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# Chapter Thirty-Two

"...The excitement we all feel at this historic moment. The honor of speaking for the entire Star Kingdom, of somehow finding the words to express the pride Her Majesty's subjects all feel in our incomparable scientific community on an occasion such as this, does not come often to any political leader, and I approach it with mingled pride and anxiety. Pride that it has fallen to me to attempt to speak aloud what all of us feel at this moment, and anxiety for how inadequate I know any words of mine must be. Yet I take courage from the reflection that, in the end, anything I may say will be only the first words spoken. They will be far from the last, and as the citizens of the Star Kingdom add their own, far more worthy thanks to my own, I know that . . ."

"My God," T.J. Wix muttered out of the corner of his mouth. "Is he never going to shut up?!"

Jordin Kare and Michel Reynaud, seated to either side of him, managed not to glare repressively at him. They also managed not to grin in appreciative agreement with his plaintive tone . . . which was considerably more difficult. They sat with him on the raised stage of the press room, behind the lectern and the tall, narrow, stoop-shouldered form of the Prime Minister of Manticore, listening to his apparently interminable speech, and not one of them would have accepted the invitation to this prestigious moment if he'd had any choice in the matter.

Unfortunately, none of them had. And equally unfortunate, Kare reflected, was the fact that the High Ridge Government had found itself in greater need than usual of a public relations windfall at precisely the wrong moment.

I don't suppose we ought to have expected anything else out of them, he reminded himself. Not that knowing what was coming would have made it any better.

The Prime Minister and his First Lord of Admiralty had suffered a sharp downtick in their popularity and job approval ratings when the HD footage of Secretary of War Theisman's Nouveau Paris news conference reached the Manticoran public. The public's reaction hadn't been as severe as it might have been, but it had been undeniably sharp, and the Centrists and Crown Loyalists had done their best—with some initial success—to capitalize upon it.

Kare had entertained at least a faint hope that the shock of the news might weaken High Ridge's grip on power, and he supposed it could still have a cumulative effect in that direction. But damaging as the revelation of the Peeps' new naval capabilities might have been, it was obviously insufficient to do the job by itself.

It was difficult for the astrophysicist to keep his own highly disrespectful thoughts from shadowing his attentive expression as he sat watching the Prime Minister speak into the lenses of the newsies' HD cameras, but he managed. He didn't have much choice. Besides, disgusting as he might find High Ridge, he didn't have a great deal more respect for his fellow citizens, either. In any reasonably run universe, the Manticoran electorate and even—God help them all—the Manticoran peerage ought to have been smart enough to rise up in revolt now that the consequences of the High Ridge-Janacek naval policies had become manifest. In the universe they actually occupied, things hadn't quite worked out that way.

Although he knew his rabbi would disagree, Kare had often suspected that the Manticoran domestic political arena was the direct present day heir of the same divine thinking which had led to the Book of Job. Certainly he couldn't think of anything besides a deliberate decision on God's part to turn the Devil loose on hapless humanity under carefully delimited conditions which could explain the current political process in the Star Kingdom.

He scolded himself, more dutifully than out of any sense of conviction, for being too hard on the Manticoran public. Up until the past few weeks, after all, there'd been plenty of evidence which could be adduced to support the thesis that the war was over. Not a shot had been fired in almost four T-years, and there was no immediate prospect of that changing. And even leaving aside the obvious assumption on the Government's part that the Peeps had been licked once and for all, there'd been the heady assurance that if the Peeps had been foolish enough to start something new, the technical and tactical supremacy of the Royal Manticoran Navy would crush them with ease. Not to mention the fact that the generally conciliatory tone the Republic's diplomatic teams had pursued in the peace negotiations had been another example which could be cited by proponents of the theory that peace had actually come, whether it had been sealed by a formal treaty yet or not. Kare hadn't happened to subscribe to that theory himself, but he could readily understand why it had been so attractive to the public at large. After the pain, losses, and fear of fighting the war, it would have been profoundly unnatural for people not to have wanted to believe that the killing and the dying were over. The inevitable (and proper) need of individuals to focus on their individual concerns, to worry about the day-to-day details of their own lives, jobs, and families, only made the electorate's willingness to turn its attention to domestic concerns even stronger.

On the other hand, there'd also been plenty of countervailing evidence for people with the will to see it. And there'd been plenty of people like Duchess Harrington, Earl White Haven, and William Alexander who'd pointed that out. Unfortunately, in some ways the very strength and determination with which they'd made their case undermined it with those who weren't already disposed to share their views. If a politician was unscrupulous enough, it wasn't all that difficult for him to make his opponents look obsessed and vaguely ridiculous, or at least terminally alarmist, when they kept hammering away with warnings that the sky was falling.

Until, that was, Kare thought grimly, the sky finally came crashing down.

In his book, that was exactly what had happened the moment Thomas Theisman admitted that the Republican Navy had virtually completely rebuilt its war-fighting capabilities, apparently without anyone in the High Ridge Government even suspecting they were doing it. A sizable chunk of the electorate appeared to be inclined to agree with him, but not a large enough one. Government spokesmen—and especially "nonpartisan" representatives from the so-called strategic think tank of the Palmer Institute—had instantly begun providing tranquilizing public statements to prove things weren't really as bad as they seemed to be, and those statements were already beginning to have their effect. Even if they hadn't been, any immediate alarm on the part of the voters was completely unable to affect the Government's control of the House of Lords.

And then, of course, there was Jordin Kare's personal contribution to sustaining the High Ridge Government in power.

It became momentarily more difficult not to scowl ferociously as that thought flowed remorselessly through his brain. It wasn't really his fault any more than it was Wix's, but the timing of this first manned transit of the newly discovered terminus could not have come at a more propitious moment for Michael Janvier and his henchmen. The Government's spin strategists had recognized that instantly, and their successful drive to capitalize upon it had survived even the Prime Minister's unpleasant, droning voice and interminable speeches.

Which was what had brought all of them to this particular news conference.

" . . . and so," High Ridge said finally, "it is my enormous pleasure and privilege to introduce to you the brilliant scientific team responsible for making this momentous breakthrough so much more rapidly than even they were prepared to predict might be possible."

It was really a pity, Kare thought, that even at a moment like this High Ridge was unable to project the image of anything but the supercilious aristocrat presenting the unusually clever lowborn servants who had somehow stumbled into doing something of actual value. The man was clearly trying. Worse, from the smile painted onto his vulpine face, he seemed to think he was succeeding. The man had all the personality and spontaneity of an overaged cake of warm gefilte fish.

The Prime Minister half turned to sweep his right hand in an arc at the three men seated behind him. It was somehow typical of him that he should refer to them collectively as the "scientific team," completely overlooking the fact that what Michel Reynaud actually was was the extraordinarily competent administrator who'd somehow kept the RMAIA functioning despite the technical illiterates with which his own staff had been lumbered.

Or perhaps he hadn't "overlooked" anything. Perhaps he was deliberately choosing to ignore Reynaud for some reason. His next words certainly suggested that he was, anyway.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the press, I present to you Dr. Jordin Kare and Dr. Richard Wix, the extraordinary intellects responsible for this historic moment."

Kare and Wix rose as the assembled dignitaries and newsies broke into applause. The fact that the applause was genuine, that the press corps of the Star Kingdom was as excited and eager as even the Prime Minister could have wished, only made it worse. Kare managed to smile, and he and Wix both inclined their heads in acknowledgment of the clapping hands. It was more of a semi-bob than a bow on Wix's part, but at least he'd tried.

The Prime Minister beckoned for the two of them to join him at the podium in what was clearly intended as a spontaneous gesture of invitation. Kare gritted his teeth and obeyed it, as did Wix . . . after a surreptitious elbow-jab in the ribs. Kare's smile became a trifle more fixed as the applause redoubled. It was extraordinarily perverse of him, he reflected, that he should feel equally irritated by the Prime Minister's invincible aura of aristocratic dismissal of anyone else's competence, on the one hand, and by the other man's hyperbolic praise of his own sheer brilliance, on the other. He was entirely too well aware of how huge a part good fortune, not to mention the hard work of all the other members of the RMAIA research staff, had played in the chain of discoveries and observations leading to this moment.

"Dr. Kare will now offer a brief summary of his team's progress and immediate plans," High Ridge announced as the applause finally faded. "After that, we will entertain questions from the ladies and gentlemen of the press. Dr. Kare?"

He beamed at the astrophysicist, and Kare smiled back dutifully. Then it was his turn to turn to face the audience.

"Thank you, Prime Minister," he said. "Ladies and gentlemen of the press, I'd like to welcome you here aboard Hephaestus on behalf of the Royal Manticoran Astrophysics Investigation Agency, its scientific team, and its Director, Admiral Reynaud." He turned his head to smile at Reynaud, then returned his attention to the spectators.

"As you know," he began, "over the past two and a half T-years, we've been engaged in the systematic search for additional termini of the Manticore Wormhole Junction. It's been a painstaking process, and a time-consuming one. But thanks in no small part to the observations and diligent work of my colleague, Dr. Wix, and to a quite disproportionate amount of pure good fortune, we are considerably ahead of any schedule we could have realistically projected as little as six, or even four, months ago. In fact, we are now in a position to dispatch a properly manned survey ship through the Junction's seventh terminus.

"That ship will depart from the Manticore System next Thursday." The entire audience seemed to inhale simultaneously, and he produced his most genuine smile of the entire news conference. "Precisely where it will depart to, and precisely when it will return, are questions I will not be able to answer today. No one will . . . until the ship and its crew have done both of those things. If you have any other questions, however, I'll do my best to answer them."

* * *

"Excuse me, Ma'am. I apologize for interrupting, but you wanted to know when the Secretary of War's pinnace was fifteen minutes out."

"Thank you, Paulette." Shannon Foraker looked up from her earnest conversation with Lester Tourville and smiled briefly at her flag lieutenant. "Please inform Captain Reumann that we'll be joining him in the boat bay momentarily."

"Of course, Ma'am," Lieutenant Baker murmured and withdrew from the day cabin almost as unobtrusively as she'd entered it.

Foraker turned back to her guests. Tourville half-reclined in the cabin's largest chair with all of his usual loose-limbed, casual ease. No one had seemed inclined to dispute his possession of it . . . particularly since it was positioned directly under an air return. Javier Giscard sat rather more neatly in his own chair, his mouth quirked in a fond half-smile as he watched the tendrils of smoke wreathing up from Tourville's cigar towards the ventilator grille. Their chiefs of staff formed the perimeter of the conversational group along with Captain Anders, but Commander Clapp, the most junior officer present, sat directly to Foraker's right. It probably wasn't evident to anyone who didn't know him as well as she did, but the commander was clearly more than a little uncomfortable at finding himself in such high-ranked company. Not that he'd allowed any trace of that to color the informal briefing he'd just given Tourville and Giscard.

"Obviously," Foraker told the two senior admirals as the hatch closed behind Baker, "we're going to have to head on down to the boat bay shortly. Before we do, though, did you have any more questions you wanted to ask Mitchell?"

"Not really. Not any specific ones, anyway," Tourville replied. "I'm sure some questions will occur to me eventually, but for now I think I need to spend some time digesting what he's already told us. Javier?"

"That sums up my own reaction pretty well, I think," Giscard agreed. "But I would like to say, Commander Clapp, that what you've already told us is impressive. To be perfectly honest, I'll be much happier if we never have to put your doctrine to the test, but the fact that we've got it if we need it is a vast relief."

"I'm flattered that you think that, Sir," Clapp said after a moment. "But as I keep pointing out, however well it may have performed in the sims, it hasn't been tested under real-world conditions."

"Understood." Giscard nodded. Then he shrugged. "Unfortunately, the only way to test it in the real world is to find ourselves back in a shooting war with the Manties. That may be going to happen whether we want it to or not, but just between you and me, I'd like to go on being short of real-world test results for as long as possible."

"I'm sure we all would, Sir," Foraker agreed, then glanced at her wrist chrono and made a small face. "And now, I'm afraid, we really do have to head for the lift."

* * *

Thomas Theisman didn't have to be a mind reader to recognize the disciplined anxiety behind the faces of the three admirals assembled in Sovereign of Space's flag briefing room to meet with him and Admiral Arnaud Marquette, the chief of the Naval Staff which Theisman had painfully rebuilt after its predecessor's destruction in the McQueen coup attempt. The five admirals were alone, aside from the fleet commanders' chiefs of staff and his own senior military aide, Captain Alenka Borderwijk, and he knew Tourville and Giscard, at least, had been a little surprised by his decision to exclude everyone else. Foraker hadn't, but then, he'd spoken directly with her when Sovereign of Space first arrived in the Haven System. Tourville and Giscard might look a bit anxious at the departure from the norm; Foraker, despite her best effort to conceal it, looked a lot anxious because she already knew—or suspected—the reason for that departure.

"First," the Secretary of War said after everyone was seated, "let me apologize for the somewhat unusual circumstances of this conference. I assure you all that I'm not trying to be melodramatic, and that I don't think I'm allowing my megalomania or paranoia to get the better of me. On the other hand," his smile was thin, but it carried an edge of genuine humor, "I could be wrong about that."

"Well, Tom," Tourville said with the answering lazy grin permitted to the Republican Navy's third ranking flag officer, "I seem to remember an old saying. Something about sometimes even paranoiacs having real enemies. Of course, I can't speak to the megalomania question."

"How unwontedly tactful of you," Theisman murmured, and all his junior admirals chuckled. The amusement barely touched their eyes, however, and the Secretary of War leaned slightly forward in his chair.

"All joking aside," he said quietly, "one of the main reasons I wanted to come out here with Arnaud to talk to all three of you at once, face-to-face, instead of inviting you down to the New Octagon, was to keep any newsies from realizing we were talking at all. And another, frankly, is my confidence that we can control the information flow and guarantee security here. Not just against the Manties, either, I'm afraid."

Tourville and Giscard tightened almost visibly, and the temperature in the briefing room seemed to drop perceptibly. Theisman bared his teeth in a grimace which could never have been confused for an expression of amusement, because he knew exactly what sort of memories and resonances his last sentence had to have provoked in officers who had survived both State Security and his own coup.

"Don't worry, the President—" he bestowed a brief, genuine smile on Giscard "—knows exactly where I am, and exactly what I'm going to be talking to you about. In fact, she sent me. And, no, she's not planning a coup d'état, either. In some ways, it might be simpler if we were, but neither of us is that far along towards throwing out the baby with the bathwater."

"Well, that's a relief, anyway," Giscard murmured. "And it's not much more frustrating than the vague hints and dark mutterings in Eloise's last few letters to me, either," he added pointedly.

"Sorry," Theisman said sincerely, and waved his right hand at Marquette and Captain Borderwijk. "Alenka's brought along a full briefing packet for each of you, and before we head back to Nouveau Paris, Arnaud and I want to hold at least one general session with all of your senior staffers. But I wanted us to meet with just the six of you first, because it's particularly important that all of us be on the same page before we start bringing your staffs into it."

He tipped his chair back, propped his elbows on the chair arms, and folded his hands across his midsection. For just a moment, as his facial muscles relaxed, the admirals saw the fatigue and worry the animation of his expression normally cloaked. Then he inhaled sharply and began.

"All of you know that, left to my own devices, I still wouldn't have admitted the existence of Bolthole or any of the new ships. Shannon's done a miraculous job at the yards, and people like Captain Anders and Commander Clapp have performed more than a few minor miracles of their own along the way. Despite that, I think everyone in this briefing room has to be aware of the fact that our capabilities on a ship-for-ship basis continue to lag behind those of the RMN. I hope to God all of us are, at any rate!

"Unfortunately, what I wanted—or any of us wanted—doesn't really matter. Thanks to domestic political considerations, like the empire-building ambitions of a certain Secretary of State who shall remain nameless, the President and I found ourselves with no option but to go public with the new fleet. What we haven't yet told Congress, although I feel confident that some of them at least suspect the announcement is coming in the President's speech tonight, is that she also feels we have no option but to adopt a more aggressive stance in our negotiations with the Manties."

His gaze swept over all of them, but it settled on Giscard, and his eyes held the admiral's steadily as he continued.

"I'm not at all certain I agree with her reasoning. I can't really offer a better plan, however. And even if I could, the fact is that she's the elected President, and that means policy is hers to make, not mine. To be perfectly honest, that principle is important enough that even if I vehemently disagreed with her, I'd shut up and carry out my orders when she gave them.

"In this instance, those orders were to announce the improvements in our combat capabilities in a way which was certain to catch the Manties' attention as publicly as possible. And they were also to prepare—as unobtrusively as possible—to meet and defeat any preemptive strike Janacek and Chakrabarti might be inclined to launch. And as a third point, they were to prepare the best possible plan for a renewed general war with the Star Kingdom of Manticore."

If the temperature had seemed to drop earlier, now it was as if an icy wind had blown through the briefing room. The fleet commanders and their chiefs of staff sat very, very still, eyes fixed on the Secretary of War. Only Marquette, Borderwijk, Foraker, and Anders had known what he was about to say; the other four looked as if they wished they had never heard it.

"Let me emphasize," Theisman went on in a firm, quiet voice, "that neither the President nor I are actively contemplating operations against the Manties. Nor do we have any desire to contemplate them at any time. But it's our responsibility to be certain that if something goes wrong, the Navy is prepared to defend the Republic."

"I'm sure all of us are relieved to know we're not planning to attack the Manties," Tourville said. "However, I'm also sure that everyone in this compartment recognizes that however much the current tech balance may favor them, at the moment the overall military balance is probably as close to favoring us over them as it's ever going to get."

"I take your meaning, Lester. And I agree with you," Theisman said after a moment. "In fact, that's one of the main reasons I announced only the existence of the new ships of the wall, not the CLACs. And why I understated the number of SD(P)s we have in commission, as well. Obviously, I didn't want to panic Janacek into recommending that the Manties do something foolish and preemptive. But the longer we can keep them unaware of our true capabilities, the longer they'll be less likely to begin any vigorous countermeasures. Which, hopefully, translates into a longer period in which we can maintain whatever military edge we currently have."

"I don't know how 'vigorous' their countermeasures are likely to be, assuming they don't go for a military option," Giscard observed. "But all they really have to do to offset any edge we may have is to complete all of those damned SD(P)s and CLACs they laid down before the Cromarty Assassination."

"Exactly," Theisman agreed. "I'm hoping, probably with more optimism than rationality, that High Ridge will authorize as small an increase in naval spending as he thinks he can get away with. That would extend our window of relative naval security."

"I think you're right about optimism getting the better of reason, Tom," Giscard replied. "Not necessarily about how High Ridge's priorities would work out if he were left to his own devices, but about how likely we are to be able to keep Manty intelligence in the dark about our true capabilities indefinitely. I know we seem to've kept the wool pulled over their eyes for a lot longer than I would have thought we could have, but the cat's out of the bag now. They know we fooled them, and that's going to make them even more determined to get at the real numbers. Even someone like Jurgensen is going to be able to form a much more realistic estimate of our total ship strength than we'd like if he makes it the number one priority of their ONI."

"I know," Theisman admitted. "And all I'm really hoping to do is to delay that moment for as long as possible. Our own building programs are continuing to accelerate out at Bolthole. And Shannon—" he smiled at Foraker "—tells me that she's shaved another three months off the projected construction schedules for the new Temeraire-class units. So if we can just keep them from laying down new construction of their own for the next two or three T-years, I think we'll probably be in a position to stay ahead of them, or at least even with them, in effective naval power no matter what they may do.

"But there's no denying that we face both a window of opportunity and a window of vulnerability," he continued in a graver voice. "The window of opportunity is defined by however long we can keep the Manties from realizing our actual military potential and taking steps to neutralize it. The window of vulnerability is the period in which the Manties have time to neutralize it if they decide to do so. The most dangerous aspect of the entire situation, in many ways, is that the awareness of our opportunity makes it very tempting for us to take action in order to close the window of vulnerability. Frankly, that temptation becomes even stronger whenever I consider our responsibility to devise a general war-fighting plan with the Manties as our most probable opponent."

"That's a very dangerous temptation, if you'll allow me to say so, Tom," Tourville said in the quiet voice which always seemed so startling, even to his intimates, in contrast to his public "cowboy" persona. "Especially since I'm sure that somewhere deep inside, at least a part of a great many of our officers and enlisted personnel would not so secretly like to get a little of our own back against the Manties."

"Of course I'll allow you to say it," Theisman told him. "In fact, I'm delighted to hear you say it. I assure you that it's something I'm trying very hard to keep in mind at all times, and having other people remind me of it can't hurt.

"Nonetheless, I think it behooves us all to admit that if worse came to worst and we went back on active operations against the Manties, our best option at this point would be to adopt a basically offensive stance. Particularly now, while they're hopefully unaware of our true potential, a hard, carefully coordinated offensive offers us at least the potential of neutralizing their fleet and driving them back onto the defensive in a way which might convince them to negotiate seriously with us for the first time.

"No one in the administration, with the possible exception of the Secretary of State, would even consider suggesting that we run such military risks in an effort to unjam the diplomatic process. I'm certainly not proposing that we do any such thing, either. I'm simply pointing out that when it comes to devising war plans, I feel we need to look very closely at the advantages of a powerful offensive strategy rather than restricting ourselves to a purely defensive one."

"In the final analysis, an offensive strategy is a defensive one," Giscard said thoughtfully. "When it comes right down to it, for us to win, the Manty fleet and industrial infrastructure both have to be neutralized. If they aren't, and if we don't manage to do it early, then even with all Shannon's accomplished at Bolthole, it's likely that we'll end up looking at a situation very similar to the one Esther McQueen faced. Except that with the new ship types, any lengthy stalemate will be even bloodier than it was then."

"Exactly." Theisman nodded firmly. "Only an idiot would willingly go back to war with the Manties at all. If we have to, though, then I intend to fight to win, and to win as early as we possibly can. I don't plan to ignore the possibility of a more defense-oriented strategy, and Arnaud and the rest of the staff will be working on that as well at the New Octagon. But to be perfectly honest, any defensive plans are going to be primarily fallbacks in my thinking. That's one reason I wanted to talk to the three of you in person. If it comes down to it, you and Lester are going to be our primary field commanders, Javier. And your position at Bolthole is going to become even more critical, Shannon. So I want all of you to understand exactly what and how the President and I are thinking."

"I think we all do," Giscard told him. "Or, at least, I'm confident we all will before you head back to Nouveau Paris, at any rate. The thing I wonder is whether or not the Manties are smart enough to figure out the same thing."

"You and me both," Theisman told him with a sigh. "You and me both. In a way, I hope to Hell they are, because maybe then they'll also be smart enough to help avoid ever letting it come to that. Unfortunately, I don't think we can count on it."

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