"I agree with you, Your Grace, but, forgive me if I seem cold, but what does that matter? Lady Harrington is Sky Domes' majority stockholder, Gerrick is their chief engineer, even Howard Clinkscales is their CEO. However it happened, the legal responsibility falls squarely on them. It was their job to see to it that a disaster like this never, ever, happened... and they didn't do it."
The Protector scrubbed his face with his hands, and a cold chill went through him, one that was totally independent of the death and destruction on his HD. He loathed himself for feeling it, but he had no choice; he was the Protector of Grayson. He had to be a political animal as well as a father with children of his own.
Henry had seen the reports. Within days, hours, the news people would have them, as well, and what the Chancellor had just said would be being said over every news channel on the planet. Nothing, nothing, could have been better calculated to infuriate Graysons, and every person who'd ever denounced Honor Harrington, every person who'd ever even entertained private doubts about her, would hear those reports and awaken to a deep, implacable hatred for the woman who'd let this happen. And hard on the heels of that hate would come the denunciations, no longer whispers but shouts of fury. "Look!" they would cry. "Look what happens when you let a woman exercise a man's authority! Look at our murdered children and tell me this was God's will!"
Benjamin Mayhew could already hear those anguished, heartfelt cries, and in them he heard the utter destruction of his reforms.
"Dear Tester, what have we done?" William Fitzclarence whispered. He, too, sat staring at an HD, and Samuel Mueller and Edmond Marchant sat on either side of him. "Children," Lord Burdette groaned. "We've killed children!"
"No, My Lord," Marchant said. Burdette looked at him, blue eyes dark with horror, and the defrocked priest shook his head, his own eyes dark with purpose, not shock. "We killed no one, My Lord," he said in a soft, persuasive voice. "It was God's will that the innocent perish, not ours."
"God's will." Burdette repeated numbly, and Marchant nodded.
"You know how little choice we have in doing His work, My Lord. We must bring the people to their senses, show them the danger of allowing themselves to be poisoned by this harlot and her corrupt society."
"But this...!" Burdette's voice was a bit stronger, and a hint of color flowed back into his ashen face, and Marchant sighed sadly.
"I know, My Lord, yet it was God's will. We had no way to know children would be present, but He did. Would He have allowed the dome to collapse when it did if it wasn't part of His plan? Terrible as their deaths were, their souls are with Him now, innocent of sin, untouched by the world's temptations, and their deaths have multiplied the effect of our plan a thousand fold. Our entire world now sees the consequences of embracing Manticore and the Protector's 'reforms,' and nothing, My Lord, nothing, could have driven that lesson home as this has. Those children are the Lord's martyrs, fallen in His service as surely as any martyr ever perished for his Faith."
"He's right, William," Mueller said quietly. Burdette turned to his fellow Steadholder, and Mueller raised one hand. "My inspectors have already found the substandard ceramacrete. I'll wait a day or so before announcing it, long enough for us to check and recheck the analyses, so that no one can possibly question our conclusions, but the proof is there. The proof, William. There's no way that harlot or the Protector can weasel their way around it. We didn't pick the moment it would collapse; God did that, and in doing so he made our original plan enormously more successful than we'd ever dared hope."
"Maybe... maybe you're right," Burdette said slowly. The horror had faded in his eyes, replaced by the supporting self-righteousness of his faith... and a cold light of calculation. "It's her fault," he murmured, "not ours. She's the one who drove us to this."
"Of course she is, My Lord," Marchant agreed. "It takes a sharp sword to cut away Satan's mask, and we who wield the Lord's blade can only accept whatever price He thinks mete to ask of us."
"You're right, Edmond," Burdette said in a stronger voice. He nodded and looked back at the HD, and this time there as a slight, sneering curl to his lip as he listened to the reporters grief-fogged voice.
"You're right," Steadholder Burdette repeated. "We've set our hands to God's work. If He demands we bear the blood price, then His will be done, and may that harlot burn in Hell for all eternity for driving us to this."
Adam Gerrick walked into the conference room, and his face was terrible. The young man who'd left for Mueller Steading that morning had died with the collapse of his shining dream. The Adam Gerrick who'd returned to Harrington was a haunted man, with the joy of accomplishment quenched to bitter ashes in his eyes.
But he was also an angry man, filled with rage and determined to find out what had happened. He'd find the man whose greed was responsible for this carnage, this murder, he promised himself, and when he did, he'd kill the cold, calculating bastard with his two bare hands.
"All right," he said harshly to his senior engineers, "the Mueller inspectors have barred us from the site, but we still have our own records. We know what was supposed to go into that project, and we are going to find out what actually went into it ... and how."
"But..." The man who'd started to speak closed his mouth as cold, burning eyes swiveled to his face. He licked his lips and looked appealingly at his colleagues, then turned unwillingly back to his superior.
"What?" Gerrick asked in a liquid helium voice.
"I've already putted the records, Adam," Frederick Bennington said. "I've checked everything that went to the site and compared expenditures in every category against what we still have in invoice."
"And?"
"And it all checks!" Bennington said forcefully. "We didn't skimp anywhere, Adam, I swear it." He laid a mini-comp on the table. "There are the records, and they're not just mine. I'm in charge of procurement, and that makes me the logical suspect. I know that. So when I pulled the records, I took Jake Howell from Accounting with me, and I brought in three inspectors from the Harrington Bureau of Records. These figures are solid, Adam. We checked them five times. Every single item we bought and shipped to that site met or surpassed Sword code standards."
"Then someone swapped them on-site," Gerrick rasped. "Some bastard skimmed the code materials and replaced them with crap."
"No way, Adam." Despite his own shock, Bennington's voice was flat with assurance. "Not possible. We're working round-the-clock shifts, and we've maintained continuous on-site visual records. You know that." Gerrick nodded slowly, his expression suddenly intent, for Sky Domes was in the midst of a motion efficiency study, and that required detailed visual records of all their procedures.
"All right," Bennington went on, "if anyone had stolen materials from the site, we'd have at least some evidence of it on record. But every air lorry that entered or left that site is on chip, Adam, and aside from the disposal lorries headed for reclamation or the landfill, none of them, I repeat, none of them, left loaded. All materials movement was into the site."