“Only two squadrons?” Mercedes Brigham demanded, and turned to face Honor. “I know you warned me they were being tight about turning tonnage loose, Your Grace, but that’s ridiculous! There’s no way two squadrons of pre-pod ships equate to a single squadron of SD(P)s!”

“No, there isn’t,” Honor agreed with massive restraint. Privately, she wondered if it was possible that some of Benjamin’s apprehensions about the Republic of Haven might finally have begun to percolate through what passed for the brain of ONI. She reminded herself that she still had to bring William Alexander and Elizabeth up to speed on all of Benjamin’s concerns… including Erewhon’s possible intentions. But at the moment, that was secondary to her own immediate concerns, and she certainly couldn’t think of any other reason to reduce the ships being sent off to deter the Andermani so severely. If the new force levels held up, the Admiralty would be giving her task force only one squadron of SD(P)s. Admittedly, there would be eighteen older-style superdreadnoughts—or dreadnoughts, if Andrea is right, she corrected herself—to back them, plus the two weak battle squadrons already on station under Admiral Hewitt. And it was also true that six of the new ships ought to be capable of destroying an entire fleet of the older types all by themselves, but it still seemed like a foolhardy move.

Should I tell them about the Protector’s Own? she wondered. There was no real reason she shouldn’t… except that she and Benjamin had agreed that no one would be told—except Alfredo Yu himself—until the Grayson ships actually reached Silesia. The Protector had decided upon more mature consideration that the simplest way to avoid potential domestic arguments over his decision was simply not to tell anyone about it. As far as the rest of the Navy and the Grayson population at large were concerned, the Protector’s Own was merely being dispatched on an extended deep-space training cruise, accompanied by its organic support ships. The primary purpose was to demonstrate its ability to sustain itself out of its own logistic resources in long-distance, independent operations. The fact that its training cruise would just happen to take the entire Protector’s Own to the star system where its official commander just happened to have been stationed by the RMN would just happen to be one of those happy coincidences which just happened to happen from time to time.

Besides, as Wesley Matthews had pointed out when his opinion was sought, if someone like Sir Edward Janacek or Simon Chakrabarti knew Grayson was planning to make up the difference in the force levels Honor would require, their response almost certainly would be to see it as an opportunity to reduce the purely Manticoran forces available to her even further. Which analysis took on an additional point in the wake of Jaruwalski’s news.

No, she decided. It’s not really fair for me to tell them when Benjamin won’t even be telling his own people about it. And even though it may not be very nice of me, if I don’t tell them about it, it’ll probably encourage them to try even harder to make what we do officially have adequate. Besides, she hid a sudden mental grin, think what a pleasant surprise it will be for them when Alfredo turns up in Marsh. Assuming, of course, that they don’t decide to lynch the admiral who didn’t warn them he was coming!