Elizabeth Winton's expression was solemn as she looked out of HD displays throughout the entire Manticore Binary System while the totally unnecessary official introduction came to an end.
It wasn't as if anyone was going to fail to recognize her, even though as a general rule the Queen of Manticore seldom addressed all her subjects at the same time. In fact, these days she couldn't. She couldn't even simultaneously address all of the subjects of the "Old Star Kingdom," far less the entire Star Empire, since no one could drive a signal through a wormhole junction to Trevor's Star or the Lynx Terminus. Normally, when she spoke publicly at all, it was to relatively small gatherings—at "town hall meetings," civic organizations, charitable associations, and similar events. Clips of her remarks from those occasions, and sometimes even entire speeches, were frequently rebroadcast, but the tradition was that the reigning monarch did not engage in partisan politics. Everyone knew she (or he) really did, given that the monarch was acting head of government as well as head of state, but not in the rough-and-tumble of political strife. Which meant the prime minister was the usual face of Her Majesty's Government, except on particularly critical occasions.
Like tonight's.
"Good evening," she said quietly. "I'm speaking to you tonight because the Star Empire—our Star Empire—faces what is undoubtedly the greatest challenge and threat in our history."
She paused and reached up to gently touch the ears of the treecat stretched across the back of her chair, letting that sentence settle into her subjects' minds. Then she lowered her arm, folded her hands together on the antique desk blotter in front of her, and continued unflinchingly.
"The events of the past fifteen T-months have been the most traumatic period in the lives of every man, woman and child of the Old Star Kingdom of Manticore. No one could have imagined in her worst nightmares the sequence of events which began with the Battle of Monica, then continuted through the proposed summit meeting between myself and President Pritchart, then the assassination of Admiral Webster thirteen months ago, and the simultaneous attack on Queen Berry of Torch and my own niece. Then came the Battle of Lovat, one T-year ago—a decisive victory . . . followed less than three T-months later by the Battle of Manticore, with all the millions of dead and shattered ships which were left in its wake. And no sooner had we begun to recover from that desperate struggle, then we found ourselves plunged into a fresh confrontation—this time with the Solarian League itself—at New Tuscany. All of you know what happened when Admiral Josef Byng treacherously, and cravenly, massacred three ships of our Navy—three destroyers, fired upon by seventeen Solarian battlecruisers when they hadn't even raised their wedges or sidewalls. And all of you know what happened when Countess Gold Peak arrived at New Tuscany to demand an explanation and an accounting."
She paused once more, then allowed herself to inhale deeply.
"The confrontation with the Solarian League was not of our seeking. We endeavored to make that point clear to the Solarian government, but our diplomatic efforts were rebuffed, and our warnings about the seriousness of our impending collision—and of the outside forces we had come to believe were deliberately bringing that collision about—were ignored. Which led, just under four T-months ago, to the Battle of Spindle, where a handful of our heavy cruisers completely defeated over seventy Solarian superdreadnoughts."
An edge of iron pride showed in her voice, but her expression remained solemn, serious and focused.
"I'm sure all of you recall that moment of combined fear for the future and pride in our uniformed men and women when we realized not a single Manticoran, not one of our Grayson allies, had even been injured at Spindle. It seemed impossible that the vaunted Solarian Navy could have been so summarily and completely defeated.
"Which"—her voice dropped and hardened—"made the shock and horror of the attack on our home system immeasurably worse than it would have been anyway. It hit us at the very moment when our confidence and relief were highest, and it took us completely by surprise. The truth is that no one—not the Admiralty, not our intelligence services, not our diplomats, not our political leaders, not I, but no one—even saw that attack coming."
She made the admission unflinchingly.
"We believe the attack was made possible through the development of a radically new starship drive technology. We believe we have, after a painstaking analysis of Perimeter Security's records, identified the hyper footprint of the attackers' arrival, although it wasn't recognized as such at the time. We also believe it would be extraordinarily difficult, if not outright impossible, for a similar operation to be repeated without the attackers being detected and engaged far short of their targets.
"Yet despite all that, the truth remains—we were attacked. The attack was totally successful. Millions of our citizens, thousands of visitors to our star system, and an unconscionable percentage of the intelligent species native to this, our home system, died in a deliberate, callous attack whose very nature precluded the notice to evacuate nonmilitary personnel required under the universally recognized rules of warfare. It was, by any standard anyone might choose to apply, the most successful, most devastating, and bloodiest surprise attack in the history of human warfare, and it left our industrial infrastructure crippled and in ruins."
She paused once more, and throughout the Manticore Binary System literally billions of other human beings sat silent with her, staring at her face, wondering what she would say—what she could say—next.
"Even if we'd attempted to, there would have been no way we could have kept what happened here a secret," she resumed finally. "Although no one could definitively say even who was responsible for it, the fact that the attack had occurred, and its consequences, spread rapidly throughout the League. We do believe we know who was behind the attack upon us." Her eyes hardened, and surprise rippled through her enormous audience. "At this point, we can't prove our suspicions, but looking at everything which has happened over the past T-year, there is a very clear and discernible pattern. We know, without doubt, that we're still merely scratching the surface, that there are far more things we don't know than things we do know. But I am totally confident that we'll find the proof we require. We will discover who was behind that attack, where that attack originated, and who carried it out, and when we've proven those things to our complete satisfaction, we will act."
Her voice was a sword, chilled steel with a razor edge, and her treecat companion's ears flattened as he showed bared, needle-pointed canines.
"In the meantime, however," she continued, "those in the League whose stupidity and arrogance made them so amenable to our enemies' manipulation have not suddenly become wise. As some in the media have been reporting, the Solarian League Navy, having failed to learn its lesson at Spindle, has decided to move directly against the Manticore System. We anticipate the arrival of several hundred Solarian superdreadnoughts in our space within the next two to three T-weeks."
If the silence of her audience had been profound before, it became absolute as she made that admission.
"When those ships arrive, they will not be here on a peaceful diplomatic mission. All of us have known for our entire lives how corrupt the Solarian League has truly become. We know who truly runs the Solarian bureaucracy. We know about the 'sweetheart deals' between Solarian transstellars and the venal, utterly dishonest Frontier Security commissioners who pimp for them. We know about the vast gulf between the League's soaring professions of belief in human dignity and human worth and OFS' support of debt peonage throughout the Verge. Between the League's solemn condemnation of the interstellar genetic slave trade and the reality of high League officials and bureaucrats on the payrolls of criminal enterprises like Manpower, Incorporated."
Her lip curled, and her brown eyes glittered like ice.
"Knowing what we know, none of us can be surprised by the fact that the Solarian League Navy intends to demand the Star Empire of Manticore's unconditional surrender. The intention is to turn us into yet another OFS-administered satellite of the League. We've all seen, only too often, what happens to local government, local administration of justice, local economies, and the right of self-determination when the 'enlightened' supervision of the Office of Frontier Security engulfs an independent star nation. Make no mistake about it—that is precisely what the League intends to do to us.
"It intends to do so out of a desire for vengeance for the defeats it's suffered at our Navy's hands. It intends to do so because it cannot tolerate the example of a 'neobarb' out-system star nation which refuses to slavishly comply with the League's whims. It intends to do so because it resents the size and power of our merchant marine. And it intends to do so out of the basest motives of greed as it contemplates the potential revenue source of the Manticoran Wormhole Junction."
She paused yet again, briefly, and her shoulders squared and her head rose proudly.
"There is no hope of dissuading the Solarians from their chosen course," she said slowly and distinctly. "The Solarian League, for all its past glories and high achievements, has become an appetite, a voracious hunger, and trillions of its citizens, living safe, satisfied, self-centered, and secure lives on its core worlds, have no concept of what routinely happens to the weak and the helpless along its frontiers.
"It's time they found out."
The eyes which had been cold as ice glittered with a sudden fire, and Ariel half-rose on the back of her chair, lips curling back from his fangs in challenge.
"The Star Empire of Manticore has been wounded as we've never been wounded before," she said flatly. "But a hexapuma or a peak bear or a Kodiak max is most dangerous when it's wounded. Perhaps the men and women secure at the heart of the Solarian League's bureaucracy have forgotten that fact. If so, we're about to remind them.
"I do not say this lightly. I know, even better than any of you, how badly we've been weakened, how seriously our industrial and economic power has been reduced, what that means ultimately for our military capacity. I know the stakes."
The woman the treecats had named "Soul of Steel" looked out of all those countless HD displays, and there wasn't a single millimeter of retreat in those eyes of blazing ice.
"Despite the damage we've suffered, Home Fleet remains intact. Despite the damage to our production lines, Home Fleet's magazines are fully loaded. Our system-defense missiles are untouched. If the Solarian League wants a war, the Solarian League will have one. If that is the choice the League makes, then the war which began at New Tuscany and continued at Spindle will resume right here. Whatever they may think, the fleet they've dispatched against us is no match for our remaining combat power. If they choose to send a second, equally large, fleet after this one, the Admiralty is confident we have sufficient strength to defeat it, as well. No doubt the League believes we'll refuse to fight because of the vast difference between our ultimate capabilities. The League is wrong.
"Within six T-months, we will have reestablished our missile production capability. It won't be as great as it was prior to the recent attack, but it will be sufficient to guarantee the security of our own star systems against any ships or weapons currently in the Solarian League Navy's inventory. That is the bottom-line analysis of the Admiralty, and you have my word—and the word of the House of Winton—that I am telling you the absolute truth when I say that."
She paused once more, letting that soak into her audience's minds. Then she smiled thinly.
"There is, of course, a vast difference between being able to guarantee our own security in the near term and being able to defeat a behemoth like the Solarian League in the long term. I don't pretend to have a magic bullet to guarantee our ultimate victory. But I do have this. I have the courage of the Manticoran people. I have my own refusal to fail the trust those people have placed in the House of Winton. I have the determination of all Manticorans—those of the Old Star Kingdom and those of the Star Empire who have newly and freely joined us—to live in freedom. I have the skill and the high professionalism and the dauntless determination of the men and women of the Manticoran armed forces. And I have the absolute certainty that those things will never fail me . . . or you.
"I don't bring you any 'magic bullet,' because there is none. I make no promises of easy triumphs, because there will be no easy triumphs. I promise you only the truth, and the truth is that the price we will ultimately pay will be even higher than the one we've already paid. That the cost of the battle which waits for us will be sacrifice, loss, backbreaking toil, blood, and grief. But I also promise you this one more thing. I promise you victory. For seventy-plus T-years, the Star Empire has lived under sentence of death, yet we're still here. And we will still be here when the smoke finally clears. However long it takes, whatever sacrifice it entails, wherever the battle takes us, and no matter what foe we may face, we will triumph, and those who have wrought such destruction and suffering upon us, who have butchered our civilians, who have attacked us from the shadows like assassins, will discover to their infinite regret that in the defense of our homes, our families, and our children, we can be just as merciless as them."
Now who wants to go out and kick some Solly (and Mesan) ass!
