"Which will only make it even more satisfying when he finally gets it," the chief of staff replied. Crandall grunted and looked at Ou-yang.
"I don't think this brainstorm about 'negotiating' is going to work out very well, Zhing-wei." It wasn't quite a snarl, this time, although it remained closer to that than to a mere growl.
"Probably not, Ma'am," the operations officer acknowledged. "On the other hand, it was never for their benefit, was it?"
"No, but that doesn't make it any more enjoyable."
"Well, Ma'am, at least it's giving us plenty of time to take a look at what they've got in orbit around the planet," Ou-yang pointed out. "That's worthwhile in its own right, I think."
"I suppose so," Crandall admitted irritably.
"What do they have, Zhing-wei?" Bautista inquired, and Shavarshyan wondered—briefly—if the chief of staff was deliberately trying to divert Crandall's ire from the Manticorans. But the question flitted through his brain and away again as quickly as it had come. If anyone aboard Joseph Buckley was even more pissed off at the Manties than Crandall, that person was Vice Admiral Pйpй Bautista.
"Unless we want to take the remotes in close enough the Manties may pick them up and nail them, we're not going to get really good resolution," Ou-yang replied. "We are picking up a superdreadnought and a squadron—well eight, anyway—of those big heavy cruisers or small battlecruisers or whatever of theirs, but I'm pretty sure that isn't everything they've got."
"Why?" Crandall sounded at least a bit calmer as she focused on Ou-yang's report.
"We've got some fairly persistent 'sensor ghosts,'" the ops officer told her. "They're just a bit too localized and just a shade too strong for me to believe the platforms are manufacturing them. The Manties' EW capabilities are supposed to be quite good, so I'm willing to bet at least some of those 'sensor ghosts' are actually stealthed units."
"Makes sense, Ma'am," Bautista offered. "They probably want to keep us guessing about their actual strength." He snorted harshly. "Maybe they think they can pull off some sort of 'ambush!'"
"On the other hand, they might just be trying to make us worry about where the rest of their ships are," Ou-yang pointed out. The chief of staff frowned, and she shrugged. "Until we actually turned up, they couldn't have been confident about what kind of strength we'd have. They may have expected a considerably smaller force and figured we'd be leery of pressing on when the rest of their fleet might turn up behind us at any moment."
Shavarshyan started to open his mouth, then closed it, then drew a deep breath and opened it again.
"Is it possible," he asked in a carefully neutral tone, "that what they're really trying to do is to convince us they're even weaker than they actually are in order to make us overconfident?"
He knew, even before the question was out of his mouth, that the majority of his audience was going to find the very idea preposterous. For that matter, he didn't really expect it to be true himself. Unfortunately, suggesting possibly overlooked answers to questions was one of an intelligence officer's functions.
Crandall and Bautista, however, didn't seem to appreciate that minor fact. In fact, they both looked at him in obvious disbelief that even a Frontier Fleet officer could have offered such a ludicrous suggestion.
"We've got seventy-one ships-of-the-wall , Commander," the chief of staff said after a moment in an elaborately patient tone. "The last thing these people want to do is actually fight us! They know as well as we do that any 'battle' would be a very short, very unhappy experience for them. Under the circumstances, the last thing they'd want would be to make us even more confident than we already are. Don't you think they'd be more interested in encouraging us to feel cautious ?"
Shavarshyan's jaw tightened. It was hardly a surprise, however; he'd known how Bautista would react before he ever spoke. That, unfortunately, hadn't relieved him of his responsibility to do the speaking in question. But then, to his surprise, someone else spoke up.
"Actually, Pйpй," Ou-yang Zhing-wei said, "Commander Shavarshyan may have a point." The chief of staff looked at her incredulously, and she shrugged. "Not in the way you're thinking. As you say, they can't want to fight us, but they may have orders to do just that. And I suggest all of us bear in mind that this particular batch of neobarbs has been fighting a war for the better part of twenty T-years."
"And that experience is somehow supposed to make battlecruisers and heavy cruisers capable of taking on superdreadnoughts?" Bautista demanded.
"I didn't say that," Ou-yang replied coolly. "What I'm suggesting is that whether they want to fight us or not, there probably aren't a whole lot of shy and retiring Manty flag officers these days. Hell, look at what this Gold Peak's already done! So if they've got orders to fight, I expect they'll follow them. And in that case, it's entirely possible they'd want us to underestimate their strength. It might not help them a lot , but when the odds are this bad, I'd play for any edge I could find, if I were in their place."
"I see your point, Zhing-wei," Crandall acknowledged, "but—"
"Excuse me, Ma'am," Captain Chatfield said. "Two minutes to the Manties' response."
"Thank you, Darryl." Crandall nodded to him, then looked back at Bautista and Ou-yang. "There may be something to this, Pйpй. At any rate, let's not automatically assume there isn't . I want you and Zhing-wei to give me an analysis based on the possibility that all of her sensor ghosts are those big-assed battlecruisers. And another based on the possibility that all of them are superdreadnoughts that managed to get here from Manticore faster than we got here from Meyers. Understood?"
"Yes, Ma'am," Bautista acknowledged, although it was evident to Shavarshyan that he continued to put very little credence in the suggestion.
Crandall turned back to face the com display and composed her features just as O'Shaughnessy nodded from it.
"Oh, I'm perfectly well aware of what happened in New Tuscany, of course, Admiral," O'Shaughnessy said with an affable smile. Then his eyes narrowed, and his voice hardened ever so slightly. "I'm just not aware of any unprovoked aggression on the Star Empire's part."
He looked out of the display at her for another heartbeat, then deliberately cocked his chair back and returned his attention to his novel.
Crandall seemed to swell visibly, and Shavarshyan closed his eyes. He wasn't especially fond of Manties himself, but he had to admire the skill with which O'Shaughnessy had planted his picador's dart. On the other hand, he also had to wonder what the lunatic thought he was doing, baiting the CO of such a powerful force.
"Unless you wish me to move immediately upon your pathetic little planet, I advise you to stop splitting semantic hairs, Mr. O'Shaughnessy," Crandall said, as if underlining Shavarshyan's last thought, and her expression was as ugly as her tone. "You know damned well why I'm here!"
"I'm afraid that since I'm not a mind reader, and since you haven't bothered to respond to any of our earlier communication attempts, I really don't have a clue as to the reasons for this visit," O'Shaughnessy told her coolly eighteen minutes later, looking up from his reader once more. "Perhaps the Foreign Ministry protocolists back in Old Chicago will be able to figure it out for me when they play back the recording of your edifying conversation which will undoubtedly be attached to Her Majesty's next note to Prime Minister Gyulay."
Crandall twitched as if he'd tossed a glass of ice water over her, and her face turned a full shade darker at his none too subtle reminder that whatever her ultimate intentions might be, this was at least theoretically an exchange between official representatives of two sovereign star nations.