what we've had to tell him and from his brother's post on the Naval Affairs Committee. And Descroix doesn't have the slightest intention of negotiating seriously." She replied.
[break]
Eighteen months, Haven's secretary of state reflected, could change quite a lot. The Andermani were committed, now. And from what Theisman had been legally obligated to tell the cabinet, quite a lot of technology had been transferred in both directions. The new warships both Haven and the Empire were completing now could match every capability the Manticorans had shown in that "Operation Buttercup", from multi-drive missiles to pod-laying super dreadnoughts to advanced compensators to FTL communications to a new generation of light attack craft and the carriers to go with them to electronics warfare capabilities. And he was convinced Theisman's fears of new Manty developments beyond their capabilities then where a chimera. They'd certainly deployed that capability far more broadly since then – the Graysons seemed near to bankrupting themselves in the process – but fighting Haven and the Andermani Empire without a decisive technological advantage was a war Manticore could not win.
So while he felt some hesitation before altering the President's latest diplomatic note, it wasn't much. Certainly not enough to stop him from doing it.
Reference guide to new Manticoran ship classes in this universe
Black Rose – roughly equivalent to the Flight III/IV Reliant-class BC; explicitly does have extended-range missiles
Gauntlet – roughly equivalent to the Saganami-B class CA
Hexapuma – roughly equivalent to the Saganami-C class CA, though slightly larger and with a larger Marine complement
Arthur – Mark 16-based CL class; similar in concept to a stretched Roland-class DD, but it uses a different missile tube layout
San Martin – third-generation Manticoran SD(P) class. The original design was essentially the Medusa-B proposal, but it was substantially reworked for improved defenses before the class was laid down.