In Enemy Hands

"I don't know..." Pierre rubbed his chin and looked back at Saint-Just. "Oscar?"

"I can't say I care for the idea," Saint-Just said frankly, "but we invited the Citizen Admiral, Esther, to join the Committee because we felt we need a professional officer's advice. Under the circumstances, I'm not prepared to reject it out of hand without giving it some pretty careful thought."

"That sounds fair enough," Pierre agreed. "And her other recommendations?"

"Those make sense," Saint-Just said. "Mind you, I'm in two minds about how to proceed on the question of collective responsibility. I have to admit that we've reached a point of diminishing returns with it, but I'm also convinced it's still useful in some cases, and I'm worried about what Manty propaganda could do if we formally admit that we ever adopted the policy in the first place. Could we discontinue it without making a specific a

"That's obviously a political decision," McQueen said, seeing an opportunity to give ground and sound reasonable. "From a purely military perspective, I think an a

"That won't be possible for at least a month or two," Pierre told her. "Cordelia is en route to Barnett."

"She is?" McQueen’s mental ante

"She is," Pierre confirmed, then smiled tightly. "And we might as well admit that having her away for a few weeks may not be an entirely bad thing. I'm sure you've observed that the Navy isn't exactly her favorite institution?"

"I'm afraid I have," McQueen admitted in a carefully neutral tone.

"Well, I expect her to pitch a fit when she hears what you have in mind," Pierre said almost philosophically, "and we're going to need Public Information's support, not just its acquiescence, if we're going to make this work. That means we'll have to bring her around somehow."

"May I assume from that that you intend to support the changes I've suggested?" McQueen asked even more carefully, and Pierre smiled once more.

"I'm not certain I agree with all of them," he said frankly. "I think that staff group you suggested is an excellent idea, and I'd like you and Oscar to each nominate half its membership. But even if it signs off on all of your suggestions, I'm not the one who's going to be supporting them. You are... Citizen Secretary of War."

"Sec...?" McQueen managed to chop herself off before she repeated the title like an idiot, and Pierre nodded.

"Citizen Secretary Kline is one of the committee members whose loyalty Oscar and I have some doubts about," he admitted. "Under the circumstances, I think we can dispense with his services, and if you're going to take Cordelia on, you'll need the rank to do it." McQueen nodded, green eyes glowing despite her iron self-control, and he frowned slightly. "At the same time, Citizen Secretary, bear in mind that your appointment is provisional," he said in a much cooler tone, and she nodded once more.

Of course it was provisional. It had to be. They wouldn't dream of really trusting her until they decided that she was sufficiently tame, but that was all right. Even a provisional appointment would put her in a position from which she might actually be able to fix some of the things wrong with the Fleet, and if Rob Pierre wanted to play lion-tamer with her, that was fine with Esther McQueen.

Let him and Saint-Just decide I'm nice and tame, she thought, smiling brightly but soberly at the Chairman of the Committee of Public Safety. After all, how many lion-tamers come close enough to a wild lion for it to eat them?

Chapter Seven

"Good morning, Milady."

Andreas Venizelos turned with a smile of greeting as Honor stepped out of the flag bridge lift with Andrew LaFollet at her elbow. Although her chief of staff had known her since the days when she was plain Commander Harrington, with no titles or feudal dignities, he'd adjusted to the presence of her armsmen without fuss or bother. In fact, he and LaFollet were well on their way to becoming friends, for which Honor was grateful.

Nimitz rode in his normal, half-standing perch on her shoulder. Like her Grayson vests, her uniform tunics were made of a fabric tough enough to resist light pulser fire, not because she expected assassins to lurk on her flag bridge, but because Nimitz’s claws required it. His true-feet dug in at the level of her shoulder blade, and his hand-feet clung to the top of her shoulder as he looked around with bright, curious eyes, and the scimitar claws which would quickly have reduced any lesser fabric to shreds didn't even leave pick marks. Which was just as well, she thought, and smiled as she reflected on MacGuiness' probable reactions to that sort of carnage.

Nimitz caught her amusement and bleeked a laugh, flirting the tip of his prehensile tail cheerfully, as he plucked the same image from her thoughts. Like Honor, the 'cat had perked up in the last few days. In her case, it was being away from the perplexing puzzle Earl White Haven had come to represent, and, in a sense, that was also the reason for Nimitz’s improved mood. There was still a low key echo, a sense of something not quite perfectly in synch in her emotions, but by and large the return to a familiar environment and new but well-understood challenges had restored her equilibrium and damped the emotional spikes he'd been unable to understand. Neither of them was so foolish as to think the problem was solved, but unlike Honor, Nimitz had the capability to let worries take care of themselves without rushing to meet them.

"Good morning, Andy." Honor nodded a reply to the chief of staff's greeting and crossed to her comfortable command chair and ran her fingers lightly over the keys to bring it on-line.

The flatscreen and holo displays flicked to life about her, presenting the full status of her squadron, or, at least, those units of it which were currently present, at a glance, and she gave a mental nod of satisfaction. There wasn't that much to see, with all her ships still in a Grayson parking orbit, but she sat back for a moment, watching the routine small craft traffic plying between them and the planet or moving on ship-to-ship courses. There was something almost sensually satisfying about watching her command live and breathe. In an odd sort of way, it was even more satisfying than it had been when she'd been given the GSN's First Battle Squadron and command of no less than six superdreadnoughts. Even one of those stupendous ships would have outmassed her entire present squadron by a factor of three, but perhaps that was the reason for the difference. Those ships had been stupendous, with a ponderous might and majesty that lacked the fleet-footed responsiveness of a cruiser squadron.