Tourville’s expression showed momentary surprise at the brevity of her response. But the surprise vanished as quickly as it had come, and she saw a flicker of sympathy in his eyes. Of course he’d understand, she thought. She’d spent too much time on his staff for him not to realize exactly how she must be feeling at this moment.

She shook herself and gave herself a sharp mental scold for allowing her unhappiness to splash on to anyone else. Then she produced a smile for him. It might have been a tad lopsided, but it was also genuine, and she knew he recognized the unspoken apology for her terseness.

“Well,” Giscard said, in a voice which was just hearty enough to show he, too, had caught the undertones, “we’ve got a lot to talk about. So I suppose we’d better get started.”

He gestured at the waiting lift shaft, and his subordinates moved obediently towards it.

· · • · ·

“So that’s the bare bones of the current deployment plan,” Captain Gozzi said, winding up the first stage of his briefing the better part of two and a half hours later. “With your permission, Admiral,” he continued, turning to speak directly to Giscard, “I’d like to open the floor to general questions before we move on to the consideration of specific details.”

“Of course, Marius,” Giscard told his chief of staff, and glanced at the other two flag officers present in Sovereign of Space’s flag briefing room. “Lester? Shannon?”

“From what I seem to be hearing here,” Tourville observed, frowning from behind a cloud of fragrant cigar smoke at the floating holo map of the region around Trevor’s Star, “this is no longer a hypothetical deployment.”

It wasn’t precisely a question, but Gozzi nodded anyway.

“That’s correct, Sir. The Octagon sent us the preparatory movement orders this morning.”

“It sounds as if things are getting even dicier,” Captain DeLaney said, her expression unhappy, and Tourville nodded in agreement with his own chief of staff.

“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” he said, and frowned.

“I know none of us are particularly happy about this situation,” Giscard said with massive understatement, “but at least you’re getting what you handle best, Lester—a detached, independent command.”

“ ‘Detached!’ ” Tourville snorted. “That’s certainly accurate enough. Just who had this brainstorm, anyway?”

“That’s not something I’ve been specifically told,” Giscard replied with a wry smile. “Having said that, it has all the earmarks of something Linda Trenis would have come up with.”

“Figures. Linda always was too smart for her own good.”

“You don’t think it will work?” Giscard asked, one eyebrow raised, and Tourville puffed on his cigar some more, then shrugged.

“I think it should do what it’s supposed to do,” he acknowledged. “I guess what bothers me about it is that sending Second Fleet clear to Silesia seems to indicate that someone is beginning to think a lot more seriously in terms of reopening a can of worms I don’t think any of us want reopened.”