"That's so," Mostert agreed. "I think we can all agree about that: our hope, the hope of Venus, is to stand back and let our guns do the job for us."
"The Federation vessels will be carrying soldiers," said a courtier Stephen didn't recognize, a member of Duneen's entourage. "Over ten thousand troops have been gathered on Nuevo Asuncion, and our expectation is that most or all of them will embark with the fleet."
The speaker was a man in his sixties, wizened and wearing a beaded cap over what was clearly a bald scalp. It was the first time a member of a councilor's staff had entered the discussion.
"The primary purpose of the troops is to provide initial garrisons for Venus if we open our cities due to the threat of bombing," Councilor Duneen added. "But they'll certainly be prepared to fight in a boarding battle between ships as well."
"There's no need to board," Mostert said. "Not for any of our vessels, certainly not for the new-design ships, which can concentrate their fire as-"
He paused a half-beat to glance, not glare, at Captain Casson.
"— geometry prevents old-style spheres like the Freedom from doing, though God Himself were at the controls."
"We've smashed Fed ships to gas and fragments plenty of times," Captain Salomon said. "Because they can't maneuver with us, we'll run past them like they were on the ground. Our big guns will chew them away like files eating down an aluminum bar!"
The assembly growled murderous agreement.
Stephen Gregg's expression looked like a slight smile: approving, to an onlooker eager for approval; neutral, to a neutral observer. Jeremy Moore pursed his lips in Stephen's direction, then raised an eyebrow. Stephen shrugged.
The size of the Federation fleet frightened them all, though few in this room would admit it. No one knew exactly how many ships President Pleyal would be able to gather, but everyone was aware that the resources of the Federation were many times greater than those of Venus. Venus was better able to concentrate what ships and men she had, but when the fleets met, the disparity in numbers as well as in the size of individual ships was certain to be great.
The men here wanted desperately to believe that gunnery was the answer to the Federation threat. Maybe they were right, but Stephen as a matter of policy distrusted "certainties" when the folk proclaiming them thought nothing else stood between them and the abyss. The vision of a Federation fleet melting like salt under a hose as plasma bolts washed their ships was attractive, but that didn't make it true.
The next dozen speakers trampled over the same ground. Stephen waited, his face intent but only the surface level of his mind listening. Venerian ships had better fire control, better guns, more big guns, ship-smashing guns. Venerian crews reloaded faster, and their ceramic tubes increased the rate of fire by a good thirty percent over that of the Feds' stellite weapons, even when the Feds were crack personnel.
Each statement was true in itself. Stephen had seen the truth repeatedly demonstrated in blood and flame from Winnipeg to the Reaches. But there was a greater question: "Is this enough to destroy the fleet that will otherwise destroy Venus?" Every one of the captains speaking begged the truth of that question, but for Stephen Gregg it had yet to be proved.
Eventually Piet cleared his throat. Councilor Duneen caught Bruckshaw's eye and nodded.
Commander Bruckshaw said, "Gentlemen? As you know, my final plans will be drawn up in close consultation with Factor Ricimer. I think it might be useful at this juncture for all of us to hear what his current thinking on the matter may be. Sir?"
Piet nodded twice and crossed his hands behind his back. "Commander, gentlemen," he said. "I don't believe Governor Halys will permit any significant portion of her fleet to leave the Solar System at the present juncture-"
He glanced in the direction of Councilor Duneen. Duneen smiled dryly and nodded agreement. What had been true before the Winnipeg raid was even more certain now that full-scale war was inevitable.
"Therefore we'll have to rely on picket vessels to inform us when the Feds leave Asuncion," Piet resumed. "I hope and expect, with God's blessing, that we'll still be able to meet the Feds many days' transit from Venus."
"Nuevo Asuncion is only eight days from Venus," Casson interrupted.
Bruckshaw looked at the Ishtar City captain with a gaze Stephen wouldn't have wanted turned on himself. Piet merely smiled agreement and said, "Yes, for us; and probably no more than ten days for an ordinarily well-found Federation ship with a Federation crew. But we're not to forget that the Feds will be traveling as a fleet, a very large fleet. Further, they'll know that their only chance of safety against us will be to hold a tight formation at all times. They'll have to make very short transit series."
Casson shrugged with a black expression. Most of the other captains nodded or murmured assent. Everybody knew that not only did a company of vessels travel at the rate of the one least able to navigate accurately, the difficulties increased almost as the logarithm of the number of ships involved.
Practical interstellar travel required that a vessel transfer from the sidereal universe to a series of other bubble universes. Each cell of the hyperuniversal sponge-space matrix had its own different constants of time and distance. The ship retained momentum from the sidereal universe and from thrust expended within each cell that it transited, but the effect of motion within a cell could exceed by thousands of times that of motion within the sidereal universe.
Distances within the sidereal universe were of no practical significance, because even the stars nearest to the Solar System were too far for trade through normal space. The concepts of Near Space and the Reaches referred to the relative length of voyages to those locations through the enormously complex patterns of sponge space.
The artificial intelligences that calculated transit series were the most sophisticated electronics in the human universe. Because of constant slight changes in the association of bubble universes and in the energy gradients separating one cell from the next, no sidereal distance longer than those within the core of a planetary system could be encompassed by a single transit series.
Ships made a number of gut-wrenching hops back and forth from normal space to cells of sponge space, then paused for hours or days while their AIs compared sidereal reality with the navigators' programmed intent. The process was time-consuming and uncomfortable even for hardened spacers, but it made the stars and their multiplicity of Earthlike planets available to mankind. If transit had been developed ten generations sooner, there would not have been a network of colonies burrowing through the crust of Venus-
And surviving, even when the Outer Planets Rebellion brought human civilization down in crashing horror through a handful of pinprick attacks that a less centralized, less homogeneous, society could have ignored.
No two ships metered thrust or judged angles in quite the same fashion. Since differences were multiplied by scores or thousands during every transit, it was obvious that a large fleet that was required to stay in close formation would have to proceed by brief series with correspondingly long delays to recalibrate for the next hop.
The Federation force would certainly be huge, and neither President Pleyal's vessels nor his captains were of Venerian standard. Normally ships in company proceeded each at its own pace and rendezvoused at the end of each day's voyaging. The Grand Fleet of Retribution had to keep much closer contact, or the individual ships would be gobbled up by Venerians in concert. Bruckshaw would have his own problems, since Venerian ships and navigators were of varying capacities too; but the average capacity was very much higher.