Ashes Of Victory

of missile fire he'd observed. It was unfortunate he and Shannon Foraker had been almost completely ignored by the people running the PRH's intelligence agencies on their return, though it had probably been inevitable, given the suspicion in which they were held over the loss of their ship and the fact that they had been prisoners of war, after all.

But if the Manties could put some sort of pod-dispensing system inside a freighter, there was no reason they couldn't do the same thing with a superdreadnought, and if anyone had bothered to listen to Caslet and Foraker, the PN might actually have figured out how to do the same thing. He doubted it had been easy, and he shuddered at the thought of all the design and redesign studies which must have been involved in restructuring a ship of the wall's internal anatomy so completely. But difficult was hardly the same thing as impossible, and the payoff for their efforts had been a handsome one. Not only did their ships dramatically outrange the People's Navy, but their rate of fire was devastatingly superior, as well. Which meant no Republican commander was going to survive to get into effective range of a Manticoran fleet no matter what he did.

He sighed and looked across at LePic once more. The war was lost. It seemed obvious the Manties didn't have a huge number of their new classes, but the reason for their quiescence had become painfully obvious the instant they cut loose at Dimitri. McQueen had been right — again. They'd been waiting until they could build up a decisive strength, and they'd done so. No doubt they'd be at least a little cautious, for they couldn't afford heavy losses among their new units, but they had enough, concentrated in one spot, or at least on one front, to smash anything the PN put in their way. The only thing that could prevent them from cutting their way right through to the Haven System itself, and that in a matter of months, not years, would be ammunition constraints. The new weapons had to be in short supply, just like the ships equipped to fire them, but Theisman doubted that anyone like White Haven had been stupid enough to launch his offensive without an ample reserve of the new missiles. And, much as he hated to admit it, they were actually using less of the new birds than they had of the old. Their standoff range should be (and probably was) lowering accuracy, but the new EW missiles and drones more than compensated for that by blinding the active defenses. Which meant far more hits were getting through on a per-missile basis.

'We're screwed, Denis,' he said now, quietly, admitting aloud what they both already knew. 'I trust, however, that you don't expect me to put it to the Citizen Chairman in quite those terms, however.'

'I think that would be... um, inadvisable,' LePic agreed with another of those weary smiles. 'Maybe we can bring him around to accepting that after another month or so, assuming the Manties haven't arrived here in the capital and made the point for us by then, but for now, I think we have to concentrate on lesser matters. Maybe if we can talk some sense into him on smaller issues, he'll listen more closely when the time comes to tackle the greater ones.'

' `If we can talk some sense into him,' ' Theisman repeated, then chuckled tiredly. 'All right, Denis. I'll see what I can do,' he promised.

* * *

Oscar Saint-Just watched Citizen Admiral Theisman enter his office with eyes which were beginning to show the strain a bit too clearly for his own taste. He was unhappily aware that he was retreating into a bunker mentality, hunkering down as the entire galaxy prepared to come crashing down on his head. There was altogether too much desperation in his thinking of late, and he knew it was pushing him towards ever more excessive responses, but he couldn't help it. Which only made it even worse. That sense of sliding helplessly down into a pit of quicksand could either paralyze a man or drive him into a mad, senseless effort to lash out at the universe, however uselessly, before it killed him, and the strain of trying to steer a course between those two extremes was grinding away at his stability.

But he made himself step back from his desperation for a moment as Theisman crossed the office towards him. He suspected the citizen admiral resented the mandatory weapon search which had become the lot of any regular officer entering his presence, but if he did, Theisman was careful not to show it. And Saint-Just was a bit surprised by how comforting he found Theisman. The man was scarcely the dull, stolid sort, but he stubbornly refused to allow himself to be panicked, and rather than rail against his difficulties, he simply drew a deep breath and got down to overcoming them. The aura of competence he projected was almost as great as McQueen's had been, and it came without the jagged edges of ambition. At this particular moment, that was more important to Saint-Just than he would have admitted to a living soul.

'Good afternoon, Citizen Admiral,' he said, waving his visitor into a chair. 'What can I do for you?'

The citizen admiral inhaled deeply, then met his eyes squarely.

'Sir, I've come to request that you reconsider your intention to order Citizen Admiral Giscard and Citizen Vice Admiral Tourville home.'

Saint-Just's nostrils flared ever so slightly — the equivalent, for him, of a screaming tantrum — but he made himself sit still and actually think about what Theisman had just said. He wondered how the citizen admiral had learned of his intentions. Of course, it was always possible he hadn't 'learned' about anything; Giscard's and Tourville's affiliation with McQueen had to have a lot of people wondering when he'd summon them home and dispose of them. Especially now, when it was obvious to every regular officer that McQueen — and, by extension, Tourville and Giscard — had been absolutely right about the new Manty weapons while he had been absolutely wrong.

Whether Theisman had learned about it from some source or simply figured it out on his own, however, was less important than the fact that he felt strongly enough about it to come discuss it. He had to know that if Giscard and Tourville were under a cloud, the displeasure of the new Citizen Chairman might very well splash all over anyone who tried to stand up for them, as well.

'Why?' the Citizen Chairman asked flatly, and Theisman shrugged.

'I'm in command of Capital Fleet, Sir. As you yourself told me, my foremost responsibility is to reorganize that formation as a coherent combat force whose loyalty to the Republic I can guarantee. At this moment, I'm far from confident I can do that if you were to recall Giscard and Tourville and... something happened to them.'

'I beg your pardon?' Saint-Just's tone was frosty. Theisman had already talked him out of executing Citizen Admiral Amanda Graveson and Citizen Vice Admiral Lawrence MacAfee, the previous CO of Capital Fleet and her second in command. Some of his senior StateSec officers had urged him to shoot both flag officers as an example to all the other senior officers who hadn't instantly declared their loyalty to the Committee when McQueen's coup started. But as Theisman had pointed out, neither Graveson nor MacAfee had moved to support McQueen, either, and there'd been more than enough confusion coming out of the capital, where personal orders from their direct superior, the Secretary of War, had been countermanded by the Secretary of Sate Security (who wasn't in their official chain of command at all), and no one had been able to reach the Citizen Chairman for confirmation of which Committee member they ought to be listening to. Under the circumstances, Theisman had argued, the only prudent course for a senior flag officer was to try to figure out who was really trying to stage the coup — McQueen or Saint-Just — before they jumped.

It had been, in some ways, a specious argument, in Saint-Just's opinion. But it had also contained at least a little truth, and Theisman had certainly been right to point out that shooting them could only make the rest of Capital Fleet's officers wonder who was next. Which, as the citizen admiral had rather dryly remarked, was unlikely to contribute to a calm and collected state of mind on their part. Or, as he carefully had not remarked, their ultimate loyalty to the man who'd ordered up the firing squads.

Saint-Just had been impressed, almost against his will, both by Theisman's reasonable tone and by the guts it had taken to stand up for his two subordinates when so much bloodlust hung in the air. And as he'd considered the other man's arguments, the new Citizen Chairman had come to the conclusion he might well be right. Even if he wasn't, the fact that everyone knew how seriously Saint-Just had considered shooting Graveson and MacAfee would make the point that future lack of loyalty would be fatal while the fact that he hadn't shot them in the end might help convince them the new master of the PRH wasn't a frothing-at-the-mouth madman after all.

But this time was different.

'I trust that admission wasn't intended as an implied threat, Citizen Admiral,' he said coolly. 'Even if it was, however, I think you should be aware that certain evidence connecting Tourville, at least, and possibly Giscard, as well, to McQueen's plot has been brought to my attention.'

'I don't doubt it.' Theisman managed to keep both his expression and his voice calm and hoped Saint-Just didn't guess how hard it was for him to do that. 'I'd like to point out two things in return, however, Sir. First, I don't