Honor Among
Enemies Honor Among
Enemies 
CHAPTER ONE
"Mr.
Hauptman, Sir Thomas."
Sir
Thomas Caparelli, First Space Lord of the Royal Manticoran Navy,
rose with his very best effort at a smile of welcome as his
yeoman ushered his guest into his huge office. He suspected it
wasn't very convincing, but, then, Klaus Hauptman wasn't one of
his favorite people.
"Sir
Thomas." The dark-haired man with the dramatically white
sideburns and bulldog jaw gave him a curt nod. He wasn't being
especially rude; that was how he greeted almost everyone, and he
held out his hand as if to soften his brusqueness. "Thank
you for seeing me." He did not add "at last," but
Sir Thomas heard it anyway and felt his smile become just a bit
more fixed.
"Please
have a seat." The burly admiral in whom one could still see
the bruising soccer player who'd led the Academy to three system
championships waved his guest politely into the comfortable chair
facing his desk, then sat himself and nodded dismissal to the
yeoman.
"Thank
you," Hauptman repeated. He sat in the indicated chair-like,
Caparelli thought, an emperor taking his throne-and cleared his
throat. "I know you have many charges on your time, Sir
Thomas, so I'll come straight to the point. And the point
is that conditions in the Confederacy are becoming
intolerable."
"I
realize it's a bad situation, Mr. Hauptman," Caparelli
began, "but the war front is-"
"Excuse
me, Sir Thomas," Hauptman interrupted, "but I
understand the situation at the front. Indeed, Admiral Cortez and
Admiral Givens have-as I'm certain you instructed them
to-explained it to me at considerable length. I realize you and
the Navy are under tremendous pressure, but losses in Silesia are
becoming catastrophic, and not just for the Hauptman
Cartel."
Caparelli
clenched his jaw and reminded himself to move carefully. Klaus
Hauptman was arrogant, opinionated, and ruthless . . . and the
wealthiest single individual in the entire Star Kingdom of
Manticore. Which was saying quite a bit. Despite its limitation
to a single star system, the Star Kingdom was the third
wealthiest star nation in a five-hundred-light-year sphere in
absolute terms. In per capita terms, not even the Solarian League
matched Manticore. A great deal of that was fortuitous, the
result of the Manticore Worm Hole Junction which made the
Manticore Binary System the crossroads of eighty percent of the
long-haul commerce of its sector. But almost as much of its
wealth stemmed from what the Star Kingdom had done with the
opportunity that presented, for generations of monarchs and
parliaments had reinvested the Junction's wealth with care.
Outside the Solarian League, no one in the known galaxy could
match the Manticoran tech base or output per man-hour, and
Manticore's universities challenged those of Old Earth herself.
And, Caparelli admitted, Klaus Hauptman and his father and
grandfather had had a great deal to do with building the
infrastructure which made that possible.
Unfortunately,
Hauptman knew it, and he sometimes-often, in Caparelli's
view-acted as if the Star Kingdom belonged to him as a
consequence.
"Mr.
Hauptman," the admiral said after a moment, "I'm very
sorry about the losses you and the other cartels are suffering.
But your request, however reasonable it may seem, is simply
impossible to grant at this time."
"With
all due respect, Sir Thomas, the Navy had better make it
possible." Hauptman's flat tone was just short of insulting,
but he stopped himself, then drew a deep breath. "Excuse
me," he said in the voice of one clearly unaccustomed to
apologizing. "That was rude and confrontational.
Nonetheless, there's also a kernel of truth in it. The war effort
depends upon the strength of our economy. The shipping duties,
transfer fees, and inventory taxes my colleagues and I pay are
already three times what they were at the start of the war,
and-" Caparelli opened his mouth, but Hauptman held up a
hand. "Please. I'm not complaining about duties and taxes.
We're at war with the second largest empire in known space, and someone
has to pay the freight. My colleagues and I realize that. But you
must realize that if losses continue climbing, we'll have no
choice but to cut back or even entirely eliminate our shipping to
Silesia. I leave it to you to estimate what that will mean for
the Star Kingdom's revenues and war effort."
Caparelli's
eyes narrowed, and Hauptman shook his head.
"That's
not a threat; it's simply a fact of life. Insurance rates have
already reached an all-time high, and they're still climbing; if
they rise another twenty percent, we'll lose money on cargos
which reach their destinations. And in addition to our
financial losses, there's also the loss of life involved. Our
people-my people, people who've worked for me for
decades-are being killed, Sir Thomas."
Caparelli
sat back with an unwilling sense of agreement, for Hauptman was
right. The Confederacy's weak central government had always made
it a risky place, but its worlds were huge markets for the Star
Kingdom's industrial products, machinery, and civilian technology
transfers, not to mention an important source of raw materials.
And however much Caparelli might personally dislike Hauptman, the
magnate had every right to demand the Navy's help. It was, after
all, one of the Navy's primary missions to protect Manticoran
commerce and citizens, and prior to the present war, the Royal
Manticoran Navy had done just that in Silesia.
Unfortunately,
it had required a major fleet presence. Not of battle
squadrons-using ships of the wall against pirates would have been
like swatting flies with a sledgehammer-but of light combatants.
And the critical needs of the RMN's war against the People's
Republic of Haven had drawn those lighter units off. They were
desperately needed to screen the heavy squadrons and for the
countless patrols and scouting and convoy escorts the Fleet
required for its very survival. There were never enough cruisers
and destroyers to go around, and the overriding need for capital
ships diverted yard space from building them in the necessary
numbers.
The
admiral sighed and rubbed his forehead. He wasn't the RMN's most
brilliant flag officer. He knew his strengths-courage, integrity,
and enough bullheaded stubbornness for any three people-but he
also admitted his weaknesses. Officers like the Earl of White
Haven or Lady Sonja Hemphill always made him uncomfortable, for
he knew as well as they that they were his intellectual
superiors. And White Haven, Caparelli admitted, had the
infuriating gall to be not only a better strategist, but a better
tactician, as well. Nonetheless, it was Sir Thomas Caparelli
who'd been named First Space Lord just in time for the war to
explode in his face. That made it his job to win the thing, and
he was determined to do just that. Yet it was also his job
to protect Manticoran civilians in the course of their legitimate
commercial activities, and he was desperately conscious of how
thin his Navy was stretched.
"I
understand your concerns," he said finally, "and I
can't disagree with anything you've said. The problem is that
we're stretched right to the very limit. I can't-not won't, but
literally cannot-withdraw additional warships from the
front to reinforce our convoy escorts in Silesia."
"Well
we have to do something." Hauptman spoke quietly, and
Caparelli sensed the arrogant magnate's very real effort to match
his own reasonable tone. "The convoy system helps during
transits between sectors, of course. We haven't lost a single
ship that was under escort, and, believe me, my colleagues and I
all appreciate that. But the raiders realize as well as we do
that they can't attack the convoys. They also know simple
astrographics require us to route over two-thirds of our vessels
independently after they reach their destination sectors . . .
and that the available escorts simply can't cover us when we
do."
Caparelli
nodded somberly. No one was losing any ships in the convoys
covering transit between Silesia's nodal sector administration
centers, but the pirates more than made up for that by snapping
up merchantmen after they had to leave the convoys to
proceed to the individual worlds of the Confederacy.
"I'm
not certain how much more we can do, Sir," the admiral said
after a long, silent moment. "Admiral White Haven's
returning to Manticore sometime next week. I'll confer with him
then, see if there's any way we can reorganize and pry a
few more escorts loose, but, frankly, until we can somehow take
Trevor's Star, I'm not optimistic. In the meantime, I'll put my
staff to work on an immediate study of anything-and I do mean anything,
Mr. Hauptman-we can do to ease the situation. I assure you that
this matter has the second highest priority, after Trevor's Star
itself. I'll do everything possible to reduce your losses. You
have my personal word on that."
Hauptman
sat back in his chair, studying the admiral's face, then grunted.
The sound was weary, irate, and just a little desperate, but he
nodded grudgingly.
"I
can ask no more than that, Sir Thomas," he said heavily.
"I won't insult you by trying to insist on miracles, but the
situation is very, very grave. I'm not certain we have another
month . . . but I am certain we have no more than four,
five at the most, before the cartels will be forced to suspend
operations in Silesia."
"I
understand," Caparelli repeated, rising to extend his hand.
"I'll do what I can-and as quickly as I can-and I promise
I'll personally brief you on the situation as soon as I've had a
chance to confer with Admiral White Haven. With your permission,
I'll have my yeoman set up another meeting with you for that
purpose. Perhaps we can think of something at that time. Until
then, please stay in touch. You and your colleagues may actually
have a better feel for the situation than we do at the Admiralty,
and any input you can offer my analysts and planning people will
be greatly appreciated."
"Very
well," Hauptman sighed, standing in turn, and gripped the
admiral's hand, then surprised Caparelli with a wry smile.
"I realize I'm not the easiest man in the universe to get
along with, Sir Thomas. I'm trying very hard not to be the
proverbial bull in the china shop, and I genuinely appreciate
both the difficulties you face and the efforts you're making on
our behalf. I only hope that there's an answer somewhere."
"So
do I, Mr. Hauptman," Caparelli said quietly, escorting his
guest to the door. "So do I."
Admiral
of the Green Hamish Alexander, Thirteenth Earl of White Haven,
wondered if he looked as weary as he felt. The earl was ninety
T-years old, though in a pre-prolong society he would have been
taken for no more than a very well-preserved forty, and even that
would have been only because of the white stranded through his
black hair. But there were new lines around his ice-blue eyes,
and he was only too well aware of his own fatigue.
He
watched space's ebon black give way to deep indigo beyond the
view port as his pinnace dropped towards the city of Landing and
felt that weariness aching in his bones. The Star Kingdom-or, at
least, the realistic part of it-had dreaded the inevitable war
with the People's Republic for over fifty T-years, and the Navy
(and Hamish Alexander) had spent those years preparing for it.
Now that war was almost three years old . . . and proving just as
brutal as he'd feared.
It
wasn't that the Peeps were that good; it was just that they were
so damned big. Despite the internal wounds the People's
Republic had inflicted upon itself since Hereditary President
Harris' assassination, despite its ramshackle economy and the
pogroms which had cost the People's Navy its most experienced
officers, despite even the indolence of the Republic's Dolists,
it remained a juggernaut. Had its industrial plant been even half
as efficient as the Star Kingdom's, the situation would have been
hopeless. As it was, a combination of skill, determination, and
more luck than any competent strategist would dare count on had
allowed the RMN to hold its own so far.
But
holding its own wasn't enough.
White
Haven sighed and massaged his aching eyes. He hated leaving the
front, but at least he'd been able to leave Admiral Theodosia
Kuzak in command. He could count on Theodosia to hold things
together in his absence. White Haven snorted at the thought.
Hell, maybe she could actually take Trevor's Star. God knew he
hadn't had much success in that department!
He
lowered his hand from his eyes and gazed back out the view port
while he took himself to task for that last thought. The truth
was that he'd had a very "good" war to date. In the
first year of operations, his Sixth Fleet had cut deep into the
Republic, inflicting what would have been fatal losses for any
smaller navy along the way. He and his fellow admirals had
actually managed to equalize the daunting odds they'd faced at
the start of the war, and taken no less than twenty-four star
systems. But the second and third years had been different. The
Peeps were back on balance, and Rob Pierre's Committee of Public
Safety had initiated a reign of terror guaranteed to stiffen the
spine of any Peep admiral. And if the destruction of the
Legislaturalist dynasties which had ruled the old People's
Republic had cost the PN its most experienced admirals, it had
also destroyed the patronage system which had kept other officers
from rising to the seniority their capabilities deserved. Now
that the Legislaturalists were out of the way, some of those new
admirals were proving very tough customers. Like Admiral Esther
McQueen, the senior Peep officer at Trevor's Star.
White
Haven grimaced at the view port. According to ONI, the people's
commissioners the Committee of Public Safety had appointed to
keep the People's Navy in line were the ones who really called
the shots. If that was so, if political commissars truly were
degrading the performance of officers like McQueen, White Haven
could only be grateful. He'd begun getting a feel for the woman
over the last few months, and he suspected he was a better
strategist than she. But his edge, if in fact he had one, was far
thinner than he would have liked, and she had ice water in her
veins. She understood the strengths and weaknesses of her forces,
knew her technology was more primitive and her officer corps less
experienced, but she also knew sufficient numbers and an
unflinching refusal to be bullied into mistakes could offset
that. When one added the way Manticore's need to take Trevor's
Star simplified the strategic equation for her, she was giving as
good as she got. Losses had been very nearly even since she took
over, and Manticore simply couldn't afford that. Not in a war
that looked like it might well last for decades. And not, White
Haven admitted, when every month increased the threat that the
Republic would begin to figure out how to redress its
technological and industrial disadvantages. If the Peeps ever
reached a point where they could face the RMN from a position of
qualitative equality, as well as quantitative superiority, the
consequences would be disastrous.
He
heard the pinnace's air-breathing turbines whine as it began its
final approach to Landing and shook himself. Between them, he and
Kuzak had finally evolved a plan which might-might-let
them take Trevor's Star, and that was something they had to do.
The system contained the only terminus of the Manticore Worm Hole
Junction which Manticore did not already control, which made it a
deadly potential threat to the Star Kingdom. But it was a
two-edged sword for the Peeps. Its capture would not only
eliminate the threat of direct invasion but give the RMN a secure
bridgehead deep inside the Republic. Ships-warships, as well as
supply vessels-could move between the RMN's most powerful fleet
bases and the battle front virtually instantaneously, with no
threat of interception. Capture of Trevor's Star-if it was
ever captured-would both ease the Navy's logistics enormously and
open a whole new range of strategic options, which made it the
most valuable prize short of the Haven System itself. But even if
White Haven's plan worked, it would take at least four more
months, minimum, and from Caparelli's dispatches, maintaining the
momentum that long wasn't going to be easy.
"So
that's the situation," White Haven said quietly.
"Theodosia and I think we can do it, but the preliminary
operations are going to take time."
"Um."
Admiral Caparelli nodded slowly, eyes still on the holographic
star chart above his desk. White Haven's plan was no daring
lightning stroke-except, perhaps, in its final stage-but the last
ten months had been ample proof a lightning stroke wasn't going
to work. In essence, the earl proposed to abandon the messy,
inconclusive fighting of a direct approach and work around the
perimeter of Trevor's Star. His plan called for crushing the
systems which supported it one by one, simultaneously isolating
his true objective and positioning himself to launch converging
attacks upon it, and then bringing up Home Fleet itself in
support. That part of the proposed operation was more than
a bit daring-and risky. Three and a half full battle squadrons of
Sir James Webster's Home Fleet could reach Trevor's Star from
Manticore almost instantly via the Junction, despite the huge
distance between the two systems. But the passage of that much
tonnage would destabilize the Junction for over seventeen hours.
If Home Fleet launched an attack and failed to achieve rapid and
complete victory, half its total superdreadnought strength would
be trapped, unable to retreat the way it had come.
The
First Space Lord rubbed his lip and frowned. If the plan worked,
it would be decisive; if it failed, Home Fleet-which was also the
RMN's primary strategic reserve-would be crippled in an
afternoon. In an odd way, that potential for disaster was one of
the things which might make it work. No sane admiral would try it
unless he was absolutely certain of success or had no other
choice, so it was unlikely the Peeps would expect it. Oh, no
doubt they'd drawn up contingency plans against such an attempt,
but Caparelli had to agree with White Haven and Kuzak.
Contingency plans or no, the PN would never really expect
an attack like this, especially if White Haven's preparatory
operations were such as to give him a realistic chance of victory
without using the Junction. If he could draw their covering fleet
out of position, convince them Sixth Fleet was the real
threat, before he tried it . . .
"Coordination,"
Caparelli murmured. "That's the real problem. How do we
coordinate an operation like this over such distances?"
"Absolutely,"
White Haven agreed. "Theodosia and I have wracked our
brains-and our staffs' brains-over that one, and we've been able
to come up with only one possibility. We'll keep you as closely
informed as we can by dispatch boat, but the transit delay's
going to make actual coordination impossible. For it to work at
all, we have to agree ahead of time when we'll make our move, and
then Home Fleet is going to have to send a scout through to see
if we've pulled it off."
"And
if you haven't 'pulled it off,' " Caparelli said frostily, "it's going to be a
bit rough on whoever we send through from Manticore."
"Agreed."
White Haven's voice didn't flinch, but his nod acknowledged
Caparelli's point. The mass of a single vessel would destabilize
the Junction for mere seconds, and if the Peep defenders had, in
fact, been diverted as planned, a scout would be able to transit,
make its scans, and turn and run back down the Junction before it
could be engaged. But if the Peeps hadn't been diverted,
Home Fleet would never even know what had killed its scout.
"I
agree it's a risk," the earl said. "Unfortunately, I
don't see an alternative. And if we're cold about it, risking a
single ship is nothing beside the risk of letting operations
continue to drag on. If I had to, I'd send an entire squadron
through, even knowing I'd lose them all, if it let us pull this
off. I don't like it, but compared to what we've already
lost-what we're going to go on losing if we keep pounding
away frontally-I think it's our best option. And if it does work,
we'll catch the defenders between two fires, with a real
possibility of taking them all out. Certainly it's chancy,
but the potential prize is enormous."
"Um,"
Caparelli grunted again, and tipped his chair back while he
pondered. It was ironic that White Haven should propose something
like this, for it sounded much more like something Caparelli
would have come up with-if, he conceded, he'd had the nerve to
consider it in the first place. White Haven was a master of the
indirect approach, with a sense for choosing the right moment to
make an unexpected pounce or carve another few squadrons out of
an enemy's fleet that amounted to near-genius, and his hatred for
"all or nothing" battle plans was legendary. The notion
of risking the entire war on the turn of a single card, with all
the subtlety of a sledgehammer, must be anathema to him.
Which,
Caparelli admitted, was another reason it might just work. After
all, the Peeps had studied the RMN's officer corps as closely as
Manticore had studied the PN's. They knew something like this was
completely atypical of White Haven's normal thinking, and they
also knew it was White Haven who'd shaped the RMN's overall
strategy to this point. Given that, they'd almost have to be
looking the other way when he launched his sucker punch . . .
assuming the timing worked.
"All
right, My Lord," the First Lord said finally. "There
are still quite a few questions I'll want answered before I
commit myself either way, but I'll turn it over to Pat Givens,
the War College, and my staff for evaluation. You're certainly
right that we can't go on bleeding ourselves forever, and I don't
like how effective McQueen is proving. If we take Trevor's Star
away from her, maybe the Committee of Public Safety will shoot
her pour encourager les autres."
"Maybe,"
White Haven agreed with a grimace Caparelli understood only too
well. He didn't much like the notion that someone was
willing to execute good officers who'd done their utmost simply
because their best efforts failed to stop the enemy either, but
the Star Kingdom was fighting for its life. If the People's
Republic was obliging enough to eliminate its best commanders for
him, Thomas Caparelli would accept the favor.
"The
one thing about your plan which bothers me most-aside, of
course," he couldn't quite resist the dig at the earl,
"from the possibility of crippling Home Fleet-is the delay.
For you to pull this off, we'll actually have to strengthen your
light forces, not weaken them, and with the situation in
Silesia-" He shrugged, and White Haven nodded in
understanding.
"How
badly will it really hurt us?" he asked, and Caparelli
frowned.
"In
absolute terms, we could survive even if we completely halted
trade to Silesia," he said. "It wouldn't be pleasant,
and Hauptman and the other cartels would scream bloody murder.
Worse, they'd be justified. The disruption could literally ruin
some of the smaller ones, and it wouldn't do the big fish like
Hauptman and Dempsey any good, either. And I'm not sure what the
political ramifications might be. I had a long talk with the
First Lord yesterday, and she's already catching a lot of flak
over this. You know her better than I do, but I got the
impression she's under extreme pressure."
White
Haven nodded thoughtfully. He did know Francine Maurier,
Baroness Morncreek and First Lord of the Admiralty, better than
Caparelli. And as the Crown minister with overall responsibility
for the Navy, Morncreek was undoubtedly under just as much
pressure as Caparelli suggested. Indeed, if she was letting it
show, it was probably even worse than Caparelli thought.
"Add
the fact that Hauptman's in bed with the Liberals and the
Conservative Association, not to mention the Progressives, and
we've really got a problem," the First Space Lord continued
grimly. "If the Opposition decides to make a fight over the
Navy's 'disinterest' in his problems, things could get messy. And
that doesn't even consider the direct losses in import duties and
transfer fees . . . or lives."
"There's
another point," White Haven said unwillingly, and Caparelli
raised an eyebrow. "It's only a matter of time until someone
like McQueen sees the possibilities," the earl explained.
"If a bunch of pirates can hurt us this badly, think what
would happen if the Peeps sent in a few squadrons of
battlecruisers to help out. So far, we've kept them too far off
balance to try anything like that, but frankly, they're better
able to cut light forces loose, given all those battleships they
still have in reserve. And Silesia isn't the only place they
could hurt us if they decided to get into commerce warfare in a
big way."
White
Haven, Caparelli thought sourly, did have a way of
thinking up unpleasant scenarios.
"But
if we can't free up the escorts we need," the First Space
Lord began, "then how-"
He
paused suddenly, eyes narrowing. White Haven cocked his head, but
Caparelli ignored him and tapped a query into his terminal. He
studied the data on his display for several seconds, then tugged
at an earlobe.
"Q-ships,"
he said, almost to himself. "By God, maybe that's the
answer."
"Q-ships?"
White Haven repeated. Caparelli didn't seem to hear for a moment,
then he shook himself.
"What
if we were to send some of the Trojans to Silesia?" he
asked, and it was White Haven's turn to frown in thought.
Project
Trojan Horse had been Sonja Hemphill's idea, and that, the earl
admitted, tended to prejudice him against it. He and Hemphill
were old and bitter philosophical foes, and he distrusted her
material-based strategic doctrine. But Trojan Horse hadn't
involved any major diversion from the fighting, and it had
offered enough possible benefits even if it failed in its main
purpose to win his grudging support.
In
essence, Hemphill proposed turning some of the RMN's standard Caravan-class
freighters into armed merchant cruisers. The Caravans were
big ships, over seven million tons, but they were slow and
unarmored, with civilian-grade drives. Under normal
circumstances, they'd be helpless against any proper warship, but
Hemphill wanted to outfit them with the heaviest possible
firepower and seed them into the Fleet Train convoys laboring to
keep Sixth Fleet supplied. The idea was for them to look just
like any other freighter until some unwary raider got close, at
which point they were supposed to blow him out of space.
Personally,
White Haven doubted the concept was workable in the long term.
The Peeps had used Q-ships of their own to some effect against
previous enemies, but the fundamental weakness of the tactic was
that it was unlikely to work against a proper navy more than once
or twice. Once an enemy figured out you were using them, he'd
simply start blowing away anything that might be a Q-ship
from the maximum possible range. Besides, the Peep Q-ships had
been purpose built from the keel out. They'd been fitted with
military-grade drives which had made them as fast as any warship
their size, and their designs had incorporated internal armor,
compartmentalization, and systems redundancy the Caravans
completely lacked.
Now,
however, Caparelli might have a point, because the raiders who
plagued Silesian space didn't have proper warships . . .
and they were no part of any proper navy. Most were independents,
disposing of their plunder to "merchants"-fences,
really-who bankrolled their operations and asked no embarrassing
questions. Their ships tended to be lightly armed, and they
normally operated in singletons, certainly not in groups of more
than two or three. The normal unrest of the Confederacy, where
star systems routinely attempted to secede from the central
government, complicated things a bit, since the "liberation
governments" were fond of issuing letters of marque and
authorizing "privateers" to hit other people's commerce
in the name of independence. Some of the privateers were heavily
armed for their displacement, and a few were commanded by genuine
patriots, willing to work together in small squadrons for their
home system's cause. Even they, however, would tend to run from a
properly handled Q-ship, and unlike operations against the Peeps,
the strategy might become more effective, not less, once word of
it got out. Pirates, after all, were in it for the money, and
they were unlikely to risk losing the ships which represented
their capital or settle for destroying potential prizes from
stand-off ranges. Where a Peep commerce raider might be willing
to accept the risk of encountering a Q-ship in order to simply destroy
Manticoran shipping, a pirate would be looking to capture
his victims and would be unlikely to hazard his ship against a
merchant cruiser unless he anticipated a particularly luscious
prize.
"It
might help," the earl said after considering the notion
carefully. "Unless we have an awful lot of them, they won't
be able to destroy many raiders, of course. I'd have to
say the effect would be more cosmetic than real in those terms,
but the psychological impact could be worthwhile-both in Silesia
and Parliament. But do we have any of them ready to commit? I
thought we were still at least several months short of the target
date."
"We
are," Caparelli agreed. "According to this"-he
tapped his terminal-"the first four ships could be ready
sometime next month, but most of them are still a minimum of five
months from completion. We haven't assigned any crews yet,
either, and frankly, our manpower's stretched tight enough to
make that a problem, too. But we could at least make a start. And
as you say, My Lord, a lot of the benefit will stem from purely
psychological factors. The situation's worst in the Breslau
Sector. If we put the first four in there and let the word get
out that we had, we might be able to put a damper on losses in
that area until the others are ready for deployment."
"We
might." White Haven rubbed his chin, then shrugged. "It
won't be more than a sop-not until the other ships are ready. And
whoever you give it to will have a hell of a job on his hands
with only four ships. But, as you say, at least we'll be able to
tell Hauptman and his cronies we're doing something." And,
he thought, doing it without diverting the ships I need
in the process.
"True."
Caparelli drummed on his desktop for two or three seconds.
"It's only a thought at the moment. I'll run it by Pat this
afternoon and see what BuPlan has to say about it." He
considered a moment longer, then tossed his head. "In the
meantime, let's look a bit closer at the nuts and bolts of this
plan of yours. You say you'll need another two battle squadrons
at Nightingale?" White Haven nodded. "Well, suppose we
draw them from-"