War Of Honor

"It's only a simulation!" Clapp pointed out as coherently as he could through the background racket and Anders' pounding.

"But it's the best simulation we've been able to build," Foraker responded. "And we used the most pessimistic assumptions we could about our relative capabilities when we modeled it in the first place." She shook her head, gri

"But only for the initial engagements," Clapp countered, and gestured at her chief of staff. "As Captain Anders pointed out, once we've done this to them a time or two, they're going to begin adapting their tactics. If nothing else, they'll accept a greater degree of dispersal and use sequenced waves of EW drones to make it harder for us to kill them before we close."

"Of course they will," she agreed. "And," she went on more somberly, "you're quite right—our relative losses will go up steeply when that happens. But the entire point of your operational concept is that since we can't match their ability to kill starships with LACs, the best we can hope to do is to impose attritional losses on them. To neutralize their anti-shipping strike capability because we don't have the tech base to create a matching capability of our own. And that, Mitchell, is precisely what you've accomplished here. It isn't pretty, and it isn't elegant, but it is something more important than either of those things—it works." She shook her head. "To be honest, I hope we never get the opportunity to validate your creation, but if we do, I think it's going to do exactly what you set out to do."

Chapter Twenty One

"I don't care what the intelligence 'experts' have to say," Arnold Giancola grunted. "I'm telling you that the damned Manties don't have any intention in Hell of giving us back our star systems."

He pushed back in his chair and glowered around the table in the palatial, expensively paneled private meeting room in what had once been the Hall of the People. That edifice had once more reverted to its even older title—the Senate Building—and technically, the Secretary of State was here to address the Foreign Affairs Committee. But that committee meeting wasn't due to begin for another hour and a half. Since he seemed to have arrived a bit early, however, he'd decided to spend a few minutes passing the time in idle conversation with a few personal friends.

Now one of those friends, Senator Samson McGwire (who just happened to be the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee and an old Giancola crony), managed almost visibly not to sigh and shook his head, instead.

"You've said that before, Arnold," he said. "And I don't say you're wrong. But let's face it—there's no reason I can see for the Manties to want to keep most of those systems, either. Hell, all but half a dozen of them were economic liabilities to the Old Regime! Why should a bunch of money-grubbing plutocrats want to hang onto money-losing possessions?"

"Then why haven't they gone ahead and given them back?" Giancola demanded irately. "God knows we've been negotiating about it with them long enough! Besides, according to the latest estimate I've seen, some of those systems' economies are begi

"And don't forget the military considerations," Senator Jason Giancola put in sharply. "They seized those systems in the first place to use as jumping off points for operations deeper in the Republic. So I can see at least one reason for them to want to hang onto them that has nothing at all to do with their economies."

"I know," McGwire agreed heavily. Unlike most of the Republic's senators, McGwire had been a member of a minor Legislaturalist family before the Pierre Coup. His family hadn't been important enough to draw the People's Court's attention during the purges, but he'd lost two cousins and a nephew in the war against Manticore, and his hostility towards—and suspicion of—the Star Kingdom were profound. "In fact, that's why I'm inclined to support you, Arnold, despite the fact that I'm not at all sure your ideas make economic good sense."

"This discussion is all well and good," Representative Gerald Younger pointed out. Like the Secretary of State, he was technically an interloper in this building, but many representatives were in and out of the Senate Building on a regular basis. Younger was one of them. He was also several decades younger than any of the discussion's other participants, and his tone was brisk, almost impatient. "The fact is, though, that whatever we may think, President Pritchart doesn't agree with us. And with all due respect, Arnold, it looks to me like she's holding the rest of the Cabinet in line with her own policy."

"Yes, she is . . . so far," the older Giancola admitted. "But it's not as cut and dried as it may look from the outside. Theisman is completely in her corner, of course. So are Hanriot, LePic, Gregory, and Sanderson, to one degree or another." Rachel Hanriot was the Secretary of the Treasury, Denis LePic was the Attorney General, Stan Gregory was the Secretary of Urban Affairs, and Walter Sanderson was the Interior Secretary. "But Sanderson is more than half way to seeing things my way, and Nesbitt, Staunton, and Barloi have both told me privately that they agree with me." Toby Nesbitt was the Secretary of Commerce, Sandra Staunton was the Secretary of Biosciences, and Henrietta Barloi was the Secretary of Technology. "So if Sanderson decides to come out openly on our side, the Cabinet will actually be split almost straight down the middle."

"It will?" Younger sounded surprised, and his expression was thoughtful.

"Damn right it will," the Secretary of State replied.

"What about Trajan and Usher?" Younger asked. Wilhelm Trajan's Foreign Intelligence Service and Kevin Usher's Federal Investigation Agency both came under the Justice Department and reported to LePic, much to Giancola's resentful chagrin. In his opinion, Justice should have the FIA, but State should have jurisdiction over ForInt. Pritchart hadn't seen things that way, and her decision to place both under LePic was one more point of contention, as far as he was concerned.

"Both of them are lined up behind the President, of course," he said testily. "What else did you expect? But neither of them holds a cabinet-level appointment, either. They're just very senior bureaucrats, and what they think or don't think doesn't affect the balance of power, if you will, in the Cabinet."

"Which won't matter a great deal," McGwire pointed out calmly. "Eloise Pritchart is the President, after all. Under the Constitution, that means her one vote outnumbers all the rest of the Cabinet combined. And even if it didn't, do you really want to risk pissing off Thomas Theisman?"

"If he were a Pierre or a Saint-Just, I wouldn't," Giancola said frankly. "But he's not. He really is obsessed with restoring 'the rule of law.' If he weren't, he never would have brought in Pritchart in the first place."

"And if he thinks you're challenging the 'rule of law,' you're likely to get a chance to exchange personal notes with Oscar Saint-Just," McGwire said dryly.

"Not as long as I do whatever I do from within the framework of the Constitution," Giancola disagreed. "As long as I do that, he can't take direct action against me without violating due process himself, and he won't do that. It would be like strangling his own child."