"Who said anything about blackmail?" White Haven demanded. "I simply informed you that the Queen also wishes to know what her Admiralty is prepared to do about the situation in Silesia."
"If she wants to know, there are proper channels through which she may inquire," Janacek snapped. "This isn't one of them!"
"Unfortunately," White Haven said icily, " 'proper channels' seem to be somewhat . . . constricted these days." He smiled again, his eyes cold. "Think of this as the Gordian knot and me as another Alexander, My Lord."
"Fuck you!" Janacek snarled. "Don't you dare come walking into my office and demand information from me! You may think you're God's gift to the fucking Navy, but to me you're just one more pissant admiral without a command!"
"I find myself singularly unimpressed by your view of me," White Haven replied contemptuously. "And I'm still waiting for an answer I can deliver to the Queen."
"Go to Hell," Janacek growled.
"Very well," White Haven said with deadly precision. "If that's your final word, I'll go and deliver it to Her Majesty. Who will then, I feel certain, call a news conference in which she will inform the press of precisely how forthcoming her First Lord of Admiralty was." His smile was colder than ever. "Somehow, My Lord, I doubt the Prime Minister will thank you."
He turned away, striding towards the door, and Janacek felt a sudden stab of panic. It wasn't enough to overcome his fury, but it was sharp enough to penetrate it.
"Wait," he said flatly, and White Haven paused and turned back to face him. "You have no right at all to demand an accounting from me, and Her Majesty is fully aware of the constitutional channels through which she should request any accounting. If, however, you're truly prepared to spew such sensitive matters into the media, regardless of their potential effect on the military security and diplomatic posture of the Star Kingdom, I suppose I have no alternative but to tell you what you want to know."
"We may differ on just what would be affected if I spoke to the newsies," White Haven said coldly. "However, other than that, I find myself unusually in agreement with you, My Lord."
"What, specifically, do you want to know?" Janacek grated.
"Her Majesty," White Haven stressed, "would like to know the Admiralty's official reaction to Duchess Harrington's report of Havenite Naval activity in Silesia?"
"At the moment, the Admiralty's official reaction is that the Sidemore Station commander's report contains far too little detail for any definitive conclusions to be drawn."
"Excuse me?" White Haven's eyebrows rose.
"All that we—or Admiral Harrington—know," Janacek retorted, "is that a single Republican destroyer engaged—or was engaged by—an armed merchant auxiliary of the Silesian Navy commanded by a half-pay Manticoran officer who was dismissed his ship for cause forty T-years ago. That virtually the entire crew of the destroyer was massacred in the ensuing action. And that the captain of the armed auxiliary in question handed over fragmentary records which he claimed to have obtained from the wrecked destroyer's computers."
White Haven stared at him, as if momentarily bereft of words. Then he shook himself almost visibly.
"Are you suggesting that Admiral Bachfisch fabricated this entire affair for some unknown Machiavellian reason of his own?" he demanded.
"I'm suggesting that at this moment we know absolutely nothing for certain," Janacek shot back. "I can't think of any reason why Bachfisch might have fabricated anything, but that doesn't mean I'm prepared to dismiss the possibility out of hand. The man's been out of Manticoran uniform for forty years, and he didn't exactly leave it voluntarily, did he? He fucked up by the numbers when he wore the Queen's uniform—under remarkably similar circumstances, I might add—and I see no reason to assume he didn't do the same thing here. And even if he didn't, he's undoubtedly still bitter over what happened to his career. That might make him an ideal conduit if someone wanted to deliberately plant disinformation on us."
"That's preposterous," White Haven snorted. "And even if he was inclined to do anything of the sort—even to the extent of voluntarily allowing both of his own legs to be shot off to lend authenticity to his efforts—Duchess Harrington and her staff evaluated the records and interviewed the surviving crew members independently."
"Yes, and sent a task group off to examine the star where this hypothetical 'Second Fleet' was supposedly stationed," Janacek retorted. "But she didn't find anything there, did she?"
"Which proves absolutely nothing," White Haven pointed out. "There are any number of reasons why a fleet ordered to remain covert might have shifted its base."
"Of course there are. And that's precisely what Theisman wants us to think."
"Theisman? Are you suggesting now that the Republic's Secretary of War deliberately sacrificed a destroyer and its entire crew just to convince us he was prepared to contemplate an act of war against us?"
"Of course not!" Janacek snapped. "He never intended for the destroyer to be damaged. But he did expect it to be spotted and followed—why else would he have openly sent two fleet destroyers to ostentatiously orbit the one planet in the entire sector where there was a Havenite diplomatic mission? In a star system where our patrol units call regularly?" The First Lord sneered. "If they were so damned determined to remain 'covert,' don't you think they could have found something just a bit less obtrusive than that?"
"And the purpose of allowing themselves to be spotted and followed?" White Haven asked, fascinated despite himself and despite his scalding anger.
"To convince us of exactly what Admiral Harrington was convinced of," Janacek said with the patience of someone speaking to a very small child. "Our relations with the Republic are deteriorating steadily. You know that as well as I do. And despite all of his public statements of confidence in his navy's abilities, Theisman isn't at all certain of his ability to stand up to us. So he sent his two destroyers off to Silesia with orders to draw our attention there in order to convince us he was sending forces to threaten Sidemore. Obviously what he wants is for us to divert still more of our strength to Silesia, thus weakening ourselves at the decisive point if the cease-fire should fail."
"I see." White Haven considered the First Lord in silence for several seconds, then shook his head. "Exactly how were his destroyers supposed to suggest all of this to us?"
"By being followed to an appropriate star somewhere—exactly as this Hecate was. Undoubtedly, they hoped to be picked up by one of our warships. If one of them had been, she would have 'suddenly' realized she was being trailed and broken away from the star she'd been to such trouble to bring to our attention. Our ship would have followed her until she either lost us or else returned to the Horus System 'for new orders.' In either case, when the incident was reported to Sidemore, Admiral Harrington and her staff could be relied upon to draw the proper conclusions.
"As it turned out, they were spotted and shadowed by what they thought was a typical Silesian merchant ship, and they thought they saw an even better way to get their disinformation into our hands. Obviously, they intended to board Bachfisch's ship, drop a few hints, and then turn her loose with stern orders not to go anywhere near the Marsh System. Of course any Silly merchant crew would immediately see the possibility of selling such information to us, which would have sent them straight off to Admiral Harrington!"
"And the data Admiral Bachfisch recovered from her computers?" White Haven asked.
"Strictly a fallback position," Janacek said confidently. "Hecate was never intended to be captured or destroyed, but it must have been apparent to their planners that their ship might be unfortunate enough to attract the attention of a cruiser or even a battlecruiser. With our compensator efficiency advantages, Hecate's ability to pull away would have been far from assured, so they briefed her crew with a cover story and planted a few ambiguous references to this 'Second Fleet' of theirs in her computers. They probably had it set up to look as if the crew had attempted to purge their database and failed to get everything dumped." He shrugged. "When they screwed up and misidentified Bachfisch's ship as a regular merchie, someone had time to go back to the fallback plan before he was killed."