It was not a thought he particularly cared to contemplate at a moment like this.

“They’re coming out, Citizen Admiral,” Citizen Commander MacIntosh announced. Giscard held up his hand, interrupting a report from Julia Lapisch as he turned to face the ops officer.

“Strength estimates?” he asked.

“Still too far for any sort of positive count, Citizen Admiral, but it looks like they’re present in considerably lower strength than predicted. We make it six to eight of the wall and an unknown number of battlecruisers. They seem to be headed our way at about three hundred gravities.”

“Thank you.” Giscard turned his chair towards Citizen Lieutenant Thaddeus. “Reactions, Madison?” he asked the intelligence officer.

“Our estimates were the best we could give you from the data we had when Icarus was planned, Citizen Admiral,” Thaddeus said.

There was an edge of something almost like challenge in his voice, but Giscard was prepared to let that ride as long as Thaddeus kept it under control. He’d wondered why someone of the citizen lieutenant’s obvious ability had not been promoted; now he knew, for the answer had been in the StateSec files Pritchart had received just before their departure from Secour. Thaddeus’ older sister had been denounced to the People’s Courts by a vengeful lover—falsely, as it turned out—as an enemy of the People. The lover had hanged himself when his anger cooled and he realized what he’d done, but his remorse had come too late to save Sabrina Thaddeus’ life, and the SS feared that his sister’s fate might turn the citizen lieutenant against the New Order. From what Giscard had seen of the man, they were right to be afraid of that. But it had never affected his work for the Citizen Admiral, and Giscard was hardly in a position to fault another over divided loyalties.

“I know the analysts’ data was limited, Madison,” the citizen admiral said now, putting just enough patience into his tone to remind the intelligence officer to watch his manners in front of others. “But this is a considerably lighter force than we anticipated, and I’d prefer not to find out the hard way that they actually have all those other ships we expected headed at us in stealth somewhere. So if there was any information, even questionable information, that could shed some light on this, I’d like to hear it.”

“Yes, Citizen Admiral. Sorry,” Thaddeus apologized, and leaned back in his chair, thinking hard. Finally he shook his head. “I can’t really think of anything concrete that could explain it, Citizen Admiral,” he said in a very different voice. “But that doesn’t mean as much as I’d like. We haven’t made any scouting sweeps of Basilisk since the war started and the Manties blew out Seaford Nine. Instead, we’ve relied on covert intelligence gathered by merchant skippers on our payroll. For the most part, they’re foreign nationals, not our own people, which means any report from them has to be taken with a grain of salt, but they’re the best we’ve had.”