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"Wonderful," Khumalo sighed.
"I'm afraid it gets even better, Sir. All they managed to give Byng was battlecruisers. This Admiral Crandall they were telling Vézien about apparently has a lot more than that under her command."
"Do you think 'Admiral Crandall' really even exists?"
"That's a good question," Michelle admitted. "Anisimovna told Vézien and the other New Tuscans about Crandall, but no one on the planet ever actually saw her or any of her ships. Given what happened toGiselle, it's pretty evident Anisimovna wouldn't have suffered any qualms of conscience over lying to them about a little thing like fifty or sixty superdreadnoughts. And I'd really like to think that it's one thing to get a Battle Fleet admiral with a pathological hatred for all things Manticoran assigned to a Frontier Fleet command but another thing entirely to get an entire fleet of Battle Fleet ships of the wall maneuvered this far out into the boonies. If Manpower has that kind of reach, if it can really move task groups and battle fleets around like chessmen or checkers, we've obviously been underestimating the hell out of them for a long, long time. And if that's true, who knows what else the bastards are up to?"
The two of them looked at one another unhappily for several silent minutes, then Khumalo sighed again, heavily. He took a generous sip of brandy, shook his head, and gave her a crooked smile.
"You and Aivars do have a way of brightening up my days, don't you, Milady?"
"I wouldn't say we do it on purpose, Sir," Michelle replied with an answering smile.
"I realize that. In fact, that's part of what makes it so . . . ironic." Michelle cocked an eyebrow at him, and he chuckled and a bit sourly. "For quite some time, I was convinced I'd been sent out here—and left here—because the Cluster was absolutely the lowest possible priority for the Admiralty. In fact, to be honest, I still cherish rather strong suspicions in that direction."
He smiled more warmly at her, and she hoped she'd managed to conceal her surprise at hearing him say that. The fact that it accorded well with her own view of the situation made it even more remarkable that he'd brought it up. And especially that he'd done it with so little evident bitterness.
"In fairness," he continued, "I'm relatively sure the Janacek Admiralty sent me out here because of my co
"Then the new Government came in, and I wondered how long I'd stay here until I got yanked back home. Politics being politics, I really didn't expect to be left out here for long, and it got more than a little unpleasant waiting for the ax to fall. But it became pretty evident that the Grantville Government had assigned a lower priority to Talbott than to Silesia, and, again, I couldn't really argue on any logical basis. So, here I sat in a humdrum, secondary—or even tertiary—assignment out in the back of beyond, with the firm expectation that the most exciting thing likely to happen was the chance to chase down an occasional pirate, while I waited to be relieved and banished to half-pay.
"Obviously," he said dryly, "that's changed."
"I think we might both safely agree that that's an accurate statement, Sir," Michelle said. "And, if you'll forgive me, and since you've been so frank and open with me, I'd like to apologize to you."
He quirked an eyebrow, and she shrugged.
"I'm afraid my evaluation of why you were out here was pretty close to your own, Sir," she admitted. "That's what I want to apologize for, because even if the logic that got you out here in the first place was exactly what you've just described, I believe you've amply demonstrated that it was a damned good thing you were here."
She held his eyes, letting him see the sincerity in her own, and, after a moment, he nodded.
"Thank you," he said. "And there was no need to apologize. Not when I'm pretty sure you were right all along."
There was another moment of silence, then he shook himself.
"Getting back to the matter of the hypothetical Admiral Crandall," he said in a determinedly lighter tone, "I have to say I'm rather relieved by one of the dispatches I received day before yesterday."
"May I ask which dispatch that may have been, Sir?"
"Yes, you may. That, after all,"—this time the smile he gave her was suspiciously like a grin—"was the reason I casually worked mention of it into the conversation, Admiral Gold Peak."
"Indeed, Admiral Khumalo?" she responded, raising her brandy snifter in a small salute.
"Indeed," he replied. Then he sobered a bit. "The dispatch in question informed me that, despite whatever is or isn't going on closer to home, Admiral Oversteegen and his squadron will still be arriving here in Spindle. In fact, I expect him within the next twelve to fifteen T-days."
"Thank God!" Michelle said with quietly intense sincerity.
"I agree. It's taken some time for them to feel comfortable enough back home after the Battle of Manticore to go ahead and release him, and I still don't have an exact projected arrival date, but he's definitely in the pipeline. I understand he'll be bringing another squadron ofSaganami-Cs with him, as well, and I'm sure we'll all be relieved to see them."
"Based on the Sollies' performance at New Tuscany, and what my people were able to see of their hardware on the prize ships, I'd say that with Michael and another squadron of the Charlies we ought to be able to handle just about anything below the wall they're likely to throw our way."
"I'm sure you would," Khumalo said even more soberly. "But I'm afraid that's sort of the point, isn't it? I'm not too worried about anything below the wall, either."
"What do you think happened at New Tuscany?" Lieutenant Aphrodite Jackson, HMS Reprise's electronic warfare officer, asked quietly.
Lieutenant Heather McGill, the destroyer's tactical officer, looked up from her book reader. She and Jackson were off duty, seated inReprise's wardroom. At the moment, the EWO's hands were busy building a sandwich out of the ingredients she'd collected from the mid-rats laid out as a buffet, and Heather smiled slightly. Promotions came quick in the electronics warfare specialty these days. That tendency was probably going to become only more pronounced as the new construction began to commission in Manticore, and Jackson had actually been a JG when she arrived aboard Reprise. In fact, her current rank was still technically "acting" (although everyone was certain it would be confirmed in due time). Which meant that although McGill was still short of her own thirty-fifth birthday (standard reckoning), Jackson was a good nine T-years younger than she was.
Yet there were times when Heather felt a lot more than nine years older than Jackson. The younger woman often seemed to suffer from the perpetual, ravenous hunger which afflicted all midshipmen, and there was a new-puppy eagerness about her. Maybe that was part of the reason Heather had more or less taken the electronics warfare officer under her wing off duty, as well as on.
"I don't know, Aphrodite," she replied after a moment. "I know what probably happened if that idiot Byng didn't do exactly what he was told to do, though."
Jackson' blue eyes looked up from her plate and darkened. Unlike Heather, she'd never personally experienced combat, and what had happened to Commodore Chatterjee's destroyers had hit her hard.