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With that sort of security available, Secretary of War Theisman had opted to allow his prisoners to manage their own affairs, subject to a sort of distant oversight by officers like Captain Bouvier, as long as they kept things ru
Which is undoubtedly the reason he did it. She shook her head mentally. There's a man who still thinks he has a lot to make up for. And not for anything he did, either. Honor was right—he is a decent man.
In fact, she'd come to the conclusion that most of the Havenites she'd met were decent people. In a way, she wished that weren't the case. It was always simpler when one could think of the enemy as the scum of the galaxy. Reflecting on the fact that the people who were firing missiles at you—and who you were firing missiles back at—were just as decent as anyone you knew on your side could be . . . uncomfortable.
She thought about Theisman's di
She hadn't had that sort of baggage with the other di
All things being equal, she was just as happy that she hadn't heard—then—about the masterful job Tourville had done of thoroughly trashing the Zanzibar System and its defenses.
Theisman's other two di
Most of the time, it was hard to believe that di
Still, there were days when the fact of her captivity, however little like the brutality of StateSec from the last war it might be, ground down upon her. When she looked out the window of her office and saw not sky and sea, but an enemy planet, where she was held prisoner, powerless, unable to protect the Star Kingdom she loved. And that, she knew, was going to get only worse in the days, weeks, and months ahead.
Before too long, I'm probably going to be grateful for the distraction of snafus in the vegetable deliveries, she reflected. Golly! Isn't that something to look forward to?
"Excuse me, Ma'am."
Michelle twitched and looked up quickly from her reverie as a head poked in through her office door. The head in question belonged to one of the very few men she'd ever met who'd probably been in the Service as long as—and, she suspected, racked up more demerits in his youth as—Chief Warrant Officer Sir Horace Harkness.
"Yes, Chris?" Michelle's tone was pleasant, although she felt an i
Her steward of many years, Clarissa Arbuckle, had never cleared Ajax. Billingsley had been provided as Clarissa's replacement once Michelle arrived at Charlie-Seven. The good news was that, physically, Billingsley reminded her as little as anyone possibly could of Clarissa. He was about James MacGuiness' age, and—like MacGuiness—a first-generation prolong recipient. And, unlike Clarissa, he was not simply male but solidly, if compactly, built with a rather luxuriant beard he'd grown since his capture. That would have been more than enough to differentiate him from Clarissa in Michelle's mind even without . . . certain other differences. Obviously, as a prisoner-of-war, his perso
Actually, the Service had a great many serviceable—and quite probably more accurate—terms for describing someone like Master Steward Billingsley. It was just that he was far too likable for Michelle to have the heart to apply them to him. And, in all fairness, he seemed to have mostly reformed his more questionable ways. To be sure, Michelle suspected that he had, upon occasion, during his stay here on Nouveau Paris, supplied certain minor but highly desired luxuries to his fellow POWs by way of not quite legal transactions with the Peeps. And if there were a game of chance—especially one involving dice—within a half light-year, Master Steward Billingsley knew where it was, knew who was playing, and had a reserved seat. Then there was that minor matter of the distillery he'd once been involved with, purely as a part of his social responsibility to help provide the camp medical staff with medicinal alcohol.