"Anyway, none of that matters much to you. I have an oversight meeting in two hours, and I'm sure they're going to ask what the fuck our response is going to be to all the borderland attacks recently. I'd like to get the answer straight from the horse's mouth. I know you're spread thin protecting vital infrastructure, but where the hell are all of Wolfe's Mickeys? Weren't they supposed to be filling the gaps?"

"Shifting paradigms when it comes to ship construction as drastically as we have creates some practical issues," Pitt said. "The learning curve of building the modules, learning how to integrate them, and then putting trained crews in them isn't as easy as Wolfe made it sound when he sold Parliament on the idea."

"That's not even remotely fucking close to an actual answer," Marcum said. "You sure you're not prepping for a run in politics?"

"There's no short answer, sir," Pitt protested. "I'm just making sure you understand how difficult this has been to swing generations of thinking onto a new course. That being said, we're expecting the first operational units to get live munitions and be ready for deployment in four months."

"Hot damn! That's what I'm talking about." Marcum clapped loudly and sat up in his chair. "How many, and what flavor?"

"One hundred and seventy-six command modules are ready now, with enough mission and drive modules to load out light and heavy cruisers at about a sixty-forty split respectively."

"You built almost two hundred ships already?! How?"

"This was the point of the program, was it not?" Pitt asked, managing to keep the smirk off his face.

"And you're still building—"

"About six a day, give or take," Pitt said. "Supply chain issues are still the main—"

"Whatever." Marcum waved him off. "This is pretty significant. It takes the ESA's numerical advantage and almost wipes it out…and that's why I can't tell the committee about your success."

"Oversight Committee is compromised?"

"Two that we know of, although with the one, it's her husband who’s leaking info, she's just the one dumb enough to tell her spouse classified information. If I'm being caught off-guard by how many ships you've actually completed and staged in your secret hidey-hole, then the ESA is probably in the dark as well."

"Damn, I wish we could just get it on with a stand-up fight and get this over with," Pitt sighed.

"Any updates on the Wolfpack?" Marcum asked, trying to sound casual.

"Fleet Intel caught a small ESA force penetrating New America's space and heading in their general direction. There are some…sensitive…installations along that flightpath, and such a small group of ships isn't the ESA's usual tactic so they're flying out to investigate," Pitt said. "Wolfe's been given a lot of leash on this mission, and I see no need to yank on it just yet. It could be nothing, or it could be something we'll be glad he's there to stop. Either way, it's a good use of resources until we get a bead on what rock Admiral Kohl has been hiding under since Odmena."