"Go on. I'm sure there's more and better still to come."
"Well, I did point out—diffidently, you understand—that even allowing for the fact that Filareta is a lot closer to Manticore than anyone would have expected, it's going to take around a month to get him reinforced the way they're talking about, and then another month and a half to get him to Manticore, by which point at least some of the shock effect should have dissipated. Bernard agreed that was a possibility, but her staff psychologists"—his eyes met Teague's and rolled—"estimate that would actually work in our behalf. Apparently they feel three months or so would be about right for the anesthetizing effect of the shock to wear off and give way to despair as 'a more sober evaluation of their situation' sinks in fully."
"I don't suppose any of these staff psychologists are planning on accompanying Admiral Filareta to Manticore?"
"Oddly enough, I don't believe they are."
"Neither would I," Teague muttered.
"After that concern of mine had been suitably allayed," al-Fanudahi continued, "I pointed out that our reports indicate the Manties probably have at least a hundred or so wallers of their own left in Home Fleet. Given the outcome of the Battle of Spindle, it seemed to me that perhaps a greater numerical advantage on our part would be in order. Admiral Jennings, however, informed me that Admiral Thimár's reports indicate the Manties took heavier losses than we'd originally assumed when Haven attacked their home system. You'll be interested to know that ONI's best estimate is that the Manties have no more than sixty or seventy of the wall left."
"I thought we were the Office of Naval Intelligence," Teague observed.
"No, we're the Office of Operational Analysis," al-Fanudahi corrected in a chiding tone of voice. "Admiral Kingsford was kind enough to point that out to me. Apparently, additional human intelligence reports you and I haven't had access to strongly support Admiral Thimár's conclusions about Manticoran losses."
"Fascinating."
"I thought so, too. But after I'd had the opportunity to digest that information for a few moments, I pointed out that even sixty or seventy of their wallers would presumably be more than enough to deal with three or four hundred of ours, given their newly revealed advantage in missile warfare. Which, I noted, didn't even consider any fixed defenses their capital system might have deployed after a couple of decades of active warfare with the Republic of Haven.
"Admiral Bernard agreed that that was certainly a reasonable cause for concern, but it's apparently the joint view of Admiral Rajampet and Admiral Kingsford that no one could have gotten in to hammer the Manties' shipyards and space stations that hard without blowing his way through the fixed defenses first. In other words, whoever it was must have already taken out a lot of the combat capability they might have used against us. And with the damage to their industrial sector, not to mention their losses in trained military manpower, they won't have been able to do very much to replace lost capability."
Teague realized she was shaking her head, slowly, again and again, and made herself stop.
"They're insane," she said flatly.
"Or a reasonable facsimile thereof," he agreed glumly.
"Haven't they even considered the implications of what happened to the Manties?" she demanded.
"The only implications they're interested in are the ones that have left Manticore vulnerable," al-Fanudahi replied flatly. "I pointed out to them that we don't have a clue how whoever it was did whatever the hell he did. All we have so far are news reports, for God's sake! It's obvious someone got in and blew the crap out of Manticore's infrastructure, but that's all we know."
"Bullshit it's all we know!" Teague snapped. "We know damned well that nothing we have could've done it! What happened to Crandall at Spindle's proof enough of that. I guarantee you that there's no way Spindle had anything like the depth of sensor coverage their home system has, and their Home Fleet is a hell of a lot more powerful than a handful of cruisers and battlecruisers. So if somebody got through all of that and got in close enough to do the kind of damage the newsies are reporting—or anything remotely like the damage they're reporting—they had to do it with some kind of hardware we've never even heard of. Another kind of hardware we've never even heard of!"
"My own thoughts exactly," al-Fanudahi agreed heavily.
The two of them sat looking at one another in silence for at least a couple of minutes. Then Teague leaned back and inhaled deeply.
"You realize who it was, of course," she said quietly.
"Well, we've just agreed it wasn't us," he replied. "And if Haven had anything like this—or if they'd even been close to getting something like this deployed—they never would've launched that do-or-die attack of theirs. So, from where I sit, that eliminates most of the usual suspects. And given what's been going on in Talbott, and the assassination of the Manty ambassador right here in Old Chicago, and that obvious nonsense about Manty sponsorship of that attack on Green Pines, and that attack on Congo, the name that pops to the top of my list begins with the letter 'M'."
"Mine, too." Her eyes were as dark as his had been, and her expression was very, very grim. "Daoud, I'm starting to have a really bad feeling. The sort of feeling a person might get if she believed the Manties had been right all along about Manpower's involvement. It doesn't seem possible, but . . . ."
Her voice trailed off, and al-Fanudahi nodded.
"I agree," he said. "And, frankly, the fact that no one—not Rajampet, not Kingsford, not Jennings or Bernard—seems to be so much as thinking about that worries me even more than the fact that they don't seem to be aware that our hardware has just been demonstrated to be the third-best—if that—in the galaxy. It's bad enough they aren't tearing their own commands apart trying to figure out just how the hell Manpower got so deep inside they can actually influence major deployment decisions, but even that pales beside the rather more pressing question of what could have inspired Manpower—or whoever—to hit Manticore so directly. To risk stepping that far out of the shadows."
"So you think this goes a lot farther than just getting Manticore out of the Talbott Cluster and away from Mesa."
"I wouldn't be a bit surprised if that was a big part of it, maybe even some kind of triggering event," al-Fanudahi said. "But anyone who could pull this entire sequence of events together—anyone who could get whole task forces and fleets of Solarian capital ships deployed where he wants them, when he wants them, then pull something like the attack on Manticore out of his ass—isn't just improvising as he goes along. Either of those operations must have required a massive organization and very careful—and lengthy—planning. Byng and Crandall—even Filareta—could probably have been steered into position by somebody with enough money and enough political clout to influence a handful of high-level strategic decisions. After all, as far as anyone knew, they were just routine peacetime deployments, so why not do a little favor for someone with deep enough pockets? But this direct assault on Manticore required serious industrial power, military planning, and almost certainly some sort of technological breakthrough that neither we nor the Manties know anything about. That's way outside the parameters for even the biggest and nastiest transstellar, Irene. It's an entirely different level of capabilities."
"And whoever it is—whether it's Manpower or someone else who's just been using Manpower as a front—there has to be a reason she's decided to go ahead and show us all she has that kind of capability," Teague said quietly.
"Precisely." Al-Fanudahi rubbed his forehead wearily. "Maybe at least part of it was opportunism. Maybe the real target's been Manticore all along, and the combination of the Manties' confrontation with us in Talbott and their losses in the Battle of Manticore was just too great a temptation, like Rajampet's 'strategic window of opportunity', and the bad guys jumped before they were ready. But I don't think it's that simple. I don't think someone who was able to build up the capabilities we're talking about in the first place without anyone even noticing is going to just throw aw
ay all that careful concealment, however great the strategic temptation, before he was pretty much ready to move anyway."
"Move against Manticore, you mean." Teague frowned with a dissatisfied air. "I don't think you're wrong, Daoud, but at the same time, I don't see the point." She waved one hand. "Oh, don't get me wrong. Obviously, if we didn't even know these people were planning whatever the hell it is they're planning, it's not very likely we're going to be able to magically discern what it is they're after. What their endgame is. And I know Manticore's richer than sin, for its size, at least, and its merchant marine is all over the damned galaxy, with its nose in everybody else's business. And I don't doubt for a minute that Manpower resents the hell out of the Manties' enforcement of the Cherwell Convention. I'll grant you all of that. But why go to such lengths to crush Manticore? God only knows how long they must've spent planning and building up their resources before they could pull something like this off. So why do it? Why make that kind of investment just to attack a relatively small star nation on the far side of the damned League from them? It doesn't make any sense!"
"No, it doesn't," al-Fanudahi agreed quietly. "That's why I'm so worried by the fact that no one else even seems to care about 'Manpower's' involvement in all this. Because I agree with you, Irene. Nobody's going to go to all this trouble and the huge expense which must've been involved just because they don't like the Star Empire of Manticore. There's got to be more to it, and the very unpleasant question that's been occurring to me over the last day or so is why they got us involved in the first place. If they already had the capability to carry off something like this attack of theirs, why run the risk of trying to manipulate us into squashing Manticore? They could've done this on their own anytime they wanted to without involving the League at all. And if their intelligence on Manty capabilities was as good as it must've been for them to have planned and executed this operation, they must've had a damned good idea of just how outclassed our Navy was going to be when it went up against the Manties. So they obviously weren't counting on us to do the job for them."
"You're sure about that?" Teague's question wasn't a challenge, but her eyes were troubled. "You don't think they might have resorted to doing the job themselves only because they'd realized we weren't going to be able to after all?"
"No way." He shook his head. "Just getting their strike forces into position would have taken a long time. Unless I'm sadly mistaken, they would have had to start moving them before the first New Tuscan incident. Certainly before the second one. So that means they had both wings of their plan in motion at the same time. No. They knew we wouldn't be able to take the Manties, but they maneuvered us into a war with them, anyway. And that suggests to me that maybe it wasn't so much that they wanted the Manties at war with us as they wanted us at war with the Manties."
"Why?" Teague's frown was deeper than ever, and al-Fanudahi shrugged unhappily.
"If I knew the answer to that question, I might be able to do something about it," he said. "But what I'm very much afraid of, Irene, is that we just thought this was all about using the League to crush Manticore. I think it goes a lot deeper than that, and as preposterous as it sounds, I can only see one other target on the range at the moment."
He looked across her desk at her, his dark eyes worried.
"Us," he said very, very softly.
Chapter Thirty-Three
"Madam President, Secretary Theisman is on the com."
"Thank you, Antoine," Eloise Pritchart said, suppressing a familiar temptation to smile.
Antoine Belardinelli, her senior secretary, was probably the only member of her staff who persistently "forgot" to refer to Thomas Theisman as "Admiral Theisman." Everyone else was willing to accept that Theisman preferred his naval title (to which he was still entitled, since he was CNO, as well as Secretary of War), but Belardinelli was adamant. As far as he was concerned, one of the most important features of the restored Republic was that elected officials really were in charge again, and so he invariably used Thesiman's civilian title. If that irritated the Secretary, Belardinelli was quite prepared to live with it. In fact, he and Angelina Rousseau, the president's personal aide, had been sparring over that little omission on his part ever since the first post-coup elections. Of course, although the "Two A's," as Belardinelli and Rousseau were commonly referred to, were both highly efficient and both deeply devoted to Eloise Pritchart, they loathed one another with deep and reciprocal passion. Which might be the real reason Rousseau—never one to back away from a fight herself, especially with Bernadelli—was so adamantly on the military side. If they hadn't been squabbling over Theisman's proper title, they would have found something else to fight about, after all.
Personally, Pritchart was just as happy to have them use up at least some of their energy on something fairly harmless, and she knew Theisman found the entire situation amusing.
"You're welcome, Madam President," Belardinelli replied now, and disappeared from Pritchart's display to be replaced by Thomas Theisman.
"And how are you this fine morning, Mr. Secretary?" Pritchart inquired.
"Did it again, did he?" Theisman asked with a smile.
"Unless I miss my guess, Angelina was in the outer office when your call came in. He wasn't using his hush mike, anyway. My observation's been that when he 'forgets' to do that, it's usually on purpose."
"Have you ever considered just locking the two of them in a room with a pair of pulsers to let them settle this once and for all?"
"Often, as a matter of fact," she said gravely. "Unfortunately, Sheila won't let me play with guns anymore."
"Pity."
"Indeed. And now that we have that out of our systems, Admiral, to what do I owe the pleasure?"
"We've finished that study you requested," Theisman said in a much more serious tone, and Pritchart let her chair come upright.
"I see. And your conclusions were—?"
"Pretty much what I'm sure you expected." Theisman shrugged. "Frankly, Spindle doesn't make much difference as far as our own strategic situation vis-à-vis Manticore is concerned. We're still where we were—screwed, in other words, if they come after us. What we know now is that we're not alone in that predicament. In fact, it would appear the Sollies are even worse screwed than we are. Personally, I take at least a modicum of dog-in-the-manger satisfaction from that conclusion, given how the Sollies made us pay through the nose for their tech transfers right after the first war started."
Pritchart nodded. She knew Theisman would be sending her the actual report, along with a complete précis, but that wasn't what she wanted from him now, and as he said, his summary of the Octagon's conclusions were about what she'd expected.
"So Admiral Trenis' analysts are satisfied that the sensor data Duchess Harrington provided us with is genuine?" she asked.
"The missile performance wasn't quite as good as what we've observed against our own units," Theisman said, "but I suspect that's because their heavy cruisers' fire control isn't sophisticated enough to take full advantage of the FTL link. It certainly wasn't because anything the Sollies did knocked them back, at any rate." He grimaced. "I can admire a professional job as much as the next man, but in this instance, those poor Solly bastards were even more outclassed than we were during Operation Buttercup. Which says really depressing things about how bad Solly intelligence must be, when you think about it. We and the Manties have been throwing multidrive missiles at each other for quite a while now, but it's obvious this Crandall didn't have a clue what that was going to mean. You'd think someone would've mentioned those unimportant little details to their Office of Naval Intelligence."
"Well, one thing I've never had any trouble agreeing with the Manties about is that the Sollies are the biggest, most arrogant pains in the posterior of anyone in the entire galaxy," Pritchart said tartly. "I don't like the thought of that many people getting killed, whoever they are,. At the same time, though, I'd be lying if I said a nasty little part of me doesn't take a cer
tain satisfaction in seeing the almighty Solarian League flat on its face in the mud while somebody tapdances on its spine."
"By and large, I can't disagree," Theisman replied. "Still, as your Secretary of War, it behooves me to point out that the Sollies' value as an additional threat to the Manticorans has just been . . . substantially devalued."
"So you don't agree with Younger's argument that the League's sheer size is still going to keep the Manties running scared of a confrontation with Old Chicago?"
"Madam President—Eloise—let's be serious here." Theisman shook his head. "Whatever else anyone might say about Manticorans, they don't 'run scared' worth a damn. If they'd had any inclinations in that direction, the Legislaturalists would still be running the People's Republic, and the Manticore Binary System would belong to us. Neither of which, you may have noticed, is the case."
"Now that you mention it, I had noticed," she replied with a slight smile.
"In the long term, I'm sure the Manties would vastly prefer to avoid a direct, large-scale confrontation with the League," Theisman continued soberly. "They've already had a graphic demonstration from us about the transitory nature of technological advantages, and the League's so damned big and so damned rich it could afford to scattergun a hundred separate research programs into each and every one of the Manties' current toys. Eventually, they'd manage to duplicate them, too, and when that happened, Manticore would almost certainly be history.
"But unless the Sollies' leadership consists solely of outright lunatics—which, unfortunately, no one over here at the Octagon is prepared to rule out—they're going to realize that for the next several years, any war against Manticore would be a one-sided massacre. It may be they're stupid enough to pull the trigger, anyway, but I seriously question whether even the Solly public would tolerate that sort of bloodbath for any lengthy period."
"So what?" Pritchart asked in her best devil's advocate tone. "Who cares about a little thing like angry voters? It's not as if there's any real political accountability or oversight in the League, you know."