Flag In Exile

and her memory replayed Adam Gerrick's com message with merciless clarity. She saw his tattered clothing, the ripped and torn hands which had fought madly to heave wreckage off small, crushed bodies... the bloodstains and his haggard, tear-stained face. He was a man who'd looked upon Hell. A man who wished he'd died with the victims of his dream, and she understood perfectly.

'No, damn it!' Adam Gerrick shouted, and his torn hands quivered with the desire to strangle the officious bastard in front of him. 'My people have to be part of the investigation!'

'I'm afraid that will be impossible,' the building inspector replied with cold, bitter venom. They faced each another in the tangled wreckage of Winston Mueller Middle School, and their crews stood behind them like two hostile armies. The surviving Sky Domes people had worked like demons, risking life and limb side by side with the Mueller rescue personnel in a frantic effort to save as many lives as possible. But the last survivor had been removed hours ago. It would be days, even with Manticoran equipment, before the last body was recovered, and now that the desperation which had prevented them from considering how it had happened had eased, the shock which had made them allies had turned into searing anger.

'Then make it possible!' Gerrick raged. 'Damn it, man, I've got twenty-three other projects! I've got to know what happened here!'

'What happened, Mr. Gerrick,' the inspector said in that same cold, vicious voice, 'is that your workers just killed eighty-two people, including thirty children who were citizens of this steading.' Gerrick flinched as if he'd been struck, and the inspector's eyes glowed with savage satisfaction. 'As for why it happened I have no doubt we'll discover substandard construction materials and practices brought it about.'

'No,' Gerrick half-whispered. He shook his head violently. 'Sky Domes would never do something like that! My God, fifty of our people died here. Do you think we'd... we'd...'

'I don't have to think, Mr. Gerrick!' The inspector nodded to one of his assistants, and the man held out a lump of what should have been heat-fused ceramacrete. The assistant looked straight into Adam Gerrick's eyes and closed his fist, and the 'ceramacrete' crumbled like a clod of sun-dried mud. Dust drifted from his fingers on the evening breeze, and there was naked hate in the eyes staring into Gerrick's.

'If you think for one minute that I'm going to give you bastards a chance to cover this up, then I'm here to tell you you're wrong, Mr. Gerrick.' The inspector's voice was far more terrible for its total, icy control. 'I am going to personally validate every single example of substandard workmanship on this project,' he said. 'And after I've done that, I'm going to personally see that you and every officer of your goddamned company are prosecuted for murder, and if one of you, even one of you, is still on this site in ten minutes, then my men will by God shoot the bastard!'

'My God,' Benjamin Mayhew whispered. His eyes were locked to the live reports from Mueller Steading, and his face was white. Chancellor Prestwick stood beside his desk, staring at the same reportage, and his face was even whiter and more drawn than the Protector's.

'My God in Heaven,' Mayhew repeated in a harrowed voice. 'How, Henry? How did something like this happen?'

'I don't know, Your Grace,' Prestwick murmured ashenly. He watched a massive beam being moved aside, and his eyes were sick as another small, broken body was lifted tenderly from under it. Work lights poured pitiless brilliance over the night-struck scene, and Mueller Guard armsmen formed a cordon around the site. The parents of the dead children stood just beyond that cordon, fathers with their arms about their wives, faces twisted with terrible grief, and the Chancellor's hands shook as he lowered himself into a chair at last.

'The Mueller inspectors claim it's the result of sub-standard materials, Your Grace,' he said finally, and winced at the look the Protector threw him.

'Lady Harrington would never condone that!' Benjamin snapped. 'And our own people saw every facet of that design. It exceeded code standards in every parameter, and Sky Domes was still going to show a twenty-five percent profit margin! My God, Henry, what possible motive could she have had?'

'I didn't say she did, Your Grace,' the Chancellor replied, but he shook his head as he spoke. 'Nor did I say she knew anything about it. But look at the scale of the projects. Think about all the opportunities for someone else to skim off the top by substituting subcode materials.'

'Never.' Benjamin's voice was ice.

'Your Grace,' Prestwick said heavily, 'the Mueller inspectors have sent ceramacrete samples to the Sword laboratories here in Austin. I've seen the preliminary reports. The final product did not meet code standards.'

Benjamin stared at him, trying to understand, but the scale of such a crime was too vast to comprehend. To use substandard materials for a school's dome was unthinkable. No Grayson would put children at risk! Their entire society, their whole way of life, was built on protecting their children!

'I'm sorry, Your Grace,' Prestwick said more gently. 'Sorrier than I can say, but I've seen the reports.'

'Lady Harrington couldn't have known,' the Protector whispered. 'Whatever your reports say, she couldn't have known, Henry. She would never have permitted something like this, and neither would Adam Gerrick.'

'I agree with you, Your Grace, but, forgive me if I seem cold, but what does that matter? Lady Harrington is Sky Domes' majority stockholder, Gerrick is their chief engineer, even Howard Clinkscales is their CEO. However it happened, the legal responsibility falls squarely on them. It was their job to see to it that a disaster like this never, ever, happened... and they didn't do it.'

The Protector scrubbed his face with his hands, and a cold chill went through him, one that was totally independent of the death and destruction on his HD. He loathed himself for feeling it, but he had no choice; he was the Protector of Grayson. He had to be a political animal as well as a father with children of his own.

Henry had seen the reports. Within days, hours, the news people would have them, as well, and what the Chancellor had just said would be being said over every news channel on the planet. Nothing, nothing, could have been better calculated to infuriate Graysons, and every person who'd ever denounced Honor Harrington, every person who'd ever even entertained private doubts about her, would hear those reports and awaken to a deep, implacable hatred for the woman who'd let this happen. And hard on the heels of that hate would come the denunciations, no longer whispers but shouts of fury. 'Look!' they would cry. 'Look what happens when you let a woman exercise a man's authority! Look at our murdered children and tell me this was God's will!'

Benjamin Mayhew could already hear those anguished, heartfelt cries, and in them he heard the utter destruction of his reforms.

'Dear Tester, what have we done?' William Fitzclarence whispered. He, too, sat staring at an HD, and Samuel Mueller and Edmond Marchant sat on either side of him. 'Children,' Lord Burdette groaned. 'We've killed children!'

'No, My Lord,' Marchant said. Burdette looked at him, blue eyes dark with horror, and the defrocked priest shook his head, his own eyes dark with purpose, not shock. 'We killed no one, My Lord,' he said in a soft, persuasive voice. 'It was God's will that the innocent perish, not ours.'

'God's will.' Burdette repeated numbly, and Marchant nodded.

'You know how little choice we have in doing His work, My Lord. We must bring the people to their senses, show them the danger of allowing themselves to be poisoned by this harlot and her