Bit of Analysis: HH Crown of Slaves

[PKRudeBoy]

As far as Erewhon goes, I have to imagine that the tech transfer from Erewhon to Haven followed almost immediately by Haven resuming hostilities would wipe out any goodwill Manticore as a whole has towards them. Erewhon appears to have gotten a really cushy deal out of joining the Alliance. The only support that we see them provide is a DN squadron for 8th fleet, and in return they received large amounts of tech and ships from Manticore. Then they not only negotiate a separate peace, which is understandable, but provide Haven with reams of intel on Manticore. The closest equivalent that I can think of would be if when de Gaulle pulled out of NATO, he went and joined the Warsaw Pact, who then immediately invaded. In fact, I'm somewhat surprised that they didn't get hit with a full-blown embargo by the Manties.

[Simon_Jester]

We're not in a position to see all of the other things Erewhon might have done.

One extremely valuable service they could have provided easily would be to deny their wormhole junction to Haven- which would all by itself help to weaken Haven's economy.

[Ahriman238]

In fact, McBryde was more than a little surprised Bardasano was in a position to do any "catching up." She'd been back on Mesa for less than forty-eight hours, but rumors of how spectacularly her operation in the Talbott Cluster seemed to have blown up in everyone's face were already rampant within the Alignment hierarchy. The truth was that if anyone had asked him, this time around, and despite her impressive record of past achievements, he would have placed his own bet against her retaining her position as Collin Detweiler's immediate subordinate. For that matter, he wasn't sure he wouldn't have bet against her even surviving, given the apparent magnitude of the debacle.

Which would have been pretty stupid of me, now that I think about it, he admitted to himself. Whatever else may be true about Albrecht and Collin, they don't throw away talent without a damned good reason. And while this operation may have gone south on her, her overall track record really is almost scary.

Isabel Bardasano, and placing this once more firmly after the events in Talbott relayed in Shadow of Saganami.

McBryde nodded, and he had to admit she'd always borne that same point in mind where others were concerned. If you screwed up because you were stupid, or failed to execute your part of an op—on time and as planned—because of something you did, she would very quickly make you wish you'd never been born. And in her public persona as Jessyk Combine's senior "wet work" specialist, she had deliberately cultivated a "mad dog" mentality where the operatives who had no clue they were working for the Alignment were concerned. That bloodthirstiness and obvious belief in the motivating power of terror were both significant parts of her cover, and the failures she eliminated to "encourage the others" were a completely expendable, easily replaced resource.

Still, there was an undeniably . . . vicious edge to her personality, one which enjoyed devising inventive punishments, even for Alignment Security personnel who screwed up too egregiously. But what very few people outside Security's upper echelons grasped was that it was an edge she had firmly under control. And he was willing to acknowledge that the fact that that edge existed—and was generally known among her subordinates—was an extraordinarily effective efficiency motivator.

More on Bardasano, her character and policies.

"Problem, Ma'am?"

"Herlander Simões," she said, and he grimaced. She saw his expression and nodded.

"I know he's been under a lot of strain, Ma'am," he began, "but, so far, he's been holding up his end of his project, and—"

"Jack, I'm not criticizing his performance so far. And I'm certainly not criticizing the way you've handled him so far, either. But he's deeply involved in the entire streak drive improvement program, and that's one of our critical research areas. For that matter, he's got peripheral involvement in at least two other projects. I think, under the circumstances, it's probably appropriate for us to show a little additional concern in his case."

Streak drive is the someone insipid name for one of Mesa's biggest breakthroughs. They've broken through the next hyper wall (and I think one or two after it, it's been a while since I read the relevant bit) to produce FTL twice as fast as anyone else's, all in total secrecy. Manticore's not the only star nation with a serious R&D budget. Or the only one willing to conceal major breakthroughs until they're good and ready to make military use of them.

"To begin with," he said finally, "I have to admit I never really knew Simões—either Simões—in any sort of social sense before all of this came up. For that matter, I still don't. My impression, though, is that the LRPB's decision to cull the girl really ripped him up inside."

Short version: since we last saw Dr. Simoes, his daughter backslid and fell into a coma and the Long-Range Planning Board voted to pull the plug. Even though Herlander begged to be allowed to take responsibility for her medical bills himself, showed that he could if he forgot everything in life but his work, and they said they wouldn't let him destroy himself to fix one of their mistakes. Funny that this act of semi-compassion is what disgruntles and radicalizes Simoes. Not the casual brutality of genetic slavery or the horror of the LRPB's vision for the galaxy.

Oh, and they may not know or care what this would do to one of their best scientists, but Bardasano and MacBryde at least are now aware of Simoes as a potential security risk.

"The LRPB goes to great lengths to keep its decision-making process as institutionalized and impersonal as possible as the best way of preventing favoritism and special-case pleading," she said. "That means it's all pretty much . . . automated, especially after the decision's been made. But I imagine you're right. In a case like this, showing a little more sensitivity might not have been out of order."

"In light of the effect on him, you're absolutely right," McBryde said. "It hammered his wife, too, of course, but I think it hit him even harder. Or, at least, I think it's had more serious consequences in terms of his effectiveness."

"She left him?" Bardasano's tone made it clear the question was actually a statement, and McBryde nodded.

The LRPB's "just business, nothing personal" management style. Simoes and his wife had a falling out because she wanted to pull the plug.

"Long-term, Ma'am, I think we'd better start looking for that replacement." McBryde couldn't quite keep the sadness out of his tone. "I don't think anyone can go through everything Simões is going through—and putting himself through—without crashing and burning in the end. I suppose it's possible, even likely, that he'll eventually learn to cope, but I very much doubt it's going to happen until he falls all the way down that hole inside him."

"That's . . . unfortunate," Bardasano said after a moment. McBryde's eyebrow quirked, and she let her chair come back upright as she continued. "Your analysis of his basic ability dovetails nicely with the Director of Research's analysis. At the moment, we genuinely don't have anyone we could put into his spot who could match the work he's still managing to turn out. So I guess the next question is whether or not you think his attitude—his emotional state—constitutes any sort of security risk?"

"At the moment, no," McBryde said firmly. Even as he spoke, he felt the tiniest quiver of uncertainty, but he suppressed it firmly. Herlander Simões was a man trapped in a living hell, and despite his own professionalism, McBryde wasn't prepared to simply cut him adrift without good, solid reasons.

"In the longer term," he continued, "I think it's much too early to predict where he might finally end up."

Willingness to extend Simões the benefit of the doubt was one thing; failing to throw out a sheet anchor in an evaluation like this one was quite another.

How Mesa operates. Care in speaking to one's superiors, treating all personnel as inherently disposable.

Arsène Bottereau, late—very late, in his case—citizen commander in the service of the People's Republic of Haven's Office of State Security, tried not to wince. He was not outstandingly successful. First, because Laukkonen was a physically powerful man who hadn't pulled the blow in the least. Second, because Bottereau had been concentrating on keeping a low profile for a long time, now. And third, because he owed Laukkonen money . . . and wasn't there to pay it. Which was one reason he'd arranged to meet the fence and weapons dealer in a public bar rather than a quiet, discreet little office somewhere. Now he steered the other man to a corner booth—the sort of corner booth where waiters left one alone because they worked in the sort of bar where business discussions were likely to require an additional degree of . . . privacy.

Oh hey, more escaped StateSec dregs.

... They're going to be dealing with these rats in the walls for decades aren't they?

"The thing is, I can't pay you right now, and to be honest, the way both the Manties and Theisman—and Erewhon, for that matter—are escorting their convoys in the area, things are getting too hot for Jacinthe. She's only a light cruiser, and we're beginning to see heavy cruiser escorts—even a couple of battlecruisers, out of Theisman." Bottereau shook his head. "I'm not going to get your money by ramming my head into that kind of opposition, and the stuff sailing independently around here right now is strictly low-end. It's not going to pay the bills, either."

Local convoy security. Seems everyone wants to avoid the commerce-raiding of the last war.

"I know these people are good for the money. I've worked with them in the past, although I have to admit this time they're talking about a lot bigger paycheck than before." He grimaced. "On the other hand, what they're talking about sounds like a straightforward merc operation, not commerce raiding." It was interesting, a corner of his own mind noted, that even now he couldn't bring himself to use the word "piracy" in conjunction with his own actions. On the other hand, it never even occurred to him to mention anything about the People's Navy in Exile to Laukkonen. Mostly because he was certain it would absolutely convince the arms dealer he was shooting him a line of pure shit. "It's a single in-and-out op, and the amount they're talking about, completely in addition to anything we might . . . pick up along the way, would clear everything I owe you—and everyone else—and still leave me enough to set up somewhere else in something legitimate."

More ominous foreshadowing of the former StateSec forces they're going to try and hit Torch with.

"I also know you've been through a lot, these past few months." He was careful to keep his tone gentle and yet professionally detached. "I've read your file, and your wife's. And I've seen the reports from the Long-Range Planning Board." He shrugged ever so slightly. "I don't have any kids of my own, so in that sense, I know I can't really understand how incredibly painful all of this has been for you. And I'm not going to pretend we'd be having this conversation if I didn't have a professional reason for speaking to you. I hope you understand that."

MacBryde trying to befriend Herlander Simoes in a not-getting-involved but letting him vent way.

"I'll be honest with you," McBryde said. "The last thing I really want to do is to get close, on a personal level, to someone who's in as much pain as I think you are. And it's not as if I'm any kind of trained counselor or therapist. Oh, I've had a few basic psych classes as part of my security training, of course, but I'd be totally unqualified to try to cope with your grief on any sort of therapeutic basis. But the truth is, Herlander, that if I'm going to feel confident I understand you, and the security implications you present, you're going to have to talk to me. And that means I'm going to have to talk to you."

He paused and Simões nodded.

"I don't expect you to be able to forget I'm in charge of the Center's security," McBryde continued. "And I'm not going to be able to promise you the kind of confidentiality a therapist is supposed to respect. I want you to understand that going in. But I also want you to understand that my ultimate objective, however we got where we are, is to try to help you stay together. You can't complete the work we need completed if you fall apart, and it's my job to get that work completed. It's that simple. On the other hand, that also means you've got at least one person in the universe—me—you can talk to and who will do anything he can to help you deal with all the shit coming down on you."

Good luck with that.

"So, what about Laukkonen?" he asked, shaking himself back up to the surface of his thoughts.

"Well, he's in the favor-trading business, and he knows how we like to keep track of anyone whose . . . operational interests might intrude into the Sector. In fact, I might as well admit that we went ahead and hinted as much to him."

"And just how much of an investment did we make in this 'hint' of yours?" Rozsak inquired dryly.

"As retainers go, it's not really all that much," Watanapongse replied. "Actually, it's pocket change for him, as well as for us. What he's really after is maintaining access, staying in our good graces, in case another instance of mutually advantageous backscratching should arise."

Rozsak's intelligence people hear about this big score, and ominous gathering of StateSec dregs.

Manson had been planted on them originally by Ingemar Cassetti—a fact of which, he undoubtedly believed, Roszak and Watanapongse were both unaware. They'd kept him in place because it was always easier and safer to manipulate the spy you knew about rather than inspire one's adversaries to plant spies you didn't know about, but they'd never entertained any illusions about his loyalty or lack thereof. He'd been quite useful on several occasions, too, yet that usefulness had always had to be balanced against the need to keep him completely in the dark where the Maya Sector's true plans were concerned.

That had still been manageable, if increasingly difficult, but now that Cassetti had been removed from the equation, there was no need to "manage" his chosen spy. And even if there had been . . .

And preparing to clean house/

"We're sure we've shortstopped all of his fishing expeditions?"

"As sure as you ever can be in this sort of game. Which is to say, almost certain."

"Then that'll have to do." Rozsak thought for a moment, then shrugged. "An accident, Jiri. Something as far removed from us or anything related to his official duties as you can manage."

"He's scheduled to go grav-skiing Friday," Watanapongse observed.

"Really?" Rozsak leaned back in his chair, expression thoughtful, then nodded. "I do hope he's careful," he said.

Cold.

Where did we change course? he wondered. When did we shift from the maximizing of every individual into producing neat little bricks for a carefully designed edifice? What would Leonard Detweiler think if he were here today, looking at the Board's decisions? Would he have thrown away a little girl whose father loved her so desperately? Would he have rejected Herlander's offer to shoulder the full financial burden of caring for her? And, if he would have, what does that say about where we've been from the very beginning?

Never met the guy, couldn't say for sure. But I do like the idea that Mesa started out with good intentions and has sincegotten serious mission-drift.

Is this really what we're all about? About having the Board make those decisions for all of us in its infinite wisdom? What happens if it decides it doesn't need any random variations any more? What happens if the only children it permits are the ones which have been specifically designed for its star genomes?

He took another, deeper sip of whiskey, and his fingers tightened around the glass.

Hypocrite, he thought. You're a fucking hypocrite, Jack. You've known—known for forty years—that that's exactly what the Board has in mind for all those "normals" out there. Of course, you didn't think about it that way, did you? No, you thought about how much good it was going to do. How their children, and their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren would thank you for allowing them to share in the benefits of the systematic improvement of the species. Sure, you knew a lot of people would be unhappy, that they wouldn't voluntarily surrender their children's futures to someone else, but that was stupid of them, wasn't it? It was only because they'd been brainwashed by those bastards on Beowulf. Because they were automatically prejudiced against anything carrying the "genie" stigma. Because they were ignorant, unthinking normals, not an alpha line like you.

But now—now that you see it happening to someone else who's also an alpha line. When you see it happening to Herlander, and you realize it could have happened to your parents, or to your brother, or your sisters . . . or some day to you. Now you suddenly discover you have doubts.

Jack MacBryde and his carefully hidden doubts.

[Simon_Jester]

Streak drive is the someone insipid name for one of Mesa's biggest breakthroughs. They've broken through the next hyper wall (and I think one or two after it, it's been a while since I read the relevant bit) to produce FTL twice as fast as anyone else's, all in total secrecy. Manticore's not the only star nation with a serious R&D budget. Or the only one willing to conceal major breakthroughs until they're good and ready to make military use of them.

The one after it, not the two after it.

And, well, actually streak drive only gives them... I think about a 30% or so speed advantage. Each successive 'band' seems to permit apparent FTL speeds about 500c greater than the previous one, as far as I can remember the table I read in, um... some book, one of the anthologies I think. It was quite a long time ago.

Short version: since we last saw Dr. Simoes, his daughter backslid and fell into a coma and the Long-Range Planning Board voted to pull the plug. Even though Herlander begged to be allowed to take responsibility for her medical bills himself, showed that he could if he forgot everything in life but his work, and they said they wouldn't let him destroy himself to fix one of their mistakes. Funny that this act of semi-compassion is what disgruntles and radicalizes Simoes. Not the casual brutality of genetic slavery or the horror of the LRPB's vision for the galaxy.

Well, it's having this literally happen right in his lap that slams home for Simoes that this is more or less what the LRPB has in mind for everyone. That everyone will be the subject of genetic experimentation and control, and that indeed Simoes is one of the lucky ones.

He's the product of a society where about three fifths of the population are genetically modified slaves, and where he was brought up to take for granted that he's a superman. But he's at least empathic enough to realize that the same horrible thing that happened to him and his family will be happening billions of times over, to everyone, forever if the Alignment actually wins.

Oh, and they may not know or care what this would do to one of their best scientists, but Bardasano and MacBryde at least are now aware of Simoes as a potential security risk.

Weber revealed in outside-the-book infodumps that in Mesan society think that killing off genetically flawed children is normal, and people like McBryde think that Simoes is seriously, seriously overreacting to the whole thing. Which is why it didn't occur to them that this would make him truly unhinged and destroy his career and work abilities until he actually started reacting the way he did.

His wife, as you noted, appears to have felt the same way.

That's why they talk about how he's "putting himself through it." If you or I experienced that- beautiful intelligent child born, diagnosed with severe autism bordering on locked-in syndrome, then 'euthanized-' in the context of our own society, people would not think we were irrational to be not only depressed and stressed but also angry.

On Mesa, in their social context, they see that anger and the great intensity of the depression as irrational.

... They're going to be dealing with these rats in the walls for decades aren't they?

Well yes. I mean, various Nazi German figures were still a factor after the war, and it took a long time to bring some of them to justice. Others, well, just kept turning up like a bad penny...

And the Havenite SS was in all probability a lot bigger than the armed forces of the Third Reich. Possibly bigger than the population of the Third Reich, given the size of the population it had to police.

Never met the guy, couldn't say for sure. But I do like the idea that Mesa started out with good intentions and has sincegotten serious mission-drift.

Well, it's hard to say what Leonard Detweiler really wanted, yeah. Although I'm not sure he was such a sweet fellow, since the current Detweiler running the Alignment is supposedly a clone of his, plus whatever gene-tinkering the Alignment's done to "optimize" him in the past 600 years. Then again, gene tinkering in the Honorverse can make people more psychopathic or otherwise dysfunctional and dangerous, so it may be the Leonard was a nicer guy than his descendant-clone.

In any case, I'm sure all Mesans believe in Detweiler as this saintly patron of positive eugenics and a greater future for all. Because he's their founding hero, after all. So even if Simoes is objectively wrong, what he's saying makes sense in his own frame of reference.

Jack MacBryde and his carefully hidden doubts.

Yeah. I think at least three Mesan Alignment viewpoint characters have all had similar doubts. That there's a certain amount of cognitive dissonance built into their worldview. Because on the one hand they value certain people and claim to promote a greater future for all humanity. But on the other hand they explicitly treat individual humans as raw materials, as means toward a long-range goal.

Likewise, there's dissonance in that the Alignment has devoted vast resources to quietly going underground and building up this huge conspiracy against galactic civilization... but for a fraction of the cost, they could probably have convinced the galaxy that gene-modification isn't so bad after all and proceeded with their programs in a more open and consensual fashion.

[VhenRa]

Yeah. A Mesan viewpoint character in Cauldron of Ghosts basically goes "You know, if we had put all this effort into a decent PR campaign our original goal would have been completed by now."

[Mr Bean]

The current Detweiler we've met is however an intelligent man. Not what you call a "nice guy" but something almost Lannister about him, specifically Tywin. He know what he knows, he's got goals he's willing to achieve and he's not evil about it... just amoral. People are not people to him even the ones close to him, even when he talks about his wife it's in a professional relationship way.

The Detweiler of several hundred years ago sounds like a evangelist who talks up eugenics in 1947. Had Beowulf been isolated by Grayson there's an excellent chance that he might have pulled off his atomic super men if the organization is anything to go by. Keep in mind there seem to be elements of letting chaos be chaos inherent in the Mesan Alignment. Witness the fact they still push for live births and try mixing gene lines both at random and for planned purposes. This focus on not wasting time and forced euthanasia could have been part of the first Detweiler but something tells me it was something that came later.

After all if Detweiler was a committed genetic scientist wanting to study humanity to uplift us via genetic tinkering, the failures tell you as much as the successes. Terminating the child Dr Simoes was raising denies you the ability to determine the long term of what would happen. After all his daughter did last much longer than normal. There is a use is studying that that the forced euthanasia denies you.

[eyl]

Weber revealed in outside-the-book infodumps that in Mesan society think that killing off genetically flawed children is normal, and people like McBryde think that Simoes is seriously, seriously overreacting to the whole thing. Which is why it didn't occur to them that this would make him truly unhinged and destroy his career and work abilities until he actually started reacting the way he did.

His wife, as you noted, appears to have felt the same way.

That's why they talk about how he's "putting himself through it." If you or I experienced that- beautiful intelligent child born, diagnosed with severe autism bordering on locked-in syndrome, then 'euthanized-' in the context of our own society, people would not think we were irrational to be not only depressed and stressed but also angry.

On Mesa, in their social context, they see that anger and the great intensity of the depression as irrational.

The post in question (scroll down a bit, I haven't been able to figure out how to link to a specific post rather than the page):

As far as the “culling” of Francesca Simoes is concerned, however, I will give you guys one additional tidbit which I don’t believe has been explicitly covered in the books yet (although it’s a-coming). Experimental genetic lines in which children are terminated are MOSTLY restricted to the slave population; experimental children placed in family environments like the Simoes are EXTREMELY rare and always happen well inside the onion. Another factor that needs to be considered here is that the termination of human lives on the basis of quality of life decisions is a deeply engrained part of the entire Mesan mindset and has been for centuries; the society as a whole brought it with it as part of its rebellion against the Beowulf Code when the Detweilers . . . relocated in the first place. Simoes' response to his daughter’s termination was highly atypical, and his marriage came apart not simply because his wife was traumatized by her daughter’s death after both of them believed she had escaped the “danger zone” of which they had been warned (she was) but because his (atypical) desperate struggle to prevent the girl’s termination traumatized her still further and let her focus her own pain and anger on him for being so “unreasonable” and drawing out the anguish of the moment unnecessarily (and uselessly). McBryde would have responded to Herlander with the same “Well, gosh, we know it’s difficult, but what truly loving parent in his right mind would have wanted his daughter to suffer that way for an entire lifetime?” attitude if he hadn’t been INSTRUCTED to get close to him to keep an eye on him as a potential security risk because of his “irrational reaction” to what was basically a routine medical decision. Most members of Mesan society who know anything at all about Simoes' reaction to the termination think he was some sort of lunatic. They have absolutely no reason to believe that Francesca was a experiment that went tragically wrong, nor do they have any reason to believe the girl represented a deliberate decision to RISK allowing parents to love a child who might very well (indeed, possibly even probably, given the program's uniform lack of success to date) have to be terminated. Society as a whole sees this as a case of a tragic (and thankfully vanishingly rare) instance of a defective child who would have been condemned to a completely isolated, hellish existence (or a vegetative one, depending on the reports they’ve seen) and a parent who, deranged by misguided love, preferred to allow that to happen rather than loving her enough to let her go and spare her decades and decades of unremitting misery. Obviously he was a lunatic!

Well, it's hard to say what Leonard Detweiler really wanted, yeah. Although I'm not sure he was such a sweet fellow, since the current Detweiler running the Alignment is supposedly a clone of his, plus whatever gene-tinkering the Alignment's done to "optimize" him in the past 600 years. Then again, gene tinkering in the Honorverse can make people more psychopathic or otherwise dysfunctional and dangerous, so it may be the Leonard was a nicer guy than his descendant-clone.

In any case, I'm sure all Mesans believe in Detweiler as this saintly patron of positive eugenics and a greater future for all. Because he's their founding hero, after all. So even if Simoes is objectively wrong, what he's saying makes sense in his own frame of reference.

Jack MacBryde and his carefully hidden doubts.

Yeah. I think at least three Mesan Alignment viewpoint characters have all had similar doubts. That there's a certain amount of cognitive dissonance built into their worldview. Because on the one hand they value certain people and claim to promote a greater future for all humanity. But on the other hand they explicitly treat individual humans as raw materials, as means toward a long-range goal.

Likewise, there's dissonance in that the Alignment has devoted vast resources to quietly going underground and building up this huge conspiracy against galactic civilization... but for a fraction of the cost, they could probably have convinced the galaxy that gene-modification isn't so bad after all and proceeded with their programs in a more open and consensual fashion.

Related:

And that, in a way, is what Mesa is all about. The bottom line is that the central purpose of the Mesan Alignment ideology is beneficial. Their driving principle is the maximization of the genetic potential of the entire human race and the rectification of that horrible error they believe Beowulf and the rest of humanity made in the wake of the Final War. The problem is twofold: (1) they are willing to do anything at all that will help them to achieve their goal in the belief that the nobility of their purpose sanctifies any means to which they might choose to resort; and (2) they've long since lost track of the fact that what matters is accomplishing their goal rather than proving that THEY were right and BEOWULF was wrong. They — or, rather, their ancestors — began this project when the revulsion against genetic engineering was still at witchhunting levels. In which the equivalent of the village mobs storming Baron Frankenstein's castle were all too likely and they felt that they HAD to resort to underground, clandestine, and (frankly) highly illegal means. When they were finally able to relocate off of Beowulf to Mesa, they began a gradual process of offering genetically MODIFIED (very carefully avoiding the term "improved") workers and colonists which tended to be snapped up by large industrial concerns. This, in turn, began the long association of Manpower with the transstellars of the Solarian League. They were also very careful never to JOIN the Solarian League, which meant that they weren't covered by the League's policies and laws which had grown out of the Final War and the Beowulf Code. And as their very capable medical researchers began rivaling the Beowulf community they'd left behind, they began attracting a client base of their own — one which generally understood that Mesa was going to be at least shaving the edges of what a Beowulf-sanctioned geneticist would do for them. But well before that stage was reached, the Mesan Alignment had already gone underground and organized itself and — even more importantly — its ideology around the need to DEFEAT rather than MODIFY Beowulf's biosciences code.

The truth is that for at least a century or two after the Final War, it WOULD have been impossible for Mesa to contend openly with Beowulf over this particular question. The horrible example of Old Earth was still right there in front of everyone and the revulsion against anything which might repeat or duplicate that disaster was far too overwhelming for the Detweilers and their followers to have gained traction against it. What this means is that by the time an open debate might really have become possible again, the Alignment was already completely committed to its clandestine, covert, long-range strategy to change the paradigm by force rather than through reason. And even if that hadn't been the case, by that time Mesa had been so thoroughly blackened (and had blackened itself) through its association with the genetic slave trade that no one would have taken professions of an altruistic interest in the improvement of the human race seriously coming from that source.

By this point, the Mesan Alignment's innermost leadership truly have become sociopaths where their great and burning purpose is concerned. Not only that, they have a tunnel vision which is literally centuries old. They've been so focused for so long, for so many GENERATIONS, that they simply can't see what became blindingly obvious to Jack McBryde, which is that if they are in fact right, a fraction of the effort they've spent on building their strategy and the means to accomplish it would have paid for a propaganda/PR campaign that would almost have to have convinced a significant percentage of the human race to agree with them. They wrote that possibility off so long ago that it's not even on their menu of options. And after all this time, the Alignment HAS to defeat Beowulf (and prove its own moral superiority in the process) in order to justify and, if you will, sanctify all of the effort and all of the wealth and all of the destruction of lives which it has poured into its struggle. It's not logical, but let's face it, logic is seldom the most powerful motivating factor where human beings are concerned.

[Batman]

Call me silly but shouldn't all the information I need to make sense of what's going on inside the novels I'm reading be inside the novels?
If I have to read your blog, our your Facebook wall, or anything else online to make sense of a print book you didn't do your job right.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, the euthanasia thing is problematic but honestly I think the story works as a standalone- we don't need to know why Simoes is upset, anyone in a modern society would understand that quite well. And since all the other Mesans interacting with him are rough tough security people and conspirators, we're not surprised that they aren't torn up by what happened to him.

And the "couldn't the Mesans have done this more cheaply some other way?" angle, well, again, that is explicitly pointed out in the novels, along with the other contents of that post. You don't have to read his forum posts to make sense of it.

It's just that he released that post a year or two prior to the time at which he released the novel containing that particular bit of exposition.

[Simon_Jester]

Ghetto Edit:

What I think it comes down to is that Weber's fanbase is large and pesters him online, and rather than completely divorce himself from them (which is what some others would do), he tries to cater to them by providing exposition about the underlying stuff in his novels.

Much of that exposition is not strictly necessary, what is necessary almost invariably makes it into the books. For instance, the idea of a 'Frontier Fleet' versus 'Battle Fleet' divide in the Solarian navy was largely irrelevant until, oh, the second round of the spin-off books came out, and after the publication of At All Costs. But Weber had already posted on his site (which seems to contain copypastes from online forum posts I gather) that such a divide existed. Indeed, the idea may have originated with one of the fans he talks to in the first place.

What is unfortunate is that sometimes, big blobs of entirely unnecessary exposition make their way from the site to the printed page, resulting in six pages of how the new missile has a bigger warhead because [insert entire history of using artificial gravity to make nuclear shaped charges here].

[Ahriman238]

In the event, the weeks that Brice Miller and his friends spent fretting over their upcoming encounter with the notorious Jeremy X proved to be pointless. When they were finally introduced to the feared and ferocious terrorist, after they arrived on Torch, it turned out that the reality bore no resemblance to the legends.

To begin with, he was not two hundred and twenty centimeters tall, nor was his physique that of an ogre. Quite the opposite, to Brice's surprise and relief. The former head of the Audubon Ballroom and current Secretary of War for Torch was no more than a hundred and sixty-five centimeters in height, and his build was wiry and slender rather than massive.

He seemed quite a cheerful fellow, too. Even puckish, you might say—at least if, like Brice, you had just recently encountered the term and been taken by it, but hadn't yet read enough literature to realize that "puckish" was by no means the same thing as "harmless."

I'd say it fits just fine.

By then, though, Brice had stopped caring what Palane thought or didn't think. In fact, he'd become almost completely oblivious to her existence—and even the existence of Jeremy X. That was because it hadn't taken more than five minutes in the presence of the queen of Torch before Brice had developed an infatuation for the young woman. A really, really powerful infatuation, the sort that drives all other thoughts from a teenage boy's brain like a steam cleaner scours all surfaces.

Also a really, really, really stupid infatuation, even by the standards of fourteen-year-old adolescent males. Brice wasn't so far gone that he didn't realize that, at least in some part of his brain. Big deal. He was providing neurologists with the most graphic evidence probably ever uncovered that the brains of adolescents—male adolescents, for sure—were not fully developed when it came to those portions that evaluated risks.

Oh yeah.

"Twelve counts as a 'few,' when you're my age, young man. To get back to the point, James—and you too, Ed and Brice—Mr. Zilwicki has a job for you." She gave Zilwicki a beady stare. " 'Somewhat' dangerous, he says. A word to the wise, youngsters. This is one of those situations where the phrase 'somewhat dangerous' is a lot closer to 'a little bit pregnant' than it is to . . . oh, let's say the version of 'somewhat dangerous' that a conscientious playground attendant says to a mother when her child is heading for the seesaw."

Anton has a use for the three boys from Parmley Station.

"That's the whole point, Your Maj—ah, Berry. Add them into the mix, as young as they are, and with neither the ship nor anybody on it having any connection to either Torch or the Ballroom—or Manticore or Beowulf or Haven—and they'll be about as invisible as anyone can be, where we'd be going."

"And where is that, precisely?" demanded Ganny. "I can't help but notice that you've made no mention of that so far."

The square-faced man glanced at Zilwicki. "Mesa. To be precise."

I'm liking where this is going.

"You dirty rotten cheaters," hissed Ganny. She point a finger at the three boys. "You know perfectly well their brains haven't fully developed yet."

"Well, sure," said Zilwicki. He poked his forehead with a finger. "Cortex is still a little unshaped, especially in the risk-assessment areas. But if it'll make you feel any better, the same's probably true for me, even at my decrepit age." He hooked a thumb at Cachat. "For sure and certain, it's true for him."

I doubt that even prolong will achieve that. But I'm pretty sure Victor Cachat's idea of risk-assessment looks very different from most peoples'.

He, on the other hand, felt exuberant. He'd finally realized what was going on. The most wildly improbable fantasy, come true to life!

The classic, in fact. Young hero, sent out on a quest to slay the dragon in order to rescue the princess. Well, very young queen. Close enough.

The traditional reward for which deed of derring-do was well-established. Hallowed, even.

Oh dear.

"Problem solved," she repeated, coming to her feet. "I come along too—I might even help in the distract-dumb-males-or-lesbians department, although obviously not as much as Sarah—but I can pose as Michael Alsobrook's wife." She pointed at Brice. "We can claim him as a child, very plausibly, given his somatic features. Michael and I might be older than we look, given prolong. That only leaves James to be accounted for and that might even be an advantage even if it's necessary at all which it probably isn't because by now the human genome is so mixed up with so many recessive features that keep popping up that you never know what a kid might look like but even if somebody assumes there's no way that Michael could be the father I could certainly be his mother in which case"—here she gave Alsobrook a gleaming smile that was simultaneously fetching, amused and apologetic—"I've either been cheating on my husband or I've got loose habits, either of which might intrigue a nosy customs official—"

She hadn't taken a single breath since she started the sentence. It was pretty impressive.

"—although we've got to face the fact that if anybody does a DNA match the whole charade goes into the incinerator and it's the easiest thing in the world to gather DNA samples."

"Actually, it wouldn't," said Ganny, whose spirits seemed to be perking up. "It might even help. The fact is that all of us except you are related—too damn ingrown, to be honest—and while your DNA won't match, so what? There could any number of explanations for that. I can think of three offhand, two of which would certainly intrigue a nosy customs inspector with an active libido and an orientation toward females."

Ruth is coming too, and the ease of gathering DNA samples.

Jeremy watched the delicate process with a sardonic smile. "You really needn't take so much care," he said. "If you crush the miserable thing, maybe I'll be able to get the State Accounting Office to authorize more suitable furniture. Not likely, though." He took a seat behind the desk. "I'm sorry to say that the anal-retentive manias of the SAO's officials is the clearest evidence I've ever seen that Manpower's genetic schemes actually work according to plan. Most of them are J-11s."

Now sure that the chair would hold his weight, Hugh looked up and gave Jeremy a smile. J-11s were the "model" of slave that was supposedly designed to handle technical work of an accounting and record-keeping nature. Like all such precise Manpower designations, it was mostly nonsense. Manpower's geneticists did breed for those skills, but genes were far more plastic than they liked to admit—certainly to their customers. There was no gene for "accounting," nor was there one for "file-keeping."

It was true that slaves designed for a certain task tended to do it well. But that was far more likely the product of the slave's training and—probably most important of all—the slave's own self-expectation, than any genetic wizardry on Manpower's part.

That said . . . In Hugh's experience, J-11s did tend to be anal-retentive. That manifested itself primarily in a certain sort of knee-jerk stinginess. You might as well try to get blood from a stone as squeeze money out of a J-11 was a common wisecrack among genetic slaves and ex-slaves.

J-11, J for technical work and the 11th series is apparently meant for accounting and bookkeeping. Again, the Mesan's are wizards of genetics, their training has a lot to do with a slave's aptitudes.

"I'm a little astonished that the Wintons agreed to let her stay here."

"It's not really that odd, if you're willing to stretch the definition of 'public service.' The Manticoran dynasty has always had a tradition that its youngsters can't just lounge about idly."

Hugh shook his head. "In the nature of things, spying is hardly what you'd call 'public' service. And—being cynical about it—that's mostly the purpose of having young royals displaying their patriotic merits, isn't it?"

Jeremy pondered the question, for a moment. "Actually, no. Not with that dynasty, anyway. With most it would be, true enough. But I think the main concern of the Wintons is with maintaining their own . . . call it 'fiber,' for lack of a better term. The big problem with letting young royals spend their time loafing is that eventually they became the royals, and then it won't be long before the dynasty itself is a loafer."

He gave Arai another beady gaze. "I can tell you that our own founding dynast has stated any number of times that no kid of hers is going to be an idler.

The British/Manticoran tradition of public service by royals, so they won't be idle and can learn some of the hands-on of military or diplomatic matters. Or in Ruth's case, espionage.

Unwarily, Hugh said, "Well, good. But first she has to produce said kids."

Too late, he recognized the beadiness of the gaze. Jeremy hadn't become one of the galaxy's deadliest pistoleers if he hadn't known how to keep his eyes on the target.

"Exactly so. And for that, unless we opt for artificial insemination—and you really don't want to hear the Queen's opinion on that subject, trust me—we need a consort."

"Not a chance, Jeremy," said Hugh, chuckling. "Leaving aside the fact that I barely know the girl, having just met her, I have my own career plans."

And we have a comedic subplot: Jeremy X playing matchmaker.

"Come on, Jeremy! Stop playing the innocent. You know perfectly well the issue isn't money as such—it's laundering the money so there'll be no trace of it for Manpower's agents to pick up. For that, nobody's as good as Beowulf's secret services."

Jeremy leaned back in his chair and bestowed a cool smile on Arai. "No, actually, they aren't the best. I admit Beowulf's very good at it—but you forget that we're less than a week's travel from the galaxy's champion money-launderers. Who happen to be on very good terms with Torch."

Yeah, if anyone can purchase a freighter with no questions asked and no idea who actually paid for the thing, it's the Erewhoni.

The Mesa System was home to a number of huge interstellar corporations, so it had a truly enormous amount of freight traffic coming in and out. Not as much as Manticore or Sol or a few of the other well-established old star systems in the League's core, but close.

True, Mesan security was pretty ferocious, but it was still forced to work within some limits. About thirty percent of Mesa's population were freeborn citizens, and they had a wide range of rights and liberties that were enshrined by law and even respected, most of the time. Mesa's government was not an outright dictatorship that could operate with no restraints at all. Like many rigid caste societies in history that had a large population of privileged free citizens—South Africa's apartheid system was a well-known example—Mesa's government was a mixture of democratic and autocratic structures and practices.

The same democratic liberties were not extended to the remaining seventy percent of the population, of course. Slaves constituted about sixty percent of Mesa's population with the remaining ten percent consisting of the descendants of slaves who'd been freed in the earlier periods of Mesan history.

Mesa sees enough shipping to be easy to sneak into, even with their security. Mesan citizenship and demographics: 30% citizens, 60% slaves, 10% freedmen who are legally second-class citizens.

In its origins, Manpower had claimed that genetic slavery was actually "indentured servitude." That fiction had been openly dispensed with centuries ago, when the Mesan constitution was amended to make the manumission of genetic slaves illegal. But that still left a large population of freed ex-slaves—legally second-class citizens ("seccies" was the slang term used for them)—inhabiting all of Mesa's large towns and cities, and even a number of villages in more rural areas.

Periodically, calls were made to expel all seccies from the system. But, by now, the seccies had become an integral part of Mesa's social and economic structure and provided a number of useful functions for the planet's freeborn citizens. As had been true throughout history, once a large class of ex-slaves came into existence, they were hard to get rid of, for the same reason that a large class of illegal immigrants was hard to get rid of. People were not cattle, much less inert lumps of stone. They were intelligent, self-motivated and often ingenious active agents. About the only effective way to just eliminate such a large class of people was to adopt a political and legal structure that was sometimes described as "totalitarian."

For a wide variety of reasons, Mesa was not prepared to adopt that option. So, Mesa's security forces simply kept a close eye on the seccies—insofar as they could. That wasn't as easy as it sounded, though, because seccy society was socially intricate, often shadowy, and intermixed with that of Mesa's freeborn citizens. Marriage was illegal, but despite all of Manpower's pretensions to creating new types of people, human nature remained pretty intractable. There were plenty of personal liaisons between seccies and freeborn, regardless of what the law said or official custom prohibited and frowned upon.

Mesa has since made it illegal to free slaves, or to intermarry with slaves. Their is a flourishing 'seccy' culture that survives by providing goods and services to the freeborn.

Seccies were very much what their name implied—second-class, or lower, members of Mesan society, thoroughly excluded from the "respectable" professions and employment generally. The majority of them eked out their existences doing casual day labor, and they were generally non-persons as far as Mesa at large was concerned. Some of them, however, had amassed considerable personal fortunes from their positions as slave sutlers—who frequently also served as loan sharks, drug pushers, etc., servicing the "gray economy" of the slave community. Some of these seccy sutlers, especially the richer ones, even had silent freeborn partners.

Naturally, some of the seccies had been co-opted into the Mesan security apparatus. In general, the authorities ignored the activities of the sutlers (which, accordingly, were not taxed), and in return, the sutlers were expected to help defuse tensions in the slave community—and to inform the authorities if they saw something in danger of getting out of hand. In fairness to them, one of the reasons seccies played the informant role as often as they did stemmed less from the rewards they received for it than their recognition that any sort of organized slave revolt on Mesa would be not simply totally futile but guaranteed to produce stupendous numbers of dead slaves. For all that they were frequently venal, it was still true that seccies identified more closely with their still enslaved brethren than they did with the rest of Mesa.

Seccies provide manual labor and some art, and as smugglers, dealers, pimps and crime bosses, all tolerated so long as they defuse tensions among the slaves.

Background search
Allen, Ronald
MANPOWER SLAVE IDENTITY NUMBER:
D-17d-29547-2/5.
SCANNING ERROR
NUMBER ALREADY REGISTERED
REGISTRATION DATE: MARCH 3, 1920
REGISTRATION IDENTITY: ZEIGER, TIMOTHY
RESUBMIT FOR SCANNING

The background check on the newcomer who twigged Jenghis' "something's not right here" whisker. And why is a repeat number not immediately flagged? (the security chief makes that very demand.)

"Zeiger'll be easy to find, thankfully. He's a resident of Beacon"—that was the name the ex-slaves had bestowed on Torch's capital city not long after the insurrection—"and, better still, he works for the Pharmaceutical Inspection Board. He's a clerk, too, not a field agent, so he ought to be right here." He gestured at one of the windows. "Well, just a few blocks away. We can be there in five minutes."

"And Allen?"

Harper keyed in some final words. "Oh, wonderful. He also works in the pharmaceutical industry, but he's a roustabout. He could be anywhere on the planet."

They named their capital city Beacon.

"The way I got freed was something of a fluke. A Havenite warship intercepted a slaver convoy—this was about thirty-five years ago—"

"Convoy?" Judson was a little startled.

Ferry nodded. "It's not unheard of. Usually slaver ships operate solo, but there are some exceptions. So what happened, Tim?"

"Well, the Havenites sprang the trap a little too early. Most of the convoy was able to translate into hyper before they could be run down. The ship I was on was the last one and the Havenites destroyed it, just a couple of minutes before the slave ship ahead of it made the transition."

-snip-

Harper and Judson looked at each other. "The proverbial hell's bells," muttered Ferry. "The slavers would have had records of their cargo, so they'd assume that Tim here just vanished. Perfect way to disguise an identity, without running the risk of faking a number entirely."

So reusing a slave's number they "know" to be dead.

God damn Jeremy. Hugh Arai's thought was simultaneously irritated and amused. Since the very beginning of this second audience he was having with Queen Berry, he hadn't been able to stop thinking of her as a woman instead of a monarch. Which, of course, was exactly the effect Jeremy had aimed for. The notorious terrorist was also a shrewd psychologist.

Jeremy's skill at messing with people.

Without realizing it, he must have muttered the words. Berry turned a friendly face toward him, smiling in that extraordinarily warm way she had. "What was that, Hugh? I didn't catch the words."

Hugh was tongue-tied. Odd, that, since he was normally a fluent liar when he needed to be. Something about those bright, clear, pale green eyes just made dissembling to her very difficult. It'd be like spitting in a mountain stream.

"He was cursing me," said Jeremy, who was sitting near the queen—and not that close to Hugh at all. But Jeremy had phenomenal hearing as well as eyesight. The secretary of war was trying not to smirk, and failing.

Berry glanced at him. "Oh, dear. You should really stop doing this, Jeremy. Being elbowed by the galaxy's most cold-blooded killer isn't actually the best way to get a man to overcome his hesitations about asking a queen out on a date."

She turned back to Hugh, her smile widening and getting warmer still. "Is it, Hugh?"

Hugh cleared his throat. "Actually, Berry . . . in my case, it probably is. But I agree with you as a general proposition."

"Well, good!" The smile was now almost blinding. "Where do you propose to take me, then? If I can make a recommendation, there's a very nice ice cream parlor less than a ten-minute walk from this office-pretending-to-be-a-palace. It's got several small tables in the back where we'd even have a chance of enjoying a private conversation."

I can only assume wacky hijinks ensue.

Still, the blow knocked him down. Allen was a big man, and very strong.

A lot stronger than Van Hale, certainly. But between his own pulser and Genghis' formidable abilities as a fighter, Judson wasn't really worried.

Allen apparently reached the same conclusion. He turned and darted around the extractor, heading for the nearby forest.

He was fast as well as strong. Judson probably couldn't have caught up with him, and he was reluctant to just shoot the man down when they still didn't really know anything.

But Genghis solved that problem. The 'cat was off Judson's shoulder and onto the ground and racing in pursuit within two seconds.

It was no contest. Genghis caught up with Allen before the man had gotten even halfway to the tree line. He went straight for the big man's legs and brought him down in two strides.

Allen hit the ground hard, screeching. He tried to knock Genghis away but the 'cat's razor-sharp claws were more than a match for his fist. A human being in good condition and with really good martial art skills had at least a fair chance against a treecat in a fight, simply because of the size disparity. But it wouldn't be easy and the human would certainly come out of it badly injured.

Allen didn't even try. He wriggled around onto his stomach. Then, oddly, he just stared at the trees for a few seconds.

Mr. Allen reacts to seeing a treecat by punching a cop and rabbiting. Treecat vs. human.

"He committed suicide." Judson felt a bit stunned. Everything had happened so fast. From the time Harper tapped Allen on the shoulder to the man's suicide, not more than thirty seconds could have passed. Probably less. Maybe a lot less.

Harper knelt down next to Allen's body, and rolled him onto his back. The former Ballroom killer was careful not to let his hands get anywhere near Allen's mouth.

"Fast-acting poison in a hollow tooth. What in the name of creation is an ex-slave immigrant doing with that kind of equipment?" He looked around, spotted a sturdy-looking stick within reach, and picked it up. Then, used the stick to pry open Allen's mouth so he could look at the man's tongue.

"And . . . that's a Manpower breeding mark, for sure and certain. No chance at all it's cosmetic."

And when he's busted, bites hard on a false tooth and poisons himself.

The planetary—and system—capital was the city of Columbia, of course, but Columbia, alas, was only Beowulf's second largest city. In fact, it had been the system's second largest city for right on five hundred T-years, now. There were moments when its population had surged, threatening to overtake Grendel at last, yet it never had. Whenever Columbia seemed on the brink of finally overtaking its rival, something always happened to give Grendel a sudden surge of its own. Indeed, the more conspiracy-minded Columbians had muttered for generations that it was all a plot by some secret conspiracy to maintain the status quo. There'd never been any actual proof of that, mind you, but by now it was enshrined in Beowulfan legend that Grendel would always be bigger, more commercial—flashier in general. And, while Hugh would never want to appear overly credulous where such paranoid accusations were concerned, he'd once been curious enough to do a little research of his own . . . in the course of which he had discovered that Grendel's zoning laws had, in fact, been modified to encourage accelerated growth on several . . . demographically significant occasions. And on very little notice—and with very little public debate—too.

...

Beowulf is kind of weird.

There were those (although Hugh didn't think he counted himself among them) who went still further and asserted that the same nefarious population plotters had deliberately enticed the original owner of Muckerjee's Treats into locating her emporium in Grendel. The parlor was certainly regarded as one of the city's hallmark and legendary attractions, at any rate, and rumor had it that the city government had extended the current owners several very attractive tax breaks to keep it right where it was. And with good reason, too. No ice cream anywhere in the inhabited galaxy was as good as that to be found in Muckerjee's Treats. Such, at least, was the firm opinion of Hugh Arai and every single member of Beowulf's Biological Survey Corps except the notoriously contrarian W.G. Zefat—and it was perhaps no coincidence that Captain Zefat had been sent off on what was expected to be the longest survey mission in the history of the Corps.

For that matter, the ice cream made in the parlor favored by the queen of Torch—J. Quesenberry's Ice Cream and Pastries, it was called—wasn't really as good as the ice cream made in a number of parlors in Manticore or any one of the inhabited planets in Sol system. Still, it was awfully good, and it had the great advantage over all other ice cream parlors in the galaxy of being the only one currently inhabited by Berry Zilwicki.

And apparently they take their ice cream very seriously.

"Aldib's a G9 star, whose official monicker is Delta Draconis. Despite being in the same constellation as Beowulf's star, it's not really that close. It's about seventy-five light years from Sol. As for Berstuk . . ."

Hugh's expression grew bleak. "It's named after the Wendish god of the forest. Who was a pretty evil character, apparently. Which I can well believe."

Berry tilted her head slightly. "Well-named because of the forest, or the evil?"

"Both. The planet's gravity is slightly above Earth-normal. There aren't many oceans and those are small, so the climate is a lot worse. What they call 'continental.' Not unlivable, but the summers are bad and the winters are terrible."

Location of the refugee camp where Hugh spent his first years of freedom.

"All things considered, I'm fond of my adopted homeworld, and Beowulf's probably—no, scratch that, definitely—the most ferocious star nation in the galaxy when it comes to enforcing the Cherwell Convention. Still, Beowulf has its faults. One of them, in my opinion, is that it pretends the Solarian League is really a functional nation, not just a batch of self-satisfied, overly prosperous, basically self-centered, piles of shared interests tied together in an association of convenience."

Berry raised her eyebrows, and Hugh chuckled. The sound was not remarkably cheerful.

"Sorry. The thing is, the ship that took out the slaver I was aboard happened to be operating in the territorial space of a fellow League star system. No one was ever able to prove anyone in that system had anything to do with the nasty slave traders, of course, but the local government insisted that the poor, liberated slaves be handed over to it so that it could personally see to their needs. The skipper of the cruiser—Captain Jeremiah—was a good sort, but he didn't have any choice but to go along with the demands of the local, legally constituted authorities. So we got handed over."

The major strike against Beowulf is their League membership, and their obligation to respect the laws and authority of other League members.

"And it's a good thing Captain Jeremiah was a good sort, because he put in a call to Beowulf's local trade representative. In the League, 'trade representatives' do a lot of the same things 'commercial attachés' do for relationships between independent star nations, so they've got more clout than the title might suggest. And the Beowulf representative made a point out of informing the local government that Beowulf felt responsible for the slaves it had liberated and would be expecting regular reports on their well-being. Which is probably the only thing that kept us all from getting 'disappeared.' Unfortunately, it didn't keep those oh-so-concerned local authorities from dumping us with the Office of Frontier Security when it found out it couldn't just make us all—poof, go away." He grimaced. "So, we all wound up stuck on Berstuk. It took quite a while for even Beowulf to get us unstuck. Once it did, though, we were fast tracked for citizenship."

Happy endings through diplomacy. And the mysterious disappearance of one obstructionist sector commissioner.

"The truth is, it's not that easy to get Beowulfan citizenship. The professional associations have a lot of clout on Beowulf—too much, in my opinion—and getting citizenship can take a long time unless you've got highly desirable professional skills or money or something else they find especially valuable. It can be done, but there are a lot of hoops to jump through, and it takes a while. Except for liberated slaves. Whatever else I might think about Beowulf, it really and truly hates Manpower's guts. Which is one of the main reasons that liberated slaves get to jump the line over just about everybody else when it comes to getting citizenship."

Standards for emigrating to Beowulf.

Hugh laughed. "Took about three months. Trust me on this one, Berry. The surest and fastest way known to humanity I can think of to get gangster attitudes nipped in the bud is to have Jeremy X as a godfather. That man makes any gang boss or criminal mastermind in the universe look wishy-washy and sentimental, if he sets his mind to a project. Which, in my case, was what you might call 'the Reformation and Re-Education of Hugh Arai.' "

I'd be interested in a short story about that.

In fact, extricating themselves from the back room of J. Quesenberry's Ice Cream and Pastries and getting onto the street outside proved to be quite easy. In some mysterious manner that Hugh was sure violated at least one of the laws of thermodynamics, the patrons in the place managed to squeeze themselves aside, just enough to leave a lane for Berry and her companions to pass through.

That was further proof, if any was needed, of the queen's high level of public approval. But the experience practically had Hugh screaming. One of the basic principles of providing security to a public official was to keep a clear zone around them. That gave the security force at least a chance—a pretty good chance, in fact, if they were properly trained professionals—of spotting an emerging threat in time to deal with it.

From that standpoint, J. Quesenberry's Ice Cream and Pastries might as well have been named Death Trap. In that press, literally dozens of people could have murdered Berry with nothing more complicated or high-tech than a non-metallic poisoned needle. And there would have been no way Hugh or Lara or Yana—or any bodyguard this side of guardian angels—could have prevented it. They wouldn't have even spotted the threat until Berry was on her way down.

And already dead, not more than a few seconds afterward. Hugh knew at least three poisons that would kill a normal-sized person within five or ten seconds. Of course, they wouldn't actually die that quickly. Contrary to popular mythology that had been fed by way too many badly researched vid dramas, not even the deadliest poison could outrace the passage of oxygen and fluids through the human body. But it hardly mattered. With any one of those three poisons, the person's death was inevitable unless the antidote was administered almost simultaneously with the poison itself. One of them, in fact, a distant derivative of curare developed on Onamuji, had no known antidote at all. Luckily, it was unstable outside of a narrow temperature range and therefore not very practical as a real murder weapon.

Security and poisons known to Hugh Arai.

"Okay. I think." She took his elbow and began leading him back toward the palace. Managing, somehow, to make it seem as if he'd politely offered her his arm and he'd accepted.

Which he hadn't, in fact. His real inclination was to keep both hands free and clear, in case some threat materialized . . .

"Gah," he said.

"What does that mean?"

"It means Jeremy's right. You are a security expert's nightmare."

"You tell her, Hugh!" came Yana's approving voice from behind them.

"Yeah," chimed in Lara. "You are the walrus."

I guess that makes Web the eggman.

Hugh's spirits picked up. That was old training at work. The simplest and still surest way to make a room secure from any spying apparatus was to bury it deeply in the earth. Judging from the time it was taking the elevator to get there, and Hugh's estimate of their speed, this room must be at least a thousand meters below the surface, and probably closer to two thousand. About the only particles that would penetrate to that depth, at least reliably, were neutrinos. To the best of Hugh's knowledge, not even Manticore had managed to build detection equipment that used neutrinos.

Manticore can detect neutrinos in fusion reactions, it probably isn't that great a stretch to neutrino communication, if you're worried about bugs. Something like an X-ray camera is probably beyond their abilities though. Oh, and Mesa casually dug a chamber 1800 meters underground, which now serves as Torch's Operations room.

Jeremy must have sensed Hugh's curiosity. "Manpower built this buried chamber to cover its most secure computers—read 'really deep dark and secret, burn-before-reading record archives.' Which, of course, meants they were also their most incriminating records, as well as the most sensitive. And then the incompetent clown charged with destroying the evidence neglected to punch in the instructions in the proper sequence during the rebellion. Probably because he was shitting his pants. So the chamber computers locked down instead of slagging the molycircs and everything stored in them. And then he couldn't get them to unlock and let him back in because—apparently—he either never had the access code for that little problem in the first place or (more likely, my opinion) he simply forgot what the hell it was. Probably because he was shitting his pants. Then he just ran away—see prior explanation—and apparently got killed in the general mayhem. We're not positive, because it took us—Princess Ruth, that is—almost two days to unseal the chamber. By then, few of the bodies anywhere in the headquarters area had enough left for good physical identification. And the DNA records were mostly destroyed because the slaves who stormed the record office reduced the library files to teeny, tiny, thoroughly stomped upon and incinerated chunks of circuitry. Along with the technicians and clerks who'd maintained those records."

Apparently slave rebellions aren't great at preserving critical records. Original purpose of the Ops Room.

From the elevator, it was a short walk down a wide corridor—there was plenty of room there for additional computer systems, if they were needed, although it was currently empty—and then into a circular and very spacious chamber. Looking around at the equipment lining much of the wall space, Hugh recognized them as security-proofing devices.

State of the art, too. Much of the equipment had been made on Manticore, he was pretty sure.

At the very center of the chamber was a large and circular table. Torus-shaped, rather. Keeping an actual "center" in a table with that great a diameter would have been pointless and sometimes even awkward. Instead, the open center had a robot standing idle, ready to move papers and material around, and Hugh could see where a portion of the table could be slid aside to allow a person to enter that central space.

In short, it was a state-of-the-art conference table that had probably been designed and built somewhere in the Republic of Haven. The table itself was made of wood—or possibly a wood veneer—and Hugh thought he recognized it as one of the very expensive hardwoods produced on Tahlmann.

The Ops Room, complete with a robot for passing around papers. Erewhon provided their video and sound system.

It was a crude hologram, with peculiar lacunae in the imagery. Hugh recognized what he was seeing immediately. As was true of police officials most places in the modern universe—or even people whose jobs involved at least some policing functions—Harper S. Ferry and Judson Van Hale had been legally required to carry vid-recording equipment at all times and turned on whenever they were functioning in an official capacity. That was partly for the purpose of protecting suspects from possible police misconduct, but mostly because such records had proven time and again to assist the police themselves.

The crudity and sometime raggedness of this particular hologram was caused by the fact that it was a computer composite of only two vid-recorders—both of them located on the officers' shoulders, from the apparent height of the viewpoints, and both of which had been subject to violent motions during the critical last period.

Twin shoulder-cams legally required for on-duty cops on Torch, and throughout the modern, mainstream Star Nations.

"Why bother to use a duplicated number? After all, Manpower designs the numbers in the first place. Why not just use new numbers altogether, set aside for the purpose?"

Jeremy shook his head. "The process used to assign and imprint numbers isn't all that complicated, really, Berry—not for someone who's designing complete human genotypes! Trust me, we know how it works—and from too many independent sources—to doubt that Manpower can, and does, make damned certain there aren't going to be any accidentally duplicated numbers. They've got a lot of reasons to want to be sure of that, including their own security concerns and the need to be able to positively and absolutely identify any individual slave's specific batch in case some genetic anomaly turns up and they need to track down anyone else who may have it. Keeping the numbers straight—both before and after a slave is decanted—isn't a minor consideration, given that they produce slaves at so many different breeding sites, and they've put a lot of effort into developing procedures to do just that.

"If they started screwing around with those procedures, they might poke a hole in them they don't want. Oh, they could set aside the occasional batch number. In fact, I think they probably do, if they need lots of them. But they'd have to set aside the entire batch each time, given their procedures, so I doubt they do it very often. If they did, the bar codes would have to 'clump,' and there'd always be the chance—probably a pretty good one, actually—that somebody might notice an association between batch mates doing suspicious things. It might not be too likely in any single agent's case, but statistics play no favorites. Sooner or later, somebody would be likely to notice the clumping—or, for that matter, just notice an age spread, or a genetic variation, or any number of little differences batch mates shouldn't have. And if that happened, then those agents would be sitting ducks. Manpower might as well have their tongues marked shoot me now."

Why they don't just issue a new number to covert agents.

"We've got the locus' central focus nailed, we've got the tidal stresses, and we've got the entry vector," Wix replied.

"Which is all well and good, Doctor," Captain Zachary put in, "except for that other little problem."

"We've been over that and over that," Wix said, as patiently as he could (which, truth to tell, wasn't all that patiently). "I don't see any way a gravitic kick that weak is going to have any significant impact on efforts to transit. We compensate for kicks like that every day, Captain."

"No, TJ, we don't, actually," Kare said. Wix glowered at him, but Kare only shrugged. "I'll grant you that we routinely compensate for kicks of its magnitude. For that matter, we've got a kick several times this strong on the Manticore-Basilisk transit, and it's never been a problem. But you know as well as I do we've never seen one like this—one whose strength and repetition rate vary this sharply and unpredictably." He shook his head. "If you can show me what's causing it—a model that explains it, one that lets you predict what it's going to do for, say, a twenty-four-hour duration—then I'll agree with you that it's a matter of routine compensation. But you can't do that, can you?"

"No," Wix admitted after a moment. "I don't think it's powerful enough, even at the strongest reading we've recorded, to seriously threaten a ship transiting the terminus, though."

Nailed down the wormhole mouth. It seems wormholes sometimes spike or 'kick' and this needs to be compensated for by ships making transit. The 'kick' of the Torch wormhole is unusually strong, frequent and unpredictable. Not enough to threaten a ship, but enough to say there's something weird, something new going on here. Normally a kick is like clockwork, responding to a cycle of stress patterns. I wonder if a translation powerful to lock down the wormhole effects the cycle, or if that's what happens, a great multi-hour kick.

"People tend to think of wormhole termini as big, fixed doorways in space, and in gross terms, I don't suppose there's anything wrong with that visualization. But what they actually are are fixed points in space where intense gravity waves impinge on one another. On the gravitic level, they're areas of immense stress. It's a very tightly focused stress, one in which enormous forces are concentrated and counterbalanced so finely that they appear, on the macro level, to be stable. But it's a stability which results only from keeping enormous amounts of instability perfectly balanced against one another.

"That's always been the really tricky point about surveying and charting wormholes, of course. Nobody could possibly build a ship tough enough to survive even momentarily if it tried to power its way through that interface of balanced instabilities by brute force. Instead, we have to chart them, much like I suppose oceanographers chart currents and winds, to determine the precise vectors which let ships . . . well, 'shoot the rapids,' as a friend of mine likes to put it."

That's a very helpful description of wormholes to us readers, but you did really just explain to the captain of the Harvest Joy what a wormhole is?

"Mr. Prime Minister, there's no way anyone could make this process risk free, whatever you do," Wix pointed out. "We could have dropped a decimal point in our analysis of the terminus. Over the last couple of hundred years, we've actually turned up a terminus no one has ever successfully transited. Just one. That's an absurdly tiny percentage of the total, but it has happened. Frankly, though, the possibility of something that unlikely happening would be a lot greater than the possibility that Harvest Joy couldn't get home again—eventually—from the other end of the bridge, wherever it is."

So it seems there's a wormhole no one has ever returned from, I'm going to call it the Omega Four wormhole because I like my sci-fi mixed up. Seriously though, I know Weber likes to set these things up and never use them, but if he ever introduces hostile aliens to this series, that's where they come from.

If one wormhole is "an absurdly tiny percentage of the total" then it seems likely there are quite a few more wormholes out there than the twenty or so mentioned or shown on the galactic maps of this series.

"That's true, Mr. Prime Minister," Zachary agreed. "The longest wormhole leg anyone's ever charted is right on nine hundred light-years long in normal-space terms. The average is a lot shorter than that, and transits of more than three or four hundred light-years are rare. Harvest Joy, on the other hand, has a four-month unrefueled endurance. That gives us a cruising radius of eight hundred light-years before we'd have to re-bunker, and that figure is based on our having to make the entire trip under impeller drive. As soon as we could get into a grav wave, our endurance would go up hugely, so we'd have to go a hell of a lot farther directly away from any settled area of the galaxy before we wouldn't be able to get home eventually."

Grav-waves also do wonders for the endurance of the power systems. The longest wormhole recorded (and distinctly not associated with the Manticore Junction) is 900 LY long, 300-400 LY is more normal. Cruisers carry enough fuel for four months or 800 LY with no grav-wave between fuel stops. Berry green-lights the transit but grounds Doctors Kare and Wix. Just in case, they can't lose the foremost living experts on wormholes.

He was definitely on the young side for a cruiser's tactical officer, but Harvest Joy's combat days were well behind her now. Zachary and Keller kept her people well trained and well rehearsed—she was a Queen's ship, however long in the tooth she might be growing, and the possibility that she might yet be called to action always existed, however slight it might have become—but she'd sacrificed a quarter of her armament when she was converted for service with the Astrophysics Investigation Agency.

Never really described the Joy the last time around. She's an older cruiser, with a quarter her weaponry given up for scientific instrumentation.

"Aye, Ma'am," Hartneady replied, never taking his eyes from his own displays as Harvest Joy edged into the terminus. The survey ship was tracking directly down the path Evans had programmed. If everything went the way it was supposed to go, she'd go right on doing that. If things decided not to go the way they were supposed to go, however, James Hartneady might find himself extraordinarily busy sometime in the next few seconds.

"Threshold!" Evans said sharply.

"Rig foresail for transit," Zachary ordered.

"Rigging foresail, aye," Hammarberg responded instantly.

Harvest Joy's impeller wedge fell abruptly to half strength as her forward beta nodes shut down. At the same moment, her forward alpha nodes reconfigured, dropping their own share of the cruiser's normal-space impeller wedge to project a Warshawski sail's circular disk of focused gravitational energy, instead. The sail was perpendicular to Harvest Joy's long axis, and over three hundred kilometers in diameter.

"Stand by after hypersail," Zachary said, watching the flickering numerals in the Engineering window opened in one corner of her own maneuvering plot as the cruiser continued to creep forward under her after impellers alone.

"Standing by aft hypersail, aye," Hammarberg replied, and she knew he was watching the same flashing numbers climb steadily higher on his own displays as the foresail moved deeper into the terminus. They weren't climbing anywhere near as quickly as they could have been, given the absurdly low speed with which anyone but a madwoman approached a first-transit through an uncharted terminus, of course, but—

The numbers suddenly stopped flashing. They went on climbing, but their steadiness told Zachary the foresail was drawing enough power from the terminus' grav waves to provide movement.

"Rig aftersail," she said crisply.

"Rigging aftersail, aye," Hammarberg said, just as crisply, and Harvest Joy shivered as her impeller wedge disappeared entirely and her after hypersail spread its wings at the far end of her hull.

Senior Chief Hartneady's hands moved smoothly through the tricky maneuver, and Zachary felt her stomach trying to turn over as the cruiser slid into the terminus' interface with equal smoothness.

The inevitable queasiness of crossing the hyper wall was briefer but substantially more intense in a wormhole transit, and she ignored it with the practice of several decades' experience, never looking away from her maneuvering display. She watched it narrowly, eyes focused, and then it flashed again.

No one had ever been able to measure the duration of a wormhole transit. Not from the inside of one, at any rate, and no chronometer aboard Harvest Joy managed to measure this one, either. For however long that fleeting interval was, though, the cruiser simply ceased to exist. One instant she was sixty-four light-minutes from the star called Torch; the next she was somewhere else, and Zachary felt herself swallowing in relief as her nausea vanished.

Got something of a sense of foreboding here.

"Transit complete," Hartneady reported.

"Thank you, Senior Chief," Zachary acknowledged. Her gaze was back on the sail interface readout again, watching the numbers spiral downward as her ship moved further forward.

"Engineering, reconfigure to—"

An alarm shrilled with shocking suddenness, and Zachary's head whipped around towards the tactical display.

"Unknown starships!" The professionalism of merciless training flattened the stunned disbelief in Lieutenant Keller's voice without making his report one bit less jarring. "Two unknown starships, bearing zero-zero-five by zero-seven-niner, range one-zero-three thous—"

Twelve battlecruiser-grade grasers, fired at a range of just over a third of a light-second, arrived before he could complete his final sentence, and HMS Harvest Joy, Josepha Zachary, and every man and woman aboard her ship disappeared in a single cataclysmic ball of incandescent fury.

Son of a-

I was actually right, it leads to Mesa. Or somewhere controlled by Mesa, but I'm thinking Mesa itself. WHy else would they worry about the torches learning "the truth about the wormhole" and why else would there be ships waiting to ambush surveyors?

"One hundred and thirteen days, to be precise," said Kare. "That was the Solarian survey ship Tempest back in . . . what? 1843, TJ?"

Wix nodded, and Berry made a face. "Four months!"

Kare's look of concern was replaced by one of reassurance. A good attempt at it, anyway. "It's not as bad as it sounds. For one thing, there's not much danger involved. Like Captain Zachary said before they ever headed out, survey ships are designed with the possibility in mind that this might happen. They've got plenty of endurance and life support."

Length of time before they'll really worry about the Joy.

"But of course survey ships are designed with that in mind also," Kare added, a bit hurriedly. "I can assure you, Your Majesty—I speak from personal experience here—that a survey ship has as much in the way of stored entertainment as even a big city. Well . . . not live entertainment, of course. But there's about all you could ask for in the way of reading material, vids, games, music, you name it."

"Sure is," said Wix. "I once took the opportunity on a long survey voyage—almost certainly the once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity—to watch the entirety of The Adventures of Fung Ho."

Berry's eyes widened. The Adventures of Fung Ho had been the longest-running fictional vid series in human history—aside from soap operas, of course—with forty-seven continuous seasons.

Apparently shot during the late 18th/early 19th Century PD. But I believe Sesame Street will yet break that imagined record. Mind, if I had four months in an enclosed space with the Complete Sesame Street I'd probably flip out within a fortnight. Actually, the show is apparently an epic-length adaptation of Baron Munchhausen with some pulp sci-fi action adventure (well, in the Honorverse it's just camp action adventure.)

Lugh was the third planet of the star Tau Ceti, and was the location where most of the episodes in The Adventures of Fung Ho had been recorded. The planet was popular for a large number of vid series, especially those involving adventure, due to its flamboyant scenery and even more flamboyant biota. Unfortunately, the Tau Ceti system also had over ten times as much dust as did Sol's system and that of most inhabited solar systems. That massive debris disk meant the planet was subject to more in the way of impact events than all but a handful of other planets with permanent human settlements. The danger of bolides shaped everything about Lugh's culture, from the structure of its system defense force down to the fact that those same bolides were a regular feature in the adventure vids produced there.

The planet where Fung Ho, and many popular video series, was filmed.

I'm presuming that until you know more, you have no intentions of sending another survey ship through the wormhole." That was a statement, not a question. Beneath the pleasant tone, there was the hint that Berry—Queen Berry, when push came to shove—would not permit any such foolishness.

Kare shook his head. "Oh, no. Even if we had another survey ship with an experienced captain and crew at our disposal—"

"Which we certainly don't," Wix said forcefully.

"—we wouldn't do it, anyway. There's a standard procedure to be followed in cases like this. Stripping away the jargon, the gist of it is: remeasure, recalculate, and refigure everything, before you so much as breathe heavily on that wormhole."

Procedure if a survey ship doesn't come back.

Kare made a face. He had not, in fact, lied to the queen. As Wix had just stated, the most likely explanation was that the Harvest Joy couldn't return through the wormhole, for whatever reason, and was now slowly making its way back to Torch via hyperspace.

But . . .

It wasn't the only possible explanation. He'd been honest enough when he stressed how uncommon it was—these days, at least—for ships to be lost during wormhole surveys. Statistically, the odds were very much against anything of the sort having happened to Harvest Joy. On the other hand, though, there was a reason he'd deliberately avoided getting into any details concerning the disasters that could happen to survey ships. However unlikely they might be, they could happen, and some of them were . . . gruesome. The fate of the Dublin and her crew was still something no one involved in survey work wanted to contemplate or talk about, even a century and a half later.

And there was that one wormhole no one had ever come back from . . . at all.

"Yes, it is," he said. "The most likely explanation, by far."

Think positive, doc.

[Ahriman238]

Harper S. Ferry stood in the throne room, arms crossed, watching the thirty-odd people standing about. He knew he didn't cut a particularly military figure, but that was fine with him. In fact, the ex-slaves of Torch had a certain fetish for not looking spit and polish. They were the galaxy's outcast mongrels, and they wanted no one—including themselves—to forget that.

Which didn't mean they took their responsibilities lightly.

Torch military/cops prefer not to look overly fancy.

William Henry Tyler stood in the throne room, waiting patiently with the rest of the crowd, and rubbed idly at his right temple. He felt a bit . . . odd. Not ill, really. He didn't even have a headache. In fact, if anything, he felt just a bit euphoric, although he couldn't think why.

He shrugged and checked his chrono. "Queen Berry"—he smiled slightly at the thought of the Torch monarch's preposterous youth; she was younger than the younger of Tyler's own two daughters—was obviously running late. Which, he supposed, was the prerogative of a head of state, even if she was only seventeen.

He glanced down at his brief case and felt a brief, mild stir of surprise. It vanished instantly, in a stronger surge of that inexplicable euphoria. He'd actually been a bit startled when the security man asked him what was in the case. For just an instant, it had been as if he'd never seen it before, but then, of course, he'd remembered the gifts for Queen Berry and Prince Ruth. That had been a really smart idea on Marketing's part, he conceded. Every young woman he'd ever met had liked expensive perfume, whether she was willing to admit it or not.

And now Mesa has gotten a lone gunman into Berry's audience chamber.

A slight stir went through the throne room as someone noticed the queen and her lean, muscular bodyguard entering through the side door. The two of them moved across the enormous room, which had once been the ballroom of the planetary governor when Torch had been named Verdant Vista. The men and women who'd come to meet the Queen of Torch were a little surprised by how very young she looked in person, and heads turned to watch her, although nobody was crass enough to start sidling in her direction until she'd seated herself in the undecorated powered chair which served her for a throne.

Harper S. Ferry and Judson Van Hale were still ten meters from the New Age Pharmaceutical representative when Tyler looked up and saw Berry. Unlike any of the other commercial representatives in the room, he took a step towards her the moment he saw her, and Genghis's head snapped up in the same instant.

The 'cat reared high, ears flattened and fangs bared in the sudden, tearing-canvas ripple of a treecat's war cry, and vaulted abruptly from his person's shoulder towards Tyler.

Tyler's head whipped around, and Harper felt a sudden stab of outright terror as he saw the terrible, fixed glare of the other man's eyes. There was something . . . insane about them, and Harper was suddenly reaching for the panic button on his gun belt.

The pharmaceutical representative saw the oncoming 'cat, and his free hand flashed across to the briefcase he was carrying. The briefcase with the "perfume" of which no one at New Age Pharmaceutical had ever heard . . . and which Tyler didn't even remember taking from the man who'd squirted that odd mist in his face on Smoking Frog.

Genghis almost reached him in time. He launched himself from the floor in a snarling, hissing charge that hit Tyler's moving forearm perhaps a tenth of a second too late.

Tyler pressed the concealed button. The explosive charges in the two massively pressurized canisters of "perfume" in the briefcase exploded expelling the binary neurotoxin which they had contained under several thousand atmospheres of pressure. Separated, its components had been innocuous, easily mistaken for perfume; combined, they were incredibly lethal, and they mingled and spread, whipping outward from Tyler under immense pressure even as the briefcase blew apart with a sharp, percussive crack.

Genghis stiffened, jerked once, and hit the floor a fraction of a second before Tyler, left hand mangled by the explosion of the briefcase, collapsed beside him. Harper's finger completed its movement to the panic button, and then the deadly cloud swept over him and Judson, as well. Their spines arched, their mouths opened in silent agony, and then they went down as a cyclone of death spread outward.

* * *

Lara and Berry did their best to maintain suitably grave expressions, despite their mutual amusement, as they walked towards Berry's chair. They were about halfway there when the sudden, high-pitched snarl of an enraged treecat ripped through the throne room.

They spun towards the sound, and saw a cream-and-gray blur streaking through the crowd. For an instant, Berry had no idea at all what was happening. But if Lara wasn't especially well socialized, she still had the acute senses, heightened musculature, and lightning reflexes of the Scrag she had been born.

She didn't know what had set Genghis off, but every instinct she had screamed "Threat!" And if she wouldn't have had a clue which fork to use at a formal dinner, she knew exactly what to do about that.

She continued her turn, right arm reaching out, snaking around Berry's waist like a python, and snatched the girl up. By the time Genghis was two leaps from Tyler, Lara was already sprinting towards the door through which they'd entered the throne room.

She heard the sharp crack of the exploding briefcase behind her just as the door opened again, and she saw Saburo and Ruth Winton through it. From the corner of her eye, she also saw the outrider of death scything towards her as the bodies collapsed in spasming agony, like ripples spreading from a stone hurled into a placid pool. The neurotoxin was racing outward faster than she could run; she didn't know what it was, but she knew it was invisible death . . . and that she could not outdistance it.

"Saburo!" she screamed, and snatched Berry bodily off the floor. She spun on her heel once, like a discus thrower, and suddenly Berry went arcing headfirst through the air. She flew straight at Saburo X, like a javelin, and his arms opened reflexively.

"The door!" Lara screamed, skittering to her knees as she overbalanced from throwing Berry. "Close the door! Run!"

Berry hit Saburo in the chest. His left arm closed about her, holding her tight, and his eyes met Lara's as her knees hit the floor. Brown eyes stared deep into blue, meeting with the sudden, stark knowledge neither of them could evade.

"I love you!" he cried . . . and his right hand hit the button to close the door.

And Lara dies, and Judson, Jenghis and Harper Ferry. Berry and Ruth get out, fortunately.

[Terralthra]

Son of a-

I was actually right, it leads to Mesa. Or somewhere controlled by Mesa, but I'm thinking Mesa itself. WHy else would they worry about the torches learning "the truth about the wormhole" and why else would there be ships waiting to ambush surveyors?

It doesn't, actually. It leads to a nameless star system...which happens to have another wormhole terminus linking to the Felix Junction, linking to yet another system, Darius, which is where the Mesan Alignment has been building its secret fleet. Remember that because of the onion strategy, the MA has always been planning on ditching Mesa sooner or later as part of the overall coming-out-of-the-shadows plan.

[VhenRa]

Son of a-

I was actually right, it leads to Mesa. Or somewhere controlled by Mesa, but I'm thinking Mesa itself. WHy else would they worry about the torches learning "the truth about the wormhole" and why else would there be ships waiting to ambush surveyors?

It doesn't, actually. It leads to a nameless star system...which happens to have another wormhole terminus linking to the Felix Junction, linking to yet another system, Darius, which is where the Mesan Alignment has been building its secret fleet. Remember that because of the onion strategy, the MA has always been planning on ditching Mesa sooner or later as part of the overall coming-out-of-the-shadows plan.

And the nearest inhabited system to Felix is Mannerheim. Which is a member of the Mesan Alignment. But yes, Torch is a few hours flight from Darius, the hidden Bolthole of the Mesan Alignment and no one but the Mesans even realise.

And if you think that isn't going to come up later... I have a bridge to sell you.

[Simon_Jester]

Mesa sees enough shipping to be easy to sneak into, even with their security. Mesan citizenship and demographics: 30% citizens, 60% slaves, 10% freedmen who are legally second-class citizens.

Otherwise known as "seccies," that last group are.

And, yes, this is a bizarre toxic mess of a social structure. But it does help explain why the Mesan characters in the Alignment are so quick to accept the genetic division of humanity into castes. For them, that's a reality already because 3/5 of their planetary population are genetically engineered slaves as it is.

Also note that the Mesan viewpoint characters never mention slaves, except when making policy decisions that specifically involve their dealings with slaves as an abstract political force. This includes the 'good' Mesans, not just the bad ones.

Either this is a gross oversight on Weber's part, or it's meant to reflect that the slaves are basically invisible to Mesans, in the same sense that we might not notice a piece of furniture until it's time to make use of it.

Beowulf is kind of strange...

And apparently they take their ice cream very seriously.

I honestly think that Eric Flint is making his influence known. There's often a very noticeable difference in authorial voice between Flint and Weber, and Flint is much more light-hearted as an author. He's prone to ramblings about the weirdnesses of human nature and the inherent contradictions of political systems, things like that.

Having a recurring catch-phrase or joke pop up over and over throughout a novel is a signature of his too. You know all those comical misidentifications of dollars as evil spirits or whatever? I'm pretty sure that's Flint in action.

Manticore can detect neutrinos in fusion reactions, it probably isn't that great a stretch to neutrino communication, if you're worried about bugs.

Yes. Yes, it is. Trust me.

See, detecting neutrinos from a very intense fusion reaction (and Honorverse reactors, which run very hot and energetically, are intense) is at least credible. The problem is generating neutrinos, which can only be created by nuclear reactions. So generating pulses of neutrinos suitable for signalling is right out. You'd basically need a fusion reactor that switches on and off in Morse code or something; it's not practical as a bug.

Oh, and Mesa casually dug a chamber 1800 meters underground, which now serves as Torch's Operations room.

We could do this today but it'd be nontrivial. Gravitics and automation probably help.

That's a very helpful description of wormholes to us readers, but you did really just explain to the captain of the Harvest Joy what a wormhole is?

I KNOW RIGHT?

Flint would probably not have written that passage that way. Weber... yeah. I think he loses track of which characters are speaking in a given scene.

[Ahriman238]

"I think we should talk to Admiral Harrington," said Victor Cachat. "As soon as possible, too—which means going to see her where she is right now, not spending the time it would take to set up a meeting on neutral ground."

Well that's different.

But Anton knew how hard it was to talk Victor Cachat out of a course of action once he'd decided upon it. And the truth was, Anton wasn't inclined to do so anyway. It was less than a day since they'd returned to Torch and learned about the assassination attempt on Berry that had happened three days earlier. Anton Zilwicki was as furious as he'd ever been in his life—and Cachat's proposal had the great emotional virtue of being something concrete they could do—and do it now.

Besides, leaving emotional issues aside, there were a number of attractive aspects to Victor's proposal. If they could get Honor Harrington to agree to meet with them—a very big "if," of course—they'd have opened a line of communication with the one top Manticoran leader who, from what Anton could determine, was skeptical of the established wisdom in the Star Kingdom when it came to Haven.

Of course, even if Anton was right, it was still a stretch to think she'd agree to let a known Havenite agent—who, if he wasn't precisely an "assassin," was certainly a close cousin to one—into her physical presence. Given that she herself had been the target of an assassination attempt less than six T-months earlier.

Arguments for and against talking to Honor.

"Why do you need a dental technician?"

"He's actually suggesting that I do, Berry. So I can get a poisoned hollow tooth installed. Which is just silly." Victor clucked his tongue chidingly. "I have to tell you, Anton, that in this technological area Haven is way ahead of Manticore. And apparently Manpower, as well."

Thandi Palane was squinting at him. "Victor, are you telling me that you routinely carry around suiciding devices?" Her tone of voice was short of absolute zero, but could have made ice cubes in an instant. "If so, I am not pleased. And wouldn't be, even if we didn't share a bed every night."

Cachat gave her a quick, reassuring smile. "No, no, of course not. I'll have to get it from our station on Erewhon. But we'll need to pass through Erewhon en route to Trevor's Star, anyway."

* * *

On their way out of the palace to start making their preparations, Anton murmured, "Nice save, Victor."

Cachat might have looked a bit embarrassed. If so, though, it was only an itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny bit of embarrassment.

"Look, I'm not crazy. Of course I don't carry the thing into bed. In fact, I don't keep it anywhere in the bedroom. But . . . what would be the point of having a suicide device in another star system? Naturally, I carry the thing with me at all times. I've done so for years."

Zilwicki didn't shake his head, but he was sorely tempted. There were times when Victor seemed like an alien from a far away galaxy with an emotional structure not even remotely akin to that of human beings. It was obvious Cachat thought it was perfectly reasonable—normal practice for any competent secret agent—to carry around a suicide device at all times. He'd no more think of venturing out without one than another man would go without putting on shoes.

In point of fact, no intelligence agency other than that of Haven followed such a practice—and, although he wasn't positive, Anton was pretty sure not even the Havenites did so routinely. Not even when Saint-Just had been running the show. Suicide devices would only be provided to agents on rare occasions, for missions that were especially sensitive. They wouldn't be passed around like so many throat lozenges!

Once again, if Anton needed the reminder, Victor Cachat was demonstrating that he was Victor Cachat.

Victor never leaves the house without his suicide device. Something rare even in StateSec, but it makes a certain degree of sense for a major station chief.

"Why are you so certain Manticore can bring enough influence to bear on Beowulf?" Jeremy asked later.

"There are at least four reasons I can think of," replied Web. "The simplest of which is that even though you've spent a lot of time around Beowulfers, I don't think you really grasp the depth and relentlessness of the enmity Beowulf's elite has for Manpower. For them, in some ways even more than for ex-slaves like ourselves, this war is profoundly personal. A grudge match, you might say."

"That all happened centuries ago, Web. Over half a millennium. Who can hold a personal grudge that long? I don't think I could even do it, and I'm a well-known fanatic."

Web chuckled. "There are at least eight projects on Beowulf that I know of which are studying evolutionary effects, every one of which was started within five years of the first settlement of the planet—almost one thousand, eight hundred years ago. At a certain level of dedication, biologists aren't really sane."

He shook his head. "But leave that aside. One of the other reasons is that Manticore can bring a lot of pressure to bear on Beowulf. Call it influence, rather. And vice versa, of course. The relations between those two star nations are a lot closer than most people realize."

Getting Hugh's team assigned to provide security for Berry, the depth of hatred between Beowulf and Mesa, their penchant for long-term projects and relationship to Manticore.

The warship which emerged from the Trevor's Star terminus of the Manticore Wormhole Junction did not show a Manticoran transponder code. Nor did it show a Grayson or an Andermani code. Nonetheless, it was allowed transit, for the code it did display was that of the Kingdom of Torch.

To call the vessel a "warship," was, perhaps, to be overly generous. It was, in fact, a frigate—a tiny class which no major naval power had built in over fifty T-years. But this was a very modern ship, less than three T-years old, and it was Manticoran built, by the Hauptman Cartel, for the Anti-Slavery League.

Torch remains friendly with Manticore, and with Haven for that matter, and after the assassination attempt no one is interested in making trouble.

In her time, Honor Alexander-Harrington had known quite a few dangerous people. Zilwicki was a case in point, as, in his own lethal way, was young Spencer Hawke, standing alertly to watch her back even here. But this young man had the clear, clean uncluttered taste of a sword. In fact, his mind-glow was as close to that of a treecat as Honor had ever tasted in a human being. Certainly not evil, but . . . direct. Very direct. For treecats, enemies came in two categories: those who'd been suitably dealt with, and those who were still alive. This unremarkable-looking young man's mind-glow was exactly the same, in that regard. There was not a single trace of malice in it. In many ways, it was clear and cool, like a pool of deep, still water. But somewhere in the depths of that pool, Leviathan lurked.

Over the decades, Honor had come to know herself. Not perfectly, but better than most people ever did. She'd faced the wolf inside herself, the aptness to violence, the temper chained by discipline and channeled into protecting the weak, rather than preying upon them. She saw that aspect of herself reflected in the mirrored surface of this young man's still water, and realized, with an inner shiver, that he was even more apt to violence than she was. Not because he craved it one bit more than she did, but because of his focus. His purpose.

He wasn't simply Leviathan; this man was also Juggernaut. Dedicated every bit as much as she to protecting the people and the things about which he cared, and far more ruthless. She could readily sacrifice herself for the things in which she believed; this man could sacrifice anything in their name. Not for personal power. Not for profit. But because his beliefs, and the integrity with which he held them, were too strong for anything else.

But although he was as clean of purpose as a meat-ax, he was no crippled psychopath or fanatic. He would bleed for what he sacrificed. He would simply do it anyway, because he'd looked himself and his soul in the eye and accepted what he found there.

Oh for- even Honor is all kinds of impressed with Cachat.

Honor leaned back slightly, gazing at him thoughtfully. It was obvious from his emotions that he had no idea she could actually taste him. And it was equally obvious he was telling the truth. Just as it was obvious he actually expected to be detained, probably jailed. And—

"Officer Cachat," she said, "I really wish you would deactivate whatever suicide device you have in your right hip pocket."

-snip-

Cachat sat very, very still. Then he snorted—a harsh, abrupt sound, nonetheless edged with genuine humor—and looked at Zilwicki.

"I owe you a case of beer, Anton."

"Told you so." Zilwicki shrugged. "And now, Mr. Super Secret Agent, would you please turn that damned thing off? Ruth and Berry would both murder me if I let you kill yourself. And I don't even want to think about what Thandi would do to me!"

Honor twigs on to Victor's suicide device.

"I've heard a great deal about you, Duchess Harrington. We have extensive dossiers on you, and I know Admiral Theisman and Admiral Foraker both think highly of you. If you're prepared to give me your word—your word, not the word of a Manticoran aristocrat or an officer in the Manticoran Navy, but Honor Harrington's word—that you won't detain me or attempt to force information out of me, I'll disarm my device."

"I suppose I really ought to point out to you that even if I give you my word, that doesn't guarantee someone else won't grab you if they figure out who you are."

"You're right." He thought for a moment longer, then shrugged. "Very well, give me Steadholder Harrington's word."

"Oh, very good, Officer Cachat!" Honor chuckled as Hawke stiffened in outrage. "You have studied my file, haven't you?"

"And the nature of Grayson's political structure," Cachat agreed. "It's got to be the most antiquated, unfair, elitist, theocratic, aristocratic leftover from the dustbin of history on this side of the explored galaxy. But a Grayson's word is inviolable, and a Grayson steadholder has the authority to grant protection to anyone, anywhere, under any circumstances."

"And if I do, I'm bound—both by tradition and honor and by law—to see to it you get it."

"Precisely . . . Steadholder Harrington."

Honor's word as a Steadholder, rather than an individual, an officer, or a duchess.

"All right, Admiral. The most convincing piece of evidence Anton has is that if the Republic had ordered any such operation on Torch, it would have been my job to carry it out. I'm the FIS chief of station for Erewhon, Torch, and the Maya Sector."

He made the admission calmly, although Honor knew he was very unhappy to do so. With excellent reason, she thought. Knowing with certainty who the opposition's chief spy was would have to make your own spies' jobs a lot easier.

"There are reasons—reasons of a personal nature—why my superiors might have tried to cut me out of the loop for this particular operation," Cachat continued, and she tasted his painstaking determination to be honest. Not because he wouldn't have been quite prepared to lie if he'd believed it was his duty, but because he'd come to the conclusion that he simply couldn't lie successfully to her.

"Although it's true those reasons exist," he went on, "it's also true that I have personal contacts at a very high level who would have alerted me anyway. And with all due modesty, my own network would have warned me if anyone from Haven had invaded my turf.

"Because all of that's true, I can tell you that the chance of any Republican involvement in the attempt to assassinate Queen Berry is effectively nonexistent. The bottom line, Admiral, is that we didn't do it."

The reason they came, of course, to explain to Honor that the attempt on Berry's life had nothing to do with Haven.

"Obviously, if it wasn't Haven, our suspicions are naturally going to light on Mesa," Zilwicki said. "Mesa, and Manpower, have plenty of reasons of their own to want Torch destabilized and Berry dead. The fact that the neurotoxin used in the attempt is of Solly origin also points towards the probability of Mesan involvement. At the same time, I'm painfully well aware that everyone in the official intelligence establishment is going to line up to point out to me that we're naturally prejudiced in favor of believing Mesa is behind any attack upon us. And, to be totally honest, they'd be right."

"Which doesn't change the fact that you really do believe it was Mesa," Honor observed.

Of course it was, the Mesans have abundant reasons to assassinate the rule of Torch, and they're just as happy to break the truce between Manticore and Haven.

"I know that," Cachat replied. "And I'm not impartial, or disinterested. In fact, I have two very strong motives for telling you this. First, because I'm convinced that what happened in Torch doesn't represent my star nation's policy or desires, and that it's clearly not in the Republic's best interests. Because it isn't, I have a responsibility to do anything I can do mitigate the consequences of what's happened. That includes injecting any voice of sanity and reason I can into the Star Kingdom's decision-making process at the highest level I can reach. Which, at this moment, happens to be you, Admiral Harrington.

"Second, Anton and I are, as he said, pursuing our own investigation into this. His motives, I think, ought to be totally understandable and clear. My own reflect the fact that the Republic is being blamed for a crime it didn't commit. It's my duty to find out who did commit it, and to determine why he—or they—wanted to make it appear we did it. In addition, I have some personal motives, tied up with who might have been killed in the process, which also give me a very strong reason to want the people behind this. However, if our investigation prospers, we're going to need someone—at the highest level of the Star Kingdom's decision-making process we can reach—who's prepared to listen to whatever we find. We need, for want of a better term, a friend at court."

The game plan, moving forward.

"Princess Ruth's not coming with us?" asked Brice Miller. He and his two friends Ed Hartman and James Lewis had distressed expressions on their faces.

Marti Garner shook her head, trying not to laugh. "No, that part of the plan had to be scrapped."

Ruth won't be coming to Mesa. Mostly because Hugh told her bodyguards about the mission.

"Why would I try to deny it?" he said calmly. "I readily agree that I'm guilty as charged. Which, in turn, simply means that unlike one person in this room—female, about one hundred and sixty-seven centimeters tall, weight somewhere in the range of sixty-five kilograms, of Masadan ancestry—I'm not crazy. Face it, Ruth. Whether you like it or not, your ability to operate as a field agent is now and will forevermore be tightly constrained by the fact that on the scale of 'Hostage, Value Thereof,' you rank ten out of ten. Or at the very least, nine point nine nine unto the two thousandth decimal point out of ten."

There is that.

Hugh took a slow deep breath. "I don't have any choice, Berry—and that's the last time you'll hear me use your given name so long as I have this assignment." For a moment, he looked distinctly unhappy. "One of the basic rules concerning security work is that security agents need to keep their personal distance from the person or persons they're providing security for. In this case . . . that's not going to be easy for me. Informality would make it impossible."

Berry didn't know if she was delighted or chagrined to hear that. Probably both. "I'll kill Jeremy, I swear I will. The first guy who comes along since they put this stupid crown on my head who's not intimated by going out on a date with me—and he makes him my security chief!"

"You can't kill Jeremy," said Ruth. "Sorry, girl—but you were the one who specifically refused his offer to give you the right to exercise the death penalty once a year, at your whim and discretion." The princess beamed up at Hugh. "Been me, I would have taken it. And you'd be for the high jump, right about now."

"Fine. I can have him banished." Berry cocked her head, studying Hugh for a few seconds. "But it wouldn't do me any good, would it? You're one of those people with an overdeveloped sense of duty. Even with Jeremy gone, you'd keep soldiering on."

And their relationship goes on hold, because having the boyfriend run security is a truly terrible idea.

"First, no matter who fronted the cash—Manpower or Technodyne—the fact remains that very few corporations in history have ever thrown such huge resources into speculative endeavors as risky as the Monica project. Oh, there've probably been at least a few private venture operations with this kind of price tag, given the scale the big transtellars operate on. All those battlecruisers together didn't cost much more than a couple of superdreadnoughts all by themselves, after all, even if they had to pay full price for them. And when you stack that up against something like, say, TranStar of Terra's infrastructure project in Hiawatha, it starts looking downright picayune. But the risk factor in this case was way outside any standard operation. Especially one that was unsecured. TranStar got a huge chunk of its expenses guaranteed upfront by the League before it ever sent the first survey crew into Hiawatha, and that sure as hell didn't happen here! If everything had worked, they'd have made a fortune. But if anything went wrong—which, after all, it did—they were going to get exactly zilch back on whatever they put into the effort. That's what's so far outside the standard models."

"Corporations are intrinsically conservative when it comes to things like this, Jeremy," Anton put in. "That's why no long-term, really expensive projects that don't have a definite payoff within a reasonably short and specified time frame are ever undertaken by private corporations—unless they have solid government backing and some pretty hefty government guarantees."

"Yeah!" Ruth nodded energetically. "And that brings us to the second thing I think everybody should be considering here. If the primary goal was to kick the Star Kingdom off of Mesa's front step—and that's what everything seems to be indicating—then the possible payoff for grabbing the terminus was entirely secondary, right? I mean, we're postulating that profit wasn't the primary motive."

Yes, there's little financial sense in their efforts to destabilize Talbott.

"Who's Napoleon?" asked Berry.

"Bernice Napoleon. She's the minister of system defense for Eta Cassiopeiae," said Ruth. For someone as young as she was, the Manticoran princess's knowledge of astropolitics was phenomenal.

"I think Web's referring to an ancient conqueror," said Zilwicki. "But the only dictum I can remember associated with him is something about an army marching on its stomach, which seems pretty irrelevant here."

" 'Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence,' " said Victor. "I first heard it from Kevin Usher. He practically dotes on the quip."

And there seems to be a running gag where someone makes a classic reference or uses an unfamiliar word, and Ruth mistakes them for a contemporary political figure of the same name, as she later does to Dante and Jutzpah (chutzpah).

"Yeah, I figured it out," Ruth said. Her eyes got a bit unfocused. "You know . . . I could probably crunch those numbers, too. Even here on Torch, the data bank we've been able to compile is enormous. There should be enough in there for me to run models using figures from companies that went bankrupt."

"Don't bother," said Zilwicki. "I've run models close enough to those in the past. Even assuming the worst case variant—a private company run by a single individual with no internal restraints of any kind, which doesn't resemble Manpower at all—you still won't get numbers anything like this. These are the sort of outlays measured against possible gain that you only get from governments. And aggressive governments, at that. The sort led by your Alexander the Great types. Not bean-counters."

"Why in the world would you have taken the time to develop such models?" asked Cachat. "I can't think of any reason to do so."

Zilwicki clucked his tongue. "That's because you have the limited horizons and stunted vision of someone who's spent his whole life in the hall of mirrors. I didn't do it for intelligence reasons, Victor. I did it back in my yard dog days, so I'd have a gauge for businesses that submitted bids."

Anton's varied background, and they have a baseline for companies run into the ground by mismanagement, and Mesa looks nothing like them either.

The political structure of Mesa was essentially that of a corporation in which all free citizens owned voting stock. Slaves, of course, were permanently barred from ever owning voting stock.

The CEO of Mesa was elected by the General Board of the star system. Membership on the board was split between the star system's major corporate entities and members elected by the free citizenry as a whole. The balance of power was unambiguously in the hands of the board members appointed by the major corporations, however. Elective members constituted only one-third of the General Board's total membership; the other two-thirds were appointed by the corporations on the basis of the percentage of the government's taxes which each corporation paid. Because Manpower was far and away the largest single corporation, and, indeed, provided almost sixteen percent of the government's total tax base, its appointees dominated the General Board and normally determined who would hold the office of CEO.

In addition to the appointments Manpower could make in its own right, it had carefully concealed (or, at least, carefully never mentioned) relationships with other major Mesan corporations, through which it controlled the appointment of still more members of the General Board. For example, the Jessyk Combine was officially an independent corporation which appointed 4.5% of the General Board's members, but those appointments were actually controlled by Manpower. If their suspicion that a similar relationship existed with Mesa Pharmaceuticals, that would give Manpower control of—or influence over, at least—another 9.5% of the General Board. Between just those three nominally independent corporations, the Directors of Manpower probably controlled thirty percent of the General Board of the star system outright.

Under the Mesan Constitution, the CEO had to be selected from among the members of the General Board, which virtually guaranteed that he would come out of the ranks of the corporate appointees. And he was, indeed, the chief executive officer of the star system, in fact, as well as name. He served at the pleasure of the General Board, and no CEO could hold office continuously for a period greater than ten T-years, but while he held office, his power was effectively unlimited, and all decisions of government policy were made in a top-down fashion from his office, through an executive branch staff answerable directly to him. His budgetary proposals had to be approved by the General Board, but they were usually confirmed without a great deal of debate. In fact, the (extremely rare) refusal by a General Board to endorse the current CEO's budget proposals was the equivalent of a vote of no confidence, and terminated that CEO's term of office immediately.

Mesan government.

It was certainly not a political structure that lent itself to suppleness and risk taking. So far as that went, Du Havel agreed with Victor. On the other hand, he thought Cachat's egalitarian political philosophy sometimes blinded him—partially, at least—to certain realities.

Governments run along corporatist lines were actually fairly common in the galaxy, and Mesa was by no means the sole example. As originally established, for instance, the original Manticoran government had been set up in a very similar fashion. True, it had changed extensively over the centuries, but change was the one true constant of human institutions, when one came right down to it, and many another star nation had evolved into a corporatist form, rather than away from one.

And, done properly, they worked just as well as any other system. Which was to say, never perfectly, but often more than well enough to get by with.

Government-by-corporation also seems to happen a lot in the Honorverse.

Beowulf was a case in point, actually, since it also had a corporate political structure which mirrored its economic structure. The shareholders who owned all of the stock in the Corporation (which, in turn, owned the entire Beowulf System) elected a Board of Directors and corporate officers, who then ran the corporation and were responsible for providing necessary public services to the citizens of Beowulf. This structure had persisted, essentially unchanged, for the better part of five hundred T-years, and was retained in outer form even today, to some extent. Yet Beowulf's government was quite capable of behaving like a genuine national state, and not just a squabbling oligopoly.

Beowulf is also a corporate state.

The key difference between Beowulf and Mesa was slavery. About seventy percent of Mesa's population were slaves. That crude and simple demographic reality placed its stamp on every aspect of Mesan society. True, the thirty percent of Mesa's population who were not slaves enjoyed a high degree of individual civil liberties and were quite well provided for by the various corporations for whom they worked in what amounted to a patron-client relationship. In no small part, though, that represented a payoff from the corporations to their clients as a way to help defuse any inclinations towards abolitionism.

That "payoff" mentality was probably unnecessary, since the notion of a Mesan Anti-Slavery League boggled the mind, but it was indicative of the fundamental paranoia which the institution of slavery bred in its slaveowner class. That paranoia also extended itself—with considerably greater justification—to suspicion of outside "troublemakers." While free Mesan citizens enjoyed relatively high degrees of civil liberty, there were specific areas in which those liberties were extremely restricted. The security organs of Mesa enjoyed virtually carte blanche authority in any matter impinging upon the institution of slavery, and they were ruthless in the extreme with any suspected abolitionist. The majority of Mesan citizens had no objection to this, since they, like their corporate overlords, lived in fear of the specter of servile rebellion and generally supported any measure they believed would make that rebellion less likely.

What all that meant, however, was that the formally democratic aspects of Mesa's governmental structure were basically just that—formalities. That was quite unlike the situation on Beowulf, where the population as a whole—that is to say, its citizens—had final control of the government.

The police state and paranoia used to ruthlessly quash any whisper of abolitionism on Mesa.

"Technically, I've got dual citizenship now," said Ruth stoutly. "So I figure I count as a citizen of Torch, not a Manticoran."

That claim was . . . dubious. To begin with, while Torch recognized dual citizenship, the Star Kingdom didn't. Not for anyone, much less a member of its own royal house. Granted, under the circumstances, the Manticoran government had been willing to look the other way when Ruth took out Torch citizenship. Leaving that aside, nobody in their right mind—and certainly not Victor Cachat—doubted for a moment that Ruth would never act against Manticore's interests.

Torch recognizes dual-citizenship, it seems Manticore does not.

"I can see that," said Jeremy, nodding. "But . . . ah, I hate to remind another person of his duty, Victor, but I thought you were the head of Haven's intelligence not only here on Torch but also on Erewhon. 'Chief of Station,' I think it's called."

Victor looked uncomfortable again. "Well . . . yes. But there's a lot of latitude involved." More brightly: "And they've sent out a very competent subordinate. I'm sure she can handle things while I'm gone."

"And just how can you be so certain she's that good?"

"Oh, we've worked together before, Jeremy, on La Martine. She did a superb job of organizing the murder of a rogue StateSec officer, and handled the beating I gave her afterward just about as well." Seeing the stares, he added: "Well, I had to have her beaten. Only way to cover her tracks. I learned that from Kevin Usher, the time he beat me to a pulp in Chicago."

That would be Sharon Justice then? She'll do okay.

[Terralthra]

Torch recognizes dual-citizenship, it seems Manticore does not.

Fits with previous standard. Remember that it took a writ from the Queen (and Queen's Bench) to allow recognition that Steadholder Harrington was an entirely separate person from (then) Captain Harrington (despite both of them living in the same body) in order to allow the Harrington Steadholder's Guard to be aboard a Queen's ship. A star nation with functioning recognition of dual-citizenship would probably not need to go so high as the ruling monarch in order to resolve such a dispute.

[Simon_Jester]

Honor twigs on to Victor's suicide device.

Poor Victor. It really is unfair to throw a telepath at him. Then again, it's arguably unfair to throw Victor at most problems so, well, sauce, goose, gander.

And their relationship goes on hold, because having the boyfriend run security is a truly terrible idea.

Amusingly, in an entirely different series of novels, Flint (and David Drake) have more or less exactly that happen- but that's in a medieval context where the danger of assassins is qualitatively different. Arai's job is more of a modern-day Secret Service thing.

And there seems to be a running gag where someone makes a classic reference or uses an unfamiliar word, and Ruth mistakes them for a contemporary political figure of the same name, as she later does to Dante and Jutzpah (chutzpah).

One of Eric Flint's signature styles.

What all that meant, however, was that the formally democratic aspects of Mesa's governmental structure were basically just that—formalities. That was quite unlike the situation on Beowulf, where the population as a whole—that is to say, its citizens—had final control of the government.

The police state and paranoia used to ruthlessly quash any whisper of abolitionism on Mesa.

Historically precedented, too- during the 1840s and '50s some of the most stringent limitations on free speech in American history (certainly to date and arguably even including the rest of US history) were passed at the behest of the slave states. The prospect of an organized slave revolt is so terrifying to the citizens of a slaveholding society that they routinely tolerate vicious and terrifying measures to control the slaves, and to punish any citizen who allies with a slave.

[See the Krypteia in ancient Sparta for an example of this from the distant past]

It's even worse on Mesa than in the antebellum South, because on Mesa the slaves outnumber the citizens two to one, rather than it being the other way around.

[CaptainChewbacca]

One comment I wanted to make about the Mesan FTL systems is that there are TWO of them. The Streak drive is not the high-band drive, but it doesn't break the hyper wall in a severe fashion, so it doesn't register on sensors. In addition to the streak drive, Mesans ALSO have conventional sail/wedge systems that are capable of transiting to the higher bands. That's the one they use for their dispatch boats and personal cruisers.

[Terralthra]

One comment I wanted to make about the Mesan FTL systems is that there are TWO of them. The Streak drive is not the high-band drive, but it doesn't break the hyper wall in a severe fashion, so it doesn't register on sensors. In addition to the streak drive, Mesans ALSO have conventional sail/wedge systems that are capable of transiting to the higher bands. That's the one they use for their dispatch boats and personal cruisers.

Other way around. Streak is the conventional wedge/sail system that can go above the iota wall. The Spider drive is the n-space impeller system that doesn't register on gravitic sensors.

[Ahriman238]

Berry looked back and forth between Victor and Yana. "All right, I can see that. Victor and Yana go in as a couple, pretending to be among the very few survivors of the Manpower Incident on Terra—the only StateSec agent and one of the few Scrags who somehow managed to keep from getting slaughtered by the murderous alliance between the Ballroom, Kevin Usher—now the head of Haven's FIS—and a certain then-completely-unknown StateSec agent by the name of . . . Victor Cachat."

"Look at it this way," said Victor. "If anybody presses me, I can give them details about the episode that they've never heard, but which will ring absolutely true."

Victor and Yana's (one of the Amazons) cover story, they're survivors of the failed kidnapping of Helen Zilwicki. Which is actually 100% true in Victor's case.

"I don't know . . . It would seem to me that there's a risk there. If there were so few Scrag survivors of that incident—and there aren't all that many Scrags in the universe to begin with—isn't there a chance that one of the real survivors will know that Yana wasn't among them? Of course, that's assuming she runs into any such on Mesa, which is probably not likely. Still, it's a risk."

Yana shook her head. "You don't really understand how Scrag society works, Ruth. The level of what you might call internal belligerence is closer to that of predators than humans. It wouldn't be at all surprising if I'd gotten irritated with other Scrags and gone my own way. And, as it happens, I did spend a fair amount of time on Terra in my younger days, most of it in Chicago. A lot of Scrags do, though, so I'd hardly stand out."

More on Scrag culture.

"What he means," said Anton, "is that we have to assume that even given the incredibly low profile Victor's maintained over the years, Manpower—or whoever's really running the show on Mesa—will by now have gotten enough to be able to identify him. If one of their own top agents spots him. But the odds that they've spread that information widely, even among their own ranks, is low."

"Why?" asked Ruth. "I'd think that's the first thing they'd do."

Thandi Palane smiled, and shook her head. "That's because you've been an individualist your whole life, Ruth—even when your membership in the Winton dynasty enabled you to shoehorn yourself into a central position as an official spy."

Ruth frowned. "Which means . . . what?"

"It means you've had no experience with bureaucracies from the inside out," said Jeremy. "Neither had I, of course"—here he gave Web Du Havel a sour look—"until this inveterate paper-pusher finagled me into accepting a position in his administration. But I know the dynamic, since I often manipulated it myself to good effect. Any bureaucrat, especially a bureaucrat in a security or espionage agency, has what amounts to an automatic reflex to keep things a secret. That's because 'being in the know' is the currency by which such stalwarts trade favors and influence—and thereby their own advancement."

Why the average Mesan rent-a-cop isn't going to recognize Victor or Anton.

He and Zilwicki exchanged glances. "This is something I've discussed extensively with Anton. Mesan society, no matter how tightly organized and no matter what secret cabal might actually be running the show, has got to have a huge and filthy underbelly. There's simply no way a society can operate on such brutal and elitist premises for so many centuries without creating such an underbelly—which it's very likely even Mesa's elite doesn't really know that much about. Partly because they can't, and partly because they don't want to."

And spies just love giant filthy underbellies, they provide the best contacts and hiding places.

"We already discussed, yesterday, the information Rozsak's intelligence officer Watanapongse passed onto us. They're almost certain—and we agreed with that assessment—that Mesa is planning to launch a massive attack on Torch in the near future using mostly StateSec renegades as the shock troops. And that they're most likely planning to violate the Eridani Edict."

"Ah." The frown on Ruth's forehead cleared away. "Which means Mesa is going to want as much plausible deniability as possible when it comes to those StateSec renegades—including the ones on their own planet."

Victor nodded. "My guess, in fact, is that shortly before the attack happens, Mesa will launch a major purge of those StateSec people still on the planet. A few will be rounded up in case show trials are needed, but most of them—and certainly any who know anything—will be shot while resisting arrest or shot while attempting to escape or accidentally killed by a freak meteor strike."

So the Torches know an attack is coming, using StateSec renegades. And that Mesa will purge any StateSec on Mesa itself as part of their plausible deniability, which just makes Cachat going in as a StateSec goon even ballsier.

"How will you arrange to meet each other after you've gotten there?" asked Du Havel. Then he held up his hand. "Sorry, I don't really need to know that. I'm just curious."

Anton shrugged. "We couldn't tell you anyway, since we haven't figured it out ourselves. And won't. I'm just leaving it to Victor to find me. That's because while his cover story is riskier than mine, it has the advantage of giving him greater freedom of movement if it works. A lot of this is stuff we'll jury-rig as we go along."

A number of frowns appeared.

"Relax," said Victor. "We really are very good at this."

And They don't have a set time or place to meet each other, Anton is just counting on Victor to find him.

"Well," he said, tipping back slightly in his chair, "I'd have to say that so far, at least, removing Webster—and, of course, Operation Rat Poison—seems to be working out quite well. Aside from whatever new weapons goody the Manties seem to have come up with."

Dettweiler and Bardasano having an Evil Meeting. Places this part after Lovat.

"I doubt even Beowulf will be able to put it together quickly," he said after a moment. "I don't doubt they could eventually, with enough data. They certainly have the capability, at any rate, but given how quickly the nanites break down, it's extremely unlikely they're going to have access to any of the cadavers in a short enough time frame to determine anything definitive. All of Everett's and Kyprianou's studies and simulations point in that direction. Obviously, it's a concern we have to bear in mind, but we can't allow that possibility to scare us into refusing to use a capability we need."

The Mesans take it as a given that sooner or later somebody is going to figure out the lone gunman trick.

"What else concerns me is that there are two possible alternative scenarios for who was actually responsible for both attacks. One, of course, is that it was us—or, at least, Manpower. The second is that it was, in fact, a Havenite operation, but not one sanctioned by Pritchart or anyone in her administration. In other words, that it was mounted by a rogue element within the Republic which is opposed to ending the war.

"Of the two, the second is probably the more likely . . . and the less dangerous from our perspective. Mind you, it would be bad enough if someone could convince Elizabeth and Grantville that Pritchart's offer had been genuine and that sinister and evil elements—possibly throwbacks to the bad old days of State Security—decided to sabotage it. Even if that turned around Elizabeth's position on a summit, it wouldn't lead anyone directly to us, though. And it's not going to happen overnight, either. My best guess is that even if someone suggested that theory to Elizabeth today—for that matter, someone may already have done just that—it would still take weeks, probably months, for it to reach the point of changing her mind. And now that they've resumed operations, the momentum of fresh casualties and infrastructure damage is going to be strongly against any effort to resurrect the original summit agreement even if she does change her mind.

"The first possibility, however, worries me more, although I'll admit it would appear to be a lower order probability, so far, at least. At the moment, the fact that they're convinced they're looking at a Havenite assassination technique is diverting attention from us and all of the reasons we might have for killing Webster or Berry Zilwicki. But if someone manages to demonstrate that there has to be an undetectable bio-nanite component to how the assassins are managing these 'adjustments,' the immediate corollary to that is going to be a matching suspicion that even if Haven is using the technique, it didn't develop the technique. The Republic simply doesn't have the capability to put something like this together for itself, and no one as smart as Patricia Givens is going to believe for a moment that it does. And that, Albrecht, is going to get that same smart person started thinking about who did develop it. It could have come from any of several places, but as soon as anyone starts thinking in that direction, the two names that are going to pop to the top of their list are Mesa and Beowulf, and I don't think anyone is going to think those sanctimonious bastards on Beowulf would be making something like this available. In which case Manpower's reputation is likely to bite us on the ass. And the fact that both the Manties' and the Havenites' intelligence services are aware of the fact that 'Manpower' has been recruiting ex-StateSec elements is likely to suggest the possibility of a connection between us and some other StateSec element, possibly hiding in the underbrush of the current Republic. Which is entirely too close to the truth to make me feel particularly happy.

Other paths of exposure.

"My guess would be that the main point they wanted to make was that Cachat hadn't ordered Rat Poison. Or, at least, that neither he nor any of his operatives had carried it out. And if he was willing to confirm his own status as Trajan's man in Erewhon, the fact that he hadn't carried it out—assuming she believed him—would clearly be significant. And, unfortunately, there's every reason to think she would believe him if he spoke to her face to face."

And the Mesans know that Victor and Anton talked to Honor.

That was bad enough, but the real spark for his anger was Bardasano's indirect reference to the never-to-be-sufficiently-damned treecats of Sphinx. For such small, fuzzy, outwardly lovable creatures, they had managed to thoroughly screw over altogether too many covert operations—Havenite and Mesan alike—over the years. Especially in partnership with that bitch Harrington. If Cachat had gotten into voice range of Harrington, that accursed treecat of hers would know whether or not he was telling the truth.

The Mesans really dislike treecats.

The gusto with which the Audubon Ballroom had gone after Manpower and all its works had been one more element, albeit an unknowing and involuntary one, in camouflaging the Alignment's true activities and objectives. The fact that at least some of Manpower's senior executives were members of at least the Alignment's outer circle meant one or two of the Ballroom's assassinations had hurt them fairly badly over the years. Most of those slaughtered by the vengeful ex-slaves, however, were little more than readily dispensed with red herrings, an outer layer of "the onion" no one would really miss, and the bloody warfare between the "outlaw corporation" and its "terrorist" opposition had helped focus attention on the general mayhem and divert it away from what was really going on.

Yet useful as that had been, it had also been a two-edged sword. Since all but a very tiny percentage of Manpower's organization was unaware of any deeper hidden purpose, the chance that the Ballroom would become aware of it was slight. But the possibility had always existed, and no one who had watched the Ballroom penetrate Manpower's security time and time again would ever underestimate just how dangerous people like Jeremy X and his murderous henchmen could prove if they ever figured out what was truly going on and decided to change their target selection criteria.

Use of the Ballroom as a diversion.

One of the problems with using Manpower as a mask was that too many of Manpower's executives had no more idea than the rest of the galaxy that anyone was using them. Which meant it was also necessary to give those same executives a loose rein in order to keep them unaware of that inconvenient little truth . . . which could produce operations like that fiasco in Chicago or the attack on Catherine Montaigne's mansion on Manticore. Fortunately, even operations which were utter disasters from Manpower's perspective seldom impinged directly on the Alignment's objectives. And the occasional Manpower catastrophe helped contribute to the galaxy at large's notion of Mesan clumsiness.

It seems the Alignment doesn't completely control Manpower. They can't, without cluing in Manpower execs that there's someone higher up on the food chain.

"If we find them, this time it won't be Manpower flailing around on its own," Detweiler continued grimly. "It will be us—you. And I want this given the highest priority, Isabel. In fact, the two of us need to sit down and discuss this with Benjamin. He's got at least a few spider units available now—he's been using them to train crews and conduct working-up exercises and systems evaluations. Given what you've just said, I think it might be worthwhile to deploy one of them to Verdant Vista. The entire galaxy knows about that damned frigate of Zilwicki's. I think it might be time to arrange a little untraceable accident for it."

Arranging for Anton's hsip to be destroyed as soon as it's outside of anyone's sensor range, using Mesa's new super-stealthy ships. The book calls them strike ships, I think of them more as submarines.

Her first real security team, rather. Berry had insisted the unit be titled Lara's Own Regiment. "Regiment" was absurd at the moment, of course. But if the new star nation survived, it wouldn't always be.

Berry named her security detail after Lara, the Amazon who died saving her from the assassination attempt.

[Simon_Jester]

And They don't have a set time or place to meet each other, Anton is just counting on Victor to find him.

Well, Anton's cover story makes him fairly easy to find, as I recall. Victor's, not so much.

Arranging for Anton's hsip to be destroyed as soon as it's outside of anyone's sensor range, using Mesa's new super-stealthy ships. The book calls them strike ships, I think of them more as submarines.

There are some similarities but also some differences. The main one being that the Mesan spider-drive is invisible to long range gravitics but not to everything else out there; it's sort of like how stealth aircraft are practically invisible to radar, but only radar.

[SpottedKitty]

Great to find a forum with some good HH-verse discussion.

Got a little question I've been pummeling my brain over for the last few months, I think this is the best-fitting of the various HH threads to ask it in. At some time after the Zilwicki family and Cathy Montaigne returned from Earth after the Manpower Incident, there have been a few mentions of the attack on Cathy's townhouse. Did this actually happen "on camera" or is it just in those brief mentions?

I was sure I'd read — a long time ago — a moderately detailed account of what happened, but I've skimmed over all the books and story collections (I don't have all of them) in the right time period with no luck. Am I misremembering, or did I skim right over the chapter every time without noticing, or what?

[gigabytelord]

I don't think that the event is ever described in detail. After doing a little google searching and looking on the weber forums and the like, I found very little other than this is apparently a very popular question that gets asked.

[White Haven]

It's on paper. I don't remember where, but I distinctly recall reading it...somewhere.