He glanced at Jessica Milliken from the corner of one eye. Given the fact that both Citizen Commodore Luff and Captain Maddock were almost certainly equally dead, Commander Milliken was now the senior Mesan representative present. She looked just as shocked by what had happened to the PNE as the Havenite officers and ratings around her, but she still represented the price the PNE would pay if Konidis didn't attack the planet.
Manpower never backed us because it liked us, he thought harshly. It backed us because we represented a useful tool. If we don't hit Torch, that usefulness disappears, as far as it's concerned, and without Manpower, we lose any future logistical support.
Without some source of support, just repairing his surviving ships' damages would be out of the question. Any sort of sustained action against the counterrevolutionaries in Nouveau Paris would become impossible, unless they wanted to be seen as nothing more than common pirates. And if that happened, then everything they'd already done—the price they'd already paid—would have been for nothing.
But it'll be for nothing, anyway, if we do do this, he realized. The only reason Luff agreed to the operation in the first place was because it was supposed to be anonymous. No one was supposed to know it was us. Thanks to Rozsak, though, everyone will know, and no one in the People's Republic is going to rally to "defenders of the revolution" they know violated the Eridani Edict for a bunch of genetic slavers.
He glanced at Citizen Commander Sanchez. His chief of staff was involved in an intense four-way conversation with Citizen Commander Charles-Henri Underwood, Chao Kung Ming's executive officer; Citizen Lieutenant Commander César Hübner, the heavy cruiser's tactical officer; and Citizen Lieutenant Commander Jason Petit, Konidis' staff operations officer. There was no question, no doubt, in Sanchez's intent expression, the citizen commodore thought resentfully. The chief of staff, unlike Konidis himself, had never entertained any doubts about Operation Ferret's justification. For him, it was a simple matter of buying the support the Revolution required, and that automatically validated anything that might be required of them.
I don't want to do this, the citizen commander admitted to himself. I've never wanted to do it. And now—
"Commander Milliken," he heard himself say.
"Yes, Citizen Commodore?"
"It seems to me," Konidis said, "that the current situation lies far outside any possibility that was envisioned when this operation was planned."
He paused. The blond-haired commander who had become the only official Mesan representative to the PNE in the same moment Konidis became its commander only looked back at him, her blue eyes and expression politely attentive.
"Completely disregarding the losses we've sustained," he went on, "it's evident that the enemy knows who we are and why we're here. They also know about Manpower's . . . sponsorship. If we proceed as originally planned, the consequences for the People's Navy in Exile will be extreme. By the same token, however, given the losses we've already inflicted on them, it strikes me as . . . unlikely, to say the least, that the Solarian League Navy is going to adopt a sympathetic attitude towards the Mesa System in general if it becomes known that a Mesa-based transstellar was behind everything that's happened here today. Would you agree with that assessment?"
Milliken said nothing for several seconds. Then she shrugged very slightly.
"Citizen Commodore, I think just about anyone would have to admit that what you've said so far is self-evident."
Her voice was noncommittal, but Konidis felt a stir of hope, anyway. At least she hadn't started out by trying to argue with him.
"As I see it, we have two options," he told her. "First, we can go ahead and carry out the operation, then try to pick up all of our surviving personnel before leaving the system. Assuming we succeed in doing that—and that we've got sufficient shipboard life support for it—there won't be any prisoners for anyone to interrogate. Despite that, though, I feel confident there are going to be enough recoverable bodies for conclusive DNA identification if someone checks back with Nouveau Paris for matches against our personnel files. Which would mean that Rozsak's basic analysis of who we are and where we came from—and, therefore, who we came here for—would be clearly validated, as far as the galaxy at large is concerned. My understanding of our initial operational plan was that Manpower wanted to avoid that. That anonymity was a primary operational objective."
He paused again, and, once more, she simply looked at him, waiting.
"Our second option is to abandon the direct attack on Torch," he said. "We have more than sufficient firepower to overwhelm anything Torch—I mean, Verdant Vista—has left. We could take out any warships they might have in orbit as we overfly the planet, then come back and take our time destroying their orbital infrastructure. Given the fact that the system's current regime has declared war on both Manpower and Mesa, that would be completely legal within the constraints of the accepted rules of war. We'd still have to worry about how the Solarian League might choose to react to what's happened to Rozsak's ships, but, legally speaking, Mesa and Manpower could make a strong argument that our actions were justifiable in light of Rozsak's announced intention to attack us if we didn't break off our completely legitimate operation against Verdant Vista."
Again, he paused. Again, she said nothing, and he grasped the dilemma by its horns.
"It's my thought that the first option would be disastrous for the People's Navy in Exile, and probably equally disastrous for Manpower and, quite possibly, the Mesa System itself. The second option would fail to accomplish our full operational objectives, but it would still inflict massive damage on the current Verdant Vista regime. It's even possible that we'd catch a significant portion of the regime's government aboard the space station. For that matter"—he allowed himself a slight smile, although he was far from feeling amused—"orbital debris is going to fall somewhere if we take out their station. It would be a pity if it happened to fall on any major population centers as a result of any . . . encouragement we might give it, but that sort of collateral damage would not constitute a violation of the Edict.
"Given all of that, I believe the second option is by far the better of the two. We'll go ahead and finish off their 'navy' and all of their orbital infrastructure and industry, but I'm not going to commit a clear violation of the Eridani Edict when it's bound to come back against not just me and my people but against Manpower and Mesa, as well."
Jessica Milliken gazed back at the Havenite with merely thoughtful eyes while her brain went into overdrive. Every word he'd just said was unarguably accurate. Of course, he didn't know about Wooden Horse, so he wasn't aware of just how little anyone in the Mesa System was going to care about what happened to the "People's Navy in Exile." Which didn't change the fact that he was absolutely right that Manpower's deniability had clearly been badly damaged. That wasn't the same thing as saying the Alignment's deniability had been damaged, but bringing the League's official displeasure down on Mesa, especially at this particular time, didn't exactly come under the heading of what her superiors would consider a good thing.