Quite a few Manticoran politicians argued that the Star Empire had a moral responsibility to provide the stability the ex-Protectorates needed. That, as the creator of the power vacuum, the Grand Alliance was the only force capable of filling it. Part of Honor wanted—badly—to endorse that argument. She was a historian, and specifically a military historian, and she knew how poorly it was going to end in some of those star systems. She didn’t want to see that…and, she knew, she wanted to avoid the moral guilt for having allowed it to happen. But the last thing the galaxy needed was for the
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