War Of Honor

He extracted Houseman's datachip from its folio and plugged it into his own console, then brought up the file header. He advanced to the first page of the report summary and sca

"As you'll note in paragraph two," the Second Lord began, "we can begin by listing the entire King William —class for disposal. After that . . ."

"So you agree we can safely reduce military spending," Lady Elaine Descroix observed in that bright, cheerful tone which always set Baron High Ridge's teeth on edge. Descroix was a small, sweet-faced woman who took great pains to project the image of everyone's favorite aunt, and he reminded himself yet again not to forget the armor-plated pseudocroc behind her smile.

"Within limits, Elaine," the Prime Minister of Manticore cut in smoothly before the First Lord could respond to his Foreign Secretary. "And that assumes the situation in the People's Republic—excuse me, the Republic of Haven—remains effectively what it currently is."

High Ridge made himself return her smile with one of his own. One with a carefully gauged edge of steel. Pseudocroc or not, Descroix wasn't in charge of this meeting. He was, and the sun-bright spaciousness of his luxurious woodpaneled office was the outward sign and confirmation of his ascendancy. The antique clocks which had cluttered its shelves, coffee tables, and credenzas during the Duke of Cromarty's tenure had disappeared, replaced by his own knickknacks and memorabilia, but this was the same office from which four T-centuries of prime ministers had governed the Star Kingdom, and his smile reminded her of the power he represented.

"Oh, I think we can assume the situation will remain unchanged," Descroix assured him. Her eyes acknowledged his expression's message, but even as they did, her own smile showed a decided complacency. "We can keep them talking for as long as we need to. After all, what else can they do?"

"I'm still not convinced we should have completely ignored their last proposals," another voice said, and High Ridge turned to consider the third member of the quartet which had assembled in his office to await Janacek's arrival. Marisa Turner, Countess of New Kiev and Chancellor of the Exchequer since the last Cabinet reorganization, looked troubled. Then again, she often looked troubled. It wasn't that she didn't understand political necessity when it looked her right in the eye, but she sometimes found pursuing that necessity . . . distasteful.

Which has never prevented her from pursuing it anyway, he reminded himself cynically.

"We didn't have much choice, Marisa," Descroix assured her, and shrugged when New Kiev looked at her. "If we're going to be completely honest," the Foreign Secretary continued, "on the surface, their proposal was much too reasonable. If we'd accepted it, certain elements in Parliament would probably have insisted that we seriously consider using it as the basis for a formal treaty. Which would have opened the door to the territorial concessions from us which were also part of their new proposals. And which, of course, would have required us to give up far too much of all that our courageous Navy won for us."

New Kiev's expression flickered for an instant, but High Ridge noticed that she raised no objection to Descroix's explanation. Which underscored her willingness to do what pragmatism required, however unpleasant she might find that, because she understood the subtext of the explanation as well as anyone else in the office.

In the final analysis, everyone in the present Government understood all the reasons not to bring the war against the Peeps to a formal conclusion. There was no real need, given the Star Kingdom's overwhelming technical superiority. The Havenite Secretary of War, Theisman, obviously understood just how helpless his forces were in the face of that superiority. Even if he hadn't, in High Ridge's private opinion, he'd never have the nerve to resort once more to open military action against a star nation which had so decisively defeated his own. If he'd come equipped with that sort of testosterone supply, he would never have supinely surrendered the absolute power which had lain in his grasp to someone like Pritchart!

No. If operations were ever resumed, the People's Navy—or the Republican Navy, as it now chose to style itself—would be quickly a

The Constitution required a general election no less than once every four Manticoran years, except under certain carefully specified extraordinary circumstances . . . yet the last election had been over five Manticoran years ago. One of the circumstances which permitted electoral delays was the existence of a declared state of emergency, proclaimed by the Crown and confirmed by a two-thirds majority of both houses. Any state of emergency, however, had to be reconfirmed each year, both by the Crown and by the same majority in each house, or it automatically lapsed.

The other circumstance which permitted the postponement of a general election was the existence of a state of war. The Constitution didn't require that elections be postponed in either case; it merely provided that they could be, at the discretion of the current government. Unlike High Ridge, the Duke of Cromarty's primary base of support had been found in the Commons, and despite occasional sags in the public's morale, it had remained essentially firm. Cromarty had timed the elections carefully, but he'd also called two of them during the course of the war, and his majority in the lower house had increased after each.

High Ridge's primary support base, however, lay in the Lords, which meant that the last thing he wanted, for many reasons, was to call a general election. And since sustaining a state of emergency required a majority in both houses—not to mention the concurrence of the Crown, which he was most unlikely to get—only the official state of war against Haven allowed him to hold off the election which, under current conditions, would almost certainly have proved a disaster.

But that state of war was useful in other ways, as well. High Ridge had not only managed to postpone confirmation of the San Martino peers and an almost certain embarrassing electoral defeat for both the Liberals and Progressives (his own Conservative Association's representation in the lower house was already so tiny that no conceivable popular vote could have had much impact upon it), but also to maintain the "wartime only" tax measures which had been instigated by the Cromarty Government. Those taxes were unpopular, to say the very least, but their passage was firmly associated in the public mind with Cromarty—and thus with the Centrist Party.

The Star Kingdom's Constitution had been drafted by people determined to restrict the power of the state by restricting the power to tax, and the Founders had crafted a fiscal system in which the government's income was intended to depend primarily on import and export duties and property and sales taxes. The Constitution specifically required that any income tax be flat-rated and limited to a maximum of eight percent of gross income except in time of emergency. To make their position crystal clear, the Founders had also specified that even in emergency conditions, any graduated income tax could be enacted only with the approval of a super-majority in both houses and automatically lapsed (unless confirmed by the same super-majority) in five T-years or at the next general election.