She drew a deep breath, then activated the holo display above the conference table, bringing up the first graphic.
"Direct, immediate civilian loss of life," she began, "was much worse than any pre-attack worst-case analysis of damage to the space stations had ever suggested, because there was absolutely no warning. As you can see from the graphic, the initial strike on Hephaestus— "
* * *
"I never realized just how much worse a victory could make a defeat taste," Augustus Khumalo said much later that evening.
He, Michelle, Michael Oversteegen, and Aivars Terekhov sat with Khumalo and Baroness Medusa on the ocean-side balcony of the governor's official residence. The tide was in, and surf made a soothing, rhythmic sound in the darkness, but no one felt very soothed at the moment.
"I know," Michelle agreed. "It kind of makes everything we've accomplished out here look a lot less important, doesn't it?"
"No, Milady, it most definitely does not ," Medusa said so sharply that Michelle twitched in her chair and looked at the smaller woman in surprise.
"Sorry," Medusa said after a moment. "I didn't mean to sound as if I were snapping at you. But you—and Augustus and Aivars and Michael—have accomplished an enormous amount 'out here.' Don't ever denigrate your accomplishments—or yourselves—just because of bad news from somewhere else!"
"You're right," Michelle acknowledged after a moment. "It's just—"
"Just that it feels like the end of the world," Medusa finished for her when she seemed unable to find the words she'd been looking for.
"Maybe not quite that bad, but close," Michelle agreed.
"Well, it damned well should!" Medusa told her tartly. "Undervaluing your own accomplishments doesn't necessarily make you wrong about how deep a crack we're all in right now."
Michelle nodded. The Admiralty dispatches had pulled no punches. With the devastation of the home system's industrial capacity, the Royal Manticoran Navy found itself—for the first time since the opening phases of the First Havenite War—facing an acute ammunition shortage. And that shortage was going to get worse—a lot worse—before it got any better. Which was the reason all of Michelle's remaining shipboard Apollo pods were to be returned to Manticore as soon as possible. Given the concentration of Mark 16-armed units under her command, the Admiralty would try to make up for the differential by supplying her with all of those they could find, and both her warships and her local ammunition ships currently had full magazines. Even so, however, she was going to have to be extraordinarily circumspect in how she expended the rounds available to her, because there weren't going to be any more for quite a while.
"At least I don't expect anyone to be eager to poke his nose back into this particular hornets' nest anytime soon," she said out loud.
"Unless, of course, whoever hit the home system wants to send his 'phantom raiders' our way," Khumalo pointed out sourly.
"Unlikely, if you'll forgive me for sayin' so, Sir," Oversteegen observed. Khumalo looked at him, and Oversteegen shrugged. "Th' Admiralty's estimate that whoever did this was operatin' on what they used t' call 'a shoestring' seems t' me t' be well taken. And, frankly, if they were t' decide t' carry out additional attacks of this sort, anything here in th' Quadrant would have t' be far less valuable t' them than a follow up, knock out attack on th' home system."
"I think Michael's probably right, Augustus," Michelle said. "I don't propose taking anything for granted, and I've got Cindy and Dominica busy working out the best way to generate massive redundancy in our sensor coverage, just in case, but I don't see us as the logical candidate for the next sneak attack. If they do go after anything in the Quadrant, I'd imagine it would be the Terminus itself, since I can't see anything else out this way that would have equal strategic value for anyone who obviously doesn't like us very much. And that, fortunately or unfortunately, we're just going to have to leave in other peoples' hands."
Her uniformed fellows nodded, and Baroness Medusa tilted back her chair.
"Should I assume that—for the moment, at least—you feel relatively secure here in the Quadrant, then?"
"I think we probably are," Khumalo answered, instead of Michelle. He was, after all, the station commander. "There's a great deal to be said for Admiral Oversteegen's analysis where these mysterious newcomers are concerned. And, frankly, at the moment, the League doesn't have anything to send our way even if it had the nerve to do it. That could change in a few months, but for now, at least, they can't pose any kind of credible threat even against ships armed 'only' with Mark 16s."
"Good." Medusa's nostrils flared. "I only hope that sanity leaks out somewhere in the League before anyone manages to get additional forces out our way. Or directed at the home system."
Chapter Thirty-Seven
"You screened, Pat?" Sir Thomas Caparelli asked as his face appeared on Patricia Givens' com display. "I'm sorry I was out of the office, but Liesel told me you'd said it was urgent when I got back. And also that I wasn't to use my personal com?"
"That's right," Givens replied. "And I did tell her I needed you to screen back on a secure com."
She looked better than she had immediately after the disastrous attack, Caparelli thought, but "better" was a purely relative term. The shadows of guilt had retreated in her eyes, yet he was beginning to think they would never completely disappear, and the near hysteria of a certain portion of the Star Empire's news media hadn't helped. He doubted there was anything they could have said that she hadn't already said to herself—he knew that was true in his own case—but the angry, panic-driven sense of betrayal coming from that particular group of newsies and editorials had inspired them to hammer the "blatant intelligence failure" far harder than they'd hammered the rest of the Navy.
Realistically, neither he nor Givens could have expected anything else, Caparelli supposed. Public opinion had been wound tight enough with the combined euphoria of the Battle of Spindle and the looming threat of war against the Solarian League, and it was perfectly understandable why the psychological impact of the devastating onslaught had hit the Star Empire's subjects like a sledgehammer. And it was perfectly reasonable for those same subjects to want the heads of whoever had allowed it to happen. As a matter of fact, Caparelli agreed with them in many ways; that was why he'd submitted his resignation—twice. Unfortunately, in his opinion, it had been rejected twice, as well.
The first rejection had come from Hamish Alexander-Harrington, who'd pointed out—again—that no one could have seen something like this coming and that holding any individual or group of individuals responsible would be a blatant case of scapegoating.
Caparelli hadn't been able to logically dispute the first lord's analysis, but that didn't mean he'd agreed with it. Nor did it mean he was able to accept it, whatever logic might say. So he'd submitted his resignation a second time, this time directly to Queen Elizabeth . . . who'd returned it to him unread with an admonition "not to be silly." She'd accompanied that pithy bit of advice with a firm injunction to take his resignation back, to tear it up, and never to submit it to her again. First, because she agreed with Earl White Haven, and secondly (and, he suspected, even more pragmatically), because his abrupt departure from the Admiralty would look like a case of scapegoating. In the queen's opinion, the hysterical segment of public opinion represented a distinct minority, and she had no intention of allowing herself or the Grantville Government to fan the hysteria by looking as if they were racing about in a panic of their own, looking for someone—anyone —to blame.