Especially given the fact that, at the moment, that assessment was entirely accurate.

“Actually,” he went on, “the best-case scenario would be for Theisman to realize that you’ve reinforced us here before he kicks off any attack. The realization that the GSN is prepared to reinforce us this promptly, despite any… difficulties you may be experiencing working with our present deplorable Prime Minister, would almost have to give him pause. He’d also have to rethink any ops plan he’d already drawn up on the assumption that you wouldn’t be. And if we can win that jackass Janacek just another four or five months, the ships he’s finally resumed construction on will begin to come into commission in something like genuinely useful numbers. Especially the ones in the Grendelsbane shadow yards. They were further along in construction when they were suspended, and the first of them will be ready for acceptance trials in just a couple of weeks.”

“From your lips to the Tester’s ears,” MacDonnell said fervently.

· · • · ·

“It’s confirmed, Sir. All of them.”

Admiral of the Red Allen Higgins was a man of only middling height, with a round, almost chubby face that was usually a faithful mirror of his affable nature. At the moment, that face was the color of old oatmeal and the eyes were haunted.

He stared down at the pitiless display and felt like a fly in the path of Juggernaut as the Peep attack force rumbled down upon him. Thirty-two superdreadnoughts, an unknown number of them SD(P)s. There were also at least some CLACs in that oncoming freight train of destruction. There had to be, because the four hundred-strong LAC strike he’d sent out to meet them had been ripped apart by an even stronger LAC counterattack.

And to oppose it, once his LACs had been effectively destroyed, he’d had seven SD(P)s, sixteen pre-pod SDs, four CLACs with less than thirty LACs between them, and nineteen battlecruisers and cruisers. He’d thought he might still be able to accomplish something, given his outnumbered SD(P)s’ range advantage. But he’d been wrong. As the Peeps had just demonstrated by destroying all seven of them from a range in excess of forty million kilometers.

His remaining twenty capital ships were hopelessly outclassed. The incredible missile storm which had wiped away his SD(P)s was proof enough of that. Thank God that at least he’d held them back when he sent in the SD(P)s! Thousands of RMN personnel were still alive because of that simple decision on his part. A decision he’d tossed off almost casually at the time.

But that was the only mercy which had been vouchsafed to him.

“We can’t stop them,” he said softly and looked up to meet his chief of staff’s equally shocked eyes at last. “Anything we send out to meet them will only end up giving them extra target practice,” he grated. “And the same thing is true of the shipyards. Hell, we always depended on the mobile force for the system’s real security. Why bother to upgrade the forts to fire MDMs? That’s what the frigging Fleet was for! Goddamn that bastard Janacek.”