“They should be, Citizen Commissioner. I could wish for a little more tonnage and a few ships of the wall, but I’m confident we can hold our own against any picket we’re likely to hit.”

“Even if, unlike us, they do have superdreadnoughts?” Penevski asked still more quietly, and this time it was Kellet who bared even white teeth in a thin smile. It was hungry, that smile, and most unpleasant despite its whiteness, and her dark eyes gleamed.

“The gap between our onboard systems efficiency and the enemy’s has fallen since the war began, Citizen Commissioner,” she said. “Oh, they still have an edge, but our best estimate is that our technology transfers have reduced it by at least fifty percent. What’s really made them so dangerous to us for the last several years has been the fact that they had missile pods and we didn’t. The overwhelming advantage that gave them in the initial missile exchanges would be very difficult to exaggerate. Certainly the sheer volume of a pod salvo was enough to make any real difference between our missile defense capabilities largely irrelevant. But now we have pods of our own, with a sixty percent edge in the number of birds per pod, and that means the playing field just got leveled big time, Ma’am.”

“So I understand,” Penevski replied. “But there’s no point pretending I’m as technically informed as you are, Citizen Admiral. I suppose it’s just a little harder for me to accept the projections when I don’t fully understand the basis upon which they were made… especially when you seem to be saying that we’ve reached a point at which the relative capability of our defenses does count once more.”

“Understandable enough, Ma’am,” Kellet said. Penevski had been assigned as her people’s commissioner only three months earlier, and they were still learning to know one another. One thing she had already discovered, however, was that Penevski was at least willing to admit when she didn’t know something. Jane Kellet was prepared to forgive any superior for a great many other failings when that was true, and she turned to face Penevski squarely.

“In the end, missile engagements come down to numbers, Citizen Commissioner,” she said, “because probability theory plays no favorites. Differences in electronics warfare, jammers, and decoys can divert fire from a target, thus reducing the number of birds which become actual threats, but if a missile achieves lock, and if it retains maneuver time on its drive, only active defenses can stop it.”

She paused for a moment, and Penevski nodded to show she was following her.

“Any ship, or squadron, or task force has only a finite active anti-missile capability,” Kellet resumed, “and that capability is defined by the interplay of scanner sensitivity, the sophistication of the defenders’ fire control and supporting ECCM, and the effectiveness and numbers of the weapons systems the defender can bring to bear upon incoming fire.

“Since the war began, the Manties have held a considerable advantage in scanners, fire control, and ECCM. Their missiles’ onboard seekers and penaids are also better than ours, but that’s a separate issue and harder to quantify, anyway. Our countermissiles and laser clusters are roughly comparable to theirs, and it appears that we do a little better job with our main battery energy weapons when we use them in counter-missile mode, as well. But the Manties’ electronics superiority, coupled with their previous monopoly on the missile pod, has given them a very substantial edge in missile engagements.