than four months after we finished telling Parliament we're making further reductions in our wall.'
Jurgensen and Chakrabarti nodded solemnly, secure in the knowledge that they had proposed nothing of the sort, whatever the civilian lords of Admiralty might have had to say about it. Of course, neither of them had protested the reductions, but that was entirely different from bearing responsibility for them.
'What sort of details
'Almost none, actually,' Jurgensen admitted. 'A Sidemorian analyst claims that visual imagery of one of the IAN's new
'In addition, we have two reports from merchant skippers suggesting that the Andies may have managed at least some improvement in their inertial compensators. The evidence is extremely sketchy, but both of the captains involved report observing Andermani ships pulling accelerations considerably higher than they should have been.'
'Merchant skippers!' Chakrabarti snorted, but Jurgensen shook his head.
'That was my own initial reaction, Simon, which is one reason I wanted to get confirmation before reporting it. But one of the merchant captains involved is a half-pay admiral.'
'What?' Janacek eyes sharpened. 'Which half-pay admiral?'
'An Admiral Bachfisch,' Jurgensen replied.
'Oh, him!' Janacek snorted. 'I remember now. A fuck-up who almost got his ship blown out of space!'
'Not, perhaps, the best possible reference for someone's resume,' Jurgensen agreed. 'But he is an experienced man, with over thirty T-years on active duty before he, um, left active naval service.'
Janacek snorted again, although with a bit less panache this time. Chakrabarti, on the other hand, suddenly looked more thoughtful, and Jurgensen twitched one shoulder.
'There are a half dozen other reports, most of them from independent stringers run by our naval attaches in the Empire, that indicate the Andies have at least been experimenting with longer ranged missiles, and we've known for years now that they've been developing their own pods. What we don't know, and what I haven't found a way to confirm one way or the other yet, is whether or not they've begun laying down SD(P)s of their own.'
'Find a way to confirm it, one way or the other.' There was an edge in Janacek's voice. His estimates of necessary force levels had been predicated upon maintaining the RMN's monopoly on the new superdreadnought types. His reports to the Cabinet hadn't even considered the possibility that the Andermani might already be beginning construction of their own SD(P)s.
There wasn't any reason to bring it up, he told himself defensively. It's the Peeps we have to worry about; not the Andies. If we had to, we could survive letting them have the entire Confederacy, in the short term, at least. Besides, Francis hadn't said a word to me about it then.
'In the meantime,' he continued, turning back to Chakrabarti, 'I need firm proposals from you on the exact strength we need to transfer to Sidemore.'
'Do you want me to use worst-case assumptions?' the First Space Lord asked, and Janacek shook his head.
'Not worse-case. We don't need to frighten ourselves into overreacting when none of this has even been confirmed by Intelligence. Assume some improvements in their capabilities, but let's not get carried away.'
'That still leaves a lot of uncertainty, Ed,' Chakrabarti pointed out, and Janacek frowned. 'I just want to be certain I base my proposals on what you want them based on,' the admiral said.
'All right,' Janacek said, 'assume their present capabilities are approximately equal to what ours were, say, six T-years ago. No SD(P)s, no Ghost Rider, and no CLACs, but otherwise assume that they have everything we had, including the new compensators.'
'Fine,' Chakrabarti agreed with a satisfied nod. Then he cocked his head. 'On the basis of those assumptions, though, I can already tell you that 'a couple of battle squadrons' isn't going to be enough. Not playing so close to the Andies' backyard.'
'There are limits to our resources,' Janacek told him.
'I understand. But we may be looking at a situation where we have no choice but to rob Peter if we're going to pay Paul.'
'It's highly probable that the Government will be able to control the situation through diplomatic measures,' Janacek said. 'If it turns out that we're going to require a more concrete proof of our commitment, we'll just have to do whatever is necessary to come up with it.'
'Yes, Sir. But if we're going to reinforce Sidemore on the scale I think the threat levels we'll be assuming are going to require, then we'll also have to pick somebody to command those reinforcements. Rear Admiral Hewitt, the station's present commander, is actually on the junior side for what's already assigned to it. He's much too junior to command what's about to become one of our three largest fleet commands, whether we call it a 'fleet' formally or not.'
'Um,' Janacek said again, frowning down at his desk in thought. Chakrabarti had a point, but picking a new station CO wasn't going to be easy. Sidemore had proved fairly useful, but scarcely essential or vital even during the war. Now that the war had been effectively won, Sidemore would become increasingly less relevant to the Star Kingdom's strategic needs, which meant no ambitious officer was going to appreciate being shuffled off to command it. And that didn't even consider the potential mousetraps built into the assignment.
Despite his words to Jurgensen and Chakrabarti, Janacek was privately certain the Government would much prefer to avoid any distracting confrontation with the Andermani, and rightly so. The First Lord had never been in favor of the expansionist pressures he'd often sensed in both the Navy and Parliament, anyway. That was why he'd done his best to disengage from Basilisk during his first tenure at the Admiralty, before that maniac Harrington almost got them into a shooting war with the Peeps five T-years early.
If it came down to it, he would certainly recommend to the Cabinet that reasonable territorial concessions be made to the Andermani. It wasn't as if the territories in question belonged to the Star Kingdom, anyway, and nothing inside Silesia struck him as being worth the risk of a shooting incident, much less an actual war. But that meant whoever was sent out to Sidemore would find himself in the unenviable position of attempting to deter the Andermani in the full knowledge that no additional reinforcements would be forthcoming. And if the Andermani declined to be deterred and there was an incident of any sort, the Government would almost certainly disavow the station commander's actions. Even in a best case situation, whoever wound up in command would be remembered as the officer on whose watch the Empire had moved in on Silesia. It wouldn't have been his fault, of course, but that wouldn't prevent his peers—and his superiors—from associating it with his assumption of command.
So where did he find someone who could make bricks without straw if he had to, convince the Andermani he would fight to the death before he let them have Silesia (until, at least, he got the inevitable order to hand it over to them), and be expendable if it became necessary for the Government to disavow him? Right off the top of his head, he couldn't think of anyone, but he was sure something would come to him.
Chapter Ten
Vice Admiral Shannon Foraker stood in the boat bay gallery with her hands clasped loosely behind her and gazed out through the bay's clear vacuum at the unwinking stars as she watched the incoming pinnace settle into the docking buffers. The service umbilicals ran out to it, followed by the boarding tube, and she straightened her shoulders and stood a bit straighter as the side party came to attention.
The telltales on the gallery end of the tube blinked from red to the amber of standby, and then to the bright green that indicated a tight seal and good atmosphere. Then the hatch opened, and the bosun's pipes began to squeal in the high, shrill voices she'd never been able to develop a taste for.
'Secretary of War, arriving!' the intercom announced as a slightly stocky, brown-haired man in an admiral's uniform stepped through the hatch and into the sound of the pipes, and the side party snapped instantly to attention. So did Admiral Foraker as she watched the newcomer salute RHNS
