Torch of Freedom

Stephens looked a little dubious, and Rozsak shook his head.

"Trust me, Brent. When I get done writing my evaluation as Frontier Fleet's senior officer here in the Sector, everybody back on Old Earth's going to understand that we're critically short of the sort of light units—destroyers, maybe the occasional light cruiser—you need for commerce protection. Unfortunately, everyone's always short of light units like that. Most systems with the kind of economic clout we have are full members of the League, which means they can raise their own system-defense forces to provide that sort of protection. We can't; we're officially a protectorate. That means the only place we can get the escorts we need is from Frontier Fleet, but Frontier Fleet doesn't have them to spare. So, what I'll be doing, is using discretionary funds, plus additional 'special subscriptions' the Governor is going to screw out of the local merchants and manufacturers, to buy a few extra destroyers which will then become the property of Frontier Fleet. They'll be integrated into my own squadrons out here, they won't cost the Navy (or any of the other bureaucracies back home) a single centicredit, and when the situation out here finally calms down, Frontier Fleet will cheerfully transfer them somewhere else.

"Or that's what they think will happen, anyway."

Stephens could have shaved with Rozsak's smile.

"And they're also going to think that what we're building are only destroyers," Watanapongse added. "The 'light cruisers' are officially going to be Erewhonese units, not ours. We'll be 'borrowing' a few of them from Admiral McAvoy once the piracy situation starts getting out of hand out here. It'll be another example of how those silly neobarbs built more ships than they had the cash and manpower to keep operational, so in the interests of getting the League's hooks even more deeply into the Republic of Erewhon, we'll be providing naval assistance in the form of experienced officers to help the poor neobarbs find their way around. In the meantime, no one back home's going to realize that our new 'destroyers' are going to be the next best thing to the same size as our Morrigan-class light cruisers."

Stephens frowned, and the lieutenant commander laughed.

"Nobody back home seems to have noticed the . . . to

His smile looked remarkably like Rozsak's, Stephens thought.

"Edie and I are already working up the reports and correspondence," Rozsak said. "Officially, we're going to be describing our new units as 'modified Rampart-class destroyers,' for example. We just aren't going to get too specific about what the modifications consist of . . . or the fact that we're talking about destroyers fifty or sixty percent bigger than the original Rampart. I'm pretty sure the geniuses back at OpNav are going to assume that any modifications will result in decreased capabilities, given their view of Manty and Havenite technical capabilities. A view which Jiri's and my modest efforts have probably done just a bit to help shape. And since all of the official correspondence—governmental, as well as from the private builders and inspectors—from the Erewhon side is going to be understating to

Stephens pursed his lips silently as he considered that. Rozsak was right about how it would help cover their own actions, but the industrialist wondered just exactly how the admiral had convinced Erewhon to run that kind of risk. Eventually, someone back on Old Earth was going to realize they'd been systematically deceived by the Erewhonese (and the League's own official intelligence apparatus here in the Sector, of course), and the consequences of that could be severe—for Erewhon, not just Maya.

On the other hand, if that sort of situation arose, it would mean all the rest of their plans had failed disastrously, so there probably wasn't a lot of point worrying about it. Although getting theErewhonese to look at it that way must've taken some doing . . .

"You said there were three things to consider," he said to Watanapongse after a moment, and the commander nodded.

"The third thing, maybe the most important one of all," he said, his expression much more somber, "is that four or five-T-year window between now and the delivery of our first wallers. Even after the SDs start coming out of the yards, it's going to take a while for any sort of volume production to build up. We'll hide as many of 'our' wallers as we can in the flow going to Erewhon, of course, but the odds are good that we're going to have to start shooting at somebody before we have a real wall of battle of our own."

Stephens felt a distinct stir of alarm, but Rozsak flashed him the lazy, white-toothed smile of a confident tiger.

"Even with a four or five-year delay to our own first waller, we're going to be ahead of the curve compared to the rest of the League, Brent. A long way ahead of the curve. Trust me, the 'not invented here' syndrome is going to kick in back home even after they begin to figure out just how screwed any SLN ship is going to be going up against its Havenite—or, even worse, Manty—equivalent. So, what we're really going to need to tide us over is something that can kick the shit out of anything Frontier Fleet's likely to be sending out towards us with unfriendly intentions. Right?"

"With the proviso that I think we need to do a little worrying about the Battle Fleet units that might be sent along behind that first wave," Stephens agreed a bit caustically.

"Well, of course." Rozsak chuckled. "And it just happens we've come up with something that should let us do that, at least as long as nobody back on Old Earth is paying any attention to all of those ridiculous rumors about how Manticore and Haven have been sticking multiple drives into their missiles. Nonsense, of course! I'm sure those reports are just as exaggerated as Commander Watanapongse's diligent staff has consistently reported they are! Still, it's occurred to us that if someone were building multidrive missiles, and if they happened to have themselves a couple of dozen freighters—freighters that might happen to have military-grade drives, and maybe even sidewalls—that could carry, oh, I don't know, three or four hundred missile pods at a time, then they could probably do a lot of damage to a fleet equipped only with single-drive missiles, don't you think?"

Stephens's eyes narrowed, and Rozsak chuckled again, more harshly.

"That's one of the things Edie and I have been kicking around when we started thinking about doctrine and ship designs. And it's the real reason we're going to be building that extra to

"And the beauty of it," Watanapongse said, "is that Carlucci already has a commercial design—they picked it up from some outfit in Silesia—for a freighter designed around plug-in cargo modules. It's one of those ideas that sounds really good on paper, but it hasn't worked out that well for the Sillies as a commercial proposition. It's actually less flexible, it turns out, than what you can do reconfiguring a standard cargo hold's interior. But that's not something that's going to be instantly evident looking at it from the outside, and the basic construction just happens to be something that's going to lend itself well to a 'merchantship' pod-carrier design. The Sector government is going to be buying quite a few of them—several dozen, at least—as part of our move to broaden our investment base in Erewhon. We've got a lot of short domestic cargo routes of our own, just like the Sillies, so if it works for them, it ought to work for us, right? And even if it turns out they aren't the most cost-efficient possible way to haul freight around, so what? It was still worth it just to get our toes further into the Erewhonese door."