He strongly suspected that even Eloise Pritchart had seriously underestimated the strength of the public reaction her speech was likely to provoke. But it seemed that the electorate’s outrage and growing disgust and anger over the Manticorans’ procrastination were beginning to outweigh its war weariness. For that matter, they even seemed to be starting to outweigh the public’s deep seated fear of the Manticoran Alliance. Perhaps even worse was the strength of the public’s deep resentment of the humiliating and crushing defeat the Manticorans had inflicted upon them. Theisman had seen enough of human nature to realize that revanchism spawned by resentment was far more dangerous than any anger based on reason or logic, and the strength of this resentment had surprised him.

It shouldn’t have, and he knew it. But it had. Perhaps that was because it had seemed to him that his own awareness of how catastrophic any fresh confrontation with the Star Kingdom could prove ought to have been agonizingly obvious to anyone who thought about it for a moment. Yet whatever the reason for his own blindness, the sheer strength of the public’s emotional response to Pritchart’s speech had been far, far stronger than he’d ever anticipated that it might.

He didn’t like that. He didn’t like that at all… and he especially didn’t like the way his own announcement of Bolthole’s existence seemed to have fanned that outrage and anger to even hotter flame. The situation wasn’t out of control yet. In fact, it was a long way short of that. But the potential for a ground swell of support for Giancola’s style of confrontational foreign policy, regardless of its possible consequences, was there.

“It isn’t our job to make foreign policy here at the Octagon,” he told his subordinates after a moment. “That was a point the Navy tended to forget under the Legislaturalists, and that helped produce the Committee of Public Safety. But it is our job to evaluate the potential military threats which may confront of the Republic or hinder the attainment of its foreign policy objectives.”

“Obviously, from the moment we made the existence of our new units public, the parameters of the potential threats we face changed dramatically. All of you are aware of that.”

Heads nodded. And they’d damned well better! he thought. We’ve certainly spent long enough discussing those threats.

“The President’s speech, and our more assertive position in the peace talks are going to change those parameters even further,” he continued. “Frankly, I don’t know how the Manticoran Alliance is going to respond to all this. So far,” he emphasized the two words ever so slightly, “the President assures me she has no intention of resorting to the actual use of military force except in self-defense. Unfortunately, defending ourselves successfully, especially when so many of our star systems are already occupied by the potential enemy, creates a situation in which the best defense may indeed be a strong offense.

“The purpose of this meeting, Ladies and Gentlemen, is to bring all of you fully up to speed on the considerations which are currently shaping the way Admiral Marquette and I view our responsibilities. And our opportunities.”