Mission of Honor

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!'

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Albrecht Detweiler sat back in his chair and contemplated the true crown jewels of the 'onion' his ancestors had spent so long building.

The conference room in which he sat was probably, at that moment, the most carefully protected, eavesdropping-proof conference room in the entire explored galaxy. If it wasn't, he reflected wryly, it certainly wasn't for lack of trying. This meeting was just as important, and probably even more critical, than Oyster Bay had ever been.

For all its security, it was a large, comfortable chamber, decorated with light sculpture masterpieces carefully chosen from each of the star systems represented by the people in it. Each of the chairs around the enormous table