In Enemy Hands

"Yes," she went on thoughtfully as he made himself escort her courteously to the door, "this is going to take some thought. Perhaps what we should do is centralize all POW decisions. We could adopt a policy under which the names of captured perso

Theisman swallowed bile as the Secretary of Public Information paused at the door to shake his hand warmly.

"Thank you very much, Citizen Admiral!" she said enthusiastically. "You've been a tremendous help to the war effort. If you have any other valuable ideas, please share them with me!"

She gave his hand another squeeze, smiled brightly, and left, and Thomas Theisman barely made it to the head before he vomited.

Chapter Twenty-One

The guards aboard the shuttle wore the black tunics and red trousers of State Security, not Navy green and gray or the brown and gray of the People’s Marines, and there were more of them. In fact, there was as many guards as there were prisoners, each of them with a flechette gun and the expression of someone who would enjoy using it.

Honor sat straight and still, with Nimitz a stiff, motionless weight in her lap, and tried to hide behind an assumed calm as hard, hostile eyes bored into her back. It wasn't easy, and her mask had slipped when the SS guards arrived to replace the naval escort she'd expected. Nor had the prisoners remained together for their trip planet-side, for this shuttle held only her own staffers and the more senior of Prince Adrian's commissioned perso

She didn't know, but she almost hoped not, for they would be better off as far as possible from whatever the Peeps pla

And thugs they were, she thought grimly, fighting to hold onto her stability and maintain her pretense of calm while the fear of others fed her own. Manticore's intelligence agencies had analyzed State Security and its role in maintaining the Committee of Public Safety in power, and Honor had seen ONI's reports. For the most part, Admiral Givens' analysts had been more concerned with StateSecs impact on the operations of the People's Navy than with how it functioned within civilian society, but even ONI's summary reports had noted that the SS had recruited its members not just from the elements which had been the most disaffected under the old regime but from the now defunct Office of Internal Security, as well. InSec's enforcers and executioners had been professionals, not ideologues. They'd been willing enough to shift allegiance to the new regime and teach its minions their trade, and their new colleagues had learned their lessons well. In fact, they'd learned to surpass their instructors, for they'd had lots of practice.

One reason for the Legislaturalists' fall was that their repression had been... uneven. One week they might make dozens of troublemakers disappear; the next, the government might grant a general amnesty to curry favor with the Dolists. But uneve

Honor hadn't questioned the accuracy of those ONI reports, yet neither had she thought their implications through. If she had, she would have realized what sort of people were required to embrace that sort of action.

She realized now. She couldn't help it, for their emotions beat in upon her like jeering demons, whispering malevolently in the back of her mind. The red fangs of hunger radiated from some of them, jagged with the need to prove their own power by grinding others under their heels. There was a sickness in that appetite for cruelty, one that turned Honors stomach, yet there was worse, as well, for some of the guards standing behind her felt no hunger. They felt nothing when they looked at Honor and the other prisoners. She and her people might have been so many insects for all the emotion those guards would feel if the order were given to murder them all, and the deadness of their feelings carried a charnel reek more horrible than the most savage sadism. They were no longer human themselves. They had become automatons, and whether they'd been drawn to State Security because they'd always been sociopaths, or whether they had been dehumanized into sociopaths mattered not at all. When their gazes rested upon her, she felt the chill anticipation coiling behind their eyes. All the shuttle guards knew what had been pla

The shuttle buffeted gently as it entered atmosphere, and Honor closed her eyes, resting her hands on Nimitz’s warm softness. She wasted no effort hoping for the best. Not any longer.

Thomas Theisman glanced at Citizen Rear Admiral Tourville from the corner of one eye. Ransom had summoned Tourville, Honeker, Bogdanovich, and Foraker to face her even before she'd ordered Harrington and the other prisoners brought down from orbit. Theisman had been excluded from that meeting, but the normally fiery Tourville had emerged from the hour-long session white-faced and taut, and Honeker had looked equally shaken. Theisman hadn't been able to decide how much of Tourville’s tension had been fear and how much fury, but he'd entertained no such doubts where Honeker was concerned, for the Peoples Commissioner had looked outright terrified.

Bogdanovich and Foraker had been at least as pale as their superiors, but there'd been a subtle difference between the two of them. The stone-faced chief of staff was clearly frightened, though he had it under better control than Honeker did. The ops officer, on the other hand, looked like a woman who wanted to strangle people with her bare hands. For all her fabled lack of social graces, Sha