Bit of Analysis: Honor Harrington II

[Ahriman238]

Hm. The Havenites are using 14-missile pods or something...

16, actually. I arrived at five pods by division, assuming the remainder to be ship-launched missiles.

[Simon_Jester]

Eighty-four missiles... five sixteen-missile pods would indicate that the Havenite cruiser has a four-missile broadside, which is silly for a Mars-class and light even for a CL. Five fifteen-missile pods would give a nine-missile broadside which would be credible for an older heavy cruiser. Five fourteen-missile pods would give a fourteen-missile broadside, a bit heavy for a cruiser and I think three more tubes than were attributed to the Mars-class... [checks own posts]

Yeah. The tech bible says a Mars has eleven tubes, which would imply a seventy-three missile broadside which is just goofy. Le sigh.

[Ahriman238]

Pods and chasers?

[Simon_Jester]

In that case, three missile tubes on the bow, 81 missiles from the pods... AAARGH.

[Batman]

Re the lack of environmental suits, from earlier in the same scene:

"Honor, will you please get out of here and into a rescue suit?" he demanded in a voice pitched too low for anyone else to hear but still harsh with concern.
She gazed at him with dark, chocolate-brown eyes, and he felt his teeth trying to grind together at her calm expression and quizzically arched eyebrow. She reached up to rub Nimitz's ears, and the 'cat pressed against her fingers. McKeon needed no link to Nimitz to know the 'cat's deep, anxious purr urged Honor to take his advice, but she seemed as unmoved by Nimitz's advice as by McKeon's.
"I need to be here," she said mildly, and McKeon inhaled sharply. Part of him wanted to grab her by the scruff of the neck, haul her physically off the bridge, and hand her over to his Marines with orders to stuff her into a suit for her own good. The fact that any such attempt on his part would end in a swift and humiliating fiasco made it no less attractive . . . only impractical.

So it's not like they don't have any, Honor just won't leave the bridge, and by extension, neither will her people.

As for the odd opening volley size, a Mars has 3 chasers so that would leave us with 81 missiles from the pods. I can think of several reasons for an 84 missile salvo (incomplete pod loads, one or more launch cells/tubes were out of order, they deliberately gave up one or more cells per pod load, possibly per launcher for extra telemetry links, the Mars got an extra chaser tube as the war went on etc) but 'I don't think any of this is ever mentioned anywhere.

[Ahriman238]

He unwrapped the cigar, nipped its end off with strong, white teeth, then lit it with finicky precision while his mind considered what Public Information would do with this bit of news. A mere commodore shouldn't have been all that big a catch, especially not against the galaxy of Republican vice admirals and admirals the Manties had bagged. But there was nothing "mere" about this particular commodore. Honor Harrington was one of the bogeymen of the People's Navy. She'd come to epitomize the vast gulf between the capabilities of the RMN and the People's Navy, and Tourville savored the sense of having taken a large first step to bridge that gulf. For all its small scale, his success at Adler was the most one-sided defeat the Manties had suffered in five hundred T-years, and their people would realize that just as clearly as Tourville did. That was probably already more than Citizen Admiral Theisman had dared hope for when he sent Tourville out, but now, as an unexpected bonus, ships under his command had also captured Harrington.

Pffft. Honor is the Peep's bogeyman?! Get out. Get the hell out.

Alright, she shouldn't be an unknown to them, but Haven has been engaged in a desperate war with a navy with numerical parity and technical superiority for the last six years. Except for the opening phase and one attempt at a deep-strike, this war has taken place exclusively within Haven space. In this entire time, Honor has fought in exactly one major battle, admittedly a major defeat for Haven. Her prewar adventures may have made her a household name and padded out her StateSec file, but at this point I wouldn't be surprised to learn she was the only active-duty Manty flag officer who hadn't been part of taking a system from the Peeps.

Her entire contribution to the war effort to date has been: serving as Mark Sarnow's flag captain and commanding TF- Hancock 01 for the last hour or so of the Battle for Hancock, lending her expertise to the training and organization of the Grayson Space Navy, defending Grayson at Fourth Yeltsin, commanding the squadron that blew open the commerce raiding in Silesia, and flying a desk with the Weapons Development Board for eight months. But she's the bogeyman? How about White Haven, who used the PRHN as his personal punching bag for the first year and took Trevor's Star? Or his friend and protégé Theodosia Kuzak? Hells, I'd be surprised if even Mark Sarnow and Sir. Yancey Parks haven't done more damage to the Peeps just by being part of active operations for the last six years.

Any navy, even one whose high command languished in the grip of revolutionary fervor, had a simple rule where officers who refused promotion—and thus indicated they were unprepared to accept the responsibility which went with it—were concerned. They were never again asked to accept it. In fact, they were never employed in responsible positions again . . . and only in the most extraordinary of conditions were they ever employed in any capacity. And while he was hardly alone in looking for ways to avoid the role of StateSec's scapegoat, people who refused promotion, especially in a navy fighting for its life, were likely to find their professional colleagues actively assisting the SS in getting rid of them.

Promotion in the People's Navy is a dangerous business. But so is refusing promotion.

The Republic's reputation for proper treatment of prisoners of war had not been an admirable one even under the Legislaturalists. Lester Tourville was one of the officers who felt both shamed by and bitter over that, and the Republic's record had gotten even worse under the new regime. State Security now had primary authority for the management of prisoners, both military and political, and the Navy fought a continuous, clandestine war to keep its POWs out of StateSec's clutches. Unfortunately, the Navy won only the battles the SS chose to let it win, and even those victories were usually no more than the result of StateSec's decision to let the Navy come up with the personnel required to run its own POW camps while the SS concentrated on more important (and politically sensitive) prisons.

It was possible, even probable, that StateSec would demand that Harrington be turned over to it, Tourville realized, and his smile vanished into a bleak nonexpression. Not only did she deserve better, but unlike StateSec's thugs, Tourville and every other member of the People's Navy had a direct interest in the proper treatment of captured Allied personnel. There were many more PN officers and ratings in Allied hands than the reverse, and if the Manties decided to retaliate for the mistreatment of their personnel, it wouldn't be State Security who paid the price.

The silent struggle over POWs by officers who care about the law, tradition, respecting their enemies and simple humanity, and StateSec thugs who care about getting information and making a statement.

The one thing the citizen rear admiral couldn't do was appeal to Honeker solely on the basis of moral obligations and the honor of the Fleet. Not because Honeker wouldn't understand the appeal was seriously meant, but because the people's commissioner—like any people's commissioner—came with a preprogrammed rejection of anything that smacked of the old regime's prerevolutionary concepts. It was, after all, an imperishable article of faith with them that the Legislaturalist regime had collapsed under the weight of its own corrupt decadence, and that the Committee of Public Safety was engaged in a revolutionary fight to the death against the forces of reactionism, aristocracy, elitism, and entrenched plutocratic interests. The values of those opponents of justice and progress were only lies, invented to manipulate the masses, and so had to be cast aside as the posturing of the greedy elite, which had conspired throughout history to oppress and debase the People. As Citizen Committeewoman Ransom herself was fond of putting it, "Honor is a word plutocrats use when they want someone killed."

Peep propaganda, so much more than mere rose-colored glasses. Now the Legislaturists collapsed beneath the weight of their decadence (the bombs sure helped though) but the new regime remains revolutionary in liberating the masses everywhere. Or, this is the part where the Peeps go full-on communist. Not some sort of a veiled reference to communism, they are the Soviet Union In SPAAAACE!!!

The best bet is the Deneb Accords, Tourville told himself. God knows StateSec's violated them often enough, but they're still the official basis for the treatment of captured personnel, and they explicitly charge their signatories' militaries with seeing to it that military POWs are properly treated. And the Solarian League's accepted responsibility for monitoring the treatment of both sides' prisoners in this war. StateSec may have managed to fob off the League's investigators so far, but what if I make the point to Honeker that Harrington's going to be an especially high-profile prisoner? The Manties aren't going to accept any "sloppy record keeping" excuses if she disappears, and she's also a steadholder. Even those idiots the League sends out here will have to get off their asses and really look at the situation if we "misplace" a head of state!

The Solarian League has sent inspectors to ensure both Haven and Manticore treat their prisoners well. Without much results on the Haven side of things.

In fact, she'd done all she could by identifying them to their captors as Grayson Marines. She'd recognized McKeon's astonishment when she informed Luchner that LaFollet was a Marine colonel and that Candless and Whitman were both Marine lieutenants, but he'd said nothing. She knew he'd assumed she was lying in order to keep Candless and Whitman from being separated from her when the prisoners were segregated into commissioned and enlisted ranks, but he was only half right. That was the reason she'd identified them as Marines, but she hadn't lied.

The Grayson word "armsman" was a term with a multiplicity of uses. It was used for most police personnel, but it had a very special meaning where a steadholder's retainers were concerned. The "Harrington Steadholder's Guard" was actually two separate bodies, one within the other. The smaller of the two—properly known as the Steadholder's Own Guard—consisted of only fifty men, because the Grayson Constitution limited any steadholder to a maximum of fifty personal armsmen. The Harrington Steadholder's Guard as a whole contained the Steadholder's Own, who held commissions in both, plus every other uniformed member of Harrington Steading's police force. All of its members—to the confusion of foreigners—were called "armsmen," but there were significant differences between their duties. The Steadholder's Own provided Honor's personal security detachment—a function in which the rest of the Guard assisted as required—and replacements for the Steadholder's Own were normally drawn from the rest of the Guard, as well. But she could never have more than fifty personal armsmen, for Benjamin the Great hadn't spent fourteen years fighting one of the most bitter civil wars in human history just so his son or grandson could do it all over again. The steadholders' armies of personal retainers had provided the core of trained troops for both sides in the civil war, and so Benjamin's Constitution had set an absolute ceiling on the personal legions his steadholders could thenceforth raise. And he'd taken one more precautionary step by granting every armsman an officer's commission in the Grayson Army, as well.

His intent had been simple. If all armsmen belonged to the Army, then—in theory at least—a Protector could summon the armsmen of a recalcitrant steadholder to active Army service, thus depriving him even of the fifty personal retainers he was allowed. The fact that a steadholder who was allowed only fifty armsmen would tend to recruit the very best he could find also meant that the supply of backup officers they represented would be of high caliber if they were ever actually needed, which was an additional benefit, but everyone knew it had also been a secondary one from Benjamin's viewpoint.

Unfortunately for his plan, however, the Planetary High Court of a later (and weaker) Protector had observed that armsmen received their Army commissions because they were armsmen . . . and that they became armsmen in the first place on the basis of the oaths of loyalty they'd sworn to their steadholders. In the court's view, that meant their first responsibility was to the steadholders they served, not the Army. As such, they could be called to active Army service only with the consent of their liege lords, which no steadholder engaged in a face-off against the Protector was likely to grant.

That had blown Benjamin's intentions out from under his descendants, but the constitutional provisions remained. And since Grayson Marines were simply Army troops assigned to shipboard duty, and since LaFollet, Candless, and Whitman did hold Army commissions, they were indeed technically Marine officers. It was a fragile assertion, resting entirely on the peculiarities of Grayson's domestic laws, but it was an honest one, and the fact that the personnel records for Honor's armsmen had all been left in her personal files aboard Alvarez meant there was no documentary evidence to challenge it.

Oh yay, Grayson history infodump. Well, in fairness to Benny the Great, reducing household armies was sorely needed at the time. And technically Honor's armsmen are Grayson army officers, just wearing Harrington Steading uniforms. Maybe these peeps have never seen a Grayson Army uniform before?

He'd done his best with Honeker, and to be honest, he'd wrought a bit better than he'd hoped. They'd discussed the situation quietly in a corner of Count Tilly's gym under cover of the background noise from a basketball game. Neither of them had commented on why Tourville had chosen that particular difficult-to-bug spot, but that in itself had told him Honeker understood his reasons for inviting the people's commissioner there.

Paranoia is a part of life.

"In particular, Commodore, I'm glad the Citizen Commander was able to give me some additional background on your, um, companion." He gestured at Nimitz, never unlocking his gaze from Honor's. "I understand you have a unique sort of bond with him, and Citizen Commander Foraker assures me he's far more intelligent than one might normally assume from his small size. Under the circumstances, I've given instructions that he's to remain with you, so long as he behaves himself, for the duration of your stay aboard Count Tilly. Of course, I will also have to hold you responsible for ensuring that he does behave, and I trust you—and he—will see to it that I have no cause to regret my decision."

Shannon Foraker shared her opinion about Nimitz's sentience with Tourville so they're not breaking them up, just yet.

"Even with the most generous allowance for a slow passage, Prince Adrian should have reached Clairmont two days ago. I'm afraid that, as of thirteen hundred hours local time today, she will be listed as officially overdue . . . and presumed lost."

Might tell us a lot about the hyperspeed of damaged ships, if only we knew how far Clairmont was from Adler.

"I don't think we can 'take up the slack' this time," Greentree said soberly. "We'll do our best, Admiral, and we'll survive." He returned her bleak smile. "We're Graysons, and Graysons know a thing or two about surviving. But find someone else who can fill her shoes? Be what she was?" He shook his head. "We'll be a poorer planet for having lost her, Dame Madeleine, and those of us who knew her will always wonder what we might have managed to do or become if we hadn't lost her."

"Maybe living up to what you think she would have expected of you will actually inspire you to accomplish even more," Sorbanne suggested gently. "A woman could have a worse legacy than that. And don't automatically assume you've 'lost her,' either. All we know right now is that Prince Adrian is overdue. Of course we have to allow for the worst, but there are almost always survivors, even when ships are lost in action, and from what I know of Lady Harrington, she had—has—the moral courage to accept responsibility for ordering a Queen's ship to surrender. I don't think she would've let Prince Adrian fight to the death if it was obvious she couldn't win—not when she had to know you'd gotten the convoy out. I'd say the odds are at least even that she's alive and a prisoner."

Grayson is not going to take this well, though the possibility that she was captured occurs to all, it's not particularly comforting given the Peep's human-rights record.

Despite the vast gulf between Honor's rank and theirs, McGinley, Metcalf, and DuChene were the next most senior female POWs, and it was impossible for the Peeps to offer any of their prisoners—even Honor—private quarters. Citizen Captain Bogdanovich had apologized on Citizen Rear Admiral Tourville's behalf for crowding the four of them together, but Count Tilly was only a battlecruiser. There was only so much space to go around, and however spartan, the compartment—intended by the ship's designers to provide berthing space for six junior officers—was preferable to a cell in the brig.

There isn't room for all the prisoners on Tourville's BC flagship, that's why they're crowded into spare compartments.

No doubt it was silly of her to worry herself over what could happen to an officer in an enemy navy, especially when those very talents made the officer in question uniquely dangerous to her own side, but it was hard to remember that when Foraker made a point of reminding Count Tilly's cooks of Honor's special dietary needs…

So at some point the Peeps, aboard Count Tilly, were informed of Honor's special need for extra calories. Perhaps it's even part of her medical record on something like dog tags (maybe a subcutaneous chip, like a dog's?). But later on someone will most pointedly not get the memo.

Honor was grateful for the opportunity to see the others, although she knew those dinners were hard on LaFollet, but they had also offered Tourville the chance to "let slip" that the Peeps' Naval Intelligence had assembled a file on her.

She'd been startled at first, though a little consideration had told her she shouldn't have been. After all, she routinely saw the files ONI compiled on Peep officers whom the RMN had decided were important enough to keep tabs on. She simply hadn't considered that the People's Navy might see her in that light. But they did . . . and as part of her file, they'd included full details of her career on Grayson. From Tourville's deliberately casual remarks, it was obvious those details included clips from the gory Planetary Security video of her and Nimitz foiling the attempt to assassinate Protector Benjamin's family. No one who'd seen that footage could ever make the mistake of underestimating Nimitz's lethality, and while Tourville clearly didn't feel threatened by him, she rather doubted that everyone else who had the rank to see it would share his equanimity.

Tourville's a brave man, Haven has the footage of her saving the Protector in book two. If I'd seen Nimitz open a man's throat with ease before making like Basil Bulgar-Slayer on a couple dozen more, I'd be much to scared to come within ten feet of him.

Admitting that did absolutely nothing to make her feel confident, and she was shocked when she first realized how deeply her future's looming uncertainties were affecting her.

It wasn't a sort of pressure she'd ever before faced, and it was one she was uniquely unsuited to handle. It would, she'd realized slowly, have been impossible to design a situation which could have turned the normal mainstays of her personality more cruelly against her. The very act of ordering Prince Adrian's surrender had turned her sense of duty and responsibility to her Queen and her Navy into a source of guilt, not strength. The matching sense of duty to her personnel—the sense of mutual obligation and responsibility which existed between any officer and those under her orders—had become another vicious goad, for there was no way she could discharge it. She did her best as their representative, and the decency of officers like Tourville and Foraker had prevented their captors from abusing her people . . . so far. But that was the point, wasn't it? She had no power to protect her personnel if—no, when—Tourville was replaced by someone else. And above and beyond all those grinding concerns was her bond with Nimitz. What had been the single most important cornerstone of her life for over forty years, the wellspring of stability and love to which she had been able to turn even in her darkest moments, was now the greatest threat she'd ever faced. She could lose Nimitz. He could be taken from her—even killed—at the whim of any Peep Navy or Marine officer, any State Security thug, even a simple prison camp guard. There was nothing she could do to protect him from any of those people, and the desperation that woke within her could only be concealed from her subordinates, for it could not be dispelled.

And because she couldn't dispel her desperation—or her terror—they only grew, like sources of infection which could not be lanced and cleaned. The dark cores of fear grew deeper and stronger, eating into her reserves of strength and undermining her sense of self, and all she could do was try to ignore them. To avoid thinking about them. To pretend they weren't there . . . when she knew perfectly well that they were.

I actually like Honor's coming a bit unglued in captivity, it humanizes her again and makes perfect sense. Honor is a very driven person who is constantly seeing to her duties, or engaging in self-improvement. Enforced idleness and helplessness shouldn't sit well with her.

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.

At least three major Solly news networks are covering the Haven War, two of them have reporters ballsy enough to try and stowaway on a warship to interview the crew. Like Manticore, the Solarian League is very vocal about freedom of the press, particularly contrasted with Haven's state-run news agency under Ransom's control. Then again, the Sollies are often very invested publicly in all sorts of things they're willing to let slide when the cameras are off.

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.

Ransom's news crews have the run of the base and very little sense for what should be left out.

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.

Sollie office on the same planet as the prison camps they're monitoring, and Sollies reporting all prisoners they see. Well, in the last book they were going to be required to report their prisoners to the Sollies who would pass on that information, so it goes both ways.

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.

Somehow, I doubt this is what Rob Pierre meant when he first stood up and spoke of the revolutionary reforms the Republic would require to survive the next decade.

…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.

Instant soberizer in an inhaler. Unpleasant, but useful.

"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!

Theisman is starting to realize how good Cordelia's reality-filters are. Note that the Committee has chosen to turn the fight against Manticore into a class thing.

"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!"

Theisman flinched. He couldn't help himself, for he'd just discovered a terrifying secret: Cordelia Ransom actually believed her own propaganda.

The proletariat will rise in our enemies' lands and overthrow them! And we shall all meet up for ice cream in the new and perfected world! Oh, and Haven is now engaging in conscription rather than try and find volunteers for a hated and distrusted, but still entirely necessary, military.

"Yes," she went on thoughtfully as he made himself escort her courteously to the door, "this is going to take some thought. Perhaps what we should do is centralize all POW decisions. We could adopt a policy under which the names of captured personnel are provided to the League inspectors only from central HQs. For that matter, we could restrict the inspectors' contacts and unescorted movements to the planets where we put those HQs, couldn't we?" Her voice brightened. "Of course we could! We can take the position that it's a matter of our own military security and that doing things in an orderly, organized fashion will actually make it easier for us to assure our POWs receive proper care. We'll even be telling the truth! Of course," she flashed another of those icy, hungry smiles, "it will also mean we'll never have to admit ever having even seen the . . . inconvenient prisoners. What a pity we didn't think of all this before! It certainly would have simplified the present situation."

Theisman swallowed bile as the Secretary of Public Information paused at the door to shake his hand warmly.

"Thank you very much, Citizen Admiral!" she said enthusiastically. "You've been a tremendous help to the war effort. If you have any other valuable ideas, please share them with me!"

Theisman explains the benefits of following, or appearing to follow, interstellar treaties on the treatment of prisoners in purely pragmatic terms and convinces Ransom, a feat as miraculous as manipulating his own Commissioner into ordering him to retreat. But in the process he gives her an exciting new way to get around these treaties. Oops.

[Simon_Jester]

Pffft. Honor is the Peep's bogeyman?! Get out. Get the hell out.

Alright, she shouldn't be an unknown to them, but Haven has been engaged in a desperate war with a navy with numerical parity and technical superiority for the last six years. Except for the opening phase and one attempt at a deep-strike, this war has taken place exclusively within Haven space. In this entire time, Honor has fought in exactly one major battle, admittedly a major defeat for Haven. Her prewar adventures may have made her a household name and padded out her StateSec file, but at this point I wouldn't be surprised to learn she was the only active-duty Manty flag officer who hadn't been part of taking a system from the Peeps...

This is a point. One of the unfortunate side-effects of Weber following the Forester/O'Brian strategy of having his heroic protagonist manage to miss all the major battles of the war is that it's... really hard to explain how she becomes a celebrity and remains one for a decade or so in the face of all else that is going on. It's not like Hornblower or Jack Aubrey did, after all.

Although on Manticore her celebrity status is probably more cemented by the end of Echoes of Honor than anything else.

So at some point the Peeps, aboard Count Tilly, were informed of Honor's special need for extra calories. Perhaps it's even part of her medical record on something like dog tags (maybe a subcutaneous chip, like a dog's?). But later on someone will most pointedly not get the memo.

I suspect StateSec just isn't really prepared to deal with prisoners having special needs. Much less brutal people in real life can fail at this, because they're used to imprisoning huge masses of people who all have roughly the same needs. It only gets worse in a system like the People's Republic where if one prisoner dies because of sloppy handling and recordkeeping, nobody really cares and no one is likely to get in much trouble.

I actually like Honor's coming a bit unglued in captivity, it humanizes her again and makes perfect sense. Honor is a very driven person who is constantly seeing to her duties, or engaging in self-improvement. Enforced idleness and helplessness shouldn't sit well with her.

Agreed.

Somehow, I doubt this is what Rob Pierre meant when he first stood up and spoke of the revolutionary reforms the Republic would require to survive the next decade.

This is what he gets for making InSec's number two man before the coup into his own number two man after the coup.

Oscar Saint-Just is very good at reigns of terror; InSec as a whole no doubt was too. The only thing really restraining them was the conservatism of the old oligarchy, which had no desire to upset things with mass purges. And basically, all Pierre did to InSec was shoot the senior officers and replace them with crackpot thugs drawn from the ranks, while folding in some of the more violent revolutionary groups to thicken out StateSec's numbers.

To really fix this aspect of the system, Pierre would have had to somehow dismantle StateSec without dismantling his own hold on power... and since his hold on power was maintained entirely by force and the revolutionary loyalty of his chosen blackshirts, that was probably not going to work.

Theisman is starting to realize how good Cordelia's reality-filters are. Note that the Committee has chosen to turn the fight against Manticore into a class thing.

They need the Dolists to line up behind the war effort, both because it's the only way they can win, AND because it's their justification for cutting back the welfare programs and expanding the education and employment systems to give Haven a functional economy again.

The proletariat will rise in our enemies' lands and overthrow them! And we shall all meet up for ice cream in the new and perfected world! Oh, and Haven is now engaging in conscription rather than try and find volunteers for a hated and distrusted, but still entirely necessary, military.

Honestly I suspect their prewar military was also conscript-based like the old Soviets, with volunteer officers and conscripted rank and file. As a side effect this tends to lead to rather undertrained enlisted personnel. It also leads to a semi-silly inflation of the total number of 'officer' positions in the armed forces, because only the officers (NOT long-service noncoms) have the experience and education to handle responsible jobs.

[Terralthra]

Pffft. Honor is the Peep's bogeyman?! Get out. Get the hell out.

Alright, she shouldn't be an unknown to them, but Haven has been engaged in a desperate war with a navy with numerical parity and technical superiority for the last six years. Except for the opening phase and one attempt at a deep-strike, this war has taken place exclusively within Haven space. In this entire time, Honor has fought in exactly one major battle, admittedly a major defeat for Haven. Her prewar adventures may have made her a household name and padded out her StateSec file, but at this point I wouldn't be surprised to learn she was the only active-duty Manty flag officer who hadn't been part of taking a system from the Peeps...

This is a point. One of the unfortunate side-effects of Weber following the Forester/O'Brian strategy of having his heroic protagonist manage to miss all the major battles of the war is that it's... really hard to explain how she becomes a celebrity and remains one for a decade or so in the face of all else that is going on. It's not like Hornblower or Jack Aubrey did, after all.

I'm not sure. He doesn't say "the boogeyman", he says "one of the boogeymen." I'm sure that White Haven is another, as are probably several more. Also, Honor's contributions to the war effort are only part of the story here. She was in overall command of tiny forces that stood off two attempts to take central Manticoran/Alliance worlds before the actual war was declared, assumed command of another at the war's outset, engaged in an extremely public melodramatic personal feud (that simply has to play well on the news, regardless of spin), commanded another defense of Grayson, and commanded a piss-pot squadron of piss-pot converted merchies in the process of defeating another major operation. Each time, against superior forces with the initiative, and every time winning through superior technology, guile, and tactics.

Patton was only the General in command of major combat operations in the "main battles" once (the African campaign), yet the Germans thought of him as a boogeyman to the point that they couldn't believe he wasn't to be in command during the European campaign in 1944.

[Simon_Jester]

That's a fair point.

On the other hand, Patton was already a general at the start of the war- no US Army officer senior to Patton distinguished himself in combat during the opening phases of the war.

Whereas most of Honor's career to date was as a single ship captain. It'd be more like having some colonel show up as a national boogeyman if you ask me...

Though that reminds me of Eisenhower calling Otto Skorzeny "the most dangerous man in Europe."

[Crazedwraith]

Now, is this lame because it isn't Honor 'losing the fight' directly? Maybe. But it's pretty consistent with a functioning military tradition.

I'm behind on my reading for this thread. Only finished Flag In Exile and only read that this post of Aihrman's and a wiki summary so it's very likely I'm missing something. But Honor was only just promote to Flag rank in the book yeah? And this is her first jaunt as Commodore? It just seems to me this is a cheap way for the book to try and preserve Honor's combat record.

There's a very good time for Honor to get captured and that's after one her patented death rides. Have her complete her objective but then be surrounded by peep reinforcements in her crippled ship. It'd even work if you reversed the roles. Have Honor as captain ordered into an impossible position by a flag officer. Though I guess that would just hieghten the story arc's resemblance to A Ship of The Line/Flying Colours. Hornblower books.

Though speaking of Hornblower the more I look at think about it the moe obvious it is that Honor is not a direct Expy of him. In fact that's probably the reason for things like the repeated mentions of Honor's lack of maths skill and astrogation, and her facillity and confidence in direction action and hand-to-hand combat. These are the inverse of Hornblower's qualities who was all about the maths and ration analysis and consistent doubt his skills for physical violence.

Unless I missed something, which is quite possible...

Weber is saying that Honorverse warships (at least RMN ones) don't carry any surplus environmental suits. That strikes me as a really bad idea. Among other things, what happens if the ship is attacked while your skinsuit has been damaged or otherwise rendered unavailable? What if your ship has to perform search and rescue operations in outer space? What if it's transporting a few prisoners or refugees or something?

If nothing else there should be some kind of emergency life support bubble you can inflate around a person for later rescue.

Of course, if a ship went into battle with civilians aboard there are obvious solutions like "order them into an escape pod." The pods are armored and individually have a very good chance of survival as long as they don't take a direct hit...

Err... They do have extra environmental suits? The rescue suits Honor and co are wearing? They're just not as good as skinsuits (since everyone is supposed to carry their skinsuits at all times. It seems a very strange reg for Honor to ignore. They can't be that hard to haul around from what we've seen)

The quoted passage does also mention options thy don't carry. Hardsuits which are too big for the insides of ships and passaenger suits. Which are better than rescue suits but not as good as skinsuit. Presumably they are bulkier enought though to make them unsuitable to carry lots of extras. Mass and space is perennially at a premium ater all.

[Crazedwraith]

Ghetto Edit:
Just a random unrelated question. But why is that the very first generation MDMs they have seem very advanced? With like three equally power engines on it? Would they start with something simpler? Or would that not make it past the prototyping stages?

I can see the base of the concept being just a two-drive missile. One big drive, one small. You use the big drive as normal or at longer ranges and the use the second drive the guarantee its ability to perform terminal manoeuvres.

[Ahriman238]

Ghetto Edit:
Just a random unrelated question. But why is that the very first generation MDMs they have seem very advanced? With like three equally power engines on it? Would they start with something simpler? Or would that not make it past the prototyping stages?

I can see the base of the concept being just a two-drive missile. One big drive, one small. You use the big drive as normal or at longer ranges and the use the second drive the guarantee its ability to perform terminal manoeuvres.

There's not, IIRC, a definitive explanation in the text, so this is speculation. But much of Manticore's technical superiority comes from Hemphill's efforts to make LACs viable. This involved a lot of miniaturization of existing components, like fusion plants and electronics that the Navy was probably all to happy to fund for the mass savings. And the first missiles to get MDM were pod-missiles, SD scale missiles. Point three, the missiles don't run out of power, their drives burn out.

My theory is that they were playing with miniaturized drives sharing the same power source and made the missiles just big enough that they'd need a major retooling of the pods and launchers. And as long as they're doing that anyway, why not go for three? It drastically increases the range and control and general options with the missiles, and would require only the retooling they'll have to do anyways.

When they do get around to giving cruisers MDMs (Shadow of Saganami) they're dual-drive.

[Simon_Jester]

Ghetto Edit:
Just a random unrelated question. But why is that the very first generation MDMs they have seem very advanced? With like three equally power engines on it? Would they start with something simpler? Or would that not make it past the prototyping stages?

I can see the base of the concept being just a two-drive missile. One big drive, one small. You use the big drive as normal or at longer ranges and the use the second drive the guarantee its ability to perform terminal manoeuvres.

The Mesan Alignment does exactly that with their "Cataphract" missiles. Meanwhile, Manticore has been working on the MDM for 20-30 years by the time they release the design. I suspect they waited to be able to build a missile with three fully functional drives because they wanted to be sure their system would have a decisive advantage and was fully functional.

They may also have wound up in a situation where the miniaturization technology improved faster than they expected, so they were able to say "well shoot, we might as well just make the missile a little bit larger and splurge on a third drive" unexpectedly. Since ships capable of launching the MDM were unavailable until 1913 PD anyway, there was no reason not to keep refining the technology until the SD(P)s were ready. Using MDMs before that time would be counterproductive.

[White Haven]

Keep in mind that Hemphill is still heavily involved in the design and development of the MDM. I'm sure a dual-drive missile system could have been put into production sooner, but its impact would have been smaller (witness the compact DDMs on Hexapuma later on) and the Peeps would have had time to adjust and work out counters to it while the development of the full-up MDMs went on. It would be a ground-breaking improvement, but not, potentially, a war-ending one as the MDM and podnaughts ended up being (High Ridge's idiocy notwithstanding). And that's what Hemphill's philosophy demands: massive, sweeping sea-changes that are nigh-impossible to counter in the expected time between introduction and forced surrender. It's two gambles at once: the first that Manticore can keep the war going long enough for R&D and construction to progress, and the second that they can keep it all secret long enough. The second is always a crapshoot, although the massive investment in internal security that Haven forces on its intelligence organizations probably helps that quite a lot. The first, though...I expect we would have seen capital-grade DDMs and DDM-armed podnaughts much sooner if the war hadn't been wobbling between a Manticore advantage and a stalemate during the development process.

Manticore let just enough of the new toys dribble into circulation to keep the war from turning against it, while funneling the rest into an almighty haymaker. The MDM was a concept they didn't strictly need until later, so they kept it under wraps and kept refining it. They could afford to do that because I'm guessing they started building the SD(P)s on speculation, with room for large enough pods that they could either chuck the pencil-sketched MDMs or smaller, probably-more-numerous DDMs if time started to run in the wrong direction. That's the advantage of not planning on firing the things from internal launchers, it gives you the ability to play with timetables that way.

When she actually latches onto good ideas, Hemphill's laser-obsessive focus can actually be quite helpful. I see her as someone who works much better on a team on which she is not the senior member, so someone else has proper editorial control.

[Batman]

If memory serves Manticore deliberately held the MDMs back until they could use them for a gigantic 'You lose!' with Buttercup. The defense of Basilisk in 'Echoes of Honor' used the 'guess what-you have nineteen million missiles coming your way' advantage of podnaughts without using the ridiculous range advantage MDMs gave them, and neither did Minotaur nibbling at the Havenite forces at Hancock (though that may simply have been because she didn't have MDMs, merely conventional missiles benefiting from the same improvements).

[Simon_Jester]

Minotaur twitched ever so slightly as her bow missile tubes opened fire. She was nine million kilometers astern of her enemies and losing ground steadily. Her superior acceleration would change that shortly, but it hadn't yet, which should have made the launch a futile gesture. But she had the first fruits of Project Ghost Rider in her magazines, and the missiles she fired in salvos of nine were like none that had ever been fired in anger before.

[snip LAC action pew pew blam]

But then something caught [Harmon's] eye, and she blinked, lips pursing in surprise, as HMS Minotaur's first nine missiles came shrieking in from astern. They'd taken one hundred and forty-three seconds to overhaul their targets, and their overtake velocity was over a hundred and twenty-six thousand kilometers per second. No other missile in space could have done that; simply to get the burn time would have required a thirty-five-percent reduction in maximum acceleration, which would have put it three million kilometers behind these birds with a velocity almost twenty thousand KPS lower. More to the point, any other missiles would have been ballistic and unable to maneuver by the time they overhauled their prey, whereas these birds would still have close to forty seconds on their drives.

Roughly a 180-second burn time total, at about ninety thousand gravities: consistent with the three-stage MDM missile at peak acceleration. However, these missiles are being fired at ranges much shorter than the MDM is theoretically capable of.

Note that powered range from rest of an MDM at peak acceleration is... one half a tee squared... 14.6 million kilometers, which is considerably less impressive than we're used to thinking. The reason is that the individual drives still have that "sixty seconds at 900 km/s^2 or 180 seconds at 450 km/s^2" thing going. This really adds up when you use all three drives in stepped-down mode and get nine minutes of burn time.

But at the high power setting you burn through all three drives in the same span of time a conventional missile would last on low power. Sure, you get double the acceleration for those glorious three minutes... but that only doubles your range compared to the extreme range for conventional missiles. In stepped-down mode you get an increase by a factor of nine.

No one in TF 12.3 saw them coming—not even Oliver Diamato. The PN tactical crews could be excused for that. There was so much other confusion on their displays, so many other known threats scorching in on so many different vectors, that none of them had any attention to spare for the single dreadnought so far behind them that it couldn't possibly represent a danger.

More support for this- the Havenites didn't consider Minotaur to be any threat at that range, and didn't even bother to look for signs of her firing missiles at them.

Now, partly that's because they just got jumped by a hundred LACs that are busy pumping tiny but nigh-unjammable missiles into their hulls, and occasionally letting fly with a graser barrage comparable to a couple of battlecruiser squadrons, fired from behind cover of the galaxy's only impenetrable wedge-throats.

But the text makes it very clear that Minotaur was also seen as irrelevant because of the sheer distance, which suggests they were firing from well outside the range of a conventional single-drive missile.

[Ahriman238]

The guards aboard the shuttle wore the black tunics and red trousers of State Security, not Navy green and gray or the brown and gray of the People's Marines, and there were more of them. In fact, there was as many guards as there were prisoners, each of them with a flechette gun and the expression of someone who would enjoy using it.

Ah HAH!

Sorry it's been bothering me since the last book, when the Andermani uniforms were described that I couldn't remember what a Peep uniform looks like, and flipping back through I couldn't find a description. We've heard endlessly how the RMN uses a black tunic/jacket and trousers with a black beret (white for a starship captain) with a double-row of buttons and rank stripes on the sleeves, and they make most of the covers anyway.



We know the Solarian League Navy wears essentially the same uniform as Manticore, but all in white.

Grayson wears USAF dress blues, essentially a blue formal suit with insignia and either an officers or side cap. The Grayson army (srving as de facto marines) wear the same thing in olive green, so US army.





While Andermani uniforms are hussar style frogged jackets with fur caps, and Army officers even get a pleisse, or a short fur-lined jacket worn over one shoulder when it's too warm for it. Army wears black, Navy white. Though apparently these are just the dress uniforms and duty wear is more pragmatic.



And now we know that Haven goes for grey trousers and a tunic that's green for Navy, brown for Marines. Oh, Statsec, presumably including the People's Commissioners, get black tunics and scarlet pants.

Getting all these officers in a room together must be a feast for the eyes.

Manticore's intelligence agencies had analyzed State Security and its role in maintaining the Committee of Public Safety in power, and Honor had seen ONI's reports. For the most part, Admiral Givens' analysts had been more concerned with StateSec's impact on the operations of the People's Navy than with how it functioned within civilian society, but even ONI's summary reports had noted that the SS had recruited its members not just from the elements which had been the most disaffected under the old regime but from the now defunct Office of Internal Security, as well. InSec's enforcers and executioners had been professionals, not ideologues. They'd been willing enough to shift allegiance to the new regime and teach its minions their trade, and their new colleagues had learned their lessons well. In fact, they'd learned to surpass their instructors, for they'd had lots of practice.

One reason for the Legislaturalists' fall was that their repression had been . . . uneven. One week they might make dozens of troublemakers disappear; the next, the government might grant a general amnesty to curry favor with the Dolists. But unevenness was a mistake the Committee of Public Safety had no intention of making. Cordelia Ransom herself had proclaimed, "Extremism in the defense of the People is the first responsibility of the State," and not a day passed without StateSec's doing its best to live up to that instruction. Even the official Peep news channels made no bones about State Security's deliberate use of terror against "enemies of the People"—who, after all, deserved whatever they got.

So the old InSec was folded into StateSec, plus the most rabid revolutionaries and opportunistic thugs. And of course, now the atrocities and abuses all take place in the open, with the reminder that the People's Enemies deserve whatever they get.

He glanced across the terminal to where Ransom stood in casual conversation with Citizen Captain Vladovich, Tepes' captain. Vladovich's presence was one more thing to rasp Theisman's raw nerves, for the man should never have been promoted to his present rank. Theisman knew that from personal experience, for he'd sat on the last prewar promotion board that had rejected Vladovich's promotion to lieutenant commander . . . for the seventeenth time. The man had spent over twenty-six T-years as a lieutenant. Even in a navy in which Legislaturalist connections were required for promotion above captain, almost three decades in grade should have given the man a hint that he was in a dead-end career. And he had been. His undeniable ambition, drive, and experience had made him just too valuable to be ordered to retire, but the nasty stripe of sadism running through his personality had put any promotion to higher rank out of the question. He took too much delight in tormenting those junior to him, always in ways which didn't—quite—violate the letter of the regulations. That was something the Legislaturalists were prepared to tolerate only in one of their own, and much as Theisman himself had resented the Legislaturalist stranglehold on the senior rank ladder, he'd been more than happy that Vladovich would never climb it. Of course, Vladovich had never understood the true reason for his lack of promotion. He'd convinced himself it was due solely to the fact that he wasn't a Legislaturalist. Indeed, he'd actually come to believe—not simply claim, but genuinely believe—that he was the subject of a vendetta, a deliberate plot to exclude him from higher rank lest his capability and skill embarrass the Legislaturalists about him.

Under the old regime, that had been merely pathetic. Under the new, it made him a natural for service in the SS's paramilitary arms. For all his flaws, he did have a firm basic grasp of naval realities, and his ardor in rooting out and destroying "enemies of the People" was legendary. Unfortunately, he seemed to have learned nothing at all about the responsibilities of command. He was rumored to be unpopular, even with other StateSec personnel, and from reports, he ran Tepes as if the ship were his personal property and her crew (aside from his favorites) were his serfs. No doubt he was always careful to cloak his attitude in the proper platitudes about service to the People, but his particularly nasty type of favoritism and the way he played one faction of his crew off against another turned Theisman's stomach. And it was incredibly stupid, as well. Vladovich probably believed there was no chance his command would be called to battle like a normal fleet unit, but if it ever happened, he was going to find himself wielding a grievously flawed weapon, Theisman thought grimly. A crew whose own captain set its members at one another's throats would go into battle with both hands tied behind its back, crippled by lack of cohesion, and Vladovich didn't even seem to realize it.

Captain Vladovitch was held back for his sadism, making him a perfect candidate to command a StateSec warship.

But strong as it was, McKeon's obvious anger was less frightening than the utter lack of expression of the green-uniformed man beside him. The cut of his uniform labeled him a Grayson, which made him one of the "Marines" who were obviously Harrington's armsmen . . . and no doubt explained the dangerous tension churning within him. Theisman had seen that sort of nonexpression before. He knew what it meant, and the helpless spectator trapped within him begged the auburn-haired Grayson not to lose control. Surrounded by so many heavily armed guards, the consequences of a berserk attack could only be a massacre.

Theisman, at least, is not fooled by "they're just Grayson Marines" but he's not in a sharing mood.

"And who might these be, Citizen Major?" Ransom asked the senior SS guard.

"Enemies of the People, Citizen Committeewoman!" the major barked.

"Indeed?"

Ransom walked slowly down the line. But no, Theisman reflected, "walk" was scarcely the word. She swaggered down the line. She strutted, and he was suddenly ashamed of the image she projected. Didn't she even begin to realize how shallow and petty—how stupid—she made herself look? Or how her contempt could affect the members of the Republic's Navy? Whatever else her prisoners were, they had fought openly and with skill for their own star nations, just as Theisman had fought for his, and when Ransom spat upon their courage and their dedication, she spat upon his. And what had she done to earn the right to treat them with contempt? What enemies had she faced in combat? Even as an insurrectionist before the coup, she'd been a terrorist—a bomber and assassin; a murderer, not a warrior. Perhaps she didn't see it that way, but that couldn't change the reality. And because it couldn't, her theatrical contempt belittled her, not them, whether she could see it or not, and her own HD crews were recording it all. All too soon it would be broadcast all over the People's Republic, and after that it would just as surely find its way onto the airwaves of the Manticoran Alliance and the Solarian League, and he ground his teeth at the thought.

Ransom's theatrics, and a little more insight into her history and personality.

"This woman is Honor Harrington, Citizen Major. I double-checked the records just this morning, and there's a civilian arrest order out for her. One which predates the outbreak of hostilities." Even Harrington twitched in surprise at that, and Ransom grinned viciously.

"Honor Harrington," she said very precisely, "was arraigned for murder following her deliberate, unprovoked destruction of the unarmed Republican freighter Sirius in the Basilisk System eleven years ago, Citizen Major. She was offered the opportunity to defend herself in court, but she rejected it and her plutocratic masters refused to surrender her for trial, which left the Ministry of Justice no choice but to order her tried in absentia. She was, of course, convicted . . . and the sentence was death."

Which was a sham trial, conducted by the old regime to cover up their disgrace, and since when do you care for the reputation of old, dead Legislaturists, Cordelia? Besides, isn't it widely know that the 'unarmed freighter' Sirius smashed her ship to pieces and killed half her crew?

Oh, I know this is just an excuse, but I'd have an easier time buying it if there was some concrete advantage to executing Honor on facetious grounds. Something worth Grayson enlistment soaring while others pull three shifts a day at the shipyards.

"Now, Citizen Major," she said. "Since the warrant for this woman's arrest and execution is a civilian order, she's hardly a matter of concern for the military, is she? Whatever unhappy events may subsequently have transpired between the People Republic and the Star Kingdom of Manticore—" her tone made the last four words into expletives "—can have no bearing on the decisions of the civilian judiciary in time of peace, nor can a naval uniform be permitted to shield its wearer from the prewar verdict of a civil court. I believe Section Twenty-Seven, Subsection Forty-One of the Deneb Accords addresses that very point." She darted a swift glance at Theisman, who managed—somehow—to keep his hatred from his expression.

"In fact," she went on, "Section Twenty-Seven specifically states that the military status of individuals is nullified if they've been convicted of a civil crime before the commencement of hostilities . . . which means this woman isn't a military prisoner at all. So it's fortunate you and your people, as representatives of the People's civilian legal system, are here to take charge of her, isn't it, now?"

"Yes, Citizen Committeewoman!" The citizen major snapped to attention and saluted. "What are your orders?"

Thomas Theisman's teeth ground helplessly as Ransom smiled at the SS thug, for he knew what she was going to say. And it was his fault, he thought bitterly. No doubt she would have found a way to do what she wanted anyway, but he was the one who'd argued for observing the forms of the Deneb Accords, and the most sickening thing of all was that she'd cited them correctly. Section Twenty-Seven, Subsection Forty-One had been inserted after the Kersey Association's war against the Manitoban Republic. The Kerseyites' so-called government had put several dozen convicted Manitoban murderers into uniform for "special operations" against their home world and then claimed their status as prisoners of war protected them, if captured, from the execution of their sentences. Of course, the Kersey Association had been little more than organized pirates and murderers themselves, but their abuse of the Accords had led to their postwar modification in an effort to close the loophole the Kerseyites had exploited. And now another band of murderers was going to use that modification for its own twisted purposes, Theisman thought sickly, and the legal farce of that prewar "trial" would make it all technically legal.

The Deneb Accords specifically strip military prisoner status and protection from convicts serving in foreign uniform. Which was apparently done to close a loophole in the past.

But as Ransom's vindictive triumph flowed into her like venom, Honor realized it didn't really matter. Ransom wanted Honor dead, and not just because of what Honor had done to the People's Navy. No, there was something dark and poisonous—something personal—in her hatred, and even through her own despair, Honor realized what it was.

Fear. Ransom was afraid of her, as if she personified every threat to Ransom's own position. In the other woman's mind, Honor was the embodiment of the Alliance's military threat to the Republic, and hence to Ransom herself. Yet the committeewoman's hatred went even deeper than that should explain, and as Ransom glanced back at Tourville, Honor understood. The citizen rear admiral's efforts to protect her had only turned her into yet another threat: the threat that the Republic's own military would turn upon the Committee of Public Safety.

There'd been rumors enough of mounting unrest in the Haven System, where lunatic factions in the Nouveau Paris Mob had mounted at least one coup attempt. The Navy had put that down—somewhat to the surprise of ONI—but what if the military didn't put down the next one? What if it began to think for itself, to make its own policies and resist the Committee's? That was the only way a person like Ransom could possibly interpret Tourville's actions—as the first move in some plot to overthrow the Committee's authority—because it would never occur to her that the citizen rear admiral had acted out of a sense of decency. Cordelia Ransom couldn't conceive of viewing her enemies as honorable opponents who deserved to be honorably treated, and so she assumed that, just as she would have been, Tourville must be playing some Byzantine game in which Honor was only one more marker on the board.

More character insight into Cordelia Ransom. So, there is no good reason to make a martyr of Honor, you're doing it because you're crazy and afraid?

"In the meantime, Citizen Major, take that creature outside and destroy it. Immediately," she said softly.

Well, this isn't going to end well.

The guards had been briefed on Ransom's intentions and warned to expect trouble, but Honor's passivity had lulled them. Or perhaps her heavy-grav reflexes were simply too fast for them. Whatever the reason, they were too slow, even forewarned, as she rose on her toes and her up-sweeping arms launched Nimitz like a falconer with a hawk.

The treecat was a cream-and-gray blur, arcing sinuously over the guards' heads, and the ripping canvas snarl of his war cry was the only warning the citizen major had. The SS man shrieked in agony as six sets of scimitar claws reduced his face to ruin, and his shriek died in a hideous gurgle as one last slash severed his jugular. But he was only an intermediate step for Nimitz—a launching pad from which to redirect his trajectory, not his true objective—and he leapt from his first victim to hit another SS guard in the chest. The fresh target screamed, clutching uselessly at the six-limbed demon that hissed and snarled as it swarmed up him, claws savaging his belly and chest, and then sprang from his shoulders in a leap that carried him straight at Cordelia Ransom.
The first flechette gun butt slammed into Honor even before Nimitz hit the citizen major, but she'd sensed it coming and rode the force of the blow. She let it smash her aside, taking her out of the path of a second guard's swing, and her feet shot up as her back hit the floor. Both heels thudded into a man's belly, and she rolled frantically to avoid two more. She came up on one knee, and her left fist lashed out in a savage thrust to an unprotected groin. The stricken guard doubled forward as she came upright once more, and the heel of her right hand exploded into his face. It smashed his nose, driving shattered bone and cartilage up into his brain, and her left hand snatched for his flechette gun as he went down.

She never touched it. Another gun butt came down, and this time its owner made no mistake. It struck cleanly at the base of the neck, driving her back to the floor, stunned and unable to move, and two more slammed into her kidneys and ribs while shouts and orders and the sounds of blows erupted around her through the shrieks of Nimitz's second victim.

She couldn't even turn her head, but she caught glimpses of the chaos. She saw McKeon take down one guard with a smashed kneecap, then go down himself under battering gun butts. Andrew LaFollet was a madman. He spun like a cat, catching one SS trooper completely off guard, and his fist crushed the man's larynx like a hammer. Two more came at him, and he went into them in a blur of fists, elbows, and flying feet. Both of them went down, one with a broken neck, and he hurled himself at the woman who'd just smashed Honor in the ribs and was raising her weapon for yet another stroke.

Another guard's flechette gun came at him from the side, crunching into him so hard it lifted his toes into the air. A second gun butt crashed down, and he crumpled across Honor's legs just as Andreas Venizelos and Marcia McGinley were tackled and buried under the weight of half a dozen SS troopers.

Most of the other POWs never had time to react before they were beaten to their knees, but Nimitz's war cry still wailed as another SS trooper came between him and Ransom. The new guard wasn't trying to intercept him—in fact, she tried desperately to get out of his way—but she was the last barrier blocking him from his prey, and he snarled as he ripped her throat out. She went down in a gush of blood, but killing her had delayed him an instant too long, and he screamed as a gun slammed into him at last.

Nice try, Nimitz, for half a moment the first time I read the book, I thought you had a shot.

"If you kill the 'cat, she'll die!" The ops officer's shout cut through the confusion, and she stretched out a hand to the committeewoman. "They're linked!" she shouted. "Don't you understand? If you kill the 'cat, she'll die, too!"

-snip-

"Treecats are empaths, and probably telepathic," she went on, making herself speak urgently but clearly. "They bond to their partners, and when they die, their partners either die or go catatonic."

"That's nonsense!" Ransom snarled.

"No it isn't," another voice said, and the committeewoman turned towards the source. Like every other Manticoran in the room, Fritz Montoya was on his knees now, with the muzzle of a flechette gun pressed against the back of his head, but his Medical Branch caduceus glittered on his collar.

"What do you mean?" Ransom repeated suspiciously.

"It's in the medical literature," Montoya lied in support of Foraker's preposterous claim. "Treecats' bonds with humans are uncommon, and we don't know as much about them as we'd like, but the consequences of a 'cat's death are well established. Catatonia is more common than death, but the mortality rate is well above forty percent."

So that's a lie, Samantha certainly didn't go catatonic or die when she lost her partner in the last book. But she was in a deep, dark depression and probably suicidal. On the other hand, it's a very plausible lie and Havenites don't know much about treecats, and most of what they know comes from the Grayson news about Honor.

"As far as the rest of these . . . people are concerned, Citizen Captain . . . de Sangro," she said, reading the nameplate on her chest, "their actions here were clearly unprovoked." A wave of her hand took in the groaning SS wounded—and the bodies of those who would never groan again. "Even under the Deneb Accords, a prisoner of war who attacks our personnel except in the course of an escape attempt or in direct self-defense forfeits the standard protections accorded to captured military personnel."

She turned to smile at Theisman, who clenched his jaw as yet again she cited the letter of the Accords correctly in order to pervert their intent.

"The Accords don't give us the right to execute them for their actions—which, of course, we would never choose to do, anyway," she told the StateSec officer piously for the benefit of the watching cameras. "In light of their murderous, unprovoked assault on our personnel, however, a more secure disposition is clearly in order in their case. Under my authority as a member of the Committee of Public Safety, I instruct you to take charge of them in the name of the Office of State Security for transport to and imprisonment at Camp Charon. They can be shipped out on the same transport as their ex-commander."

Everyone who fought when Honor and Nimitz did goes to Camp Charon, the planet Hades, in the Cerberus system (gee, I wonder if the idea is that it's connected to the underworld?) which was InSec's top-secret, only whispered of, prison planet they 'disappeared' people to. Naturally inherited by StateSec, and after six years Ransom decides to publicly own up to it's existence.

I actually like large parts of the idea for Hades. Weber remembered that planets are pretty big, so the prisoners are dropped in batches at points thousands of miles apart to make their own shelter with Stone Age equipment. Nothing on Hades is edible, the only food is grown on Charon Island (Camp Charon) using prisoner slave-labor with heavily-armed guards. Once a week food gets airlifted to the drop-off points where camps and villages are raised. Just enough food to see them through to the next drop. If the prisoners try and rush the air transport, they get gunned down, if they make enough trouble, the food shipments stop. If they need to release a prisoner or move them to the island, heavily armed pickup flight. Minimal effort with maximum security, a prsion without fences or walls because the entire planet is a prison and even if, by some miracle, another settlement was within walking distance, you'd have no way of knowing which direction to walk in.

Of course, there are a couple of holes a clever person (with some starting resources, which most prisoners don't have) could exploit.

Oh, and in the honorverse military prisoner status and protections are also negated if the prisoners attack the guards for any reason besides strict self-defense or in the course of an escape attempt. Not sure what the IRL rules are for this situation.

"As for you, Citizen Rear Admiral," she said, "I believe you ought to return to Haven with me. What's happened here raises serious questions as to the quality of your judgment where these prisoners are concerned. I think you should drop by the Admiralty for a discussion of proper procedure for dealing with captured enemy personnel."

Tourville said nothing. He met her gaze levelly, refusing to flinch, but that was all right with Ransom. She was willing to allow him his bravado. In fact, it would make the final outcome even more satisfactory.

"In fact," she went on, "I believe you should bring along your entire staff—and Citizen Commissioner Honeker." She glanced at Theisman. "Citizen Rear Admiral Tourville and his flagship will escort Tepes to the Cerberus System, Citizen Admiral," she told him. "Please have orders to that effect cut immediately."

Not only publicly admitting their secret super-prison, but showing a Navy ship the way. Granted, that ship is going back to Noveau Paris so it's commander can answer for arousing a Committeeperson's paranoia, but what can you do?

[Batman]

*scratches head*
Wouldn't an attack by POWs on their captors pretty much qualify as an escape attempt by default?

[Terralthra]

*scratches head*
Wouldn't an attack by POWs on their captors pretty much qualify as an escape attempt by default?

An organized escape attempt is one thing. An attempt to wreak havoc and kill an enemy civilian (essentially) over a pet being threatened (most people in the SKM/SEM don't think of treecats as anything more than pets at this point) is another.

[Simon_Jester]

We know the Solarian League Navy wears essentially the same uniform as Manticore, but all in white.

Given the history, I submit it's the other way around- the RMN wears, essentially, a photonegative version of the League Navy's...

Theisman, at least, is not fooled by "they're just Grayson Marines" but he's not in a sharing mood.

Theisman was probably extensively briefed on Grayson culture during the Havenite operation that led to First and Second Yeltsin- and the Masadans may well have something like the tradition of "armsmen" simply because they are when you get down to it a Grayson splinter culture.

Which was a sham trial, conducted by the old regime to cover up their disgrace, and since when do you care for the reputation of old, dead Legislaturists, Cordelia? Besides, isn't it widely know that the 'unarmed freighter' Sirius smashed her ship to pieces and killed half her crew?

Oh, I know this is just an excuse, but I'd have an easier time buying it if there was some concrete advantage to executing Honor on facetious grounds. Something worth Grayson enlistment soaring while others pull three shifts a day at the shipyards.

What it comes down to is that Cordelia Ransom is fundamentally rather unhinged, and probably always has been. She has the terrorist's tendency to see "victory" and "kill any of our enemies we get our hands on" as meaning the same thing, too.

More character insight into Cordelia Ransom. So, there is no good reason to make a martyr of Honor, you're doing it because you're crazy and afraid?

Cordelia was always crazy- and you'll note that Pierre and Saint-Just bringing Esther McQueen into the Committee's inner circle really, truly scared her. At least, that was my take on the scenes you quoted earlier.

So yes, she is afraid. She's afraid that the revolution will fail due to the military being so unlike her ideal revolutionary warriors of extremism. And she's afraid of harm directly to her own person by the military of her own nation, especially now that senior military officers are starting to roll back some of the control mechanisms StateSec put in place over them.

[Treecat attacks toward Ransom]

Nice try, Nimitz, for half a moment the first time I read the book, I thought you had a shot.

Me too.

I actually like large parts of the idea for Hades. Weber remembered that planets are pretty big, so the prisoners are dropped in batches at points thousands of miles apart to make their own shelter with Stone Age equipment. Nothing on Hades is edible, the only food is grown on Charon Island (Camp Charon) using prisoner slave-labor with heavily-armed guards. Once a week food gets airlifted to the drop-off points where camps and villages are raised. Just enough food to see them through to the next drop. If the prisoners try and rush the air transport, they get gunned down, if they make enough trouble, the food shipments stop. If they need to release a prisoner or move them to the island, heavily armed pickup flight. Minimal effort with maximum security, a prsion without fences or walls because the entire planet is a prison and even if, by some miracle, another settlement was within walking distance, you'd have no way of knowing which direction to walk in.

Yes. It's a very intelligent way to handle the question of "how the hell do you imprison millions of people without needing millions of guards?"

[White Haven]

Little note: Statesec's not called 'Black-legs' for nothing by the prisoners on Hades. That would seem to contraindicate them wearing red pants.

[Ahriman238]

We know the Solarian League Navy wears essentially the same uniform as Manticore, but all in white.

Given the history, I submit it's the other way around- the RMN wears, essentially, a photonegative version of the League Navy's...

I'm sure the League, at least, sees it that way. I suspect Manticore's independent enough for the design to be more-or-less coincidence.

Theisman, at least, is not fooled by "they're just Grayson Marines" but he's not in a sharing mood.

Theisman was probably extensively briefed on Grayson culture during the Havenite operation that led to First and Second Yeltsin- and the Masadans may well have something like the tradition of "armsmen" simply because they are when you get down to it a Grayson splinter culture.

The Civil War was started by religious extremist Steadholders and their armsmen, which is why they were capped and commissioned in the Army after the war. I suspect the Masadan Elders had armsmen. And if Theisman didn't learn about the practice the first time around, he's had plenty of time and reason to be interested in the Graysons since.

I actually like large parts of the idea for Hades. Weber remembered that planets are pretty big, so the prisoners are dropped in batches at points thousands of miles apart to make their own shelter with Stone Age equipment. Nothing on Hades is edible, the only food is grown on Charon Island (Camp Charon) using prisoner slave-labor with heavily-armed guards. Once a week food gets airlifted to the drop-off points where camps and villages are raised. Just enough food to see them through to the next drop. If the prisoners try and rush the air transport, they get gunned down, if they make enough trouble, the food shipments stop. If they need to release a prisoner or move them to the island, heavily armed pickup flight. Minimal effort with maximum security, a prsion without fences or walls because the entire planet is a prison and even if, by some miracle, another settlement was within walking distance, you'd have no way of knowing which direction to walk in.

Yes. It's a very intelligent way to handle the question of "how the hell do you imprison millions of people without needing millions of guards?"

Exactly, even if other parts of the security arrangement reveal that combination of absolute paranoia and sloppiness from lack of experience. Though, in fairness Hades was InSec's for seventy years before it belonged to StateSec so not all the problems can be laid at the feet of the new regime. Though before the glorious revolution it was probably subject to the same sort of corruption and mismanagement that was everywhere.

[Mr Bean]

Exactly, even if other parts of the security arrangement reveal that combination of absolute paranoia and sloppiness from lack of experience. Though, in fairness Hades was InSec's for seventy years before it belonged to StateSec so not all the problems can be laid at the feet of the new regime. Though before the glorious revolution it was probably subject to the same sort of corruption and mismanagement that was everywhere.

Wasn't prior to the revolution there room for two dozen assault shuttles and schedules for random overflights of camps? I seem to recall in the next book one of the StateSec personnel wondering why the base was way bigger than it needed to be.

[Simon_Jester]

Little note: Statesec's not called 'Black-legs' for nothing by the prisoners on Hades. That would seem to contraindicate them wearing red pants.

Dress uniform may have scarlet trousers while field/utility uniforms are black? Black is a better choice for someone who expects to get shot at; it doesn't stand out so much. You don't really want your combat uniform to literally paint a big target on your butt.

Or the uniform could be black with scarlet piping/highlights.

I'm sure the League, at least, sees it that way. I suspect Manticore's independent enough for the design to be more-or-less coincidence.

But were they at the dawn of RMN history? I kind of doubt it. At least, I don't think the idea appeals or makes sense- we really SHOULD see more evidence of the League's soft-power influence on the periphery in my opinion, even if today powers like Manticore are self-consciously independent of it.

Wasn't prior to the revolution there room for two dozen assault shuttles and schedules for random overflights of camps? I seem to recall in the next book one of the StateSec personnel wondering why the base was way bigger than it needed to be.

It may have been designed to accomodate a much larger garrison than it actually needed, the designers having overestimated how many troops and shuttles they'd need to control the population.

Alternatively, it may have been designed with the potential for massive expansion- if InSec had needed to throw tens of millions of people into prison camps in a hurry, where would they have put them all? Answer: welcome to Hades!

The only real limiting factors on how fast you can scale up the prison facilities on Hades are how fast you can expand the agricultural facilities... and how many troops and shuttles the base can physically accommodate. So you overbuild the base and keep bulldozers and tractors on hand to expand your farms in a hurry, and you have a prison camp that's designed to accomodate several hundred thousand, but can trivially be expanded by an order of magnitude should a really serious mass "disappearance" be required.

[Ahriman238]

"You just stay where the hell you are, chica." It was the SS captain who'd taken over the detail, and her accent was tantalizingly familiar. It took Honor a few seconds to realize that she'd heard it before, from Tomas Ramirez and other refugees from the Peeps' conquest of San Martin, the inhabited planet of Trevor's Star, and she wondered how the woman behind her felt now that her home world had been conquered in turn by the Alliance. At the moment, however, the origin of her accent meant far less to Honor than the sneering pleasure in her voice. "You don't talk, you don't turn your head, you don't do anything unless someone tells you to. You got that?"

A San Martino in a StateSec uniform. It takes all kinds I guess.

Over the years, the PRH's security forces had discovered that it was much more effective to "disappear" troublemakers. It was a tactic InSec had used often enough against opponents of the Legislaturalist regime, and StateSec had brought it to a new, all-pervasive height. And it worked, she thought grimly, for there was an infinitely greater terror in knowing people you cared for could simply vanish. Death was terrible, yet it was an end, a conclusion. Disappearance was simply the doorway to ignorance and the cruelest emotion of all: hope that the one you loved still lived . . . somewhere. Which was what made it so effective—the ripple effect of a single "disappeared" individual could keep a dozen others in line in hopes that their submission would buy the life and eventual return of the person they loved.

The effectiveness of the night and fog tactics used by pre and post-revolutionary Haven.

For seventy-odd years, the Legislaturalists and then the Committee of Public Safety had steadfastly denied that there was any such planet as Hades or place as Camp Charon. Their existence was no more than a vicious rumor circulated by opponents of the regime, with no foundation in fact. Indeed, the Legislaturalists' denials had been so consistent that the Star Kingdom's intelligence agencies had almost been prepared to believe them. After all, as more than one analyst had pointed out, rumors of such a prison planet would be almost as effective as the reality for controlling the Peep population, and feeding the rumor mill would also be far cheaper than actually creating a Camp Charon.

But the consensus had been that the camp was real, and over the years a few dozen once-"disappeared" enemies had been "rehabilitated" amid rumors they'd been held there. And their fragmentary descriptions fitted together to paint a picture of the planet officially named Hades but called "Hell" by anyone who had ever been sent there. No one outside the PRH's security forces knew where it was, but all reports agreed escape was impossible, and stories abounded that the most recalcitrant military and political prisoners the Republic had taken in seventy T-years had been dispatched to its surface.

And now Ransom intended to use the occasion of Honor's execution to confirm the place's existence. For a moment, the thought that Ransom felt so threatened—that she believed the Committee of Public Safety's control was so fragile—that she wanted to be certain her enemies knew the iron fist really existed, that all the rumors of the suppressive power of StateSec were founded on fact, woke a distant stir of hope within Honor.

A concise history of Hades. The recent coup attempt and McQueen's elevation have rattled Ransom enough that she wants to confirm the existence of Hades, and announce it to the entire universe.

"In particular," he said, "Citizen Committeewoman Ransom feels the military has failed to properly embrace the realities of total war against our class enemies. She believes too many of our officers continue to cling to outmoded, elitist concepts of so-called 'honor.' While such a carryover may be understandable in the abstract, she feels the time has come to break such habits of thought, which create a dangerous sense of sympathy for the enemies of the People who are currently attempting to undermine our will to fight as part and parcel of their efforts to defeat and destroy the Republic."

"This is total war now, stripped of all pretense!"

"No, Citizen Commander. Citizen Committeewoman Ransom has requested that you be temporarily attached to her staff to serve as military liaison to the prisoners until their formal delivery to Cerberus."

Caslet will be coming on this pleasure cruise aboard Tepes, allegedly to act as liason to the prisoners, in reality because Ransom knows he was once captured by Honor and distrusts him.

The yard which built PNS Tepes had altered her basic design to better fit her to her role in State Security's private navy. The most important of those changes was obvious to Warner Caslet as his cutter approached the ship, for Tepes had three fewer grasers and one less missile tube in each broadside than the original plans for the Warlord class had specified, and the tonnage saved had been expended in providing life support for a double-sized "Marine" contingent and two additional—and very large—boat bays.

The alterations gave the battlecruiser a superdreadnought's small-craft capacity, which seemed excessive until the tractors drew his cutter into one of those cavernous bays and he saw what was already docked there. No less than three outsized heavy-lift assault shuttles, each better than half again the size of a pinnace and up-armored and gunned to match, hung in the docking buffers, and his mouth twisted as he gazed at them.

Modifications to Tepes, more marines, more brig space and more small craft in exchange for less weaponry. An extra two bays needed to upgrade a BC (which already has two, or at least Nike did) to an SD's smallcraft complement, which we know from earlier books includes six pinnaces and an unknown number (greater than two) of cutters.

Oh, and first mention of assault shuttles which are impeller smallcraft rather like pinnaces, only half again the size (and a normal pinnace is the size of a jumbo jet and holds 80) with extra armor and weapons. More designed for a ground-attack role than carrying out boarding actions at speed.

This ship would never be attached to any normal task force of the People's Navy, which meant those shuttles would never be used against the PRH's enemies. They were to be used against the Committee of Public Safety's enemies, which wasn't quite the same thing. Their purpose was to land assault forces on the Republic's own planets in order to take them away from the Republic's own citizens, and he wished he could believe their presence represented simple paranoia. But it didn't. Whatever one might think of the Committee or State Security, the fact that they had real—and violently inclined—enemies was indisputable, and the thought added still more weight to his bleak depression.

There is that.

He opened his various bags and stowed their contents with the quick efficiency of someone who'd spent the last twenty years of his life moving from one shipboard assignment to another and tried not think about the fact that the Cerberus System was over a hundred and sixty-eight light-years from Barnett. Even for a battlecruiser, the voyage would last almost a month each way, which would give Ransom plenty of time to decide he should be in a cell.

Hades is a secret but Caslet knows, or was informed recently, of its precise distance to Barnett. 168 LY takes almost a month, even with military FTL.

Despite her self-control, Honor blinked in surprise as she realized what that something was . . . and why his mask failed to hide it from her. It was as if Timmons carried the stink of rotting blood around with him, and he did. But not in any physical sense. What she was sensing came from inside him, and her nostrils flared as she realized that even so far separated from Nimitz she could scarcely feel his pain, she was picking up someone else's emotions. That had never happened before. Or she didn't think it had, anyway, but she didn't really know, for she'd never tried to read another's emotions on the rare occasions when she and the 'cat had been physically separated.

Honor sensing people's emotions for the first time without Nimitz. Naturally this would happen in a StateSec brig.

"In the meantime, though," Timmons went on more briskly, "let's get her processed. You're in charge of that, Bergren." He handed the memo board to a short, powerfully built sergeant. "It says here she's got an artificial eye, and you know the rules on implants. Get Wade in here to shut it down; if he can't do that, call the surgeon."

"Yes, Sir. And the rest of it?"

"She's a condemned murderer, Citizen Sergeant, not a paying guest," Timmons half-sighed. "Standard procedures. Strip search, cavity search, haircut, disease check—you know the drill. And since the Committeewoman wants to be sure she arrives intact, better put her on suicide watch, too. In fact," he gave another of those bright smiles, "we'd better take full precautions. I want her searched—completely, if you get my meaning—every time her cell's opened. And that includes meals."

Processing the prisoner includes all the basics, intense scrutiny, a disease check and having her implanted eye forcibly shut down or removed. They also burn out the artificial nerves in half her face.

Honor gets a strip search and body-cavity check before every meal and visit.

"One thing, cell bait," he told her. "Every so often, we get someone in here who figures, what the hell, he's got nothing to lose, and tries to get rowdy, and that memo board says you're from a heavy-grav planet. It also says you're some kind of fancy-assed fighter, and I guess you heard Citizen Captain de Sangro tell me they want you at Camp Charon intact. I s'pose you might think that means you can get frisky with us 'cause we can't kick your ass without upsetting Committeewoman Ransom. Well, if you're thinking that way, you go right ahead, but remember this. There's another twenty, thirty friends of yours topside, and every time you give anybody trouble, we'll just have to take it out on one of them, since we can't take it out on you."

That one's hitting below the belt.

"I know his right midribs are broken," Montoya said heavily, "and as nearly as I can tell, so are his right midshoulder and upper arm. The gun butt caught him from above, striking downward, and I'm pretty sure it broke both the scapula and the joint itself. I don't think it caught him squarely enough to damage his spine, but I can't be sure about that, and I don't know enough about treecat skeletons to be sure I could set the bones I do know are broken even under optimum conditions. From what I can tell—or guess—though, that shoulder socket's going to need surgical reconstruction, and I don't begin to have the facilities for that."

"Is—" LaFollet swallowed. "Are you saying he's going to die?" he asked in a steadier tone, and Montoya sighed.

"I'm saying I don't know, Andrew," he said much more gently. "There are some good signs. The biggest one is that there's no bleeding from the nose or mouth. Coupled with the fact that his breathing may be slow and shallow, but it's steady, that at least suggests none of the broken bone damaged his lungs, and I don't feel any distention in his midsection, either, which suggests that if there's any internal bleeding, it must be minor. If I can get my hands on something to use as splints, I can at least immobilize the broken limb and shoulder, which should—hopefully—prevent any further damage, but aside from that—" He paused and sighed again. "Aside from that, there's not really anything I can do, Andrew. Whether he makes it or not is going to depend on him a lot more than it will on me. At least treecats are tough."

Most of the damage from Nimitz getting smacked into the ground with a rifle butt. More on that later.

"The People's Republic, however, recognizes that some of you—perhaps even many of you—have been misled by your own corrupt, elitist rulers. The citizens of plutocratic states are never consulted when their overlords choose to wage war, after all, and as the champion of the People in their struggle against plutocracy, it is one of the Committee of Public Safety's responsibilities to extend the hand of companionship to other victims of imperialist regimes. As the representative of the Committee, it therefore becomes my task to offer you the opportunity to separate yourself from the leaders who have lied to you and used you for their own self-seeking ends."

She stopped speaking for a moment, and the quality of silence had changed yet again. Most of the prisoners stared at her in frank incredulity, unable to believe she could possibly be serious, and Caslet shared their astonishment. Like most citizens of the Republic, he'd seen the confessions of "war crimes" from captured Allied personnel, and he'd never believed a one of them. Most of the self-confessed "war criminals" had come across heavily and woodenly, obviously repeating words someone else had scripted for them. Some had mumbled and stumbled their way through their "confessions" with the muzziness of the drugged, and others had stared into the cameras with terror-cored eyes, babbling anything they thought their captors wanted to hear. True, a few had sounded far more natural than that, but Caslet figured there were probably a few weasels in any body of men and women, and it wouldn't take much of a weasel streak to convince someone that cooperation was infinitely preferable to the things StateSec could do to a person.

-snip-

"The People's Republic is prepared to be merciful to those of you who, recognizing the criminal purposes to which you and your companions have been put, wish to free yourself of your shackles. Perhaps some remnant of the brainwashing to which your leaders have subjected you causes you to feel that it would be dishonorable to 'defect to the other side.' But you would not be defecting. Instead, you would be returning to your true side—the side of the People in their just struggle against their oppressors. Think carefully before you reject this offer. It will not be made again, however much conditions at Camp Charon may make you wish you'd accepted it."

She leaned forward, forearms planted on the table, and ran cold, burning blue eyes down the line of prisoners. Her posture made her look like some sort of golden-haired predator, crouched to spring, and one or two POWs shifted uncomfortably under her hungry glare. But no one spoke, and, finally, she inhaled sharply and sat back once more.

"Very well. You've made your choice. I doubt you'll enjoy it. Citizen Captain de Sangro, remove the prisoners."

-snip-

"Wait a minute!" he shouted again. "I ain't no hero—and I damned well didn't lose anything at this Camp Charon!"

"Senior Chief!" Venizelos barked. "What do you thin—"

The commander's shout died in a grunt of anguish as a gun butt slammed into his belly. Harkness didn't even turn his head, for his eyes were locked on Ransom with desperate intensity.

"Look, Ma'am—Ms. Committeewoman or whatever you are—I've been in the Navy for damned near fifty T-years. I didn't volunteer for any damned war, but it was my job, see? Or they told me it was, anyway, and it was the only job I knew. But this war ain't putting any extra money in my credit account, and I don't want to rot in prison for some rich son-of-a-bitch's fight!"

"No, Harkness!" Scotty Tremaine stared at the senior chief, his face twisted in horrified disbelief, and his outburst bought him a gun butt, as well. He went down, retching, and this time Harkness did look back.

"I'm sorry, Sir," he said hoarsely, "but you're an officer. Maybe you think you've got to go down in flames. Me, I'm only a petty officer, and you know how many times I got busted before I ever made chief." He shook his head and turned back to Ransom, his expression a blend of shame, fear, and desperation. "If you're offering transfers, Ma'am, I'll surely take one!" he blurted.

Horace Harkness takes Ransom's offer to join the Dark Side. Dun dun dunn!

...yeah, you don't spend fifty years in the service without developing some form of attachment. Harkness is just the only one smart enough to take the offer and game the system.

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.

Rob, Oscar and Esther's collective reaction to Ransom's decision to execute Honor is essentially "she did what?" Rob is not above vanishing Committee members, though so far he's never done one of the triumvirate.

"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."

McQueen understands what executing Honor will do, and incidentally I do like the touch of acknowledging that she's an admiral in one navy and a commodore in another, and Rob and Oscar agree. Yet... they're not going to contradict or countermand Ransom's orders after she's made her intentions clear to all Haven. To do so would show dangerous disunity and weakness.

Manticoran physicians had flooded into Grayson over the past few years. Almost a third of them had been women, and the huge gap between modern medicine and that of Pre-Alliance Grayson had gone a long way towards demolishing any reservations about female doctors. It was difficult for any physician to argue that women must be less competent than men when the medical knowledge of the women in question was at least a century in advance of their own. Of course, nothing was impossible for the sufficiently bigoted. A certain percentage of the most conservative Grayson doctors had managed to maintain their prejudices, but they were a distinct minority. Despite that, however, some members of the Grayson medical profession—and not all of them bigots, by any means—had been prepared to assume that Dr. Harrington's relationship to the Steadholder, more than her own abilities, helped explain her selection to head the clinic.

Manticoran medicine is at least a century ahead of Grayson, and they're working constantly to catch their allies up. On the one hand, a sizeable number of skilled female doctors is doing a lot to change views on gender roles, on the other hand there is still resistance from the hardline conservatives and probably will be until they die off. Assuming their views aren't transferred to their prolong-recipient heirs in which case it may take an epoch to effect real change.

Some people think that one of the Star Kingdom's best geneticists got her job purely through nepotism. That's adorable.

Miranda was certain there wasn't a malicious bone in Allison Harrington's body, but that didn't make her sense of humor a bit less wicked, and she was only too obviously aware of how Grayson's conservative elements must feel about Beowulf's reputation. That first night's dinner with the Clinkscales had made that abundantly clear, for she really had turned up in a smoke-gray backless gown of thin—very thin—neoworm silk from Naismith with a deeply plunging neckline. The simplicity of its styling had been almost brutal, but the opaque fabric had clung and flowed like the smoke it so resembled, outlining her body so frankly that, for the first few seconds, Miranda had feared for the Regent's health. He was no longer a young man, after all, and that gown's potential impact on his blood pressure had been enough to worry anyone. But he'd clearly taken Dr. Harrington's measure more accurately at their first meeting than Miranda had expected, and he'd evinced neither confusion, consternation, nor outrage. In fact, he'd actually smiled as he bent over her hand to welcome her with exquisite formality, then escorted her to the dinner table to introduce his wives.

The campaign against Grayson mores is going well. I don't want to know what neoworms are.