House of Steel The Honorverse Companion - By David Weber Page 0,9

clause had been very carefully worded. The actual language only authorized the government to punish “hate speech” and language which “attacked another’s dignity on the basis of political, religious, or economic differences.” Of course, the courts had taken a rather broader view of the government’s authority in that regard than the letter of the constitution might have suggested, but it had really only been officially codifying what had gradually become the normal, accepted state of affairs over the previous T-century.

And then, with the new constitution safely in place to rescue the Republic from insolvency and ruin, the first budget passed under it had actually increased the deficits, raising them to a level which could only lead to outright collapse within the next fifty T-years. Everyone had believed that eventually the Legislaturalists would be forced to bite the bullet, to reform their system before it fell apart under them, but the Legislaturalists had had another solution in mind, and the reason for those increased deficits had become clear as the Peoples Navy’s tonnage began to increase steadily.

It hadn’t happened overnight. In fact, they’d managed to hide their increased military spending well enough no one had even noticed for the first ten or fifteen T-years, and once people did start to notice, they’d managed to pass it off as a means to “prime the economic pump” through government funded “jobs production” and “skill training programs.” Oh, there’d been “wild rumors” about huge numbers of Havenite battleships being secretly constructed, but no one had believed them.

Despite everything, Haven was still the golden image. Its economic and fiscal woes had to be only temporary, just until the Republic caught its breath and got its house back in order. It was impossible for it to work any other way, and despite any transitory fiscal dislocations, its laudable commitment to economic fairness remained the model everyone else wanted to emulate.

Several of the other star nations in the Haven Quadrant had done just that, following the Republic into statist economies and guaranteed standards of living. And to be fair, most of those other star nations’ governments had avoided the death spiral of the People’s Republic for the simple reason that they’d been relatively honest governments. They’d managed to provide their own equivalent of the Havenite Basic Living Stipend without completely destroying their economies’ competitiveness and productivity, and they’d managed to pay for their social programs without plunging themselves ever further into debt, but they’d done it only by radically changing their spending goals and policies. Unable to pay for everything without destroying their own economies, they’d cut back even further on military spending, relying for protection against outside aggression on Haven, the traditional guarantor of interstellar peace and order in the Haven Quadrant. In fact, many of them had actually been relieved by the expansion of the Peoples Navy, since its ability to protect them provided such a hefty “peace dividend” for the rest of their national budgets.

Until 1846, that was.

Less than eighteen T-months after Roger’s letter to the Proceedings, the rest of the Haven Quadrant—or as much of it as was willing to face reality, at least—had discovered the real reason for the People’s Republic’s military buildup.

In the last four T-years, the People’s Republic had “annexed” no fewer than eleven independent star systems. Most of them had been Havenite daughter colonies, and the majority of them had “spontaneously sought” inclusion in the new, greater, interstellar People’s Republic of Haven. The thing that amazed Samantha was that there were actually people—quite a lot of them, in fact—who accepted the “spontaneous” nature of those star systems’ eagerness to join the PRH. Obviously even the analysts who’d worried about the Havenite military buildup had missed the Legislaturalists’ accompanying investment in espionage and subversion, although they hadn’t really needed all that much subtlety in many cases. A quiet ultimatum here, a private conversation between the Havenite ambassador and a system president there, an offhand reference to the heavy task forces waiting to sweep in and take control by force of arms if an invitation wasn’t forthcoming in another case, had proved quite effective.

It wouldn’t take very much longer for all of Haven’s daughter colonies to be gathered to her bosom, Samantha Winton thought grimly, her mouth tightening despite Magnus’ comforting, buzzing purr. And if there was anyone in the entire galaxy who believed the People’s Republic would stop then, she had some magic beans she wanted to sell them.

“We’re running out of time, Roger,” she told her son quietly. Monroe