"No doubt you're correct, Admiral, but it's the idea of a long engagement that worries me. With the repair base to protect, we won't be able to mount a real mobile defense—they can always pin us down by going straight for the base—and once the pods are exhausted, your battlecruisers are going to find themselves hard-pressed by ships of the wall, Sir."

Honor's eyes narrowed as she examined Houseman's face. It took nerve for a commander to keep arguing after two different flag officers, one his own immediate CO, had just more or less told him to shut up. What bothered her was where Houseman's nerve came from. Was it the courage of his convictions, or was it arrogance? The fact that she disliked the man made it hard to be objective, and she warned herself to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Sarnow seemed less charitably inclined.

"I realize that, Mr. Houseman," he replied. "But at the possible expense of boring you, let me repeat that the purpose of this conference is to solve our problems, not simply to recapitulate them."

Houseman seemed to shrink into himself, hunching down in his chair with a total lack of expression as Van Slyke gave him an even colder glance, and someone cleared his throat.

"Admiral Sarnow?"

"Yes, Commodore Prentis?"

"We do have one other major advantage, Sir," Battle-cruiser Division 53's CO pointed out. "All our sensor platforms have the new FTL systems, and with Nike and Achilles to coordinate—"

The commodore shrugged, and Sarnow nodded sharply. Nike was one of the first ships built with the new grav pulse technology from the keel out, but Achilles had received the same system in her last refit, and their pulse transmitters gave both battlecruisers the ability to send FTL messages to any ship with gravitic sensors. They had to shut down their own wedges long enough to complete any transmission, since no sensor could pick message pulses out of the background "noise" of a warship's drive signature, but they would give Sarnow a command and control "reach" the Peeps couldn't hope to match.

"Jack has an excellent point, Admiral, if you'll pardon my saying so." This time Van Slyke didn't even glance at Houseman as he spoke—which suggested there was going to be a lively discussion when they returned to Van Slyke's flagship. "If we can't match them toe-to-toe, we'll just have to use our footwork to make up the difference."

"Agreed." Sarnow leaned back and rubbed his mustache. "Do any other advantages we've got—or that we can create—spring to mind?"

Honor cleared her throat quietly, and Sarnow cocked an eyebrow at her.

"Yes, Dame Honor?"

"One thing that's occurred to me, Sir, is those Erebus-class minelayers. Do we know what Admiral Parks intends to do with them?'

"Ernie?" Sarnow passed the question to his chief of staff, and Captain Corell ran one fine-boned hand through her hair while she scrolled through data on her memo pad. She reached the end and looked up with a headshake.

"There's nothing in the flagship's current download, Sir. Of course, we haven't received their finalized dump yet. They're still thinking things over, just like us."

"It might be a good idea to ask about them, Sir," Honor suggested, and Sarnow nodded in agreement. The minelayers weren't officially assigned to Hancock—they'd simply been passing through on their way to Reevesport when Parks read Admiral Caparelli's dispatch and short-stopped them. It was probably little more than an instinctive reaction, but if he could be convinced to hold them here indefinitely...

"Assuming we can get Admiral Parks to steal them for us, how were you thinking of using them, Captain?" Commodore Banton asked. "I suppose we could mine the approaches to the base, but how effective would it really be? Surely the Peeps would be watching for mines when they finally closed on the base."

The objection made sense, since the mines were simply old-fashioned bomb-pumped lasers. They were cheap but good for only a single shot each, and their accuracy was less than outstanding, which made them most effective when employed en masse against ships moving at low velocities. That meant they were usually emplaced for area coverage of relatively immobile targets like wormhole junctions, planets, or orbital bases... where, as Banton had just pointed out, the Peeps would expect to see them. But putting them where the Peeps expected wasn't what Honor had in mind.

"Actually, Ma'am, I've been looking at the drive specs on the layers, and we might be able to use them more advantageously than that."

"Oh?" Banton cocked her head—consideringly, not in challenge—and Honor nodded.

"Yes, Ma'am. The Erebus-class ships are fast—almost as fast as a battlecruiser—and they're configured for rapid, mass mine emplacement. If we could make the Peeps think they are battlecruisers and operate them with the rest of our force, then float the mines out in the Peeps' path..."

She let her voice trail off suggestively, and Banton gave a sudden, fierce snort of laughter.

"I like it, Admiral!" she told Sarnow. "It's sneaky as hell, and it might just work."

"Assuming the Peeps don't shoot at them and give the show away," Commodore Prentis observed. "Minelayers don't have much in the way of point defense, and their sidewalls aren't much, either. You'd be asking their captains to run an awful risk, Dame Honor."

"We could cover them fairly well against missile attack by tying them into our divisional tac nets, Sir," Honor countered. "There are only five of them. We could include one in each divisions net and hook the odd man out into Nike's and Agamemnon's net. The Peeps won't be able to tell exactly where our defensive fire is coming from, so they shouldn't be able to ID them at any extended range. And for us to make the mines work, we'd have to use them before we got to beam range, anyway."

"And if they spot the mines?" Prentis was thinking aloud, not arguing, and Honor allowed herself a small shrug.

"Their fire control's a hundred percent passive, Sir. They don't have active emission signatures, and they're mighty small radar targets. I doubt the Peeps could spot them at much more than a million klicks, especially if they're busy chasing us."

Prentis nodded with growing enthusiasm, and Sarnow gestured to Corell.

"Make a note of Dame Honor's suggestion, Ernie. I'll float the idea to Sir Yancey; you get hold of Commodore Capra. Bug the hell out of him if you have to, but I want authorization to use those ships in the event of an attack on Hancock."

"Yes, Sir." Corell tapped at her memo pad, and the admiral tilted his chair back and swiveled slowly from side to side.

"All right. Let's assume we can steal the minelayers from Reevesport and that we can talk Admiral Parks into leaving us enough parasite pods for at least the opening broadsides. I don't see any option but to hold our main striking power in a central position—right here with the base, probably—to allow us to respond to a threat from any direction. At the same time, I want to go on concealing the existence of our pulse transmitter technology. I'm sure—" he allowed himself a wry smile "—Their Lordships would appreciate it if we can manage it, at any rate. But that means we've got to give the Peeps something they can see to explain how we can know where they are. We're not going to have as many light units as I'd like for that, but I think we're going to have to split them up as pickets."

Heads nodded, and he let his chair snap back upright.

"Commodore Van Slyke, your squadron's our next heaviest tactical unit, so we'll have to keep you concentrated with the battlecruisers. Ernie," he turned to his chief of staff once more, "I want you and Joe to figure the most economical way to use the light cruisers and tin-cans for perimeter coverage."