And no one else in the entire galaxy is crazy enough to wear them, either, he thought sourly, and shook his head mentally behind the expressionless façade of his eyes.I wonder, do even they still genuinely believe there's a single chance in hell they'll ever return victoriously to Nouveau Paris and deal with the counterrevolutionary scum whose backstabbing treason brought down the people's paladins of the Committee of Public Safety?
It seemed unlikely to Maddock that anyone could truly be that completely and totally out of touch with reality, but the People's Navy in Exile certainly acted the part. Even the names they'd assigned to the surplus Indefatigable-class battlecruisers Manpower had provided to them reflected that: Leon Trotsky, George Washington, Marquis de Lafayette, Oliver Cromwell, Thomas Paine, Mao Tse-tung, Maximlien Robespierre . . .
Well, I don't really care how far out to lunch they are, he reminded himself. All I care about is that they do what they're supposed to do . . . and that I get the hell off this ship before the button gets punched on Wooden Horse.
"First," Luff said as he surveyed the officers seated around the table, "let me say I'm extremely pleased with how well the most recent exercises have gone. I think I can say without fear of contradiction that this is the best trained, most proficient naval force with which I have ever been associated."
There were murmurs of satisfaction, and Maddock made himself nod in sober agreement with the commodore's assessment. And it was probably accurate, too, he reminded himself. Unlike at least a few of the People's Navy in Exile's ship commanders, Luff himself had never served in the original People's Navy of the People's Republic of Haven. He'd attained his pre-Thesiman rank of captain (the self-granted promotion to "commodore" had come later—purely, of course, as an administrative necessity when he organized the PNE) because of his loyalty and reliability. And his function had been not to fight actual battles but to make certain that no one in the regular navy entertained any thought of resisting the Committee of Public Safety's orders. He'd been the regime's enforcer, not a naval officer, and it was unlikely any members of the regular "naval forces" to which he had been attached during his StateSec career would have considered him one of their "associates," either.
Still, there was some valid basis for Luff's current satisfaction, the Mesan officer reminded himself. Especially given the fact that for all their pretension to the status of warriors of the revolution, the men and women in this briefing room had spent the last six T-years as little better than common, garden-variety pirates. It was amazing to Maddock that they'd managed to hang on to any shared sense of identity, and he supposed their identification of themselves as a "navy in exile," however ludicrous it might be, helped account for it. Well, the fact that Manpower had subsidized the PNE generously enough for them to hold their ships' companies together had something to do with it, as well, he imagined.
The consequences of their degeneration into ten-a-credit brigands had been painfully evident when they gathered here to begin drilling for the Verdant Vista operation, though. They'd never been what Maddock would have considered real naval officers, but they'd become even sloppier and more incompetent than he'd expected. Integrating the mercenaries Manpower had been forced to retain to flesh out their crews—especially when the additional SLN units had been added to the PNE's order of battle—had made things even worse. Given the nature of this particular operation, Manpower had prudently avoided the more respectable mercenary outfits. In fact, the bulk of its new hires were basically common thieves, thugs, and murderers with a thin veneer of technical competence. Beating them into a semblance of efficiency had been a daunting task. It was fortunate Luff and his fellows had acquired so much experience in instilling terror-based discipline, he supposed, but even with the aid of Milliken and the other Manpower "advisers" provided by the "Mesa System Navy," it had taken every single day of the endless months spent orbiting this bleak, planetless red dwarf to get them ready.
But they really are ready, he told himself. However hard to believe that may be, they're actually ready to mount the operation. It's still probably a damned good thing they're only going up against a handful of frigates manned by a bunch of semiliterate runaway slaves with maybea few Erewhonese cruisers in support, but I have to admit, they've worked up to a level of efficiency I never would have believed they'd get to.
"As all of you are aware," Luff continued gravely, "the execution date for Operation Ferret is almost upon us. This was our last exercise, which makes it particularly gratifying that it went so well."
He paused again, briefly, then cleared his throat.
"I'm sure we're all also aware that at least some of our personnel continue to cherish a few . . . reservations about the requirements of the ops plan. Under the circumstances, I suppose that's inevitable."
He glanced briefly at Maddock and Milliken from the corner of his eye, and Maddock blandly pretended not to notice.
"There are two points to bear in mind," the commodore went on after a moment. "First, from a purely pragmatic viewpoint, our obligation to our . . . benefactors requires us to carry out this operation. Not to put too fine a point on it, and without intending offense to anyone," this time he nodded openly to Maddock, "this operation is our payment for the ships and the support the PNE requires to finally mount an organized, sustained offensive against the counterrevolutionaries in Nouveau Paris. I realize that even with the additional hulls we've added to our force, the counterrevolutionaries will substantially outnumber us. However, I also realize, as I'm sure all of you do, that not everyone in Nouveau Paris and elsewhere in the People's Republic has forgotten everything the Committee of Public Safety stood for. There are people in the People's Republic, even in the current Navy, who sympathize with us and are only waiting for an example. For some leadership. We will provide that example and that leadership, and the ships and the advanced weapons with which our benefactors have already supplied us—and promise to continue to supply to us—are what will make that possible."
He gazed around the silent briefing room, and Maddock could almost hear his audience's thoughts. The PNE's "new" ships were effectively SLN castoffs, and he knew Luff and many of his ship commanders had reservations about them. And rightly so, he reflected, given how weak their missile defenses were. The MAN was equally aware of that weakness, although Maddock hadn't admitted anything of the sort to his ex-StateSec pupils, since neither the Solarian League Navy nor the official Mesan System Navy, had any concept of just how outclassed they truly were. The Alignment had seen to it that all of the new battlecruisers had Aegis, the SLN's most recent (and, in Maddock's considered opinion, hopelessly belated) bid to increase counter-missile salvo density, and it had upgraded all of the PNE ships' electronics to current first-line Solarian standards. It was clear from the StateSec holdouts' reactions that they were impressed but not exactly overawed by the capabilities of their new fire control and EW systems, but it was equally clear they remained less than enthralled by the paucity of point defense clusters and counter-missile tubes. Maddock had been privately amused watching them upgrade the software of the vaunted Solarian League Navy's defensive systems. They'd made that their very first priority, and, amused or not, he had to admit that they'd probably enhanced their vessels' missile defenses' efficiency by somewhere around twenty-five percent.