Al-Fanudahi's heart sank. He'd hoped—prayed—that Rajampet would abandon this notion after his own briefings to Kingsford, Jennings and Bernard.
"What the Strategy Board and I propose," Rajampet told the gathered officers, "is to concentrate the units I've mentioned under Filareta's command and send him to Manticore."
The room was hushed, and he paused long enough to survey the faces looking back at him, then shrugged ever so slightly.
"I fully realize—as does the Strategy Board—that there's a degree of risk in the action we're contemplating. In our opinion, however, the potential gain vastly outweighs the risk. First, the Manties are quite probably going to be so disenheartened by what's happened to their home system that much of their truculence will have been hammered out of them before Filareta ever arrives. Second, even if they should be so foolish as to attempt to resist him, their capacity to do so must have been seriously damaged in the course of any attack capable of penetrating to their inner-system space stations as this one did. Third, having a second fleet, six times the size of the one they confronted at Spindle, arrive in their home system this promptly has to drive home the totality of our quantitative advantage in any protracted struggle. And, fourth, Ladies and Gentlemen, we are currently redeploying the remainder of our active wallers towards Manticore and simultaneously beginning the largest activation of the Reserve in the Navy's history."
Al-Fanudahi wouldn't have believed the silence could get even more intense, but he would have been wrong. He wondered if any of those assembled flag officers were thinking about the constitutional implications of what Rajampet had just said. Even the broadest interpretation of Article Seven's "self-defense" clause had never been construed to cover a general mobilization of the Reserve without formal authorization from the civilian government. Kolokoltsov and his cronies, however, clearly doubted they could get that authorization without touching off a political dogfight such as the League had never seen. So at the moment, he and his fellow bureaucrats were simply going to look the other way and carry on with their "diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis" while Rajampet did the dirty work. Which meant that, ultimately, the Navy was going to carry the can if it all blew up even half as catastrophically as al-Fanudahi was afraid it might.
Not to mention the millions of more men and women in Navy uniform who were going to get killed along the way.
"My own belief, and that of the Strategy Board, is that the Manties will realize we aren't going to be bluffed or blackmailed, even by something as painful as Spindle, into simply giving them the blank check they want. Faced with Filareta's squadrons as the proof of our determination that their actions are not going to be allowed to stand, it seems most likely to us that they'll surrender to the inevitable rather than risk suffering even more fatalities and damage to their home system.
"At the same time, however, we realize there's no way to be certain of that, and we're prepared for the possibility that the Manties may be insane enough not to surrender. We're even prepared for the possibility that they may have sufficient of their new missiles available from existing stores to beat off Filareta's attack, at least temporarily. Which is why the redeployment of our active wall is designed to concentrate no fewer than an additional five hundred wallers on Tasmania—this time with complete logistical support and a powerful Frontier Fleet screen—within two and a half months. In three months' time, that total will reach six hundred. Which means we'll be able to dispatch a second wave, substantially larger and even more powerfully supported, against Manticore within a maximum of five months—long before they will have been able to restore sufficient industrial capacity to reammunition their own ships."
He looked around the briefing room once more.
"One way or the other, Ladies and Gentlemen," he said very quietly after several moments, "what happened at Spindle is not going to be allowed to stand. And, for the Manties' own sake, I hope they realize how serious we are before they make things even worse."
* * *
Chris Billingsley poured the final cup of coffee, set the carafe on the small side table, and withdrew without a word. Michelle Henke watched him go, then picked up her cup and sipped. Other people were doing the same thing around the conference table, and she wondered how many of them were using it as a stage prop in their effort to project a sense that the universe hadn't gone mad around them.
If they are, they aren't doing a very good job of it , she thought grimly. On the other hand, neither am I because as near as I can tell, the universe has gone crazy .
"All right," she said finally, lowering her cup and glancing at Captain Lecter. "I suppose we may as well get down to it." She smiled without any humor at all. "I don't imagine any of you to be any happier to hear this than I am. Unfortunately, after we do, we've got to decide what we're going to do about it, and I'm going to want recommendations for Admiral Khumalo and Baroness Medusa. So if any of you—and I mean any of you—happen to be struck by any brilliant insights in the course of Cindy's briefing, make a note of them. We're going to need all of them we can get."
Heads nodded, and she gestured to Lecter.
"The floor is yours, Cindy," she said.
"Yes, Ma'am."
Lecter didn't look any happier about the briefing she was about to give than her audience looked about what they knew they were going to hear. She spent a second or two studying the notes she'd made before she looked up and let her blue eyes circle the conference table.
"We have confirmation of the original reports," she said, "and it's as bad as we thought it would be. In fact, it's worse."
She drew a deep breath, then activated the holo display above the conference table, bringing up the first graphic.
"Direct, immediate civilian loss of life," she began, "was much worse than any pre-attack worst-case analysis of damage to the space stations had ever suggested, because there was absolutely no warning. As you can see from the graphic, the initial strike on Hephaestus— "
* * *
"I never realized just how much worse a victory could make a defeat taste," Augustus Khumalo said much later that evening.
He, Michelle, Michael Oversteegen, and Aivars Terekhov sat with Khumalo and Baroness Medusa on the ocean-side balcony of the governor's official residence. The tide was in, and surf made a soothing, rhythmic sound in the darkness, but no one felt very soothed at the moment.
"I know," Michelle agreed. "It kind of makes everything we've accomplished out here look a lot less important, doesn't it?"
"No, Milady, it most definitely does not ," Medusa said so sharply that Michelle twitched in her chair and looked at the smaller woman in surprise.
"Sorry," Medusa said after a moment. "I didn't mean to sound as if I were snapping at you. But you—and Augustus and Aivars and Michael—have accomplished an enormous amount 'out here.' Don't ever denigrate your accomplishments—or yourselves—just because of bad news from somewhere else!"
"You're right," Michelle acknowledged after a moment. "It's just—"
"Just that it feels like the end of the world," Medusa finished for her when she seemed unable to find the words she'd been looking for.
"Maybe not quite that bad, but close," Michelle agreed.
"Well, it damned well should!" Medusa told her tartly. "Undervaluing your own accomplishments doesn't necessarily make you wrong about how deep a crack we're all in right now."
Michelle nodded. The Admiralty dispatches had pulled no punches. With the devastation of the home system's industrial capacity, the Royal Manticoran Navy found itself—for the first time since the opening phases of the First Havenite War—facing an acute ammunition shortage. And that shortage was going to get worse—a lot worse—before it got any better. Which was the reason all of Michelle's remaining shipboard Apollo pods were to be returned to Manticore as soon as possible. Given the concentration of Mark 16-armed units under her command, the Admiralty would try to make up for the differential by supplying her with all of those they could find, and both her warships and her local ammunition ships currently had full magazines. Even so, however, she was going to have to be extraordinarily circumspect in how she expended the rounds available to her, because there weren't going to be any more for quite a while.