House of Steel: The Honorverse Companion

by David Weber

  By the end of the thirteenth century PD, Grayson had reestablished a substantial space presence, with private industry providing the lion’s share of deep-space industry and the increasing exploitation of the asteroid belt. The habitats orbiting Grayson remained extremely primitive by present-day standards, heavily dependent upon support from the planetary surface in many critical areas, particularly food and other life-support elements. Space industry was providing benefits which clearly outweighed the support costs, however, and ambitious plans were afoot to construct orbital farms to produce not simply sufficient food to support the extra-atmospheric population, but also significant quantities of foodstuffs free of the omnipresent heavy-metals contamination which had such destructive effects for Grayson’s planetary citizens. The increase in private contractors and employees had inevitably resulted in the need for both search-and-rescue capabilities and law enforcement powers, and in 1286 PD, the Five Keys created the Grayson Space Guard (GSG).

  Civil War, the Time of Dying

  1337–1351 PD

  In 1337 PD, the Faithful launched a coup d’état against the Conclave of Steadholders, triggering the Grayson Civil War. Steadholder Jeremiah Bancroft, an avowed member of the Faithful and one of the Five Keys, had petitioned for a special meeting of the Conclave of Steadholders, ostensibly to address some of the more contentious issues dividing the Faithful from the Moderates. Protector John Mayhew II, with the support of Reverend Elkanah Timmons, called the special Conclave and the steadholders attended with their heirs. Steadholder Bancroft never arrived, but troops of the Faithful massacred fifty-three of fifty-six steadholders and their heirs. The other two survivors, Steadholder Oswald and Steadholder Simonds, were also members of the Faithful. Reverend Timmons was “accidentally killed” in the crossfire, the first patriarch of the Church of Humanity Unchained to die by violence.

  The Mayhew armsmen died to the man, fighting with Protector John at their head, but by their sacrifice, they saved John’s son Benjamin, who escaped to claim the Protectorship as Benjamin IV. The seventeen-year-old Protector, who was to become known in the fullness of time as Benjamin the Great, fled to Mackenzie Steading and rallied the shattered remnants of the other Steadholders’ Guards to him. Fighting was extraordinarily bitter and bloody, and the brutal measures the Faithful employed in an effort to suppress resistance in areas occupied by their troops was a key element in Benjamin’s success in rallying and leading the military opposition. Damage to the planetary infrastructure, including its farmlands, was extreme, and almost forty percent of the total planetary population died.

  One of the Faithful’s first moves was to immediately terminate all support for the despised space industry and to demolish its ground-based component, throwing the fragile deep-space community back on its own limited resources. At the same time, the GSG promptly declared its support for Benjamin IV as the legitimate Protector and head of government, although there was little it could do at that time to assist him, given the need to divert every scrap of orbital and deep-space capability to simple survival, especially after the Faithful destroyed two of the three primary orbital habitats with surface-to-space missile strikes. The GSG was able to create an antimissile defense for the remaining habitat, but only at the expenditure of even more manpower and resources from a critically limited supply of each.

  War is usually an impetus to research and development, and the bitterness of the fighting and the total incompatibility of the religious beliefs on either side led to the Faithful’s creation and planned use of a doomsday weapon. Although the practicality of the threat, designed to crack the planet with a succession of powerful warheads, was questionable, there was no doubt that they would almost certainly wreak still more destruction on Grayson’s remaining population centers. They might well also destroy sufficient of the farmland which had been slowly and painfully decontaminated over the past four centuries to threaten all remaining human life on Grayson through mass starvation. Faced with that threat, Steadholder Bancroft’s senior wife, Barbara, defected. Warned by her of the Faithful’s plans, Benjamin’s forces found and defused the first of the doomsday weapons. The Faithful, however, continued building and secreted the weapons around the planet.

  Some of Benjamin’s advisers had seriously questioned his decision to “waste” desperately needed resources on off-world projects when they were fighting for their very lives on the planetary surface. In their opinion, it would have been far wiser to withdraw the remaining human presence from space to the planetary surface rather than expend effort, money, and supplies on sustaining it. In the event, they discovered how wise Benjamin had been to reject their arguments when the GSG, given the vitally needed transfusion of resources and support he was able to provide, designed and built a kinetic bombardment capability. Available in 1349 PD, the ability to call in impossible-to-intercept, highly accurate, high-kiloton range kinetic strikes provided the critical edge Benjamin’s still badly outnumbered but passionately loyal, skillfully led, and grimly determined army required to take the war to the Faithful. Another two years of bloody combat (and yet more damage to the farms and protected habitats necessary for survival) were required for the final defeat of the Faithful, but virtually every analysis of the Civil War has agreed that the GSG provided the margin which led to Benjamin the Great’s ultimate victory.

  Although the surface infrastructure on Grayson suffered terribly through the Civil War, the remaining spaceborne habitat was largely untouched after the initial missile strikes, as were the ships used to transport goods to and from this platform. The relatively minor nature of the damage to remainder of Grayson’s distributed spaceborne infrastructure was to prove critical to ending the Civil War.

  An impasse had been reached: the Faithful no longer had the ability to conquer the planet, but they could destroy its habitability once and for all. Benjamin, with the assistance of Reverend Baruch Gonzalez, Reverend Timmons’ successor, ultimately brokered a deal with the Faithful under which Grayson’s Moderates built short-range starships to transport the Faithful to an exile on Masada in the Endicott System in exchange for the locations of the hidden weapons.

  Reconstruction, The Time of Healing and The Rise of the Sword

  1351–1397 PD

  The Grayson Civil War officially ended in 1351 PD, although the Faithful did not leave Grayson for the Endicott System until 1362, when the starships necessary for the trip had been constructed. Including the Faithful who departed for Masada, Grayson had lost almost fifty-three percent of its pre-Civil War population in just twenty-eight years and damage to the planetary infrastructure, while not total, had been catastrophic. Worse still, in some ways, the capacity diverted to building the starships required for the Faithful’s exile had severely hampered early reconstruction efforts. Fortunately, the Graysons had lost none of the hardworking pragmatism that comes from living on a planet that is trying to kill you even in the good times. The same traditional goal-oriented R&D which had allowed Grayson to produce the capability to exile the Faithful to Masada was turned to the reclamation of the Moderates’ home.

  The political results of the Civil War proved far more lasting than the mere physical effects. The old order, defined by a relatively weak Protector serving as first among equals in a small group of leading steadholders, was completely turned on its head. One of the Five Keys and two other steadholders had turned traitor, the loyal Keys had been gunned down to a man, and Protector Benjamin (already beginning to be called “the Great”) had rallied the leaderless steadings in defeating the enemy. Under Reverend Gonzalez, the Church had strongly supported Benjamin yet deliberately distanced itself from direct control of Grayson politics as a response to the religious fanaticism which had sparked the Civil War. Gonzalez continued to support Benjamin after the war, which, combined with his own achievements, gave him the opportunity to set up the new political system in whatever manner he chose, and that is exactly what he did.

  The keys which steadholders wore around their necks
were symbols of their power, and as “first among equals,” the Protector had shared that symbol. Benjamin’s new Constitution, however, promulgated in 1357 PD, formalized the political supremacy of the Protectorship, giving Benjamin and his heirs the de jure power that he had acquired de facto during the Civil War. Accordingly, the Protector’s symbol became the Sword, rather than the Key, underscoring that supremacy and how it had been won. The steadings of the three treasonous steadholders were combined as the Sword Steading, the Protector’s personal demesne, further cementing Mayhew dominance in the post-Civil War era. The original Mayhew Steading became the steading of the Protector’s heir, thus effectively combining four of the larger steadings of Grayson in the direct Mayhew line.

  Nor was that change the only dilution of steadholder power. The Constitution also created a second parliamentary house, the Conclave of Steaders. From the perspective of the exhausted steadholders, the common steaders had earned representation in a chamber of their own because of the way in which they had continued the fight even after their steadholders had been murdered or killed in battle. From the perspective of Benjamin IV (a shrewd politician, as well as a military leader of genius), the natural enemies and competitors for the Sword’s authority were most likely to be found in the Keys, whereas a lower house would be inclined to ally itself with the Sword to protect its own prerogatives.

  The cultural rebuilding of this era was made possible largely by the fact that the Faithful who wanted to leave the planet had done so. The lack of a defeated and disaffected former foe and the immediate needs of rebuilding, coupled with a general war-weariness, permitted a rapid and uncommon degree of religious reconciliation and healing. Madame Barbara Bancroft’s remarriage to Protector Benjamin IV also helped Graysons of a more conservative religious perspective view themselves in full communion with the Church and sharing in the Protection of the Sword.

  Even the setbacks were used to good effect. When an assassin murdered Madame Barbara Mayhew, members of the crowd tore the killer apart, and Protector Benjamin, with the full support of the Grayson steaders, used the opportunity to root out any remaining pockets of extremist groups unwilling to live at peace with their neighbors.

  By the time of Benjamin the Great’s death in 1397 PD, Grayson had largely completed the rebuilding process.

  Maturation, The Time of the Protectors

  1397–1703 PD

  The nearly three centuries following the rule of Protector Benjamin the Great were a golden age for Grayson. The number of steadings continued to increase. The population continued to expand. The rate of growth was high for Grayson, considering the hostile environment. A sense of planetwide unity grew, particularly as the planetary data-net expanded and grew in complexity and capability.

  In political terms, the authority of the Sword was wounded by the six-year dynastic war between 1418 and 1424 PD, which was sparked by Thomas II’s assassination of his brother Caleb. Fortunately for the Sword’s fortunes, Caleb’s junior wife Patricia fled to her father, Steadholder Dietmar Yanakov. Unknown to Thomas (who became known to history as “Thomas the Usurper”), his sister-in-law was pregnant, and Yanakov and Steadholder Abner Mackenzie forged an alliance among a coalition of steadholders to depose Thomas and replace him with Caleb’s posthumously born son, Bernard.

  Barely twenty years had passed between Benjamin the Great’s death and Thomas’ coup attempt, and the Constitution (itself barely sixty years old) might well have foundered under such stress. Yanakov, Mackenzie, Reverend Ronald O’Day, and their allies among the Keys, however, recognized the potential for fresh civil war if that was allowed to happen. They stood unswervingly behind the infant Protector, and Yanakov and his daughter trained Bernard literally from the cradle up to rule and not simply reign. Under their rigorous, sometimes harsh tutelage, Bernard V emerged as a ruler almost as skilled as his great-grandfather, Benjamin IV, and strongly reasserted the Sword’s authority after Yanakov’s death in 1443 PD.

  There were other setbacks as well. Perhaps the most egregious was the decision by three protectors in a row—Bernard VI, Peter, and Benjamin VII—between 1569 and 1655 PD to effectively turn their backs on further development of space. In fairness, all of them were focused on pressing planetary development issues, but many historians argue that their attitudes owed a great deal to how much of the existing space infrastructure had been created primarily to build the Faithful’s exile fleet, which “tainted” it in the eyes of some of Benjamin IV’s descendants. It was fortunate, however, that Protector Adrian (1655–1681 PD) reversed that trend when he did. Without his change in policy, Grayson would have found itself virtually defenseless in the face of the first Masadan attack on Yeltsin’s Star.

  While Grayso was focused on domestic affairs, however, the Faithful were rapidly expanding and consolidating on Masada. In one of history’s greater ironies, Masada was a far more hospitable planet than Grayson, and without the checks of a hostile environment, the Masadan population grew rapidly. More ominously, had the Graysons known it, the Faithful’s attitude towards technology had changed radically. While “the Sin of the Machine” remained anathema, the Masadan Church viewed the suppression of the “heretical” Church on Grayson as a holy mission laid upon it by God Himself. The Moderates had been the first to turn their backs on God; therefore, they and the entire planet which had been intended as His perfect world must be conquered and restored to God’s will. All else must be subordinated to that end, and just as God had granted their ancestors the dispensation to use that technology absolutely essential to survival on Fallen Grayson, so He would grant them the dispensation to develop and use whatever of technology was required for the reconquest of Grayson.

  However theologically inconsistent that doctrine might have been, it led to a fierce sense of Masadan identity and solidarity and an astounding reversal in the Faithful’s attitude towards research and development. The first Grayson-Masadan War was one of the few interstellar wars fought without gravitic technology, but the fact that it could be fought at all within little more than three hundred years of the Masadans’ exile speaks volumes of their determination and ability to transcend their antitechnology biases.

  The initial series of raids were carried out entirely by sublight vessels, as neither combatant had the hyperdrive, the impeller, or the Warshawski sail. The GSG had expanded in step with the growth in industrial capacity and population, and electronic listening posts and remote observatories were established outside the system’s Kuiper belt to monitor (as well as possible) events in Endicott, since no one on Grayson was foolish enough to believe the Faithful did not cherish a burning hatred and desire for vengeance following their defeat. Those monitoring posts had been neglected under Adrian’s predecessors, though, which, coupled with well thought out Masadan measures to conceal the nature of their preparations, might well have proved fatal. Fortunately, however, the signatures of the attack force’s fusion drives and the electromagnetic noise of their passage through the interstellar medium gave sufficient warning—barely—for defensive measures to be taken prior to the first Masadan strike on Grayson in 1672 PD. The GSG’s existing cutters would have been thoroughly inadequate to defeat that attack, but Protector Adrian had been given sufficient warning to commission a force of hastily converted ore-carriers and personnel transports to meet it.

  The fighting was furious, bloody, and costly. To quote from Andrew Preston’s God’s Warriors: Masada and the Endless Crusade:

  “Modern analysts are uniformly shocked by the suicidal obsessiveness of the Masadan raiding parties. The huge ramscoop fusion carriers that made the multi-year journey to ‘cleanse’ their ancestors’ homeworld were fueled by hydrogen isotopes. Their crews, though, were fueled by religious fervor and a searing hatred, worked to a razor’s edge over three centuries of careful preparation by the Elders of the Faithful. By the time the first Masadans returned to Yeltsin’s Star they saw themselves as chosen instruments of God, guaranteed salvation, on a one-way mission to fight t
he forces of Satan at the gates of Hell itself. They did not even bother to establish a refueling complex for a chance at returning home. They just fought and died, willing to do anything to purge a planet none of them had ever seen, let alone set foot on, of a people with whom none of them had any personal experience.”

  The Faithful were defeated, but the cost was heavy and it was evident to all Graysons that Masada would not accept that defeat as final. As a recognition of that fact—and also as a well-earned tribute to its services—the GSG became the Grayson Space Navy on November 1, 1675 PD, becoming an independent, coequal of the Grayson Army, a status it has maintained ever since.

  The follow-up attack in 1696 PD assumed the same flavor, with the Graysons enjoying the advantages of years of warning and a defensive position. The Masadans had realized that, since surprise was impossible, a base of operations in the outer Yeltsin System was necessary, but the increasingly capable Grayson Space Navy prevented the establishment of such a base.

  Rediscovery and Modern Warfare

  1703–1750 PD

  In 1793 PD, the Havenite merchant ship Goliath contacted both Yeltsin’s Star and the Endicott System, reestablishing contact between the descendants of Austin Grayson’s colonists and the rest of humanity. Although additional contacts with the galactic mainstream were sporadic and infrequent, to say the least, the effects of rediscovery were profound. New technologies, whose possibility had never occurred to any Grayson or Masadan, were revealed, and a period of frenetic R&D ensued, driven by the longstanding hostility between the two star systems. Although neither Grayson nor Masada could obtain more than bits and pieces from their occasional visitors, both were aware of the dire consequences of falling behind their enemies, and both introduced domestically engineered versions of the hyperdrive, impeller drive, and Warshawski sail in remarkably short order. The locally produced iterations of those systems were both crude and outmoded compared to more modern systems, yet in the process of essentially reinventing technologies the rest of the galaxy had enjoyed for centuries, Grayson researchers opened several promising lines of development which had not occurred to anyone else.