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He stopped behind the lectern, looked out across their faces, and cleared his throat. The background hum of astonished speculation died almost instantly.
"I'm not going to bother with a lot of introductions this morning," he said, his amplified voice filling the auditorium while all of his sons who were physically present on Mesa filed onto the stage behind him. "The mere fact that I'm talking to all of you simultaneously—and directly—has no doubt already told you something important is going on, and it is. In fact, something very important is about to happen."
The silence intensified, and he gestured for Collin to join him at the lectern. Standing side-by-side, the physical resemblance between them was almost unca
"Six days ago," Collin began without preamble, "the Republic of Haven attacked the Manticore home system."
A rustle of astonishment almost as great as that evoked by Albrecht's presence rushed around the auditorium, punctuated by more than a few exclamations of shock, and Albrecht smiled grimly. Their reaction didn't surprise him in the least, because no one had attacked the home star system of a major interstellar naval power literally in centuries, if ever.
"Havenite security was very tight, and we had absolutely no warning that this was in the works," Collin continued after a moment. "Thanks to the streak drive and the Beowulf conduit, we've been able to acquire at least preliminary estimates on the outcome of the attack, however. I'm not the best person to discuss the military implications of that outcome, so I'm going to ask Benjamin to address them. I'll be prepared to take any questions on the intelligence side after the main briefing when we break down into our initial task groups."
He stepped back from the lectern, and Benjamin Detweiler took his place.
"As Collin's just said, our estimates of exactly what happened are preliminary at this time. We don't have significant penetration of the Manticoran military, but the battle was fought inside the system hyper limit, for the most part, right under the Manticoran newsies' noses. Collin's estimate, with which I concur, is that the reports our agents in Manticore have been able to pick up from the media are essentially accurate, despite some possibility of exaggeration.
"Allowing for that exaggeration and rounding reported losses downward by twenty percent as a corrective, it would appear that the entire Manticoran Home Fleet has been destroyed."
A harsh sound, like a collective gasp, went through his audience. He seemed unaware of it as he continued speaking in the same, calm voice.
"Their Third Fleet would also appear to have beeneffectively destroyed. Preliminary estimates indicate that while a handful of its units may have survived, none of them are combat-capable at this time, and many of the survivors would appear to be damaged beyond a practical point of repair.
"On the Havenite side, our best estimate is that they committed between four hundred and five hundred ships of the wall to the attack. For all intents and purposes, that means they used at least ninety percent of their fully worked-up and trained wall of battle. According to the best information available to us, no more than twenty or thirty of their ships survived the engagement. The remainder were either destroyed outright or captured by the Manticorans."
There were no gasps this time. Genetically engineered for superiority or not, his audience was too stu
"According to what our agents have been able to piece together, and what our analysts here at home have been able to do with their reports, it would appear the Havenites came within centimeters of succeeding in their objective. We're still trying to pull specific information on their tactics out of the reports we've received, but it looks like they used a two-pronged attack, bringing in a second force behind Third Fleet to ambush it when Admiral Kuzak came through from Trevor's Star in response to the initial attack. Unfortunately for the Havenites, it would appear thatEighth Fleet came through after Third Fleet, rather than in company with it, which allowed Harrington to ambush the ambushers, as it were. The result was to break the back of the Havenite attack, but every report available to us indicates that, for all intents and purposes, the Manticoran Navy's wall of battle has been pruned back to only Eighth Fleet and the odds and sods of wallers scattered around as pickets in places like the Lynx Terminus."
He paused and surveyed his audience levelly.
"What this means," he said flatly, "is that the combined walls of battle of Manticore and Haven have been effectively gutted. At this moment, the Manties' Eighth Fleet is probably the only organization on either side which actually deserves to be called a 'fleet' at all. I would be astonished to discover that they could have suffered fewer than a million and a half human casualties between them, which is bound to have its own impact in the not-too-distant future, but the critical point is that Haven no longer has an effective battle fleet at all, and that Eighth Fleet is going to be anchored to Manticore for the foreseeable future."
He stopped speaking and stepped back from the lectern, and Albrecht took his place there once more.
"Obviously," he said quietly, "there are still a great many things we don't know. But what we do know clearly indicates that, as Benjamin's just said, the combat power of both the Manticoran alliance and the Republic of Haven has been effectively—if temporarily—wiped out."
His smile would have done any Old Earth shark proud.
"In some ways, the timing on this is highly inconvenient for us. In others, it couldn't be better. And however we want to look at it, it represents an opportunity, an opening, and a warning we dare not ignore.
"What Harrington apparently managed to do to the Havenites is a warning that this new targeting system of theirs, whatever it is, is even more effective than we'd assumed from the original reports on it. I think we need to take it as a given that they'll be fitting the same technology into all of their new construction as it comes off the ways. That means Manticore is in a position to recover quickly from its losses, despite their severity, and that the Manticoran Navy will find itself in a totally dominating position once it does. According to all of our sources, Haven still has more ships under construction than Manticore does, but after the results of the Battle of Lovat and this new battle in Manticore, it's obvious that those ships are simply going to be targets for the Manties unless Haven somehow miraculously acquires the same technology for itself in the next few months. Which means Manticore is now in a position to score an outright military victory over the Republic of Haven—one so overwhelming they'll be able to dictate the terms of any peace they want to cram down Nouveau Paris' throat—within the next six to ten T-months. And if that happens, especially given their new targeting system and the fact that they'll be free to concentrate on something besides Haven, they will pose an extremely serious threat to our own strategy."
The auditorium was deathly silent when he paused. He let the silence linger for a moment, then continued.
"By the same token, however, neither Manticore nor Haven has been this vulnerable since their first war began. For all intents and purposes, Haven has no fleet, and Manticore's only existing fleet ca