“Your point’s well taken, Zack,” White Haven agreed. “However, I believe ONI and SIS are correct about the extent of McQueen’s authority.”

“As I said, Sir, I’m inclined to think that myself,” Yanakov said with deferential stubbornness. “But assuming she is in charge of their deployments, why hasn’t she reinforced Theisman even more heavily? ONI’s lost track of at least three squadrons of their SDs, not to mention all those other battleships. If I were McQueen and I was serious about holding Barnett, some of those missing ships would have turned up down here months ago. They haven’t.”

He shrugged and held out his hands, palm uppermost.

“The Commander has a point, Sir,” Lieutenant O’Brien admitted. “I’ve asked myself that question. As you know, I’ve also asked Captain Leahy—” Leahy was Third Fleet’s senior intelligence officer “—and both Grayson and Manticoran naval intelligence for their views. Unfortunately, the only answer they’ve been able to give me is that they don’t know.” It was her turn to shrug unhappily. “The only thing we know so far is that they haven’t turned up anywhere else, either, and ONI’s best estimate is that the SDs have probably been recalled for refit. Given the fact that Solarian League technology seems to be continuing to leak through the embargo to them, it would make sense for them to upgrade their ships of the wall in rotation to take advantage of whatever they’ve gotten. And, frankly, we’ve been so busy consolidating our own positions for the last eighteen months or so that we’ve given them the opportunity to do just that.”

“I know, Jenny.” White Haven rubbed his chin and glanced at the hologram floating above the briefing room table. It was a split image: a chart of the Trevor’s Star System juxtaposed to an actual repeat of the flag bridge’s main visual display, and the visual was even more impressive, in some ways, than the plot on his terminal.

Eighth Fleet floated before him—two hundred ships in all, headed by thirty-seven Manticoran and Grayson SDs and twelve Erewhonese dreadnoughts—maintaining station forty-five light-seconds off the Trevor’s Star terminus of the Manticore Junction while White Haven awaited the arrival of the last of his superdreadnoughts via the Junction. The massed, massive firepower of the fleet gleamed in the display like tiny, fiery sparks of reflected sunlight, nuzzling relatively close (in deep-space terms) to the terminus, but the star chart showed what else they shared the system with. Third Fleet’s fifty-five SDs hung in San Martin orbit, permanently on guard to protect the system and the thick clutch of half-complete deep-space fortresses being assembled under their watchful eye. Eventually, half those forts would be left to cover San Martin while the other half were towed out to cover the terminus directly. They could have been finished long ago if the Peeps had done even a tiny bit less effective job of destroying San Martin’s orbital industry before they gave up the system. As it was, the Alliance had been forced to ship in the equipment to build the facilities needed to assemble the prefabricated components of the bases. It was taking far longer than it should have, but current projections called for the first group of forts to be finished within six or seven T-months—at which point everyone would no doubt heave a sigh of profound relief. But for now the solid ranks of capital units held their watchful orbit, proudly protecting what had been won at such terrible cost in lives and ships, and White Haven let his eyes rest upon their icons.