“Mission parameters?” She rolled her eyes at him. “Just what sort of ‘mission parameters’ are going to make our superdreadnoughts survivable against their superdreadnoughts, Daud?”

“None that I can think of right off hand,” al-Fanudahi conceded. “But the evidence from the merchies who’ve been passing through Beowulf since Raging Justice does seem to suggest that the Manty forces in Beowulf space are concentrated around the terminus, not the planet.”

“So what?” Teague demanded. “Superdreadnoughts are mobile, you know!”

“Yes, and the Beowulf System Defense Force is a nasty handful all on its own, which doesn’t even consider the system’s fixed defenses,” al-Fanudahi agreed. “What I suspect our lords and masters are thinking about is that the Manties appear to be trying to avoid stepping on any Solarian sensibilities, especially until the final tally is in on Beowulf’s plebiscite. It may be politics on their part, for all I know.”

“Politics?”

“If they want to encourage other star systems to follow Beowulf’s example—to encourage the fragmentation of the League—they’d want to avoid any suggestion that they’re using force majeure to turn Beowulf into some sort of Manty puppet régime, don’t you think? One way to do that would to be to let Beowulf defend Beowulfan space while they defend the terminus, instead of putting a batch of their wallers into Beowulf orbit. It avoids the appearance of iron fist pressure on Beowulf’s voters at a particularly delicate moment…and just happens to put their superdreadnoughts a couple of light-hours away from Beowulf itself.”

“You mean Kingsford and Bernard are thinking in terms of pouncing on Beowulf—coming straight in across the hyper limit and going flat out for the planet—before any Manty forces at the terminus can intervene?”

“I think that’s about the only thing they could be thinking of,” al-Fanudahi said. “I don’t know if it would work, but assuming Beowulf hasn’t been completely surrounded by new and nasty missile pods, a big enough force of superdreadnoughts, especially with enough of the new Technodyne missile pods, probably could fight its way in through the BSDF and the fixed defenses. And once they controlled the planetary orbitals, they’d be justified under interstellar law in demanding the system’s surrender.”

“And exactly where in this fascinating analysis of yours do the Manty superdreadnoughts come in?” Teague inquired politely. “You know, the ones over at the terminus? The ones who are going to come right back over to Beowulf and kick our sorry asses out of the star system?”