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Yeltsin and Hancock, on the other hand, worried him because there'd been no action in their areas, other than the original convoy raid in Yeltsin and the Caliph's mystery losses in Zanzibar. Perhaps it was because he viewed them as his most vulnerable points, but the lack of activity around either star made him wonder why the Peeps didn't want him worrying about them.
Added to which, Admiral Parks' decision to uncover Hancock was enough to give any First Space Lord ulcers. He understood Parks' reasoning, but he wasn't at all certain he shared it. In fact, he'd gone so far as to draft a dispatch ordering Parks back to Hancock only to file it unsent and settle for ordering Admiral Danislav to expedite his own movements. The RMN tradition was that the Admiralty didn't override the man on the spot unless it had very specific intelligence that he didn't have... and the one thing Sir Thomas Caparelli currently had in abundance was a lack of specific intelligence.
"They're going to do it, Pat," he murmured, eyes still fixed on the-display. "They're really going to do it."
It was the first time either of them had said so in so many words, but Givens only nodded.
"Yes, Sir, they are," she agreed, her voice equally soft.
"There has got to be some way to pull them off balance," the First Space Lord muttered, drumming his fingers harder on the console. "Some way to turn this thing around so it bites them on the ass."
Givens gnawed her lower lip a moment longer, then drew a deep breath and reached back into the display. She cupped her palm around Yeltsin's Star, and Caparelli's eyes narrowed as he raised his head to look at her.
"I believe there may be, Sir," she said quietly.
"Let me be certain I understand this correctly, Sir Thomas." The Duke of Cromarty's voice was very quiet. "You're suggesting that we deliberately entice the PRH into attacking Yeltsin's Star?"
"Yes, Sir." Caparelli met the Prime Minister's gaze levelly.
"And your reasoning for this is?" Cromarty prompted.
"In essence, Sir, we hope to set a trap for the Peeps." Caparelli cleared his throat and activated a small-scale holo display of the Yeltsin System in the high-security conference room just off Cromarty's office.
"At present, Yeltsin's Star represents our most powerful concentration short of Home Fleet itself, Your Grace," he explained. "We've taken pains to keep our exact strength in the system a secret. Given the intelligence the Peeps seem to have on our routine movements elsewhere, it's quite possible they know much more about Yeltsin than we'd like, but Admiral Givens' plan offers us at least the possibility of turning that around on them."
He manipulated controls, and the tiny star system above the table was suddenly lit by tinier flecks of bright green light.
The Graysons have spent the last year fortifying their system with our assistance, Your Grace. We're still a long, long way from completing our plans, but as you can see, we've made considerable progress and Grayson itself is well covered by orbital forts. They're small, by our standards, because they're left over from the Grayson-Masada cold war, but there are a lot of them, and they've been heavily refitted and rearmed. In addition, the Grayson Navy itself must now be considered equivalent to at least a heavy task group of our own Navy—a truly enormous accomplishment for a seventeen-month effort from their begi
"But it also happens to belong to a sovereign ally of the Star Kingdom, Admiral." Concern and more than a hint of disapproval tinged Cromarty's voice. "You're suggesting that we deliberately draw the enemy into attacking one of our friends—without consulting them."
"I fully realize the implications of my suggestion, Your Grace, but I'm afraid we've reached a point at which we don't have time for consultations. If Admiral Givens is correct—and I think she is—the Peeps are counting down against a timetable they may have spent years perfecting. We have our own defensive plans, but allowing them to begin a war on their terms, at a time of their choice, against a target of their choice, is extremely dangerous. If at all possible, we need to draw them into a false start or, at least, into attacking a target of our choice. But to do that, Your Grace, we have to get the information we want them to have into their hands in time for them to rethink their operations and send out new orders from their central command node before their scheduled 'X' hour.
"The key to the plan is one of Admiral Givens' communication officers at BuPlan. The Havenite ambassador's gone to great pains to suborn him. He's been working for them for almost two T-years now, but what they don't know—we hope—is that he's actually working for Admiral Givens. To date, his reports have been one hundred percent accurate, but he's reported only information which couldn't hurt us or which we were reasonably certain the Peeps could obtain by other means.
"What we propose is to use him to inform the Peeps, through Ambassador Gowan, that the activity around Talbot Station has concerned us so deeply that we're transferring several of D'Orville's battle squadrons there as reinforcements. We'll be sending replacements to Yeltsin, of course, but not for two or three weeks. At the same time as he passes the information off to Gowan, we'll send the same instructions to Admiral D'Orville through regular cha
"If our present analysis of Peep operations is accurate, they're probably coordinating from their base in the Barnett System. If we can get this false information to Barnett quickly enough, whoever's in command there will have a window to hit Yeltsin before our 'replacements' arrive. Only when he does, he'll find out none of D'Orville's ships ever left."
"I understand that, Sir Thomas, but what if he hits Yeltsin hard enough to take the system despite Admiral D'Orville's strength? Bad enough that we're asking our allies to take the brunt of the first blow, but what if that blow is heavy enough to conquer them despite all we can do?"
Caparelli leaned back in his chair, his face like stone. He was silent for several seconds. When he spoke again, his voice was heavy.
"Your Grace, they're going to attack us. Neither I nor any member of my staff doubts that, and when they do, Yeltsin will be a primary target. It has to be, given the shallowness of our frontier at that point. I realize the risk I'm suggesting we expose the Graysons to, but it's my opinion that drawing the Peeps into attacking us there on our terms is our most effective option. In a best-case scenario, they'll underestimate D'Orville's strength and attack in insufficient force, in which case officers like D'Orville and High Admiral Matthews will hand them their heads. And even if we lose D'Orville's entire fleet and Yeltsin, we'll hurt them very, very badly, and a prompt counterattack from Manticore should retake the system with an overall loss rate which will be heavily in our favor."
"I see." Cromarty rubbed his chin, eyes dark, then drew a deep breath. "How quickly do you need a decision, Sir Thomas?"
"Frankly, Your Grace, the sooner the better. We don't know that we still have enough time to bring this off— assuming it works at all—before they launch an attack elsewhere. If we do have time, we don't have a lot of it."