by David Weber
It must have been nice, he'd thought, to have lived before the Warshawski sail had made true interstellar communication possible once more. Today it might take dispatch boats weeks or even months to complete their voyages, but, unfortunately, they always did seem to get there in the end. The great news agencies like United Faxes Intragalactic, Reuters of Beowulf, and the Interstellar News Service, all headquartered in the Solarian League, were bad enough, but at least restricted access and alert security could limit the damage they did. Not that any measures could be absolutely counted upon, and the League’s official insistence on "freedom of the press" made it even harder. Their correspondents seemed to think their press passes made them gods, and DuQuesne Base's Marine security types had grabbed a pair of stringers, one with UFI and the other with INS, trying to sneak aboard a freight shuttle with the evident intention of getting onboard interviews from the crew of the superdreadnought for which it was bound.
All in all, however, Theisman felt reasonably confident of his ability to protect operational security from outsiders; it was his own propagandists he feared. God knew NavInt and StateSec spent enough time, and money, paying neutral agents for recordings of the Manties' domestic news and information broadcasts. Those broadcasts were weeks or even months old by the time they reached the analysts, yet the intelligence types always managed to glean at least some useful information from them, if only by helping to fill in background. He had to assume the Alliance returned the compliment where the Republic was concerned, which meant a single wrong word in a propaganda broadcast could blow secrets the Navy had spent months hiding, and all because some Public Information writer who neither understood nor cared about operational realities wanted a good sound bite.
But for all the monumental pain in the ass Ransom's presence had been, his own contacts with her had encouraged him to hope that perhaps he hadn't been set up to be the scapegoat when Barnett fell. He couldn't be certain, of course. Whatever else she might be, Cordelia Ransom would have made a wonderful poker player, but she'd spent too much time with him and recorded too much footage of interviews with him for him to believe she intended simply to write him off along with Barnett, and the scripts from which his interviewers worked had reinforced that hope. Much of the propaganda content had been too blatant (and strident) for his taste, but the HD clips were clearly designed to present one Thomas Theisman in the most heroic light possible. Surely Public wouldn't invest so much time, and the personal attention of its director, in building up someone it intended to toss aside. After all, the loss of a public hero couldn't help but hurt civilian morale, could it? Especially when the Secretary of Public Information had personally presented that hero as the Republic's champion.
The thought of being made the Committee of Public Safety's paladin had been hard for Theisman to stomach, yet if that was the price of survival, he'd been willing, even relieved, to pay it. But even as he'd begun to think Ransom's interest in him might spell salvation, coincidence had been waiting to put yet another stain upon his conscience. For if Ransom hadn't been in Barnett to make specials portraying Thomas Theisman as a hero, she never would have seen Tourville's dispatch.
The citizen admiral growled a curse and threw back another long swallow. The alcohol burned going down and seemed to explode in his stomach, but he appeared to have reached the limit of the solace it could offer, and he leaned back in his chair with a sigh.
He wasn't certain how Tourville had gotten his people’s commissioner to sign off on his plan for dealing with his prisoners, but it had been obvious from the dispatch that the fix was in. Tourville had intended to send all of his prisoners, including the officers, to the Navy's facility in Tarragon. The prison camps there were hardly luxury hotels, but unlike the SS, the Navy had a strong vested interest in treating captured Allied military personnel decently. More than that, the Solarian League's Prisoner of War Commission, which monitored the belligerents for compliance with the provisions of the Deneb Accords, maintained an office in Tarragon and compiled lists of all incoming prisoners. That meant the Star Kingdom would have been informed within weeks of Prince Adrian's fate... and that Honor Harrington would have been safe. Nothing could have protected her against the possibility that StateSec would demand she be turned over, but the SS had so far followed a policy of leaving POWs in military hands once they got there in the first place. Tourville and Theisman could at least have hoped they would adhere to the same policy in Harrington’s case, and even if they hadn't wanted to, her location would have been a matter of public record, and her prominence would have added another layer of protection. Surely not even the SS would be stupid enough to mistreat her in the full glare of publicity. Think what propaganda opportunities that would have offered the Alliance!
But Ransom's presence had derailed Tourville's efforts, and her own orders had sent a chill down Theisman’s spine. She'd overridden Tourville's plan to send all of his prisoners to Tarragon and insisted that all senior officers and a sampling of senior petty officers be delivered to Barnett, instead. That much had probably been inevitable, once she'd learned of Harrington's capture, but what frightened Theisman was the order to suppress all mention of that capture. No one, not the League inspectors, not the Manties, not even the Navy at large, no one was to be told Harrington was now a prisoner, and an order like that sounded ominous alarms for any citizen of the PRH.
The Legislaturalists' old prewar Office of Internal Security had been frightening enough. The formality of trials had been an irritating nuisance which InSec had felt no particular need to burden itself with, and everyone had heard whispered tales of someone who had been made to disappear by InSec, or the Mental Hygiene Police, or one of their countless sister agencies. But State Security was worse. No one needed whispered reports now, for StateSec wanted its citizens to know about arrests and punishments. And trials were no longer irritating nuisances; they had become golden opportunities for propaganda and tools to legitimize SS atrocities. Yet the first stage in the process remained unchanged. Show trials might come later, but until StateSec decided how it wanted to deal with any given individual, that person was made to vanish. He could always be produced later if a trial seemed desirable... and if it was more convenient to avoid that in his case, it was a simple matter for his disappearance to become permanent.
Theisman couldn't believe Ransom intended for that to happen to Harrington, for he was certain she saw the disadvantages too clearly. He'd told himself that firmly, almost desperately, and he knew that was because deep down inside he was far less certain than he wanted to be. Too many stupid things had already been done in the name of the revolution and "the Peoples war." Too much blood had already been spilled simply because it could be. And he didn't want that to happen to Honor Harrington.
He took another, smaller sip of his drink, closed his eyes, and pressed the cold glass to his forehead while whiskey fumes sent strands of thought he might never have dared to face without the drink pirouetting through his brain.
He respected Harrington. More, he owed her his own life, and the lives of the crew she had allowed him to surrender when she'd had every possible reason simply to blow them out of space and be done with it, and she'd continued to show compassion to her enemies since. Warner Caslet had been returned to the Republic because Harrington had felt the Star Kingdom owed him and his crew a debt. Citizen Captain Stephen Holtz and the forty-six survivors of PNS Achmed had lived only because Harrington had sent her pinnaces to take them off the dead hulk of their vessel when she hadn't known if the remaining life support of her own crippled ship would keep even her own survivors alive. And she had arranged for them to be repatriated along with Caslet and his people.
The People's Navy owed her a debt of honor, and Thomas Theisman owed her a personal debt, both of which simply reinforced the argument of reciprocity. Honor Harrington was, quite simply, a person whom the Republic must treat with dignity and respect if it expected its own personnel to be properly treated. And the thought...
&
nbsp; The admittance chime sounded, and he grunted in irritation. He set his glass aside and pressed the stud on the arm of his chair.
"Yes?" he growled.
"I'd like to speak to you, Citizen Admiral," someone said, and Theisman jerked upright as he recognized Cordelia Ransom's voice. Time seemed to stop, a single instant stretching itself out towards eternity, and in that crystalline suspension, he realized how incredibly stupid he'd been to get drunk when Cordelia Ransom was anywhere in the same star system.
But then the instant shattered, and self-preservation tamed his flood of panic. Stupid he might be, but kicking himself wouldn't save him from the consequences. That was going to take action, and he shook himself violently and shoved up out of his chair.
"Uh, just a moment, Citizen Secretary!" he got out, and his feet fumbled their ways into his boots while he resealed his blouse’s collar, then reached for the inhaler beside the whiskey bottle. He hated the damned thing, and he seldom drank heavily enough to need it, but he'd learned the hard way to keep it handy when he did drink. Up till this moment, he'd thought that disastrous evening in his third year at the Academy would retain a pure and unsullied prominence as the worst drunken night in his life. Now he knew better, and he raised the inhaler, pressed the button, and breathed in deeply.
The sudden, hacking cough which doubled him over took his body by surprise. His mind had known it was coming, but not the rest of him, and his skull seemed to expand hugely. For an instant he thought he was dying, then he only wished he were. But at least the damned thing had the desired effect. His stomach felt even more upset than before, but his brain cleared, mostly, and the room stopped trying to polka about him.
He gave himself another shake, shoved the inhaler into the pocket of his trousers, and snatched his tunic up from the other chair. He started to pull it back on, then changed his mind. He was in his personal quarters, after all, and Ransom hadn't warned him she was coming. Under the circumstances, he refused to greet her in full uniform like some neorabbit scurrying to present the best possible appearance to a hunter.
He settled for hanging the tunic more neatly on a coat tree, drew a deep breath, and pressed the admittance button.
The door slid open, and Cordelia Ransom stepped through it, trailed, as always, by her hulking bodyguards. Actually, Theisman realized as he looked more closely, this was a different pair from the one which had accompanied her to his office that first day. Not that it seemed to matter. They obviously came in interchangeable matched sets.
"Good evening, Citizen Secretary," he said. "I wasn't expecting you."
"I realize that, Citizen Admiral," she replied, and cocked her head. Her blue eyes rested for a moment on his tunic, then flicked to the whiskey bottle and glass on the coffee table. "I apologize for disturbing you without prior notice, but there were a few points I wanted to discuss with you. In private."
"Indeed?" Theisman said politely. The inhaler had left him with a throbbing headache, but the pain seemed to help clear his thoughts, and he let his own eyes flick to her bodyguards. The hint was wasted. The concept of private discussions obviously didn't extend to excluding them, and Theisman was struck by a sudden insight. He wondered if the residual clash between the inhalers contents and the fuzzy remnants of his inebriation had somehow freed him to make the association, but once made, it was so blindingly obvious he wondered how he could possibly have missed it before. Those guards' presence had nothing at all to do with any genuine feeling of danger on Ransom’s part. They were present simply because she was important enough that she could have them. They were an expression of her power and importance, a totem or trophy she was unprepared to dispense with.
"Indeed," she replied, oblivious to the thoughts flickering through his mind, and he stepped aside and waved to invite her to select a chair.
"I was just having a drink to unwind," he said. "May I offer you one, as well?"
"No, thank you. Please feel free to refresh your own glass, though."
"Not just now, thanks," Theisman told her, and waited until she'd seated herself before he sat facing her. "How can I help you, Citizen Secretary?" he asked in a courteous tone while the bodyguards stationed themselves behind her.
"I wanted to discuss Citizen Rear Admiral Tourville's actions," she replied, and he felt a fresh stab of alarm, for her voice was cold and the flatness was back in her eyes.
"In what respect, Ma'am?" His whiskey-abused stomach knotted, yet he managed to keep the wariness out of his voice and expression. But it was hard, and Ransom's next words made it even harder.
"I'm not at all happy about his obvious attempt to consign his prisoners to military custody," she said.
"I'm not certain I follow your reasoning, Citizen Secretary," Theisman said as calmly as he could. "His prisoners are already in military custody, and he did report their capture and seek confirmation of his intention to transfer them direct to Tarragon."
"Don't play games with me, Citizen Admiral." Ransoms voice was colder still, and she smiled thinly. "Loyalty to one's subordinates is an admirable quality, but you know what I mean. This Harrington is scarcely an ordinary prisoner of war, and you and Tourville both know it. Her capture is a political factor of the first importance. As such, her disposition is a political, not a military, decision!"
"But, Citizen Secretary," Theisman tried, "under the Deneb Accords..."
"I'm not interested in the Deneb Accords!" Ransom snapped. She leaned forward and glared at Theisman. "The Deneb Accords were signed by the Legislaturalists, not the representatives of the People, and the People aren't bound by archaic remnants of the plutocratic past, not when they're locked in a fight to the death with other plutocratic elitists! This is a war of ideologies, and there can be no compromise between them. Why can't military officers realize that? This isn't another one of your 'warrior' clique's wars against 'honorable enemies' or 'fellow officers,' Citizen Admiral! It's a class war, a revolutionary struggle in which the sole acceptable outcome is not just the defeat but the annihilation of our enemies, because if we fail to wipe them out this time, they'll surely crush us and reimpose their exploitative rule once more. The one thing, the only thing, that matters is winning, and only people who have the political vision and willpower to admit that offer any chance of survival. Well, the Committee of Public Safety has that vision, and we refuse to throw away any tool or option which can help us win just because of some useless scrap of paper we never signed!"
Thomas Theisman wondered if the inhaler had actually worked after all, for her fervor sounded completely genuine. But that was ridiculous... wasn't it? What she'd just said was entirely in line with the Republic's official propaganda line, yet surely the woman responsible for presenting that line had to know better than to believe it herself!
"I can't disagree in theory, Citizen Secretary," he said carefully, "but I feel there are some practical consequences, tactical ones, not matters of fundamental principle, which must also be considered."
Ransom's mouth tightened ominously, but she didn't interrupt, and he kneaded his throbbing temple with one hand and went on even more cautiously.
"Specifically, Ma'am, it seems to me that the rank and file of the Manticoran Navy actually believe in the system for which they're fighting, and they see the Deneb Accords as an important part of that system. If we violate..."
"Nonsense!" Ransom broke in impatiently. "Oh, no doubt many of the enemy's prewar professionals do believe that drivel. After all, they're mercenaries who were stupid enough, or brainwashed or greedy enough, to volunteer to serve their imperialist exploiters for pay! But since the war started, their navy's been forced to recruit from the masses of the People. As the fighting goes on, more and more of their total manpower will have to be conscripted, just as ours is, and the conscripts won't believe the elitists' lies. They'll realize they're being sacrificed in a war against their own kind for the profit of their natural enemies, and when they do, they'll turn on their overlords just as we turned on ours!"
He sat very still, wishing he'd picked any other night to get drunk, and made himself draw a deep mental breath. She can't really believe it, he argued with himself. Or can she? Is it really possible that she actually believes what she tells the Proles?
No, he decided. She was a master at manipulating the Mob, and she'd shifted ground too quickly in the early days, changed course too rapidly in response to the Mob's unformed, changeful urges and desires. She'd been too successful at running in front of it, trying to anticipate its next lunge, to be a true ideologue.
But that only tells you what she was, Thomas. She's had years since then, years to put her own imprint on what the Mob wants. She's not really anticipating its direction anymore; she's shaping that direction.
His roiled stomach clenched at that thought, yet there was a fundamental conflict between the images of the cynical manipulator he was certain she was and the passionate ideologist who could believe the line she'd just spouted. The woman who dragged bodyguards everywhere to prove how important she was and whose propaganda ministry shaped and forged its lies to support any claim the Committee cared to make made an even more unlikely paladin of the proletariat than Thomas Theisman did. She had to know she was lying, or she couldn't have done it so consistently and well.
But there was another possibility, one almost as frightening as it was probable. After so long in a position of unchecked power, after so many years of being able to make the official truth over into whatever image she pleased, could it be that she'd lost the ability to recognize the actual truth? Theisman had known officers from powerful Legislaturalist families who'd fallen prey to a similar blindness. They'd known the situations described in their reports to the Admiralty bore only casual relationships to the truth, yet given their family positions, no one had dared to challenge those reports. And over the years, they'd come to operate on two separate levels: one in which they lied to their superiors to protect their private little empires, and another in which they genuinely believed they could make something true simply by saying that it was so.