House of Steel The Honorverse Companion - By David Weber Page 0,55

figured out how far behind the RMN’s actually deployed hardware it was, far less how far behind Gram and the rest of the Star Kingdom’s “black” R&D it was, yet it was clearly making a push to improve its position.

Possibly the fact that the Andermani Empire had finally bought the Astral Energetics’ version of the laser head and put it into service in 1872 had something to do with that. All indications were that Astral’s weapon was markedly inferior to Section Thirteen’s latest variant, yet the mere fact that the Andermani possessed it at all represented a closing of their capability gap vis-à-vis the Star Kingdom. Fortunately, Emperor Gustav appeared to have little interest in distracting Manticore from its concentration on Haven, at least at the moment, but the IAN’s introduction of the weapon into open service had to have spurred Havenite interest in acquiring an equivalent capability. At the moment, there was no evidence Technodyne had a laser head design to sell, but like most Solarian transstellars, Technodyne had never worried all that much over abiding by export restrictions if the customer could meet its price. That being the case, there was no reason to think it would hesitate to acquire a licensed version of Astral’s design and happily sell it to the PRH, especially since the SLN didn’t even seem to have noticed its existence. The League certainly hadn’t made any move to prevent its proliferation, at any rate. Yet.

Even if that changed, Technodyne wouldn’t care as long as it didn’t get caught by someone it couldn’t buy off, and that sort of Solarian arms inspector no longer existed. And if the Peeps were short on hard currency, Technodyne could work with that, as well. After all, the Peeps had all those political prisoners to provide the labor force they needed, which meant they were actually able to deliver raw and semi-refined materials to Technodyne—via the Junction, of course—more cheaply than Technodyne could have purchased the same materials from a source in the League. All indications were that Technodyne was bleeding the Peeps’ ruthlessly, but it was a cost they could bear, at least for now.

The fact that the state owned every Havenite freighter in existence helped hold down costs, as well, he supposed. But Roger was right about the capability of the sensor suites built into the Peep freighters passing through the Junction or trundling about the Manticoran Binary System itself to deliver or pick up cargoes. They were spy ships, plain and simple, and their presence only underscored Roger’s wisdom in setting up Project Gram on Weyland, where those sensor suites never got a peek at any of the hardware Jonas Adcock and his people were beginning to surreptitiously test in the Unicorn Belt.

And it helps that Klaus Hauptman’s such a stiff-necked bastard, too, Cromarty reflected. The man holds grudges like a Gryphon Highlander, and he absolutely loathes Summercross and Lebrun. Doesn’t stop him from doing business with Summercross, or even North Hollow, but that’s just business, and he doesn’t trust any of them any farther than he could jump without counter-grav. The man might as well have the Star Kingdom’s coat of arms tattooed across his backside when it comes to national security, and it’ll be a cold day in hell before anybody in the Association or the Liberal Party hears a single word out of him about the toys he’s been building for Gram over the last couple of T-years.

“You’re probably right, Your Majesty,” he acknowledged out loud. “But unless we’re prepared to call Nouveau Paris on it, it’s going to be hard to make a case for denying them the access they’re asking for. We don’t have to give them favored-star nation status, but we’re going to need something more than ‘because you’re rotten people’ if we’re not going to give them at least the same degree of access we give everyone else.”

“Oh, we’ll give it to them, all right,” Roger said with an unpleasant smile. “But I’ll have my kilo of flesh from Summercross and Lebrun first.”

“Your Majesty?” Cromarty’s expression was wary, and Roger’s smile turned still colder.

“I should never have accepted all the stipulations and restrictions the two of them insisted on when we annexed the terminus,” he said, and it was Cromarty’s turn to grimace in agreement.

Roger had been right about the Opposition’s inability to stop him from making his infant daughter the Duchess of Basilisk, but they’d held out for a generous grab bag of concessions before they’d agreed