"We'll just have to deal with that as it arises," Theisman said. "I realize it can create an awkward situation, and I'll try not to let my paranoia pressure me into maintaining secrecy longer than is actually warranted. But I truly don't think I can overemphasize the importance of building up to a level capable of deterring any Manty temptation towards preemptive action before we go public about the new ships."
"As I said, I'm not preparedor even temptedto overrule you in this particular area. I just wish the Manties would stop providing Arnold with fresh grist for his mill. And truth to tell, I think they're up to something, myself. There has to be a reason they keep refusing even to seriously discuss the return of the occupied star systems, and if they're not planning to hang onto them permanently, then what the hell are they doing?"
Chapter Tree
Ms. Midshipwoman Zilwicki saw the familiar green-on-green uniform before she caught sight of Duchess Harrington. Everyone on Saganami Island knew that uniform, because it was the only non-Navy or Marine uniform allowed on the RMN academy's campus. Helen Zilwicki wasn't supposed to know about the resentment and outrage certain august personages tended to very privately vent behind the scenes over its presence here, but she wasn't her father's daughter for nothing. Anton Zilwicki might have started his naval career as a "techno weenie," but before that career had come to a screeching halt four T-years before, he had more than completed his transition to a full-time intelligence type, and a good one. He wasn't the sort who talked down to anyone, far less to his motherless daughter, and he'd always emphasized how important it was to actually listen to anything she heard.
Of course, his...relationship with Lady Catherine Montaigne, Countess of the Tor, also offered Helen a certain insight denied to her fellow midshipmen. Helen never actually tried to eavesdrop on the conversations between her father and Lady Cathy, but the countess was as effervescent and compulsively energetic as Anton Zilwicki was methodical and disciplined. Her exclamation point-punctuated conversations usually seemed as if they were going off in all directions at once, with a sort of high-energy trajectory that left the unwary feeling somewhat as if they'd been run over by a ground lorry...or possibly a small fleet of them. In fact, there was always an underlying structure and cohesiveness for anyone who had the wit to stay in shouting distance of Lady Cathy's scalpel-sharp intelligence. And one thing the Countess of the Tor had never possessed was anything like Anton Zilwicki's instinctive respect for authority and tradition. "Irreverent" was far too mild a term to describe her, and her comments on the current Government started at scathing and went rapidly downhill from there.
Which had made it inevitable that Helen would hear Lady Cathy's opinion of the ill-considered attempt Sir Edward Janacek had made to revoke Duchess Harrington's special permission to bring armed personal retainers into the sacred precincts of the Naval Academy.
His efforts had failed ignominiously, exactly (in Helen's opinion) as they deserved to. Fortunately for him, he, or at least his political advisers, had possessed enough sense not to conduct his campaign in a public forum, which had left him room to retreat when he ran into the Queen's unyielding resistance. Since the dispensation which allowed for the presence of the Harrington Steading armsmen on the island in the first place had been granted by the Queen's Bench at the direct request of the Foreign Secretary in light of the fact that Steadholder Harrington and Duchess Harrington were two totally separate legal entities who simply happened to live in the same body as Admiral Harrington, the decision to revoke it had not been the purely internal Navy affair Janacek had attempted to make it. The Foreign Secretary who had requested it had also happened to be the Queen's uncle, and the Queen's Bench answered directly to her, not to Edward Janacek or even Prime Minister High Ridge. Given both of those things, only an idiot would have tried to overturn the arrangement out of what was clearly a sense of petty spite.
That, at least, had been the countess' opinion, and nothing Helen had seen or heard elsewhere suggested Lady Cathy had been in error. Not that Helen intended to discuss that observation with any of her classmates. Her father had often admonished her to remember the example of the 'cat, who saw and heard everything but said nothing. Of course, that example had developed a small flaw since the treecats had learned to sign. On the other hand, it was beginning to look as if the 'cats had been doing a lot more hearing and seeingand thinkingthan even her father had ever suspected, so perhaps the analogy was actually even better than she'd thought. Either way, a first-form midshipwoman had no business at all explaining to her fellow students that the civilian head of their service was a small-minded, small-souled, vindictive cretin. Especially not when that was true.
Helen's lips twitched in an almost-smile at the thought, but she banished the expression and stepped out of the way as Colonel LaFollet came through the pistol range door. The armsman's gray eyes swept his surroundings with an attention to detail which had long since become instinctive. He noticed the tall, sturdy young midshipwoman, and his expression suggested that some orderly file in his mind had brought up her image as one of Duchess Harrington's hundreds of students. But recognition or no, those eyes considered her with a cool, analytical detachment which made her suddenly grateful that he was unlikely to consider her a threat to his charge.
She was dressed out for gym at the moment, in the shorts and unitard which were standard issue for midshipwomen. That uniform included no headgear, which excused her from the normal requirement to salute a superior officer, but she braced quickly to attention until he nodded in acknowledgment of the courtesy. Then he stepped past her, and she came to attention once more as Duchess Harrington walked into the range behind him.
"Ms. Zilwicki," the Duchess observed.
"Your Grace," Helen responded respectfully.
The Duchess' immaculate space-black and gold uniform was unique. She was the only RMN officer who properly wore a Grayson Space Navy shoulder flash bearing the flame-enshrouded salamander emblem of the Protector's Own Squadron even in Manticoran uniform, since she was the Protector's Own's official commander. But in addition to that, she was also the only person in history whose uniform tunic carried both the blood-red ribbon of the Star of Grayson and the crimson, blue, and white one of the Parliamentary Medal of Valor. There were persistent rumors that Duchess Harrington had refused the PMV after leading the escape from Cerberus, but even if they were true, she hadn't been able to avoid it after the Cromarty Assassination. Helen suspected that she'd accepted it with very mixed emotions, however, since Baron High Ridge, as the new Prime Minister, had played the media event for all it was worth when he announced she was to receive it.
But Helen had seen those ribbons often before, and neither they nor the treecat who rode on the Duchess' shoulder were what drew her attention this afternoon. That was left to the wooden case in Duchess Harrington's hand. It was the sort of case which was hand-built at an exorbitant price by some skilled craftsman in some tiny shop filled with dusty sunlight and the sweet scent of wood shavings and varnish to wrap around something indecently expensive, and Helen felt a stir of interest. She'd never seen the box before, but she'd spoken to other midshipmen who had, and she knew what was inside it.