“And from the point Ambassador von Kaiserfest raised with you over dinner, it sounds as if the Andermani are prepared to be equally… firm with them, doesn’t it?” McGwire mused.

“That thought had also crossed my own mind,” Giancola replied. “As had the fact that if worse came to worst, the Manties would have to transfer even more of their available naval forces to Silesia to deal with it. Which, just coincidentally, would mean they had to transfer those forces directly away from us.”

“I’m not sure I like the sound of that, Arnold.” McGwire sounded suddenly more cautious, almost alarmed. “It’s one thing to contemplate the possibility of a foreign distraction for High Ridge and Descroix, but it’s quite another to deliberately court a fresh military confrontation with the Manties! I trust you haven’t forgotten what their Eighth Fleet did to us. I certainly haven’t, I assure you, and however much I might differ with the President’s negotiating stance, I’m not about to support anything which might put us back in that position.”

“Nor would I,” Giancola assured him. “But that particular situation isn’t really likely to arise again.”

“You’ve been dropping smartass hints about that for months now, but all I’ve seen is a lot of smoke and no substance,” McGwire told him in frosty tones, “And, frankly, it would take one hell of a lot of substance to convince me that we wouldn’t be reaching right back into a meat grinder if we started screwing around with the Manties again. You may think we can avoid that situation, or at least survive if it hits us in the teeth. I don’t happen to agree, and with all due respect, I’m not prepared to risk the survival of the Republic on the possibility that you know what you’re talking about.”

“It isn’t a ‘possibility,’ ” Giancola said calmly. “It’s a virtual certainty. Whatever I may think of Theisman when it comes to foreign policy or his apparent inability to subordinate theory to reality when it comes to the ‘rule of law,’ I don’t think there’s much question about his ability as a naval officer. Would you agree with that?”

“Anyone but an idiot would,” McGwire half-snapped.

“I’m glad to hear you say that,” Giancola told him. “Because it just happens that that’s what my ‘smartass hints’ have been about. It would appear that without his having bothered to tell anyone about it, the Secretary of War has been quietly but rather effectively doing something about our military inferiority.”

“Doing what?” McGwire asked intently.

“By a fortunate turn of circumstances, we’re actually in a position to answer that question for you, Samson,” Arnold Giancola said calmly, and looked at his brother. “Jason, why don’t you tell Samson and Gerald about the good Admiral’s little Bolthole.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

IT wasn’t the usual route for deploying to Silesia.

Under normal circumstances, a Manticoran task force making transit to the Confederacy would have gone out by way of the Manticoran Wormhole Junction’s Gregor terminus. But Gregor was an Andermani star system located in the very heart of the Empire. The Star Kingdom might hold title to the terminus itself, along with the legally recognized right to fortify the area around it and to maintain a fleet base orbiting the system’s secondary component, but it was the Empire who held sovereignty over the rest of it.