On the other hand, the fact remained that she'd had to do that convincing to bring the bloodshed to an end, and it was the atrocities which had already been committed, however merited they might have been, before she managed to intervene which explained why Kare and his mission were only just now arriving in Torch.
They all settled into their chairs around the circular table. Palane sat between Kare and Wix, and Du Havel sat between Wix and Captain Zachary, with Jeremy X. between Kare and Queen Berry, going the other way. There'd been no formal seating chart, but Kare found himself rather doubting that that neat spacing had occurred totally by chance.
"First," Berry said, without even glancing at Du Havel or Jeremy, "I'd like to start by saying that we're all very grateful to Mr. Hauptman for assisting us this way. And to Prime Minister Grantville and Queen Elizabeth, of course."
Well, she's got her priorities right, Kare thought wryly. He and Wix were officially here as privately paid consultants, on leave from the Royal Manticoran Astrophysics Investigation Agency. If it had been solely up to Klaus Hauptman, the financial backer of this expedition, the two of them would have been in Torch before the smoke had cleared, too. Unfortunately, and despite the Star Kingdom's official recognition of the Kingdom of Torch, the "taint" of the Ballroom had forced the Star Kingdom to move rather more slowly, even after that idiot High Ridge's ignominious departure from the premiership, than Kare was confident Elizabeth Winton or her new prime minister would have preferred. The Star Kingdom of Manticore understood more about the genetic slave trade and Manpower, Incorporated, than most star nations did, but even Manticore had been shocked by some of the HD footage which had come out of Torch. It wasn't just foreign public opinion Elizabeth had been forced to worry about, either.
There were more than a few Manticorans, even among those bitterly opposed to genetic slavery, who nursed serious reservations where the Ballroom was concerned. In fact, if Kare were going to be completely honest, he had a few reservations of his own. Not because he didn't understand exactly what had produced the Ballroom's ferocity, but because he was enough of a historian to recognize where that sort of ferocity could lead if something didn't happen to . . . ameliorate it. And despite everything the Star Kingdom had already seen out of Manpower, there'd been sufficient public revulsion at how some of Manpower's executives on Torch (and their families, in some cases) had died—and how gleefully they'd been tortured to death—before Berry Zilwicki's adamant intervention ended the atrocities (or counter—atrocities, perhaps) to make the outlaw transtellar's propaganda about the barbarism of the ex-slaves at least temporarily convincing to enough men in the street to put the brakes on any official cooperation between Manticore and Torch. Of course, that never-to-be-sufficiently-damned, overbred, under-brained, cretinous excuse for a politician High Ridge hadn't needed a lot of convincing, given his own attitudes.
Even now, though, the Grantville Government hadn't officially signed off on the survey effort. For the record, it was a privately funded project, backed by the Hauptman Cartel, which was picking up the complete tab for it. As a matter of fact, Kare and Wix were both receiving comfortable—very comfortable—stipends from Hauptman, and although Harvest Joy was a Navy vessel, the Star Kingdom had "leased" her to Hauptman for the effort and Captain Zachary was officially on half-pay at the moment. Given what Hauptman was paying her, she was actually making close to twice what her salary as an active-duty Queen's officer would have been, although that had very little to do with her presence in Torch. As the officer who'd commanded the survey voyage that led to the successful exploration and charting of the Lynx Terminus of the Manticoran Wormhole Junction, she brought a unique level of experience with her. Besides, Kare had worked with her on that effort. When it had been made clear to him that the "private venture" in Torch was actually about as private as Mount Royal Palace, he'd known exactly who he wanted as his survey ship commander.
"We're delighted to be here, Your Majesty," he said now. "It's not all that often anyone gets to survey a wormhole. The number of people who've gotten to survey two of them—and do it in less than three T-years, at that—could probably be counted on one hand." He grinned. "Trust me, it's not going to look bad on our résumés!"
"No, I don't guess it is," she agreed with a smile of her own. Then she glanced at Du Havel and Jeremy before looking back at Kare.
"Obviously, we'd like to get started as quickly as possible," she said. "For one thing, we're not at all sure how much Mesa really does or doesn't know about the wormhole."
"You didn't find anything at all in their databases, Your Majesty?" Zachary asked.
"Nothing," Jeremy responded for Berry. Zachary looked at him, and he shrugged. "I'm afraid Captain Zilwicki isn't on-planet at the moment, but if you'd like to discuss our data search with Ruth Winton we'll be happy to make her available to you. For that matter, if you—or Dr. Kare or Dr. Wix—could provide any clues or hints that might help us spot something we've missed, we'd be delighted to hear about them."
He held Zachary's eye for a moment, waiting until she gave him an ever so slight nod, then continued.
"I don't know how familiar you are with Manpower's procedures, Captain," he continued, and his voice had assumed a slightly distant tone, almost a professional chill. "Especially since the Ballroom started successfully attacking their depots whenever we—I mean, whenever it—could, Manpower's gotten even more security conscious. By now, their practice is to restrict the data available to any of their operations to what they figure that particular operation is going to need—a strict 'need-to-know' orientation, you might say. And in the last couple of T-years, they've improved their arrangements for wiping data, as well."
He shrugged.
"Although the initial claim to 'Verdant Vista' was backed by the Mesa System's government, everyone knew it was actually a Manpower and Jessyk operation. Of course, everyone also knows that the Mesan 'government' is actually pretty much owned outright by the Mesa-based transstellars, so the Mesan Navy's involvement probably shouldn't have come as quite as much of a surprise as it did for some people.
"At any rate, the management here in-system handled their data storage in accordance with Manpower's established policies. I'm sure they never in their worst nightmares expected what Captain Oversteegen and Captain Roszak—excuse me, Commodore Oversteegen and Rear Admiral Rozsak—helped us do here, but we found several largish chunks of their computer banks slagged down when we finally got possession of them. So we don't really have any idea how much effort they put into studying the wormhole here."