In Enemy Hands

"Finally, all the available evidence suggests that it was the Navy which actually stopped them. Public Information insists it was State Security, Committee Security, the Public Order Police, and the Chairman's Guard, supported by the Navy, but all of our other sources suggest it was the other way around. The security forces certainly didn't just lie down and play dead, but their responses weren't coherent. ONI suggests that someone must have managed to compromise their command and control net, though we haven't been able to confirm that. But whatever happened, it was Navy kinetic strikes and air strikes and battle-armored Marines acting under Admiral McQueen's orders that broke the uprising's back, and McQueen didn't go on to take out the Committee herself.

"That indicates a higher degree of military backing for the Pierre regime than we'd earlier estimated, and the reports that McQueen's been offered a seat on the Committee should only make that backing even stronger."

"So what you're saying," White Haven summarized when she paused once more, "is that the provinces have been brought into line, civilian resistance in the capital has been crushed, and the military has signed on?"

"Pretty much," Honor agreed, "though I don't think I'd put it precisely that way. I'd say that a particular segment of the civilian population of the capital was crushed. Given the amount of carnage and collateral casualties inflicted in the process, I suspect the bulk of the Dolists have decided to support the Committee as a source of stability which may be able to keep similar things from happening again. That goes quite a bit beyond the notion of civilians simply cowed into obedience by an iron fist, My Lord."

"Hm." White Haven tilted his chair back once more, propping his elbows on its arms and lacing his fingers together in front of him, and frowned. Once again, he couldn't fault her analysis... or, perhaps more to the point, ONI's and BuShips' estimates of what stability within the People's Republic meant for the building race. The Peeps had definitely turned up the heat under their construction programs. Where it had once taken them very nearly twice as long to build a superdreadnought, they'd cut their disadvantage in half, and if there were no fresh domestic upheavals to disrupt their efforts....

"However you look at it," he said slowly, "we're losing our margin of superiority. Not just in numbers, I saw the building rate increase coming months ago, but in quality, as well." He shook his head. "We can't afford that, Milady."

"I know," she replied quietly, and watched his eyes narrow as he turned his full attention upon her.

"On the other hand," he said, "I think this adds extra point to my concerns about the Weapons Development Boards recommendations."

"Concerns, My Lord?" she asked calmly.

"Fairly serious ones, as a matter of fact," he said. "Given that we're already looking at steepening numerical odds and improvements in the enemy's technology, this is no time to be tinkering with our own weapons mix by backing blue-sky projects." He snorted derisively, curling a mental lip at the preposterous proposals, and claims, put forth by the WDB white paper Harrington had delivered. He'd only skimmed the document, but that had been enough to show him it was more of the jeune ecole's nonsense. "The last thing we can afford to do is split our efforts between too many projects, most of which are probably useless anyway. What we need to do is rationalize production plans to turn out the maximum number of weapons we know work rather than fritter away resources pursuing crackpot 'breakthroughs.' Surely the need to concentrate on realizable technologies rather than harebrained, pie-in-the-sky, panacea boondoggles is one lesson people should have learned by now, if only from Old Earth’s history!"

"The Board isn't precisely calling for 'boondoggles,' My Lord," Honor said in a slightly frosty tone, but he shook his head.

"I'm sure your aware of my, um, differences of opinion with Lady Hemphill and the jeune ecole," he said. "I've never denied that there's room for new technology, Ghost Rider is a prime example of a new system with real and immediate value, but there has to be a balance. We can't just throw a new weapon into service because it's new. It has to have a functional slot, and the Fleet requires a rigorous analysis of its advantages, and disadvantages, before it's deployed. The mere existence of a weapon, however potent, doesn't guarantee proper doctrine will be formulated for it, either. A system we haven't figured out how to employ properly could turn out to be more dangerous to us than to the enemy, especially if we commit so heavily to it that we skimp on other, battle-proven weapons."

Honor felt his disgust through her link to Nimitz, and it surprised her. She knew White Haven was the acknowledged leader of the so-called "historical school" which believed that the fundamental strategic truths didn't change, that new weapon systems and technology simply offered new and better ways to apply those truths, not that they could create new ones, and his clashes with the jeune ecole were legendary. But the depth and bitterness of the weariness coloring his emotions startled her. It was almost like combat fatigue, she realized, as if he'd fought so many battles against the jeune ecole that he could no longer summon the detachment to consider the WDB proposals dispassionately.

She started to speak, but he held up a hand and went on before she could.

"I realize that your stint on the Board was brief, Milady, but just look at some of its proposals." He ticked the points off on the fingers of his raised hand. "First, it wants us to radically redesign our ships of the wall to produce a totally untested class. Next, it wants us to accelerate the construction of light attack craft, when we've demonstrated just about conclusively that even modern LAC’s are no match, ton-for-ton, for properly designed starships, even in a defensive role. Then it wants us to divert something like ten percent of our building capacity from super-dreadnoughts and dreadnoughts, and this, mind you, at a time when the Peeps' building rates in those same classes are going up, to build these so-called 'LAC-carriers' in order to transport light attack craft across interstellar distances as offensive units, not defensive ones. Not content with that, it wants to strip the missile tubes out of our existing ships of the wall and replace them with launchers which will use up twelve percent more weapons volume and fire missiles whose size effectively reduces magazine capacity by eighteen percent?" He shook his head.

"No, Milady. This isn't just changing horses in midstream; this is jumping off your horse without making sure you have another one to land on, and you don't do that in the middle of a war. Not if you want to win that war. This sounds too much like a Sonja Hemphill wish list for me to endorse it."

"Then you're wrong, My Lord," Honor said, "and perhaps you should have read that white paper rather than just venting your spleen on it."

Her soprano's flat, biting indecisiveness twitched White Haven upright in his chair, and she felt his astonishment through Nimitz. He was unused to hearing anyone speak to him like that, she realized, but she refused to retreat and held his eyes unflinchingly.

White Haven looked at his hostess, and it was as if he were truly seeing her for the first time. Very few officers below three-star rank dared cross swords with him, and even those who did seldom had the nerve to address him in such a cool, clipped tone. But Honor Harrington had the nerve, and her chocolate-brown eyes were very level, and hard. He blinked as he digested her demeanor, for it was painfully clear that all his undeniable experience, achievements, and seniority failed to overwhelm her. There was no hint of apology or hesitance in her ma