“Whatever.” Chakrabarti waved a dismissive hand. “We still ought to consider deploying at least a couple of more battle squadrons to Sidemore, whoever’s show of force it is.”

“Um.” Janacek rubbed an index finger in slow circles on his desktop and frowned down at it. “I can follow your thinking, Simon, but coming up with that much tonnage isn’t going to be easy.”

Chakrabarti looked at him for a moment, but decided against pointing out that finding the necessary ships of the wall might have been easier if the Government hadn’t just decided to scrap so many of them. For all his bureaucratic career track, he’d spent too many decades as a naval officer not to recognize the bitter irony of the situation. He was also too experienced as a uniformed politician to make the point.

“Easy or not, Sir Edward,” he said instead, his voice just a tiny bit more formal, “if we’re going to stand by our current policy to discourage Andie adventurism, then we need to beef up Sidemore. We don’t have to use the new pod superdreadnoughts, but we have to deploy something that would at least be more than purely symbolic. If we don’t, we’re effectively telling them we’re not prepared to go to the mat.”

Janacek looked up, and the First Space Lord met his gaze levelly. Then Jurgensen cleared his throat.

“Actually,” he said carefully, “it might be wiser to send some of the SD(P)s, after all.”

“Oh?” Chakrabarti looked at the Second Space Lord and frowned.

“Yes,” Jurgensen said. “I’ve been conducting a general review of our intelligence on the Andermani over the last week or two, and I’ve come across a few… disturbing reports.”

“Disturbing reports about what, Francis?” Janacek asked, joining Chakrabarti in frowning at him.

“They’re not very specific,” Jurgensen replied. “That’s the main reason they haven’t already been passed along to you, Edward. I know you prefer hard data to vague speculation, so we’ve been trying to confirm them first. Under the circumstances, however, even though they’re still unconfirmed, I think we have to take them into account when we consider what sort of reinforcements Sidemore might require.”

“Which would be much easier to do if you’d tell us what they say,” Chakrabarti pointed out.

“I’ll have a precis to you by the end of the day,” Jurgensen promised. “Essentially, though, we’ve had some indications—none of them, as I say, confirmed—that the Andies may recently have begun deploying some new weapons systems of their own. Unfortunately, we don’t have very many details about just what sort of hardware we may be talking about.”

“And you didn’t see fit to bring this information to our attention?” Janacek inquired ominously.

“I wasn’t even aware of its existence until two weeks ago,” Jurgensen said. “And prior to this meeting, the possibility of deploying additional forces to deter the Andies hadn’t even been discussed. Under the previously existing circumstances, I felt that it would be advisable to attempt to confirm the information one way or another before bringing it to your attention.”