Flag In Exile

women can't be such things. I regret that. At the same time, honesty compels me to admit that even if I had considered it, I wouldn't have let it stop me from drafting you... and knowing, as I now do, that your own sense of duty wouldn't have let you turn me down would only have made me feel guilty. It wouldn't have stopped me, because we do need you, and I have a responsibility as Protector of Grayson to see to it that we have you.' Honor's blush darkened, and he shook his head at her. 'But the fact is that if they didn't have you, the reactionaries would only find some other rallying point. People determined to stand in the path of progress can always find some emotional hook to hang their opposition on. You happen to be the hook for this particular bunch of idiots because they see you as the most dangerous person on Grayson, and, from their perspective, they're absolutely right. You are.'

'I am?' Honor asked in surprise.

'You are,' Benjamin repeated. 'You're a hero to our people, even the ones who have doubts about the social reforms, which gives you a dangerous 'constituency' far beyond the bounds of your own steading. The number who have doubts about you may be growing just now, but the majority still sees you as both a woman and an officer who saved our world from our hereditary enemies, which undercuts our society's notions that women are weaker and must be protected. You've done an outstanding job as a steadholder, which presents an intolerable challenge to conservative steadholders who believe no woman could ever do their job. And you're an 'infidel' who not only respects and protects the Church in your steading but who's actually studied our Faith so well you can trade citations with a bigot like Marchant and pin his ears back. When you add all of that together, there's not a reactionary on the planet who doesn't see you, you personally, Honor Harrington, as the direct personification of every challenge to his position and pet bigotries, and it's all my fault for dragging you into it.'

Honor sat silent, gazing deep into his eyes, then looked at Catherine, who nodded wryly in agreement.

'Sir... Benjamin, I don't want to provide that kind of focus,' she repeated finally. He started to speak, but she raised a hand. 'Not because I don't want people to hate me. Because I don't want to be the fulcrum they use to attack your reforms.'

'If you weren't here, they'd just find another rallying point,' Benjamin said again. 'You happen to be the key as things stand, and, as it happens, you're a very good key from my perspective. Despite any slippage in the polls, you'd have to screw up in some truly spectacular fashion before you became a negative factor, and you're not the sort of person who screws up.' He grinned. 'Frankly, having the lunatics trying to use you as the 'fulcrum,' as you put it, is a vast relief to me. If you're going to be so damned big-hearted that you don't blame me for putting you in the middle of such a mess, then for the Tester's sake, don't blame yourself for being there!'

'But...' Honor began, then stopped herself with another crooked smile. 'All right, I'll shut up and be good. But you are keeping an eye on things?'

'Do you keep an eye on enemy force appreciations, Admiral Harrington?' Benjamin asked. She nodded with a wry grin of understanding, and he nodded back. 'So do I. The sneaky bastards may surprise me from time to time, but not because I'm not paying attention, I assure you. Fair?'

'Fair, Sir,' Honor said.

'Good! Because...' the Protector grinned and cocked an ear as a sudden ruckus headed their way from the nursery '...I think the holy terrors are returning to base, and if we can catch them, it's just about time for dinner!'

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Citizen Vice Admiral Esther McQueen hadn't been told Operation Stalking Horses full purpose, but she knew how hard-pressed the Navy was before Trevor's Star. That suggested Stalking Horse was very important, given the strength of her own task force. Not, she corrected herself sourly without looking up from her display, that Task Force Thirty was truly 'hers.' She was grateful that the Committee of Public Safety had removed the Legislaturalist officer corps from her path, but that didn't mean she liked having one of its lap dogs sitting on her own flag bridge to 'oversee' her operations.

She slid that thought back into a well-hidden mental cupboard before she turned from her plot and looked across at Citizen Commissioner Fontein with a candor that was careful to conceal its resentment One of these days, she promised herself. One of these days...

Fontein smiled at her with his habitual air of slight befuddlement over all things naval, and the satisfaction it woke in her eyes irritated him. He no more enjoyed being thought a fool, especially by someone who hid it so poorly, than the next man. On the other hand, he'd worked hard to convince McQueen he was only one more ignorant Prole who'd risen to his level of incompetence, and he had no intention of revealing how well he actually understood her command's routine operations ... or how much more thoroughly than she he understood her mission and its implications.

State Security had selected Erasmus Fontein carefully for McQueen's commissioner, though Secretary Saint-Just had disliked letting him go. Fontein was a wizened little man who looked like someone's harmless uncle, but appearances were deceiving. Most of the citizen commissioners (and, of course, one had to call them all 'Citizen' today, Fontein thought dourly; 'Prole' was, after all, a plutocratic, elitist denigration) came from the ranks of those who'd most hated the Legislaturalists before the Harris Assassination. In some cases their hatred had been a reasoned thing stemming from the inequities of the old order, but people were people. Most of the Committee's official spies had hated the old regime not on the basis of reason, but solely because they'd been losers under it. Too many of them took a fierce satisfaction in cracking the whip now that it was in their hands, despite the fact that the officers they were charged with overseeing were no more the old regime's minions than they were. An officer was an officer, and if they couldn't avenge themselves on the ones they believed had injured them, then they would assuage their hatred by sneering at the ones they could.

To a certain extent, that attitude was fine with StateSec and the Committee, neither of whom trusted the military, anyway. The animosity between the Navy's officers and the citizen commissioners both warned those officers that anything which even looked like treason would be fatal and insured that they and the commissioners were unlikely to join forces against the new regime.

Unfortunately, there were officers, like Esther McQueen, whose leashes required particularly deft handlers. Her political masters had no doubt where her loyalty lay; they knew it lay solely with herself, but she was also, by almost any measure, the best flag officer they had left. They needed her skills, yet the very intelligence which made her so useful meant a clumsy watchdog would be no match for her... and that she would maneuver carefully against any commissioner whose capabilities she had cause to respect.

Which was the reason for Fontein's assignment. His harmless facade concealed a computer's dispassionately amoral mercilessness, and unlike most of the citizen commissioners, he'd done well under the old regime. Indeed, he'd been a major in Saint-Just's old Office of Internal Security, where he'd specialized in keeping an eye on the military. But he'd hungered to do still better, and Major Fontein, whose familiarity with naval operations had been invaluable when Saint-Just and Pierre structured the Harris Assassination so as to implicate the Navy, had been promoted to brigadier when the SS succeeded InSec.

Saint-Just would much preferred to have used a man of his talents to head one of the planetary SS surveillance forces, but the combination of his competence and finely honed paranoia with an in-depth military background McQueen had no idea he possessed made him uniquely valuable as her watchdog.

'So the operation is on schedule, Citizen Admiral?' he asked now in his most undangerous voice, and McQueen nodded.

'It is, Citizen Commissioner. We'll hit the Minette alpha wall almost exactly on time.'

'Excellent, Citizen Admiral. I'm sure the Committee will be pleased.'

'I'm glad you think so, Citizen Commissioner,' McQueen replied, and returned her attention to her plot as fifty-five ships of the People's Navy, headed by the sixteen superdreadnoughts of Battle Squadrons Seven and Twelve, hurtled through hyper space at an apparent n-space velocity of just over thirteen hundred times light- speed.