In Enemy Hands

"Indeed he would, Sir," White Haven agreed. But by the time she gets back, he added mentally, maybe this admiral will have gotten his head straightened out and realized he has to keep his hands in his pockets where she's concerned!

Chapter Eight

"All right, people, lets see some enthusiasm! We've got some Manty ass to kick!"

Citizen Rear Admiral Lester Tourville’s thick mustache bristled aggressively over his fierce grin. Conformity had become the path to survival for most of the People’s Navy's senior officers, but Tourville was and would always remain a character, indeed, almost a caricature. His climb from captain to rear admiral had been meteoric, yet he knew as well as anyone that the likelihood of his ever rising above rear admiral was essentially nonexistent. Not that it bothered him. Most of his more colorful ma

Of course, there were drawbacks to his relatively junior rank. Foremost among them was the fact that he would always be charged with executing someone else's orders, since any squadron he commanded would always belong to someone else's task force or fleet. On the other hand, any navy often had to detach squadrons for independent service. When that happened, any set of orders could offer only general guidance, with the squadron CO expected to use his own good sense to implement them, and that was as close to being his or her own master as any PN officer was likely to get these days. Besides, sometimes the person writing your orders actually knew what he was doing.

That was one of the reasons Tourville liked working for Citizen Admiral Theisman. The keen analyst hidden behind Tourville’s bullheaded exterior rather doubted Theisman would be around much longer, for the citizen admiral had made the mistake of allowing himself to be promoted. A postgraduate degree in ass-kissing was required at Theisman’s level, and the Barnett System CO lacked the ability to buff sufficient buttocks. That probably said something good about him as a human being, but it was a fatal flaw in the present day PRH. So far, Theisman, like Tourville, had always managed to deliver the goods, which kept him valuable to his masters. Unlike Tourville, he'd climbed too high to be allowed to remain apolitical. His purely military value would soon be outweighed by his political liabilities if he persisted in trying to remain his own man.

In the meantime, however, Theisman was one of the minority of senior officers who both saw what had to be done and was willing to risk saying so. He also had the guts to take calculated risks, despite the SS’s habit of shooting those who tried and failed, and he was always careful to phrase his orders in ways which would protect the subordinates he sent out to run those risks from StateSec's wrath. Like Tourville’s current orders.

"I commend your own enthusiasm, Citizen Rear Admiral," Peoples Commissioner Everard Honeker said dryly, "but lets not get carried away. Our orders are to carry out a reco

"Agreed. Agreed." Tourville waved one hand airily and drew a cigar from the breast pocket of his tunic. He shoved it into his mouth at precisely the right angle of jauntiness, lit it, and blew a stream of pungent smoke at the air return over his console. In point of fact, he didn't much care for cigars, but smoking had once more become fashionable over the past several years, and he'd decided cigars fitted his image. Now he couldn't get rid of the miserable things without admitting they'd been a mistake, and he was damned if he'd do that.

"A reco

Honeker sighed, but he'd grown accustomed to Tourville's ebullience. There was no real point trying to resist it, for the citizen rear admiral seemed unaware that Honeker held his leash. Indeed, Honeker often thought of himself as being towed bodily along by the cheerful, clumsy eagerness of the Great Dane or Saint Bernard he was supposedly walking. It wasn't how things were supposed to be, but it had worked, so far, at least, and his political superiors gave him much of the credit for Tourville's successes. Besides, Honeker actually liked the citizen rear admiral... even if he did choose to play the role of someone who belonged on a holystoned wooden quarterdeck with a cutlass and a brace of flintlock pistols in his belt, bellowing orders over the roar of ca

"I don't have a problem with engaging the enemy, Citizen Rear Admiral." The commissioner heard a familiar, half-soothing note in his voice and hid a wry mental grimace. "I'm simply pointing out that your squadron represents a valuable asset. It shouldn't be risked unless the potential gain clearly justifies doing so."

"Of course not!" Tourville agreed genially through another cloud of aromatic smoke. Honeker would have felt a bit better if the citizen rear admiral's grin had been a little less fierce, but he decided to accept Tourville's agreement at face value. There would be time enough to argue when the moment came... and precious little point trying to make this cheerful, bloodthirsty adolescent see reason ahead of time, anyway.

Tourville watched the people’s commissioner give up the argument with deep satisfaction. One thing he'd learned early on was that it was far better for one to appear overly aggressive, so that the Committee of Public Safety's spies were forced to rein one in, than to appear timid or hesitant. It was a lesson Citizen Admiral Theisman's own performance at the Fourth Battle of Yeltsin had underscored, and it had served Tourville well since the Harris Assassination. When he was certain Honeker had stopped objecting, he turned sharp, dark eyes on his chief of staff and jabbed the cigar at him like a pulser.

"All right, Yuri. Let's hear it," he commanded.

"Yes, Citizen Rear Admiral," Citizen Captain Yuri Bogdanovich replied. He'd been with Tourville long enough to learn to double-team their watchdog, and his crisp, cool tone was a deliberate contrast to his admiral's jovial ferocity. Now he straightened his shoulders, sitting upright with military precision, and activated the holo unit to project a floating star map above the table in PNS Count Tilly's flag briefing room.

"This is our general operations area, Citizen Rear Admiral, Citizen Commissioner. As you know, Citizen Admiral Theisman and Citizen Commissioner LePic have detached our second and third divisions to reinforce the Corrigan System pickets here." He touched a key, and the G6 primary of the Corrigan System pulsed brightly. "While that represents half our total unit strength, the ships in question are all Sultans or Tigers, whereas the units remaining under our immediate command are all Warlords. In addition, Barnett HQ has assigned us five Scimitar and three Mars-class heavy cruisers and six Conqueror-class light cruisers to replace them. Our cumulative loss in actual fighting strength is thus about equal to one Sultan-class, but we've gained three and a half times as many scouting platforms and a somewhat higher squadron acceleration curve in return. In other words, we've got more eyes, more speed, and almost as much punch as we had before. In addition, we've been assigned two fast minelayers, Yarnowski and Simmons, which have been reconfigured as freighters to provide logistical support."