At All Costs

"If he's able to inflict heavy damage on their infrastructure, Beatrice might not prove immediately fatal to the Manties, but the long term effects on the strategic balance would be clearly decisive. Without the Manticoran yards, their Alliance can't possibly match our construction ability, and they'll know it. Which means they'll have no choice but to surrender.

"It he's able to engage Third Fleet and Eighth Fleet in detail, after already trashing Home Fleet, he'll probably be able to completely destroy or cripple just under half the total modern Manty wall of battle and then take out the infrastructure. In that case, Beatrice would definitely be immediately decisive."

Theisman stopped speaking and sat back in his chair, and Pritchart gazed at him without speaking for what seemed an eternity. It was very quiet in the conference room.

Beatrice, she thought. Such a pretty name for something so hideous. Is this what it's really come to, Eloise?

She wanted to say no, to reject the notion. Yet she couldn't. She'd done her dead level best to avoid this, and she prayed she would still be able to avoid Beatrice. But deep in the secret places of her soul, she was afraid. So afraid. Not of defeat, but of the price of the alternative.

"You say we'd commit almost three hundred and fifty ships of the wall," she said, finally. "What does that leave us if things go wrong?"

"We'll have a total of just over six hundred and twenty SD(P)s in commission at that point," Theisman told her. "There'll be another three hundred or so older superdreadnoughts to support them, although by that point we'll be decommissioning the older ships steadily to provide crews for the new construction."

"Why not take more of them to Manticore, then?"

"For four main reasons. First, out of that total number of pod-layers, something like a hundred will still be working up. They won't be up to full efficiency, their ships companies won't be fully integrated. In short, they won't really be fully combat-effective units.

"Second, the force we're committing ought to be enough to do the job, and it's going to be the biggest fleet of superdreadnoughts ever committed to action in a single battle by anyone, including the Solarian League. Even under a worst-case scenario, it should be more than powerful enough to beat an organized retreat with minimum losses. I realize Murphy's still likely to put in an appearance, but there would have to be some truly radical shift in the basic operational parameters for the Manties to seriously threaten its ability to look after itself.

"Third, we simply can't be certain where their Eighth Fleet is going to be at the moment we launch Beatrice. Suppose, for example, that they've sortied from Trevor's Star on another raiding expedition. In that case, our margin of superiority at Manticore would be even greater, but we've got to cover our own absolutely essential rear areas-like Bolthole, although there's no indication they've figured out where Bolthole is yet-against whatever Eighth Fleet might be doing while we're trashing Manticore.

"Fourth, there's the Andermani. The Manties and Graysons have lost about twenty superdreadnoughts-twelve of them pod-layers-since Thunderbolt wrapped up. That's about seven percent of their total podnoughts. But the Andies are still out there somewhere, and so far, we've seen very few of their capital ships. There are at least a couple of squadrons of them assigned to the Manties' Home Fleet, but that's about it. By our estimates, they should have somewhere around a hundred and twenty pod-layers by now-just about a third of the Manticoran Alliance's total-and we haven't seen them yet. We know they aren't at Trevor's Star, and intelligence suggests there's still some technical problem with them. We know they were conducting a major refit program on the Andy wallers, and we're assuming that explains their continued absence. But it's possible more of them will come forward before we launch Beatrice. And whatever happens in Manticore, the Andy ships that aren't there can't be destroyed. So we've got to retain enough of our own forces uncommitted to provide a strategic reserve against the sudden appearance of the Andermani Navy."

Pritchart considered what he'd said for a moment, then nodded.

"How soon could you mount these operations?"

"Camille could go on very short notice," Theisman said. "Lester's already essentially positioned to mount and execute the operation. Beatrice is going to take longer. Frankly, we'll need at least seven to eight weeks to bring ourselves up to our stipulated force levels. It will take another three weeks or so for the designated units to combine and reach Manticore. So say we could hit Alizon within two weeks of the time you say go, and we could execute Beatrice anywhere from ten weeks to three months from today. If we begin making preliminary deployments for Beatrice now, we'd probably come out closer to the ten-week deadline."

"'From today,'" Pritchart repeated, with a forlorn smile. "You realize this is the day I was supposed to depart for Torch, don't you?"

"Yes, I do," Theisman said sadly.

"This wasn't a conversation I wanted to be having. Not today. Not ever."

"I know that, Madam President. But," he met her eyes unflinchingly, "if the diplomatic option isn't available, this is the logical consequence of going to war in the first place."

"You're right, of course," she sighed, massaging her temples with the fingertips of both hands. "And you tried to warn me before we did it. Before I did it."

"Madam President," he said quietly, "I could have stopped you. We both know that."

"No, you couldn't have," she disagreed. "I'd like to think you could, because then I could spread around some of the guilt I'm feeling right now. But you couldn't have stopped me without killing the Constitution, Tom, and you could no more do that than you could fly without counter-grav... or strangle your own child with your bare hands. We both know that."

He started to open his mouth, as if to continue arguing the point. Then he closed it, instead, and she smiled again.

"But however we got here, we're here now," she said, and inhaled sharply.

"All right, Tom, Arnaud. I'll review your summaries. On the basis of what you've said so far, I'm inclined to think you're probably right about the two we're most likely to be choosing between, unfortunately. I hope it will be Camille, but go ahead and assume the worst. Start deploying your units on the basis that Beatrice will be necessary."

Chapter Fifty-Five

The warship which emerged from the Trevor's Star terminus of the Manticore Wormhole Junction did not show a Manticoran transponder code. Nor did it show a Grayson or an Andermani code. Nonetheless, it was allowed transit, for the code it did display was that of the Kingdom of Torch.

To call the vessel a "warship," was, perhaps, to be overly generous. It was, in fact, a frigate-a tiny class which no major naval power had built in over fifty T-years. But this was a very modern ship, less than three T-years old, and it was Manticoran built, by the Hauptman Cartel, for the Anti-Slavery League.

Which, as everyone understood perfectly well, actually meant it had been built for the Audubon Ballroom, before its lapse into respectability. And this particular frigate-TNS Pottawatomie Creek-was rather famous, one might almost have said notorious, as the personal transport of one Anton Zilwicki, late of Her Manticoran Majesty's Navy.

Everyone in the Star Kingdom knew about the attempt to murder Zilwicki's daughter, and given Manticore's current bloody-minded mood, no one was inclined to present any problems when Pottawatomie Creek requested permission to approach HMS Imperator and send across a couple of visitors.