David Weber - Honor 07 - In Enemy Hands

IN ENEMY HANDS

David Weber

[24 oct 2001 – scanned for #bookz]

[30 oct 2001 - proofed for #bookz – by bookleech, v 1.0]

Prologue

"I think it's a mistake, a big one." Cordelia Ransom's blue eyes glittered,

but the passionate voice

which had raised and swayed so many chanting crowds was cold, almost flat.

Which, Rob Pierre

reflected, proved her emotions were truly engaged on this issue.

"I obviously don't, or I wouldn't have suggested it," he told her, meeting her

eyes levelly while he

sought to put enough iron into his deliberately calm reply to override her

chill intensity. He succeeded in

that, for the most part, but it wasn't as easy as it should have been, and he

knew it. He just hoped she

didn't.

Officially, Pierre was the most powerful man in the People's Republic of

Haven. As the creator and

head of the Committee of Public Safety, his word was law and his power over

the PRH's citizens absolute.

Yet even he faced limits, including the one which had finally decided him his

proposal was necessary, and

the fact that most of them were invisible to those beyond the ranks of the

Committee's membership made

them no less real.

His was a revolutionary government which had imposed itself upon the Republic

by force. Everyone

knew it had extended its grasp far beyond the caretaker role the People’s

Quorum had envisioned when it

voted to ratify his creation of the Committee and named him its chairman. The

Quorum had thought it

was setting up little more than a caretaker panel to restore domestic

stability as quickly as possible . . .

what it had gotten was a revolution run by a multiheaded dictatorship which

was quite prepared to use

coercion, suppression, and outright terror tactics to maintain its grasp and

promote its own agenda. That

was the heart of his problem. By using force and ruthlessness to reach so far

beyond what the Quorum

had expected and authorized, he'd made his power real and undeniable, but he'd

also deprived his

authority (which, he conceded, was not, quite the same thing) of that subtle

and elusive quality called

"legitimacy".

A rule imposed by violence or the threat of violence could be overturned the

same way, and as a

creature of force, his Committee had no recourse to the rule of law or custom

to support it. It was odd how

little thought people gave to governments which could claim those supports, he

thought moodily. Or of

how the destruction of a society's underlying social contract, even if the

contract in question had been a

bad one, smashed the stability of that society until a new contract,

acknowledged by its members as

legitimate, replaced it. Pierre himself had certainly underestimated the

consequences when he set out upon

the revolutionary's path. He'd known there had to be a period of unrest and

uncertainty, but somehow he'd

assumed that once he and his colleagues got past those initial rough spots,

the simple passage of time

would be sufficient to legitimize their authority in the eyes of those they

ruled. That was how it ought to

have worked, he told himself yet again. However they'd gotten to where they

were, they had at least as

strong a claim to their places as the Legislaturalists they'd destroyed to get

here had ever had. And unlike

the Legislaturalists, Pierre had become a revolutionary in the first place

because he genuinely believed in

reform. Yet by the very act of seizing power, he had created a situation in

which the ability to take that

power was all that truly mattered to those who might compete for authority,

for his own actions had

eliminated not only all previously existing avenues to it but also any

"legitimate" constraints upon the use

of force.

All of which meant that the seemingly all-powerful Committee of Public Safety

was, in fact, a far more fragile edifice than it appeared. Its members were

careful to display their confidence to the Dolists

and Proles they'd mobilized, but Pierre and his colleagues knew that any

number of unsuspected plotters

could be working to overthrow them at any moment. Why not? Hadn't they

overthrown the Republics

previous lords and masters? Hadn't the Legislaturalists' long monopolization

of the power of the state

produced crackpots and fanatics in profusion? And hadn't the Committee itself

crushed enough "enemies

of the People" to guarantee its members potential, and passionate, enemies

galore?

Of course they had, and some of them had demonstrated a dangerous willingness

to act on that

enmity. Fortunately, most of the outright lunatics, like the Zeroists, who had

supported Charles Froidan's

demands that all money be abolished, had been too incompetent to plan a bottle

party, much less stage a

coup. Others, like the Parnassians, whose platform had included the execution

of all bureaucrats on the

grounds that their choice of employment was prima facie evidence of treason

against the People, had been

reasonably competent conspirators but guilty of bad timing. By moving too

soon, they'd made too many

enemies among their competing extremists, and Pierre and State Security had ma

naged to play one faction

off against the other to destroy them. (Actually, that had been one of

Pierre's harder decisions, for he'd

discovered that, having dealt with the enormous, glacially paced bureaucracy

bequeathed to him by the

Legislaturalists, he felt a certain personal sympathy for the Parnassians'

views. In the end, however, he

had decided, not without regret, that the Committee required the bureaucrats

to keep the Republic

running.)

Some of their enemies, however, like LaBoeufs Levelers, might have been

lunatics but had certainly

been capable of excellent timing and good security. Their idea of a proper

society made anarchy look

positively regimented by comparison, but they'd been organized enough to get

several million people

killed in less than a day of heavy fighting. It was amazing what a few kinetic

bombardment strikes and

pee-wee nukes could do to a city of thirty-six million souls, he thought.

Actually, they'd been lucky to get

off as lightly as they had . . . and at least none of the Levelers' known

leadership had survived the

bloodbath. Of course, it was almost certain that at least some of their inner

cadre actually held seats on the

Committee itself. They had to for the Levelers to have come so close to

success, and they remained

unident ified so far . . . whoever they were.

Under the circumstances, Pierre supposed he shouldn't be surprised to find

that his initial ardor for

reform was being ground away by his constantly growing, persistently

unshakable sense of insecurity.

Bad enough when that feeling of vulnerability had been genuine paranoia, with

no basis in fact. Now that

he had proof he not only had enemies but that they could be deadly dangerous,

he was desperate to reach

out for anything which might lend the Committee even a tiny bit more

stability, strengthen his hand in any

way he could. That, coupled with the equally desperate need to win the war to

which the previous regime

had committed the Republic, was the reason for his present proposal, and he

glanced at Oscar Saint-Just

for support.

To an outside observer, Saint-Just must clearly have been the second most

powerful member of the

triumvirate which ruled the Committee and hence the PRH. In fact, some might

consider him even more

powerful, tactically, at least, than Pierre himself, for Saint-Just's was the

iron fist which commanded the

Office of State Security. But once again, appearances could be deceiving. As

head of the SS, Saint-Just

was the Committee’s executioner, with a power base which was far more readily

apparent than Ransoms.

Yet the very reasons Pierre was willing to trust him with that authority

underscored the fact that Saint-Just

could never be the threat Ransom might someday become. Unlike Cordelia, Oscar

knew his reputation as

the Republics chief warden would preclude his maintaining himself indefinitely

in power even if he

somehow managed to seize it. He was the focal point of all the fear, hatred,

and resentment the

Committee of Public Safety had engendered ... on top of which, he genuinely

had no desire to supplant his

leader. Pierre had given him sufficient opportunities to prove otherwise, but

Saint-Just had taken none of

them, for he knew his own limitations.

Ransom didn't, and that was why Pierre would never have given her the position

Saint-Just occupied.

She was too unpredictable, which translated into "unreliable" in his mind. And

where he was determined to at least attempt to build something constructive

atop the bones of the old, murdered power structure,

she often seemed more interested in the exercise of power than in the ends to

which it was exercised. She

was always at her best whipping up the Proles' mob mentality, and it was her

ability to direct that

mentality against targets other than Pierre and his regime which made her so

valuable. Yet it also gave her

Office of Public Information the first opportunity to put its spin on each

issue as it came along, which

gave her a degree of power, intangible, but frighteningly real, that made her

very nearly Saint-Just's equal.

And, Pierre reminded himself, Cordelia had more than her fair share of cronies

within Oscar's own SS, as

well. She'd been one of the Committee of Public Safety's roving headsmen

immediately after the coup,

before he moved her to Public Information, and she retained personal contacts

with the men and women

with whom she'd served. The fact that she and Oscar were both fierce empire-

builders (although, Pierre

suspected, for quite different reasons) only made the situation worse in many

ways, but at least it let him

play them off against one another, maintaining their "constituencies" in a

delicate, sometimes precarious

balance he could force to support his own position rather than undermining it.

"I understand Cordelia's concerns, Rob," Saint-Just said, answering Pierre’s

unspoken appeal after a

long, pregnant moment. He tipped back his chair, leaning away from the

crystal- topped conference table,

and steepled his fingers across his chest in a posture that made him look even

more like someone's

harmless, nondescript uncle. "We've spent over five T-years convincing

everyone the Navy was

responsible for the Harris Assassination, and while we've, ah, removed

virtually all the precoup senior

officers, putting my commissioners aboard the Navy's ships hasn't won us many

fans among their

replacements. Whether we want to admit it or not, granting political agents,

we might as well be honest

and call them spies, veto authority over line officers helps explain the

fiascoes the fleet keeps sailing into .

. . and the officer corps knows that, too. When you add all that to the number

of officers we've shot or

locked up 'to encourage the others,' it could certainly be argued that taking

our boot off their necks is a

questionable decision, at best.. . even if it was the Navy that saved our

asses from LaBoeufs ma niacs. I

mean, let's not fool ourselves here; anyone would have looked good compared to

the Levelers. Don't

forget that part of their platform called for shooting anyone above the rank

of lieutenant commander or

major for the 'military- industrial complex's treasonous misconduct of the

war.' There's no guarantee the

Navy would back us against someone less, um, energetic than they were."

His tenor was as mild and colorless as the rest of him, yet Ransom's eyes

hardened behind their glitter

as she heard the "But" he hadn't quite voiced. Pierre heard the qualification

as well, and his own eyes

narrowed.

"But compared to our other options?" he said softly, inviting Saint-Just to

continue, and the SS chief

shrugged.

"Compared to our other options, I don't see a lot of choice. The Manties keep

handing our fleet

commanders their heads, and we keep blaming them for it. After a point, that

becomes bad propaganda as

well as bad strategy. Let's face it, Cordelia," Saint-Just swiveled those

nondescript eyes to his goldenhaired

colleague, "it gets awfully hard for Public Information to keep rallying

public support behind our

'gallant defenders' when we seem to be killing as many of them as the Manties

are!"

"Maybe it does," Ransom countered, "but that's less risky than letting the

military get a foot into the

door." She switched the full force of her personality to Pierre. "If we put

someone from the military on the

Committee, how do we keep him or her from finding out things we don't want the

military to know? Like

who really killed off the Harris government?"

"There's not much chance of that," Saint-Just pointed out reasonably. "There

was never any hard

evidence of our activities . . . and aside from a few people who had a hand of

their own in the operation,

there's no one left who could challenge our version of what happened." He gave

a chill smile. "Anyone

who knows anything, and is still alive, could only incriminate himself if he

tried to talk about it. Besides,

I've made damned sure all of StateSec's internal records reflect the official

line. Anyone who wants to

challenge all that 'impartial evidence' is obviously a counterrevolutionary

enemy of the People." "'Not much chance' isn't the same thing as no chance at

all," Ransom retorted.

Her tone was sharper than usual, for manipulator or not, she truly believed in

the concept of enemies

of the People, and her suspicion of the military was almost obsessive. Despite

her need to produce prowar

propaganda which extolled the Navy's virtues as the Republics protectors, her

personal hatred for it

was the next best thing to pathological. She loathed and despised it as a

decadent, degenerate institution

whose traditions still tied it to the old regime and probably inspired it to

plot the Committees overthrow in

order to restore the Legislaturalists. Even worse, its persistent failures to

throw the enemy back and save

the Republic, which was probably at least partly due to its disloyalty, only

reinforced her contempt with

fear that it would fail to save her, and it was starting to get out of hand.

In fact, her increasingly irrational

antimilitary biases were a main reason for Pierre’s decision that he needed

someone from the military as a

counterbalance.

He often thought it was odd that so much of her hatred should be fixed on the

military, for unlike

him, Ransom had come up through the action arm of the Citizens' Rights Union.

She'd spent the better

part of forty T-years fighting not the military, which had virtually never

intervened in domestic security

matters, but the minions of Internal Security, and Pierre would have expected

her passionate hate to be

focused there. But it wasn't. She worked well with Oscar Saint-Just, one-time

second- in-command of

InSec, and she never seemed to hold past connections to InSec against any of

State Security's current

personnel. Perhaps, he thought, that was because she and InSec had played the

same game by the same

rules. They'd been enemies, but enemies who understood one another, and Ransom

the not-so-ex-terrorist

had absolutely no understanding of or sympathy for the traditions and values

of the military community.

But whatever the source of her attitudes, neither Pierre nor Saint-Just shared

their virulent intensity.

Enemies of the Committee, yes; they had positive proof those were out there.

But unlike Ransom, they

could draw a clear distinction between the Committee and the PRH itself, just

as they could accept that

military failures were not incontrovertible proof of treasonous intentions.

She couldn't. Perhaps that was

because they were more pragmatic than she, or perhaps it was because each of

them, in his own way, was

actually trying to build something while Cordelia was still committed to

tearing things down. Personally,

Pierre suspected it was because her egoism and paranoia were reinforcing one

another. In her own mind

the People, the Committee of Public Safety, and Cordelia Ransom had become one

and the same thing.

He who opposed, or failed, any part of her personal Trinity was the enemy of

them all, so simple selfdefense

required her to be eternally vigilant to ferret out and crush the People’s

enemies before they got

her.

"And even if your cover holds up perfectly," she went on forcefully, "how can

you even consider

trusting anyone from the officer corps? You said it yourself: we've killed too

many of them and made too

many others, and their families, disappear. They'll never forgive us for

that!"

"I think you underestimate the power of self- interest," Pierre replied for

StateSec's commander.

"Whoever we offer a slice of the pie to will have his own reasons to keep us

in the saddle. For one thing,

everyone will know he had to make some major accommodations with us to get the

slot, and any power

he has will depend on our patronage. And if we ease up on the officers...”

"They'll think he's the one to thank for it and have even more reason to be

loyal to him rather than to

us!" Ransom half snapped.

"Maybe," Pierre conceded. "But maybe not, too. Especially if we see to it that

we put his advice into

practice and do it very openly." Ransom started to open her mouth again, but

his raised hand stopped her,

for the moment. "I'm not suggesting that whoever we pick won't get at least

some of the credit. For that

matter, he'll probably get almost all of it, initially. But if we're going to

win this war, we have to enlist our

military as something more than slave labor. We've tried 'collective

responsibility' with some success,

after all," he smiled thinly, "knowing your family will suffer for your fa

ilures gives you a powerful

incentive. But it's also counterproductive, and it produces obedience, not

allegiance. By threatening their

families, we become as much the enemy as the Manties. Probably even more than

the Manties, for a lot of them. The Manties may be trying to kill them, but

the Alliance isn't threatening to kill their wives or

husbands or children.

"Frankly, it would be irrational for the officer corps to trust us under the

present circumstances, and I

think our past failures demonstrate that we have to 'rehabilitate' ourselves

in their eyes if we expect them

to become an effective, motivated, fighting force. We were incredibly lucky

that the Navy didn't just stand

by and watch the Levelers roll over us. In fact, I remind you that only one

ship of the wall, just one, and

not even a unit of the Capital Fleet, at that, had the initiative and nerve to

intervene. If Rousseau had

stayed out of it, you and Oscar and I would all be dead now, and we can't

count on that sort of support

again without demonstrating that we at least know we owe the people who saved

our hides a debt. And

the only way I can see to do that is to give them a voice at the highest

level, make sure the rank and file

know we've done it, and actually pay that voice some attention . . . publicly,

at least."

"Publicly?" Ransom repeated with a cocked eyebrow and an arrested expression,

and Pierre nodded.

"Publicly. Oscar and I have already discussed the sort of insurance policy

we'll need if our tame war

dog gets out of hand. Oscar?"

"I've considered each of the officers Rob's nominated," the SS man told

Ransom. "It wasn't too hard

to edit their records and their peoples commissioners' reports. Any one of

them will look like a knight in

shining armor when we introduce him to the public, and all of them are quite

competent in their own field,

but we've got enough time bombs hidden in their dossiers to blow them away any

time we have to. Of

course," he smiled thinly, "it would be convenient if the officer in question

were already dead before we

make those bombs public. It's ever so much harder for a dead man to defend

himself."

"I see." It was Ransom's turn to lean back and rub her chin in thought, and

she nodded slowly. "All

right, that's a good first step," she admitted finally. Her tone was still

grudging, but it was no longer

adamant. "I'll want a good look at those 'time bombs,' though. If we want this

talking head to be

vulnerable to charges down the road, Public Information's going to have to be

careful about just how we

initially build him up for public consumption. We wouldn't want any avoidable

inconsistencies in there."

"No problem," Saint-Just assured her, and she nodded some more. But her

expression was still

dissatisfied, and she let her chair snap back upright as she stopped rubbing

her jaw and leaned over the

table towards Pierre.

"This is all well and good as far as it goes, Rob," she said, "but it's still

a hell of a risk. And we're

going to be sending some very mixed signals, however we do it. I mean, we just

shot Admiral Gir ardi for

losing Trevor’s Star, and whatever we may have told the Proles, we all know it

wasn't entirely his fault."

Pierre was a bit surprised she was willing to make even that much of a

concession to a Navy officer, but

perhaps it was because even she had to admit dead men could no longer plot

treason. "The Navy's senior

officers certainly don't think it was, anyway. They're convinced we only shot

him to 'prove' to the Mob

that it wasn't our fault, and even some enlisted personnel resented our

turning him into a 'scapegoat'! I

don't see your proposal making much of a dent in that any time soon."

"Ah, but that's because you don't know who I'm planning to appoint!" Pierre

said, then sat without

another word, grinning at her. She glared at him, trying to pretend his effort

to play on her impatience

wasn't working. Unfortunately, they both knew it was. The better part of a

full minute dragged past, then

she shrugged impatiently.

"So tell me already!"

"Esther McQueen," Pierre said simply, and Ransom jerked upright in her chair.

"You're joking!" she snapped, and her face darkened when Pierre only shook his

head. "Well, you

damned well ought to be! Damn it, Oscar!" The glare she turned on Saint-Just

should have been sufficient

to incinerate the SS chief on the spot. "The woman's personal popularity is

already at dangerous levels,

and your own spy's reported that she's got ambitions, and plans, of her own.

Are you seriously suggesting

putting a loaded pulser into the hands of someone we know is looking for one

already?" "First of all, her ambition may be our best ally," Pierre said

before Saint-Just could reply. "Yes,

Brigadier Fontein's warned us that she has her own agenda. In fact, she's made

one or two efforts to set up

some sort of clandestine network among her fe llow flag officers. But she

hasn't met with much success,

because they know what she has in mind as well as we do. Most of them are too

cowed to stick their

necks out, and the ones who aren't consider her as much a political animal as

a military one. Given the,

um, finality with which politics are played these days, they're not about to

trust even one of their own if

she's shown she wants to join the game. If, on the other hand, we give her a

place at the table, that very

ambition will give her every reason to make sure the Committee, and, with it,

her power base, survives."

"Hmph!" Ransom relaxed just a bit and folded her arms across her chest as she

considered. Then she

shook her head again, but this time the gesture was slower and more

thoughtful. "All right," she said at

last, "let's assume you have a point there. But she's still dangerous. The Mob

sees her as the Committees

savior against the Levelers, hell, half the damned Committee thinks she can

walk on water right now! But

we don't even know that she actually intended to save us at all, do we? If her

pinnace hadn't crashed, she

might just have kept right on rolling with the momentum and finished us off

herself!"

"She might have, but I don't believe for a minute she planned to," Pierre

said, just a bit more

emphatically than his level of confidence deserved. "The Committee at least

has the legitimacy of the

original resolution which created it, not to mention almost six T-years as the

Republic's functioning

government. Even if she'd managed to wipe us out herself, what would she have

had for a power base?

Remember that only her own flagship supported her when she came to rescue us,

and she was clearly

doing her duty then. There's no way she could have counted on the rest of the

Fleet to support any sort of

putsch on her part, especially not given her reputation for political

ambition."

"It sounds to me like you're trying to convince yourself of that," Ransom

muttered darkly. "And even

assuming you're right, doesn't your logic undercut your own argument for

giving her a seat at the table? If

the rest of the officer corps see her as a political animal, why should

appointing her to the Committee

convince them to support us?"

"Because political animal or not, she's also the best field commander we've

got, and they know that,

too," Saint-Just answered. "They don't distrust her competence, Cordelia, just

her motives. In a sense, that

gives us the best of both worlds: an officer whose ability is recognized by

her peers, but whose reputation

for political ambition sets her apart from the 'real' Navy."

"If she's that damned good, how did we lose Trevor's Star?" Ransom demanded,

and Pierre hid a

smile behind his hand. Cordelia's ministry had turned Trevor's Star into a

sort of metaphorical redoubt for

the entire People's Republic, the "line in the stars," the point from which no

retreat could even be

contemplated, despite his own suggestions that she might want to tone the

rhetoric down just a bit. To be

sure, the system had been of enormous strategic importance, and the military

consequences of its loss

were what had originally inspired him to look for a naval representative for

the Committee. Yet viewed

against the sheer size of the Republic, even Trevor's Star was ultimately

expendable. What was not

expendable was public morale or the People's Navy's will to fight, both of

which had taken yet another

nose dive when "the line in the stars" fell to the Royal Manticoran Navy's

Sixth Fleet.

"We lost Trevor's Star," he told Ransom, "because the Manties have better

ships and their technology

is still better than ours. And because, thanks in no small part to our own

policy of shooting losing

admirals, their senior officers go right on accruing experience while ours

keep suffering from a severe

case of being dead."

His caustic tone widened her eyes, and he gave her a thin smile.

"McQueen may not have been able to hold the system, but at least she inflicted

heavy losses on the

Manties. In fact, given the relative sizes of our navies, the Alliances

proportional losses were probably

worse than ours, at least before the final engagement. Her captains and junior

squadron commanders

gained a lot of experience during the fighting, too, and we mana ged to rotate

about a third of them home

to pass that along. But it was obvious at least a year ago that White Haven

was going to take the system eventually. That's why I pulled McQueen out and

sent Girardi in to take the heat." Ransom quirked an

eyebrow, and Pierre shrugged. "I didn't want to lose her, and given our

existing policies, we'd have had no

choice but to shoot her if she'd still been in command when Trevor's Star went

down." He smiled wryly.

"After last month's excitement, I'm inclined to see that as one of my more

brilliant moves of the war."

"Hmph!" Ransom repeated, sliding lower in her chair once more and frowning

down at the

conference table. "You're sure McQueen is the one you want for this? I have to

tell you that the more you

tell me about how competent she is, the more nervous you make me."

"Competent in her own area is one thing; competent in our area is another,"

Pierre said confidently.

"Her reach considerably exceeds her grasp on the political side, and it'll

take her a while to figure out how

the rules work on our side of the street. Oscar and I will keep a close eye on

her, and if it starts to look

like she's figured it out, well, accidents happen."

"And whatever negative considerations might attach to choosing her," Saint-

Just said, "she's a better

choice than the next candidate in line."

"Which candidate would that be?" Ransom asked.

"Before our raid on the Manties' commerce in Silesia blew up in our faces,

Javier Giscard would have

been an even better choice than McQueen. As it is, he's completely ineligible,

at least for now. His

political views are more acceptable than McQueen's, in fact, Commissioner

Pritchard continues to speak

very highly of him, and in fairness to him, what happened to his plan wasn't

his fault. In fact, our decision

to recall him was probably a mistake. But we did recall him, and he's still on

probation for his 'failure.'"

Ransom cocked her head, and Saint-Just shrugged. "It's only a formality, he's

too good for us to shoot

unless we absolutely have to, but we can't rehabilitate him overnight."

"All right, I can see that," Ransom nodded, "but that just tells me who the

next candidate isn't."

"Sorry," Saint-Just apologized. "I got distracted. In answer to your question,

McQueen’s only real

competition is Thomas Theisman. He's considerably junior to her, but he was

David Weber - Honor 07 - In Enemy Hands

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