And, he added to himself, thank God that maniac Harrington isn’t here to add her voice to the chorus!

“What sort of ‘reconsideration’ did you have in mind, Edward?” New Kiev asked, and despite her obvious intention to avoid confrontations with the First Lord, her tone bristled with automatic defensiveness of her cherished programs for “building the peace.”

“There’s going to be a lot of pressure from the hysterics to begin all sorts of emergency construction programs and major dislocations of existing policies,” Janacek told her. “People like White Haven won’t really care about the facts; they’ll be too busy twisting them to their own advantage to justify the policies they wanted to put in place all along. If we want to prevent them from succeeding, then we’re going to have to be willing to propose a more rational set of alternatives which will still soothe the inevitable public… disquiet. I have no more desire than you do to disrupt our existing budgetary priorities, Marisa, but we’re going to have to propose at least some changes.

“Unless the actual situation is much worse than anything Admiral Jurgensen has so far been able to determine suggests, I think we can reasonably reject the most panicky demands. At the very least, however, we’re going to have to announce that we’re resuming construction on at least some of the incomplete SD(P)s and CLACs. After all, a large part of our current naval spending priorities was based on the fact that those ships are there, waiting to be finished and commissioned if circumstances warranted it. In fact, I think we’ll want to reemphasize that point in order to quell any unjustified panic.”

And demonstrate in the process that our policies were sound all along, he did not add aloud.

“Even assuming that Theisman’s numbers are accurate, simply completing the ships already under construction will more than offset them.” He continued, then snorted harshly. “For that matter, just completing the ships under construction at Grendelsbane would match every modern ship of the wall Theisman says they’ve built!”

His colleagues relaxed visibly at his assurance. He was relieved to see it, but he was also too experienced a politician not to cover his back.

“At the same time,” he cautioned, “there’s going to be a window between the time when we authorize resumption of construction and the time the ships are actually completed. I haven’t got detailed projections at this point, but the rough estimate from BuShips is that it will take at least six T-months, more probably eight, to reactivate the building slips and assemble the workforce required. In addition, Mr. Houseman, Admiral Draskovic, and I are going to have to go over the manpower numbers very carefully, since it won’t do us any good to build ships we don’t have the personnel to crew.”

“Just how wide is this ‘window’ of yours likely to be, Edward?” Descroix asked.

“It’s not my window,” Janacek replied. “It’s a simple physical limitation we’re going to have to live with.” He held her eyes levelly for a second or two, then shrugged. “As I say, it will take around six T-months to get construction back underway. After that, we can assume between another six months and a year to complete each existing hull, depending on how advanced its construction was before we halted it. So the window will be from twelve to eighteen T-months wide.”