In Enemy Hands

martyr, we can't afford to overrule Cordelia. Not publicly.' He lowered his raised hand, and his dark gaze pinned McQueen to her chair. 'She's wrong. I know this entire idea is stupid, and so do you, and so does Oscar, but she's already gone public. If I overrule her now, I'll have to do that publicly, and I can't. Not this soon after the Leveler business. Not when she's one of the Committee's original members and the head of Public Information. We simply cannot afford a public disagreement at this time, not when God knows who is waiting to use any rupture at the top against us. No, Citizen Admiral,' he shook his head wearily, 'however steep the price of letting her proceed may be, it's lower than the cost of stopping her.'

McQueen sat back and closed her mouth against the protests still burning on her tongue. Fury and disgust, as much as logic, fed her outrage, but it didn't take a hyper physicist to realize the decision had been made even before she was informed of what had happened. Pierre and Saint-Just were being as stupid as Ransom, at least in the longer term, she thought bitterly, but trying to convince them of that would only undermine her own new and fragile position. So far, her protests seemed to have struck a chord of agreement with them. They couldn't deny the validity of the points she'd made; it was just that they felt the risk of an open break with Ransom outweighed the ones she'd enumerated. They were wrong, but if she wanted to retain whatever respect she'd earned by stating her position, she had to abandon the argument before their present regretful decision to overrule her turned into something uglier.

'Very well, Citizen Chairman,' she sighed finally. 'I still think this is a serious mistake, but the decision is ultimately a political one. If you and Citizen Committeeman Saint-Just both feel it would be... inadvisable to override Citizen Committeewoman Ransom, the judgment is yours to make.'

'Thank you, Citizen Admiral.' Pierre sounded genuinely grateful, and McQueen wondered what for. He was chairman of the Committee. He and Saint-Just could damned well do anything they liked, with or without her approval... for now, at least. 'I'm very much afraid your analysis of our own military's reaction is likely to be accurate,' he went on, 'and we're going to need all the help we can get in blunting the worst of it. To that end, I would appreciate any insight you can give Citizen Boardman.' McQueen raised an eyebrow, and Pierre smiled wryly. 'Citizen Boardman will be writing the official release from the Committee and the rough draft for a communique to our own armed forces, but I don't have, um, the liveliest respect for his abilities, shall we say? Especially where the military are concerned, he's going to need all the help he can get to make this look good.'

'Citizen Chairman,' McQueen said frankly, 'I don't think we can make this look 'good' from the Navy's perspective. The best we can hope for is to make it look less bad, but I'm certainly prepared to give Citizen Boardman whatever help I can.'

'Thank you,' Pierre said again, and McQueen took her cue from his tone. She stood and nodded to the others with exactly the right blend of deference and a sense of her own value to them, then walked out the door and headed for the elevators, and it took all her willpower to keep her stride from revealing the anger still boiling within her.

But at least it wasn't my decision, she reminded herself. I really did argue against it, and not solely out of expediency, either. Funny. For the first time in years, I can honestly say 'my hands are clean'... and it doesn't change a damned thing.

She punched for an elevator car, then folded her arms while she waited for it.

On the other hand, there may actually be a silver lining to all this, she mused. Not immediately, no, but the execution was Ransom's idea, and Pierre and Saint-Just refused to override her, now didn't they? And the officer corps is going to know that as well as I do. For that matter, the Manties will know it, too. That could just make the whole thing a card worth playing when the time comes. After all, I'll be acting out of moral outrage over the excesses of State Security and the Committee, won't I? Of course I will.

The elevator doors opened, and Esther McQueen's lip curled in a bitterly sardonic smile as she stepped through them.

Miranda LaFollet sat on the shaded bench and watched the children play. Farragut lay sprawled on his belly on the bench beside her, his chin resting companionably on her thigh, and she smiled down at him and reached out to stroke the magical softness of his spine. His gentle purr buzzed in her ear, and he arched his back ever so slightly, and even that tiny response made the wonder and amazement of him brand-new all over again. She couldn't imagine anything she could possibly have done to deserve his love or the magic of her bond with him. He was her companion, her champion, and her closest friend, all in one, and already the mere thought of a life without him in it had become impossible to conceive of. It simply couldn't happen, and she was unspeakably grateful to...

Her thought chopped off, and her gray eyes went dark. It always happened that way. She managed to put the thought out of her mind by concentrating on the things that had to be done, the simple, daily duties which could consume so much of her time, and then something would happen, and the darkness would return with abrupt, brutal power.

She looked back out at the other 'cats, and familiar worry twisted deep within her. Samantha and Hera lay stretched out along separate limbs of an Old Earth oak tree, the very tips of their prehensile tails twitching as they guarded the kittens and watched Cassandra and Andromeda stalk their brothers through the underbrush under Artemis' tutelage. From here, everything looked completely normal, but Miranda had been there when James MacGuiness returned to Grayson. She'd watched him face Samantha, and she'd held Farragut in her own arms, feeling his tension as MacGuiness explained what had happened to Samantha's mate.

If anyone present had ever doubted treecats understood English, they would never doubt again. Samantha had been tense and ill at ease from the moment MacGuiness walked in, clearly sensing his own emotional turmoil, not that anyone would have needed an empathic sense for that. His worn, exhausted face had shouted it to the universe, and he'd gone down on his knees to face Samantha. The 'cat had sat fully upright, green eyes meeting his, and he'd told her.

Miranda would never forget that moment. She'd already heard the news herself, knew her brother, as well as her Steadholder, was missing. Yet she had all the rest of her huge, loving family... and Farragut. Terrible as the news had been, she'd had people who cared and duties to distract her from it. But Samantha had lost her adopted person barely twenty T-months before. Now her mate and his person had disappeared, as well, and the desolation in her eyes had twisted Miranda's heart. The other 'cats had converged upon her, even Farragut, surrounding her with the physical warmth of their bodies even as they lent her the deeper, inner warmth of their presence, yet empath and telepath or no, she had been as alone in that moment as any human.

In some ways, the endless days which had passed since then had been a blessing, for they had blunted the immediacy of their knowledge. Time might not heal all wounds, but no one, 'cat or human, could sustain the anguish of the moment of loss indefinitely, and like Miranda, Samantha had her family. She had the rest of the clan she and Nimitz had brought to Grayson, and her children, and she'd buried herself in them as desperately as Miranda had turned to her family. And the 'cats hadn't forgotten MacGuiness. It was as if they understood, as no doubt they did, that he, too, needed his 'family' at a time like this, and one of the adults was perpetually bringing him a kitten to rock to sleep or some other problem which required his attention. They watched over him as attentively as they guarded Samantha’s children, and Miranda saw to it that the Harrington House staff did the same. None of Lady Harrington’s people would ever admit that was what they were doing, of course, but the truth was that they were almost as attached to MacGuiness as they were to the Steadholder, and somehow watching over him was like a promise to Lady Harrington that her household and her steading would be ready when she returned.

Farragut stirred, raising his head from her lap. Miranda turned her head to see what had caught his attention, and a wry smile twitched her lips as the newest citizen of Harrington Steading walked down the path towards her. In some respects, there could not have been a worse time for Doctor Harrington to arrive on Grayson, but Miranda was devoutly grateful that she was here.

She had dived into the task of organizing the clinic with an energy every bit as formidable as her daughters, and the results had been impressive. Manticoran physicians had flooded into Grayson over the past few years.