He paused to take a sip of ice water and give his audience time to digest what he’d said so far. Then he cleared his throat.

“There are other indicators of a lowered tempo of offensive operations on their part,” he resumed. “Among others, Admiral White Haven is still at Yeltsin’s Star attempting to assemble a new fleet out of Allied units, not simply RMN ships. Also, we’re beginning to pick up indications that some of the forward deployed Manty ships of the wall are in increasing need of overhaul. Their systems reliability would appear to be declining.”

Well that was good news, Giscard thought wryly. The People’s Navy was perennially short of trained maintenance and repair techs, with the result that serviceability rates tended to remain uncomfortably low. The Manties, on the other hand, routinely turned in serviceability rates of well over ninety percent. But doing that relied on more than simply having excellent techs in your shipboard crews. It also required a comprehensive, highly capable, and well-organized base support system… and the time to hand ships over to that system when they required overhaul. If Manty systems reliability was dropping, it probably meant they were finding themselves unable to pull their capital ships off the front for scheduled rear area maintenance. And given that staying on top of overhaul needs was as basic an instinct for any Manty commander as topping off his hydrogen bunkers at every opportunity, it was also an even stronger indicator of increasing strain on their resources than anything else Bukato had said.

“Finally,” the citizen admiral said, “we need to look at what may be happening a year or so down the road. On our side of the line, our training and manpower mobilization programs mean that we should have all of our presently unused yard capacity up and running, but we’re unlikely to have added much additional capacity or significantly improved on our present construction rates. Indications from the Manties’ side of the line are that they should have several new yard complexes coming on-line—like their new Blackbird shipyard facility at Yeltsin’s Star—and, perhaps more ominously, will have the manpower to crew their new hulls, courtesy of the forts they’re standing down now that they control all termini of the Manticore Wormhole Junction. So what we seem to have here is a window of opportunity in which their available resources are entirely committed and their basic strategic posture might be accurately described as overextended.”

He paused once more, and Citizen Secretary McQueen tipped her chair forward. She leaned her forearms on the table and looked sideways at Giscard with a smile that was simultaneously a challenge, a warning, and somehow… impish. As if she were inviting him to share a joke… or risk his life beside her on a quixotic quest to save their star nation. And as he saw that smile, he realized there wasn’t that much difference between those invitations after all… and that some dangerous dynamism within her made him want to accept them.