Bergren nodded, and the President turned to Dumarest.
"You said you were still thinking over whether or not to accompany Amos to Barnett, Elaine. Have you made up your mind?"
"Yes." Dumarest plucked at her lower lip and frowned. "My emotions say I should go, but he doesn't really need me looking over his shoulder. And if both of us vanish, somebody's a lot more likely to wonder where we are and put two and two together. Under the circumstances, I think I'd better stay home."
"I was thinking the same thing myself," Harris agreed. "And I can certainly use you. Sit down with Jessup and Ron to help them put the right spin on our news releases. I want to restrict this to the cabinet level until we launch actual operations, so the release preparation time is going to be short. The more thought we can put into giving the writers detailed guidelines and official data when we dump it on them, the better."
"Of course, Mr. President."
"Then that's about it, I think. Except—" he turned his eyes back to Parnell "—for one other point."
"Another point, Mr. President?" Parnell sounded surprised, and Harris laughed without undue humor.
"It's not really about operations, Amos. It's about Rob Pierre."
"What about Mr. Pierre, Sir?" Parnell didn't quite succeed in keeping his distaste out of his voice, and Harris laughed again, more naturally.
"He can be a pain in the ass, can't he? Unfortunately, he's got too much Quorum influence for me to ignore him—and, I'm sorry to say, he knows it. At the moment, he's badgering me about several letters to his son which were returned undelivered by NavSec."
Parnell and Dumarest exchanged speaking glances, but there was a trace of unwilling sympathy in the admirals eyes. People, even prominent people, had been known to vanish in the People's Republic, and relatives started sweating the instant they heard the word "security." Naval Security had a better reputation than most of the PRH's security organs (the Mental Hygiene Police had far and away the worst), but they were still security. And much though Parnell personally detested both Rob Pierre and his son Edward, the elder Pierre's love for his only child was as intense as it was well known.
But whatever sympathy Parnell might feel, he was still chief of naval operations, and Pierre the Younger was still an officer, officially like any other, under his command.
"I hadn't been informed of it, Mr. President," he said after a moment, "but Admiral Pierre's squadron is involved in our current operations, and we've clamped down a communications blackout to maintain operational security."
"I don't suppose you could make an exception in this case?" Harris asked, but his tone said he didn't intend to push it if Parnell turned him down, and the admiral shook his head with a clear conscience.
"I'd really prefer not to, Sir. First, because keeping this operation secret really is important, but secondly, if I may be completely honest, because there's already a great deal of resentment against Admiral Pierre over his father's blatant use of his influence to further his career. It's unfortunate, because while I personally dislike Admiral Pierre, he actually is a very competent officer, despite a certain hotheadedness and arrogance. But if I make a special exception in his case, it's going to cause resentment among our other officers."
Harris nodded without surprise. Legislaturalists might use influence to promote their children's careers, but they were jealous of that prerogative. The President was too much a part of the system to condemn it—after all, look what family interest had done for him—but he considered it a pity that it worked against even the most competent of outsiders. Still, he would shed no tears, not even crocodile ones, for Rob Pierre. The man was exactly what he'd called him: a monumental pain in the ass. Worse, Palmer-Levy's moles in the Citizens' Rights Union were picking up more and more rumbles that he was buttering both sides of his bread by cozying up to the CRU's leadership. He was being careful to limit his contacts to the "legitimate" CRP splinter in the People's Quorum, but the President rather looked forward, all things considered, to remorsefully informing him that "operational security considerations" made it impossible to meet his requests.
"All right, I'll tell him its no go." Harris rose and extended his hand once more. "And on that note, I'll be going. Good luck, Amos. We're depending on you."
"Yes, Sir, Mr. President." Parnell took the proffered hand. "Thank you—both for the good wishes and your confidence."
Harris gave his cabinet secretaries another nod and turned back to the door and his waiting security people.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Captain Brentworth accepted the message board without leaving his command chair. It was quiet on Jason Alvarez's bridge, but there was a tension under the surface, like silently snarling marsh cats, and he wondered how much longer it would take the waiting to dull the raw, sharp edges.
He finished the routine dispatch, fingerprinted his receipt on the scan panel, and handed it back to the yeoman with a nod of thanks, then looked automatically into his tactical display.
Virtually every ship in the Grayson Navy—a small force, by galactic standards, but infinitely more powerful than just a year before—formed a huge, tenuous sphere fourteen light-minutes from Yeltsin's Star and a hundred and fifteen light-minutes in circumference. Their Manticore-designed sensors reached out far beyond that, yet their presence was a deception measure.
Manty intelligence was positive the Peeps still hadn't realized that Manticore had finally found a way for remotely deployed tactical sensors to transmit messages at FTL speeds. Their range remained limited to less than twelve light-hours, but the specially designed generators aboard the latest Manticoran sensor platforms and recon drones could produce directional grav pulses. And since grav waves were faster than light, so were their transmission speeds across their range.
The Grayson Navy knew about them, for their existence had been Lady Harrington's trump card in her epic defense of their world, but Manticore and her allies had gone to enormous lengths to deny the Peeps any evidence of their existence. Which, in no small part, explained the Graysons' present deployment.
By spreading themselves so thin, they virtually guaranteed they would be unable to intercept any intruders with more than one or two ships, but their purpose wasn't to intercept. Their job was to serve as obvious bird dogs for the heavy Manty battle squadrons behind them. Any Peep captain who poked his nose into Yeltsin would see their thin screen well before he saw any Manticoran ships of the wall, and the obvious assumption would be that it was the Graysons who'd picked him up and reported him to their allies. No doubt he would curse the luck which had placed an RMN battle squadron or two— purely fortuitously, undoubtedly as the result of some routine training maneuver—in a position to generate an intercept vector once the Graysons warned him.
Brentworth smiled unpleasantly at the thought. The sensor platforms would pick up any normal space approach at well over thirty light-hours and relay complete data back to Command Central by grav pulse, and with that data, High Admiral Matthews and Admiral D'Orville, the Manty commander, would pre-position their forces to meet the intruders at a time and place of their own choosing... and in whatever strength seemed required.
Of course, it was probable the Peeps would break and run the moment they saw capital ships, and that far out from Yeltsin they could pop straight into h-space, assuming their velocity was under .3 c. Still, if their velocity was higher than that, they'd have to decelerate to a safe translation speed. Under those circumstances, they were likely to run into a tiny bit of trouble before they could hyper out... and wouldn't that just be too bad?