In Enemy Hands

honor guard snapped to attention. Greentree and Marchant accompanied her, each a precise, militarily correct half-pace behind, and she glanced back and smothered a chuckle as the rest of her entourage shook itself out into formation. Andrew LaFollet led the procession, following at her shoulder, with Venizelos at his side. MacGuiness came next, keeping an eagle eye on two third-class stewards weighed down with the last of her personal baggage, and James Candless and Robert Whitman, the other two members of her permanent security party, brought up the rear. Accustomed though she was becoming to playing the role of a three-ring circus, it still struck Honor as mildly ridiculous to have so many people trudging around behind her. Unfortunately, no one had offered her much choice in the matter.

She just hoped the lift would be big enough to cram everyone into it.

Chapter Six

Esther McQueen's carefully trained face hid the mild surprise she still felt as Rob Pierre and Oscar Saint- Just both came to their feet at her arrival. They'd each done the same thing on every other occasion upon which she'd met with either or both of them, and oddly enough, she was certain the courteous gesture was genuine, not something assumed for the purposes of manipulation. Not because she would ever make the mistake of forgetting that both these men were consummate manipulators, but because, in their personal relations, both of them routinely demonstrated an old-fashioned courtesy which was almost grotesque against the backdrop of the Republic’s current agony.

And agony it was, she thought grimly as she crossed the thick carpet of the small conference room to shake hands with her hosts. Her own encounter with the Levelers was proof enough of that... as were the huge mass graves which had been required to deal with the wreckage in its wake.

No one had managed to produce an accurate estimate of which side had killed how many, and McQueen was just as glad. According to Public Information, of course, virtually all the casualties had been inflicted by the insurrectionists, and McQueen didn't know whether to be grateful or furious. On the one hand, she had no desire to be remembered as a mass murderer, however necessary it had been. On the other, any thinking individual who heard those reports would know they were lies, you didn't use modern weapons in a city the size of Nouveau Paris without killing a lot of people, however pure your motives, and think she'd signed off on them.

The truth was, as she knew, that she was trapped in a no-win situation where the death toll was concerned... and not just with the public. She wasn't the one who'd popped off the pee-wee nukes the Levelers had smuggled into both of StateSecs major HQs here in the capital. Those bombs had done their job of taking out the only SS field forces which might have been deployed in sufficient strength to make a difference, and the Leveler leadership had obviously felt the slaughter of surrounding civilians was worth it. McQueen would have preferred to think she wasn't like that, but the same brutal self-honesty which made her such an effective field commander wouldn't let her.

The only real difference, she told herself, is that at least I didn't start it. But I made up for that once I got rolling, didn't I? My kinetic strikes were 'cleaner' than theirs were, but does it really matter to a six-year-old whether or not the flash that incinerates her comes from a fusion reaction?

But that was the point, wasn't it? The Levelers had 'started it,' and the fact they'd opted for what were still quaintly called 'weapons of mass destruction' from the outset only emphasized the nature of their thought processes. She'd known what they had in mind and seen how they were willing to go about accomplishing it, and she'd done what she had to do because the consequences of doing nothing would have been still worse. She'd had to make her decisions under pressure as dreadful as any she'd ever faced in the defense of Trevor's Star, but she'd had time to reconsider them in detail since, and she was convinced she'd made the right ones. The hellish part was that even knowing she'd done the right thing, even knowing she'd had no choice, she still had to live with the knowledge that she'd probably killed at least as many people as the Levelers.

Yeah? Well, maybe I did... but unlike them, at least I actually got some of theguilty ones along the way, by God!

So she had, she told herself, settling into the chair Saint-Just had pulled back from the table for her, and if her appointment to the Committee of Public Safety was her reward, well, the laborer was worthy of her hire. Besides, it required raw power to set anything as thoroughly screwed up as the Peoples Republic of Haven back to rights, and someday she'd have the power to get some more of the guilty ones... starting with the two in this conference room.

'I'm glad to see you're moving better, Citizen Admiral,' Pierre said, opening the conversation, and McQueen smiled at him. The broken, 'smashed' was probably a better choice of words, ribs she'd suffered when her pinnace went down near the end of the fighting had done major internal damage. Surgical repairs and quick heal had put most of that to rights swiftly enough, but quick heal was less effective on bones. They persisted in knitting at the old-fashioned rate evolution had designed into them and she'd done an unusually thorough job of reducing most of her right rib cage to splinters. Her ribs had needed over two T-months to glue themselves back together, and an edge of stiffness persisted even now.

'Thank you,' she replied. 'I'm feeling better, as well, Citizen Chairman, and...'

'Please, Citizen Admiral, Esther,' Pierre broke in, raising one gently restraining hand. 'We try not to be that formal in private, at least among ourselves.'

'I see... Rob.' The name tasted strange on her tongue, another one of those surreal touches like the courtesy with which he'd stood to greet her. She would never be naive enough to believe this man saw her as anything except a temporarily necessary expedient, and she certainly had no intention of leaving him alive when the time came, yet here they sat, playing their parts with proper etiquette while the Republic burned.

'Thank you,' she went on. 'As I was saying, however, I am feeling much better. That's why I asked to see you and Ci...Oscar this morning. I'm ready to be put to work, but our earlier discussions were a little vague. I hoped you could explain just what it is you have in mind for me to do.'

She gave him another smile, and he tipped back in his huge chair at the head of the table while he considered her request. All the chairs in the conference room were big and sinfully comfortable, but his was the most impressive of all, and as he propped his elbows on its arms to steeple his fingers under his chin like an enthroned monarch, McQueen was suddenly struck by the mental image of a spider at the center of its web. It was a hackneyed cliche, and she knew it, but it was also utterly appropriate.

Pierre sat for another long moment, contemplating the dark-haired, slightly-built woman at the far end of the table. Her green eyes were mildly, respectfully courteous, and despite the gold braid and the plethora of decorations on her meticulously correct uniform, she scarcely looked like a cold blooded and deadly military commander. On the other hand, Oscar Saint-just hardly looked the part of StateSec's mastermind, either. It was a point worth bearing in mind, he mused, for he himself had used Saint-Just’s harmless-looking exterior to lethal effect in the planning and execution of his coup.

But for now, at least, McQueen seemed to be toeing the line. Officially, she'd been a member of the Committee for almost three months, but she'd accepted the equally official position that her injuries precluded her from assuming her duties immediately. She had to have known better, for however painful it was, the damage had hardly been incapacitating, but she'd been willing to pretend otherwise rather than push. She probably didn't know that one of the main reasons for the delay had been to get Cordelia Ransom and her bitter antimilitary prejudices off Haven, of course. Cordelia might have agreed to back McQueen’s elevation, openly, at least, but that hadn't lulled Pierre into thinking she truly accepted it, and he'd been unprepared to put up with the potential fireworks between her and the citizen admiral, at least until McQueen got her feet under her.

He'd had no intention of telling her so, however, and he'd taken the opportunity to watch how she responded as a gauge of her own willingness to accept limits. In the event, she'd waited patiently, accepting the