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"Thank you, Sir," Terekhov murmured as he and FitzGerald rose at the obvious indication that their arrival interview was at an end.
"Captain Shoupe will see you out, Captain," Khumalo continued, rising to offer his hand once again in a farewell handshake. He shook hands with FitzGerald, as well, and smiled pleasantly.
"System President Lababibi has invited me to a political banquet in Thimble tomorrow evening, Captain," he said, as if in afterthought as he walked them to his cabin hatch. "Most of the Constitutional Convention's senior delegates will be there, and Baroness Medusa will also be attending. She's suggested that I bring some of my senior staffers and captains along with me, and I feel it's important for the Navy to make a good showing at these affairs, especially given our responsibilities and the force levels we have to work with. I trust you and some of your own officers will be able to attend?"
"We'd be honored to, Sir," Terekhov assured him.
"Good. Good! I'll look forward to seeing you there," Khumalo said, beaming as the hatch opened and the Marine sentry stationed outside it came to attention. "And now," he continued, "I'll leave you in Captain Shoupe's care. Good day, Captain. Commander."
The hatch slid shut again before Terekhov could say anything else, and he and FitzGerald were suddenly alone in the passage with Shoupe and the carefully expressionless sentry.
"This way, please, Sir." The chief of staff had a pleasant soprano voice, and her hand moved gracefully as she gestured down the passage.
"Thank you, Captain," Terekhov said, and the three of them set off towards Hercules ' boat bays.
"The Admiral seems to be even more shorthanded than I'd expected from my briefings and orders," Terekhov observed as they stepped into one of the superdreadnought's lifts and the door closed behind them. His tone was pleasantly impersonal, that of someone who could have been simply making idle conversation, except for the fact that he'd waited until there were no other ears at all to hear it.
"Yes, he is," Shoupe replied after an almost imperceptible pause. She looked up at Terekhov, brown eyes meeting blue. "And I'm afraid he isn't quite as confident as he'd like to appear that there aren't additional political factors involved in the priority accorded to Talbott."
"I see," Terekhov said with a slight nod.
"At the moment, we have an almost impossible number of balls to keep in the air simultaneously," the chief of staff continued, "and I'm afraid the Admiral is feeling the strain, just a bit."
"I'm sure anyone would be, in his position," Terekhov replied.
"Yes. That's one reason-" The lift car reached its destination, and Shoupe cut off whatever she'd been about to say. She gave Terekhov a small smile, and stood back courteously for him to leave the car first.
Too bad, FitzGerald thought, as he followed her out in turn. She was about to say something interesting there. As in that old curse about living in "interesting" times.
"All right," Aivars Terekhov said, several hours later, laying his white beret on the conference table in his bridge briefing room and looking around it. Ansten FitzGerald, Ginger Lewis, Naomi Kaplan, and Captain Tadislaw Kaczmarczyk, the CO of Hexapuma 's Marine detachment, looked back. Chief Agnelli had provided steaming cups of coffee or tea, as each guest preferred, and insulated carafes of both beverages sat on a tray in the center of the table.
"I've had the opportunity to review the intelligence packet from Commander Chandler, Admiral Khumalo's intelligence officer," Terekhov continued, "and also the Admiral's rules of engagement and general orders for the Station. Now I'd like to go over them briefly with you."
Heads nodded, and he tipped his chair back slightly, nursing his own coffee cup in both hands.
"I suppose things always look a bit different to the people actually on the spot from the way they look to the folks back at headquarters," he began. "Given the fact that Admiral Khumalo's been out here ever since the Talbott Station was created, he's clearly in a better position to be aware of local conditions than anyone could be back in Manticore.
"Our primary tasks, as laid down in his general instructions, are first to maintain peace on and between the Cluster's planets. Second, he's charged with assisting the Spindle System government and Baroness Medusa's available Marines-which amount to only a single understrength battalion-in maintaining the security of the Constitutional Convention here on Flax. Our third priority is to suppress piracy and, of course, genetic slaving throughout the Cluster and to discourage... adventurism by any outside elements."
He paused for a moment, his eyes sweeping around the table, and there was no need for him to elaborate on just which "outside elements" Khumalo's general instructions might refer to.
"Fourth," he continued, "we're to assist local authorities in the suppression of any extralegal resistance to the a
"Fifth, we already know our local charts are seriously inaccurate. The Admiral's assigned a high priority to updating our astrogation databases, both by collecting information from local pilots and merchant skippers and by conducting regular survey activities of our own.
"And, sixth and finally, we're to 'show the flag,' not simply inside the Cluster, but along its outer fringes, as well. Piracy here in the Cluster has never been as serious as in, say, Silesia, but there's always been some. The Admiral desires his ships to make their presence known along the arcs Nuncio-Celebrant-Pequod-Scarlet and Lynx-Montana-Tillerman, where he's set up standing patrol lines. On the one hand, we should serve as an advertisement of the advantages of membership in the Star Kingdom, and on the other, remind any larcenously inclined souls from outside it that Her Majesty would take their little pranks amiss."
He smiled thinly at their expressions.
"As you can see, this won't exactly be a relaxing pleasure cruise."
"That's one way to put it, Sir," Ginger Lewis observed after a moment. "Since you're discussing the Admiral's general instructions, may I assume we don't have any specific movement orders just yet?"
"You assume correctly, Ginger," Terekhov agreed with a nod. "When we do receive orders, however, I imagine we'll find ourselves moving around quite a bit. Looking over the ship list, it's obvious Hexapuma is the most powerful modern unit assigned to the Station. I don't see any way the Admiral can afford not to work us hard."
"I can see that, Sir," FitzGerald put in. "Still, if you'll pardon my saying so, I didn't hear anything in that specifically about the security of the terminus."
"No, you didn't," Terekhov agreed. "We have two separate problems. One is the security of the terminus; the other is the security of the rest of the Cluster. The fact that the terminus is an eight-day trip from Split, the closest system in the Cluster proper, even for a warship, doesn't make reconciling those responsibilities any easier."
His tone was level, his expression calm, yet for just a moment, FitzGerald thought he saw something else behind those blue eyes. Whatever it was, it disappeared as quickly as it had come-assuming it had ever been there in the first place-and Terekhov continued in the same dispassionate voice.
"From the economic, astrographic, and military perspectives, Lynx is the real strategic chokepoint of the cluster, as far as the Star Kingdom is concerned. But from the immediate political perspective, Spindle, where the Constitutional Convention is meeting, is at least equally critical. And, the need to maintain a visible presence in the Cluster's inhabited star systems is yet another magnet drawing our available strength away from Lynx. Under the circumstances, and bearing in mind that Lynx can be reinforced on short notice by Home Fleet, Admiral Khumalo's decided his short-term emphasis must be placed on supporting the political processes of the Constitutional Convention and assisting the local planetary governments."
But what do you think he should be doing? FitzGerald wondered. Not that he even considered asking the question aloud.
"I can see why you wanted Naomi and Tad sitting in on this, Sir," Lewis said after a moment. "I'm not too clear on why I'm here, though."
"First, because you're my senior officer, after Ansten," Terekhov replied. "And, second, because unless I miss my guess, we're going to be pushing the ship's systems hard, without much in the way of outside support. Admiral Khumalo has three depot ships-four, counting the one stationed here-to support all of his units. At the moment, the others are assigned to Prairie, Montana, and Scarlet, to provide the maximum coverage for his patrol units. There are also ammunition ships at Montana and Prairie. Aside from that, however, we'll be essentially on our own for both maintenance and general logistics.
"Naomi is obviously going to be deeply involved if-or perhaps I should say when-we encounter pirates or slavers. And Tadislaw's Marines are going to be at least as busy, even assuming we weren't going to run into any need to deploy planet-side detachments. Which, I might add, I'm quite certain we are going to find ourselves doing. But the bottom line is that everyone else aboard the ship depends on Engineering. If we suffer a major maintenance casualty, it's going to make a huge hole in Admiral Khumalo's available strength. So," he smiled suddenly, "I basically wanted you sitting in on this so I could tighten the screws on your sense of responsibility!"
"Gee, thanks, Sir," Lewis retorted with a smile of her own.
"Don't mention it. It's known as motivation enhancement." Several people chuckled, and Terekhov let his chair come fully back upright.
"It's obviously too early to be thinking in anything but the most general terms," he said in a more serious tone. "The one thing we can depend on is that Murphy will surprise us, no matter how much effort we put into preparing for his inevitable appearance. When that happens, our ability to cope with the surprise is going to depend on our agility and flexibility. That's one of the primary reasons I asked all of you to attend this meeting. I intend to conduct a general briefing for all department heads within the next day or so. But you people's departments are going to carry the largest share of the burden, so I wanted to give each of you an early heads-up and take the opportunity for all of us to try bouncing some preliminary ideas off of one another.