In Enemy Hands

He took another, smaller sip of his drink, closed his eyes, and pressed the cold glass to his forehead while whiskey fumes sent strands of thought he might never have dared to face without the drink pirouetting through his brain.

He respected Harrington. More, he owed her his own life, and the lives of the crew she had allowed him to surrender when she'd had every possible reason simply to blow them out of space and be done with it, and she'd continued to show compassion to her enemies since. Warner Caslet had been returned to the Republic because Harrington had felt the Star Kingdom owed him and his crew a debt. Citizen Captain Stephen Holtz and the forty-six survivors of PNS Achmed had lived only because Harrington had sent her pi

The People's Navy owed her a debt of honor, and Thomas Theisman owed her a personal debt, both of which simply reinforced the argument of reciprocity. Honor Harrington was, quite simply, a person whom the Republic must treat with dignity and respect if it expected its own perso

The admittance chime sounded, and he grunted in irritation. He set his glass aside and pressed the stud on the arm of his chair.

"Yes?" he growled.

"I'd like to speak to you, Citizen Admiral," someone said, and Theisman jerked upright as he recognized Cordelia Ransom's voice. Time seemed to stop, a single instant stretching itself out towards eternity, and in that crystalline suspension, he realized how incredibly stupid he'd been to get drunk when Cordelia Ransom was anywhere in the same star system.

But then the instant shattered, and self-preservation tamed his flood of panic. Stupid he might be, but kicking himself wouldn't save him from the consequences. That was going to take action, and he shook himself violently and shoved up out of his chair.

"Uh, just a moment, Citizen Secretary!" he got out, and his feet fumbled their ways into his boots while he resealed his blouse’s collar, then reached for the inhaler beside the whiskey bottle. He hated the damned thing, and he seldom drank heavily enough to need it, but he'd learned the hard way to keep it handy when he did drink. Up till this moment, he'd thought that disastrous evening in his third year at the Academy would retain a pure and unsullied prominence as the worst drunken night in his life. Now he knew better, and he raised the inhaler, pressed the button, and breathed in deeply.

The sudden, hacking cough which doubled him over took his body by surprise. His mind had known it was coming, but not the rest of him, and his skull seemed to expand hugely. For an instant he thought he was dying, then he only wished he were. But at least the damned thing had the desired effect. His stomach felt even more upset than before, but his brain cleared, mostly, and the room stopped trying to polka about him.

He gave himself another shake, shoved the inhaler into the pocket of his trousers, and snatched his tunic up from the other chair. He started to pull it back on, then changed his mind. He was in his personal quarters, after all, and Ransom hadn't warned him she was coming. Under the circumstances, he refused to greet her in full uniform like some neorabbit scurrying to present the best possible appearance to a hunter.

He settled for hanging the tunic more neatly on a coat tree, drew a deep breath, and pressed the admittance button.

The door slid open, and Cordelia Ransom stepped through it, trailed, as always, by her hulking bodyguards. Actually, Theisman realized as he looked more closely, this was a different pair from the one which had accompanied her to his office that first day. Not that it seemed to matter. They obviously came in interchangeable matched sets.

"Good evening, Citizen Secretary," he said. "I wasn't expecting you."

"I realize that, Citizen Admiral," she replied, and cocked her head. Her blue eyes rested for a moment on his tunic, then flicked to the whiskey bottle and glass on the coffee table. "I apologize for disturbing you without prior notice, but there were a few points I wanted to discuss with you. In private."

"Indeed?" Theisman said politely. The inhaler had left him with a throbbing headache, but the pain seemed to help clear his thoughts, and he let his own eyes flick to her bodyguards. The hint was wasted. The concept of private discussions obviously didn't extend to excluding them, and Theisman was struck by a sudden insight. He wondered if the residual clash between the inhalers contents and the fuzzy remnants of his inebriation had somehow freed him to make the association, but once made, it was so blindingly obvious he wondered how he could possibly have missed it before. Those guards' presence had nothing at all to do with any genuine feeling of danger on Ransom’s part. They were present simply because she was important enough that she could have them. They were an expression of her power and importance, a totem or trophy she was unprepared to dispense with.

"Indeed," she replied, oblivious to the thoughts flickering through his mind, and he stepped aside and waved to invite her to select a chair.

"I was just having a drink to unwind," he said. "May I offer you one, as well?"

"No, thank you. Please feel free to refresh your own glass, though."

"Not just now, thanks," Theisman told her, and waited until she'd seated herself before he sat facing her. "How can I help you, Citizen Secretary?" he asked in a courteous tone while the bodyguards stationed themselves behind her.

"I wanted to discuss Citizen Rear Admiral Tourville's actions," she replied, and he felt a fresh stab of alarm, for her voice was cold and the flatness was back in her eyes.

"In what respect, Ma'am?" His whiskey-abused stomach knotted, yet he managed to keep the wariness out of his voice and expression. But it was hard, and Ransom's next words made it even harder.

"I'm not at all happy about his obvious attempt to consign his prisoners to military custody," she said.

"I'm not certain I follow your reasoning, Citizen Secretary," Theisman said as calmly as he could. "His prisoners are already in military custody, and he did report their capture and seek confirmation of his intention to transfer them direct to Tarragon."

"Don't play games with me, Citizen Admiral." Ransoms voice was colder still, and she smiled thinly. "Loyalty to one's subordinates is an admirable quality, but you know what I mean. This Harrington is scarcely an ordinary prisoner of war, and you and Tourville both know it. Her capture is a political factor of the first importance. As such, her disposition is a political, not a military, decision!"

"But, Citizen Secretary," Theisman tried, "under the Deneb Accords..."

"I'm not interested in the Deneb Accords!" Ransom snapped. She leaned forward and glared at Theisman. "The Deneb Accords were signed by the Legislaturalists, not the representatives of the People, and the People aren't bound by archaic remnants of the plutocratic past, not when they're locked in a fight to the death with other plutocratic elitists! This is a war of ideologies, and there can be no compromise between them. Why can't military officers realize that? This isn't another one of your 'warrior' clique's wars against 'honorable enemies' or 'fellow officers,' Citizen Admiral! It's a class war, a revolutionary struggle in which the sole acceptable outcome is not just the defeat but the a