Mission of Honor

She stared at him in disbelief, and he grinned sourly, then extended his whiskey-laced coffee mug towards her.

'Care for a little belt?' he invited.

'I don't think an entire bottle would help a lot,' she replied after a moment, and shook her head. 'You're serious, aren't you?'

'Believe me, I wish I wasn't.'

'What can he be thinking? '

'I'm not sure I'd apply that particular verb to whatever's going on inside his skull at the moment,' al- Fanudahi said tartly. Then he sighed.

'As nearly as I could figure out from what Jennings and Bernard were saying to Kingsford, and the kinds of questions all three of them were asking me, Rajampet thinks that even if reports of what happened to them are grossly exaggerated, the Manties have to be reeling. As Jennings put it, the moment is 'psychologically ripe'. After a pounding like that, they aren't going to have the stomach for a standup fight against the SLN.'

'Just like a handful of their cruisers didn't have the stomach for a standup fight against Crandall, you mean?' Teague said bitterly.

'I think they expect things to work out a little better this time.'

'They think the Manty Home Fleet won't fight to defend their home system when a batch of cruisers were willing to go toe-to-toe with Crandall over the administrative center of a province they haven't even firmly integrated into their empire yet?'

Teague hadn't even tried to keep the incredulity out of her savage tone, and al-Fanudahi grinned with at least a trace of genuine humor.

'There you go using that verb again,' he said. Then he sobered.

'It does tie in with existing strategic planning,' he pointed out. 'And, apparently, the theory is that getting hammered that way, completely out of the blue, is bound to have had a devastating effect on the Manties' morale and confidence, completely disregarding whatever effect it's had on their actual, physical capabilities. In fact, Jennings suggested that the psychological impact was probably even greater because it came so close on the heels of what happened at Spindle. And, of course, they can't be certain we weren't the ones who did it. So when a fresh Solarian fleet turns up on their doorstep in about half the time they can have expected anyone to take getting there, and when they realize we're willing to go at them again, this time on their home ground, despite Spindle, they'll realize they're screwed and throw in the towel. Especially if they do think we're the ones who just hit them and they're looking over their shoulder, waiting for us to do it t again at the moment they're engaged against our conventional wallers.'

Teague looked at him again, then sighed, walked back around her desk, and flopped into her own chair.

'Go on. I'm sure there's more and better still to come.'

'Well, I did point out—diffidently, you understand—that even allowing for the fact that Filareta is a lot closer to Manticore than anyone would have expected, it's going to take around a month to get him reinforced the way they're talking about, and then another month and a half to get him to Manticore, by which point at least some of the shock effect should have dissipated. Bernard agreed that was a possibility, but her staff psychologists'—his eyes met Teague's and rolled—'estimate that would actually work in our behalf. Apparently they feel three months or so would be about right for the anesthetizing effect of the shock to wear off and give way to despair as 'a more sober evaluation of their situation' sinks in fully.'

'I don't suppose any of these staff psychologists are planning on accompanying Admiral Filareta to Manticore?'

'Oddly enough, I don't believe they are.'

'Neither would I,' Teague muttered.

'After that concern of mine had been suitably allayed,' al-Fanudahi continued, 'I pointed out that our reports indicate the Manties probably have at least a hundred or so wallers of their own left in Home Fleet. Given the outcome of the Battle of Spindle, it seemed to me that perhaps a greater numerical advantage on our part would be in order. Admiral Jennings, however, informed me that Admiral Thimбr's reports indicate the Manties took heavier losses than we'd originally assumed when Haven attacked their home system. You'll be interested to know that ONI's best estimate is that the Manties have no more than sixty or seventy of the wall left.'

'I thought we were the Office of Naval Intelligence,' Teague observed.

'No, we're the Office of Operational Analysis ,' al-Fanudahi corrected in a chiding tone of voice. 'Admiral Kingsford was kind enough to point that out to me. Apparently, additional human intelligence reports you and I haven't had access to strongly support Admiral Thimбr's conclusions about Manticoran losses.'

'Fascinating.'

'I thought so, too. But after I'd had the opportunity to digest that information for a few moments, I pointed out that even sixty or seventy of their wallers would presumably be more than enough to deal with three or four hundred of ours, given their newly revealed advantage in missile warfare. Which, I noted, didn't even consider any fixed defenses their capital system might have deployed after a couple of decades of active warfare with the Republic of Haven.

'Admiral Bernard agreed that that was certainly a reasonable cause for concern, but it's apparently the joint view of Admiral Rajampet and Admiral Kingsford that no one could have gotten in to hammer the Manties' shipyards and space stations that hard without blowing his way through the fixed defenses first. In other words, whoever it was must have already taken out a lot of the combat capability they might have used against us. And with the damage to their industrial sector, not to mention their losses in trained military manpower, they won't have been able to do very much to replace lost capability.'

Teague realized she was shaking her head, slowly, again and again, and made herself stop.

'They're insane,' she said flatly.

'Or a reasonable facsimile thereof,' he agreed glumly.

'Haven't they even considered the implications of what happened to the Manties?' she demanded.

'The only implications they're interested in are the ones that have left Manticore vulnerable,' al-Fanudahi replied flatly. 'I pointed out to them that we don't have a clue how whoever it was did whatever the hell he did. All we have so far are news reports, for God's sake! It's obvious someone got in and blew the crap out of Manticore's infrastructure, but that's all we know.'

'Bullshit it's all we know!' Teague snapped. 'We know damned well that nothing we have could've done it! What happened to Crandall at Spindle's proof enough of that . I guarantee you that there's no way Spindle had anything like the depth of sensor coverage their home system has, and their Home Fleet is a hell of a lot more powerful than a handful of cruisers and battlecruisers. So if somebody got through all of that and got in close enough to do the kind of damage the newsies are reporting—or anything remotely like the damage they're reporting—they had to do it with some kind of hardware we've never even heard of. Another kind of hardware we've never even heard of!'

'My own thoughts exactly,' al-Fanudahi agreed heavily.

The two of them sat looking at one another in silence for at least a couple of minutes. Then Teague leaned back and inhaled deeply.

'You realize who it was, of course,' she said quietly.

'Well, we've just agreed it wasn't us,' he replied. 'And if Haven had anything like this—or if they'd even been close to getting something like this deployed—they never would've launched that do-or-die attack of theirs. So, from where I sit, that eliminates most of the usual suspects. And given what's been going on in Talbott, and the assassination of the Manty ambassador right here in Old Chicago, and that obvious nonsense about Manty sponsorship of that attack on Green Pines, and that attack on Congo, the name that pops to the top of my list begins with the letter 'M'.'

'Mine, too.' Her eyes were as dark as his had been, and her expression was very, very grim. 'Daoud, I'm starting to have a really bad feeling. The sort of feeling a person might get if she believed the Manties had been right all along about Manpower's involvement. It doesn't seem possible, but . . . .'

Her voice trailed off, and al-Fanudahi nodded.