11

"So what have we learned about our renegade princess?" Thenuwara asked at her first conference after returning the fleet rendezvous point.

"Nothing good. Sanderson has more heavy metal than we thought – at least five squadrons. It appears the Princess has been skipping between the three she's using for offensive operations by dispatch boat. We can give you a good external scan and signal analysis of every class they have, but we don't know their combat capabilities yet.

"The main points on their wall are simple. They've displayed acceleration that exceeds our emergency maximum, but falls well short of what we've seen from Manticore, in an 8.2 MT ship of the wall. Their wallers have the oversized rear hatches that seem characteristic of first-line wallers from Manticore and Haven – larger than theirs and and five instead of six – which we believe are for deploying missile pods. They seem to have no broadside missile armament at all, which further supports that hypothesis. Meanwhile the chase tubes clearly are designed for far larger missiles than our standard capital missiles, or even the Cataphract-Cs Technodyne supplied us.

"They also have a class of roughly 2 MT with only three presumed pod-launching bays but the same format. At a guess, it's meant to fill a battle cruiser role despite the size. It could be just for show, but we've seen Manticore's giant BCs and they could probably take one of our wallers. Everything smaller than that seems to be consistent with the Princedom used in its operations on behalf of OFS." Admiral Richt summarized.

"And the elves?"

"They showed us 18 of the wall in their capital system, and if they kept a squadron each in every other member system and are replacing their Assassins with Aes Sedai one for one like they claim, that accounts for everything." Commodore Yao said.

"But?"

"They have a lot of construction going on. And it's obvious they believe the galaxy is becoming a much rougher place. I find it hard to believe they would throw away DNs that could handle just about anyone else's SD – including ours. Add in that that the Aes Sedai class ships we saw are clearly built along a pod-laying pattern even if their bays are positioned a bit differently than Manticore's, the rumors that Manticore has been using far more automation than we do, the certainty that the elves copied everything coming out of the Haven Sector that they could reverse engineer, and that General Dynamics of Rivendell has very good engineers… it's a pretty sure thing we're missing something. I'm just not sure what. Most of Battle Fleet wouldn't have looked beyond the murals painted on their ships; I can't think Michaels was happy to see us."

"I can see only one way to get the information we need on the combat abilities of Sanderson's wall." Thenuwara said. "I have to think they would engage an SLN force that only outnumbered them by two to one or so."

"I concur, but I'd suggest you not lead that force yourself."

"Why not? I need to prove my reputation is worth something outside a simulator." She knew the answer, though.

"We need to force an engagement against an enemy that can out-accelerate us and – anywhere but their home system – is not defending anything critical. That's a job for a Vice-Admiral. An expendable one, in fact." Yao said.

"We don't have any expendable admirals."

"Not even Brock?" Yao said, referring to the senior of the two Battle Fleet squadron commanders attached to her fleet for this operation, but not part of her regular command.

"Adrienne Brock was the most capable Battle Fleet squadron commander outside our fleet within a hundred light-years of Sol when Kingsford handed me this operation. I don't intend to use her as a sacrificial lamb just because she doesn't like me. It wouldn't do wonders for Kingsford's willingness to hand me reinforcements in the future. I'll think of something."

[break]

When the conference room had nearly emptied, Yao asked his CO a question. "If you think highly of Brock, why didn't you ever try and bring her into the fleet properly?"

"In a lot of ways I would have liked to. But she's from Heimdall." Thenuwara said.

"And you're not at all certain they'll stay in the League – or in a multisystem polity that includes Sol, for that matter – when things fall apart." He said. In almost any other SLN fleet, even hinting that the fleet could end up in service to Sol but not the Solarian League would have been unthinkable.

"In a lot of ways I hate doing things like this. I'd like to be able to have the best and brightest from the whole SLN in my fleet. What I've got are the best of Battle Fleet from the deep core who are interested in using their brains to learn how to fight battles with laser heads and grasers not political maneuvering. And a few from outside the deep core that have been with us since they were junior officers and have personal loyalties to me or one of my senior people. I've been encouraging Jared Richt to do the same thing in Frontier Fleet for decades, but he has even more problems getting good people to stay in a core sector detachment; too many others are trying to get the same people, and they can offer better incentives."