In Enemy Hands

None of it had been Solomon’s fault, and she doubted he'd even known Edmond, but it seemed obvious that the commander felt guilty. He was being grossly unfair to himself, and, in a sense, to her, if he expected her to blame him for someone else's bigotry, and his pain transmitted itself all too clearly to her. But he didn't know that, and she couldn't refer to it without simply making things worse.

"I'm pleased to meet you, Commander," she said instead. "I was impressed by the reasoning behind your essay on new convoy tactics in the Proceedings. I'd like to discuss it with you in somewhat greater detail."

"Ah, certainly, My Lady." Marchant’s eyes flickered, less steady but much more human in that moment, and she gave his hand a squeeze. The tight knot at his center was still there, though it seemed to have eased just a bit. Getting it to unknot entirely would undoubtedly take time, but she seemed to have hit the right note for a begi

"No, indeed, Captain!" Honor extended her hand to Venizelos with an enormous smile. "It's wonderful to see you again, Andy. I seem to be making a habit out of seeing old friends on my staff whenever I have one!"

"Yes, Ma'am. So I've heard," Venizelos replied with a matching smile Honor was relieved to see. Not every officer would have been thrilled by the notion of giving up command of a light cruiser to accept a staff position. Of course, Venizelos had been scheduled to do just that long before Honor was tapped to command CruRon 18; all she'd done was grab him for her staff.

Only admirals and vice admirals were supposed to be allowed captains as their chiefs of staff, though an occasional rear admiral might get one, if he was a particular favorite of someone at the Admiralty. As a mere commodore, custom said Honor was limited to a commander or lieutenant commander, and she'd put in an immediate request for Venizelos when she'd found out he was available, but the decision to give him some senior staff experience before promoting him to captain junior grade had been made at a much higher level. Honor was certain he knew that... and wondered if he realized just what that meant. Experience as the chief of staff for an allied squadron with perso

"Well!" She shook off her thoughts, clasped her hands behind her, and rocked gently on her heels, contemplating her new subordinates for several seconds, then nodded. "I'll look forward to meeting the rest of your senior officers, Captain, and the rest of the staff, Andy, once I've had a chance to settle in."

"Of course, My Lady," Greentree replied. "May I escort you to your quarters?"

"Thank you, Captain. I'd appreciate that," Honor said, and gloved hands slapped pulser butts as the Marine honor guard snapped to attention. Greentree and Marchant accompanied her, each a precise, militarily correct half-pace behind, and she glanced back and smothered a chuckle as the rest of her entourage shook itself out into formation. Andrew LaFollet led the procession, following at her shoulder, with Venizelos at his side. MacGuiness came next, keeping an eagle eye on two third-class stewards weighed down with the last of her personal baggage, and James Candless and Robert Whitman, the other two members of her permanent security party, brought up the rear. Accustomed though she was becoming to playing the role of a three-ring circus, it still struck Honor as mildly ridiculous to have so many people trudging around behind her. Unfortunately, no one had offered her much choice in the matter.

She just hoped the lift would be big enough to cram everyone into it.

Chapter Six

Esther McQueen's carefully trained face hid the mild surprise she still felt as Rob Pierre and Oscar Saint-Just both came to their feet at her arrival. They'd each done the same thing on every other occasion upon which she'd met with either or both of them, and oddly enough, she was certain the courteous gesture was genuine, not something assumed for the purposes of manipulation. Not because she would ever make the mistake of forgetting that both these men were consummate manipulators, but because, in their personal relations, both of them routinely demonstrated an old-fashioned courtesy which was almost grotesque against the backdrop of the Republic’s current agony.

And agony it was, she thought grimly as she crossed the thick carpet of the small conference room to shake hands with her hosts. Her own encounter with the Levelers was proof enough of that... as were the huge mass graves which had been required to deal with the wreckage in its wake.

No one had managed to produce an accurate estimate of which side had killed how many, and McQueen was just as glad. According to Public Information, of course, virtually all the casualties had been inflicted by the insurrectionists, and McQueen didn't know whether to be grateful or furious. On the one hand, she had no desire to be remembered as a mass murderer, however necessary it had been. On the other, any thinking individual who heard those reports would know they were lies, you didn't use modern weapons in a city the size of Nouveau Paris without killing a lot of people, however pure your motives, and think she'd signed off on them.

The truth was, as she knew, that she was trapped in a no-win situation where the death toll was concerned... and not just with the public. She wasn't the one who'd popped off the pee-wee nukes the Levelers had smuggled into both of StateSecs major HQs here in the capital. Those bombs had done their job of taking out the only SS field forces which might have been deployed in sufficient strength to make a difference, and the Leveler leadership had obviously felt the slaughter of surrounding civilians was worth it. McQueen would have preferred to think she wasn't like that, but the same brutal self-honesty which made her such an effective field commander wouldn't let her.

The only real difference, she told herself, is that at least I didn't start it. But I made up for that once I got rolling, didn't I? My kinetic strikes were "cleaner" than theirs were, but does it really matter to a six-year-old whether or not the flash that incinerates her comes from a fusion reaction?

But that was the point, wasn't it? The Levelers had "started it," and the fact they'd opted for what were still quaintly called "weapons of mass destruction" from the outset only emphasized the nature of their thought processes. She'd known what they had in mind and seen how they were willing to go about accomplishing it, and she'd done what she had to do because the consequences of doing nothing would have been still worse. She'd had to make her decisions under pressure as dreadful as any she'd ever faced in the defense of Trevor's Star, but she'd had time to reconsider them in detail since, and she was convinced she'd made the right ones. The hellish part was that even knowing she'd done the right thing, even knowing she'd had no choice, she still had to live with the knowledge that she'd probably killed at least as many people as the Levelers.

Yeah? Well, maybe I did... but unlike them, at least I actually got some of theguilty ones along the way, by God!