"What?" Teague's tone was that of a woman who felt pretty sure she'd misheard something, and he snorted in harsh amusement.

"I've just come from a meeting with Kingsford, Jennings, and Bernard," he told her. "They're working on a brainstorm of Rajampet's."

Teague's stomach muscles tightened. Admiral Willis Jennings was Seth Kingsford's chief of staff, and Fleet Admiral Evangeline Bernard was the commanding officer of the Office of Strategy and Planning. Under most circumstances, the notion of the commanding officer of Battle Fleet meeting with his chief of staff and the Navy's chief strategic planner to consider the implications of combat reports might have been considered a good thing. Under the present circumstances, and given al-Fanudahi's near despair, she suspected that hadn't been the case this time around. Maybe it was his use of the word "brainstorm," she thought mordantly.

"What sort of brainstorm?" she asked out loud.

"As Rajampet sees it, what just happened to the Manties' home system offers what he calls a 'strategic window of opportunity'. He wants to mount an immediate operation to take advantage of the opening, and he proposes to use Admiral Filareta for the purpose."

"Filareta?" Teague repeated a bit blankly, and al-Fanudahi shrugged.

"He's Battle Fleet, so you probably don't know him. Trust me, you're not missing much. He's smarter than Crandall was. In fact, I'm willing to bet his IQ is at least equal to his shoe size. Aside from that, his only recommendation for command is that he has a pulse."

It was a mark of just how much he'd come to trust her—and vice-versa—she reflected, that he dared to show open contempt for such a monumentally senior officer in front of her.

"What makes Admiral Rajampet think this Filareta's in a position to do anything?"

"For some reason known only to God and, possibly, Admiral Kingsford, Filareta is swanning around in the Shell, half way to Manticore, with a force even bigger than Crandall's was."

She looked at him sharply, and he looked back with a carefully expressionless face.

"And just what is this Admiral Filareta doing out in the Shell?" she asked.

"By the oddest coincidence, he, too, is conducting a training exercise." Al-Fanudahi smiled without any humor at all. "You might be interested to know—I checked myself, out of idle curiosity, you understand—that in the last thirty T-years Battle Fleet has conducted only three exercises which deployed more than fifty of the wall as far out as the Shell. But this year, for some reason, Crandall was authorized to conduct her training exercise in the Madras Sector and Fleet Admiral Massimo Filareta was simultaneously authorized to conduct 'wargames' in the Tasmania Sector. And, unlike Crandall, Filareta's exercise constitutes—and I quote—'a major fleet exercise'. Which is how he comes to be parked out in Tasmania with three hundred wallers, plus screen. Rajampet wants to reinforce him with another seventy or eighty of the wall which 'just happen' to have been deployed to various sector bases within a couple of weeks' hyper time from Tasmania, then send him off to attack Manticore directly."

"What? "

She stared at him in disbelief, and he grinned sourly, then extended his whiskey-laced coffee mug towards her.

"Care for a little belt?" he invited.

"I don't think an entire bottle would help a lot," she replied after a moment, and shook her head. "You're serious, aren't you?"

"Believe me, I wish I wasn't."

"What can he be thinking? "

"I'm not sure I'd apply that particular verb to whatever's going on inside his skull at the moment," al-Fanudahi said tartly. Then he sighed.

"As nearly as I could figure out from what Jennings and Bernard were saying to Kingsford, and the kinds of questions all three of them were asking me, Rajampet thinks that even if reports of what happened to them are grossly exaggerated, the Manties have to be reeling. As Jennings put it, the moment is 'psychologically ripe'. After a pounding like that, they aren't going to have the stomach for a standup fight against the SLN."

"Just like a handful of their cruisers didn't have the stomach for a standup fight against Crandall, you mean?" Teague said bitterly.

"I think they expect things to work out a little better this time."

"They think the Manty Home Fleet won't fight to defend their home system when a batch of cruisers were willing to go toe-to-toe with Crandall over the administrative center of a province they haven't even firmly integrated into their empire yet?"

Teague hadn't even tried to keep the incredulity out of her savage tone, and al-Fanudahi grinned with at least a trace of genuine humor.

"There you go using that verb again," he said. Then he sobered.

"It does tie in with existing strategic planning," he pointed out. "And, apparently, the theory is that getting hammered that way, completely out of the blue, is bound to have had a devastating effect on the Manties' morale and confidence, completely disregarding whatever effect it's had on their actual, physical capabilities. In fact, Jennings suggested that the psychological impact was probably even greater because it came so close on the heels of what happened at Spindle. And, of course, they can't be certain we weren't the ones who did it. So when a fresh Solarian fleet turns up on their doorstep in about half the time they can have expected anyone to take getting there, and when they realize we're willing to go at them again, this time on their home ground, despite Spindle, they'll realize they're screwed and throw in the towel. Especially if they do think we're the ones who just hit them and they're looking over their shoulder, waiting for us to do it t again at the moment they're engaged against our conventional wallers."

Teague looked at him again, then sighed, walked back around her desk, and flopped into her own chair.

"Go on. I'm sure there's more and better still to come."

"Well, I did point out—diffidently, you understand—that even allowing for the fact that Filareta is a lot closer to Manticore than anyone would have expected, it's going to take around a month to get him reinforced the way they're talking about, and then another month and a half to get him to Manticore, by which point at least some of the shock effect should have dissipated. Bernard agreed that was a possibility, but her staff psychologists"—his eyes met Teague's and rolled—"estimate that would actually work in our behalf. Apparently they feel three months or so would be about right for the anesthetizing effect of the shock to wear off and give way to despair as 'a more sober evaluation of their situation' sinks in fully."

"I don't suppose any of these staff psychologists are planning on accompanying Admiral Filareta to Manticore?"

"Oddly enough, I don't believe they are."

"Neither would I," Teague muttered.

"After that concern of mine had been suitably allayed," al-Fanudahi continued, "I pointed out that our reports indicate the Manties probably have at least a hundred or so wallers of their own left in Home Fleet. Given the outcome of the Battle of Spindle, it seemed to me that perhaps a greater numerical advantage on our part would be in order. Admiral Jennings, however, informed me that Admiral Thimбr's reports indicate the Manties took heavier losses than we'd originally assumed when Haven attacked their home system. You'll be interested to know that ONI's best estimate is that the Manties have no more than sixty or seventy of the wall left."

"I thought we were the Office of Naval Intelligence," Teague observed.

"No, we're the Office of Operational Analysis ," al-Fanudahi corrected in a chiding tone of voice. "Admiral Kingsford was kind enough to point that out to me. Apparently, additional human intelligence reports you and I haven't had access to strongly support Admiral Thimбr's conclusions about Manticoran losses."