Uncompromising Honor (Honor Harrington, #14)

by David Weber

“That’s exactly what I’m worried about,” Shannon Foraker said quietly. “Given their performance to date, it’s tempting to think every Solly’s an idiot. But they aren’t, and if some of those not-idiots convince the Mandarins to listen to them, our current technological edge could disappear a lot sooner than anyone wants to think it could.”

How had they gotten here? How had they reached a point where the Solarian League was willing to openly violate its own Eridani Edict? The edict specifically designed to prevent this sort of atrocity? Which required any military commander to take every possible precaution to limit collateral damage and preclude any avoidable civilian deaths? The League had executed more than one officer—military commander or brigand; it hadn’t mattered—over the last eight hundred T-years for violating the fourth clause, and now it was prepared to violate it itself.

Hajdu stared at his EWO, and his mind raced. It was ridiculous! Nobody used drones as shipkillers, for God’s sake!

People will now in 2025!

The Federal Department of Justice was probably the least important department of the Solarian League’s government. Most of the League’s member systems had robust local departments of justice; the League no longer required one. That was what a few T-centuries of bureaucratic fiat and regulatory governance that no longer bothered the legislative branch with little things like passing laws tended to produce. Indeed, Justice was so lacking in stature that none of the deputy attorneys general—Justice’s equivalent of the other departments’ permanent senior undersecretaries—had ever even been considered for membership among the Mandarins.

The initial reports coming back from his task forces indicated Buccaneer was succeeding as a military strategy. Unfortunately, the ultimate object of any military strategy was to achieve political ends, and that was looking rather more…problematical. He’d warned his civilian masters that might be the case, although, as Abruzzi’s attitude suggested, they’d ignored that warning the same way they’d ignored everything else that might have saved them—and the Solarian League—from its current rolling disaster.

He’d salved his conscience at the time by hoping his commanders in the field would recoil from killing innocent bystanders in job lots. Thinking about that now, he felt only scathing, richly deserved contempt for his own naivety. No, for his own deliberate self-delusion. It had been an act of moral cowardice to rely on his subordinates’ willingness to disobey the orders they should never have been given in the first place. Even if it hadn’t been an abdication of his own responsibilities, he should have known how having Parthian in his back pocket would affect the thinking of someone like Martin Gogunov. He’d expected better out of Hajdu Győző when he chose him to command TF 1030, but looking back with bleak honesty, he knew he’d been deluding himself there, too. But what could I do when civilian command authority made it a direct order, damn it? Maybe I should have resigned instead of smiling and accepting the directive, but who would the five of you have put into the CNO slot if I had? Another Crandall? Another Filareta? Another Byng? God, I hope there aren’t two of him in the Service! But whatever my thinking, I didn’t resign, did I? And now you want to turn the fact that somebody disobeyed your orders only because someone else had her pulser in his ear into our get out of jail free card?

That limited his ability to temporize—assuming that was what he decided to do—and that was always dangerous. Civilian understanding of military capabilities invariably seemed to come in only two flavors. Either they completely misunderstood the capability in question, or else they thought they understood it and believed—usually erroneously—they were then qualified to evaluate its effectiveness. And far more often than not, they overestimated that effectiveness rather than exercising a modicum of prudence and underestimating it.

He still had few details, but an entire cluster of independent Verge star systems had proclaimed a new entity that sounded a lot more like a star nation than the simple “collective security association” it claimed to be. His analysts—even Brandy Spraker—were scrambling to put together the details about this “Renaissance Factor,” but the name seemed ominous. And everything his people did know about it at this point suggested the Republic of Mannerheim was the driving force behind the Renaissance Factor’s emergence. That was worrisome, especially in light of the fact that the Mannerheim System-Defense Force was far more potent than most Verge navies. That meant the Renaissance Factor could provide the sort of regional security umbrella only OFS had previously provided. And a government run by their neighbors, people from their own region, has to be more attractive to neobarbs in the Protectorates than OFS ever was, he thought sourly, glancing at MacArtney. And I’ll bet Barregos and what’s his name—Hurskainen—are only the first snowflakes of winter. If we don’t get a handle on this situation soon, prove our navy’s still the eight hundred-kilo gorilla, despite any temporary setbacks, the process will only accelerate. For that matter, some of the member systems that don’t like the new tax amendment are likely to go looking for safe havens outside the League to avoid paying up. And if we haven’t established that we can compel them to behave…

Still unresolved after "To End in Fire'!

“None of it matters,” Honor said. “We’ve been patient. We’ve waited. We’ve tried to minimize the death toll, tried to be the voice of sanity. We’ve tried…and none of it matters one damned bit to those men and women in Old Chicago. They don’t care how much destruction there is. They don’t care who dies. And if that’s the way they want it, so be it.” She looked around the conference room and Nimitz raised his head, his ears flat, his fangs half-bared. “We’ve always known something might change our strategic calculus. That was always part of our thinking…and now it damned well has. I’m through taking the ‘long view.’ It doesn’t matter who did it. What matters is that it has to end, Elizabeth.” Those icy brown eyes locked with her monarch’s. “It has to end now.”

Of course, the Duke wasn’t like most “yachts,” was she? She was an Agamemnon-class BC(P), fitted with Keyhole-Two and cutting-edge defensive and electronic warfare systems. For all intents and purposes, the Navy had taken a front-line battlecruiser, turned a quarter of its magazine space into luxurious accommodations for the Empress and up to a hundred and fifty or so guests, provided it with a picked crew of combat veterans, and called it a “yacht.”

“I have communicated the Alliance’s terms and conditions publicly, so that there can be no misunderstanding. So that no one like Malachai Abruzzi can distort them, lie about them. And I also inform you today that the Alliance will see to it that those demands and conditions are met. “We will not put armed forces on Old Earth. We will not invade any of the League’s member worlds. We will not send our personnel to take the Mandarins into custody. We will not threaten the life of anyone on any League planet. “We have taken no civilian lives here in the Sol System. We will continue to avoid the infliction of mass casualties. But if these terms are not accepted, if the motion to assemble a constitutional convention has not cleared the Assembly, within one month, I will divide Grand Fleet into four taskforces, and those taskforces will proceed to the next four wealthiest star systems in the Solarian League. When they reach their destinations, they will do to those star systems what I have done today to yours. And at the end of another month, if these terms still have not been accepted, they will move to the next four wealthiest star systems. And the next four. They will continue doing so until our conditions are accepted…or there are no more industrialized systems in the Solarian League.”

Innokentiy Kolokoltsov tuned them out. He sat at the head of the conference table, and for the first time in his long life, he genuinely had no idea what to do next. Agatá Wodoslawski wasn’t present, and he wondered where she was. Perhaps she believed she could find a bolthole somewhere, a way to evade the fate Harrington had decreed for them. A place to hide. God knew they could all use one. But there’s not one. Not one that’s deep enough, anyway, he thought. And especially not since Harrington laid it all out on the public boards that way. There’s no one in the entire star system who doesn’t know precisely what the “Alliance’s” conditions are. Or who they blame for all of this. Was it remotely possible, he wondered, that the Manties had been right all along about the existence of the “Mesan Alignment”…or something like the “Alignment,” at least? Could it be that they’d actually been telling the truth—as they understood it, at least—in all those diplomatic notes, all those protests he’d so blithely disregarded?

The situation in the Protectorates promised to be more complicated, and probably ugly. In some instances—like Chotěboř, Seraphim, Włocławek, Mobius, and Swallow—the local star systems looked to be adjusting well, with a minimum of bloodshed and civil unrest. In other cases…not so much. There were a lot of scores to pay off out there in the Fringe, especially on the planets whose native oligarchs had been deepest in OFS’s pocket, and OFS wasn’t going out of its way to engineer any soft landings. In fact, some OFS governors and managers were clearly determined to make the entire process as ugly as they possibly could. And it’s our fault, too, she admitted unflinchingly. We knew a lot of this would happen when we issued the demand. But I honestly don’t see any other way we could have gone. If we hadn’t demanded Frontier Security’s total and immediate disbandment, something that big, with so many people in other people’s pockets, would have hung on, claiming it was “winding down as quickly as possible,” for decades. Maybe even longer.

CF the entire Shadows of Saganami series.

Quite a few Manticoran politicians argued that the Star Empire had a moral responsibility to provide the stability the ex-Protectorates needed. That, as the creator of the power vacuum, the Grand Alliance was the only force capable of filling it. Part of Honor wanted—badly—to endorse that argument. She was a historian, and specifically a military historian, and she knew how poorly it was going to end in some of those star systems. She didn’t want to see that…and, she knew, she wanted to avoid the moral guilt for having allowed it to happen. But the last thing the galaxy needed was for the Grand Alliance to simply replace Frontier Security. And the last thing the Grand Alliance needed was to turn into Frontier Security. The Office of Frontier Security had started with the best of intentions, and it had taken a while for it to warp and corrode. But it had happened, and Honor Alexander-Harrington had no desire to see her star nation—either of her star nations—start down that dark and twisty road.

“We’re not worried at all as long as Eloise is in office,” Elizabeth said. “She and I understand each other, and we intend to stay in very close touch—and Benjamin Mayhew intends to stay in the mix, as well as Oravil Barregos. Unfortunately, she won’t be in office forever. In fact, the Havenite Constitution limits her to no more than three successive terms.” The empress grimaced. “I think that needs to be changed, and I think some of the Constitution’s other term-limit aspects—especially the clause limiting a president’s term to only five T-years—reflects pre-prolong thinking. Now, the Constitution does allow someone to run for the office again after being out of office for at least one term, and I’d say if anyone had a chance of pulling that off, it would be Eloise. Or Tom Theisman, if he wasn’t smart enough to stay as far away from elective office as physically possible! And some members of Congress are pressing to amend the Constitution to remove the three-successive-terms limitation specifically so she can run again. Eloise won’t hear of it, though. For that matter, I think she’d be highly resistant to running for office again—ever—once her three terms are up.” “I can see that,” Honor said. “She’s a historian, too.” “Quite a bit of that going around lately…thank God,” Hamish put in.

“Which is why we have to maintain a strong military posture. I don’t see any way in hell we could maintain the fleet strength we have right now. There are megatons of totally valid domestic reasons to cut naval funding now that the League’s not a threat and we’ve pretty much established we can kick anybody’s ass,” Elizabeth said bluntly. “Manticore has enough of a naval tradition, and enough interstellar commitments, that maintaining a powerful fleet won’t be that great a challenge. Maintaining one as powerful as the one we have now is likely to be impossible, though. Oh, we’ll keep a couple hundred capital ships in commission. A lot of the others can go into reserve—and unlike the Sollies we will rotate ships in and out to keep them up to date—but we’re going to need a lot more cruisers and battlecruisers than SD(P)s in our post-war fleet. And Haven’s navy will probably be under even more pressure to retrench. Partly, I’m afraid, because the Havenite Navy acquired a lot of…negative associations under the Legislaturalists that the Royal Navy’s never had to deal with.”