"I know." Elizabeth's eyes had darkened. "I know, and I wish there'd been some way to avoid dumping it on all of them. But—"

She broke off with an odd little shake of her head, and Honor nodded again.

"I understand that, but you were right. We had to go public with it—and not just because of our responsibility to tell people the truth. Something like this was bound to break sooner or later, and if people decided we'd been trying to hide it from them when it did . . . ."

She let her voice trail off, and Elizabeth grimaced in agreement.

"Did Stacey have a feel for how her subscribers reacted to the fact that we already sat on the news about what happened to Commodore Chatterjee for almost an entire T-month?" the queen asked after a moment.

"Some of them are upset about the delay, but she says e-mails and com calls alike are both running something like eight-to-one in support of it, and the opinion poll numbers show about the same percentages." Honor shrugged again. "Manticorans have learned a bit about when and how information has to be . . . handled carefully, let's say, in the interest of operational security. You've got a pretty hefty positive balance with most of your subjects on that issue, actually. And I think just about everyone understands that, especially in this case, we have to be wary about inflaming public opinion. And not just here in the Star Kingdom, either."

"That's my read, too," Elizabeth agreed. "But I'm still not entirely happy about mentioning the possible Manpower connection." She sighed, her expression worried. "It's bad enough telling people we're effectively at war with the Solarian League without telling them we think a bunch of nasty genetic slavers may be behind it all. Talk about sounding paranoid!"