"Fine," Chakrabarti agreed with a satisfied nod. Then he cocked his head. "On the basis of those assumptions, though, I can already tell you that 'a couple of battle squadrons' isn't going to be enough. Not playing so close to the Andies' backyard."
"There are limits to our resources," Janacek told him.
"I understand. But we may be looking at a situation where we have no choice but to rob Peter if we're going to pay Paul."
"It's highly probable that the Government will be able to control the situation through diplomatic measures," Janacek said. "If it turns out that we're going to require a more concrete proof of our commitment, we'll just have to do whatever is necessary to come up with it."
"Yes, Sir. But if we're going to reinforce Sidemore on the scale I think the threat levels we'll be assuming are going to require, then we'll also have to pick somebody to command those reinforcements. Rear Admiral Hewitt, the station's present commander, is actually on the junior side for what's already assigned to it. He's much too junior to command what's about to become one of our three largest fleet commands, whether we call it a 'fleet' formally or not."
"Um," Janacek said again, frowning down at his desk in thought. Chakrabarti had a point, but picking a new station CO wasn't going to be easy. Sidemore had proved fairly useful, but scarcely essential or vital even during the war. Now that the war had been effectively won, Sidemore would become increasingly less relevant to the Star Kingdom's strategic needs, which meant no ambitious officer was going to appreciate being shuffled off to command it. And that didn't even consider the potential mousetraps built into the assignment.
Despite his words to Jurgensen and Chakrabarti, Janacek was privately certain the Government would much prefer to avoid any distracting confrontation with the Andermani, and rightly so. The First Lord had never been in favor of the expansionist pressures he'd often sensed in both the Navy and Parliament, anyway. That was why he'd done his best to disengage from Basilisk during his first tenure at the Admiralty, before that maniac Harrington almost got them into a shooting war with the Peeps five T-years early.
If it came down to it, he would certainly recommend to the Cabinet that reasonable territorial concessions be made to the Andermani. It wasn't as if the territories in question belonged to the Star Kingdom, anyway, and nothing inside Silesia struck him as being worth the risk of a shooting incident, much less an actual war. But that meant whoever was sent out to Sidemore would find himself in the unenviable position of attempting to deter the Andermani in the full knowledge that no additional reinforcements would be forthcoming. And if the Andermani declined to be deterred and there was an incident of any sort, the Government would almost certainly disavow the station commander's actions. Even in a best case situation, whoever wound up in command would be remembered as the officer on whose watch the Empire had moved in on Silesia. It wouldn't have been his fault, of course, but that wouldn't prevent his peersand his superiorsfrom associating it with his assumption of command.
So where did he find someone who could make bricks without straw if he had to, convince the Andermani he would fight to the death before he let them have Silesia (until, at least, he got the inevitable order to hand it over to them), and be expendable if it became necessary for the Government to disavow him? Right off the top of his head, he couldn't think of anyone, but he was sure something would come to him.
Chapter Ten
Vice Admiral Shannon Foraker stood in the boat bay gallery with her hands clasped loosely behind her and gazed out through the bay's clear vacuum at the unwinking stars as she watched the incoming pinnace settle into the docking buffers. The service umbilicals ran out to it, followed by the boarding tube, and she straightened her shoulders and stood a bit straighter as the side party came to attention.
The telltales on the gallery end of the tube blinked from red to the amber of standby, and then to the bright green that indicated a tight seal and good atmosphere. Then the hatch opened, and the bosun's pipes began to squeal in the high, shrill voices she'd never been able to develop a taste for.
"Secretary of War, arriving!" the intercom announced as a slightly stocky, brown-haired man in an admiral's uniform stepped through the hatch and into the sound of the pipes, and the side party snapped instantly to attention. So did Admiral Foraker as she watched the newcomer salute RHNS Sovereign of Space's captain.
Captain Patrick M. Reumann returned the salute sharply. At just over a hundred and ninety centimeters, Reumann was half a head taller than the visitor, and Foraker supposed he was the physically more imposing of the two, despite his receding hairline. But somehow that didn't seem to matter. It wasn't because of any weakness in the captain; the man picked as the skipper of the lead ship of the newest, most powerful superdreadnought class in the Republican Navy wasn't exactly likely to be a weakling in anyone's book. It was just that for the Navy generally, and for everyone connected to Operation Bolthole in particular, Thomas Theisman had become a larger than life figure, almost an icon.
That wasn't something Shannon Foraker would have spent much thought on six or seven T-years ago. She'd been amazingly oblivious to the harsh realities of naval service under Rob Pierre and State Security. Until she'd been brought face-to-face with the ugly truth, at least. The humiliation and shame of being forced to become an unwilling accomplice to StateSec's brutality had changed Foraker's universe forever. The talented, apolitical "techno nerd" who'd wanted no more than to do her job with patriotism and honor had recognized that she couldn'tnot under StateSec. She'd seen an admiral she trusted and respected driven to the brink of mutiny, seen an ex-skipper she'd respected even more actually driven into willing treason because his own sense of honor could take no more violation, and been sent all too closely to the brink of imprisonment or execution herself.
In the wake of those experiences, the same qualities which had made her an outstanding tactical officer in the People's Navy had been brought to bear on other problems...which was why sheand Admiral Tourville and Admiral Giscardwere still alive. But it was unlikely that anything she'd done would have prevented the same ultimate outcome if not for Thomas Theisman.
She hadn't known Theisman before Oscar Saint-Just's overthrow, but she'd come to know him since, and somehow he just kept on getting more impressive. He'd joined a select handful of other senior officers in Foraker's estimation, one of the dedicated cadre which had somehow kept the concepts of duty and honor alive in their own lives, no matter what their political masters had demanded of them. More important, he was also the man who'd restored the Navy's honor. Lester Tourville and Javier Giscard might exercise command of the Republic's fleets, but it was Thomas Theisman who'd made it possible for them to do so. Just as he was the man who'd invited the Navy's officers and ratings to rediscover their self-respect. To remember that they'd chosen to wear the uniforms they wore because they believed in something, not because a reign of terror would shoot them if they declined to become willing agents of terror themselves.
He had restored the Navy to itself, made it his ally in the defense of the restored Constitution, both out of its own sense of honor and obligation and as a means to cleanse its shield of the filth with which StateSec had spattered it. And because he'd given it back that sense of mission, of commitment, of standing for something, the Navy would have followed him unflinchingly through the gates of Hell itself.
Just as Shannon Foraker would have.