Harrington herself gave Milligan the option of saving his people's lives. And they didn't kill or even injure a single civilian when they took out the infrastructure in that system, or anywhere else.'
'That was partly because they had the time, Ma'am,' Lewis pointed out. 'They had complete control of the star systems, and they could afford to give our civilians time to evacuate.'
'Agreed. But Harrington didn't have to let Milligan stand down his forces. And they would have been justified, under accepted interstellar law, in simply giving us 'a reasonable time' to evacuate, which would have been a lot shorter than the time they actually gave us.' She shook her head. 'No, I think part of it was the Manties' way-or, at least, Harrington's way-of telling us that if we show restraint-whenever we can, at least-they'll do the same.'
'You may have a point,' Marquette said. 'Certainly Harrington's record, despite that ridiculous 'murder conviction' the Legislaturalists cooked up after Basilisk, would lead us to expect that out of her. But I think she may also be being a bit subtler than some of our analysts would have expected out of her.'
'Subtler?'
'Yes. Think about the other side of her 'message' to Milligan. 'Our technical superiority is so great we could kill you anytime we want to, but because we're nice guys, we're not going to today. All you have to do is blow up your own ships and get out of our way.''
Marquette's irony was withering, and Trenis frowned.
'You're seeing it as an attack on our people's confidence and morale.'
'At least in part. Mind you, from what we know of Harrington, I'm sure she was delighted to not to kill anyone she didn't have to. But she apparently also believes in killing as many birds with each stone as she can.'
Trenis nodded silently for a moment, then looked almost diffidently at the chief of staff.
'May I ask if a Board's going to be convened on Milligan's actions?'
'I think you can confidently assume one is,' Marquette said a bit grimly. 'And I'm not at all sure how it's going to come out, but if I had to place a bet, it wouldn't be on a happy outcome. The fact is that Milligan showed good sense in not getting his people killed for nothing. Unfortunately, that psychological warfare element I just mentioned has to be considered as well. I suspect any Board's going to find he acted appropriately... and that he's going to be beached anyway, as a sort of object lesson. It's not fair, but we have to consider the morale of the Service as a whole.'
'I agree that we do, Sir,' Trenis said after a moment. 'On the other hand, we've gone to some lengths to convince our people they won't get shot as an example to others if they get caught in the gears through no fault of their own. And, frankly, that's exactly what happened to Tom Milligan. He couldn't run, he couldn't bring the enemy into his weapons' range, and the force mix we'd assigned him was hopelessly inadequate even to stand off modern Manty LACs, much less SD(P)s. If we hammer him for his actions, then we tell people we expect them to do the same thing Admiral Beach did, and that we'll hammer them if they don't.'
'Um.' Marquette pursed his lips, then shrugged. 'I said I wasn't sure how it's going to come out, and what you've just said is the main reason I'm not. As for Beach, he wasn't given the same option Harrington gave Milligan, so it's not exactly as if he rejected the opportunity to save his people's lives. And from what we've been able to piece together about his tactics, they were about as good as someone in a position that hopeless could have come up with.'
'I wasn't criticizing him, Sir. As a matter of fact, Everette and I knew one another for almost fifteen T-years. I'm just not sure most of our people would appreciate the difference between the options he and Milligan had, and I don't want to create a situation in which our flag officers and captains start to think we expect them to go down, every beam firing, no matter how hopeless the situation.' Trenis' expression was grim. 'I lost too many friends, saw too many good ships blown out of space, because their COs knew that was exactly what the Committee expected out of them.'
Marquette considered her thoughtfully. Linda Trenis wasn't simply one of the new Republican Navy's senior admirals. As the head of the Bureau of Planning, she was responsible for the formulation and implementation of doctrine and training standards. As such, the concerns she was expressing fell squarely and correctly within her purview.
'Very well, Linda. Your concern is noted, and I'll make certain it's taken into consideration whenever the Board on Hera is impaneled. For what it's worth, I agree that the points you've raised are entirely valid. The problem's going to be exactly where we balance them against the need to maintain the most aggressive mental and psychological stance we can.'
Trenis nodded, and Marquette turned back to Victor Lewis.
'As you just pointed out, Victor, they did show us their best where their combat hardware is concerned. What did we learn in the process?'
'Not as much as I'd have liked, Sir,' Lewis said frankly. 'Especially not given the price we paid for the info we did get. There are a few things we know now that we didn't know then, though.
'The one drawback to Milligan's acceptance of Harrington's terms, from our perspective over at Operational Research, is that her SD(P)s were never forced to fire. As such, we weren't able to get any sort of feel for how the Invictuses' armaments may vary from their Medusa/Harrington ships. The one thing that does stand out from the visual scans some of our recon platforms got and transmitted down to the planet before Harrington wiped them out is that the reports that the Invictus mounts no broadside missile tubes appears to be accurate. We're not certain why. We've had to make the same decision primarily because our missiles are so damned big, compared to theirs, that we really can't afford the mass penalty for launchers big enough to handle them in ships already designed to deploy pods. All the indications from captured hardware and what we've gotten from Erewhon are that the Manties don't suffer from that particular problem, or not, at least, to anything like the same degree, so there's obviously a different basis for the design philosophy.
'In the case of Gaston, we got a lot of sensor information on the Grayson Katanas. I'm having all of it sent directly to Admiral Foraker at Bolthole for her teams' consideration, although my initial take on it is that most of it indicates the Katana is built around more of that damned Manticoran miniaturization tech we can't match yet. Certainly, they're very small units, with extremely high acceleration rates. They appear to have all the Shrike's defensive capabilities, and whatever the hell they call that new missile of theirs. On the other hand, they never fired a shot in energy range, so we're not sure what they carry there. Even bearing in mind that we're talking about a Manty-derived design, there can't be a lot of room for the kind of energy armament the Shrike hauls around with it.
'The real bad news seems to be those missiles. They obviously can't have the sort of range our Cimeterres' missiles do, but they're incredibly fast. At the very minimum, we're going to have to completely overhaul our missile defense software to deal with their speed and maneuverability, and their sensor and tracking ability appear to have significantly improved, as well. The fact that the Manties obviously know about the Triple Ripple, and have adapted their tactics to defeat it, further complicates the situation. Frankly, at least until the next-generation LACs start coming out of Bolthole, I don't think our LACs are going to be able to encounter Manty units-or, at least, Katanas- with any realistic hope of victory.'
'My initial feeling was that Victor was being unduly pessimistic, Sir,' Trenis put in. 'Having had a better look at the raw data, though, I no longer think that. My own feeling, at this time, is that we need to restrict the Cimeterres essentially to the anti-missile role. If they have to mix it up with a Manty or Grayson LACs, they're really going to need to do it from within our own starships' engagement envelope. They're going to need the support that badly.'
'Wonderful,' Marquette muttered sourly. Then he shrugged. 'On the other hand, we never did see the Cimeterre as anything except a way to blunt Manty LAC attacks. Certainly they've been useful in other roles, but no one on our side is likely to confuse them with a main combatant. Actually, I'm more interested in what we know about their Agamemnons.'
'First of all, Sir, they're big,' Lewis said. 'Our best estimate from Admiral Beach's tactical take is that they're somewhere around one-point-seven to one-point-eight megatons. That makes them about twice the size of their previous battlecruiser classes.
'Secondly, they don't appear to deploy the same number of pods per salvo as we've seen out of their SD(P)s. Manty pods are damnably hard sensor targets, but it looks like they were only rolling four pods at a time. However-' he looked up and met Marquette's eyes '-the pods they were rolling apparently carried fourteen missiles each.'
'Fourteen?'
