Mission of Honor-ARC (36 page)

Theisman looked doubtful, and Montreau looked downright skeptical. Pritchart, on the other hand, had considerably more hands-on experience in the worlds of espionage and covert operations than either of them did. Besides, she thought, LePic had a point. It
was
Victor Cachat they were talking about, and that young man had demonstrated a remarkable talent for survival even under the most unpromising circumstances.

"All right," she said, leaning forward and folding her forearms on her desk, "I'm with you, Denis, in wishing we knew something about what happened to Cachat. There's nothing we can do about that, though, and I think we're pretty much in agreement that what we do know from our end effectively confirms what Duchess Harrington's told us?"

She looked around at her advisers' faces, and, one by one, they nodded.

"In that case," the president continued, "I think it behooves us to pay close attention to her warning about Elizabeth's patience and the . . . how did she put it? The '
flexibility
' of Manticore's options. I don't know that I buy into the notion that this was deliberately aimed at Manticore and Haven alike, that Mesa wants Manticore to trash the Republic before the League trashes
Manticore
. I think it's at least remotely possible, though. More to the point, it doesn't matter if that's what they're trying to do if that's what they end up doing, anyway. So I think it's up to us to make sure our own problem children at the negotiating table don't decide to try to take advantage of this."

"And exactly how do you propose to do that, Madam President?" Theisman asked skeptically.

"Actually," Pritchart said with a chilling smile, "
I
don't plan to say a word to them about it."

"No?" There was no disguising the anxiety in Denis LePic's voice . . . nor any indication that the attorney general had tried very hard to disguise it.

"It's called 'plausible deniability,' Denis," she replied with that same shark-like smile. "I'd love to simply march all of them in at pulser point to sign on the dotted line, but I'm afraid if I tried that, Younger, at least, would call my bluff. So I can't just shut him up everytimehe starts throwing up those roadblocks of his. That's part of the political process, unfortunately, and we don't need to be setting any iron-fist precedents for repressing political opponents. Despite that, however, I think I can bring myself to compromise my sense of political moral responsibility far enough to keep him from using
this
roadblock, at least."

"How?" This time the question came from Theisman.

"By using our lunatic who
hasn't
gone missing." Pritchart chuckled coldly. "Everyone knows Kevin Usher is a total loose cannon. I'm pretty sure that if he called Younger and McGwire, let's say, in for confidential in-depth briefings and was very careful to speak to both of them off the record, with no embarrassing recordings, and no inconvenient witnesses to misconstrue anything he might say, he could convince them it would be . . . unwise to use these unfortunate and obviously groundless allegations out of Mesa for partisan political advantage."

"Threaten them with, ah,
direct action
, you mean?" Unlike LePic, Theisman seemed to have no particular qualms with the notion, and Pritchart's smile turned almost seraphic.

"Oh,
no
, Tom!" She shook her head and clucked her tongue reprovingly. "Kevin
never
threatens. He only
predicts
probable outcomes from time to time." The humor disappeared from her smile as the shark surfaced once more. "He doesn't do it all that often, but when he does," the president of the Republic of Haven finished, "he's
never
wrong."

"The Solarian League can't accept something like this—not out of some frigging little pissant navy out beyond the Verge—not matter what kind of provocation they may think they have! If we let them get away with this, God only knows who's going to try something stupid next!"

—Fleet Admiral Sandra Crandall, SLN

"Well, this is a fine kettle of fish. Excuse me—
another
fine kettle of fish."

Elizabeth Winton's tone was almost whimsical; her expression was anything but. Her brown eyes were dark, radiating anger, determination, and not a little bit of fear, and the treecat stretched across her lap, instead of the back of her chair this time, was very, very still.

"It's not exactly a complete surprise," Hamish Alexander-Harrington, the Earl of White Haven, pointed out.

"No," the queen agreed, "although the confirmation that this Anisimovna
understated
the number of superdreadnoughts rattling around the Verge probably comes under that heading."

"I doubt anyone's likely to disagree with that, Your Majesty," Sir Anthony Langtry said dryly.

"And I doubt anyone in this room thinks discovering they're really out there's going to make things any better," William Alexander, Baron Grantville, pointed out.

"That depends entirely on what sort of officer's in command of them," Admiral Sir Thomas Caparelli, the First Space Lord of the Royal Manticoran Navy, told the prime minister. "If this Crandall has the brains of a fruit fly, she'll stay where she is and try to keep things from spinning any further out of control until she knows exactly what happened at New Tuscany and she's had time to seek guidance from home."

"And just what leads you to assume any Solarian flag officer sent to the Madras Sector is going to have two brain cells to rub together, Sir Thomas?" Elizabeth asked acidly. "I'm willing to concede that there might be one or two Frontier Fleet commodores who were already in the area who could seal their own shoes without printed instructions. But if the officer in command of those ships was sent out under the same master plan that sent Byng, she's either a complete and total idiot who needs help wiping drool off her chin—and God knows the Solarian League's got enough of
them
to go around!—or else she's in Manpower's pocket. In the first case, she's going to react as if Mike's fleet is a nail and she's a hammer out of blind, unthinking spinal reflex. In the
second
case, she's going to react as if Mike's fleet is a nail and she's a hammer because that's what Manpower's paying her to do. From the perspective of the nail, I don't think it makes a lot of difference."

White Haven winced mentally at the queen's succinct, biting analysis. Less because of the tone in which it was delivered than because of its accuracy. Of course, there
was
one little problem with her analogy.

"In this case, though," he pointed out aloud, "the hammer doesn't have a clue what it's about to let itself in for. Or, at least, if it does, it's going to be a lot less eager to start banging away."

"How realistic
is
it to hope this Crandall realizes how big her disadvantage really is?" Grantville asked.

"If I knew the answer to that one, Willie, we wouldn't need all of Pat Givens' boys and girls over at ONI," his brother replied. "Anyone who looks at what Mike did at New Tuscany with an open, unprejudiced mind is going to realize just how outclassed he and his ships were. Unfortunately, if she moved out immedately after
Reprise
spotted her at in Meyers, she won't have had time to hear anything about Second New Tuscany. And even if she waited long enough to hear from the dispatch boat that got away from Mike, she'd have to be able to make the leap from what happened to a single battlecruiser to what could happen to an entire fleet of superdreadnoughts. As Her Majesty has just pointed out, it's not unlikely anyone Manpower's recruited for this command is going to be all that interested in looking at the data. And even if she is, I suspect she's still too likely to figure her superdreadnoughts are a hell of a lot tougher than any battlecruiser ever built."

"And that they're
enough
tougher she doesn't have to worry about any slick little tricks mere battlecruisers might try against them?" Grantville finished the thought for him with a question.

"Pretty much," Caparelli agreed. "More than that, she may hope we haven't been able to reinforce. In that case, she's going to want to move quickly, before we do send in additional units."

"Do you agree with Mike's assessment about their probable targeting priorities, Sir Thomas?" Elizabeth asked, her fingers caressing Ariel's ears.

"Judging from we've seen of their contingency planning from the databases she captured at New Tuscany, I'd say yes, Your Majesty." The first space lord grimaced. "If it weren't for the wormhole, I'd be positive they were going to jump straight at Spindle. Given the importance of the Lynx Terminus, though, it's pretty much a coin toss. I don't see them splitting up and going after individual star systems in the Quadrant until after they've nailed Tenth Fleet. Not assuming Crandall knows what happened at New Tuscany, at any rate. But the idea of seizing the terminus, holding it to keep us from reinforcing while simultaneously forcing Admiral Gold Peak to come to them if she wants to reopen her line of communications, would have to appeal to a Solly strategist."

"I wish it
would
," White Haven muttered, and Caparelli barked a laugh of harsh agreement.

"Hamish is right about that, Your Majesty," he said. "We've got all but one of the forts fully online now.
And
we've got Apollo system-defense birds deployed in depth to cover them. In fact, we were planning on recalling Jessup Blaine from Lynx to refit his pod-layers with Keyhole-Two and Apollo."

"So you and Hamish are both confident the Lynx Terminus could hold off seventy-one superdreadnoughts if it had to?"

"Your Majesty, at the risk of sounding immodest, the only real question would be how long it took us to blow all seventy-one of them out of space. Those forts were designed to hold that terminus without any outside support against the attack of two hundred and fifty of our own pre-Apollo podnoughts. Now that they have Apollo, their defensive capability's been multiplied many times. We still aren't sure by exactly how much, but it's got to be at least a factor of four."

"Then Admiral Blaine could—" Elizabeth began.

"Admiral Blaine already has, Your Majesty," Caparelli interrupted. "I sent his new orders before I started over to the Palace. If he hasn't already departed for Spindle, he'll be underway within the hour. And even though he doesn't have Apollo, his command would still eat those Solly superdreadnoughts for lunch. And there's one other bit of good news to go with that one—Admiral Gold Peak's Apollo ammunition ships are almost forty-eight hours ahead of the last schedule update she's received."

Elizabeth relaxed visibly, but Ariel raised his head and glanced at White Haven a moment before the earl cleared his throat. The quiet sound drew the queen's attention, too, and an eyebrow rose.

"What Tom just said is completely accurate, Your Majesty," he said, "and I unreservedly support both his analysis and his instructions to Admiral Blaine. The problem is that it's unlikely Blaine could arrive at Spindle before the Sollies do, assuming they come straight from Meyers. So, if they do decide to move against Mike, she's going to have to take them on with what she has, and even if the Apollo pods get there in time, she doesn't have Keyhole-Two or pod-layers."

"And if they hit Mike without Blaine and before the ammunition ships get there, what are her chances?" Elizabeth asked quietly.

"From what I've seen of the tech readouts from their battlecruisers' databases," Caparelli replied for the earl after a moment, "and assuming the count on Crandall's SDs is accurate and Admiral Gold Peak fights as smart as she's always fought before, I'd say her chances range from about even to fairly good. There's no way she could survive in energy range of that many superdreadnoughts—I don't care what class they are—but I very seriously doubt that any Solarian superdreadnought's going to survive to close to energy range. Their missile armaments are light, even by our pre-pod standards, and from our examination of the battlecruisers' counter-missiles and those 'Halo' decoy platforms of theirs, they still don't have a clue what the new missile threat environment really is. For that matter, assuming the stats we've pulled out of the computers are really accurate—which, to be honest, in some instances I find a little difficult to believe—at least two thirds of their reserve fleet's still equipped with autocannon point defense, not lasers."

"You're joking," Langtry said, his expression eloquent of disbelief.

"No, I'm not." Caparelli shook his head for added emphasis. "As I say, it's hard to believe, but that's what the data says. In fact, it looks to Pat's analysts as if they've only just recently really started to become aware of the increased missile threat. From the reports we've had from Second Congo, at least
someone
in the League's been experimenting with extended-range shipkillers, but whatever Mesa may've told Luft and his lunatics, there's no evidence the one doing the experimenting is the
SLN
. They're upgrading their current-generation anti-ship missiles, but only marginally, and according to our captured data from Byng, the improvements are to seekers and EW capabilities, not range.

"Defensively, there's some information in the data about something called 'Aegis,' which is supposed to be a major advance in missile defense. As nearly as we can tell, though, what it really amounts to is ripping out a couple of broadside energy mounts, replacing them with additional counter missile fire control and telemetry links, and then using main missile tubes to launch additional canisters of counter-missiles. It's going to thicken their counter-missile fire, but only at the expense of taking several shipkiller missiles out of an already light broadside. And to make things worse from their perspective, their counter-missiles themselves aren't as good as ours; the fire control software we've been looking at was several generations out of date, by our standards, at the start of the
last
war with Haven; and even on the ships where they've converted the autocannon to laser clusters, they don't appear to have increased the
number
of point defense stations appreciably."