"I see," Honor repeated, and turned her eyes to Cachat. "Very well, Officer Cachat. Since you're obviously Captain Zilwicki's additional reason, suppose you convince me, as well."

"Admiral," Cachat said, abandoning the aristocratic titles which, she knew, had been their own subtle statement of plebeian distrust, "I find you have a much more disturbing presence than I'd anticipated. Have you ever considered a career in intelligence?"

"No. And about that convincing?"

Cachat chuckled harshly, then shrugged.

"All right, Admiral. The most convincing piece of evidence Anton has is that if the Republic had ordered any such operation on Torch, it would have been my job to carry it out. I'm the FIS chief of station for Erewhon, Torch, and the Maya Sector."

He made the admission calmly, although Honor knew he was very unhappy to do so. With excellent reason, she thought. Knowing with certainty who the opposition's chief spy was would have to make your own spies' jobs a lot easier.

"There are reasons—reasons of a personal nature—why my superiors might have tried to cut me out of the loop for this particular operation," Cachat continued, and she tasted his painstaking determination to be honest. Not because he wouldn't have been quite prepared to lie if he'd believed it was his duty, but because he'd come to the conclusion that he simply couldn't lie successfully to her.

"Although it's true those reasons exist," he went on, "it's also true that I have personal contacts at a very high level who would have alerted me anyway. And with all due modesty, my own network would have warned me if anyone from Haven had invaded my turf.

"Because all of that's true, I can tell you that the chance of any Republican involvement in the attempt to assassinate Queen Berry is effectively nonexistent. The bottom line, Admiral, is that we didn't do it."

"Then who did?" Honor challenged.

"Obviously, if it wasn't Haven, our suspicions are naturally going to light on Mesa," Zilwicki said. "Mesa, and Manpower, have plenty of reasons of their own to want Torch destabilized and Berry dead. The fact that the neurotoxin used in the attempt is of Solly origin also points towards the probability of Mesan involvement. At the same time, I'm painfully well aware that everyone in the official intelligence establishment is going to line up to point out to me that we're naturally prejudiced in favor of believing Mesa is behind any attack upon us. And, to be totally honest, they'd be right."

"Which doesn't change the fact that you really do believe it was Mesa," Honor observed.

"No, it doesn't."

"And do you have any evidence beyond the fact that the neurotoxin probably came from the League?"

"No," Zilwicki admitted. "Not at this time. We're pursuing a couple of avenues of investigation which we hope will provide us with that evidence, but we don't have it yet."

"Which, of course, is the reason for this rather dramatic visit to me."

"Admiral," Cachat said with the first smile she'd seen from him, "I really think you should consider a second career in intelligence."

"Thank you, Officer Cachat, but I believe I can exercise intelligence without having to become a spy."

She smiled back at him, then shrugged.

"All right, Gentlemen. I'm inclined to believe you. And to agree with you, for that matter. It's never made sense to me that Haven would do something like attack Berry and Ruth. But, while I may believe you, I don't know how much good it's going to do. I'm certainly willing to present what you've told me to Admiral Givens, ONI, and Admiralty House. I don't think they're going to buy it, though. Not without some sort of corroborating evidence besides the promise—however sincere—of the senior Havenite spy in the area that he really, really didn't have anything to do with it. Call me silly, but somehow I don't think they're going to accept that you're an impartial, disinterested witness, Officer Cachat."

"I know that," Cachat replied. "And I'm not impartial, or disinterested. In fact, I have two very strong motives for telling you this. First, because I'm convinced that what happened in Torch doesn't represent my star nation's policy or desires, and that it's clearly not in the Republic's best interests. Because it isn't, I have a responsibility to do anything I can do mitigate the consequences of what's happened. That includes injecting any voice of sanity and reason I can into the Star Kingdom's decision-making process at the highest level I can reach. Which, at this moment, happens to be you, Admiral Harrington.

"Second, Anton and I are, as he said, pursuing our own investigation into this. His motives, I think, ought to be totally understandable and clear. My own reflect the fact that the Republic is being blamed for a crime it didn't commit. It's my duty to find out who did commit it, and to determine why he—or they—wanted to make it appear we did it. In addition, I have some personal motives, tied up with who might have been killed in the process, which also give me a very strong reason to want the people behind this. However, if our investigation prospers, we're going to need someone—at the highest level of the Star Kingdom's decision-making process we can reach—who's prepared to listen to whatever we find. We need, for want of a better term, a friend at court."

"So it really comes down to self-interest," Honor observed.

"Yes, it does," Cachat said frankly. "In intelligence matters, doesn't it always?"

"I suppose so."

Honor considered them both again, then nodded.

"Very well, Officer Cachat. For whatever it's worth, you have your friend at court. And just between the three of us, I hope to heaven you can turn up the evidence we need before several million people get killed."

Chapter Thirty-Three

May, 1921

"Princess Ruth's not coming with us?" asked Brice Miller. He and his two friends Ed Hartman and James Lewis had distressed expressions on their faces.

Marti Garner shook her head, trying not to laugh. "No, that part of the plan had to be scrapped."

"Why?" asked Michael Alsobrook. If anything, his expression was even more woebegone. That was perhaps understandable, since he was about the same age as Ruth Winton, so whatever fantasies he'd been having fell into the Very Unlikely category rather than, as with the three fourteen-year-olds, into the delusional realm known as You Have Got To Be Kidding.

Marti heard a little choking sound to her left. Turning her head, she saw that Elfride Margarete Butre had her attention riveted onto the screen showing their departure from Torch orbit—a subject which was really not all that interesting. Clearly enough, the clan matriarch was finding the romantic anguish of the male members of her party over the sudden and unexpected absence of the princess to be every bit as amusing as Marti did.

Before explaining, Garner considered the security issues involved. They didn't seem to be critical, however, since the only "secret" she'd be divulging was something that would be blindingly obvious to any observer very soon anyway.

"Well, the request Torch sent in that the Biological Survey Corps release our team for detached duty—"

Hearing another choking sound, she broke off and turned her head to the right. Haruka Takano seemed to be utterly fascinated with the data appearing on a different screen. Which was odd, on the face of it, since that data pertained to the ship's completely routine environmental processes.

"Is something amiss, Lieutenant Takano?"

He didn't take his eyes off the screen. " 'Request,' " he mimicked. "Is that 'request' as in 'the gangster requests that you cough up your extortion payment'?"