Ashes Of Victory

movements in any navy. I even know that analysts — like me — have a tendency to look on the pessimistic side in evaluating routine movements, especially after McQueen hit us so hard. And,' she admitted, 'after I supported the view that the Peeps would be institutionally incapable of giving her the authority to use her talents so effectively against us. But I honestly don't think I'm being influenced by a need to cover my backside because I screwed up once before.'

'I didn't think you were,' Caparelli said mildly. 'And you were hardly alone in doubting that Pierre and Saint-Just could or would risk easing their own grip on the Navy to let her run her own war plans. I agreed with you, for that matter. Although—' he smiled crookedly '—Admiral White Haven didn't, as I recall. Worse, he specifically warned me that we were all going off the deep end. A bad habit of his, being right.'

'He's been wrong a time or two himself, Sir,' Givens pointed out. She liked and respected Hamish Alexander. But as she'd watched Caparelli bear up under his responsibilities, she'd come to the conclusion that, for all his brilliance, White Haven would have been a poorer choice than Caparelli as a wartime First Space Lord.

She'd been surprised when she realized she'd come to feel that way, but reflection had only strengthened the feeling. White Haven was brilliant and charismatic, but he had no patience with fools, he was far less accustomed to (or possibly even capable of) delegating important tasks, and sometimes he became a victim of his own brilliance. He was accustomed to being right, and people around him also became accustomed to it. Partly, Givens knew, because that was the normal state of affairs... but it also happened because he was so self-confident, he simply overwhelmed everyone else. And because he entered so passionately and completely into any debate. He enjoyed stretching his mind and wrestling problems into submission, and he expected his subordinates to feel the same. But not everyone's brain worked that way, and some inevitably felt intimidated or threatened by the vigor with which he required them to defend their conclusions. They shouldn't have. They were supposed to be adult, responsible officers of the Queen's Navy, after all. But that was an ideal which all too often failed of attainment in the real world, and while Givens knew he would never punish someone simply for disagreeing with him, not all his subordinates shared her assurance of that. It was a brave staffer who openly challenged his views, and that, coupled with his confidence in his own judgment, created an occasional case of tunnel vision. Like his initial resistance to the new LAC carriers and superdreadnought designs. He hadn't even realized he was being doctrinaire and closed-minded, because no one junior to him had possessed the gall to tell the man universally regarded (even, albeit unwillingly, by Sonja Hemphill and the rest of the jeune ecole ) as the RMN's premier strategist that he was being an idiot.

But no one was afraid to offer a divergent viewpoint to Thomas Caparelli. He might or might not agree with it, but Givens had yet to see him brush a differing view aside. And if he lacked White Haven's brilliance, he also lacked the earl's occasional abrasiveness. Coupled with his unflinching integrity, self-discipline, and determination, that made him, in her opinion, the best possible choice for his present duties.

'I know he's been wrong on occasion,' the First Space Lord agreed now. 'But they're rather rare occasions. And this wasn't one of them.'

'No. No, it wasn't,' she admitted.

'Oh, well.' Caparelli turned his chair to face her, cocked back comfortably, and folded his arms. 'Tell me why these new Peep movements seem particularly significant.'

'For several reasons,' Given said promptly. 'First, we're seeing ships of the wall being pulled in this time, not just battleships from their rear areas. They're still coming from secondary systems, yes, but this time around some of them are systems where one would expect them to worry seriously about the possibility that we might pounce with raids of our own, not just ones where they'd left a couple of battleships on station to depress any local temptation towards civil unrest or disloyalty to the New Order.

'In addition, my latest reports indicate that they've actually pulled at least one squadron of superdreadnoughts out of Barnett.' Both of Caparelli's eyebrows rose at that, and she nodded. 'Given how hard McQueen's worked at reinforcing Barnett, that represents a major change of policy.

'There are also some indications that units of StateSec's private navy are being diverted to regular fleet duty. There could be several reasons for that, including a desire to have a few politically reliable ships positioned to watch the flagships of admirals whose accomplishments might be beginning to make them look like threats to the Committee. But it's also possible that it represents a rationalization and concentration of their total strength, whether it's officially SS or People's Navy, as a preliminary to a major operation somewhere. I, for one, think that's something they ought to have done years ago. Of course, I also thought it was stupid to let their security service build a navy of its very own in the first place, so I may not be the best judge in this instance. But whatever their thinking, we've got confirmation from three separate sources — including one ONI has been nursing for years inside their naval communications structure — that StateSec capital ships are being assigned to Tourville and Giscard. Neither of whom,' she added dryly, 'appears to have been properly appreciative of the reinforcement.

'Finally, I got a report yesterday from another of our sources in Proctor Three.'

Caparelli cocked his head and pursed his lips. Proctor Three was one of the three main naval shipyards in the Haven System — which, by definition, made them the three largest yards in the entire PRH.

'According to our source,' Givens went on, 'the Peeps have made a major, and successful, effort to clear their repair and refit slips. Our source—' even here, and even with Caparelli, she was careful to give no clues to that source's identity, including even his (or her) gender '—isn't highly placed enough to be privy to the reasons for that effort. But our source's personal observation confirms that they seem to've gotten an awful lot of capital units off the binnacle list and back to the fleet over the past few months. That sort of surge must've required a major commitment of time, manpower, and resources, which suggests that they must have skimped somewhere else to get it done. And if they've sent that many ships back to active duty and they're still pulling even more ships in from less critical systems, then my feeling is that they have to be concentrating a powerful force somewhere for a purpose. And,' she added dryly, 'I didn't much care for what they did the last time they managed to assemble a striking force like that.'

'Um.' Caparelli unfolded one arm to rub his chin, then nodded. 'I can't fault you there,' he said. 'But how reliable is your data?'

From some people, that might have sounded challenging, or like a dismissal of her argument. From Caparelli, it was only a question, and she shrugged.

'All of our data is weeks, even months, old,' she admitted. 'It has to be, over such distances, and the fact that agent reports have to be transmitted clandestinely slows things even more. And there's always the possibility of disinformation. We've done that to the Peeps a time or two, you know, and however heavy-handed and brutal State Security may be, the people running it have a lot of experience dealing with internal security threats. Like spies.

'Having said all that, I think it's basically reliable. There are going to be some errors, and it's seldom possible to conclusively confirm or deny the reliability of any given report. Taken as a whole, though, I think the picture that's emerged is pretty solid.'

'All right.' Caparelli nodded. 'In that case, what do you think they — or McQueen, at least — is planning to do with them?'

'That, of course, is the million-dollar question.' Givens sighed. 'And the only answer I can give you is that I don't know. Before they hit Basilisk and Zanzibar, I'd have felt a lot more confident predicting that they were thinking in terms of something along the frontier, but now—?'

She shrugged, and Caparelli snorted.

'Let's not double-think ourselves into indecision, Pat. Yes, they hit us with a deep, rear-area operation and got away with it... once. Actually, when you look at it, they took fairly heavy losses, especially at Hancock, and the physical damage to our infrastructure wasn't really all that bad except at Basilisk. The morale and diplomatic consequences were a whole different kettle of fish, of course, and I'm certainly not trying to minimize them. They were bad enough to throw us back on the defensive, after all. But we have to remember the way things probably look from their side of the hill, not just the way they look to us. They have to be nervous over what we did to them at Hancock, and they also have to know we've redeployed to make similar deep raids extremely risky in the future.'

'I can't argue with that, Sir. Not logically, anyway. But I think we have to allow for the possibility that they might try a similar operation again, despite the risks.'

'Agreed. Agreed.' Caparelli nodded briskly, then turned his chair back to his console and waved out over the tank's huge holo display. 'On the other hand, though, they've got all that area out there to pick from, and the