There was silence for a moment. Osiris Trajan had a well-deserved reputation for openness with subordinates he trusted. "Everybody knows everything" about any current operation, at least at the level of his own staff, was practically a mantra of his, because he regarded it as the only way to get their best thoughts—and prevent competent people from making ignorance-based mistakes. But his comments about the operation against Torch were unusually blunt, even for him, given the fact that TF 4 wasn't even assigned to the MSDF covering force on the other end of the Verdant Vista wormhole bridge.
Captain Granger cocked her head to one side, clearly considering what he'd said. She stayed that way for two or three seconds, then shrugged.
"From a purely military perspective, I agree with you completely, Sir. And I suppose it's always possible someone somewhere's gotten her nose out of joint over what happened in Verdant Vista when we lost control of the system in the first place. I think, though, that the operative factor here, in many ways, is a concern about what the Manties may eventually figure out about the wormhole bridge."
"They aren't going to figure out anything about it that's going to do them any good, Addie," Trajan countered. "Besides, they've already figured out just about anything that could be deduced from their end, or they never would have gotten their survey ship through to SGC-902 in the first place. For all the good that did them."
He grimaced, and so did Granger and Nyborg. Hasselberg, on the other hand, only shrugged.
"I admit that was . . . unpleasant, Sir," the chief of staff said. "It was clearly within policy and Commodore Ganneau's instructions, though."
"I'm fully aware of both those points, Niklas." Trajan's voice was considerably frostier than normally came Hasselberg's direction. "I'm also aware, however, that it was a single cruiser—and one that was the next best thing to totally obsolescent, at that—and Ganneau had an entire battlecruiser squadron sitting there, with two of them already at action stations and knowing exactly where anything from the other end had to come out. Do you really think a Manty skipper would have been stupid enough to fight with eight battlecruisers sitting there ready to turn his ship into plasma? Ganneau had the option of ordering him to surrender; he just refused to take it."
"I'm not defending his decision, Sir," Hasselberg pointed out. "I'm saying what he did was covered. And it probably wouldn't hurt to remember who his sister-in-law is."
Trajan frowned at the reminder. It was just like Hasselberg to bring it up, though, he reflected. The man was as tough-minded—not to say ornery—as they came. And he definitely believed in calling a spade a shovel, even if it wasn't very diplomatic to remind his admiral that Commodore Jérôme Ganneau's wife, Assuntina, was the youngest sister of Fleet Admiral Chiara Otis, the Mannerheim System-Defense Force's chief of naval operations.
Diplomatic or not, it was also an indication of just how much Hasselberg trusted the other officers seated around the table. It was highly unlikely that his observation would have evoked any anger from Fleet Admiral Otis, but that wasn't really the point.
"He may be Admiral Otis' brother-in-law," Captain Granger said, "but that's not who's watching his ass for him, Niklas."
"Of course not, Ma'am," Hasselberg agreed. "But Admiral Kafkaloudes is. And, unfortunately, that's almost the same thing."
"I think we should probably turn this conversation in another direction," Trajan said calmly. The others looked at him, and he shrugged. "Oh, I don't disagree with anything that's been said. On the other hand, there's not much point in discussing something everyone already agrees about, and discussing the CNO's and her chief of staff's—or her chief of staff's, at least—little . . . foibles"—he smiled quickly at Granger as he used her own earlier terminology—"even among friends is neither productive, diplomatic, wise, nor supportive of good discipline."
Granger looked back at him for a moment, gray-green eyes stubborn. Then she inhaled deeply, nodded, and sat back in her chair, reaching for her wine glass.
The truth, Trajan thought, was that Kafkaloudes' empire building tendencies were well known throughout the MSDF. In fact, they were so well known that Fleet Admiral Otis' willingness to put up with them was widely regarded as her single true weakness. She was smart, competent, experienced, and dedicated to her duty, yet it was impossible for Trajan to believe she was unaware of Kafkaloudes' vendettas against anyone who ever made the mistake of rousing his ire. And it was an ire which roused with remarkable ease.
The problem was that, personality shortcomings aside, he really was very good at his job. And, to give the devil his due, part of his job clearly was to protect Otis, because in protecting her, he also protected her effectiveness. That was why Granger and Hasselberg were almost certainly correct where Ganneau was concerned. Otis might not protect him just because he was her brother-in-law—in fact, Trajan, who knew the fleet admiral quite well, was pretty damn sure she wouldn't—but she didn't have to. The commodore could rely on Kafkaloudes to quietly suppress any personal criticism of him. After all, it wouldn't do to have that criticism splash on the CNO! Or that, at any rate, was how Kafkaloudes could be counted upon to see things.
And Hasselberg had a perfectly valid point about Ganneau's actions. They were covered by his orders, even though Trajan knew Ganneau had been expected to use his own discretion about employing lethal force. And there were arguments in favor of exactly what the commodore had done. Trajan might not like them very much, but he couldn't deny their existence. The reason Ganneau's squadron had drawn the duty of watching the Alignment's end of the Verdant Vista Bridge in the first place was that judicious personnel assignments similar to those which had been tweaked in Task Force Four's favor had led—purely coincidentally, of course—to the Sixth Battlecruiser Squadron's being exclusively officered and manned by what happened to be Mesan star-lines. None of them were going to mention what had happened to anyone else, but if a Manticoran survey vessel had been brought in by vessels of the Mannerheim System-Defense Force . . .
All of that's true enough, Trajan thought, but they wouldn't have had to be brought into Mannerheim in the first place. The Alignment could've squirreled them away somewhere. Hell, we've managed to "squirrel away" the entire frigging Darius System for two hundred damned years! But Ganneau didn't want to mess with the "inconvenience," so he just casually went ahead and blew away an entire ship full of people, instead.
"Leaving aside any discussions of our senior officers," Hasselberg said after a moment, "there's still your own point, Admiral. The Manties can't possibly realize what they're dealing with from their end of the bridge."
He glanced at the smart wall bulkhead of Trajan's dining cabin as he spoke, and the others followed his gaze to it. The wall was configured at the moment to show not the Felix System, where Vivienne and the rest of TF 4 were currently conducting "routine training exercises," but what lay at the other end of the Verdant Vista Wormhole Bridge.
It was centered on a single star which looked slightly brighter than any of the others in their field of view. In fact, the only reason for its apparent brightness was that it had been considerably closer to the recording pickup than any of the others. It was actually only a lowly M8 dwarf, without a single planet to its name. Or, rather, to its number, for it had never achieved the dignity of the name all its own. It was simply SGC-902-36-G, a dim little star just this side of a "brown dwarf," of absolutely no particular interest to anyone and over forty light-years from the nearest inhabited star system.