"I see." Cromarty returned his gaze to the holo wall for a long, silent moment. "And which option do you favor, Admiral?" he asked finally.
"The third, Your Grace." Caparelli didn't hesitate. "As I say, we can't stop them from pushing it if they really want to, but I see no reason to help them do it. If we make our frontier detachments powerful enough, they'd have to commit heavy forces of their ownand quite possibly lack off a full-fledged warif they decide to keep pushing. That might cause them to back off entirety if this is no more than an effort to divert Dolist attention from domestic complaints. Even if it doesn't have that effect, we'll give our local commanders the strength to stand a fighting chance when they come in."
"I see," the Prime Minister replied, then glanced up the conference table at Admiral White Haven. The earl had sat silent throughout, thoughtful blue eyes studying each speaker in turn. He showed no disposition to speak up now, and Cromarty was fully aware of the awkward position he'd put him in. But he hadn't brought the admiral along for his silence, and he cleared his throat "Which option do you favor, Earl White Haven?"
Caparelli's eyes flashed, and one fist clenched under the table, but he said nothing. He simply turned to look at White Haven.
"I think," the earl said quietly, "that before we recommend any of them, we might ask ourselves exactly why the PRH has chosen this particular pattern of provocations."
"Meaning?" Cromarty prompted.
"Meaning that they could have achieved the same degree of tension without spreading their efforts all up and down the frontier," White Haven replied in the same, quiet voice. "They've hit usor prodded us, at leastall the way from Minorca to Grendelsbane, but aside from Yeltsin, they haven't hit any of our nodal fleet stations like Hancock, Reevesport, or Talbot. Any of those are more important than some place like Zuckerman or Quentin, yet they've stayed well away from them, again with the exception of Yeltsin, even though they must know how much more sensitive we'd be to any threat to them. Why?"
"Because those are our nodal positions." Caparelli's voice was a bit harsh, but he made himself pull his tone back to normal. "Our mobile forces are enormously stronger in those systems. That's why they got in and out so fast at Yeltsin. They knew that if they'd poked their noses deeper in the way they did at Zuckerman or Candor, we'd have sawed them right off at the ankles."
"Agreed." White Haven nodded. "But what if they did it for another reason? A specific purpose, not simply to minimize their risk?"
"A bait? Something they want us to do in response?" Givens murmured, her eyes thoughtful as she turned in her chair to study the holo wall afresh, and White Haven nodded again.
"Exactly. As Admiral Caparelli says, they've virtually left us no choice but to reinforce the frontier. Certainly they have to know that increases their risk in any future incident... but they also know those reinforcements will have to come from somewhere."
Caparelli grunted unhappily, his own eyes clinging to the display, and felt an acid burn of agreement as he realized White Haven might just have a point... again.
"You're suggesting that they're trying to pull us into strategic dispersal," he said flatly.
"I'm saying that may be what they want. They know we won't reduce our strength at our major frontier nodes. That means any meaningful reinforcement has to come from Home Fleet, and anything we send to, say, Grendelsbane or Minorca, will be far beyond support range of Manticore. If someone pushes the button, it would take them almost as long to get back to the home system as it would take a Peep task force to make the same tripand they couldn't even know to start home until we got a courier to them with orders to return."
"But that only makes sense if they really are considering pushing the button." There was a new note in Caparelli's voice, a combination of devil's advocate and an unwillingness to believe Haven might actually do that after so long. Yet his eyes said the idea did make sense, and silence hovered once more in the wake of his words.
"Admiral Givens," Cromarty broke the stillness at length, "is there any intelligence to support the possibility Admiral White Haven and Sir Thomas have raised?'
"No, Your Grace. But I'm afraid there isn't anything to dismiss it, either. There may be some pointers that are simply buried in the sheer mass of data coming at us, and I'll certainly try to find them if there are, but if the Peeps are finally getting ready to attack, none of our sources in the PRH have picked up on it. That doesn't mean they aren't doing ittheir government's had a lot of experience in security, and they thoroughly understand the advantage of surprise after a half-century of conquestbut there's simply no way to get inside their heads and know what they're thinking."
The Second Space Lord studied the display a moment longer, then turned back to face the Prime Minister.
"Having said that, however, I don't think it's a possibility we can afford to ignore, Sir," she said quietly. The first principle of the military analyst is to figure out how the enemy can hurt you worst with his known capabilities and then plan to stop him, not hope he won't try it."
"Admiral Givens is right, Your Grace." Part of Caparelli still wanted to glower at White Haven just for being there, but his own integrity wouldn't let him reject the earl's analysis. "You can't avoid running risks, sometimes, where military operations are concerned, but prudence is a powerful military virtue. And prudence suggests that you err on the side of pessimism, especially before the shooting starts."
"Which means what, in terms of deployments?" Baroness Morncreek asked.
"I'm not certain yet, Milady," Caparelli admitted. He looked at White Haven with opaque eyes. "I don't think there's much question that, whatever they're up to, at least some redeployment of our forces to strengthen the frontier is in order," he said in a toneless voice, and his shoulders relaxed minutely at White Haven's firm nod of agreement.
"Even if they are seeking no more than a confrontation short of war," the First Space Lord continued more naturally, "we have no choice but to increase the forces that may have to respond to it. At the same time, any major dispersion of our wall of battle clearly constitutes an unwarrantable risk." He paused and rubbed his right temple for a moment, then shrugged.
"I'll want to do some very careful force analyses before making a formal recommendation, Your Grace," he told the Prime Minister. "Despite our buildup, our margin for error is slim. Their wall of battle has an advantage of almost fifty percent in hulls, and their tonnage advantage is even higher, since our fleet has a much higher percentage of dreadnoughts.
"Most of our ships are bigger and more powerful than theirs on a class-for-class basis, but their edge in superdreadnoughts means we not only have less hulls but that our ships of the wall actually average smaller. That means each battle squadron we remove from Home Fleet will weaken us more than diverting the same number of ships would weaken them, both proportionately and absolutely."
He shook his head, powerful shoulders hunching as he considered the unpalatable numbers, then sighed.
"With your permission, Your Grace, I'd like to ask Admiral White Haven to join me and Admiral Givens at Admiralty House." He made the admission with only a trace of his earlier resentment as his mind grappled with the problem. "Let the three of us take a very close look at our commitments, and I'll try to have a recommendation for you by sometime tomorrow morning."