"Oh, I realize that, Sir." Lampert shook his head with a lopsided grin. "I suppose it's just that I'm a compulsive stage watcher."
" 'Stage watcher'?" Reumann shook his head. "I'm afraid am not familiar with that one."
"We're the ones who insist on chopping complex operations up into discrete stages so that we can check them off, one at a time." Lampert shrugged. "I know it doesn't make a lot of sense, but it's how I keep things organized."
"Well, I certainly can't complain, then," Reumann told him. "Without you to keep the Sovereign organized, God knows where we'd be. But somehow I don't think the Admiral would be very happy about the results."
"Executive officer's job, Sir," Lampert replied with another shrug. "All the same, I'll feel better this time day after tomorrow."
"You'll feel better this time day after tomorrow if the ops plan works," Reumann corrected, and Lampert grimaced.
"I seem to recall having heard somewhere that it was an officer's job to project cheerful confidence, Sir."
"Indeed it is. And it's also an officer's job to remain constantly aware of potential difficulties which may interfere with the successful completion of the tasks assigned to him. Like, for example, the Manty navy." Reumann chuckled again at Lampert's expression.
"Sorry," he said after a moment, with an edge of contrition. "I don't really mean to give you a hard time, Doug. Just put it down to the peculiar way I deal with defusing my own tensions."
" 'S another thing execs are there for, Skipper." Lampert shrugged. "If the Master after God can relieve his tension, thereby improving his own efficiency, just by abusing his hapless executive officer, then said hapless executive officer is only too pleased to suffer for the good of the Service."
"Yeah. Sure he is." Captain and first officer grinned at one another, but then, as if by unspoken agreement, their eyes slid once more to the time display on the bulkhead, and their grins faded.
When it came down to it, Reumann reflected, Lampert was right. Maybe they couldn't have changed the schedule, and no doubt they truly had been committed from the moment Admiral Giscard activated Operation Thunderbolt on the instructions of President Pritchart and the Congress. But there was something more than merely symbolic about Starlight's departure from Trevor's Star to Basilisk via Manticore. Battle divisions and squadrons had been departing First Fleet's rendezvous for several days, each force heading off for its own individual objective. In fact, all of First Fleet had dispersed in accordance with Thunderbolt's minutely organized timetable, and no one could possibly have called any of them back. So the Rubicon had actually been crossed well before Starlight reached Trevor's Star. But there was still a special significance to the dispatch boat's mission, even if Reumann couldn't possibly have offered a logical explanation for why that was true.
Maybe it was simply the scale of the operations. Or perhaps it was knowing how many megatons of warships and how many thousands of Navy personnel were waiting with Second Fleet in Silesia for the arrival of that single, small vessel. Or perhaps it was even simpler than that. Perhaps it was just fear that something would still go wrong. That the Silesian Ambassador's crew would screw up their mission, or let something slip...or even intentionally betray the Republic whose monumental bribe had convinced the Ambassador to make his ship available to it. So much coordination depended on such a tiny ship. Somehow, the universe hadn't seemed quite so vastor the dispatch boat quite so minutewhen Thunderbolt had simply been an ops plan. Now it was reality, and Patrick Reumann had discovered that he was only too well aware of the fragility of their communication link to Second Fleet.
He gave himself a stern mental shake. What was really happening, he told himself firmly, was that he had opening night jitters. That, and the fact that despite all of the upgrades in the Republican Navy's weapons and hardware, despite all of the doctrine and tactical development Shannon Foraker and her team had carried out at Bolthole, and despite all of the simulation runs, all of the training exercises, which Javier Giscard had put First Fleet through, there was still that edge of dread. That sense of challenging Fate itself by going up against the enemy fleet which had shattered the Republic's Navy like so much glass in the final months before the cease-fire. Intellectually, Reumann knew that the Manties were far from superhuman. He only had to glance through the intelligence reports and the analyses of the incredibly stupid policies Janacek and High Ridge had instigated since assuming power to know that. But what his brain knew and his emotions expected weren't necessarily the same thing, and he felt a familiar flutter somewhere deep inside as he, too, looked at the time display and realized that, in barely thirty-two hours, the Republic of Haven would once again be openly at war with the Star Kingdom of Manticore.
Chapter Fifty Four
"So why isn't the Minister of Trade here?" Sir Edward Janacek demanded in a voice which only too accurately reflected his outrage.
"Be reasonable, Edward," Michael Janvier replied with more than a trace of answering impatience. "The man's wife has disappeared, his home has just been blown uppossibly with her in itand even if he's not ready to admit it, all of the 'North Hollow Files' went with the house. And if you believe that the entire disaster was the result of a 'leaking air car hydrogen cylinder in the parking basement,' then you probably believe in the tooth fairy, too!"
Janacek started to snap back sharply, then visibly made himself pause. The ferocious explosion which had rocked one of Landing's most luxurious suburbs had left a smoking crater where the Young's capital residence had once been and administered an equally savage shock to the political establishment. The existence of the North Hollow Files had been one of the open dirty little secrets of Manticoran politics for so long that even those who'd most detested the tactics they reflected were temporarily disoriented. Of course, just as the Earls of North Hollow had never officially admitted to their files' existence, Stefan Young wasn't about to admit that his enormous behind-the-scenes political leverage had blown up along with his mansion. And it was going to take some timeand a lot of cautious probes and testsbefore the Star Kingdom's political leadership was prepared to believe it truly had been. Especially for the people who had been the subjects of that leverage over the years.
The First Lord of Admiralty knew that the implications of the North Hollow explosion were only just beginning to ripple through the establishment. As those implications went more and more fully home, the consequences for the High Ridge Government might well prove profound. Janacek wasn't really certain exactly how many of High Ridge's "allies" had been coerced into giving him their support, but he had no doubt that some of themlike Sir Harrison MacIntoshwere in extremely important, if not vital, positions. What might happen once they realized the evidence of their past misdeeds no longer existed was anyone's guess, but he didn't expect it to be good. Apparently, the Prime Minister shared his expectations, which probably helped to account for his waspish tone.
Of course, there were other factors which undoubtedly helped to account for it, as well.
"All right," Janacek said finally. "Personally, I suspect that the disappearance of his wife and his house are pretty directly connected. And no, I don't think her limo just happened to blow up because of a fuel leak, whatever he wants to believe. I don't know what anyone could have offered her, but given the LCPD's failure so far to find any human remains at all in the rubble, much less hers" He shrugged angrily. "Still, I can understand that he's...distracted just now. Which doesn't change the fact that his precious ACS appointee just let the fucking Graysons stomp all over us!"