The Honor of the Qween hh-2 Page 22

  "How soon can you deliver the message?"

  "As soon as I get to my office com terminal, but if you don't mind, I'd like to spend at least a few minutes working on a properly grim delivery. Something formal and stiff with the proper overtones of laboring under the demands of a military hard case who doesn't understand she's violating every diplomatic precedent." Despite the tension, Langtry chuckled. "If I handle this right, I may even get away with holding a gun to a friendly government's head without chucking my career out the airlock!"

  "You can make me as big an ogre as you like as long as saving your career doesn't slow us down too much," Honor said with another smile. She stood. "As a matter of fact, why don't you work on your delivery while we walk to your office?"

  Langtry nodded again, grinning even though his eyes were just a bit dazed from her ruthless dispatch. He walked out of the conference room with Honor on his heels, and an even more dazed-looking Commander Brentworth trailed in their wake.

  None of them even looked back at the diplomat still sobbing quietly in the shadow of the overturned table.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  "How dare they?!" Jared Mayhew glared around the council room as if hunting a Manticoran to attack with his bare hands. "Who do they think they are?!"

  "With all due respect, Councilman Mayhew, they think they're the only people who can keep those fanatics on Masada from conquering this star system," Chancellor Prestwick replied far more calmly.

  "God wouldn't want us to save ourselves at the cost of such ... such sacrilege!"

  "Calmly, Jared. Calmly." Protector Benjamin touched his cousin's shoulder. "Remember that they don't see this as a sacrilegious demand."

  "Perhaps not, but they have to know it's insulting, degrading, and arrogant," Howard Clinkscales, Grayson's Minister of Security growled. He and Jared Mayhew were the most conservative Council members, and his mouth worked bitterly. "It spits on all our institutions and beliefs, Benjamin!"

  "Hear, hear!" Councilman Phillips murmured, and Councilman Adams, the Minister of Agriculture, looked like he wanted to say something even stronger. Barely a third of the faces present showed disagreement, and Prestwick looked around the long table despairingly.

  He and Mayhew had been genial opponents for the five years since Benjamin had become Protector, sparring with elegant good manners over the authority the last six protectors had lost to Prestwick's predecessors. Yet Prestwick remained deeply and personally committed to the Mayhew dynasty, and they'd worked closely to secure the Manticoran alliance. Now it was crashing down in ruins, and there was anguish in his eyes as he cleared his throat.

  "At the moment, our concerns—" he began, but the Protector's raised finger stopped him.

  "I know it looks that way to you, Howard," Protector Benjamin said, focusing on Clinkscales' face as if to exclude everyone else, "but we have to consider three questions. Do they truly realize how insulting this demand is? Will they really pull their warships out of this system if we reject it? And can we hold Grayson and preserve those institutions and beliefs if they do?"

  "Of course they realize how insulting it is!" Jared Mayhew snapped. "No one could have put so many insults into one package by accident!"

  The Protector leaned back in his chair and regarded his cousin with a mix of weariness, patience, disagreement, and exasperated affection. Unlike his own father, his Uncle Oliver had steadfastly refused to have any of his sons contaminated by off-world education, and Jared Mayhew was bright, talented, and the quintessential product of a conservative Grayson upbringing. He was also next in line for the Protectorship after Benjamin's brother and ten years older than Benjamin himself.

  "I'm not at all sure `insult' is the proper word, Jared. And even if it were, surely we've given them just as many `insults' as they've given us."

  Jared stared at him in astonishment, and Benjamin sighed mentally. His cousin was a gifted industrial manager, but he was so confident of the rectitude of his own beliefs that the notion anyone else might find his attitudes or behavior insulting was irrelevant. If they didn't like the way he treated them, then they should stay away from his planet. If they insisted on contaminating his world by their presence, he would treat them precisely as God wanted him to, and if they felt insulted, that was their problem.

  "If you'll forgive me, Protector," a resonant voice said, "I rather think that whether they realize they're insulting us or not is somewhat less important than the last two questions you raised." The Reverend Julius Hanks, spiritual head of the Church of Humanity Unchained, seldom spoke up in Council meetings, but now he gave Prestwick a very hard look indeed. "Do you think they truly would withdraw and leave us to Masada's mercy, Chancellor?"

  "I don't know, Reverend," Prestwick said frankly. "Were Admiral Courvosier still alive, I'd say no. As it is ..." He shrugged. "This Harrington woman is now in complete control of their military presence, and that means her policies are driving their diplomatic position. I doubt Ambassador Langtry would support any decision to withdraw, but I don't know if he could stop her from doing it. And—" he hesitated a moment, glancing at Clinkscales and Jared Mayhew "—I have to say the experiences on Grayson of Captain Harrington and the other women in her crews may well incline her to do exactly that."

  "Of course she feels inclined to!" Clinkscales snorted. "What d'you expect when you put women in uniform? Damn it, they don't have the self-control and stability for it! She got her feelings hurt when she was here before, did she? Well, at least that explains why she's cracking the whip over us this way now! It's for revenge, damn it!"

  Prestwick clamped his lips on a hasty retort, and the Protector hid another sigh. Actually, this one was more of a groan. His was the third Mayhew generation Clinkscales had served, and not just as Minister of Security. He was the personal commander of the Protectorate Security Detachment, the bodyguards who protected Benjamin and his entire family every hour of their lives.

  He was also a living fossil. The old man was an unofficial uncle—a curmudgeonly, irascible, often exasperating uncle, but an uncle—and Benjamin knew he treated his own wives with great tenderness. Yet fond as Benjamin was of the old man, he also knew Clinkscales treated them so because they were his wives. He knew them as people, separated from the general concept "wife" or "woman," but he would never dream of treating them as equals. The notion of a woman—any woman—asserting equality with a man—any man—was more than merely foreign to him. It was totally incomprehensible, and as the personification of that notion, Captain Honor Harrington was a fundamental threat to his entire way of life.

  "All right, Howard," Benjamin said after a moment, "assume you're right—that she's just likely to pull her ships out of here for revenge because she's a woman. Distasteful as all of us may find the notion of submitting to her ultimatum, doesn't her very instability make it even more imperative for us to maintain an open mind as we consider it?"

  Clinkscales glared at him. For all his conservatism, the old man was no fool, and his Protector's attempt to turn his own argument against him was the sort of thing the overly clever young sprout had been doing for years, ever since his return from that fancy university. His face reddened, but he clamped his jaws and refused to be drawn to the obvious conclusion.

  "All right, then," Councilman Tompkins said. "If there's a real possibility this woman will abandon us, do we stand any chance at all of holding off the Faithful without her?"

  "Of course we do!" Jared Mayhew snapped. "My workers are drawing weapons, and my shipyards are converting every freighter we have into missile carriers! We don't need foreigners to defend ourselves against scum like Masadans—just God and ourselves!"

  No one else said a word, and even Clinkscales looked away in discomfort. Jared's fiery hatred of—and contempt for—Masada had always been very public, but no amount of rhetoric could hide Grayson's nakedness. Yet even though they all knew Jared's strident assertions were nonsense, no one had the will—or the courage—to say so, and Benjamin Mayhew survey
ed the council room with a sense of despair.

  Phillips and Adams had opposed the Manticore treaty from the outset, as had Jared and Clinkscales, though Phillips had seemed to be coming around under Courvosier's influence once Harrington disappeared from the equation. Most of the rest of the Council had been in cautious agreement with Prestwick, Tompkins, and the others who believed the alliance was critical to Grayson's survival. But that had been when an attack by Masada had merely seemed likely. Now it had become a fact, and the destruction of their own navy had filled too many councilmen with terror. Knowing the despised, backward Masadans had somehow acquired state-of-the-art military technology only made their panic complete, and panicked men thought with their emotions, not their intellects.

  Despite the desperation of their situation, if Prestwick polled the Council at this moment, a majority would undoubtedly vote to reject Captain Harrington's demand. The Protector felt his heart sink as that certainty filled him, but then an unexpected voice spoke up in support of sanity.

  "Forgive me, Brother Jared," Reverend Hanks said gently. "You know my own view of the proposed alliance. Father Church has learned from Masada's example not to meddle willfully in political decisions, yet I, as many in the Faith, have entertained serious doubts of the wisdom of such a close relationship with a power whose fundamental values differ so radically from our own. But that was when we had near parity with Masada's military."

  Jared met the Reverend's eyes with an expression of betrayal, but Hanks continued quietly.

  "I have no doubt you and your workmen would fight valiantly, that all of you would willingly die for your people and your Faith, but you would die. And so would our wives and children. Masada has always proclaimed its willingness to destroy all life on Grayson if that should prove the only way to cleanse this planet of our `apostasy.' I fear we have no choice but to assume they mean what they say, and if that be true, Brother Jared, it leaves us only three options: secure the support of this foreign woman's ships in any way we must, surrender all we love and hold dear to Masada, or die."

  Silence trembled in the council room as Grayson's spiritual leader put the decision into stark relief. Many of the councilmen seemed more shocked by Hanks' statement than they'd looked when they learned of the Fleet's destruction, and Benjamin Mayhew's pulse throbbed as he felt a moment of balance shivering about him.

  The Council had chipped away at the protectorship's authority for a century, hemming successive protectors about with more and more restrictions. Benjamin himself was little more than a figurehead, but a figurehead who'd always known the Protector retained far more authority in the eyes of Grayson's citizens than the Council knew, and now the men in this room faced a decision they wanted desperately to avoid. They were frozen, their supremacy over the protectorship singing with the crystalline brittleness of ice, and he suddenly realized history and Captain Honor Harrington had given him a hammer.

  He drew a deep breath and brought that hammer down.

  "Gentlemen." He stood, assuming a dominant stance none of them had ever seen before. "This decision is too grave, and time is too short, for us to debate it endlessly. I will meet with Captain Harrington."

  Breaths hissed all around the table, but he continued in that same, firm voice.

  "Under the circumstances, I would be criminally remiss as Protector of Grayson not to act. I will meet Captain Harrington and, unless her demands are totally unreasonable, I will accept them in Grayson's name."

  Howard Clinkscales and his cousin stared at him in horror, and he turned his head to meet Jared's eyes.

  "I realize many of you will disagree with my decision, and it wasn't an easy one to make. Bowing to ultimatums never is easy. Nonetheless, my decision is final. I believe, however, that we can arrange to have differing viewpoints represented by placing this meeting in a familial setting. I will invite Captain Harrington to join myself and my family for supper, and I will extend that same invitation to you, Jared."

  "No!" Jared Mayhew surged to his feet, glaring at his cousin. "I will never break bread with a woman who spits on everything I believe!"

  Benjamin looked at his cousin and hoped his pain didn't show. They'd always been close, despite their philosophical differences. The thought that those differences might force a breach between them at last twisted his heart, but he had to meet with the Manticoran captain. The survival of his planet required it, and he could feel the political structure of Grayson realigning itself about him. If he hesitated, neither his home world nor his chance to forge a new, progressive power base would survive.

  "I'm sorry you feel that way, Jared," he said quietly. "We'll miss you."

  Jared stared at him, his face twisted, then wheeled and stormed out of the Council Room. A ripple of agitation washed over the councilmen at his flagrant breach of protocol, but Benjamin made himself ignore it.

  "Very well, gentlemen. I believe that concludes our debate."

  He turned on his heel and walked through the door to the private quarters of the palace. The frozen Council watched him go, and as the door closed behind him, they knew it had closed on their own control of the government, as well.

  * * *

  There was no image on the com in the small shop's back room. That was a security measure, yet it also meant the man who'd answered it could never be certain the blank screen wasn't a trap, and he drew a deep breath.

  "Hello?"

  "The Abomination of the Desolation will not be suffered twice," a familiar voice said.

  "Nor shall we fear defeat, for this world is God's," the man replied, and his shoulders relaxed. "How may I serve, Maccabeus?"

  "The time has come to reclaim the Temple, Brother. The Protector will meet privately with the blasphemer who commands the Manticoran squadron."

  "With a woman?!" the shopkeeper gasped.

  "Indeed. But this time sacrilege will serve God's Work. Word of his decision will be announced within the hour. Before that happens, you must mobilize your team. Is all in readiness?"

  "Yes, Maccabeus!" The shopkeeper's horror had turned into something else, and his eyes gleamed.

  "Very well. I'll com back within forty-five minutes with final instructions and the challenges and countersigns you'll need. After that, God's Work will be in your hands, Brother."

  "I understand," the shopkeeper whispered. "My team and I won't fail you, Maccabeus. This world is God's."

  "This world is God's," the faceless voice responded. Then there was a click, and only the hum of the carrier.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  She was certainly a big woman.

  That was Benjamin Mayhew's first thought as Captain Harrington was ushered into the sitting room, but he changed it almost instantly. She wasn't so much "big" as "tall." She towered over her Security escort, but though she was broad-shouldered for a woman, with the solid, well-muscled look of a heavy-worlder, she moved like a dancer, and there wasn't a gram of excess weight on her.

  He watched Captain Fox, the head of his personal Security detachment, bristle like a terrier confronted by the tall elegance of a borzoi and felt an almost uncontrollable desire to laugh. Fox had been Mayhew's personal guardsman since boyhood, and laughing would have been an unforgivable insult to his utterly loyal henchman, but Harrington was twenty centimeters taller than he, and Fox was only too obviously irked by that.

  He was also irked by the six-legged, cream-and-gray creature riding her shoulder. One didn't normally bring pets to formal state occasions, but then, the Protector had decreed that this wasn't a state occasion. Officially, it was simply a dinner invitation to a foreign officer. The fact that this horrible woman had issued an ultimatum to the entire planet to extort that "invitation" was beside the point—officially—but it certainly didn't give her a right to bring her horrid alien creature and God alone knew what off-world parasites or diseases into the Protector's presence!

  Unfortunately for Fox, Captain Harrington was all done deferring to Grayson's tender sensibilities. She hadn't e
ven discussed bringing the beast along; she'd simply appeared with it on her shoulder. Mayhew had used the palace surveillance system to observe her arrival, and he hadn't quite been able to suppress a grin as she ignored Fox's pointed hints that its presence might be unwelcome. When he'd tried to persist, she'd given him the sort of look nannies reserved for rambunctious boy children not yet out of the nursery.

  Fox had surrendered, but the chemistry between him and Harrington should add a certain something to the evening's atmosphere.

  Mayhew rose from his armchair as Fox escorted her across the room to him. Unlike his Security team's commander, he'd spent six years at Harvard University's Bogota campus on Old Earth. That gave him a degree of experience with off-world women virtually no other Grayson could match, yet even he was struck by Captain Harrington's assurance. Her height didn't hurt any, but neither that, nor her startling, unconventional attractiveness, nor even the gliding grace with which she moved, explained it.

  She paused, tall and erect in her black-and-gold uniform with the snarling, scarlet-and-gold Manticore shoulder patch, and removed her white beret. Mayhew recognized the gesture of respect, but his Security men exchanged grimaces behind her as she bared her short, curly mop of close-cropped hair. Grayson women were spared the veils of their Masadan sisters, but none of them would have dared wear trousers in public, and tradition still forbade uncovered female heads in the presence of men. Besides, no Grayson woman would ever cut her hair so short.

  But Captain Harrington wasn't a Grayson woman. One look into those dark, cool almond eyes made that perfectly clear, and Mayhew extended his hand as he would have extended it to a man.

  "Good evening, Captain Harrington." He allowed himself an ironic smile. "It was so kind of you to come."

  "Thank you, Protector Mayhew." Her grip was firm, though he had the impression its strength was carefully restrained, and her soprano voice was surprisingly soft and sweet. It was also admirably grave, but he thought he saw a hint of a twinkle in her dark eyes. "It was very generous of you to invite me," she added, and he felt his lips twitch.