Shadow of Freedom

“I believe those deployments will give us at least as much defensive depth as splitting up my wallers could accomplish. In addition, however, it will permit Admiral Khumalo and me to concentrate my hyper-capable units into two striking forces, each with a powerful LAC element of its own. One will be deployed to Tillerman; the other will be based on Montana.

“Obviously, the Tillerman force will be closest to Monica and Meyers, which would normally be the most probable threat axis where any fresh Solarian adventures were concerned. Frankly, though, at the moment I’m not really very concerned about something coming at us out of the Madras Sector, given the fact that we just polished off seventy-plus superdreadnoughts that were stationed in that sector. It seems unlikely they have still more capital ships tucked away out here, even with Mesa and Manpower pulling every string they can reach.

“If the Sollies do decide they have anything else to spare and send it our way, it’s more likely to come in direct from the Core. That’s why I’m planning on basing the second force at Montana to cover the Quadrant’s flank, and the Lynx Terminus picket force will be available to cover any threat that might come in past Asgerd. There are some arguments in favor of staying right here in Spindle instead of moving to Montana, given Spindle’s more central location within the Quadrant, but so far Admiral Khumalo and I don’t find them persuasive. To be honest, our objective is to get sufficient combat power—enough combat density—deployed across a broad front to permit me to respond quickly to dispatches from the star systems behind me while simultaneously positioning me to operate offensively into Solly and Mesan space, if that should become desirable.”

She saw one or two sets of eyes flicker at the reference to Mesa. Not everyone in the Quadrant endorsed her own suspicions of Mesa and Manpower, Incorporated. It wasn’t that anyone questioned Manpower’s involvement in what had happened at Monica and New Tuscany. Nor did anyone in the Quadrant doubt Mesa’s and Manpower’s implacable (and thoroughly reciprocated) hostility towards the Star Empire. More than one of the people sitting around that table, though, remained of the opinion that Frontier Security (and possibly other interests within the League) had been using Manpower as a catspaw. Certainly that made more sense, in their view, than the possibility that a single outlaw transstellar corporation was using the entire Solarian League as a catspaw!

Most of the others were prepared to grant at least the possibility that Michelle and Khumalo and their staffs might be correct—that Manpower or the Mesa System might indeed have been the prime mover. Might even have provided the “invisible” starships which had carried out the Yawata Strike. Michelle doubted any of them found the notion any less bizarre than she did, but they were at least open to it. And if she was reading the ONI appreciations from home accurately, opinion within the Admiralty and the Grantville Government was hardening in the same direction. There was, however, a vast gap between “prepared to grant the possibility” and “willing to bet the farm on it,” and she decided—again—not to go into all the details of the logic behind her proposed deployments.

She’d considered mentioning that she intended to base herself on Montana, closest to Mesa and what she believed was clearly the greater threat, while assigning the Tillerman force to Vice Admiral Theodore Bennington, who’d become her senior battle squadron commander upon his arrival from the home system. Under the circumstances, though, it would undoubtedly be wiser to let that particular sleeping dog lie. She didn’t expect Alquezar or Krietzmann to object, anyway, and they were the Talbott decision-makers who really mattered where fleet movements were concerned.

“In addition to the deployment plan Admiral Gold Peak and I are proposing,” Khumalo said after a moment, “there are certain other measures we’d like to set in motion. Three of them are especially important.

“First, as Prime Minister Alquezar, Minister Lababibi, Minister Krietzmann, Minister Clark, and I have already discussed, we need to complete our survey of the Quadrant’s industrial capabilities as quickly as possible. I suspect our local resources may be able to contribute more materially to our defense here than some people might think. Nobody’s going to be building any superdreadnoughts anytime soon, but several of our systems—Rembrandt, San Miguel, and Spindle itself come to mind—have sufficient local industry to provide significant support for both our local defense and striking forces. Obviously, we’ll be making technical advisors from Admiral Gold Peak’s repair and depot ships available wherever possible.