In Enemy Hands

you would propose to change the current system to correct it.'

'I'd like an opportunity to consider that at a little length, preferably with a small staff group with both a military and a political component, before I got into detailed proposals,' McQueen said cautiously.

'Understood. But tell us how you'd begin.'

'All right.' She drew a deep breath, then plunged in. 'The first thing I'd do would be to formally discontinue the policy of 'collective responsibility.' Shooting people for their mistakes is one thing; in my opinion, shooting people just because they're related to someone who screwed up not only strangles initiative but is actively counterproductive in terms of loyalty to the state.

'Second, I would take a very close look at every officer above the rank of commodore or brigadier. I would evaluate them on the basis of four qualities: competence, aggressiveness, loyalty to the Committee, and leadership ability. Precisely how those qualities should be balanced is one of the things I'd like to go into with that staff I mentioned earlier, and the interrelationships between them would mean the evaluations would have to be done on something of an individual basis, but it would give us a handle for eliminating dead wood. And there is dead wood out there, gentlemen. Strapped as we are for officers, operating shorthanded is better than handicapping ourselves with incompetents.

'Third, I would remove the peoples commissioners from the chain of command.' She saw Saint-Just stiffen but went on speaking before he could protest. 'I'm not suggesting that we remove them from the ships...' after all, you did say we have to start slowly, didn't you, Citizen Chairman? '... nor am I suggesting that they should stop being the Committee's direct representatives. But however sound they may be ideologically, not all of them are competent to judge the military merits of battle plans and orders. And if we're going to be honest, some of them have personal axes to grind which have nothing to do with operational realities. All I'm suggesting is that they be restricted to passing on the Committee's directions and overseeing the general policy of the units to which they're attached without being required to sign off on actual ops plans and orders. If there's a difference of opinion between a commissioner and a flag officer, by all means let them report the matter to higher authority, but until a decision comes down from above, let the trained professional make the operational call. After all...' she smiled thinly '...if an admiral knows her commissioner is complaining to the Admiralty, State Security, and the Committee, she's going to think long and hard before she does anything too risky.'

'I don't know...' Pierre rubbed his chin and looked back at Saint-Just. 'Oscar?'

'I can't say I care for the idea,' Saint-Just said frankly, 'but we invited the Citizen Admiral, Esther, to join the Committee because we felt we need a professional officer's advice. Under the circumstances, I'm not prepared to reject it out of hand without giving it some pretty careful thought.'

'That sounds fair enough,' Pierre agreed. 'And her other recommendations?'

'Those make sense,' Saint-Just said. 'Mind you, I'm in two minds about how to proceed on the question of collective responsibility. I have to admit that we've reached a point of diminishing returns with it, but I'm also convinced it's still useful in some cases, and I'm worried about what Manty propaganda could do if we formally admit that we ever adopted the policy in the first place. Could we discontinue it without making a specific announcement to that effect? That would avoid the possible propaganda damage, and surely the fact that we've simply stopped doing it would percolate through the military fairly quickly.'

'That's obviously a political decision,' McQueen said, seeing an opportunity to give ground and sound reasonable. 'From a purely military perspective, I think an announcement would be beneficial by providing a sense of closure, and a formal statement would end any lingering confusion as to our intentions much more quickly. On the other hand, there is indeed the potential for enemy propagandists to make capital out of it. Perhaps Committeewoman Ransom should be consulted.'

'That won't be possible for at least a month or two,' Pierre told her. 'Cordelia is en route to Barnett.'

'She is?' McQueen’s mental antennae quivered at that. She'd met Thomas Theisman, and she respected his record, though she didn't know him well. He'd always struck her as a bit too politically puritanical, however. In her opinion, no officer could wield real power to affect the decisive decision points in a war unless she had the political clout to go with her rank. Under the Legislaturalists, that had meant family connections or debts that could be called in; under the new system, there were more... direct routes to it, but Theisman had never been interested in reaching for it under either set of rules. All the same, she hoped Ransom’s visit to Barnett didn't mean Theisman was about to be 'disappeared.' The Navy needed any officer who could motivate his people the way he did, and they needed him where he was if they were going to hold Barnett long enough to make a difference.

'She is,' Pierre confirmed, then smiled tightly. 'And we might as well admit that having her away for a few weeks may not be an entirely bad thing. I'm sure you've observed that the Navy isn't exactly her favorite institution?'

'I'm afraid I have,' McQueen admitted in a carefully neutral tone.

'Well, I expect her to pitch a fit when she hears what you have in mind,' Pierre said almost philosophically, 'and we're going to need Public Information's support, not just its acquiescence, if we're going to make this work. That means we'll have to bring her around somehow.'

'May I assume from that that you intend to support the changes I've suggested?' McQueen asked even more carefully, and Pierre smiled once more.

'I'm not certain I agree with all of them,' he said frankly. 'I think that staff group you suggested is an excellent idea, and I'd like you and Oscar to each nominate half its membership. But even if it signs off on all of your suggestions, I'm not the one who's going to be supporting them. You are... Citizen Secretary of War.'

'Sec...?' McQueen managed to chop herself off before she repeated the title like an idiot, and Pierre nodded.

'Citizen Secretary Kline is one of the committee members whose loyalty Oscar and I have some doubts about,' he admitted. 'Under the circumstances, I think we can dispense with his services, and if you're going to take Cordelia on, you'll need the rank to do it.' McQueen nodded, green eyes glowing despite her iron self-control, and he frowned slightly. 'At the same time, Citizen Secretary, bear in mind that your appointment is provisional,' he said in a much cooler tone, and she nodded once more.

Of course it was provisional. It had to be. They wouldn't dream of really trusting her until they decided that she was sufficiently tame, but that was all right. Even a provisional appointment would put her in a position from which she might actually be able to fix some of the things wrong with the Fleet, and if Rob Pierre wanted to play lion-tamer with her, that was fine with Esther McQueen.

Let him and Saint-Just decide I'm nice and tame, she thought, smiling brightly but soberly at the Chairman of the Committee of Public Safety. After all, how many lion-tamers come close enough to a wild lion for it to eat them?

Chapter Seven

'Good morning, Milady.'

Andreas Venizelos turned with a smile of greeting as Honor stepped out of the flag bridge lift with Andrew LaFollet at her elbow. Although her chief of staff had known her since the days when she was plain Commander Harrington, with no titles or feudal dignities, he'd adjusted to the presence of her armsmen without fuss or bother. In fact, he and LaFollet were well on their way to becoming friends, for which Honor was grateful.

Nimitz rode in his normal, half-standing perch on her shoulder. Like her Grayson vests, her uniform tunics were made of a fabric tough enough to resist light pulser fire, not because she expected assassins to lurk on her flag bridge, but because Nimitz’s claws required it. His true-feet dug in at the level of her shoulder blade, and his hand-feet clung to the top of her shoulder as he looked around with bright, curious eyes, and the scimitar claws which would quickly have reduced any lesser fabric to shreds didn't even leave pick marks. Which was just as well, she thought, and smiled as she reflected on MacGuiness' probable reactions to that sort of carnage.

Nimitz caught her amusement and bleeked a laugh, flirting the tip of his prehensile tail cheerfully, as he plucked the same image from her thoughts. Like Honor, the 'cat had perked up in the last few days. In her case, it was being away from the perplexing puzzle Earl White Haven had come to represent, and, in a sense, that was also