difficulties, because, having endured occupation by the PRH for so many years, the people of San Martin had no desire to be dictated to, even gently, by
The Alliance had no problem with that, but the San Martinos themselves and their constant internal bickering had created endless difficulties. Observers from Zanzibar and Alizon had been particularly dismayed by the liveliness of the exchanges, and even the Grayson delegates to the commission overseeing San Martin's return to self-government had experienced reservations about turning the planet back over to its owners. It might be their world by birth, but most of the commissioners seemed to feel the Allies had a responsibility to protect them (and their helpless planet) from their own excesses.
The Manticoran and Erewhonese commissioners had been less worried, mostly because they had rather more experience at dealing with energetic electorates of their own. The fine old art of political hyperbole, viewing with alarm, and vilifying one's political opponents had been a part of Manticoran political life almost since the Star Kingdom's inception. Erewhon wasn't far behind, and for all their enthusiasm, the San Martinos were scarcely in the same league as Manticoran or Erewhonian machine politicians out to demonize their foes. As long as no one was actively shooting at anyone else, the Manticorans and Erewhonese were reasonably content to adopt a wait-and- see attitude, and they'd concentrated their prophylactic efforts on providing transport off planet for any of the old regime's sympathizers who preferred to be somewhere else when their somewhat irritated friends and neighbors resumed self-government. No one had used any threats to compel Peep sympathizers to refugee out, but the Allies' San Martin Reconstruction Commission had found a great many people who'd been downright eager to accept their transportation offer.
In the event, that waiting attitude had proven the wiser course, if not precisely for the reasons the commissioners had thought it might. The provisional government had just started wrangling about the details for arranging the first planetwide election when Honor Harrington was captured by the Peeps, and they'd still been wrangling when she returned from the dead. That much hadn't surprised anyone in the Alliance. Indeed, what had almost stunned those who'd become accustomed to the debates, arguments, shouting matches, and occasional fistfights which formed the bone and sinew of the San Martin political process had been the screeching speed at which those debates had come to an end with the return of Commodore Jesus Ramirez from Cerberus.
No one, including Ramirez, could possibly have predicted the effect of his return. In some ways, the San Martinos had been even more infuriated than the Allies by the Peep claim to have executed Harrington. Perhaps it was because it resonated so painfully with their own memories of what it was like to live under StateSec's heel, Elizabeth reflected. But whatever the cause for it, San Martin had been the scene of spontaneous, planetwide celebrations when the Elysian Space Navy sailed into the Trevor's Star System. Not even the fact that their world had been forced, temporarily at least, to somehow absorb, house, and feed the better part of half a million strangers with literally no warning at all had damped the San Martinos' jubilation.
Then they'd discovered exactly who the 'Commodore Ramirez' who'd served as Harrington's second-in- command was. He was
The Ramirez family had not fared well during the occupation. President Hector Ramirez had been 'shot trying to escape' within a month of being forced to sign the planet's capitulation. His brother Manuel, Jesus' father, had been convicted of 'terrorist activities' and shipped off to Haven. InSec apparently had intended to use his immense popularity to encourage his countrymen to behave themselves and stop blowing up InSec Intervention HQs, but the plan had backfired when he died within two years. Given the fact that a dead hostage wasn't particularly useful, it was probable that in this instance the Peeps had told the truth about a prisoner's death being due to natural causes. Unfortunately, no one on San Martin, least of all Manuel's surviving uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews, in-laws, and acquaintances, had believed a word of it. Manuel and his brother had become martyrs, and their surviving family members had been at the heart of the local resistance movement.
And the Ramirezes had paid for it. The Legislaturalists had stripped them of their bank accounts and property as part and parcel of the process of looting the San Martin economy to shore up PRH's finances. InSec had hunted and harried them. One by one, most of the family's men and many of its women had perished. Some had been picked up by InSec, or later by StateSec, and simply disappeared. Others had been killed leading guerilla attacks, or in Peep raids on Resistance camps. By the time the Alliance took the planet, the family had been all but wiped out, and in the process, it had acquired an almost mythic stature in the eyes of all San Martin opponents of the Peep regime.
And then the Ramirezes had returned. First in the person of Brigadier General Tomas Ramirez, Royal Manticoran Marine Corps, who, in a rare instance of slipping a round peg neatly into a round hole, had been selected to serve as the executive officer of the Allied occupation force. That had been a sufficiently emotional experience, especially for San Martinos who remembered Tomas' family, even the boy Tomas himself, from before the occupation. But then Tomas' father had returned, as well, literally from beyond the veil of death, and the effect upon the rest of San Martin's population had been... profound. Hysterical hero worship was not a San Martino vice, but the staunchly individualistic mountaineers had come perilously close to it when they realized one of
The squabbles over electoral processes ended overnight, and Jesus was drafted, almost without being consulted, to run for the presidency of the new government. All but one of his opponents withdrew when they realized who they faced, and the one woman who stayed the course was trounced at the ballot box, receiving barely fourteen percent of the vote and conceding defeat even before the polling closed. The last president of the old Republic of San Martin had been a Ramirez; so was the first president of the
Which might have been just a mite premature after all, Elizabeth thought, studying her Prime Minister's expression.
'All right, Allen. Just what, exactly, are they up to now?'
'Well...' Cromarty tugged on one of his earlobes, then shrugged. 'In simplest terms, Your Majesty, President Ramirez has instructed his ambassador to explore the possibility of San Martin's requesting annexation as our fourth planetary member.'
'He
'That's essentially what I said when Ambassador Ascencio broached the possibility, Your Majesty. It came out of absolutely nowhere.'
'Is he serious?' Elizabeth demanded. 'And even if he is, what in the world makes him think he could pull off something like that? I know he's popular, but if he's going to run around making offers like that one, the man must have delusions of godhood!'
'In answer to your first question, I think the answer is that he's extremely serious,' Cromarty said. 'The letter he sent along via Ascencio certainly reads that way, and his analysis of the benefits and advantages such an arrangement might bring to San Martin is both persuasive and well reasoned. As, I might add, is his analysis of the advantages the arrangement would offer the Star Kingdom and our desire to insure the security of the Trevor's Star terminus. And he's apparently done a surprising amount of research into the legal precedents created by your father's annexation of Basilisk. Your uncle is on Gryphon this weekend, but I had some of the Foreign Office's senior legal specialists look over his conclusions, and their preliminary consensus is that he's quite right about the Crown's authority, with advice and consent of Parliament, to add worlds to the Star Kingdom.'
'But what about the rest of the San Martinos? Does he honestly think they'll stand for being sold down the river to Manticore?'
'I doubt he thinks anything of the sort, Your Majesty,' Cromarty said sternly. 'But I also doubt that he expects them to feel they've been `sold down the river,' either. Apparently, the initial idea wasn't his alone. According to his letter, it had occurred independently to several of the more prominent members of their new Senate more or less simultaneously. They'd still been talking around the point with one another without anyone's quite having the nerve to propose it seriously, when a casual remark of his led them to believe he shared their interest. That was enough to get them moving, and the authorization to formally explore the possibility with us seems to have been proposed, debated before the Senate in closed session, and voted upon in less than two
