Free Shadow of Freedom-eARC by David Weber Page B

ocean-side balcony of her official residence. The tide was in, and surf made a soothing, rhythmic sound in the darkness, but no one felt very soothed at the moment.
    “I know,” Michelle agreed. “It kind of makes everything we’ve accomplished out here look a lot less important, doesn’t it?”
    “No, Milady, it most definitely does not ,” Medusa said so sharply that Michelle twitched in her chair and looked at the smaller woman in surprise.
    “Sorry,” Medusa said after a moment. “I didn’t mean to sound as if I were snapping at you. But you—and Augustus and Aivars and Michael—have accomplished an enormous amount ‘out here.’ Don’t ever denigrate your accomplishments—or yourselves—just because of bad news from somewhere else!”
    “You’re right, of course,” Michelle acknowledged after a moment. “It’s just—”
    “Just that it feels like the end of the world,” Medusa finished for her when she seemed unable to find the exact words she’d been looking for.
    “Maybe not quite that bad, but close,” Michelle agreed.
    “Well, it damned well should!” Medusa told her tartly. “Undervaluing your own accomplishments doesn’t necessarily make you wrong about how deep a crack we’re all in right now.”
    Michelle nodded. The Admiralty dispatches had pulled no punches. With the devastation of the home system’s industrial capacity, the Royal Manticoran Navy found itself—for the first time since the opening phases of the First Havenite War—facing an acute ammunition shortage. And that shortage was going to get worse—a lot worse—before it got any better. Which was the reason all of Michelle’s remaining shipboard Apollo pods were to be returned to Manticore as soon as possible. Given the concentration of Mark 16-armed units under her command, the Admiralty would try to make up for the differential by supplying her with all of those they could find, and both her warships and her local ammunition ships currently had full magazines. Even so, however, she was going to have to be extraordinarily circumspect in how she expended the rounds available to her, because there weren’t going to be any more for quite a while.
    “At least I don’t expect anyone to be eager to poke his nose back into this particular hornets’ nest anytime soon,” she said out loud.
    “Unless, of course, whoever hit the home system wants to send his ‘phantom raiders’ our way,” Khumalo pointed out sourly.
    “Unlikely, if you’ll forgive me for sayin’ so, Sir,” Oversteegen observed. Khumalo looked at him, and Oversteegen shrugged. “Th’ Admiralty’s estimate that whoever did this was operatin’ on what they used t’ call ‘a shoestring’ seems t’ me t’ be well taken. And, frankly, if they were t’ decide t’ carry out additional attacks of this sort, anything here in th’ Quadrant would have t’ be far less valuable t’ them than a follow up, knock out attack on th’ home system.”
    “I think Michael’s probably right, Augustus,” Michelle said. “I don’t propose that we take anything for granted, and I’ve got Cindy and Dominica busy working out the best way to generate massive redundancy in our sensor coverage, just in case, but I don’t see us as the logical candidate for the next sneak attack. If they do go after anything in the Quadrant, I’d imagine it would be the Terminus itself, since I can’t see anything else out this way that would have equal strategic value for anyone who obviously doesn’t like us very much. And that, fortunately or unfortunately, we’re just going to have to leave in other peoples’ hands.”
    Her uniformed fellows nodded, and Baroness Medusa tilted back her chair.
    “Should I assume that—for the moment, at least—you feel relatively secure here in the Quadrant, then?”
    “I think we probably are,” Khumalo answered, instead of Michelle. He was, after all, the station commander. “There’s a great deal to be said for Admiral