Страница 75 из 128
His intent had been simple. If all armsmen belonged to the Army, then, in theory at least, a Protector could summon the armsmen of a recalcitrant steadholder to active Army service, thus depriving him even of the fifty personal retainers he was allowed. The fact that a steadholder who was allowed only fifty armsmen would tend to recruit the very best he could find also meant that the supply of backup officers they represented would be of high caliber if they were ever actually needed, which was an additional benefit, but everyone knew it had also been a secondary one from Benjamin’s viewpoint.
Unfortunately for his plan, however, the Planetary High Court of a later (and weaker) Protector had observed that armsmen received their Army commissions because they were armsmen... and that they became armsmen in the first place on the basis of the oaths of loyalty they'd sworn to their steadholders. In the courts view, that meant their first responsibility was to the steadholders they served, not the Army. As such, they could be called to active Army service only with the consent of their liege lords, which no steadholder engaged in a face-off against the Protector was likely to grant.
That had blown Benjamin’s intentions out from under his descendants, but the constitutional provisions remained. And since Grayson Marines were simply Army troops assigned to shipboard duty, and since LaFollet, Candless, and Whitman did hold Army commissions, they were indeed technically Marine officers. It was a fragile assertion, resting entirely on the peculiarities of Grayson's domestic laws, but it was an honest one, and the fact that the perso
Yet any satisfaction Honor had felt when Luchner accepted them as Marines had been no more than a brief flicker in the blackness which had engulfed her, dwarfed by the defeat and failure which filled the men and women about her. In many cases it was accompanied by an enormous sense of gratitude at having survived, as well, but for most even that relief was flawed. In a way, having been spared death or injury became another source of shame, for the survivors felt guilty for being grateful, as if that very human reaction were somehow despicable, and that, too, beat in upon Honor through Nimitz.
She closed her eyes, tasting the bitter flavor of her officers' i
A dark and terrible, and intensely personal, fear snarled deep inside her. She'd done her best to drive it out of her forebrain, to ignore it or at least to so occupy herself with her duties that she could pretend she'd ignored it, but all her efforts had been a lie. The fear only laughed at efforts to suppress it. It jeered and whispered to her, mocking her, and her inability to set it aside as her intellect insisted she ought only made her ashamed of the weakness she could not master.
But worst of all, the same intellect which told her it was her duty to defeat her fear knew that fear was valid, for it was the fear of separation. The fear that her captors would dismiss Nimitz as no more than a curious, alien pet, an animal, and separate her from him. Or, still worse, that they would class him as a dangerous alien animal. The consequences of any such decision terrified her so deeply that she dared not let herself face them fully, yet neither dared she ignore them. And so she'd left him in his suit, hoping his obvious training in its use would emphasize his intelligence and make it clear he was far more than a "mere animal" when the time came for her to defend him as such. And, she admitted, the suit's gloves hid the murderous, centimeter-long scimitars of his claws. None of her captors had ever seen Nimitz in action, and if she could just conceal the lethality of his natural weapons until she'd had a chance to fix his intelligence and self-control firmly in their minds, perhaps she could protect him.
Perhaps... and perhaps not. But if she couldn't, if someone tried to separate them or to injure Nimitz, if, She clenched her jaw and jerked free of the choking panic as it tried to build within her once more. She had other responsibilities, duties she must somehow discharge, and she felt Nimitz reach up to stroke her face with a gentle true-hand. He felt her dread, and she knew he understood its source, for she felt his answering fear. In fact, the two of them were trapped in a feedback loop in which their shared fear fed upon itself and grew strong. But she also felt his support, his love and fierce rejection of her conscience's efforts to punish her for the way her thoughts seemed to waver and flow like water when she should be concentrating on her duty to the people her orders had brought to this.
But he was wrong. She did have those other responsibilities, and somehow she forced her shoulders to straighten and her head to rise as the procession of prisoners reached the boat bay gallery. Expressionless Peep Marines lined the bulkheads, pulse rifles at port arms, not overtly threatening but instantly ready, and Honor's lips quirked bitterly. She'd seen her own Marines in similar poses, alert eyes watchful as surrendered Peep perso
Citizen Commander Luchner extended his hand to her, and she gripped it firmly. Somehow she managed to dredge up a caricature of a smile for him, and the shamed part of her sneered at the paucity of her efforts. Whatever else had happened, Luchner and his CO had, indeed, treated their prisoners well. He deserved more than a corpse grin from her for his efforts, yet it was the best she could offer, and she hoped he understood.
He stood aside once more, and the Marines split Honor and her officers up into pi
Citizen Rear Admiral Tourville turned from his conversation with Citizen Captain Hewitt, his flag captain, as the boat bay tractors deposited the lead pi
He'd done his best with Honeker, and to be honest, he'd wrought a bit better than he'd hoped. They'd discussed the situation quietly in a corner of Count Tilly's gym under cover of the background noise from a basketball game. Neither of them had commented on why Tourville had chosen that particular difficult-to-bug spot, but that in itself had told him Honeker understood his reasons for inviting the people's commissioner there.
And, as he'd hoped, Honeker had been sympathetic. In fact, Tourville suspected Honeker had been almost as responsive to the citizen admiral's concern over the honor and moral responsibilities of the Fleet as to the more "practical" implications of the way they treated their prisoners. Yet there were limits on how far the commissioner was prepared to go. In effect, he'd agreed, without ever specifically saying it in so many words, to defer to Tourville's treatment of Harrington and her perso