At All Costs

Hamish felt a protest hovering on the tip of his tongue. Not because he wasn't almost as certain of Haven's complicity as Elizabeth herself, but because it still didn't make sense to him. Theway Haven had attempted to kill Honor certainly seemed to indicate they saw assassination as a perfectly legitimate tool, and that accorded with the traditional policies of the Legislaturalists and the Committee of Public Safety, as well. Not to mention the fact that Pritchart herself had been credited with more than one assassination during her revolutionary days.

Not only that, he could follow Elizabeth's reasoning where James Webster's death was concerned. Webster had been effective, and his death certainly wasn't going to help manage the crisis in the Talbott Cluster. Given how the threat of that crisis hung over the Star Kingdom, inhibiting Manticore's freedom of action, preventing its resolution had to be attractive to Haven.

But her theory about Haven's motives for what had happened on Torch.... That he found much harder to accept. Or, at least, to understand.

There was no need for the Republic to resort to Machiavellian diplomatic maneuvering. If anyone knew that, it was Hamish Alexander-Harrington. The sheer scale of the Peeps' numerical advantage was terrifying, and it was going to get only worse. It was possible new i

So why worry about diplomacy? Why not simply issue an ultimatum: surrender now, or face an overwhelming offensive from our side at the same time you're confronting Frontier Security in Talbott.

And yet....

And yet, Elizabeth had put her finger on the single most damning point. Who else had a motive? And even assuming someone else did have some motive to derail a possible peace initiative, how had they known one was in the offing? Or where the conference was to be held?

Elizabeth's theory might not seem completely logical, but no other theory offered itself at all.

"I suppose," William Alexander said heavily, "that the real question before us isn't whether or not we hold the Peeps responsible for their actions, but what we do about it.

"Hamish," he turned to his brother, "what are our military options?"

"Essentially what they were before Pritchart's invitation," Hamish replied. "One thing that's changed is that Eighth Fleet's had longer to receive munitions and train with them. We've got a few new wrinkles we think are going to make our ships considerably more effective, and the additional training time will stand Eighth Fleet in good stead. However, at this time, Eighth Fleet is the only formation we've got which is fully trained with the new weapons. It's also the only formation that's equipped with the new weapons, because only the Invictuses and the Graysons' late-flight Harringtons-" he smiled wryly at the class name, despite his somber mood "-can operate them without refitting."

"Why is that?" Grantville asked. "I thought the pods were the same dimensions?"

"They are, but only the ships built with Keyhole capability from the outset can handle the Mark Two platforms, and they're essential to making the new missiles work. We can refit with Keyhole II-in fact, the decision to build that in is part of what's delayed the Andermani refits-but it requires placing the ship in yard hands for at least six weeks. And, frankly, we can't stand down our existing ships that long when we're this tightly strapped. All our new construction is being altered on the ways to be Keyhole II-capable, and when it starts coming into commission, we can probably start pulling the older ships back for refit.

"But at the moment, only Eighth Fleet is really equipped to handle them, and even they have only partial loadouts on the new pods. We're attempting to get into full production on them as quickly as possible, but we've hit some bottlenecks, and security issues have restricted the number of production facilities we could commit to them."

"But Eighth Fleet could resume active operations immediately?"

"Yes," Hamish said firmly, trying to ignore the icy shiver which went through him at the thought of Honor going back into combat when he'd allowed himself to hope so hard for a diplomatic solution. And trying not to think about her bitter disappointment-and Emily's-if she found herself unable to be there for their daughter's birth after all.

"And what does our defensive posture look like?"

"That, too, is essentially what it was. We're in a little better shape in Talbott, because O'Malley's on station at Monica now. Given ONI's current estimates of Solarian capabilities, and bearing in mind Terekhov's after-action report on the performance of the Solly battlecruisers the Monicans used, O'Malley can almost certainly destroy anything Verrochio could assemble to throw at him for at least the next two to four months. In fact, Verrochio would have to be heavily reinforced before he'd have any chance at all of evicting us from Monica, much less the Cluster as a whole.

"As far as direct action against the home system by the League is concerned, sheer distance would work in our favor. They aren't going to invade us successfully through the Junction, not with the number of missile pods we've got covering the central nexus. That means they've got to do it the hard way, which leaves them with something on the order of a six-month voyage just to get here. Which doesn't even take into consideration the fact that they're going to have to mobilize, bring together, and logistically support a fleet with overwhelming numerical superiority if they expect to offset our tactical and technological advantages.

"To be honest, I'm reminded of something a wet-navy admiral from Old Earth once said. For eighteen months to two years, possibly even twice that long, we'd run wild. It's unlikely the Sollies recognize just how much things have changed in the last five to ten T-years, which probably means they'd commit grossly inadequate force levels, at least initially. Eventually, they'd realize what was happening, though. And if they had the stomach for it, they could use their sheer size to soak up whatever we did to them while they got their own R&D to work on matching weapons and cranked up their own building capacity.

"The bottom line is that my current estimate is that we could do enormous damage to them-far more, I'm certain, then any of their strategists or politicians would imagine was possible. But quantity has a quality all its own, and we simply aren't big enough to militarily defeat the Solarian League if it's prepared to buckle down and pay the cost to beat us. We don't have the ships or the manpower to occupy the number of star systems we'd have to occupy if we wanted to achieve military victory. They, on the other hand, have effectively unlimited manpower and productive capacity. In the end, that would tell. And even if that weren't true, it overlooks the fact that the Peeps already have-or soon will have-enough wallers with broadly equivalent capabilities to pound us under. Especially if we're distracted by dealing with the League."

"But what I seem to hear you saying," Grantville said intently, "is that whatever the League ultimately does, nothing it can do in the next, say, six months is going to have a significant impact on us?"

"That time estimate's probably a bit optimistic, assuming we take any heavy losses against Haven," Hamish replied. "Overall, though, that's fairly accurate."

"Then it seems to me we've got to take the position that that six months-or whatever shorter period we actually have-represents our window for dealing with the Peeps," the Prime Minister said.