Weber David. Flag In Exile

   "High Admiral." She held Nimitz in the crook of her left arm and extended her right hand, and Matthews gripped it firmly.
   "Lady Harrington. Thank you for seeing me on such short notice. I hope it's not an imposition."
   "Of course not." Honor studied his expression for a moment, then glanced at Candless. "Thank you for showing the Admiral in, Jamie."
   "Of course, My Lady." It wasn't quite proper for an armsman to leave his Steadholder unguarded, but Honor's bodyguards had learned to adjust to her foibles. "High Admiral, My Lady." Candless braced to attention and left, and Honor turned back to Matthews.
   "And now, High Admiral, what can I do for you?'
   "I've come to you with a proposal, My Lady. One I'd like you to consider very carefully."
   "A proposal?" Honors right eyebrow crept back up.
   "Yes, My Lady. I'd like you to accept a commission in the Grayson Navy."
   Honor's eyes opened wide, and Nimitz pricked his ears. She started to speak, then closed her mouth and bought a few seconds to think by lifting the cat to her shoulder. He sat higher than usual atop it, his spine straight, and his fluffy tail curled about her throat in a protective gesture as both of them looked intently into Matthew's face.
   "I'm not certain that would be a good idea," she said finally.
   "May I ask why not, My Lady?"
   "For several reasons," Honor replied. "First and foremost, I'm a Steadholder. That's a full-time job, High Admiral, especially in a steading as new as this one, and particularly when there's been as much, ah, public discussion of whether or not I even ought to be one."
   "I..." Matthews paused and rubbed an eyebrow. "May I speak frankly?"
   "Of course you may."
   "Thank you." Matthews rubbed his eyebrow a moment longer, then lowered his hand. "I've discussed my desire to offer you a commission with Protector Benjamin, My Lady, and he gave me permission to do so. I'm sure he considered your responsibilities as Steadholder Harrington before he did so."
   "No doubt he did, but I have to consider them, as well. And they're only one consideration. There are others."
   "May I ask what they are?"
   "I'm an officer in the Royal Manticoran Navy, for one." Honors mouth twitched with an edge of bitterness as she said it. "I realize I'm on half-pay now, but that could change. What if they recall me to active duty?"
   "If they do, you would, of course, be free to leave Grayson service, My Lady. And, if I may anticipate a part of your point, I should point out that Manticore has a tradition of detaching officers to assist allied powers, and they've already lent us a large number of personnel. Under the circumstances, I feel confident First Space Lord Caparelli would agree to any request we might make to offer you a Grayson commission."
   Honor grimaced and chewed her lower lip. The offer had completely surprised her, and her own reaction to it puzzled her. A part of her had leapt in instant excitement, eager to get back into the one job she truly understood. But another part of her had responded with an instant stab of panic, an instinctive backing away in something uncomfortably like terror. She gazed deep into Matthews' eyes, as if what he saw when he looked at her could somehow tell her what she truly felt, but there was no help there. He simply returned her gaze, politely but directly, and she turned away from him.
   She took a quick turn about the salle, arms folded, and tried to think. What was wrong with her? This man was offering her the one thing she'd always wanted most in the universe, in the Grayson Navy, not the Manticoran, perhaps, but she was a Grayson herself, as well as a Manticoran. And he was undoubtedly correct. Political pressure might make it impossible for the Admiralty to find her a ship, but the Navy would certainly be willing to "loan" her to the Graysons. In fact, it would be an ideal solution, so why did her throat feel so tight and her heart race so hard?
   She stopped, facing out the salle's windows across her mansion's manicured grounds, and realized what it was.
   She was afraid. Afraid she couldn't do it anymore. Nimitz made a soft sound, and his tail tightened about her throat. She felt his support flow into her, but her eyes were bitter as she stared out the windows. It wasn't like other times, when she'd been nervous at the thought of assuming new duties, greater responsibilities, in her Queen's service. There was always a lurking anxiety when the push of seniority thrust her into some fresh, more demanding assignment. A tiny fear that this time she might prove unequal to those demands. But this was darker than that, and it cut far deeper.
   She closed her eyes and faced herself, and dull shame burned deep inside as she admitted the truth. She'd been... damaged. Memories of all her uncertainties, of her nightmares and unpredictable bouts of paralyzing grief and depression, flashed through her, and she shied away from the half-crippled portrait they painted. An officer who couldn't control her own emotions had no business commanding a ship of war. A captain wallowing in self-pity couldn't offer people who must live or die by her judgment her very best. That made her more dangerous than the enemy to them, and even if that hadn't been true, it was, but even if it weren't, did she have enough left inside to lay herself open to still greater damage? Could she live with herself if still more people died under her command? And perhaps more dangerous even than that, could she make herself let them die if the mission required it? People were killed in wars. If anyone in the universe knew that, she did. But could she live with sentencing her own people to death yet again if she had to? Or would she flinch away, fall short of her duty because she was too terrified of bearing more blood on her conscience to do what must be done?
   She opened her eyes and gritted her teeth, taut and trembling, and a seething uncertainty not even Nimitz could ease filled her. She fought it as she might a monster, but it refused to yield, and her reflected face looked back from the window before her, white and strained, with no answer to the questions that lashed her mind.
   "I'm... not certain I should be an officer anymore, High Admiral," she made herself say at last. It was one of the hardest things she'd ever done, but she knew it must be said.
   "Why?" he asked simply, and the wounded part of her flinched at the lack of judgment in his quiet voice.
   "I ... haven't been exactly..." She broke off and inhaled deeply, then turned to face him. "An officer has to be in command of herself before she can command others." She felt as if she were quivering like a leaf, yet her voice was level, and she made the words come out firm and clear. "She has to be able to do the job before she accepts it, and I'm not sure I can."
   Wesley Matthews nodded, and his hazel eyes were intent as he studied her face. She'd learned, over the years, to wear the mask of command, he thought, but today the anguish showed, and he felt ashamed for inflicting it upon her. This woman wasn't the cold, focused warrior who'd defended his home world against religious fanatics with five times her firepower. She'd been afraid then, too; he'd known it, even though the rules of the game had required them both to pretend he hadn't. But she hadn't feared what she feared today. She'd been afraid only of dying, of failing in the near hopeless mission she'd accepted, not that the job was one she lacked the courage to do.
   She gazed back at him, meeting his eyes, admitting that she knew what he was thinking, refusing to pretend, and he wondered if she'd ever faced this particular fear before. She was three years older than he, despite her youthful appearance, but three years either way mattered very little, and in this moment he felt suddenly as if she were truly as young as she looked. It was her eyes, he thought; the pleading look in them, the honesty that admitted she no longer knew the answers and begged him to help her find them. She was ashamed of her indecision, her "weakness," as if she didn't even realize how much strength it took to admit she was uncertain rather than pretend she wasn't.
   He bit his lip and realized how right the Protector had been to stop him from offering her a commission months ago. Not because she couldn't do the job, but because she was afraid she couldn't. Because she would have refused it, and that refusal would have ended her career forever. Inability, real or imagined, could never truly be overcome once an officer accepted deep inside that he could no longer hack it. That damage was almost always permanent, for it was self-inflicted and no one else could heal it for him.
   Yet Lady Harrington's inner jury was still out, its verdict as yet undecided, and as her haunted eyes met his without flinching, he knew the final judgment lay as much in his hands as in hers. He was the one who'd pushed it to the decision point, brought it out into the open where she had to decide, and he wished, suddenly, that he hadn't.
   But he had.
   "My Lady," he said quietly, "I can only respect the courage it takes for an officer of your caliber to admit to uncertainty, but I believe you've been too harsh on yourself. Of course you 'haven't been yourself.' How could you have been? You've seen your entire personal and professional world torn apart and been pitchforked into a totally different society and forced to become not simply a tourist there but one of its rulers. You know our beliefs, that God tests His people, that it's by rising to the Test of Life that we nurture and develop all we can be. Your Test has been far harsher and more demanding than most, My Lady, but you've risen to it as you always have, with a courage any Grayson not poisoned by bigotry and blind fear of change can only admire. It may not seem that way to you at this moment in your life, but just this once, trust our judgment more than your own, please."
   Honor said nothing, only stared into his eyes, every cell of her brain focused on his quiet words while she weighed them through her link to Nimitz. The cat sat very still on her shoulder, body rumbling with the pulse of his faint, barely audible purr, and she sensed the intensity with which he strained to convey Matthews' emotions with absolute fidelity.
   "You say you doubt your ability to 'command yourself,'" the admiral continued. "My Lady, the manner in which you've discharged your duties as Steadholder Harrington is the clearest possible proof that you can. You've brought this steading further in a shorter time than any other steading in our history. I fully realize that you've had help, that Lord Clinkscales is an outstanding regent and that the influx of new technology has given you opportunities few other new steadholders have had, but you've seized those opportunities. And when hate-filled, frightened men attacked you simply for being what you are, you neither let them stop you from doing your duty nor lashed out at them. You've acted, always and in every way, responsibly, however badly you may have been hurt. I see absolutely no reason to believe you'll act, that you even know how to act, in any other way in the future."
   Still Honor said nothing, but his sincerity washed into her through Nimitz. He truly believed his own words. He might be wrong, but he wasn't saying them simply to win a point or because courtesy demanded he pretend she was still a whole person.
   "I..." She stopped and cleared her throat, then looked away, breaking the intensity of the moment. "You may be right, High Admiral," she went on after a pause. "I'd like to believe you are. Perhaps I even do believe it, and there's certainly something to be said for getting back up on the horse." She paused again, and surprised herself with a small, genuine smile. "'Back up on the horse,'" she repeated softly. "Do you know, I've used that cliché all my life, and I've never even been within a hundred kilometers of a horse?" She shook herself, and her voice was brisker, closer to normal when she continued.
   "However, the fact remains that I am Steadholder Harrington. Is it really more important for you to have one more captain, especially one who may or may not, whatever either of us thinks, be up to doing her duty, than for me to continue with my responsibilities here?"
   "My Lady, Lord Clinkscales has proven he can govern Harrington in your complete absence if he must, and you'll never be more than a few hours com time from him at any point in the Yeltsin System. You can continue to discharge your duties to your steading, but you may not realize just how desperately the Navy needs you."
   "Desperately?" Honors eyebrows rose once more, and the admiral smiled without humor at the genuine surprise in her voice.
   "Desperately, My Lady. Think about it. You know how tiny our Navy was before we joined the Alliance, and you were here when Masada attacked us. Only three of our starship captains survived, and we never had the experience with modern weapons and tactics the Manticoran Navy takes for granted to start with. I think we've done well, but aside from those officers like Captain Brentworth with limited experience in antipiracy operations, none of our new captains have ever commanded in action, and all of them are very, very new to their duties. More than that, we've suddenly found ourselves with a fleet more huge than any Grayson officer ever dreamed of commanding. We're stretched to the breaking point, My Lady, and not one of my officers, not even me, their commander-in-chief, has a fraction of the experience you have. I don't believe for a moment that the RMN will leave you dirt-side long. Their Admiralty's not that stupid, whatever the political situation in the Star Kingdom. But it's absolutely imperative that, while we have you, you pass on as much as possible of that experience to us."
   His stark sincerity sank into Honor's mind, and she frowned. She'd never considered it in that light. She'd seen only the determined way the GSN had tackled the task of expanding its forces and mastering its new weapons, and she suddenly wondered why she hadn't realized what an enormous leap into the unknown that must be. She herself had been trained and groomed in a fleet with a five-hundred-T-year tradition as a first-rank interstellar navy. It had shaped and formed her, infused its views and confidence into her, given her its heroes and failures as metersticks and a rich body of tactical and strategic thought on which to base her own. The Grayson Navy lacked those advantages. It was barely two centuries old, and before the Alliance, it had never been more than a system defense fleet, with no access to the reservoirs of institutional memory and experience the Royal Manticoran Navy took for granted.
   And now, in less than four T-years, it had been thrust into a war for survival that raged across a volume measured in hundreds of light-years. It had expanded a hundred fold and more in those same four years, but its officers must be agonizingly aware of how thinly stretched they were, how new they were to the duties and challenges they faced.
   "I ... never thought of it that way, High Admiral," she said after a long pause. "I'm only a captain. I've always been concerned with just my own ship, or possibly a single squadron."
   "I realize that, My Lady, but you have commanded a squadron. Aside from myself and Admiral Garret, there's not a single surviving Grayson officer who'd ever done that before we joined the Alliance, and we've got eleven superdreadnoughts to command, not to mention our lighter units."
   "I understand." Honor hesitated a moment longer, then sighed. "You know the buttons to punch, don't you, High Admiral?" Her voice was amused, not accusing, and Matthews shrugged and smiled back at her, acknowledging the truth of her statement. "All right. If you really need one somewhat less than mint-condition captain, I suppose you've got her. What were you planning to do with her?"
   "Well," Matthews tried to hide his exultation at her response, but it was hard, especially when her treecat flipped its ears and wrinkled its muzzle at him in an unmistakable grin. "The yard will finish refitting the Terrible next month. She's the last of the prizes Admiral White Haven turned over to us, so I thought it would be fitting to give you her."
   "A superdreadnought?" Honor cocked her head, then chuckled. "That's quite an inducement, High Admiral. I've never skippered anything bigger than a battlecruiser. Talk about a jump in seniority!"
   "I don't think you quite understand, My Lady. I don't intend to put you in command of Terrible. Or perhaps I should say, not directly in command of her."
   "I beg your pardon?" Honor blinked. "I thought you said..."
   "I said I was giving you Terrible," Matthews said, "but not as her CO. That will be up to your flag captain, Admiral Harrington; I'm giving you the entire First Battle Squadron."

CHAPTER SEVEN

   The man behind the outsized desk was of medium height, thin-faced and dark-haired, and touches of white at his temples marked him as a first or second-generation prolong recipient. There was nothing imposing about him, he might have been a businessman, or perhaps an academic, until one saw his eyes. Dark eyes, intense and focused and just a bit dangerous, as was only fitting in the most powerful single man in the People's Republic of Haven.
   His name was Robert Stanton Pierre, and he was chairman of the Committee of Public Safety which had been formed after the assassination of Hereditary President Sidney Harris, his cabinet, and the heads of virtually every important Legislaturalist family. The Navy had killed them in an attempted military coup, everyone knew that... except for less than thirty people (still living, that was) who knew Pierre had arranged it all himself.
   Now he leaned back in his chair, gazing out across the city of Nouveau Paris through the floor to ceiling window of his three-hundredth-floor office, and his narrowed eyes took on the cast of flint as he contemplated his achievements. He fully appreciated both the complexity and the staggering scope of the operation he'd carried off, yet something a bit more anxious, with a hint of what could almost have been desperation, flawed the flint in his gaze, and there was a reason for that. One he disliked admitting, even to himself.
   Pierre couldn't have accomplished all he had without the rot spreading from the Legislaturalists' policies, yet the very thing which had made their overthrow possible also made it all but impossible to fundamentally change the system they'd spent two centuries building. They'd created a vast, permanently unemployed underclass, dependent upon the Republic's stupendous welfare machine for its very existence, and in so doing, they'd sown the seeds of their own destruction. No one could place two-thirds of a world's population on the Dole and keep them there forever without the entire system crashing... but how in hell did one get them off the Dole?
   He sighed and walked over to the windows as darkness closed in on the capital and its lights blinked to life, and wondered yet again what had possessed the Dolist system's creators to birth such a monster. The enormous towers blazed alight, flaming against the gold and crimson of Haven's sunset, and a sense of his own mortality warred with his fierce determination. The system was so vast, the forces which drove it almost beyond calculation, and he was a product of the old regime, as well as its executioner. He was ninety-two T-years old, and he yearned for the days of his youthful certainty, when the system had worked, superficially, at least, even as a part of him knew it had been doomed long before his birth. That younger Pierre had bought into the lie that said the state could provide every citizen a guaranteed, ever higher standard of living, regardless of his own productivity or lack thereof, and that was what had so enraged him when he recognized its hollowness. It was rage which had fueled his ambition, driven him to claw his own way off the Dole and become the most powerful of Havens Dolist managers, and he knew it. Just as he knew that same rage, that need to punish the system for its lies, was what had fused with the death of his only child to make him the hammer that smashed the system to splinters.
   He laughed bitterly, without mirth. Smash the system. Oh, that was a good one! He'd done just that, wiped away the Legislaturalists in a thunderbolt of precision-guided bombs and colder, bloodier pogroms. He'd destroyed the old officer corps, Navy and Marine alike, crushed every source of organized opposition. The Legislaturalists' hydra-headed security organs had been ambushed, dissolved, merged into one, all-powerful Office of State Security responsible only to him. He'd achieved all that in less man a single T-year, at the cost of more thousands of lives than he dared remember... and "the system" sneered at his efforts.
   There'd been a time when the Republic of Haven, not "the People's Republic," but simply "the Republic", had inspired an entire quadrant. It had been a bright, burning beacon, a wealthy, vastly productive renaissance which had rivaled Old Earth herself as the cultural and intellectual touchstone of humanity. Yet that glorious promise had died. Not at the hands of foreign conquerors or barbarians from the marches, but in its sleep, victim of the best of motives. It had sacrificed itself upon the altar of equality. Not the equality of opportunity, out of outcomes. It had looked upon its own wealth and the inevitable inequities of any human society and decided to rectify them, and somehow the lunatics had taken over the asylum. They'd transformed the Republic into the People's Republic, a vast, crazed machine that promised everyone more and better of everything, regardless of their own contributions to the system. And, in the process, they'd built a bureaucratic Titan locked into a headlong voyage to self-destruction and capable of swallowing reformers like gnats.
   Rob Pierre had challenged that Titan. He'd poured out the blood of the men and women who'd been supposed to run the machine like water, concentrated more power in his person than any Legislaturalist had ever dreamed of possessing, and it meant nothing, for, in truth, the machine had run them, and the machine remained. He was a fly, buzzing about the maggot-ridden corpse of a once great star nation. Oh, he had a sting, yet he could sting but one maggot at a time, and for each he destroyed, a dozen more hatched in its place.
   He swore softly and raised his fists above his head, planting them against the window, and leaned into the tough plastic. He pressed his face to it and closed his eyes and swore again, more viciously. The rot had gone too far. The Legislaturalists' parents and grandparents had taken too many workers out of the labor force in the name of "equality," debased the educational system too terribly in the name of "democratization." They'd taught the Dolists that their only responsibilities were to be born, to breathe, and to draw their Basic Living Stipends, and that the function of their schools was to offer students "validation", whatever the hell that was, rather than education. And when the rulers realized they'd gutted their own economy, that its total collapse was only a few, inevitable decades away unless they could somehow undo their "reforms," they'd lacked the courage to face the consequences.
   Perhaps they, unlike Pierre, actually could have repaired the damage, but they hadn't. Rather than face the political consequences of dismantling their vote-buying system of bread and circuses, they'd looked for another way to fill the welfare coffers, and so the People's Republic had turned conquistador. The Legislaturalists had engulfed their interstellar neighbors, looting other economies to transfuse life back into the corpse of the old Republic of Haven, and, for a time, it had seemed to work.
   But appearances had been misleading, for they'd exported their own system to the worlds they conquered. They'd had no choice, it was the only one they knew, yet it had poisoned the captive economies as inexorably as their own. The need to squeeze those economies to prop up their own had only made them collapse sooner, and as the revenue sources dried up, they'd been forced to conquer still more worlds, and still more. Each victim provided a brief, illusory spurt of prosperity, but only until it, too, failed and became yet another burden rather than an asset. It had been like trying to outrun entropy, yet they'd left themselves no other option, and as conquest bloated the People's Republic, the forces needed to safeguard those conquests and add still more to them had grown, as well.
   The galaxy at large had seen only the Republic's stupendous size, the massive power of its war machine, and Haven's neighbors had shivered in terror as the juggernaut bore down upon them. But how many of those neighbors, Pierre wondered, had seen the weakness at the juggernaut's heart? The ramshackle economy stumbling towards collapse, dragged down by the dead weight of the Dole and the crushing cost of its war machine? The Republic had become little more than an appetite, a parasite which must devour more and more hosts to survive. Yet there were only so many hosts to be devoured, and when all of them were drained, the parasite itself must perish.
   Rob Pierre had looked below the surface. He'd seen the inevitable and tried to stop it, and he couldn't. He, too, was caught, like a blind aerialist forced to run along a high-wire while he juggled a dozen hand grenades. He controlled the machine, yet the machine had him in its jaws, as well, and he turned away from the window and returned to his desk while the dreadfully familiar cycle of his options churned through his brain.
   At least he'd managed one thing no Legislaturalist ever had, he told himself bitterly. He'd actually awakened the Dolists from their apathy, but they'd waked ignorant. They'd been drones too long. They'd been taught that that was the way things were supposed to be, and their fury was directed not towards scrapping the old system and building anew, but to punishing those who had "betrayed" them by robbing them or their "economic birthright."
   Perhaps it was his own fault for clutching at the familiar catchwords when he found himself straddling the vast, hungry beast that was the People's Republic. He'd punched the buttons of expediency in the name of survival, embracing the rhetoric of people like Cordelia Ransom because it was the language the mob understood and he'd feared the mob. He admitted it to himself. For all his contempt for the people who'd let things reach this pass, he, too, had been afraid. Afraid of failure. Of admitting to the mob that there were no quick fixes. Afraid the beast would turn upon him and devour him.
   He'd meant to introduce genuine reforms, he thought wearily. He truly had. But the mob wanted simple solutions, uncomplicated answers, and it didn't care that the real world wasn't like that. Worse, it had tasted blood and discovered the pleasure of smashing its enemies, and it sensed, dimly, perhaps, yet sensed, its own immense, latent power. It was like a homicidal adolescent driven by urges it didn't understand, without the self-discipline that might have controlled those urges and unconcerned with consequences, and the only way to avoid becoming its target was to give it other targets.
   And so he had. He'd pointed at the Legislaturalists as traitors who'd fattened on the wealth that should have gone to the Dolists, denounced them as profiteers and grafters, and the undeniable wealth of the great Legislaturalist families had made it work, for they had siphoned off immense fortunes. But what he hadn't told the mob, what the mob hadn't wanted to hear, was that all the wealth of all the Legislaturalists of the PRH was meaningless against its debts. Nationalizing their fortunes had provided a temporary relief, a fleeting illusion of improvement, yet it could be no more than that, and so he'd given the mob the Legislaturalists themselves. He'd loosed Oscar Saint-Just's new Office of State Security upon them and watched the "People's Courts" condemn family after family to death for "treason against the people." And as the execution totals rose, he'd learned a terrible truth: bloodletting simply beget more bloodletting. The conviction that the mob had a right to vengeance upon its "betrayers" only fanned the frenzy with which that vengeance was demanded, and when the supply of victims ran short, new ones were required.
   And when Pierre realized the impossibility of fulfilling even the modest promises of reform he'd made upon seizing power, he'd also realized that sooner or later, as the latest savior to fail the mob, he must become its victim unless, somehow, he could find someone else upon whom to fix the blame. And so, in desperation, he'd turned to Cordelia Ransom, the third member of the triumvirate which now ran the Republic.
   Pierre was firmly placed as that triumvirate's senior member and master. He'd taken steps to stay that way and seen to it that both his associates knew it, yet he needed them, as well. He needed Ransom's ability as the new regime's propagandist... and he needed Saint-Just not simply to control the security forces but to watch Ransom, for there were times the golden-haired, blue-eyed Secretary of Public Information frightened Pierre almost more than the mob did.
   She wasn't brilliant, but she had a quick, iron-nerved cleverness and an innate talent for intrigue which had made her invaluable when it came to staging the coup. But she was also utterly ruthless and a brilliant demagogue who actually enjoyed the bloodshed, as if it were some sort of drug. A proof of the power she wielded. Something dark and hungry at her core seemed to crave destruction for its own sake, however it might cloak itself in the rhetoric of "reform" and "rights" and "the service of the people."
   Yet however much he might fear her, he'd seen no choice but to call on her ability to sway the mob. Not even she had been able to calm it, assuming she'd ever actually tried, but she spoke its language, and she understood the need to outrun its passions. To stay ahead of it by anticipating its next furious demand. And because she did, she'd been able to redirect its frenzy to an external target for its hate.
   The Legislaturalists had been the people's enemies, elitist conspirators who'd stolen the people's birthright and squandered it in imperialist wars of aggrandizement. Never mind that those wars had been fought to shore up a collapsing economy and preserve the Dolists' own parasitic lifestyle. Never mind that expansion, once embraced, was part of a feeding cycle which couldn't be renounced. The mob didn't want to hear that, so Cordelia hadn't told it.
   Instead, she'd offered it what it did want to hear. Her argument was so riddled with gaping inconsistencies that Pierre hadn't been able to believe anyone could accept it, but she'd sold it to the mob by pandering to its belief in its own rectitude. The mob wanted, needed, to believe it was more than a parasite, that it truly was entitled to all the "rights" it claimed by some sort of natural law, and it followed from that belief that only some vast conspiracy could deny it those rights. Cordelia had recognized its need to see itself as the victim of enemies working perpetually for its downfall rather than admit the system it demanded work couldn't work, and she'd given it those enemies.
   Of course the people wanted only peace, asked no more than to be left alone in the enjoyment of the prosperity which was their basic right, for wasn't that peace and prosperity the natural order of things? But the traitors who'd filched away their rights had also committed them to a course of war from which the people could not turn aside. After all, the Manticoran Alliance had attacked them, hadn't the Office of Public Information told them so? Never mind that an attack by the Alliance was totally at odds with the notion of the Legislaturalists as warmongers. The Alliance was part of the same corrupt order of imperialist militarists. Its member systems were no more than puppets, controlled by the Star Kingdom of Manticore, which hungered for the Republics destruction because it recognized the inevitable, natural enmity between itself and the people. The Star Kingdom wasn't even a republic, but a monarchy, ruled by a Queen and an overt aristocracy, and it didn't even pretend to respect the People's Republic's rights. It denied the Republic's citizens their prosperity by hoarding its vast wealth for the selfish ends of its own hereditary ruling class. That alone would have made it the peoples mortal foe, but it also knew what would happen if its own subjects should realize the people were right, recognize how they had been victimized, as well. No wonder Manticore had attacked the Republic; it must destroy the PRH root and branch before the inexorable spread of the people's rightful demands brought about its own destruction.
   The people had arisen in their just and terrible wrath to overthrow their plutocratic overlords only to find that it faced a still more heinous foe. A foreign foe whose overlords must be smashed in turn if the people were to be safe and secure. And so the mob had mobilized, with a fierce devotion to purpose which could have achieved almost anything if only there'd been a way to convert it to some constructive purpose.
   But there wasn't. Insane as it seemed, the coup Rob Pierre had staged in no small part to stem the military's drain on the economy had become a crusade. He'd meant only to use the immediate crisis of the Manticoran War to distract the mob and stifle dissent until he was firmly in control, but Cordelia's rhetoric had imbued that war with a life of its own. After half a T-century of total apathy and disinterest in whoever the Republic was conquering this month, the mob was willing, even eager, to defer demands for a higher BLS in order to finance the destruction of Manticore and all its works. The Committee of Public Safety couldn't renounce the war, lest the Dolists it had awakened turn upon it for its apostasy. Its only salvation, and the only hope for the reforms of which Pierre once had dreamed, was to win the war, for that and that alone might give it the moral authority to make genuine reforms.
   And for now, at least, the mob was willing to sacrifice. It was actually willing to set aside its comfortable, nonproductive lifestyle and report for military training, even to learn useful skills and labor in the shipyards to replace the ships which had been destroyed. It was even possible it would reacquire the habit of working, that there would be enough skilled workers when the war ended to turn their hands to rebuilding the PRH's threadbare infrastructure. Stranger things had happened, Pierre told himself, and tried to pretend he was doing something more than clutching at straws.
   But for any of that to happen, the war must be won, and in return for its own sacrifices, the mob demanded that the Navy, and the Committee of Public Safety, do just that. The extremism that possessed the Republic like a blood fever demanded proof of its leaders' commitment, and since the Navy had been branded with responsibility for the Harris Assassination, the Navy must prove its worthiness by winning victories. Any who failed the people in their time of trial must be punished, both for their own crimes and as a warning to others, and so Pierre had embraced a public policy of collective responsibility. The officers of the Navy were all on trial; any who failed in their duties must know that not just they but their entire families would suffer for it, for somehow this had become a war of extermination, and no quarter could be given to enemies, foreign or internal, when the stakes were victory or annihilation.
   It wasn't the revolution Pierre had wanted, but it was the one he had. And at least the reign of terror he'd unleashed had stiffened the Navy's spine, so perhaps the mob had a point. Perhaps it was possible to find at least some simple solutions if a man was willing to kill enough people in the search.
   He scrubbed his face with his hands, then keyed his terminal to view the top secret file once more. The old Naval Intelligence Branch had been merged with the Office of State Security along with every other intelligence organ of the PRH. The bulk of the pre-coup Navy's strategists had vanished in the purges, yet the core of analysts who'd served them had not only survived but learned what would happen if they failed to produce. Their analyses contained too many qualifiers and reservations, no doubt in an effort to cover their own backs, but they were generating an immense amount of raw data, and a handful of new strategists were emerging to use that data. They were ambitious, those strategists. They sensed the opportunities for personal power that hid in the Republic's barely restrained chaos. Too many were loyal to the Committee of Public Safety only because they dared not be anything else, yet, and Pierre suspected Admiral Thurston, the author of the plan on his terminal, was one of those. But for now, at least, the men and women like Thurston knew their own success, and survival, depended upon the Committee’s survival.
   They also knew the Navy needed a victory. As an absolute minimum, it had to stop the Manties' advance into the People's Republic, yet that would be the least desirable option. No doubt Cordelia's ministry could turn that into a decisive triumph, but how much better if it could win an offensive victory. And, from a strategic viewpoint, the People's Navy desperately needed something to divert Manty strength from the front-line systems. That front was stabilizing, but it was far from certain that it would stay stabilized... unless the RMN's strategists could somehow be distracted from fresh offensives.
   It was the purpose of the operations outlined on Pierre's terminal to provide that distraction, and despite his weariness, he felt his own interest rousing as he reread the file. It could work, he thought, and even if it failed, it would cost little that truly mattered. The People's Navy had immense reserves of battleships, units that were too weak to face the shock of combat in the wall of battle but which, properly utilized, could nonetheless exert a tremendous influence on the course of the war.
   He sat back, gazing at the data on his terminal, and nodded slowly. The time had come to put those battleships to use, and Thurston's plan was not only the most audacious suggestion of how to do that but also offered the richest prize if it succeeded.
   He nodded once more and picked up an electronic stylus. He dashed it across the scanner pad and watched a brief, handwritten memo blink into life on the display.
   "Operation Stalking Horse and Operation Dagger approved, by order of Rob S. Pierre, Chairman, Committee of Public Safety. Activate immediately," it said.

CHAPTER EIGHT

   The entire east end of Harrington Cathedral was a single, enormous wall of stained glass. The morning light pouring through it drenched the cathedral in gorgeous, luminous color, and Honor sat at its heart, enveloped in the swirl of incense.
   The choir's glorious harmony swept through her, and she closed her eyes to savor it. The choir sang without accompaniment, for its superbly trained voices needed none, and the artificiality of instruments, however magnificent, could only have detracted from their beauty. Honor had always loved music, though she'd never learned to play and her subjects would have greeted her singing voice with pained politeness. Classical Grayson music was based on an Old Earth tradition called "Country and Western" and took some getting used to, but she was developing a taste even for it, and she was delighted by Graysons popular music, while its sacred music was breathtaking.
   The choir completed its selection, and Honor heard Nimitz mirror her own sigh of pleasure from his cushion in the pew beside her. Andrew LaFollet stood behind them, head uncovered but still on duty, even here, and she felt a familiar, wry amusement as she glanced to the left and saw the other two armsmen standing before the unoccupied Steadholder’s Box. As someone who was not a communicant of the Church of Humanity, she was required by Church law to sit in the Stranger's Aisle, even in Harrington Cathedral, which had posed a problem for Harrington Steading's architects.
   Honor made a point of attending services regularly.
   Member of the Church or not, she was obligated to protect and defend it, and there were other, equally pressing reasons to be here. Her public respect for the Faith was an answer to her critics' charges that she disdained it, and her willingness to take her place in the Stranger's Aisle rather than insist upon occupying the box set aside for the steadholder in any steading capital's cathedral had won her even more acceptance. Her subjects' native Grayson stubbornness respected the honesty of a ruler who accepted the stigma of the Aisle rather than pretend to embrace their Faith. And the fact that she, who wasn't a member of the Church, was a regular attendant underscored the fact that she, in turn, truly respected the Faith which was not hers.
   Those were the political reasons. On a personal level, she was here because she had learned to respect the Church and because it was so central to the lives of her people. She needed to share it, even at one remove, to understand them. And even if that hadn't been true, she found the solemn majesty of the Church's liturgy and music compellingly beautiful.
   Honor had been raised in the Third Stellar Missionary Communion (Reformed), but her family, like most Sphinx yeomen, had always been low church. The Third Stellars emphasized each individual's direct, personal relationship with God, with a minimum of structure. The high church had become more formal over the last few T-centuries, but low church services tended to be quiet, introspective affairs, and Honor had been unprepared for the sheer pageantry of the Church of Humanity. She supposed Mother Helen, the priest who'd confirmed her so many years ago, would have sniffed at all the "unnecessary fol-de-rol" She'd certainly regarded the formalism of her own denomination’s high churchmen with enough reservations! But Honor suspected even Mother Helen would admit the beauty of Grayson's liturgy, and no one could doubt the personal faith of the people who followed it.
   Still, Honor's decision to attend regularly had put the architects in something of a quandary. The Stranger's Aisle was always to the left of the nave and immediately adjacent to the sanctuary. Traditionally, this was to make the people who sat in it feel welcome by placing them in the very heart of the congregation rather than isolating them like pariahs, but it had the effect of putting them under everyone's eye, as well. It was also clear across the church from the traditional location of the Steadholder's Box, and the architects had decided that having Lady Harrington so obviously separated from her "proper" position would invite invidious comment. Honor wasn't too sure about that, but it was scarcely a decision in which she'd had a voice, so she'd let them work it out to suit themselves, and they'd compromised by making two changes in the accepted layout of every other cathedral on the planet.
   Instead of placing the pulpit in its usual position at the sanctuary's extreme right, they'd swapped it with the choir loft. That put the pulpit to the left, which, in turn, required them to move the Steadholder's Box to the same side to maintain its proximity to the pulpit. All of which just happened to put the box directly adjacent to the Stranger's Aisle and meant Honor could sit right beside the seat which was nominally hers.
   Honor would never have requested the changes, but she was touched by the way her Harringtons accepted them. They could have chosen to be affronted; instead, they went out of their way to compare their church to other cathedrals, always to the detriment of the more "traditional" churches. Besides, they claimed, the acoustics were better.
   Honor smiled in memory, but her smile faded as Reverend Hanks genuflected before the altar and crossed to the pulpit. Each of Graysons eighty steadings had its own capital cathedral, and by ancient tradition, the Reverend celebrated service in a different one each Sunday, working his way through every steading in turn. It must, Honor thought, have been an incredibly wearing cycle once, though modern transport had made it much easier. But Reverend Hanks had rearranged his entire schedule to be here today, and she, like everyone else in the cathedral, wondered why he had.