David Weber - More Than Honor

McQueen's face showed expression for the first time in the meeting. The gesture that drew her lips back over her teeth was not in the least like a smile.

"Don't think of it as millions of citizens, Citizen Brigadier Conflans," she said. "Think of it as having a very, very large target selection." She met his eyes. "This is essential to the future of the People's Republic. Am I understood?"

He nodded, and her eyes went back to the display. And when it's over, a good many of the imbeciles who've kept Haven from having a rational domestic policy will be . . . no longer a factor in the equation.

"Citizen Captain Norton, in the event of any People's Navy unit firing on you, you will respond vigorously in such manner as to best defend this vessel. I will personally command this operation from a forward HQ on one of the pinnaces. Now let's get cracking on the planning side, because we have about ten minutes to do it."

The HQ building's internal net was still functioning. Rob S. Pierre watched the display monitor on the wall with a show of clinical detachment as a massive armored door blew a hundred and fifty stories below them. The muted roar over the sound membranes came a perceptible instant sooner than the feeling beneath his feet.

"Why don't they just blow the building?" Cordelia Ransom asked.

"Decapitation," the Chairman said absently. "If someone else is sitting here and giving orders when the system comes back up—particularly if they have a familiar face or two—"

Nobody looked much more guilty than anyone else. Pity . But then, everyone at this level had first-rate acting ability.

"– nearly everyone will go right on obeying orders on sheer reflex. If there's nothing but a large glowing hole in the ground, the admirals will fight it out with each other for who gets to pick the bones. You know, we've got to do something about all this, presuming we survive the next couple of hours."

The glow died down on the pickup. Plasma bolts were coming through the door, and figures in body armor. Pulser darts tore into them, turning the entrance into a mist of blood and body parts. Then something flashed through and there was a blaze of white light and the pickup went dead. When the screen came back on, it showed Chairman's Guards piling up office furniture in an undamaged corridor further up from the sub-basement. A harassed-looking officer turned for an instant as the pickup indicated somebody with a command override was taking the transmission.

"They're loaded for bear, Sir," she said. Must think it's her CO, Pierre realized. "And there's a lot of them. We can't get out to ground level to cut them off because of the crowds. But we'll make them pay for every foot they take as long as we've got anyone standing."

Pierre felt himself nodding, and an uncomfortable tightness in his chest. They were selling their lives to buy him time.

"You know," he said aloud—the unit wouldn't carry anything back– "I don't think we could have gotten this sort of performance from the Guard by holding their families hostage, even if they are an elitist remnant of the old regime. And equipped only with light personal weapons."

Various expressions rippled across the knots of Committee members scattered through the room. He saw with a faint nausea that they were still divided into the usual factional clusters. How relevant those would be when the attackers burst into the room and started shooting them down was moot. Of course, if they waited long enough to put on show trials, at least half the Committee would be clamoring to switch sides.

I wanted to help Haven, make it great again, he whispered in the back of his mind. I had to act, the Legislaturalists were riding us right down the river of entropy in a ship with engines dead. I had to do it.

That was the problem. Every single step had seemed inevitable and inescapable all along the way. And it had brought them to this.

"Let 'em have it!" the officer on the other end of the pickup said. "Let 'em—"

Pulser rifles snarled. A plasma gun answered them, and droplets of burning metal and plastic scattered backward. A man rolled past the pickup's lens, beating at the molten stuff that coated his legs. Another rose to fire over the burning barricade and toppled backward with his helmet and brains splashing away from his headless trunk. Pierre forced back the hand that would have turned off the input. He deserved to have to watch this. They all did, but he suspected that most of his dear friends and associates would never know why.

"This is going to require careful coordination," McQueen said, in the pinnace's co-pilot seat.

The figures in the screens nodded at her. She smiled at them; it was rare, unexpected, and had just the effect she was looking for.

"Actually, it's going to require a fucking miracle, but we're going to do it anyway, people. Now let's go. "

The pinnace rolled and dived. The huge white-and-blue shield of the planet grew before her, swelling with alarming speed. The pinnace had been made for high-speed atmosphere transits, and the scanners compensated for the growing ball of incandescent air around it. Her mouth quirked. One side-benefit of the confusion the Leveler coup attempt had created was that Traffic Control was completely screwed up, along with the ground-based point defense systems.

"Orbital Fortresses Liberty and Equality are signalling." That was a relayed voice from Rousseau . "Citizen Captain, they demand we vacate prohibited space immediately."

Norton's voice came through, harsh and authoritative. "Record. Rousseau is acting in aid to the civil power, under the direct instructions of the Committee. Any interference in her mission will be treated as treason to the People's Republic. End."

"Wait," McQueen said over the relay. Good man, she thought. Not imaginative, but extremely solid. "Sir, would you please sign off on that for the transmission as well, as Citizen Captain Norton's Commissioner?" Fontein nodded and added his voice.

He'd insisted on coming down with her. He hadn't asked aloud, but . . . she leaned towards him. "Because I'm going to be the one who handled this situation," she said softly. "Not commanded it from orbit, not ordered it done, but the one who did it."

Fontein nodded. That would also make her the one who'd saved the Committee . . . if, that was, she intended to save the Committee and not complete its execution, possibly as a "mistake" in the strike that took out the Levelers. He knew her people would follow her whatever decision she made.

"Speed down to Mach Seven and dropping," the pilot reported. "Nothing so—acquisition! We're being painted!"

McQueen nodded to herself as the shock cages clamped around them and the world outside spun with crazed, chaotic viciousness. Something whined past, dark and solid for a fleeting instant. Close enough to see it, by God, she thought. That meant really inspired piloting. The pinnace juddered in its path as a warhead blew up behind them, and static hashed an electromagnetic pickup.

"Maniacs," she said softly. They were using nuke warheads within the atmosphere. Not total fools, though. They hadn't put all their faith in the logic bomb to keep the Navy from intervening while their coup went on.

Rob S. Pierre kept his eyes on the wall display, hands kneading at the gray streaks over his temples. Everyone else was looking now too, and the fighting was close enough that the building shuddered continuously with the outrages being done to its structural members. Anguish shouted from the speakers: " Don't, George, don't! "