Uncompromising honor, p.29
Uncompromising Honor, page 29
part #19 of Honor Harrington Series
“I’m afraid that’s out of the question, Ms. Yang-O’Grady,” the brown-haired man on Madhura Yang-O’Grady’s com display said. “I regret the fact that you came all this way only to have me refuse your…request, but the referendum’s results have been tallied and officially certified. As a consequence, I really have no choice in the matter.”
System President Vangelis didn’t sound very regretful to Yang-O’Grady, but she made herself smile at him. SLNS Camperdown’s parking orbit was low enough that there was no perceptible delay in com transmissions, and she leaned towards her com’s pickup ever so slightly.
“Mister President,” she said as calmly as she could, “I understand the Hypatian System Constitution mandates both the procedure for and the implementation of any referendum and its outcome. I also understand that under the letter of the law, you’re technically correct that you have ‘no choice’ but to abide by the results of your system’s most recent referendum. Obviously, the Federal Government and I differ with your system’s interpretation of the Solarian Constitution, however, and that’s what creates our present problem. The Interior Ministry believes Article Thirty-Nine, the so-called secession clause of the Constitution, is a legal archaism which has lapsed over the seven and a half centuries”—she emphasized the last word deliberately and allowed her eyes to harden just a bit—“since the original Constitution was ratified. I believe the relevant technical term is ‘desuetude.’ I can provide you with the legal definition if you need it.”
She bit her mental tongue the instant the last sentence escaped her. Her tone had been, even to her own ear, what her mother had always called “snippy,” and what her husband, Jason, called “insufferably bitchy.” The fact that Vangelis was playing word games with her was no excuse for anything that might legitimately put up his back. And lecturing him on arcane legal terminology in which his own attorney general would have schooled him exhaustively before the language of the referendum was ever drafted was a wonderful way to do that.
“I’m familiar with the term, thank you,” Vangelis replied with false amiability. “As I understand it, however, it applies—in the established jurisprudence of the League—to statutes and regulations which have gone unenforced for a sufficiently long period for a new ‘customary usage’ to evolve—one clearly contrary to the original intent and purpose—which presents a bit of a problem for your argument.”
He smiled back at her, showing just an edge of incisor.
“First, a clause of the Constitution is neither a statute nor a regulation; it’s part of the fundamental law of the League, upon which all of those other statutes and regulations rest, and the Founders specifically stated in the preamble that it is alterable only by constitutional amendment.
“Second, Article Thirty-Nine’s never gone ‘unenforced’ because up until the current…unpleasantness, no one ever felt compelled to resort to it.”
His smile turned even thinner. If she’d been male, Yang-O’Grady could have shaved with it.
“And, finally, what the League is confronting today is, I’m afraid, the very reason Article Thirty-Nine was incorporated into the Constitution. And I also seem to recall that a majority—almost two thirds, including the Sol System, in fact—of the League’s original member systems refused to ratify the Constitution without Article Thirty-Nine. While I understand Interior’s position on this matter, Attorney General Boyagis and Chief Justice Varkas have concluded that, given the established history and current circumstances I’ve just described, ‘desuetude’ does not—and cannot—be legally applied to Article Thirty-Nine. And as the Hypatia System’s chief magistrate, I have no option but to enforce the laws of this star system as interpreted by the judiciary unless those laws contravene the Federal Constitution or an overriding federal statute—not a regulation, and not a legal theory which hasn’t been sustained by the League Judiciary.”
“Mister President, the Judiciary is considering this very issue on an expedited basis. Until the Court’s had time to rule, however, the Federal Government—and, in particular, the Interior Ministry—strongly dispute the interpretation of Article Thirty-Nine which you’ve just cited. And, as is the long-standing legal tradition of the League when constitutional ambiguity impacts on government policy, Interior Minister da Orta e Diadoro has sought and received an injunction against the exercise of Article Thirty-Nine until such time as the Court issues a definitive opinion in this matter.”
She delivered her statement in the measured tone she’d rehearsed many times on the voyage from the Genovese System to Hypatia. She’d debated against inserting Jacinta da Orta e Diadoro’s name into the conversation, despite her instructions from her superiors. Those instructions had been firm on that point, however. Vangelis knew as well as she did that da Orta e Diadoro had no more real authority than any of the League’s other official cabinet ministers, but Innokentiy Kolokoltsov and his senior advisers had determined that every legal fiction must be scrupulously adhered to in this case. No doubt that reflected the Manties’—and the Beowulfers’, damn them!—fiery denunciations of the “corrupt, kleptocratic bureaucracy” which had “usurped all legitimate authority” in the League.
From the flicker in Vangelis’s expression, citing the Interior Ministry’s figurehead had not strengthened her argument.
“Again, with all due respect, Ms. Yang-O’Grady,” the System President said after a moment, “Article Thirty-Nine, by its nature, is exempt from any injunction. If that had not been the intention of the Framers, then the article would have become a dead letter, since any corrupt administration”—his eyes went very hard with the last two words—“could have prevented its ever being executed simply by seeking one spurious injunction after another from an equally corrupt and compliant Judiciary. Or seeking only a single injunction while the Judiciary ‘takes the matter under advisement’…and keeps it there until a time more convenient for the administration in question.”
“Are you implying that that’s what’s happened here, Mister President?” Yang-O’Grady inquired sharply.
“By no means, Ms. Yang-O’Grady. I’m simply suggesting that that could have happened, and that the Framers provided Article Thirty-Nine precisely against circumstances in which it might. The exact nature of the concerns which impelled their decision aren’t really germane to the exercise of their clearly stated intent, however.”
Yang-O’Grady’s teeth pressed firmly together and she forced herself to pause, berating herself for rising to his bait in an exchange that was clearly being recorded by both parties.
I wish to hell they’d sent Jason or someone else from Interior to deal with this, she thought.
Jason Yang-O’Grady was a senior member of Nathan MacArtney’s ministry, a Regional Commissioner in the Office of Frontier Security, and she knew why sending someone like him had been a total nonstarter. Despite the fact that Interior had to take point in this situation, no one remotely connected with OFS could possibly be sent out as the government’s spokeswoman to a full member system of the League. That would have been true anywhere, but after the hacked conversation between Abruzzi and MacArtney, the logic had become even more pointed in Hypatia. Under the circumstances, anyone attached to Interior in any way would be tarred with the Frontier Security brush by the lunatic hotheads like Vangelis who were ripping the League apart. That was the entire reason this radioactive potato had landed in Foreign Affairs’ lap, despite all the potentially thorny aspects of sending an envoy from the ministry whose normal charge was dealing with the League’s foreign affairs, not internal issues.
She understood that. Understanding, however, wasn’t the same thing as liking it.
She kept her own expression serious and judicious, stepping down hard on the fury boiling up within her, and part of her wondered how much of that fury stemmed from the fact that she’d known from the outset how unlikely she was to succeed. Failing in a mission like this at a time like this was unlikely to be a career-enhancing accomplishment. That would have been more than enough to frustrate and anger any career Solarian bureaucrat for purely personal reasons. Watching the Solarian League swirl around the drain only made it infinitely worse.
You smiling, arrogant bastard, she thought at Vangelis. Who the hell are you to be telling the Solarian League what it can and can’t do? And what possible justification can you come up with for splitting it in the face of the first really serious threat it’s faced in almost a thousand T-years?
While she fully understood OFS’s mission and supported its objectives, Madhura Yang-O’Grady was more than smart enough to realize that the policies which supported those objectives had provided any number of completely rational—and justifiable, damn it—reasons for any Fringe System to prefer association with the Manties and their “Grand Alliance.” She didn’t like it, and she hated and loathed the uppity Star Empire for creating a situation in which the Solarian government literally could not continue to function in the fashion which had evolved over the last half-millennium. No doubt it was at least partly the bureaucracies’ own fault for having become so dependent on the cash flow from the Protectorates, but that couldn’t absolve the Manties. They must have known—they damned well had known—how attacking OFS’s ascendancy in the Protectorates would destabilize the entire Solarian League, the largest star nation in the history of humankind.
And now she had to deal with this. With the treachery of a full member system, a Core System which couldn’t possibly claim its rights or interests had been stepped on by Frontier Security or any other arm of the Federal Government. She could understand, even accept, that a Fringer might legitimately hate and despise the distant overlords who controlled his star system; she could neither understand nor accept the disloyalty of a system like Hypatia which, along with all the rest of the League, had profited from OFS’s thankless labors for so long.
“Mister President,” she said finally, “you’ve made your position abundantly clear. Now, unfortunately, I need to make mine—the Ministry of the Interior’s and that of the Federal Government as a whole—equally clear. The government’s first choice, obviously, would be for you and your star system to renounce the secession referendum—the almost certainly illegal referendum, when the Judiciary finally rules—and void the vote. Failing that, the government’s second choice would be for your government to voluntarily place the execution of the referendum on hold—as the injunction already granted against it requires—until the status of Article Thirty-Nine is fully determined by the courts. Since you refuse, for reasons I’m sure seem good from your perspective, to agree to either of those reasonable requests, I have no choice but to proceed to the government’s third and least desired option.”
She paused to look him square in the eye, then continued.
“No doubt you’ve observed the number of warships which have accompanied me to Hypatia, Mister President. These ships have been assigned to something called Operation Buccaneer, a commerce-raiding strategy directed against the Manticorans, their allies, and any star system complicit in lending the ‘Grand Alliance’ military, economic, or political support in their aggression against the Solarian League. Admiral Hajdu’s original destination was the Exapia System. He was diverted from Exapia to provide a suitable escort for my own mission. It gives me no pleasure to point this out, but if Hypatia follows through on its threat to secede from the Solarian League, and—even more—on the referendum’s express intention to seek political union with Beowulf, should Beowulf also secede and join its Manticoran friends in armed hostilities against the League—your star system will have placed itself in the category against which Buccaneer is directed.”
She paused again.
“Believe me, Mister President,” she said then, very softly, “Hypatia does not want to find itself in that category.”
“Do you think he really intends to poll his Cabinet about asking for a reconsideration?” Hajdu Győző asked as the stewards finished serving and withdrew. He and Madhura Yang-O’Grady sat in Hajdu’s favorite spot in any Nevada-class battlecruiser. Theoretically, the armorplast dome over their heads represented a chink in Camperdown’s armor, but that was true only in the narrowest, most technical sense. The spacious compartment—listed on the ship schematic as “Flag Officer’s Dining Cabin”—was located on the centerline of the big ship’s dorsal surface. In combat, it was completely protected by the Camperdown’s impeller wedge. Or, if it wasn’t protected by the wedge, the ship was already in so much trouble that lack of armor would be the least of her concerns.
The compartment was much too big for only two people. Had the larger tables been set up, it could easily have seated fifty, which meant a table for two seemed lost and tiny in its vastness, but Hajdu loved the view, and he’d discovered Yang-O’Grady shared his tastes in that respect. And while the limitless starscape would normally have made the compartment seem even vaster, that wasn’t the case tonight. Camperdown was inverted, relative to the planet, and that gave Hajdu and his guest a magnificent view of Hypatia’s white-and-blue-swirled sphere as it floated against the stars.
The view of Hypatia’s low-orbit infrastructure was equally spectacular. Especially when he thought about what might happen to that infrastructure so shortly.
“I don’t know,” Yang-O’Grady sighed. “I think he probably took it to them but the real question is whether or not he’ll abide by the result if they vote in favor of putting the referendum on hold.”
She picked at the delicious Fatányéros on the traditional wooden platter in front of her. The grilled meats were surrounded by a frame of garlic mashed potatoes, rather than garnished with the traditional fried potato slices, and it smelled delicious. Unfortunately, she was in no fit mood to do justice to the admiral’s chef, and she laid her fork aside and reached for her wineglass.
“And do you think he will?”
“Honestly?” Her eyes were dark as she gazed at the beautiful blue planet “above” them, and she shook her head. “No. I don’t think he’s going to give a centimeter. He pretended to be neutral during the secession campaign because that was what was legally required of him, but everyone knows he was one of the referendum’s strongest supporters in private. I’m inclined to think he doesn’t really believe Buccaneer might apply to his star system, and in a lot of ways, I wish he was right. But he’s not, and in a lot of other ways, I’m perfectly all right with that if that’s the way these people want it.” Her lips tightened. “When you’re fighting for your life and someone’s announced she’s going to help the people trying to strangle you, she doesn’t have any kick coming when you break her arm before she can.”
“I see your point,” Hajdu murmured, and reached for his own wineglass. “So why do you think he took it to his Cabinet, then?”
“If he actually took it to his Cabinet at all—and I’m not sure he did; or, for that matter, that there’d be any reason for him to take it to them, since it seems pretty damned clear they all agreed with the referendum’s outcome—then it’s only to buy time.”
“Time for what?”
“Time for the dispatch boat he sent off to Beowulf the instant we appeared to come back with an ‘Alliance’ fleet,” Yang-O’Grady said flatly. “I told him Buccaneer specifies a seventy-two-hour grace period to evacuate system infrastructure. The only thing he could possibly be hoping for is to stall me—us—until the Manties arrive or he knows they’re going to arrive in less than seventy-two hours.”
“Actually, Buccaneer doesn’t mandate any specific ‘grace period,’” Hajdu observed, looking across the table at her, and she nodded.
“I understand that. For that matter, I was listening when Commodore Brigman briefed me on Parthian Shot. But these people are so damn sanctimonious, so full of the legalisms they think protect them from the consequences of their own actions, that if I hadn’t told him your orders dictate a specific timeframe, they’d figure they could spin it out indefinitely by telling us they ‘haven’t yet had sufficient time’ to complete the evacuation.” She shrugged. “I had to give them a definite time window if I wanted to…focus their thinking properly.”
“I see.”
Hajdu considered what she’d just said and decided she was probably right. She was definitely right about the Hypatians’ desire to defer and delay Buccaneer as long as possible, and it was hard to blame them for that.
No, he told himself after a moment, actually, it’s very easy to blame them for putting themselves in a position where they need to defer and delay anything. It’s their own damned fault, and any pressure she can bring to bear to get them to swallow their pride—and stupidity—and crawl back off the ledge is all to the good. Besides, a seventy-two-hour window won’t change things much from my perspective. It’s the next best thing to hundred and thirty hours one-way to Beowulf. If they sent a dispatch boat off the instant we arrived, we could wait six more T-days and still give them their frigging seventy-two hours and be gone by the time anyone got here from Beowulf.
And if it happened that somebody turned up sooner than that, he had an ops plan to deal with that, too.
He considered that thoughtfully for several seconds, then sipped wine and set his glass back down.
“I believe it was Gustav Anderman who observed that when a man knows he’s going to be hanged in a week, it tends to concentrate his thinking.”
“Was it Anderman?” Yang-O’Grady tilted her head, eyebrows furrowed. “I always thought it was Thomas Svartkopff.” She considered it for a moment, then shrugged. “Well, whichever one of them said it, it’s certainly true, and if there was ever anyone who needs to do a little concentrated thinking, it’s those idiots down on Hypatia.” Her smile was cold. “I’d have preferred to accomplish my mission without you having to accomplish yours, Admiral. If they decline to give us that option, though, I’m sure you and your people will be able to amply demonstrate why they shouldn’t have.”
“Indeed,” Hajdu Győző murmured.
