She sat with her inner circle, studying the readouts on the ships due to arrive so shortly from Shilo. Two of the new Warlord-class battlecruisers—the Wallenstein and Farnese—were confirmed, as were the heavy cruisers Ares, Huan-Ti, and Ishtar, and the light cruiser Seahorse. They didn’t have classes on the cruisers, but from the names the heavies were both probably Mars-class ships, like Krashnark, and Seahorse was probably one of the Peeps’ new “frigate-class” light cruisers, like Bacchante. The rest of the escort, or even if there would be any additional escorts, had still been up for grabs when the courier boat sailed, but there would probably be at least a few more ships. Had it been a Navy escort for troopships destined for a front-line system, there would have been, at any rate, and the additional units would have included a minimum of two or three destroyers for long-range scouting. But this was an SS operation, and StateSec had been uninterested in smaller men-of-war when it started collecting its private fleet. Honor wasn’t sure why that was, though she suspected that a great deal of the reason had to do with State Security’s institutional egotism. Although, she conceded, the Black Legs’ apparent belief that sooner or later they would confront mutinous ships of the People’s Navy might also help explain it. It did make sense to go for a tonnage advantage if you could get one, after all. Although that left the interesting question of why StateSec hadn’t been interested in dreadnoughts or superdreadnoughts.

Too much manpower tied up in crewing ships that size? Honor wondered. Could be, I suppose. Or it might just be that someone on the Committee of Public Safety recognized the insanity implicit in allowing the head of its “security forces” to assemble an actual battle fleet that answered only to him. Not that it matters right this minute.

“Harry’s right, Ma’am,” Warner Caslet said quietly. “The Warlords are big ships—at least as big as your Reliant class. I know you didn’t get to see a lot of Tepes, but I did, and she was more heavily armed on a ton-for-ton basis than your ships are. Of course, their systems aren’t as capable as yours, so they need the extra brute firepower to equalize the odds, but they’re still bad medicine.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Honor replied, “and I know Harry is right about the sheer number of hulls confronting us with more possible things to go wrong. But I think you’re both missing the point. For the initial grab, at least, it wouldn’t matter whether they were sending in superdreadnoughts or destroyers or how many of them there are. If they follow SOP, the entire force—escorts and transports alike—will stay together and come in close enough for our orbital weapons to get the drop on them. In that case, we can take out anything we have to, so the worst result from our viewpoint will be that we blow a ship away rather than taking her intact. But if even a single destroyer doesn’t follow SOP and come in that close, all she has to do is run away and get help and we’re all dead.”