Mission of Honor

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Fleet Admiral Massimo Filareta was tall, black-haired, and broad- shouldered, with a closely cropped beard and piercing dark eyes. In a service renowned for nepotism and family interest, he took second place to none in terms of his lofty connections. He was also well known for a tendency to party hard when the opportunity came his way, and among those who knew him particularly well there were rumors that he enjoyed certain pleasures even the most jaded Solly might call “esoteric.” He was scarcely alone in that among the SLN’s senior officers’ ranks, however, and he’d also established a reputation for hard work, levelheadedness, and attention to detail that matched both his imposing physical presence and his expensive tastes.

At the moment, though, his levelheadedness appeared to be somewhat in abeyance, Admiral John Burrows, his chief of staff noted with undeniable unhappiness.

Burrows was the physical antithesis of his superior. Where Filareta stood a shade over a hundred and ninety centimeters, Burrows barely topped a hundred and sixty-two, and he was fair-haired, blue-eyed, and distinctly portly. Like Filareta, Burrows enjoyed a reputation for working hard, but he was actually more comfortable than his superior was when it came to improvising. And he’d also developed a certain talent for reading Filareta’s mood and adroitly… managing him.

“And what do you think about this brainstorm, John?” Filareta demanded rather abruptly, wheeling from his contemplation of his enormous day cabin’s smart wall, which currently displayed the central star of the Tasmania System.

“I assume you’re referring to Admiral Rajampet’s latest missive, Massimo?”

Burrows put an edge of drollness into his tone, but Filareta wasn’t in the mood for their usual shared, more or less tolerant contempt for the CNO.

“And just what else did you think I might be referring to?” he asked rather nastily.

“Nothing,” Burrows admitted, dropping the effort to defuse the other man’s obvious unhappiness. His more sober expression was an unstated apology for his original attempt at humor, and Filareta grunted.

“Well, whatever,” he said, waving one hand. “What do you think of it?”

“I haven’t had time to fully examine the availability numbers,” Burrows replied rather more formally. “Assuming that everyone who’s supposed to get here actually does before we hyper out, it looks like we’ll probably hit the specified force level. We might even have a few of the wall to spare. So, from the nuts-and-bolts perspective, it looks doable. I don’t like how light we’re going to be in screening elements, and I wish we had a lot better information than we do at this point on what happened at Spindle, though.”

“The screen numbers could worry me less,” Filareta said dismissively, waving his hand again. “That point about Spindle, though—that one’s well taken. Of course, Sandra Crandall always was too stupid to close the outer hatch first, but still…”

His unhappiness was even more pronounced, and Burrows discovered that he shared it.

“I think there’s probably something to the theory that the Manties aren’t going to want to go on pushing things, especially assuming ONI’s estimate of the damage they took in this attack on their home system is remotely accurate,” he offered after a moment. “If the Strategy Board’s right about that, turning up with four hundred-plus of the wall ought to inspire them to see reason.”

“And if the ‘Strategy Board’ is wrong about that,” Filareta’s withering irony made it perfectly clear who he thought had really come up with the notion, “then turning up with four hundred-plus of the wall is going to get a lot of people killed.”

“Yes, it is,” Burrows agreed. “On the other hand, I have to say I think the estimates about the damage the Manties’ system defenses must’ve suffered are probably pretty well taken.” Filareta looked at him sharply, and the chief of staff shrugged. “I’m not saying they’ve been hammered as completely flat as the ops plan seems to be suggesting, but nobody could get in close enough to inflict that kind of damage inside the limit without fighting his way through a shit pot of their inner system defenses, at least. And if the loss reports for the Battle of Manticore are remotely accurate, they couldn’t have had more than a hundred or so wallers of their own left even before this latest attack.”

“Which I might find rather more reassuring if they hadn’t pinned Crandall’s ears back with nothing heavier than cruisers,” Filareta observed rather caustically.

“I know I just said myself that I wish we had more information about what happened at Spindle,” Burrows said. “But from the way I read what data we do have, I think what she really ran into was a bunch of missile pods deployed in the system-defense role.”

“And your point is?”

“My point is that they were probably system-defense pods—I mean a specialized design specifically optimized for that role. Sure, all they showed us was cruisers, but as you just pointed out, Admiral Crandall never was the sharpest stylus in the box, and Manty stealth systems seem to be better than anyone thought they were. It’s entirely possible they managed to get an entire dispersed defensive array emplaced without her spotting it. And the minimum powered envelope estimates I’ve seen are a hell of a lot higher than the range at which they took out Jean Bart. So I’m inclined to think that what they’d really managed to do was to deploy a specialized area-defense version of their pods, probably with substantially larger missiles to get that extra range. Think of them as… oh, old-fashioned mines with three or four normal drives shoved up their asses. It’s the only way I can think of that they could’ve gotten the range, but missiles that big simply wouldn’t be practical for shipboard weapons.” Burrows shrugged. “Where the hell would you put the magazines?”

Filareta started a quick reply, then paused at Burrows’ last question. He thought for a moment or two, then nodded.

“I hadn’t really thought about that,” he admitted. “If they’ve gone to missile-dominated combat, then they have to have struck some kind of balance between missile ranges and missile size, don’t they? They’ve got to have enough rounds onboard to do the job.”

“Exactly.” Burrows grimaced. “I’m willing to concede that even their shipboard weapons will have a substantial range advantage, but it’s not going to be as great as the advantage they had over Crandall. And the second point about their being a specialized system-defense variant is that the only ‘proof’ they polished her off with ‘nothing heavier than cruisers’ comes from the Manties. If I were they, and what I’d really used was a sophisticated, integrated system-defense weapon—one that probably did have an FTL component—I’d do my best to convince the League I’d done it with a scratch force of light ships, too… if I thought I could get away with it. But everything I’ve seen from our own intelligence and R&D people says that any kind of broadband FTL is going to require humongous platforms. The smallest estimate I’ve seen suggests that nothing much smaller than a waller could carry the system and a worthwhile weapons load. So since they obviously were using FTL against Crandall, they sure as hell weren’t doing it from something as small as a heavy cruiser. To be honest, that—coupled with the size requirements for the missiles themselves—is why I’m convinced it had to be a system-defense set up. Crandall crapped out because they managed to get the dispersed platforms in-system and up and running before she got there.”

Filareta nodded slowly, his eyes intent, but there was something else behind those eyes. Burrows could see that, even though he didn’t have a clue what else the fleet admiral was turning over in his mind.

“So what you’re saying is that whoever”—that “something else” behind Filareta’s eyes flickered more strongly for a moment—”blew the piss out of their system infrastructure has to’ve done it through that same kind of defensive system.”

“That’s what it sounds like to me,” Burrows confirmed. “And to do that, they have to have either crippled the system, or else at least run it out of ammunition. Frankly, it seems more likely that whoever it was had better intel on the Manties than we do and figured out a way to go after the remote platforms, which probably means the Manties’ command net has just been shot full of holes. Even if they did it just by running them out of ammunition, though, it seems more than a little unlikely that the Manties will have been able to replace their expended missiles with their industrial structure so trashed. And even assuming that they’ve been able to replace their expenditures this time around, there’s no way in hell they’ll be able to take us out and be able to reload again before the next wave arrives.”

“I’m sure our ghosts will take great comfort from that fact,” Filareta said rather dryly, and Burrows snorted.

“I agree it would be a… suboptimal outcome, Sir,” he acknowledged. “My point, though, was that the Manties have to be aware of the same facts. So when we turn up so unexpectedly, even if they have the physical capability to repel our attack, I actually think the Strategy Board’s right about whether or not they’ll have the intestinal fortitude to actually try doing it. And if we point out to them that the next wave’s already in the pipeline, and is going to be even more powerful, I think it really is likely they’ll recognize the writing on the wall and give it up.”

“Um.”

Filareta frowned, obviously pondering what his chief of staff had just said. He still looked a far cry from anything Burrows would have called cheerful, but his expression was at least a little lighter than it had been.

“I hope to hell you’re right,” he said frankly at last. “If you’re not, then we’re going to get reamed, even if we wind up taking them out in the end.”

He paused, as if inviting Burrows to respond, but the chief of staff only nodded. After all, Filareta was absolutely correct.

“All right,” the fleet admiral said finally. “Go ahead and bring Bill and Yvonne inside on this.” Admiral William Daniels was the task force’s operations officer, and Admiral Yvonne Uruguay was the staff astrogator. “I want our movement planned by the time our reinforcements get here.” It was Filareta’s turn to grimace. “There’s no way we’re going to make our specified schedule, but let’s see how close we can come.”

“Yes, Sir,” Burrows agreed. Frankly, he’d be surprised if they could hit within a T-week of the operations schedule included with their orders from Old Earth. On the other hand, allowances for that kind of slippage were built into any interstellar fleet movement orders. They had to be.

Filareta turned to look back at the smart wall again, contemplating it for several moments. Then he inhaled deeply and nodded to the distant solar furnace which dominated the view.

“All right, John,” he said again, never turning away from the wall. “Go talk to Bill and Yvonne. I want their preliminary reactions in time for lunch. And go ahead and schedule a full dress staff meeting for tomorrow morning.”

The “private yacht” was about the size of most navies’ battlecruisers, and almost as heavily armed. Which didn’t prevent it from being one of the most luxuriously appointed vessels in the galaxy… as well as one of the fastest. It had made the passage from the Mesa System forty percent more rapidly than anyone else’s ship could have managed it.

Albrecht Detweiler reflected on exactly what that implied as he stood to one side on what would have been the flag deck aboard an actual warship and watched the enormous space station, gleaming in the reflected light of the F6 star called Darius, growing larger on the visual display as MANS Genesis approached it. The station—known officially as Darius Prime— orbited the planet Gamma, Darius’ only habitable world, and at the moment, it was over Gamma’s night side, just approaching the terminator. The planetary surface below it sparkled with lines and beads of light, and there were four other stations to keep it company, although none of them were remotely the same size as Manticor’s’ Hephaestus or Vulcan.

Or the size they had been, at any rate.

His eyes moved to the ships taking form in the shipyards Darius Prime supported. Eventually, those ships would become the first units of the Leonard Detweiler class, he knew, although it wouldn’t happen anywhere near as soon as he wished. The much smaller units of the Shark class in parking orbit beyond Darius Prime were visible evidence of why he wished that. Most of the still far from complete Detweilers were already larger than the Sharks—in many cases, substantially larger. When they were completed, they would be far, far tougher—and far more dangerous—than their smaller predecessors, and he was going to need the capability they represented as quickly as he could get it. Unfortunately, wishing couldn’t change anything.

His lips twitched briefly at the thought, and he turned his attention to the Sharks. Genesis had arrived almost three hours before her scheduled ETA, yet it was evident the fleet was already home and waiting for him. Well, that was fine with him. No doubt the Mesan Alignment Navy would someday acquire the taste for formal reviews of the fleet—and the punctillious timing which went them—which seemed to be a part of every other navy in space. So far, it hadn’t, and given how little use he had for pomp, he’d prefer for that to take as long as possible.

Not that they don’t deserve a formal review. His face hardened with mingled satisfaction and a degree of apprehension as he reflected upon the reports of Oyster Bay’s effectiveness. I don’t think anyone else in history ever managed to pull off this successful an operation. Certainly not against someone as good as the Manties!

The casualty count had been higher than projected, and part of him regretted that. He supposed that was foolish of him, given where all of this had to lead eventually, yet there it was. He couldn’t quite avoid thinking about all the children who’d never even seen it coming. Funny how that bothered him when thinking about all of the other millions who were going to be killed eventually didn’t. He wondered if that was because those other millions were still an abstraction for him, still only a potential, whereas the dead from the Manticoran space stations and in the city of Yawata Crossing weren’t. He hoped that wasn’t the reason. All of those additional deaths were coming—he couldn’t have changed that at this point even if he’d tried—and he couldn’t afford to brood over them this way when they finally arrived.

Well, you won’t, he told himself. By the time they come along, you’ll have enough emotional scar tissue to keep you from losing any sleep. And, be honest with yourself, Albrecht—you’ll be damned glad you do.

“We’ll be docking with the station in about thirty-five minutes, Sir,” Genesis‘ captain told him.

“Thank you,” Detweiler replied, suppressing the urge to smile. Hayden Milne had been his yacht’s skipper for over three T-years, during which time he’d been firmly trained to never—ever—refer to him by name. He’d been simply “Sir” to every member of the crew for as long as anyone could remember, and Detweiler’s temptation to smile faded as he thought about that. He was doomed to stay in the shadows for at least a while longer, after all.

At the same time, there was no point hiding from the men and women of the MAN. Every one of them knew Benjamin was their commander and that Albrecht stood behind Benjamin, although the fact that the two of the were Detweillers had been carefully concealed even from most of them. They knew Benjamin and Albrecht as their leaders, however. Which, after all, was the reason both he and those orbiting Sharks were in the same star system this afternoon.

“I suppose I should wander back to my quarters and tell my wife,” he continued out loud.

“Of course, Sir.”

Detweiler nodded to the captain, then turned and headed for the lift, followed even here by Heinrich Stabolis, his enhanced bodyguard.

They stepped into the lift car, and Stabolis pressed the proper destination code, then stood back with his hands folded behind him. Detwiler couldn’t begin to count the number of times he’d seen Stabolis standing in exactly that posture over the years, and it was amazing how seeing that familiar sight always helped bolster his confidence.

“So far, so good, Heinrich,” he said.

“As you say, Sir,” Stabolis agreed, and Detweiler grinned.

“You know, Heinrich, you don’t say a lot, do you?”

“I suppose not, Sir.” There might have been the faintest glimmer of an answering smile on the bodyguard’s face.

“But you’re always there,” Detweiler continued more seriously. “If I haven’t mentioned it lately, I appreciate it.”

Stabolis ducked his head in mute acknowledgment, and Detweiler reached out to rest one hand lightly on his shoulder for a moment. Then they reached their destination, the doors opened, and Stabolis stepped out into the passage, glancing both ways before he moved to allow his charge to leave the lift. They walked down the wide, tastefully decorated passageway to Detweiler’s private suite, and he pressed the admittance buttoned himself.

“Yes?” a pleasant soprano voice said after a moment.

“It’s me, Evie,” he said. “Time to go in about thirty minutes.”

“Then should I assume Heinrich’s managed to get you down here without any gravy on your shirt?”

The door opened, and Evelina Detweiler looked out at her husband. Behind her, Albrecht saw Ericka Stabolis, Evelina’s bodyguard, trying hard not to smile at her principal’s comment. Ericka had been with Evelina almost as long as Heinrich had been looking after Albrecht, and she had the same black hair, blue eyes, and regular features—a bit more delicate in her case—as her brother. Indeed, people were often struck by the extraordinarily close physical resemblance between the Stabolis siblings. They shouldn’t have been; Ericka and Heinrich were clone twins. She was every bit as deadly as her brother, and the only significant difference between them was that she had two X chromosomes.

“No,” Albrecht said now, mildly, as his wife inspected him. “I not only managed not to spill the gravy, but I’ve actually had two cups of coffee without dribbling any of it down my chin.”

“I am impressed,” Evelina told him with a chuckle, then stood back to let him through the doorway. He smiled and touched her lightly on the cheek. The Long-Range Planning Board had known what it was doing when it paired the two of them, he thought. Sometimes the LRPB’s choices resulted in pairings that couldn’t stand each other. Officially, that didn’t happen, of course, but unofficially everyone knew it did. Fortunately, mistakes like that could usually be fixed, and in the case of an alpha line pairing like any of the Detweilers, the Board’s members put special effort into trying to pick compatibles.

“Just let me change my jacket,” he told her.

“Fine. But not the red one,” she said firmly.

“I like the red one,” he protested.

“I know you do, dear.” She shuddered. “On the other hand, I’m still hoping they can do something about your taste in clothing in our grandchildren.”

“Attention on deck!”

The command rapped out as Albrecht Detweiler, his wife, and his son Benjamin stepped out onto the stage at one end of the spacious compartment.

In one sense, there was no real pressing need for them to be here. Albrecht could have addressed the senior officers of the returning Oyster Bay fleet electronically, and he doubted they would have minded or felt slighted. But they deserved better, and whether they ever actually realized it or not, he knew they would never forget that he’d come all the way out to Darius to greet them on their return. It wasn’t exactly a trivial trip from Mesa, even with the streak drive, but that wasn’t what they were going to remember.

He walked across to the podium, flanked by Evelina and Benjamin, and stopped, looking out across the assembled faces of the men and women in the maroon and green uniforms of the MAN. He stood there for the better part of a full minute, taking the time to look at each of those faces, then, finally, he nodded.

“Please, be seated.”

Feet scuffed on the space station deck as the naval officers obeyed his invitation, and he let them settle themselves once again.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said after several seconds, his voice quiet, “I came out to Darius to greet you and to tell you how extraordinarily well each and every one of you have performed. I can tell you now that Oyster Bay was a complete success.”

No one actually seemed to move, yet a stir went through his audience. Shoulders straightened almost imperceptibly, eyes brightened, and he nodded again.

“All three major Manticoran space stations were totally destroyed,” he told them. “They’ve been less forthcoming about the damage to their dispersed yards, but there was no way they could conceal what had happened to Hephaestus and Vulcan, given how many witnesses there were. Weyland’s destruction has also been confirmed by official Manticoran sources. As I say, there’s been no official word on damage to their dispersed yards, but all unofficial sources indicate near total destruction there, as well.

“The attack on Yeltsin’s Star was equally successful. Their Blackbird Yard was totally destroyed, along with virtually its entire workforce. We have confirmation that every ship under construction at Yeltsin’s Star was also destroyed or too heavily damaged to be repairable. Given that the Manties’ missile production was concentrated in their space stations and that Grayson’s missile production was concentrated at Blackbird, we’ve succeeded in destroying their ability to replace ammunition expenditures for the foreseeable future.”

He could actually feel the satisfaction of the assembled officers, and they deserved it. Still—

“The only aspect of the entire operation which can be considered less than a hundred percent success was no one’s fault,” he said gravely, and the bodies shifted slightly. “We’d hoped to destroy the Manties’ entire next generation of capital ships still in the yards. Unfortunately, it appears we’d underestimated their construction speeds. You did, indeed, destroy an entire generation of capital ships, but the one before it had already been launched, and the majority of their new construction was safely at Trevor’s Star, working up, at the time of your attack.”

The faces looking back at him were extraordinarily sober now, and he shrugged very slightly.

“As I say, you carried out your orders perfectly, ladies and gentlemen. The fault—if there was a fault—lies in our own original estimates of the Manties’ building times. And, to be completely honest, we recognized at the time we sent you out that it was possible we were going to catch less of their new construction in the yards than we might have wished. So, while that portion of the operation was less successful than we’d hoped, the overwhelming effectiveness of the rest of Oyster Bay more than compensates. Given that virtually all of the Manticorans’ combat advantages depend upon their advances in missile warfare, the fact that you’ve destroyed their missile production lines has dealt a much more significant blow to their war fighting capability than we would have achieved even if we’d caught the rest of their ships under construction. Once they’ve expended their existing missiles, it won’t matter how many missile-armed ships they have.”

Here and there a head nodded, although some of the expressions he could see remained less cheerful than they had been.

“In the meantime, however,” he said more briskly, “the entire Alignment is in your debt. We’re proud of you, and we owe you a debt no one could ever truly hope to repay. The first operation of the Mesan Alignment Navy has been, by any conceivable measure, the most successful attack by any navy in the history of space warfare. What you accomplished with a mere handful of ships is unparalleled, and you’ve dealt a deadly blow to both the capabilities and the confidence of our most dangerous enemies. I wish, more than I could ever tell you, that we could bring all of you back to Mesa for the public parades and celebrations you so richly deserve. For now, though, it’s essential we continue to conceal our military capabilities. Especially the capabilities conferred upon us by the spider drive. At this time, no one else in the entire galaxy knows—whatever they may suspect in Manticore—who was behind Oyster Bay, or where a similar attack might be launched. It’s imperative we maintain that ignorance, that uncertainty, for as long as possible. So much as I would prefer to tell everyone how proud I am of you, I can’t. Not yet. I can only tell you, and even there, I lack the words to express the depth of that pride.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the fleet, for centuries our ancestors have worked and planned for this moment.” He swept them with his eyes once more, seeing the shoulders come back once again, seeing the eyes brighten anew. “Those ancestors cannot be here today, and so I find myself forced to stand in their place. But if they could be here, if it were possible for them to speak to you, I know that they, as I, would say ‘thank you.’ Thank you for your courage, your dedication, your professionalism, and for the brilliant way in which you’ve finally begun the crusade for which all of us have hoped, planned, and waited for so very long.”

“Did I lay it on too thick, Ben?” Albrecht asked an hour or so later as he, Evelina, and their son sat down to a private supper. There was more than a hint of humor in his tone, but Benjamin wasn’t fooled.

“Actually, Father,” he said very seriously, “I think they understood you meant every word of it. I certainly did, at any rate.”

Albrecht looked sharply at him across the table, and Benjamin returned his regard levelly. After a moment, Albrecht picked up his wineglass and sipped.

“Now you’ve gone and embarrassed your father,” Evelina scolded with a small smile. “Don’t you know the Chief Executive of the Mesan Alignment isn’t supposed to come all over sentimental just because the Navy’s officers have performed so superbly?”

“Oh, hush, Evie.” Albrecht lowered his glass and shook his head at her. “I know perfectly well I can’t fool you or Ben.”

“No, and there’s no reason you should try to fool the Navy over this one, either,” she told him. “I agree with every word you said to them, Albrecht. And I hope they know exactly how deeply you meant it.”

“So do I,” Benjamin said.

“Well, I do wish we’d caught more of their construction in the yards,” Albrecht said. “I know all the analysts agree that taking out their ability to resupply with missiles was even more important, but I’d really hoped we could get a bigger jump on them when the Detweilers begin commissioning.”

Benjamin frowned, but he also nodded.

The Mesan Alignment had established the first colony on Gamma almost two hundred T-centuries ago, and it had grown steadily since, although the really exponential growth had begun only over the last seventy T-years or so. Exactly when to begin that particular side of the Alignment’s preparations had always been a bit ticklish, since no matter how well it was hidden, there was always the possibility of someone’s stubling across it, which could have raised all sorts of questions. On the other hand, the capabilities Darius represented had always been central to the Alignment’s strategy, and Albrecht’s grandfather had authorized the first colonization flight as one of his last acts as the Alignment’s chief executive.

By now, the Darius System’s total population was in the very near vicinity of 3.9 billion, of whom just under two billion were representatives of one of the alpha, beta, or gamma genomes the Alignment had worked to improve for so long. The remainder of the system population were genetic slaves, but the conditions of their slavery were very unlike those which obtained elsewhere. For one thing, they were treated far better, without the often savage discipline slaves often received elsewhere. In fact, the Darius System was one of the very few places where the Mesan Constitution’s official legal protections theoretically intended to protect slaves from gross mistreatment were actually enforced. For another, they had a much higher standard of living. And for yet another, they formed the backbone of a highly trained, highly skilled labor force which had earned the respect of its supervisors.

Every one of those slaves had been born here in Darius, and not one of them had ever left the system. Their knowledge of what was happening elsewhere in the galaxy, of the history of Mesa, or of their own history had been carefully controlled for generations. They’d been aware for those same generations that they and their parents and grandparents had been laboring to build first the basic industry and then the specialized infrastructure to support a massive navy, but they were convinced it was intended as a defensive fleet.

Yet for all the years which had been plowed into Darius, all the effort, all the generations of labor, the fact remained that its space stations and shipyards were significantly less capable than Manticore’s had been prior to Oyster Bay. Benjamin Detweiler didn’t like admitting that, but he agreed with his father; the day someone stopped admitting the truth was the day he could kiss any of his hopes for the future goodbye. And the truth was that, despite the accomplishments of the Alignment’s R&D, and despite any tactical advantages which might accrue from the streak drive and the spider, very few star nations could have matched the industrial efficiency of the Star Empire of Manticore. Indeed, Benjamin suspected that even Manticore had failed to grasp just how great an advantage it possessed in that regard.

Over the last five or six T-years, he and Daniel had been trying to introduce Manticoran practices here at Darius, only to discover that the task wasn’t as simple and forthright as it ought to have been. If they’d really wanted to duplicate Manticore’s efficiency, they would’ve had to duplicate Manticore’s entire industrial base—and its society—and they simply couldn’t do that. Their labor force was extraordinarily good at following orders, extremely well trained, and highly motivated, but the kind of independence of thought which characterized Manticoran workers wasn’t exactly something which had been encouraged among the slave workers of Darius. Even if it had been, their basic techniques and technologies were simply different from Manticore’s. Better than the majority of League star systems could have produced, if those other star systems had only realized it, yet still at least a full generation behind the Manties.

“I wish we’d taken out more of their wall, too, Father,” he said finally. “On the other hand, the point about their missile supply is extremely well taken. Especially if we can get them to use up most of the ones they’ve got on the Sollies.”

“I know.”

Albrecht sipped more wine, then looked down into his glass.

“I know,” he repeated, “but I’ve been thinking. I know they got away from us in the yards, but we know where they are, and—”

“No, Father.”

The two words came out very firmly, and Albrecht looked up to see Benjamin sitting back from the table and folding his arms across his chest. For a moment, there was something almost comical about the father’s wheedling expression and the stern light in the son’s eyes.

“I know what you’re about to say, Father,” Benjamin continued. “In fact, Dan and Collin and I figured it might occur to you as soon as we realized we hadn’t caught as many ships in the yards as we’d hoped.”

“So the three of you sat down and discussed it behind my back, is that it?” Albrecht’s voice could have been ominous, but instead, it was almost quizzical, and Benjamin shrugged.

“You’re the one who put me in charge of the Navy, Daniel in charge of research, and Collin in charge of intel, Father. I don’t think you did it because you expected us to sit on our brains.”

“No, you’re right about that,” Albrecht acknowledged.

“Well, since we were using them as something besides cushions, it occurred to us to think the same thing you’re thinking. If Topolev and Colenso could get into Manticore and Yeltsin’s Star undetected, why not do the same thing to Trevor’s Star? Pick off the warships we didn’t get first time around?”

“That is what I was thinking,” Albrecht said. “From your response, I’m assuming the three of you decided it wasn’t such a great idea after all?”

“Oh, the idea’s just fine, Father. The problem is how likely it is that we wouldn’t get away with it. Let’s face it, Oyster Bay was in many ways a one-off operation. It succeeded because the Manties didn’t have a clue about our capabilities. Well, now they do—have a clue, I mean. They still don’t know how we did it, but they damned well know we did do it, and if nothing else, they’re going to be pouncing on every ‘ghost footprint’ their hyper sensors pick up with everything they’ve got. And, frankly, the fact that we haven’t been able to come up with an effective detector for the spider drive doesn’t fill me with unbounded confidence that the Manties might not have something we don’t even know about that could do the job. I think it’s unlikely, but I’m not prepared to assume it’s impossible.

“So looking at it from the perspective of getting in in the first place, things would be a lot more iffy a second time around—especially a second time around that came close on the heels of Oyster Bay.”

Benjamin looked across the table at his father until Albrecht nodded to show he was following so far.

“Secondly,” Benjamin continued then, “the force levels we’d require would actually be higher. Oyster Bay succeeded because we could plan on achieving total surprise and our targets were civilian installations. They weren’t armored, they didn’t have any active or passive defenses in operation, and they couldn’t dodge. After what happened to their home system, I can guarantee you no one as experienced as the Manties is going to let us catch their battle fleet under circumstances like that. At the very minimum, their impellers are going to be permanently hot. Most likely, they’ll have minimum station-keeping wedges up, for that matter, and they’re going to have their damned FTL recon platforms deployed widely enough to give them plenty of time to get wedges and sidewalls fully up before anything gets close enough to attack. So we’d need a hell of a lot more firepower to achieve decisive results, and, unfortunately, the Sharks are too small—and we don’t have enough of them—to provide that level of combat power. Worse, in a lot of ways, they’re too fragile to survive the kind of damage Manty laserheads can hand out.

“And that brings me to the third point, which is—and, frankly, Father, I think this is probably the most important consideration—that we literally cannot afford to lose the Sharks. More specifically, we can’t afford to lose their crews. The people aboard those ships right now are the seed corn for the crews of the ships we’re building here in Darius. We’ve just blown an enormous hole in the Manties’ trained manpower, one that’s going to be a huge factor in how long it takes them to recover from Oyster Bay. Given the way things are proceeding, and given our own operational and strategic planning, we can’t afford to have the same thing happen to us. We’re going to be in the position of having to enormously expand our naval personnel no matter what happens, and we don’t have the institutional base the Manties do. We need every single one of the men and women who carried out Oyster Bay. We need their skills and their experience, and we need them here— alive—not vaporized at Trevor’s Star.”

“Do you really think that would be a likely outcome?” Albrecht asked after several seconds. His tone was curious, not confrontational, and Benjamin shrugged again.

“Frankly? No. I don’t think the attack would be anywhere near as successful as Oyster Bay was, and I think giving the Manties another look—or the chance for another look, anyway—at our new hardware would be risky, but I don’t really think they’d be likely to detect, track, and kill the Sharks wholesale. Unfortunately, ‘don’t think they’d be likely to’ isn’t a very good basis for operational planning. One thing you taught all of us a long time ago was that we can’t make the universe be what we want it to be, so we’d better figure out what it really is and factor that into our planning. And in this case, the potential return, even assuming everything went near perfectly, doesn’t begin to compare to the potential damage we’ll take if everything doesn’t go near perfectly.”

Albrecht sat in evident thought for a few moments, then finished the wine in his glass and set it back down on the table.

“You’re right. I didn’t put any of you boys where you are just so you could watch me make mistakes. And I hadn’t really thought about all the implications you’ve just pointed out. I still wish we could do it, but you’re right. The last thing we need to do is to start making the kind of ‘we’re invincible’ mistakes those jackasses in the League are making. As Isabel would have said, this isn’t the time for us to be flying by the seat of our pants if we don’t have to.”

“Thank you, Father,” Benjamin said quietly.

“In the meantime, though,” his father said rather more briskly, “I want you and Daniel to come to Mannerheim with me.”

“Excuse me?” Benjamin looked at him quizzically, and Albrecht snorted.

“Hurskainen and the others will all be there, and I want you two along to answer any questions—with due regard for operational security, of course—they may have about Oyster Bay.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea? If you want us there, we’ll come, of course. On the other hand, do we really want to be answering questions about the new systems and the new hardware?”

“That’s a very well taken point,” Albrecht acknowledged. “On the other hand, these people have all demonstrated their ability to maintain operational security, or we’d never have gotten as far as we have. I think a couple of them are feeling a bit nervous now, though. The way we accelerated Oyster Bay came at them cold, and while I wouldn’t say any of them are experiencing what I’d call second thoughts, I do think the… anxiety quotient, let’s say, is a bit higher than we might like.”

He paused until Benjamin nodded, then he shrugged.

“In its own way, this meeting’s going to be even more critical than Oyster Bay was. No one’s going public, but we’ll be very quietly activating the Alignment as an actual star nation. That’s going to represent a huge step, and one we’re not going to want to make public until the League’s started to show a few surface fissures, at least. But once we begin the process, we’re going to have to bring in successively lower levels in all of our members star systems’ governments. The fact that we’re up to something is, frankly, likely to leak out a lot sooner than we’d really prefer. I doubt very much that anyone on the outside is going to figure out what we’re really up to, but that’s not going to guarantee we won’t have a few dicey moments in the not too distant future. And most of the people who’re going to be in Mannerheim for our little meeting didn’t get where they are by being stupid. It’s going to occur to them, too, that we’re looking at what’s in many ways our greatest period of vulnerability over the next T-year or two. That being the case, I’d like them to feel as reassured as possible about the hardware we used in Oyster Bay.”

“And if they ask me whether or not we have all that hardware really and truly operational ?”

“If they ask you that, you admit the Sharks were originally intended primarily as prototypes and training vessels, and you don’t pretend we have more of them than we do,” Albrecht said promptly. “The last thing we need to do is to trip ourselves up by lying to these people—or to ourselves. But at the same time, I think you should point out to them that our plans always envisioned their ‘system-defense forces’ as the real basis of our joint naval strength, at least in the opening stages. There are eleven of them, for God’s sake! None of them may be all that huge in isolation, but when you combine them, they get a hell of a lot more impressive. What the MAN represents at this stage is our hole card, the ace we have stuffed up our sleeve just in case we need it. I want them to be aware we have that card and that we can play it if we have to. And I’d like them to recognize that the fleet we’re building will have exactly the same capabilities—only better—and be a hell of a lot bigger. I don’t want them worrying about whether or not we’ll be ready to take center stage as planned when the time comes just because we moved Oyster Bay ahead.”

“I see.”

It was Benjamin’s turn to sit thinking for several seconds. At length, he looked up, met his father’s eyes again, and nodded.

“All right, Father. I see what you’re saying, and I think Dan and I can probably provide the… comfort quotient you’re looking for. As long as they’re not expecting us to sail our invincible fleet of invisible superdreadnoughts right into Old Earth orbit next week, at any rate!”