At least the fact that Manticore was inside the Sollies' communications loop meant Old Terra had found out about Admiral Byng's unexpected demise even before Lorcan Verrochio. In theory, at least, Verrochio—as the Office of Frontier Security's commissioner in the Madras Sector—was Byng's superior, but pinning down exactly who was really in charge of what could get a bit slippery once the Sollies' dueling bureaucracies got into the act. That was always true, especially out here in the Verge, and from her own experience with Josef Byng, it might be even truer than usual this time around. It was entirely possible that everything which had happened in New Tuscany, and even his decision to move his command there in the first place, had been his own half-assed idea.
Which doesn't mean Verrochio was exactly an innocent bystander , she reminded herself. He sure as hell wasn't last time around, anyway. And even if it was all Byng's idea—this time—Verrochio had to sign off on it under the Sollies' own regulations, officially, at least. And then there's always the Manpower connection, isn't there?
She frowned and suppressed an almost overpowering temptation to gnaw on her fingernails. Her mother had always told her that was a particularly unbecoming nervous mannerism. More to the point, though, as far as Michelle was concerned, she doubted her staff and her flagship's officers would be especially reassured by the sight of their commanding officer's sitting around chewing on her fingernails while she worried.
That thought elicited a quiet snort of amusement, and she ran back through the timing. It was obvious Elizabeth had reacted as promptly (and forcefully) as Michelle had expected. Additional dispatches had arrived since her initial approval of Michelle's actions—along with the influx of journalists of every stripe and inclination—and it was evident to Michelle that very few people back home had appreciated the patronizing tone Roelas y Valiente and Gyulay had adopted in the Solarians' so-called responses to Elizabeth's notes. She also doubted it had surprised anyone, however, since it was so infuriatingly typical of the League's arrogance.
When the first of the Solarian news crews reached Spindle, it had been obvious there was already plenty of blood in the water as far as they were concerned, even though they'd headed out for the Talbott Quadrant before the League had gotten around to issuing a formal press release about what had happened to Jean Bart . They'd arrived armed with the Manticoran reports of events, but that wasn't the same thing, by a long chalk. And the Solarian accounts and editorials which had accompanied the follow-on wave that had departed after the official League statements (such as they were and what there was of them) were filled with mingled indignation, anger, outrage, and alarm, but didn't seem to contain very much in the way of reasoned response.
Michelle knew it wasn't fair to expect anything else out of them, given the fact that all of this had come at them cold. Not yet, at any rate. And so far, none of the 'fax stories from the League which had reached Spindle had contained a single solid fact provided by any official Solarian source. Every official statement the Solly newsies had to go on was coming from Manticore, and even without the ingrained arrogance the League's reporters shared in full with their fellow citizens, it wouldn't have been reasonable for them to accept the Manticoran version without a healthy dose of skepticism. At the same time, though, it seemed glaringly evident that the majority of the Solly media's talking heads and pundits were being fed carefully crafted leaks from inside the League bureaucracy and the SLN. Manticore's competing talking heads and pundits weren't being leaked additional information, but that was mainly because there was no need to. They were basing their analyses on the facts available in the public record courtesy of the Star Empire of Manticore which, unlike the Solly leaks, had the at least theoretical advantage of actually being the truth, as well. Not that many of Old Terra's journalists and editorialists seemed aware of that minor distinction.
It was all looking even messier than Michelle had feared it might, but at least the Manticoran version was being thoroughly aired. And, for that matter, she knew the Manticoran version was actually spreading throughout the League faster than the so-called response emerging from Old Chicago. The Star Empire's commanding position in the wormhole networks could move things other than cargo ships, she thought grimly.
At the same time Elizabeth had dispatched her second diplomatic note to Old Terra, the Admiralty had issued an advisory to all Manticoran shipping, alerting the Star Empire's innumerable merchant skippers to the suddenly looming crisis. It would take weeks for that advisory to reach all of them, but given the geometry of the wormhole network, it was still likely it would reach almost all of them before any instructions from the League reached the majority of its local naval commanders. And along with the open advisory for the merchies, the same dispatch boats had carried secret instructions to every RMN station commander and the senior officer of every RMN escort force . . . and those instructions had been a formal war warning.
Michelle devoutly hoped it was a warning about a war which would never move beyond the realm of unrealized possibility, but if it did, the Royal Manticoran Navy's officers' orders were clear. If they or any Manticoran merchant ship in their areas of responsibility were attacked, they were to respond with any level of force necessary to defeat that attack, no matter who the attackers might be. In the meantime, they were also instructed to expedite the return of Manticoran merchant shipping to Manticore-dominated space, despite the fact that the withdrawal of those merchant ships from their customary runs might well escalate the sense of crisis and confrontation.
And, Michelle felt unhappily certain, office lights were burning late at Admiralty House while Thomas Caparelli and his colleagues worked on contingency plans just in case the entire situation went straight to hell.
For that matter, little though she cared for the thought, it was entirely possible the penny had officially dropped back home by now. But even if the Star Empire had received a formal response from the League—even if the League had announced it would pursue the military option instead of negotiating—Michelle hadn't heard anything about it yet.
All of which meant she was still very much on her own, despite all the government's approval of her previous actions and assurances of its future support. She'd received at least some reinforcements, she'd shortstopped the four CLACs of Carrier Division 7.1 on her own authority when Rear Admiral Stephen Enderby turned up in Spindle. Enderby had expected to deliver his LACs to Prairie, Celebrant, and Nuncio, then head home for another load, and the LAC crews had expected nothing more challenging than a little piracy suppression. That, obviously, had changed. Enderby had been more than willing to accept his new orders, and his embarked LACs had been busy practicing for a somewhat more demanding role. She expected her decision to retain them for Tenth Fleet to be approved, as soon as the official paperwork could catch up, and the arrival of another division of Saganami-Cs had been a pleasant surprise—in more ways than one, given its commanding officer. For that matter, still more weight of metal was in the pipeline, although the original plans for the Talbott Quadrant were still recovering from the shock of the Battle of Manticore.