“So, if I understand you correctly, Senator,” Henneman said intently, “you’re saying you would support the President’s demands even at the risk of resuming active military operations against the Manties.”

“Some things, Roland,” McGwire said solemnly, “are sufficiently important, both as matters of national self-interest and of principle, to justify even the most serious risks. In my opinion, the well-being and right to self-determination of citizens of the Republic living under the military occupation of a foreign power certainly fall into both those categories.”

The senator’s timing was excellent, Theisman thought sardonically, as the program dissolved to a commercial message, leaving the viewers with the impression of his somber, strong-jawed face and steady brown eyes.

“Turn it off,” the Secretary of War said, and the HD unit went obediently dead and then withdrew silently into its ceiling nest.

Theisman brought his chair fully upright and allowed his eyes to circle the conference table. It was a very large table. It had to be to accommodate all of the officers seated around it. Counting himself and Arnaud Marquette, there were no fewer than eighteen flag officers, and each of those commodores and admirals was accompanied by at least two or three aides and staffers.

A lot of those officers looked unusually young for their seniority, because they were. Saint-Just’s destruction of the original Octagon and every single military officer in it had torn an enormous hole in the Navy’s senior ranks. The purges which followed had only turned that hole into a yawning chasm. Theisman had been given no choice but to promote to fill all of those vacancies when he resurrected the Naval Staff, and he (and most of those whom he’d promoted) recognized the relative inexperience of the replacements. That was one of the major reasons why Theisman had combined the offices of Secretary of War and Chief of Naval Operations in his own person. Preposterous as it still seemed to him, he was very probably the single most experienced officer in the entire Republican Navy.

And he’d been a mere commander fifteen T-years before.

But young for their positions or not, they were the General Staff he had to work with. And to be fair, they’d acquired quite a lot of experience and on the job training over the last four years or so.

“Well, Ladies and Gentlemen,” he observed after a moment, “there you have it. I suppose if the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee said it on The Henneman Hour it has to be official.”

A dutiful chuckle ran around the conference room, and he smiled thinly. Not that he felt particularly amused. Actually, McGwire had been considerably less inflammatory than Theisman had feared he might be, particularly in light of his close working relationship with Giancola. Theisman wasn’t certain that his restraint reflected his actual position, but he was inclined to think it did. McGwire had never made any secret of his intense wariness about anything which might have brought the Republic and the Star Kingdom back into open conflict, despite his relationship with Giancola. In a way, though, that gave even more force to what he’d said at the very end, and Thomas Theisman didn’t like what he sensed building about him.