“That seems a little optimistic to me, Honor,” McKeon said, but then he shrugged. “On the other hand, Warner’s right. We’ve got to take some chances somewhere. So how much more can we cut the designed complements, Warner?”

“We’ve already cut them by over five hundred,” Caslet said, “and if we thin out the energy mount crews to the absolute minimum needed to fire them in local control if we lose the central fire control net, then do the same for the missile tubes, and then gut the boat bay department completely, we can probably save another… three hundred to three hundred twenty-five per ship. I don’t see how you could reduce a Warlord’s crew by much more than that and still have an efficient fighting machine.”

“So five-fifty plus three-twenty-five, then?” Honor asked, and he nodded. “All right, call it eight hundred and seventy-five, so the complements come down to thirteen hundred per ship.”

“Thirteen hundred and twenty-five by my math,” McKeon told her with a slow grin. “But, then, who’s counting?”

“I am,” she said, “and it’s not polite to call attention to the problems I have with math.”

“I didn’t; you did,” he said, and she chuckled. Her other officers looked puzzled, sensing a bit of byplay they hadn’t known her long enough to understand, but she felt their moods lighten anyway.

“Yes, I suppose I did,” she admitted after a moment, “but using your numbers, then, two Warlords would require a total crew strength of twenty-six hundred and fifty.”

“I believe they would,” McKeon agreed with a twinkle. She smiled back, then returned her attention to Caslet.

“And how far could we cut the crews for the Mars-class ships, Warner?”

“About the same ratio, Ma’am. Call it roughly forty percent.”

“So that drops them to around six hundred each,” she murmured, scribbling on her pad again. “Which makes twenty-four hundred for the four of them. Twenty-four plus twenty-six…” She jotted a total and cocked her head to consider it. “Excluding Bacchante and this Seahorse, I make it five thousand and fifty warm bodies,” she said. “Adding the two light cruisers at just under five hundred each, that brings the total to right on six thousand. Does that sound fair?”

“I don’t like cutting their companies by that much,” McKeon said with a frown, “but Warner’s probably right that we could get by with that sort of stretch if we absolutely had to. Especially if we can manage to engage with only one broadside per ship.” He rubbed his jaw, then shrugged. “All right, six thousand sounds reasonable… under the circumstances.”

Ramirez and Benson nodded sharply, followed a little more slowly by Gonsalves and Simmons. Gonsalves looked less happy than any of the others about it, but her nod was firm.

“Well, we’ve got roughly five thousand Allied POWs whose training is still reasonably up to snuff, in light of how recently they were dumped here,” Honor pointed out, “and we’ve got another eighteen hundred we’ve been retraining in Krashnark and Bacchante. By my count, that’s sixty-eight hundred… which is eight hundred more than we’d need.”