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"I'm not certain of all she had in mind, Sir," he said with surprising firmness. "I wasn't there, and I haven't had time to view the chips yet. From the synopsis I was given, however, she remembered that the old regime's courts had sentenced Harrington to death before the war, and, well..." He paused and drew another deep breath. "She's decided to personally take her to Camp Charon for execution of sentence, Sir," he said.
"Can we stop her?" Esther McQueen demanded harshly. She and Oscar Saint-Just sat facing Rob Pierre's enormous desk, and her green eyes flamed. She'd started getting her teeth into her new job, and, along the way, she'd found the Ministry of War was in even worse shape than she'd thought from out at the sharp end of the stick. The problems she'd already discovered bore an overwhelming resemblance to the Augean Stables, and she did not need this kind of gratuitous insanity to make her task still harder.
"I don't see how," Saint-Just answered her in a flat voice. "Theisman's dispatch boat didn't even leave for Haven until three days after Cordelia departed for Cerberus. By now, she's less than six days from the system, and it would take seven days for any dispatch of ours to get there."
"We could at least try!" McQueen snapped. "Surely not even Ransom will have Harrington hanged the day she gets there!"
"I'm afraid you've missed the point, Citizen Admiral," Pierre said heavily. "Even if I could get word to her in time, we can't afford to countermand her."
"Why not?" McQueen managed to soften her tone at the last minute, but despite all her formidable self-control her frustration was evident, and Pierre sighed, wishing he could pretend her reaction was out of line.
"Because she's already dumped her 'interview' with Harrington into the broadcast stream," Saint-Just answered for him. "Our own people already know about it, and by now the Solarian League newsies must have sent reports to their bureau offices in Alliance space, and I'm sure you can imagine how the 'faxes will play up something like this. And even if the League correspondents didn't touch it for some reason, the spies monitoring our broadcasts for the Alliance have to have the same information. And that, of course, means that if it hasn't already reached Manticore, it will shortly... and that we can't change tacks without looking like complete fools."
McQueen stared at him for several seconds, then looked at Pierre, who nodded heavily. The new Secretary of War sat very still for a moment, then made herself speak in the calmest tone she could manage.
"Citizen Chairman, this must be thought through very carefully. In and of herself, purely as a naval officer, Harrington isn't that significant. I don't deny her ability or the damage she's done to us. In fact, I'll admit that, enemy or not, she's one of the best in the business. Tacticians like her come along possibly half a dozen times in a generation, if you're lucky, but bottom line, from a purely military perspective, she's just one more admiral, or commodore, depending on which navy she's serving in at the moment.
"But Citizen Committeewoman Ransom is making a very, very serious error if she regards Harrington solely as a naval officer. The Star Kingdom of Manticore sees this woman as one of its two or three greatest war heroes. The Protectorate of Grayson sees her not only as a hero, but as one of its great nobles. And our own Navy sees her as perhaps the outstanding junior flag officer on the other side. I'm sure the Fleet, and at least some segments of our own civilian public, will feel both relief and triumph to know she's been removed from play. But putting her in a prison camp will do that. We don't have to kill her... and her execution on what I hope you'll pardon me for characterizing as trumped up charges, will have consequences far beyond the loss of her abilities to the Allied military, or any short-term propaganda advantage for our own side. We'll turn her into a martyr, Sir, and that will make her ten times, a hundred times!, as dangerous as she ever was alive. And even if we completely disregard the effect her execution will have on the other side, think about what it will mean to our own people. The Manties will never forgive us for this, never, and with all due respect to Citizen Saint-Just, it's not StateSec perso
She'd watched the two men's faces while she spoke, but the anger she'd more than half expected to awaken failed to appear. Actually, she couldn't remember ever having seen any emotion on Saint-Just's face, and Pierre's expression was more one of exhausted agreement than anger. But the chairman shook his head when she finished. He leaned back in his chair, one hand on his blotter while the other massaged his eyes, and his voice was heavy.
"I can't fault your analysis," he said. "But even if Harrington does become more dangerous to us as a martyr, we can't afford to overrule Cordelia. Not publicly." He lowered his raised hand, and his dark gaze pi
McQueen sat back and closed her mouth against the protests still burning on her tongue. Fury and disgust, as much as logic, fed her outrage, but it didn't take a hyper physicist to realize the decision had been made even before she was informed of what had happened. Pierre and Saint-Just were being as stupid as Ransom, at least in the longer term, she thought bitterly, but trying to convince them of that would only undermine her own new and fragile position. So far, her protests seemed to have struck a chord of agreement with them. They couldn't deny the validity of the points she'd made; it was just that they felt the risk of an open break with Ransom outweighed the ones she'd enumerated. They were wrong, but if she wanted to retain whatever respect she'd earned by stating her position, she had to abandon the argument before their present regretful decision to overrule her turned into something uglier.
"Very well, Citizen Chairman," she sighed finally. "I still think this is a serious mistake, but the decision is ultimately a political one. If you and Citizen Committeeman Saint-Just both feel it would be... inadvisable to override Citizen Committeewoman Ransom, the judgment is yours to make."
"Thank you, Citizen Admiral." Pierre sounded genuinely grateful, and McQueen wondered what for. He was chairman of the Committee. He and Saint-Just could damned well do anything they liked, with or without her approval... for now, at least. "I'm very much afraid your analysis of our own military's reaction is likely to be accurate," he went on, "and we're going to need all the help we can get in blunting the worst of it. To that end, I would appreciate any insight you can give Citizen Boardman." McQueen raised an eyebrow, and Pierre smiled wryly. "Citizen Boardman will be writing the official release from the Committee and the rough draft for a communique to our own armed forces, but I don't have, um, the liveliest respect for his abilities, shall we say? Especially where the military are concerned, he's going to need all the help he can get to make this look good."