“Again, that’s a political decision, not a military one, Sir. Having said that, I think the other side would have to anticipate that that was precisely what we were doing. That being the case, I don’t see them accepting any terms we might find bearable. I could be wrong, but even if I’m not, it’s going to take us a long time to duplicate their hardware, and they’ll be using all that time to consolidate their current position. I’m sure they’ll be pushing their own R&D, look for still more improvements in their existing capabilities, which will stretch out the time we’ll require to catch up with them. And I’m equally sure they’ll be consolidating their spheres of economic power, not to mention continuing to expand their own navies. The upshot will be that when we finally do face off with them again, they’ll be far more powerful in economic and territorial terms than they are right now. So even if we can match their technological capabilities, we’ll be facing a much tougher and more powerful adversary. In which case, the consequences of a long war like the one Captain Gweon just sketched out for us would probably come into play once again.”

“Well if we’re screwed if we do fight, and screwed if we don’t fight, exactly what do you propose we do?” Kolokoltsov demanded. He wished he hadn’t heard so much exasperation in his own tone, but he couldn’t help it, and Kingsford took it without apparent offense.

“As I said earlier, Sir, I think we have no choice but to fight. At the same time, as I also said, I don’t think we can afford to send our wall of battle out to fight their wall of battle. And what that leaves us, Sir, is a policy of commerce warfare. A raiding strategy.”

“Explain…please,” Kolokoltsov said.

“At the moment, the Manties’ problem is that the League is very, very big, and they have only a finite number of starships and a finite supply of manpower,” Kingsford responded. “The ability to control and consolidate territory is dependent upon the ratio of your available military power to the volume to be controlled and consolidated, and those sorts of duties actually eat up more manpower and more tonnage than pitched fleet combat does. I’m Battle Fleet, Mr. Permanent Senior Undersecretary, but the plain truth is that Frontier Fleet’s always had to have more hulls—more hyper-capable platforms—than Battle Fleet precisely because establishing and maintaining that sort of control was its primary mission.