David Weber - Storm From the Shadows

The treecat on the back of her chair shifted, his ears half-flattened, his needle-tipped claws extending far enough to sink into the chair's upholstery, and everyone in the room could hear his soft hiss as his rage mirrored his person's. Obviously, whether Elizabeth was surprised or not, the events at New Tuscany—and the fact that there truly had been no survivors from Commodore Chatterjee's murdered destroyers—had been enough to whip her fury to a white-hot heat even before the confirmation of outside manipulation had reached her.

The other two treecats present were less overtly infuriated than Ariel was, but neither of them was immune to the human anger—and anxiety—swirling about them. They were, however, somewhat farther away, and Prime Minister Grantville, sitting beside the Queen, kept a wary eye on Ariel as he shook his own head.

"I don't think there's any such thing as 'good timing' for a confrontation with the Solarian League, Your Majesty," he said, speaking rather more formally than was his wont. "On the other hand, as you've just said, it's not exactly as if there were any tremendous surprises here, is it?"

"I can always be surprised by Solly stupidity, Willie," Elizabeth said bitingly. "I shouldn't be, I suppose, but every time I think I've seen the stupidest thing they could possibly do, they find a way to surpass themselves! At least this particular idiot's taken himself out of the gene pool. It's a pity he had to take so many others with him!"

"I agree, Your Majesty," anger of his own rumbled around in Sir Anthony Langtry's voice, "and the fact that those flaming idiots in Chicago still haven't officially responded to our initial note only proves your point."

He shook his head in disgust. The note in question had reached Old Terra three weeks before this meeting, yet there'd still been no response at all from the League's Foreign Ministry.

"Of course it does, Tony," Grantville acknowledged. "Still, I stand by my original point. This is something we've all seen coming—or at least as a serious probability—ever since we found out Byng had fired on Chatterjee in the first place."

"Oh, I don't know, Willie," his brother said, reaching out to stroke Samantha's soft ears as the 'cat pressed against the back of his neck, "I think this minor matter of the sixty or so Battle Fleet superdreadnoughts Vézien and Cardot were so eager to tell Mike about could probably come under that heading. Surprises, I mean."

"Assuming they're really there, Hamish," Grantville pointed out.

"Personally," Elizabeth said, "I'm less worried about sixty obsolete Solarian superdreadnoughts than I am about the several hundred modern, pod-laying superdreadnoughts the Peeps still have. You're right, Willie. We've discussed the Sollies almost to death. I'm not saying we've figured out what to do with them yet, even if I do feel a little bit better in that regard than I did a month or so ago, but I think we may have let ourselves get overly focused on them. I mean, whatever kind of threat the Solarian League may pose in the long term, it's the Peeps we have to worry about now. So while I'm perfectly willing to admit that the League may be the greater danger in absolute terms, I think we need to focus on removing the threat we can remove as quickly as possible."

She looked at White Haven, her eyes sharp.

"When we received our first report about Commodore Chatterjee, Willie asked you and Sir Thomas about our ability to hit Haven now, hard and fast, hurt them enough to make them realize they had no choice but to surrender outright. You seemed to think it would be feasible within a couple of months' time. I realize that was less than one month ago, but could we do it now? And could we hold off the Sollies in Talbott while we do it?"

For the first time in his naval career, Hamish Alexander-Harrington felt an almost overwhelming temptation to temporize and dodge a fundamental question. But however great the temptation, he was still Elizabeth Winton's First Lord of Admiralty, and he met her eyes squarely.

"I've deliberately kept my hands off of a lot of the operational details," he said. "The last thing Tom Caparelli needs is to think he's got a backseat driver—and one who's a civilian, now—trying to grab the controls away from him, so he and I have both tried very hard to respect one another's spheres of authority. Having said that, though, I think the answer is probably that, yes, we could punch out the Haven System with what we have available right now. If we want to do it before we find ourselves up against the Sollies, though, and considering transit times and everything else, we'd have to use Eighth Fleet, which would mean uncovering the Home System at least temporarily. I don't much care for that thought, but I think enough of the new construction would be available at or almost at combat readiness to cover the gap, and we've made better progress than I really anticipated in getting the system-defense variant of Apollo into service.

"In addition, however, there's another timing issue involved. If there really are Solly SDs in Talbott, we can't afford to have our main striking force weeks away from the home system when they finally make their presence felt. That means that if we decide firmly in favor of taking the military option against Haven first, we'd have to launch the op now —immediately, without any effort to talk to the Peeps first—and that it would have to be militarily decisive , in the shortest possible period of time. If we present any ultimatums, they'd have to be delivered from the flag bridge of a fleet actually in position to attack, with no time for the other side to think about them or digest the implications ahead of time. Which, frankly, makes it much less likely, in my opinion, that they'd be willing to stand down without a fight. Faced with the same situation, we'd certainly be more likely to fight than just roll over, so I suspect we'd have to pretty much wipe out Capital Fleet before they were ready to give in. And we might well have to actually go ahead and really take out most or all of their infrastructure, as well."

The fourth and final human being present for the conference stirred slightly in her chair beside him, but he kept his eyes resolutely focused on the Queen. He already knew exactly how his wife felt about the notion of turning the Haven System into a scrapyard.

"As I say," he continued, "we could punch out Haven. But you asked me a two-part question, and my answer to the second half of it—whether or not we can hold off the Sollies in Talbott while we do it—is that I simply don't know. That's why I say we can't afford to take the time to send diplomatic notes back and forth first, if we're going to set up to attack the Haven System at all.

"Having said that, however, I also have to say that, judging from my preliminary read of the technical appendices of this report, I think all our estimates about how outclassed the Sollies' deployed equipment is may actually have been overly pessimistic. But they've got a lot of ships, Elizabeth. And whatever our long-term prospects might be, if they've actually got that many superdreadnoughts deployed in proximity to the Talbott Quadrant, then Mike's and Khumalo's ability to fend them off with nothing heavier than battlecruisers is . . . doubtful, to say the least. If the Sollies have that many wallers available, and if they decide to respond the way it sounds very much like this Admiral Crandall would be likely to, we could find the new systems in the Quadrant burning to the ground at the same time we're off hammering Nouveau Paris."

"But as Willie just pointed out, we don't even know those superdreadnoughts exist ," Elizabeth retorted. "All we have right now is what amounts to hearsay evidence from a bunch of New Tuscans who admit they were part of a strategy to smash the Quadrant before it truly has its feet under it. Forgive me if I find information they're offering as some sort of quid pro quo to keep us from leveling their system around their ears less than totally convincing. It certainly hasn't been confirmed yet!"