War Of Honor

latter.

'But you do agree that, as the President seemed to be saying, all of the other occupied systems must be restored to us?' the commentator asked McGwire after a moment.

'That isn't precisely what President Pritchart said, Roland,' McGwire replied.

'It certainly sounded like it to me, Senator.'

'If you go back to the actual text of her speech,' McGwire disagreed, 'what she said—what she demanded, I should say—was that the status of the occupied systems be resolved in a fashion consistent with our domestic law.'

'Which sounds an awful lot like requiring that they be returned to us.'

'No. What it requires is that those planets and those star systems be restored to our jurisdiction long enough for us to ascertain what the expressed will of their citizens is under conditions which let us be positive they're not being intimidated or coerced by an occupying power. Demanding that they be 'restored to us' could be interpreted as a demand that they be returned to our permanent political control, regardless of the desires of their inhabitants.'

'But the determination of exactly what their will is would have to be made under our oversight. Is that what you understand the President to have been saying, Sir?'

'In its essentials, yes.'

'And do you believe the Manties will ever allow that to happen?' Henneman pounced, and Theisman suddenly realized he was holding his breath as McGwire hesitated. Then the senator shook his head.

'To be completely honest with you, Roland, I don't know,' he said regretfully. 'I'd have to say that on the basis of their past positions and performance they would be . . . disinclined to do so.'

Theisman cursed silently. Up to that point, he hadn't had any particular problem with anything McGwire had said on today's program. That wasn't true about comments he'd made in other venues, perhaps, and he did rather wish the man hadn't brought up that bit about using Trevor's Star's annexation as a pretext for additional territorial expansion. But he supposed that if he was going to be fair about it, the senator had a right to express whatever opinion he chose. Unfortunately, however reasonable they might be on the surface, McGwire's remarks, and especially that last one, were only going to pour additional fuel on the public resentment the Manticorans' ongoing occupation of the disputed star systems had generated.

And the senator had to be at least as well aware of that as Thomas Theisman was.

'And do you think President Pritchart would be prepared to accept their 'disinclination' in this matter?' Henneman asked.

'In the past,' McGwire said, choosing his words with obvious care, 'the President's options, as those of the Republic as a whole, have been limited by the disastrous military position we inherited from the Pierre Regime. Whatever we may have believed or desired, we were not, unfortunately, in a position of sufficient strength to press demands.'

'A situation which you believe has changed?'

'A situation which may have changed,' McGwire corrected. 'Certainly Secretary of War Theisman's announcement of our increased naval strength is something which must be weighed by all parties to the ongoing negotiations. And certainly, from the tone of President Pritchart's speech, she expects that to happen. As she so eloquently explained, we've tried for years now to resolve this fundamental issue through peaceful negotiation with absolutely no sign that the Star Kingdom was prepared to meet us halfway. No one in his or her right mind would willingly contemplate a return to open military confrontation with the Manticoran Alliance, and we've done our very best to avoid any situation in which that outcome might become likely.

'Nonetheless, there comes a time, as the President also reminded us, when avoidance of risk threatens to become the surrender of principle. I believe the demands which she's issued to the Star Kingdom—that they negotiate in good faith and that they accept the principle of self-determination, expressed in plebiscites under Republican oversight and jurisdiction, for all of the occupied planets and star systems—are completely appropriate and proper. I feel confident that I can accurately say she enjoys very strong support by all parties in the Congress, and that we stand united behind her and Secretary of State Giancola in this matter.'

'So, if I understand you correctly, Senator,' Henneman said intently, 'you're saying you would support the President's demands even at the risk of resuming active military operations against the Manties.'

'Some things, Roland,' McGwire said solemnly, 'are sufficiently important, both as matters of national self- interest and of principle, to justify even the most serious risks. In my opinion, the well-being and right to self- determination of citizens of the Republic living under the military occupation of a foreign power certainly fall into both those categories.'

The senator's timing was excellent, Theisman thought sardonically, as the program dissolved to a commercial message, leaving the viewers with the impression of his somber, strong-jawed face and steady brown eyes.

'Turn it off,' the Secretary of War said, and the HD unit went obediently dead and then withdrew silently into its ceiling nest.

Theisman brought his chair fully upright and allowed his eyes to circle the conference table. It was a very large table. It had to be to accommodate all of the officers seated around it. Counting himself and Arnaud Marquette, there were no fewer than eighteen flag officers, and each of those commodores and admirals was accompanied by at least two or three aides and staffers.

A lot of those officers looked unusually young for their seniority, because they were. Saint-Just's destruction of the original Octagon and every single military officer in it had torn an enormous hole in the Navy's senior ranks. The purges which followed had only turned that hole into a yawning chasm. Theisman had been given no choice but to promote to fill all of those vacancies when he resurrected the Naval Staff, and he (and most of those whom he'd promoted) recognized the relative inexperience of the replacements. That was one of the major reasons why Theisman had combined the offices of Secretary of War and Chief of Naval Operations in his own person. Preposterous as it still seemed to him, he was very probably the single most experienced officer in the entire Republican Navy.

And he'd been a mere commander fifteen T-years before.

But young for their positions or not, they were the General Staff he had to work with. And to be fair, they'd acquired quite a lot of experience and on the job training over the last four years or so.

'Well, Ladies and Gentlemen,' he observed after a moment, 'there you have it. I suppose if the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee said it on The Henneman Hour it has to be official.'

A dutiful chuckle ran around the conference room, and he smiled thinly. Not that he felt particularly amused. Actually, McGwire had been considerably less inflammatory than Theisman had feared he might be, particularly in light of his close working relationship with Giancola. Theisman wasn't certain that his restraint reflected his actual position, but he was inclined to think it did. McGwire had never made any secret of his intense wariness about anything which might have brought the Republic and the Star Kingdom back into open conflict, despite his relationship with Giancola. In a way, though, that gave even more force to what he'd said at the very end, and Thomas Theisman didn't like what he sensed building about him.

He strongly suspected that even Eloise Pritchart had seriously underestimated the strength of the public reaction her speech was likely to provoke. But it seemed that the electorate's outrage and growing disgust and anger over the Manticorans' procrastination were beginning to outweigh its war weariness. For that matter, they even seemed to be starting to outweigh the public's deep seated fear of the Manticoran Alliance. Perhaps even worse was the strength of the public's deep resentment of the humiliating and crushing defeat the Manticorans had inflicted upon them. Theisman had seen enough of human nature to realize that revanchism spawned by resentment was far more dangerous than any anger based on reason or logic, and the strength of this resentment had surprised him.

It shouldn't have, and he knew it. But it had. Perhaps that was because it had seemed to him that his own awareness of how catastrophic any fresh confrontation with the Star Kingdom could prove ought to have been agonizingly obvious to anyone who thought about it for a moment. Yet whatever the reason for his own blindness, the sheer strength of the public's emotional response to Pritchart's speech had been far, far stronger than he'd ever anticipated that it might.

He didn't like that. He didn't like that at all . . . and he especially didn't like the way his own announcement of Bolthole's existence seemed to have fanned that outrage and anger to even hotter flame. The situation wasn't