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He allowed himself to consider the consequences of his triumph for several more seconds, but then he blew a cloud of smoke and made himself come back to ground. There was a certain danger bound up in his success, he reflected. For one thing, it was damned likely to get him promoted, and that was bad. He'd prospered so far by avoiding the higher rank which would take him away from the independent commands he loved, on the one hand, and expose him to the risk of being made an example for failure that went with fleet command, on the other. But if Public Information poured it on too thick and heavy, the Navy would have little choice but to offer him promotion, and he could hardly escape it once it had been offered.
Any navy, even one whose high command languished in the grip of revolutionary fervor, had a simple rule where officers who refused promotion, and thus indicated they were unprepared to accept the responsibility which went with it, were concerned. They were never again asked to accept it. In fact, they were never employed in responsible positions again... and only in the most extraordinary of conditions were they ever employed in any capacity. And while he was hardly alone in looking for ways to avoid the role of StateSec's scapegoat, people who refused promotion, especially in a navy fighting for its life, were likely to find their professional colleagues actively assisting the SS in getting rid of them.
He frowned at the thought and made a mental note to be certain that his reports gave full credit for Harrington's capture to Zachary and Turner. The Fleet would know he'd been in command, and his modesty would stand him in excellent stead with his peers, but with a little bit of luck, well, he admitted, probably it'll take a lot of luck, but it's worth trying for, the official record would steer any promotion towards Zachary and Turner. And, he reflected, both of them certainly deserve it. Luck may have played a big part in their pulling this off, but luck always plays a part. God knows Harrington's been shot through with luck to manage all she has!
He nodded and took his cigar from his mouth. He held it in front of himself, studying the glowing tip with a frown, and let his mind replay Zachary's message. He was certain the citizen captain would have told him if Harrington had been injured in the battle, and he was glad she hadn't been. Much as news of her capture pleased him, Tourville was not one of the Republican officers who hated her for what she'd done to their Navy. Indeed, that was one reason the thought of capturing her pleased him so. She was a foe he could respect, one worthy of his steel, and he looked forward to meeting her. And, he told himself with a mental chuckle, I especially look forward to being the first senior Republican officer to meet her when he's not her prisoner!
But the fact that he did respect her, as much as her own military record or her political importance, made it even more important that she be treated with the courtesy her rank and achievements had earned. The Republics reputation for proper treatment of prisoners of war had not been an admirable one even under the Legislaturalists. Lester Tourville was one of the officers who felt both shamed by and bitter over that, and the Republic’s record had gotten even worse under the new regime. State Security now had primary authority for the management of prisoners, both military and political, and the Navy fought a continuous, clandestine war to keep its POWs out of StateSecs clutches. Unfortunately, the Navy won only the battles the SS chose to let it win, and even those victories were usually no more than the result of StateSecs decision to let the Navy come up with the perso
It was possible, even probable, that StateSec would demand that Harrington be turned over to it, Tourville realized, and his smile vanished into a bleak nonexpression. Not only did she deserve better, but unlike StateSecs thugs, Tourville and every other member of the Peoples Navy had a direct interest in the proper treatment of captured Allied perso
The citizen rear admiral cocked his chair back again and gazed thoughtfully at his com. He noted Bogdanovich's expression, the puzzlement in the chief of staffs eyes as he sensed his admiral’s change of mood without grasping all the reasons for it. But Bogdanovich was secondary to Tourville’s thoughts at the moment. There were aspects to this situation which he'd overlooked in his immediate exultation, and his mind began to click as he considered how best to deal with the repercussions looming up down the road.
Could he enlist Everard Honeker's aid? He certainly couldn't explain his reasoning to the people’s commissioner on the record, but Honeker had been his political watchdog long enough for them to develop a certain mutual understanding. And Honeker would reap his own share of the credit for Harrington's capture, which might just incline him to listen to what Tourville had to say. Properly speaking, Honeker himself belonged to the Office of State Security, which could reasonably be expected to hold his institutional loyalty, but he was also at least a quasi-officer who'd been exposed to the realities of naval service. More to the point, perhaps, he wasn't an idiot like too many other commissioners. Although he certainly wasn't about to admit it, he seemed to understand that a navy which expected to win wars simply could not ignore operational realities in favor of subservience to every jot and tittle of revolutionary doctrine, however asinine. He'd certainly shown himself willing to look the other way from time to time in the interest of rationality and efficiency, but could Tourville convince him to lend his support to keeping Harrington in Navy hands rather than turning her over to the SS?
The one thing the citizen rear admiral couldn't do was appeal to Honeker solely on the basis of moral obligations and the honor of the Fleet. Not because Honeker wouldn't understand the appeal was seriously meant, but because the peoples commissioner, like any people's commissioner, came with a preprogrammed rejection of anything that smacked of the old regime's prerevolutionary concepts. It was, after all, an imperishable article of faith with them that the Legislaturalist regime had collapsed under the weight of its own corrupt decadence, and that the Committee of Public Safety was engaged in a revolutionary fight to the death against the forces of reactionism, aristocracy, elitism, and entrenched plutocratic interests. The values of those opponents of justice and progress were only lies, invented to manipulate the masses, and so had to be cast aside as the posturing of the greedy elite, which had conspired throughout history to oppress and debase the People. As Citizen Committeewoman Ransom herself was fond of putting it, "Honor is a word plutocrats use when they want someone killed."
Tourville had come to suspect Honeker subscribed more deeply to the decadent values Ransom despised than he was prepared to admit, but the people's commissioner was like a man from an intensely religious family who still attended church regularly without ever admitting to himself that he'd secretly become an agnostic. Whatever might go on in the depths of his mind, he would never openly contest orthodox doctrine, and so Tourville would have to base his argument, overtly, at least, on an analysis of solid, tangible, and immediate advantage and disadvantage. Even though that agnostic part of Honeker might actually hear the moral argument, he had to give the commissioner something else which they could both pretend was the real reason for his support.