"So Admiral Givens stands by the notion that Pierre and his crowd enjoy 'popular support,' does she?" White Haven cocked his head. "That business in Nouveau Paris didn't change her mind?"
"No, My Lord. Reports about exactly what happened are mixed, but since both ONI and the Special Intelligence Service agree that it's actually strengthened the Committee of Public Safety's position, I don't think we dare disagree."
She grinned, despite the gravity of the conversation, and White Haven smiled back. The Office of Naval Intelligence and the Special Intelligence Service, the umbrella agency coordinating its civilian counterparts, enjoyed a tradition of lively competition... and resentment. As was probably to be expected, ONI tended to be right more often on military matters, while SIS had a vastly better record on diplomatic and economic matters. Where their areas of expertise collided, however, disputes were both common and passionate. Having both of them actually agree on something was almost unheard of.
But then he remembered what they were talking about, and his smile faded.
"I don't think I do disagree," he said after a moment, "but I'm curious as to whether their reasoning coincides with my own. Did they share it with you?"
"In general terms," Honor replied. "I think their first point would be that the fighting took place in Nouveau Paris, nowhere else in the Haven System or, for that matter, anywhere else in the Republic. Since that business at Malagasy and the mutiny in the Lannes System, we've had no reports of open resistance to the central government in any other system. That's not to say that there may not have been some, but if there were, they must have been on a small enough scale for their Office of Public Information to hush them up. That means that whoever controls the capital controls the provinces."
She paused, curving an eyebrow at him, and he nodded for her to go on.
"Their second point is that whoever was behind the coup attempt failed pretty spectacularly," she said. "Whether we take the official Public Information version of what happened or the less coherent—but probably more accurate—versions from other sources, it seems pretty clear that the bulk of their supporters were caught in the open. We've got reports that they used snowflake clusters on street mobs, My Lord." Her eyes were briefly haunted, as she remembered a time when pinnaces under her command had used similar weapons on unprotected targets. "They may have managed to get several million other people killed with them, but after that sort of... treatment, the 'Levelers' can't have a lot of manpower left. Not only have they been crushed themselves, but the example of what happened to them should make anyone else think twice about launching a similar attempt.
"Finally, all the available evidence suggests that it was the Navy which actually stopped them. Public Information insists it was State Security, Committee Security, the Public Order Police, and the Chairman's Guard, supported by the Navy, but all of our other sources suggest it was the other way around. The security forces certainly didn't just lie down and play dead, but their responses weren't coherent. ONI suggests that someone must have managed to compromise their command and control net, though we haven't been able to confirm that. But whatever happened, it was Navy kinetic strikes and air strikes and battle-armored Marines acting under Admiral McQueen's orders that broke the uprising's back, and McQueen didn't go on to take out the Committee herself. That indicates a higher degree of military backing for the Pierre regime than we'd earlier estimated, and the reports that McQueen's been offered a seat on the Committee should only make that backing even stronger."
"So what you're saying," White Haven summarized when she paused once more, "is that the provinces have been brought into line, civilian resistance in the capital has been crushed, and the military has signed on?"
"Pretty much," Honor agreed, "though I don't think I'd put it precisely that way. I'd say that a particular segment of the civilian population of the capital was crushed. Given the amount of carnage and collateral casualties inflicted in the process, I suspect the bulk of the Dolists have decided to support the Committee as a source of stability which may be able to keep similar things from happening again. That goes quite a bit beyond the notion of civilians simply cowed into obedience by an iron fist, My Lord."
"Um." White Haven tilted his chair back once more, propping his elbows on its arms and lacing his fingers together in front of him, and frowned. Once again, he couldn't fault her analysis... or, perhaps more to the point, ONI's and BuShips' estimates of what stability within the People's Republic meant for the building race. The Peeps had definitely turned up the heat under their construction programs. Where it had once taken them very nearly twice as long to build a superdreadnought, they'd cut their disadvantage in half, and if there were no fresh domestic upheavals to disrupt their efforts... .
"However you look at it," he said slowly, "we're losing our margin of superiority. Not just in numbers—I saw the building rate increase coming months ago—but in quality, as well." He shook his head. "We can't afford that, Milady."
"I know," she replied quietly, and watched his eyes narrow as he turned his full attention upon her.
"On the other hand," he said, "I think this adds extra point to my concerns about the Weapons Development Board's recommendations."
"Concerns, My Lord?" she asked calmly.
"Fairly serious ones, as a matter of fact," he said. "Given that we're already looking at steepening numerical odds and improvements in the enemy's technology, this is no time to be tinkering with our own weapons mix by backing blue-sky projects." He snorted derisively, curling a mental lip at the preposterous proposals—and claims—put forth by the WDB white paper Harrington had delivered. He'd only skimmed the document, but that had been enough to show him it was more of the jeune école's nonsense. "The last thing we can afford to do is split our efforts between too many projects—most of which are probably useless anyway. What we need to do is rationalize production plans to turn out the maximum number of weapons we know work rather than fritter away resources pursuing crackpot 'breakthroughs.' Surely the need to concentrate on realizable technologies rather than harebrained, pie-in-the-sky, panacea boondoggles is one lesson people should have learned by now, if only from Old Earth's history!"
"The Board isn't precisely calling for 'boondoggles,' My Lord," Honor said in a slightly frosty tone, but he shook his head.
"I'm sure your aware of my, um, differences of opinion with Lady Hemphill and the jeune école," he said. "I've never denied that there's room for new technology—Ghost Rider is a prime example of a new system with real and immediate value—but there has to be a balance. We can't just throw a new weapon into service because it's new. It has to have a functional slot, and the Fleet requires a rigorous analysis of its advantages—and disadvantages—before it's deployed. The mere existence of a weapon, however potent, doesn't guarantee proper doctrine will be formulated for it, either. A system we haven't figured out how to employ properly could turn out to be more dangerous to us than to the enemy, especially if we commit so heavily to it that we skimp on other, battle-proven weapons."