“Let’s be about it, Admiral Harrington,” he said softly.

  HMS Imperator

  Sol System

  Honor stood once again on Imperator’s flag deck, but it was very different from the last time she’d stood there. Now Hamish stood beside her, Samantha on his shoulder, and she savored the mind-glows of her staff and the flag bridge crew. She tasted the lingering echoes of disbelief, and their bright, transcendent joy. Not for themselves; for her.

  Her eyes burned as that tide of emotion washed through her, but in an odd way, it only refined and purified her cold, focused purpose. There was still hate deep inside her—and in the emotions about her. The fact that Hamish and Jacques Benton-Ramirez y Chou, Tobias Stimson, Bark Chewer’s Bane and Samantha, had been returned to them could not miraculously restore the millions of other dead to life. Perhaps the intensely personal corrosiveness of her own hatred had been dulled. Perhaps she’d been returned to that point where her duty was duty, not an excuse for mass slaughter. But Operation Nemesis was still there, still waiting, and she was just as grimly determined to complete it as she’d ever been.

  The master display had been configured to show a panoramic view of the space around Old Terra. She gazed into it, waiting, feeling the anticipation thrum in her nerves. Only another few minutes, and—

  “Coming up on the mark, Your Grace,” Andrea Jaruwalski said, and she nodded. Then she glanced over her shoulder at Hamish, and her lips quirked ever so slightly.

  “In that case, Andrea,” she said, never looking away from her husband, “let’s be about it.”

  He returned her smile and she turned back to the display, and this time her voice came out flat and cold.

  “Execute,” she said.

  “Aye, aye, Your Grace.” Jaruwalski’s voice was harder than steel. “Executing now.”

  She pressed the button…and the visual display erupted with twice a dozen tiny suns. They raced through old Earth’s industrial zone, each of them the death beacon of a major fabrication platform. A sphere of fire blazed about the mother world, filling night skies ever so briefly with a spiteful, devastating dawn. A matching sphere, even denser, blazed around Mars, crowned Venus in flame, and answering pyres glared deep in the asteroid belt, rode Jupiter’s orbit, rose like beacons of vengeance throughout the length and breadth and depth of the Sol System. And in other places, where no charges had been planted, LAC grasers shredded scores—hundreds—of minor platforms. The habitats of individual asteroid miners, the bunk room habitats of hydrogen refinery crews, communications arrays, observation platforms, monitoring stations, freight platforms, shipyards, servicing facilities, navigation and traffic control stations…every single artificial structure in the entire Solar System—two thousand T-years of building and construction and dreams, everything within a sphere eleven light hours across—vanished in that single, dreadful, perfectly coordinated cataclysm.

  Everything except the major orbital habitats and the power satellites.

  Honor watched those intolerable pinpricks spall the visual display. She listened to the reports from CIC as the tide of destruction rolled through the birth system of the humanity and knew she had just become the most hated woman in Solarian history.

  And she didn’t care.

  She waited ten minutes by the clock, then nodded to Harper Brantley.

  “Put me through,” she said and looked back to her com pickup.

  “Aye, aye, Your Grace,” he said. He punched in a command, then nodded back to her. “Live mike, Your Grace,” he told her.

  She waited another moment, letting her face, her expression, register on the eyes at the other end of the FTL link and the eight Hermes buoys riding in geosynchronous orbit about Earth and Mars. The buoys whose signals cut simultaneously into the feeds of every major news channel in the entire star system.

  “I am Admiral Harrington, of the Royal Manticoran Navy,” she told the ten or twelve billion human beings watching her at that moment. “I am speaking to you on behalf of my Empress, the President of the Republic of Haven, the Protector of Grayson, and all of our allied star systems.

  “For the last T-year, my Empress and her allies have called upon the corrupt bureaucrats running the Solarian League as their personal fiefdom to stop their unprovoked attacks and aggression against our star nations. We have persistently warned against further escalations of the conflict. We and our friends within the League attempted to be the voice of reason. For their effort, my Empress and her allies were called warmongers, imperialists, war criminals, and those within the League who attempted to be the voice of sanity were reviled as traitors and threatened with military action, including an operations plan specifically designed to violate the League’s own constitutional prohibition against deliberate mass-casualty events. Indeed, only the gallantry of a single squadron of Manticoran cruisers who sacrificed themselves engaging two hundred Solarian battlecruisers prevented the Solarian League Navy from murdering six million civilians in the Hypatia System, alone. Ninety percent of that cruiser squadron’s personnel paid with their lives to prevent that act of mass murder.

  “During the past year, the Solarian League Navy has suffered literally millions of casualties against our Allied navies. In that time, the SLN has not won a single major engagement. Admiral Crandall’s fleet was annihilated or captured to the last ship in the Talbott Quadrant. Admiral Filareta’s fleet suffered the same fate in Manticore itself. Naval Station Ganymede, right here in the Sol System, was surrendered without inflicting a single casualty on the forces under my command. Every mobile unit of the SLN, every fleet base, every maintenance platform, every tanker in the Sol System has been destroyed or is occupied by my personnel. And I have just completed the destruction of every deep-space industrial facility in the star system. They are gone, as if they had never existed.”

  She paused to let that sink in, then smiled thinly and coldly.

  “I realize many of you believe our allegations about the existence of the ‘Mesan Alignment’ are either a fabrication to justify our own criminal, imperialist expansion or else the product of the deranged paranoia only to be expected from people who support the abolitionist movement. From people who believe there is actually something evil and depraved in manufacturing human beings as property and then trading and selling them. I know that. My Empress and her allies know that. But we really don’t care whether or not you believe us. Not anymore. Except in one way.

  “Your corrupt rulers, the Mandarins, have aided and enabled the Alignment from the beginning. Perhaps that wasn’t their intention. Perhaps they genuinely didn’t believe what we told them. But whether it was their intention or not, the consequence is the same. And whether it was their intention or not, their actions remain equally vile and contemptible, a rank violation of interstellar law and solemn interstellar conventions the Solarian League itself sponsored and guaranteed over the centuries. They dispatched fleets—not squadrons, not taskforces, but fleets, containing hundreds of superdreadnoughts—to attack our star systems and our people without even seeking a formal declaration of war. Without provocation. When every shot that we had fired was in self-defense.

  “The Yawata Strike, carried out—we believe—by the Alignment, killed eight million people, including the total population of the city of Yawata, where ninety percent of my own family lived. The SLN was prepared to murder six million more in Hypatia. And two weeks ago, the SLN attacked Beowulf—the oldest extrasolar colony in the galaxy, the star system which led the fight to save this star system’s population from extinction after old Earth’s Final War, the star system which sponsored the Solarian League’s Constitution. And in the course of that attack, over forty-three million civilian citizens of Beowulf were killed.”

  She paused once more, and the flag bridge was as still and silent about her as the vacuum beyond Imperator’s hull.

  “We have tried from the beginning to minimize casualties and loss of life,” she said then, her voice like hammered copper. “Until today, until I arrived in the Sol System with my fleet, we had not initiated a single conflict with the Solarian League Navy or any of the League’s armed forces. We have stood our ground, we have defended our friends and allies, but we have not attempted to take the war to the League as we have just conclusively demonstrated we might have done at any time.

  “The Manticore Binary System was attacked in a blatant Eridani violation, and the Mandarins’ only response—the sole response of the star nation whose constitution enshrines a specific obligation to punish Eridani violations—was to capitalize upon it. Instead of seeking out whoever had committed it, instead of even so much as verbally condemning it, they dispatched Admiral Filareta to complete the Star Empire’s destruction.

  “Since that time, half a dozen neutral star systems have been attacked, their economies totally destroyed, by the Solarian League Navy. Beowulf has suffered millions upon millions of deaths as a consequence of the aggression of the Solarian League. And in all that time, we have not killed a single civilian in a single League system. Even today, we have not killed a single civilian. We have attempted to use diplomacy. We have attempted to use economic pressure. We have done everything we possibly could to bring this conflict to an end without mass destruction, without mass murders. And our reward has been to have our civilians, our families, murdered in their millions instead.

  “This ends today.”

  Her eyes glittered, Nimitz rose high and proud on her shoulder, baring his fangs, and her nostrils flared.

  “These are the demands of the Grand Alliance, the conditions upon which this travesty will end.

  “First, the unelected bureaucrats who created and drove this conflict will be arrested by the League and surrendered to us to be tried for crimes against humanity on a scale the galaxy has not seen in over a thousand years.

  “Second, every unit of the Solarian League Navy outside a member system of the Solarian League will be withdrawn immediately. Any unit of the SLN found outside a member system of the League within one month of this moment will be regarded as a piratic vessel, not a legitimate ship of war protected by the Deneb Accords, which the Solarian League Navy has already demonstrated its willingness to ignore. As such, it will be summarily destroyed and will not be permitted to surrender.”

  She paused a heartbeat for that to sink in.

  “Third, the Legislative Assembly of the Solarian League will immediately summon a constitutional convention to meet here, in the Sol System, to write a new constitution for the Solarian League. You will not attempt to repair or amend the abortion which permitted the Mandarins to cause so many millions of deaths. You will write a constitution which places authority—and responsibility—in the hands of elected officials, not unelected bureaucrats governing by fiat and regulation. The Alliance does not care what form that government takes—republic, constitutional monarchy, or any other form is perfectly acceptable to us, so long as it precludes the resurgence of the corrupt, venal, unaccountable oligarchy which plunged the galaxy into this bloodbath.

  “Fourth, that constitution will guarantee the right of any present member of the Solarian League to leave the League. It will dissolve the Protectorates. It will return ownership of all property of any sort whatsoever it or any private Solarian entity may control in any star system of the Protectorates to the government and citizens of that star system. It will disband the Office of Frontier Security. And it will create a process and an established procedure by which any present or future member system of the Solarian League may legally secede upon the vote of three quarters or more of its population. And it would be wise of that constitution to take cognizance of the fact that the Alliance will stand sponsor to those secession votes and support their outcomes.”

  She paused once again and squared her shoulders.

  “I have communicated the Alliance’s terms and conditions publicly, so that there can be no misunderstanding. So that no one like Malachai Abruzzi can distort them, lie about them. And I also inform you today that the Alliance will see to it that those demands and conditions are met.

  “We will not put armed forces on Old Earth. We will not invade any of the League’s member worlds. We will not send our personnel to take the Mandarins into custody. We will not threaten the life of anyone on any League planet.

  “We have taken no civilian lives here in the Sol System. We will continue to avoid the infliction of mass casualties. But if these terms are not accepted, if the motion to assemble a constitutional convention has not cleared the Assembly, within one month, I will divide Grand Fleet into four taskforces, and those taskforces will proceed to the next four wealthiest star systems in the Solarian League. When they reach their destinations, they will do to those star systems what I have done today to yours. And at the end of another month, if these terms still have not been accepted, they will move to the next four wealthiest star systems. And the next four. They will continue doing so until our conditions are accepted…or there are no more industrialized systems in the Solarian League.”

  She let the threat lie before them, cold and stinking of danger, and then she inhaled deeply.

  “Those are the Alliance’s terms. The choice to accept or reject them is yours. I advise you to choose wisely.

  “Harrington, clear.”

  George Benton Tower

  City of Old Chicago

  Sol System

  Solarian League

  “—and the Assembly will never give in!” Nathan MacArtney insisted hotly. “Roll over and play dead for an ‘alliance’ of neobarbs who just totally destroyed Sol’s economy? Who’ve threatened to treat Navy ships as pirates and massacre their personnel? The delegates will never agree to that!”

  “Nathan’s right.” Malachai Abruzzi’s voice was harsh, his eyes glittering. “We need to fight on. We’re closing the technological gap, and they know it. That’s the real reason they were desperate enough to try this ‘Operation Nemesis’ shit! They know damned well that we didn’t kill all those civilians in Beowulf—if anyone killed them; I’m not at all sure they were killed in the first place!—but they’re using it as an excuse, and sooner or later, everyone in the League will realize that’s all the hell this is. If they’re stupid enough to threaten the industrial capacity of every Solarian star system, they’ll create so much hatred, so much resentment, public opinion will demand we burn their systems to the ground and sow the ruins with salt! We’ll turn them into bad memories, and—”

  Innokentiy Kolokoltsov tuned them out. He sat at the head of the conference table, and for the first time in his long life, he genuinely had no idea what to do next. Agatá Wodoslawski wasn’t present, and he wondered where she was. Perhaps she believed she could find a bolthole somewhere, a way to evade the fate Harrington had decreed for them. A place to hide.

  God knew they could all use one.

  But there’s not one. Not one that’s deep enough, anyway, he thought. And especially not since Harrington laid it all out on the public boards that way. There’s no one in the entire star system who doesn’t know precisely what the “Alliance’s” conditions are. Or who they blame for all of this.

  Was it remotely possible, he wondered, that the Manties had been right all along about the existence of the “Mesan Alignment”…or something like the “Alignment,” at least? Could it be that they’d actually been telling the truth—as they understood it, at least—in all those diplomatic notes, all those protests he’d so blithely disregarded?

  He didn’t know the answers to those questions, and if he didn’t, then how could the man in the street, or even an Assembly delegate, know them?

  The answer to that question, at least, was childishly simple: they couldn’t, and it didn’t matter a single, solitary damn.

  They couldn’t know whether or not the Manties were telling the truth, no. But they did know whose heads the Manties had chosen to demand. They did know who the Manties blamed.

  And they knew who they had to hand over to prevent the Manties and their friends from wrecking the Solarian League from one end to the other.

  The only good thing was that Harrington had given them a month. Kolokoltsov knew damned well it wasn’t going to take that long for the citizens of the Sol System to decide what they were going to do, but at least they had a little time. Maybe there really was a bolthole they could reach. Maybe—

  The conference room door opened abruptly, without warning, and his head snapped up as a Gendarmerie brigadier, accompanied by a Gendarmerie lieutenant colonel and a Marine major walked through it unannounced. He opened his mouth to demand an explanation, then froze as a dozen assault rifle-armed gendarmes and Marines in light body armor followed on their heels.

  “What’s the meaning of this!” MacArtney’s demand was hot, fierce…and frightened.

  “My name is Gaddis,” the brigadier said flatly. “This is Lieutenant Colonel Okiku and Major Tarkovsky. We’re here to place you under arrest.”

  “Arrest?” MacArtney surged to his feet, pounding both fists on the conference table, his face dark with fury. “We’ll have you court-martialed! We’ll have you shot for mutiny! You have no authority, no—!”

  “We have all the authority we need,” Gaddis’s cold tone cut across MacArtney’s fiery indignation like a sword. “It comes from Admiral Winston Kingsford and Deputy Attorney General Marie-Claire Rorendaal.” MacArtney’s mouth snapped shut, and Gaddis’s eyes glittered. “Attorney General Rorendaal, on the basis of information and evidence laid before her, has authorized your arrest for conspiracy, treason, and mass murder. Given the…uncertain state of the civilian government and its agencies, she’s formally requested that Admiral Kingsford and the Navy oversee that arrest.”

  It was suddenly very, very quiet in the conference room, and Gaddis’s smile was a vibro blade.