"As a matter of fact, Admiral Givens and I spoke about it at some length month before last," Honor replied. "We didn't go into any detail on the operational side—ONI's actual information-gathering activities are classified on a need-to-know basis, and I didn't need to—but the WDB needed the most complete background available before it wrote its recommendations. From what she told me then, I'd say she's convinced of her sources' reliability, and given how well she and ONI have read the Peeps since the shooting actually started—"
She shrugged, knowing White Haven understood what she'd left unspoken. The actual outbreak of hostilities had taken the Office of Naval Intelligence by surprise, and Admiral Givens and her analysts had been given no more reason than anyone else to expect (or predict) the Harris Assassination or the creation of the Committee of Public Safety. But those failures aside, ONI's spooks had done a sterling job of dissecting Peep capabilities and probable intentions.
"I gathered the impression," she went on after a moment, choosing her words with care, "that a good deal of the raw data is coming from new human intelligence sources."
She held White Haven's eyes until he nodded once more. "Human intelligence" was a more polite term than "spies," but even today, the many and varied technological means for gathering information fell short of what an alert, intelligently used pair of eyes and ears in the right place could deliver. The problem, of course, was assessing your spies' reliability, then getting their reports across interstellar distances. On the other hand, intelligence agencies had been working on the data transmission end of it ever since the Warshawski sail made hyper-travel a truly practical proposition.
"In particular," she continued, "I rather suspect, though Admiral Givens didn't say so directly, that we have at least one source within the Peeps' embassy on Old Earth."
White Haven's eyebrows rose at that, but then his lips pursed as thoughtfulness replaced surprise. That actually made sense, he reflected. Ron Bergren, the Havenite foreign secretary under the old Legislaturalist government, had been the only member of Sidney Harris' cabinet to escape the massacre of the PRH's so-called military coup attempt. He'd survived for the simple reason that, at the time, he'd been in transit to Old Earth to explain to the Solarian League that the war with Manticore hadn't really been started by the Peeps, however things might look. Upon learning of the coup, he'd declared his enthusiastic loyalty to the Committee of Public Safety... and found as many reasons as possible why neither he, his wife, nor their three children should return to the People's Republic. That was probably wise of him, given the fact that over ninety percent of the members of the great Legislaturalist families had been executed or exiled to prison planets by the People's Courts, and he'd been helped by the fact that Old Earth was over eighteen hundred light-years from the Haven System.
The Manticore Wormhole Junction was closed to Peep traffic for obvious reasons, and the Cromarty Government had scored an enormous diplomatic triumph when it added the Erewhon Republic to the Manticoran Alliance seven years ago. Erewhon was only a single-system polity, but like the Star Kingdom itself, though on a lesser scale, it was far wealthier than any single system could normally expect to be, for it just happened to control the only other wormhole terminus connecting to League space from within twelve hundred light-years of the Peeps' capital. There'd been a degree of economic rivalry between Erewhon and Manticore in the past, but both of them had recognized the threat Haven posed to them, and Erewhon's admission to the Alliance had closed the Erewhon Wormhole to the Peeps. That meant even Peep courier boats, which routinely rode the upper edge of hyper-space's theta bands, required well over six months for the trip to Old Earth, whereas a courier from Manticore could reach the mother world in barely a week.
The diplomatic advantages for the Star Kingdom were obvious, but those for Ron Bergren personally were almost as great. He was well beyond the Committee's reach but already in place in Old Earth's diplomatic structure, where he'd represented the interests of his new masters with diligence and industry (after all, he still had relatives back home), and any attempt to recall him against his will could only result in his requesting political asylum from the League... or defecting to Manticore.
As a consequence, he was still technically the PRH's foreign secretary, although for all practical purposes he'd been reduced to the status of the Peeps' ambassador to Old Earth and the League. But even if Bergren himself truly was—or acted as if he were—loyal to the new regime, he'd taken a staff with him. Most of them were also Legislaturalists, and the possibility that one of them might have become a Manticoran agent—whether for money, vengeance, patriotic loyalty to the old regime, or any combination of the above—was excellent. And given the difference in transit times, the Star Kingdom would get such an agent's reports on any changes in the Peeps' relations with the League at least six months before the Committee of Public Safety could.
"At any rate," Honor observed after giving the earl a few minutes to consider what she'd already said, "the nature of the data clearly indicates that at least one major source is reporting from Old Earth. Look at the information on the Peeps' efforts to get around the tech embargo."
"I did," White Haven said sourly, and it was Honor's turn to nod soberly. The Solarian League's prewar embargo on technology transfers to the belligerents clearly favored the Star Kingdom, with its more active research and development establishments and superior educational system, and the RMN's technological advantages had been a major factor in its ability to carry the war to the Republic thus far.
But, White Haven reminded himself, some of the League's member systems had always resented the embargo, which the Star Kingdom had achieved only because of the economic clout bestowed by its vast merchant marine and control of the Manticore Wormhole Junction. And for all its undeniable size and power, the League was a rather ramshackle proposition in many ways. It might be called the Solarian League, but in actual fact Old Earth was simply first among equals, for every member world held a seat on the Executive Council... and each Council delegate held the right of veto. By long tradition, that veto right was used only rarely on domestic issues for two reasons. First, the League ministers' awareness that their policies could be vetoed by a single objector had for generations inspired them to recommend only center of the road domestic policies they could be fairly certain would command a broad consensus. And, second, any member world which used its veto right frivolously soon discovered that its fellows had any number of means of unilateral retaliation.
But if the League's domestic policies were coherent, its military and foreign policies were another matter, for it was far harder to forge a consensus on the diplomatic front. Much of that stemmed from the League's sheer size and power. Even the vast military machine the People's Republic had forged was less than a fourth the size of the League Navy, and the League's industrial base probably equaled that of all the rest of humanity combined. As a consequence, it was very difficult for anyone to convince the League's member worlds that anyone or anything represented a credible threat to them, and that sublime confidence was disastrous when it came to creating a harmonious foreign policy. The consequences of domestic policy decisions had a direct, perceptible impact upon the standard of living League citizens enjoyed; the absence of a rational foreign policy did not, and so each member world felt free to press for its own idiosyncratic ideal of "proper" policy... or simply to ignore the entire matter. And delegates to the Executive Council were far more likely to use their veto power to prevent "dangerous foreign adventures" than to cross their fellows on domestic matters.