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place?
    It took all of his self-control to keep his eyes from narrowing in sudden, intense speculation, but this was definitely not the time to ask either of those questions. And even if he'd asked, the answers—assuming Rajampet answered him honestly—would only have raised additional questions. Besides, however far into this particular pie Rajampet's finger might be, the CNO was covered. Byng's assignment, while not precisely routine, wasn't completely unprecedented. It was certainly justifiable in the wake of the Battle Monica and all the charges and counter charges that had spawned, as well. And, equally certainly, Crandall had the seniority to choose, within reason, where to carry out her training exercises. So if it just happened she'd picked the McIntosh System for Exercise Winter Forage (or whatever she'd decided to call it in the end), and if that just happened to mean Task Force 496 was barely fifty light-years away from the Meyers System, that didn't necessarily indicate any collusion on Rajampet's part.
    Sure it didn't , he thought. And I'll bet that answers my first question, too. Hell no he didn't tell them. And he's covered no matter what happens, because she's undoubtedly made up her own mind by now what she's going to do, and he can't possibly get orders to her in time to stop her. So, really, there was no point in telling them, was there?
    Winston Kingsford hadn't commanded a fleet in space in decades, but he had plenty of experience in the tortuous, byzantine maneuvers of the Solarian League's bureaucracy. And he was well aware of how much Rajampet resented his own exclusion from the cozy little civilian fivesome which actually ran the League. Minister of Defense Taketomo's real power was no greater than that of any of the other cabinet ministers who theoretically governed the League, but Defense was—or damned well ought to be, anyway—at least as important as Commerce or Education and Information. It had a big enough budget to be, at any rate, and it was critical enough to the League's prosperous stability. Yet Rajampet had been denied his place at the head table, and it irritated the hell out of him.
    But if we should just happen to get into a real, genuine war for the first time in three or four hundred years, all of that could change, couldn't it? Kingsford thought. I wonder how many people Rajani would be willing to kill to bring that about?
    Despite his own trepidation, Kingsford felt a certain grudging admiration. It was always possible he was wrong, of course. In fact, he wouldn't have thought Rajampet had that sort of maneuver in him. But it wasn't as if Winston Kingsford felt any inclination to complain. After all, if Rajampet pulled it off, it was Kingsford who would eventually inherit that increased prestige and real political clout. And if everything went south on them, it wouldn't be Kingsford's fault. All he would have done was exactly what his lawful superior had instructed him to do.
    It never even crossed his mind that in most star nations what he suspected Rajampet of would have constituted treason, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. For that matter, under the letter of the Solarian League Constitution, it did constitute treason—or, at the very least, "high crimes and misdemeanors" which carried the same penalty. But the Constitution had been a dead letter virtually from the day the original ink dried, and what someone else in some other star nation, far, far away, would have called "treason" was simply the way things were done here in the Solarian League. And, after all, somebody had to get them done, one way or another.
    "Well, Sir," he said, speaking for the recorders he knew were taking down every word, "I can't say I'm looking forward to the thought of having any more of our people killed, but I'm afraid you're probably right about your civilian colleagues' hopes. I hope not, of course, but whatever happens there, you're definitely right about our in-house priorities. If this