"David Weber - Honor 07 - In Enemy Hands" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weber David)

soon, they'd made too many
enemies among their competing extremists, and Pierre and State Security had ma
naged to play one faction
off against the other to destroy them. (Actually, that had been one of
Pierre's harder decisions, for he'd
discovered that, having dealt with the enormous, glacially paced bureaucracy
bequeathed to him by the
Legislaturalists, he felt a certain personal sympathy for the Parnassians'
views. In the end, however, he
had decided, not without regret, that the Committee required the bureaucrats
to keep the Republic
running.)
Some of their enemies, however, like LaBoeufs Levelers, might have been
lunatics but had certainly
been capable of excellent timing and good security. Their idea of a proper
society made anarchy look
positively regimented by comparison, but they'd been organized enough to get
several million people
killed in less than a day of heavy fighting. It was amazing what a few kinetic
bombardment strikes and
pee-wee nukes could do to a city of thirty-six million souls, he thought.
Actually, they'd been lucky to get
off as lightly as they had . . . and at least none of the Levelers' known
leadership had survived the
bloodbath. Of course, it was almost certain that at least some of their inner
cadre actually held seats on the
Committee itself. They had to for the Levelers to have come so close to
success, and they remained
unident ified so far . . . whoever they were.
Under the circumstances, Pierre supposed he shouldn't be surprised to find
that his initial ardor for
reform was being ground away by his constantly growing, persistently
unshakable sense of insecurity.
Bad enough when that feeling of vulnerability had been genuine paranoia, with
no basis in fact. Now that
he had proof he not only had enemies but that they could be deadly dangerous,
he was desperate to reach
out for anything which might lend the Committee even a tiny bit more
stability, strengthen his hand in any
way he could. That, coupled with the equally desperate need to win the war to
which the previous regime
had committed the Republic, was the reason for his present proposal, and he
glanced at Oscar Saint-Just
for support.
To an outside observer, Saint-Just must clearly have been the second most
powerful member of the
triumvirate which ruled the Committee and hence the PRH. In fact, some might
consider him even more
powerful, tactically, at least, than Pierre himself, for Saint-Just's was the
iron fist which commanded the