In Enemy Hands

Pierre’s frozen helium tone cut Boardman off in mid-blither, and he clamped his mouth shut. The Chairman of the Committee of Public Safety glared at him, dark eyes deadly, then made himself relax... some. The bureaucrats terror underscored the vast gulf between them in a way which made him feel distantly ashamed. He could have the other man destroyed, literally or figuratively, as the mood took him, on a whim, and both of them knew it. That sort of power was dangerous, Pierre reminded himself. There was a corrosiveness to it he must guard against constantly, yet for all his wariness, the corrosion tasted sweet, as well. Surely he could indulge himself in it just a little... couldn't he? When the entire galaxy seemed hell-bent on exploding in his face, where was the harm in proving there were at least some irritations he could crush with a word?

He inhaled deeply and cleared his throat, then leaned closer to his pickup.

'Of course I'll want to view the chips,' he said, in a tone whose enormous patience added the word 'idiot!' without actually quite saving it. 'Until I do, however, just give me the salient points. Now.'

'Yes, Sir!' Boardman seemed to come to attention in his chair. His hands were outside the field of his pickup, but his shoulders twitched as he fumbled at his desktop for a moment. Then paper rustled as he found the hardcopy notes he'd jotted down.

'Uh, let's see,' he muttered, dabbing sweat from his forehead as he scanned them. 'Oh. All right, Citizen Chairman.' He looked back at the pickup and dredged up a sickly smile. 'According to Citizen Mancuso, my assistant, Citizen Rear Admiral Tourville...' he peered back at his notes. 'That's right, Citizen Rear Admiral Lester Tourville, captured several Manty ships, including a cruiser with Honor Harrington on board.'

He paused, regarding his own handwriting as if he expected it to change if he took his eyes off it. Or, Pierre thought, as if he couldn't believe what he'd just said. Which was reasonable enough, given how regularly Harrington had kicked the asses of any PRH naval officers unfortunate enough to encounter her. But the pause stretched out long enough to become a fresh source of irritation, and Pierre cleared his throat with a sharp, explosive sound that snatched Boardman out of whatever reverie had possessed him.

'Uh, excuse me, Citizen Chairman!' he said quickly. 'As I say, Citizen Rear Admiral Tourville captured Harrington and sent word back to the Barnett System, where Citizen Secretary Ransom was informed of it. The propaganda aspects of the event were obvious to her, of course, and she directed Tourville to return Harrington to Barnett.'

'I understood that part of it!' Pierre snapped. 'What I want to know is what the hell she thought she was doing after that!'

Boardman cringed, his eyes sick with panic. Internal clashes between members of the Committee were rare, publicly, at least, but when they happened, the disappearance of one of the disputants normally followed, and Rob Pierre was usually careful to avoid anything which could be construed as public condemnation of any of his fellows. Not because he didn't get angry, but because someone with his power dared not show that anger. If he made a clash public, then his position as head of the Committee would give him no choice but to eliminate whoever had angered him, for any lesser action would undermine his own authority and position.

Boardman knew that... and he also knew that, as one of Cordelia Ransom's senior assistants, any fallout from Pierre’s fury at her could scarcely be beneficial for him. Of course, if he failed to shore up his patron's position and she survived, she would certainly learn of his lack of support... with equally fatal results. But at the moment, Ransom was light-years away, whereas Rob Pierre was barely sixty floors up in the same building, and the bureaucrat made himself meet the Citizen Chairman's eyes.

'I'm not certain of all she had in mind, Sir,' he said with surprising firmness. 'I wasn't there, and I haven't had time to view the chips yet. From the synopsis I was given, however, she remembered that the old regime's courts had sentenced Harrington to death before the war, and, well...' He paused and drew another deep breath. 'She's decided to personally take her to Camp Charon for execution of sentence, Sir,' he said.

'Can we stop her?' Esther McQueen demanded harshly. She and Oscar Saint-Just sat facing Rob Pierre's enormous desk, and her green eyes flamed. She'd started getting her teeth into her new job, and, along the way, she'd found the Ministry of War was in even worse shape than she'd thought from out at the sharp end of the stick. The problems she'd already discovered bore an overwhelming resemblance to the Augean Stables, and she did not need this kind of gratuitous insanity to make her task still harder.

'I don't see how,' Saint-Just answered her in a flat voice. 'Theisman's dispatch boat didn't even leave for Haven until three days after Cordelia departed for Cerberus. By now, she's less than six days from the system, and it would take seven days for any dispatch of ours to get there.'

'We could at least try!' McQueen snapped. 'Surely not even Ransom will have Harrington hanged the day she gets there!'

'I'm afraid you've missed the point, Citizen Admiral,' Pierre said heavily. 'Even if I could get word to her in time, we can't afford to countermand her.'

'Why not?' McQueen managed to soften her tone at the last minute, but despite all her formidable self- control her frustration was evident, and Pierre sighed, wishing he could pretend her reaction was out of line.

'Because she's already dumped her 'interview' with Harrington into the broadcast stream,' Saint-Just answered for him. 'Our own people already know about it, and by now the Solarian League newsies must have sent reports to their bureau offices in Alliance space, and I'm sure you can imagine how the 'faxes will play up something like this. And even if the League correspondents didn't touch it for some reason, the spies monitoring our broadcasts for the Alliance have to have the same information. And that, of course, means that if it hasn't already reached Manticore, it will shortly... and that we can't change tacks without looking like complete fools.'

McQueen stared at him for several seconds, then looked at Pierre, who nodded heavily. The new Secretary of War sat very still for a moment, then made herself speak in the calmest tone she could manage.

'Citizen Chairman, this must be thought through very carefully. In and of herself, purely as a naval officer, Harrington isn't that significant. I don't deny her ability or the damage she's done to us. In fact, I'll admit that, enemy or not, she's one of the best in the business. Tacticians like her come along possibly half a dozen times in a generation, if you're lucky, but bottom line, from a purely military perspective, she's just one more admiral, or commodore, depending on which navy she's serving in at the moment.

'But Citizen Committeewoman Ransom is making a very, very serious error if she regards Harrington solely as a naval officer. The Star Kingdom of Manticore sees this woman as one of its two or three greatest war heroes. The Protectorate of Grayson sees her not only as a hero, but as one of its great nobles. And our own Navy sees her as perhaps the outstanding junior flag officer on the other side. I'm sure the Fleet, and at least some segments of our own civilian public, will feel both relief and triumph to know she's been removed from play. But putting her in a prison camp will do that. We don't have to kill her... and her execution on what I hope you'll pardon me for characterizing as trumped up charges, will have consequences far beyond the loss of her abilities to the Allied military, or any short- term propaganda advantage for our own side. We'll turn her into a martyr, Sir, and that will make her ten times, a hundred times!, as dangerous as she ever was alive. And even if we completely disregard the effect her execution will have on the other side, think about what it will mean to our own people. The Manties will never forgive us for this, never, and with all due respect to Citizen Saint-Just, it's not StateSec personnel who'll be falling into their hands. It's the Navy and the Marines, and our fighting forces will know that they're the ones who will pay the price for this. Not only will that inevitably make them anxious over their own fates if they should face capture, but it will drive an equally inevitable wedge between them and State Security, because rightly or wrongly, that's who they'll blame for carrying out the execution.'

She'd watched the two men's faces while she spoke, but the anger she'd more than half expected to awaken failed to appear. Actually, she couldn't remember ever having seen any emotion on Saint-Just's face, and Pierre's expression was more one of exhausted agreement than anger. But the chairman shook his head when she finished. He leaned back in his chair, one hand on his blotter while the other massaged his eyes, and his voice was heavy.

'I can't fault your analysis,' he said. 'But even if Harrington does become more dangerous to us as a