command.'
He switched channels again, back to the civilian guard frequency.
'Alizon System Central, this is Captain Javits. I will be bringing your Tregarth Alpha facilities into my extreme missile range in twenty-seven minutes from... now. My vector will make it impossible for me to match velocity with the facilities or send across boarding parties, and I hereby inform you that I will open fire on them, and on any extraction vessels within my missile envelope, in twenty-nine minutes.'
He looked down at his plot once more with a hard, fierce grin. Then keyed his mike once more.
'I advise you to begin evacuation procedures now,' he said. 'Javits, clear.'
'So what's the best estimate of the results, Admiral?' President Eloise Pritchart asked.
The beautiful, platinum-haired President had come across to the Octagon, the Republic of Haven's military nerve center, for this meeting, and aside from one bodyguard, she was the single civilian in the enormous conference room. All eyes were on the huge holo display above the conference table, where the reproduced imagery from Bertrand Javits' tactical plot hovered in midair.
'Our best estimate from the recon platforms' data is that Captain Javits' raid destroyed about eight percent- probably a little less-of Alizon's total resource extraction capability, Madam President,' Rear Admiral Victor Lewis, Director of Operational Research replied. Thanks to venerable traditions of uncertain origin, Naval Intelligence reported to Op Research, which, in turn, reported to Vice Admiral Linda Trenis' Bureau of Planning.
'And was that an acceptable return in light of our own losses?' the President asked.
'Yes,' another voice said, and the President looked at the stocky, brown-haired admiral at the head of the table who'd spoken. Admiral Thomas Theisman, Secretary of War and Chief of Naval Operations, looked back at her steadily. 'We lost about a third of the people we'd have lost aboard a single old-style cruiser, Madam President,' he continued, speaking very formally in the presence of their subordinates. 'In return, we confirmed NavInt's estimate of the system-defense doctrine the Manties appear to be adopting and acquired additional information on their fire control systems and current pod deployment patterns; destroyed eight million tons of hyper-capable merchant shipping, better than five times the combined tonnage of all the LACs Javits lost; and put a small but significant dent into the productivity of Alizon. More to the point, we hit one of the Manticoran Alliance's member's home system for what everyone will recognize as negligible losses, and this isn't the first time Alizon's been hit. That has to have an effect on the entire Alliance's morale, and it's almost certain to increase the pressure on the White Haven Admiralty to detach additional picket forces to cover the Star Kingdom's allies against similar attacks.'
'I see.' The spectacularly beautiful, platinum-haired President's topaz-colored eyes didn't look especially happy, but they didn't flinch away from Theisman's logic, either. She looked at him for a moment longer, then returned her attention to Rear Admiral Lewis.
'Please pardon the interruption, Admiral,' she said. 'Continue, if you would.'
'Of course, Madam President.' The rear admiral cleared his throat and punched a new command sequence into his terminal. The holo display shifted, and Javits' plot disappeared, replaced by a series of bar graphs.
'If you'll look at the first red column, Madam President,' he began, 'you'll see our losses to date in ships of the wall. The green column beside it represents SD(P)s currently undergoing trials or completing construction. The amber column-'
'Well, that was all extremely interesting, Tom,' Eloise Pritchart said some hours later. 'Unfortunately, I think we're into information overkill. In some ways, I think I know less about what's going on now than I did before I came over here!'
She made a face, and Theisman chuckled. He sat behind his desk, tipped back comfortably in his chair, and the Republic's President sat on the comfortable couch facing the desk. Her personal security detail was camped outside the door, giving her at least the illusion of privacy, her shoes lay on the carpet in front of her, and she had both bare feet tucked up under her while she nursed a steaming cup of coffee in slender hands. Theisman's own cup sat on his desk's blotter.
'You spent long enough as Javier's people's commissioner to have a better grasp of military realities than that, Eloise,' he told her now.
'In a general sense, certainly.' She shrugged. 'On the other hand, I was never actually trained for the realities of the Navy, and there've been so many changes in such a short time that what I did know feels hopelessly out of date. I suppose what matters is that you're current. And confident.'
Her tone was ever so slightly questioning on the last two words, and it was his turn to shrug.
''Confident' is a slippery word. You know I was never happy about going back to war against the Manties.' He raised one hand in a placating gesture. 'I understand your logic, and I can't disagree with it. Besides, you're the President. But I have to admit that I never liked the idea. And that Thunderbolt's success has exceeded my own expectations. So far, at least.'
'Even after what happened-or didn't happen-at Trevor's Star?'
'Javier made the right decision on the basis of everything we knew,' Theisman said firmly. 'None of us fully appreciated just how tough Shannon's 'layered defense' was going to be against long-range Manticoran missile fire. If we'd been able to project probable losses during the approach phase as accurately then as we could now, then, yes, he should have gone ahead and pressed the attack. But he didn't know that at the time any more than the rest of us did.'
'I see.' Pritchart sipped coffee, and Theisman watched her with a carefully hidden smile. That was about as close as the President was ever going to allow herself to come to 'pulling strings' on Javier Giscard's behalf, lover or no lover.
'And Lewis' projections?' she continued after a moment. 'Do you feel confident about them, too?'
'As far as the numbers from our own side go, absolutely,' he said. 'Manpower's going to be a problem for about the next seven months. After that, the training programs Linda and Shannon have in place should be producing most of the personnel we need. And a few months after that, we'll begin steadily mothballing the old- style wallers to crew the new construction as it comes out of the yards. We're still going to be stretched to come up with the officers we need-especially flag officers with experience-but we were able to build up a solid base between the Saint-Just cease-fire and Thunderbolt. I think we'll be all right on that side, too.
'As far as the industrial side goes, I realize the economic strain of our present building plans is going to be heavy. Rachel Hanriot's made that clear enough on behalf of Treasury, but I didn't need her to tell me, and I deeply regret having to impose it. Especially given the high price we've all paid to start turning the economy around. But we don't have a lot of choice, unless we end up successfully negotiating a peace settlement.'
He raised his eyebrows questioningly, and she gave her head a quick, irritable shake.
'I don't know where we are on that,' she admitted, manifestly unhappily. 'I'd have thought even Elizabeth Winton would be willing to sit down and talk after you, Javier, and the rest of the Navy finished kicking her navy's ass so thoroughly! So far, though, nothing. I'm becoming more and more convinced that Arnold's been right about the Manties' new taste for imperialism from the very beginning... damn him.'
Theisman started to say something, then stopped. This wasn't the time to suggest that the Queen of Manticore might have very good reasons to not see things exactly as Eloise Pritchart did. Or to reiterate his own deep distrust and suspicion of anything emerging from the mouth of Secretary of State Arnold Giancola.
'Well,' he said instead, 'in the absence of a negotiated settlement, we don't really have any choice but to press for an outright military victory.'
'And you genuinely believe we can achieve that?'
Theisman snorted in harsh amusement at her tone.
'I wish you wouldn't sound quite so... dubious,' he said. 'You're the commander-in-chief, after all. Does terrible things for the uniformed personnel's morale when you sound like you can't quite believe we can win.'
'After what they did to us in the last war, and especially Buttercup, it's hard not to feel a little doubtful, Tom,' she said a bit apologetically.
'I suppose it is,' he conceded. 'But in this case, yes, I do believe we can defeat the Star Kingdom and its allies if we have to. I really need to take you out to Bolthole to actually see what we're doing there, and discuss everything Shannon Foraker is up to. The short version, though, is that we hurt the Manties badly in Thunderbolt. Not just in the ships we destroyed, but in the unfinished construction Admiral Griffith took out at Grendelsbane. We gutted their entire second-generation podnought building program, Eloise. They're basically having to lay down new vessels from scratch, and while their building rates are still faster than ours are, even at Bolthole, they aren't fast enough to offset the jump we've gotten in ships already under construction and nearing completion. Our technology
