David Weber - Honor 03 - The Short Victorious War

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THE SHORT VICTORIOUS WAR

David Weber

[03 Nov 01 - proofed and re-released for #bookz]

"What this country needs is a short, victorious war to stem the tide of

revolution."

V.K. Plehve, Russian Minister of the Interior to General A.N. Kuroparfon,

Minister of

War, 200 Ante-Diaspora (1903 C.E.J, on the eve of the Russo-Japanese War)

"The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of

the most ancient

and dangerous of human illusions."

Robert Lynd (224-154 Ante-Diaspora)

PROLOGUE

Hereditary President Sidney Harris watched the long cortege wind out of sight

along the Promenade

of the People, then turned his back upon it. The conference rooms two-

hundredth floor height had

transformed the black-draped vehicles into mere beetles crawling harmlessly

along an urban canyon, but

their implications showed only too clearly in the grim faces that looked back

at him.

He crossed to his chair and sat, propping his elbows on the long table and

leaning his chin into his

palms while he rubbed his eyes. Then he straightened.

"All right. I've got to be at the cemetery in an hour, so let's keep this

short." He turned his eyes to

Constance Palmer-Levy, Secretary of Security for the People's Republic of

Haven. "Anything more on

how they got to Walter, Connie?"

"Not specifically, no." Palmer-Levy shrugged. "Walter's bodyguards stopped the

gunman a bit too

permanently. We can't question a dead man, but we've identified him as one

Everett Kanamashi . . . and

what little we have on him suggests he was a fringe member of the CRU."

"Wonderful." Elaine Dumarest, the secretary of war, looked ready to chew

splinters out of the table

edge. She and Walter Frankel had been adversaries for years—inevitably, given

the budgetary-conflicts

between their ministries—but Dumarest was an organized individual. She

preferred a neat and tidy

universe in which to make and execute her own policies, and people like the

Citizens' Rights Union were

high on her list of untidy individuals.

"You think the CRU leadership targeted Walter?" Ron Bergren asked, and Palmer-

Levy frowned.

"We've got our moles as deep into them as we can," she told the secretary of

foreign affairs. "None of

them suggested the leadership was contemplating anything drastic, but there's

been a lot of rank-and-file

anger over Walter's BLS proposals. They're getting more security conscious,

too. I'm seeing signs of a

real cellular organization, so I suppose it's possible their action committee

authorized it without our

finding out."

"I don't like the sound of that, Sid," Bergren murmured, and Harris nodded.

The Citizens' Rights

Union advocated "direct action in the legitimate interest of the people"

(meaning a perpetually higher

Dolist standard of living) but normally limited itself to riots, vandalism,

occasional terrorist bombings,

and attacks on lower- level bureaucrats as object lessons. The assassination

of a cabinet minister was a

new and dangerous escalation . . . assuming the CRU had, indeed, authorized

the attack.

"We ought to go in and clean those bastards out," Dumarest growled. "We know

who their leaders

are. Give the names to NavSec and let my Marines take care of them—

permanently."

"Wrong move," Palmer- Levy disagreed. "That kind of suppression would only

make the mob even

less tractable, and at least letting them go on meeting lets us get a read on

what they're up to." "Like this time?" Dumarest asked with awful irony, and

Palmer-Levy flushed.

"If—and I emphasize if—the CRU leadership did plan or authorize Walter's

murder, then I have to

admit we dropped the ball. But as you just pointed out, we've been able to

compile lists of members and

sympathizers. Drive them underground, and we lose that capability. And, as I

said, there's no direct

evidence Kanamashi wasn't acting on his own."

"Yeah, sure." Dumarest snorted.

Palmer-Levy started to answer hotly, but Harris' raised hand stopped her.

Personally, the President

tended to agree with Dumarest, but he could see Palmer- Levy's point as well.

The CRU believed the

Dolists had a God-given right to an ever higher Basic Living Stipend. They

blew up other people

(including their fellow Dolists) to make their point, and it would have done

Harris' heart good to shoot

every one of them. Unfortunately, the Legislaturalist families who ran the

People's Republic had no

choice but to permit organizations like the CRU to exist. Quite aside from the

potential for even greater

violence inherent in any open move against them, they'd been around for so

long, become so deeply

entrenched, that eliminating one would only make room for another, so it made

sense to keep an eye on

the devil they knew rather than rooting it up for a devil they knew nothing

about.

Yet Walter Frankel's assassination was frightening. Dolist violence was almost

legitimized, part of

the power structure which kept the mob satisfied while the Legislaturalists

got on with the business of

running the government. Occasional riots and attacks on expendable portions of

the Republic's

bureaucratic structure had become a sanctioned part of what passed for the

political process, but there

was—or had been—a tacit understanding between the Dolist leaders and the

establishment that excluded

cabinet- level officials and prominent Legislaturalists from the list of

acceptable targets.

"I think," the President said finally, his slow words chosen with care, "that

we have to assume, for the

moment at least, that the CRU did sanction the attack."

"I'm afraid I have to agree," Palmer-Levy conceded unhappily. "And, frankly,

I'm almost equally

worried over reports that Rob Pierre is sucking up to the CRU leadership."

"Pierre?" Surprise sharpened the President's voice, and the security chief

nodded eve n less happily.

Robert Stanton Pierre was Haven's most powerful Dolist manager. He not only

controlled almost eight

percent of the total Dolist vote but served as the current speaker of the

Peoples Quorum, the "democratic

caucus" which told the Dolist Mana gers how to vote.

That much power in any non- Legislaturalist's hands was enough to make anyone

nervous, since the

hereditary governing families relied on the People's Quorum to provide the

rubber-stamp "elections"

which legitimized their reign. But Pierre was scary. He'd been born a Dolist

himself and clawed his way

from a childhood on the BLS to his present power with every dirty trick

ambition could conceive of.

Some of them hadn't even occurred to the Legislaturalists themselves, and if

he followed their instructions

because he knew which side his bread was buttered on, he was still a lean and

hungry man.

"Are you certain about Pierre?" Harris demanded after a moment, and Palmer-

Levy shrugged.

"We know he's been in contact with the CRP," she said, and Harris nodded. The

Citizens' Rights

Party was the political wing of the CRU, operating openly within the People's

Quorum and decrying the

"understandable but regrettable extremism to which some citizens have been

forced." It was a threadbare

mask, but accepting it gave the Quorum's managers an often useful pipeline

into the CRUs underground

membership.

"We don't know exactly what they've been talking about," Palmer-Levy went on,

"and his position as

Speaker of the Quorum means he could have any number of legit imate reasons

for meeting with them.

But he seems to be getting awful chummy with some of their delegates."

"In that case, I think we have to look very seriously at the possibility that

he knew the assassination

was coming," Harris said slowly. "I'm not saying he had anything to do with

planning it, but if there was

official CRU involvement, he could have known—or suspected—what they were up

to. And if he did know and didn't tell us, it could have been because he saw a

need to cement his own relationship with

them, even at our expense."

"You really think things are that bad, Sid?" Bergren asked, and the President

shrugged.

"No, not really. But we can live with being overly pessimistic, whereas if the

CRU did okay it—and

if Pierre knew something about it but chose not to tell us—and we assume they

didn't, we could talk

ourselves into a serious domestic policy error."

"Are you suggesting that we abandon Walters BLS proposals?" George De La

Sangliere asked. The

portly, white-haired De La Sangliere had succeeded Frankel as secretary of the

economy . . . not without

strenuous efforts to decline the "honor." No one in his right mind wanted to

take responsibility for the

Republic's decrepit fiscal structure, and De La Sangliere's expression was

unhappy as he asked the

question.

"I don't know, George." Harris sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"I hate to say it, but I don't really think we can," De La Sangliere replied.

"Not unless we can cut

military spending by at least ten percent."

"Impossible," Dumarest snapped instantly. "Mr. President, you know that's out

of the question! We

have to maintain our fleet strength at current levels—at least—until we deal

with the Manticoran Alliance

once and for all."

De La Sangliere frowned without looking at her while he kept his eyes almost

pleadingly upon his

president, but the hope faded from them at Harris' expression.

"We should have hit them four years ago," Duncan Jessup grunted. The secretary

of public

information was a stocky, perpetually disheveled man who cultivated the public

image of a grumpy but

golden-hearted uncle. Public Information was the official government

spokesman, its main propaganda

pipeline, but it had also wrested the Bureau of Mental Hygiene away from the

Ministry of Public Health

twenty years before. Jessup employed the Mental Hygiene Police with a cold and

ruthless dispatch which

sometimes frightened even Harris, and his personal control of the MHP made him

the most powerful

member of the cabinet, after the President himself.

"We weren't ready," Dumarest protested. "We were overextended digesting our

new acquisitions,

and—"

"And you got too fucking fancy," Jessup interrupted with a rude snort. "First

that screw- up in Basilisk

and then the disaster in Yeltsin and Endicott. All we've done is let them

build their 'alliance' while our

military potential held steady. Are you seriously suggesting we're in a

stronger relative position now than

we were men?"

"That's enough, Duncan," Harris said quietly. Jessup glowered at him for a

moment, then lowered his

eyes, and the President went on more calmly than he felt, 'The entire cabinet

endorsed both operations,

and I'll remind all of you that however spectacular those failures were, most

of our other operations have

succeeded. We may not have prevented the Manticorans from building up their

alliance, but we have

secured countervailing positions. At the same time, I think we all know the

showdown with Manticore is

coming." Heads nodded unhappily, and Harris turned his eyes to Fleet Admiral

Amos Parnell, CNO of the

Peoples' Navy, who sat at Dumarest's elbow. "How do the odds really stack up,

Amos?"

"Not as well as I'd like, Sir," Parnell admitted. "The evidence suggests

Manticore has a considerably

greater technical advantage than anyone thought four years ago. I've

personally debriefed the survivors

from the Endicott-Yeltsin operation. None of our people were involved in the

final action there, and we

don't have any hard data to support our analyses of what happened, but it's

pretty clear the Mantles took

out a Saladin-class battle-cruiser with only a heavy cruiser and a destroyer.

Of course, the Masadans

crewing Saladin were hardly up to our standards in terms of training and

experience, but that's still a

disturbing indication of our hardware's relative capabilities. On the basis of

what happened to Saladin and reports of survivors from the earlier actions,

we're estimating that, ton- for-ton, their technical superiority

probably gives their units a twenty to thirty percent edge over our own."

"Surely not that much," Jessup objected, and Parnell shrugged.

"My personal gut feeling is that that's conservative, Mr. Secretary. Let's

face it, their education and

industrial systems are much better than ours, and it's reflected in their R&D

establishment."

The admiral allowed his eyes to angle towards Eric Grossman as he spoke, and

the secretary of

education reddened. The catastrophic consequences of the "democratization of

education" in the People's

Republic were a sore point between his ministry and the ministries of

economics and war alike, and the

exchanges between him and Dumarest since the superiority of Manticore's

technology had become

evident had been acid.

"At any rate," Parnell went on, "Manticore has a definite edge, however

pronounced it may actually

be. On the other hand, we have something like twice their absolute tonnage,

and forty percent of their wall

of battle consists of dreadnoughts. RMN dreadnoughts may be bigger than our

own, but ninety percent of

our wall are superdreadnoughts. Added to that, we've got a lot of combat

experience, and their alliance

partners don't add much to their actual fighting power."

"Then why are we so worried about them?" Jessup demanded.

"Because of astrography," Parnell replied. "The Manties already had the

advantage of the interio r

position; now they've built up a defense in depth. I doubt it's as deep as

they'd like—in fact, it's barely

thirty light-years across at Yeltsin—but now that they've closed the gap at

Hancock, they've got an entire

network of interlocking fortified supply and maintenance bases all along the

frontier. That gives them the

advantages of forward surveillance, and each of those bases is a potential

nexus from which they can raid

our supply lines if we advance against them, as well. Their patrols already

cover every axis of approach,

Mr. Secretary, and it's only going to get worse once the actual shooting

starts. We'll have to fight our way

through them, taking out the bases in our path as we go to protect our flanks

and rear, and that means

they're going to have advance notice of our line of attack and be able to

deploy their strength to meet us

head on."

Jessup grunted and leaned back, lumpy face set in a frown, and Parnell went on

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1THESHORTVICTORIOUSWARDavidWeber[03Nov01-proofedandre-releasedfor#bookz]"Whatthiscountryneedsisashort,victoriouswartostemthetideofrevolution."V.K.Plehve,RussianMinisteroftheInteriortoGeneralA.N.Kuroparfon,MinisterofWar,200Ante-Diaspora(1903C.E.J,ontheeveoftheRusso-JapaneseWar)"Thebeliefinthepossibil...

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David Weber - Honor 03 - The Short Victorious War

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