War Of Honor

He gestured at the waiting lift shaft, and his subordinates moved obediently towards it.

"So that's the bare bones of the current deployment plan," Captain Gozzi said, winding up the first stage of his briefing the better part of two and a half hours later. "With your permission, Admiral," he continued, turning to speak directly to Giscard, "I'd like to open the floor to general questions before we move on to the consideration of specific details."

"Of course, Marius," Giscard told his chief of staff, and glanced at the other two flag officers present in Sovereign of Space's flag briefing room. "Lester? Sha

"From what I seem to be hearing here," Tourville observed, frowning from behind a cloud of fragrant cigar smoke at the floating holo map of the region around Trevor's Star, "this is no longer a hypothetical deployment."

It wasn't precisely a question, but Gozzi nodded anyway.

"That's correct, Sir. The Octagon sent us the preparatory movement orders this morning."

"It sounds as if things are getting even dicier," Captain DeLaney said, her expression unhappy, and Tourville nodded in agreement with his own chief of staff.

"That's exactly what I was thinking," he said, and frowned.

"I know none of us are particularly happy about this situation," Giscard said with massive understatement, "but at least you're getting what you handle best, Lester—a detached, independent command."

"'Detached!'" Tourville snorted. "That's certainly accurate enough. Just who had this brainstorm, anyway?"

"That's not something I've been specifically told," Giscard replied with a wry smile. "Having said that, it has all the earmarks of something Linda Trenis would have come up with."

"Figures. Linda always was too smart for her own good."

"You don't think it will work?" Giscard asked, one eyebrow raised, and Tourville puffed on his cigar some more, then shrugged.

"I think it should do what it's supposed to do," he acknowledged. "I guess what bothers me about it is that sending Second Fleet clear to Silesia seems to indicate that someone is begi

"It sounds that way to me, too," Foraker put in. "That's one reason this whole deployment plan worries me."

Even as she spoke, Foraker reflected upon how insanely dangerous it would have been for any flag officer to express reservations about her orders under the Committee of Public Safety. But she didn't serve the Committee; that was the entire point.

"I don't think anyone in Nouveau Paris is taking the possibility of a resumption of hostilities lightly," Giscard said. "I know Secretary Theisman isn't, as I'm sure all of us are aware." He gazed at Tourville and Foraker until both of them nodded, then shrugged. "By the same token, it's his job—and ours—to be ready if worse comes to worst anyway. On that basis, do you have any reservations, Lester?"

"Other than those I think any of us would feel about going up against someone as good as Harrington that far from any of our own support bases, no," Tourville conceded. "I like the fact that I don't do a thing without positive orders from home. At least we don't have to worry about my starting a war because no one got me the orders not to in time!"

"Sha

"Actually," Foraker said unhappily, "I do have a few reservations."

"Oh?" Giscard eyed her speculatively. "What sort of reservations?"

"I can't escape the feeling that we're ru

Giscard nodded. As soon as this conference ended, he and the newly designated First Fleet would depart the Haven System and head for his new station in the SXR-136-23 System. It had never received a name to replace its catalog designation because the thoroughly useless red giant had absolutely nothing, not even any planets, to attract anyone to it. It did, however, offer a handy anchor around which to park a fleet safely out of sight. And it just happened to be located less than forty light-years northwest of Trevor's Star.

The logistics ships to support First Fleet were already in place, orbiting SXR-136's dim central fires with sufficient supplies and spares to sustain the entire fleet on station for up to six months. If it turned out to be necessary to leave First Fleet there for longer than that, the fleet train would detach ships in relays to bring back what was needed. And if the balloon went up, every single task group (except Second Fleet) set up by the carefully orchestrated war plan known as Case Red Alpha would depart from SXR-136. Its components would sail at staggered intervals which would place each of them at its objective at precisely the same time, but they would all depart from the same place, under the same orders, without risking the strategic miscue which had sent Admiral Yuri Rollins to the Hancock System early. Of course, it helped that, with the exception of Grendelsbane, all of those objectives lay within no more than a hundred and twenty light-years of Trevor's Star.

"Unfortunately," Foraker continued, "the fact that this plan provides for better coordination doesn't change the fact that we're going to be attacking in a lot of places at once. Which means dispersing our forces to a much greater degree than I'd really prefer."

"That's a valid concern," Giscard agreed. "I think, though, that it's an element of risk we're just going to have to accept. And if we're going to be dispersed, at least the Manties are spread even thi

"There is that." It was Foraker's turn to nod.

"And," Captain Gozzi pointed out respectfully, "the ops plan does provide for us to hit our objectives in sequenced attacks, Ma'am. We'll be concentrating superior forces for each attack, and starting with their nodal positions to take out their response forces first."

"I know." Foraker frowned. "Given our resources and the mission objectives, this certainly looks like the most effective employment of our forces. I suppose when it comes right down to it, a lot of my concerns stem from the fact that I know how much of our pla

She grimaced and glanced at her own chief of staff.

"Five and I—all our people—have tried to be as constructively critical of our own work as we could. But none of our conclusions have been tested in battle yet. Our simulations are solid . . . if the intelligence data on Manty hardware on which we based them is accurate. But we can't know for certain that it is. And even if the numbers are good, we're going to be committing an awful lot of ships, ma

"I can appreciate your concerns," Giscard said after a moment. "At the same time, I suspect at least a part of them stem from your own conscientiousness. And I think you may be underestimating the quality of the work you and your people have done. Oh, I don't doubt for a minute that we're going to hit at least some holes in the doctrine, or that we're going to find out some assumption about Manty capabilities wasn't sufficiently pessimistic. But Lester and I have gamed out a dozen battles in the simulators, using your new hardware and your new doctrine, and from what we've seen there, you've managed to increase our combat effectiveness by a factor of at least ten."