“I’d already considered both of those points, Sir,” Trenis said respectfully. “May I respond?”

“Of course you may. Please do.”

“First of all, Sir, we can substantially reduce the time it would take for our forces to reach Silesia by stationing them closer to the frontier. If we were to move them over to Seljuk, for example, they’d be over a hundred and fifty light-years closer to Silesia, which would reduce their transit time by almost three weeks if we decided to commit them. Or, we could go ahead and deploy them all the way to Silesia immediately, as long as your second major concern is addressed.”

“I suppose so,” Theisman conceded slowly. “Of course, I’d want to be confident we didn’t need those same ships here to deal with Kuzak. And, for that matter, that whatever we sent to Silesia would be adequate to deal with Harrington’s forces there. There isn’t much point in splitting our forces if it simply weakens us enough to be beaten in detail.”

“Understood, Sir. In fact, I took that as a given before I ever raised the possibility. Unless the Manties have considerably more in the way of SD(P)s squirreled away somewhere than we know about, I think we can make up the numbers on both fronts.”

“You’re probably right. But that still leaves the problem of communicating with someone we’ve sent off with orders to attack if the situation changes here.”

“Not really, Sir,” Trenis said in that same respectful tone. “What I would propose doing would be something like this. We’d go ahead and preposition an attack force in Silesia, preferably somewhere close to Marsh but sufficiently out of the way that no one would be likely to stumble across them, and somewhere between Marsh and either Basilisk or Gregor. But that force would be authorized to attack only after receiving a specific release order from here.”

“Which would get there exactly how?” Marquette asked skeptically.

“Actually, Sir, that’s the easiest part of all,” Trenis told him. “The order to attack in Silesia wouldn’t be issued until after the order to attack Trevor’s Star and the other Manticoran detachments in our space had been given. What would happen is that when our primary attack force, presumably the one tasked with retaking Trevor’s Star, received final orders to begin its sortie, its commander would send a dispatch boat to Trevor’s Star. That dispatch boat wouldn’t be Navy; it would be a civilian vessel, with impeccable documentation to prove that it was. The dispatch boat would arrive at Trevor’s Star at least forty-eight hours before our attack force, and it would make transit through the Manties’ wormhole junction to Basilisk or Gregor. From there, it would proceed as rapidly as possible to rendezvous with our Silesian attack force to deliver its orders to attack March. If it passed through Trevor’s Star forty-eight hours before we attacked, then it would have a forty-eight hour head start on any possible warning to Harrington—more than that, if our attack force was positioned between the courier’s arrival terminus and Marsh. Which means that our Silesian units would receive their orders and move to attack her before she had any reason to expect it. Especially since she would never know they were in the area at all, and all of her attention would be directed towards keeping an eye on the Andermani, rather than worrying about anything we might do.”