The Romulan War_ Beneath the Raptor's Wing (Book 1) - Michael A. Martin [112]
“If you’ll permit me to make a blunt observation, Madame Minister,” said MACO General Hayes as he slowly paced along the west wall of the spacious office, “Altair VI escaped Romulan conquest only by the skin of its ass.”
Appearing considerably more relaxed than either the general looked or Samuels felt, Interior Minister Haroun el-Rashid crossed an ankle over a knee on the same low sofa upon which Minister Littlejohn sat, alongside a worried looking Admiral Black. “But you can’t argue with results,” el-Rashid said. “Whatever the folks at Altair VI were doing seemed to work for them. Maybe we ought to study that and replicate it.”
“Whatever early warning Altair received was no thanks to the Vulcans’ warpfield detectors,” said Captain Eric Stillwell, who stood beside the couch, his arms folded.
Thomas Vanderbilt, the prime minister’s defense secretary, chimed in from his chair to the immediate right of Samuels’s desk. “I’m afraid I have to agree. If one of Starfleet’s NX-class starships hadn’t been close at hand, Altair VI would have been another rout.”
“It sounds as though my defense advisers are all in agreement that Altair owes its survival to little more than dumb luck,” Samuels said, shaking his head. He was beginning to feel a lancing pain behind his eyes. “Wonderful.”
“Maybe sometimes it’s better to be lucky than to be good,” Minister el-Rashid said with a shrug.
Admiral Black shook his head. “I’ll always take whatever luck I can get, Minister. Like the luck that has protected Earth ships from getting hit hard by that Romulan hijack-weapon over the past few months. But luck is no substitute for solid long-term strategy and flexible, adaptable tactics.”
“I have to agree with that assessment, Admiral,” said Secretary Vanderbilt.
“As do I,” Samuels said. The Andorians and the Tellarites had indeed taken the brunt of the Romulans’ remote-control attacks lately, although the reasons for that remained inexplicable, stumping humanity’s finest tactical minds. “I’m gratified to see that no one here needs to be warned how dangerous it can be to develop an overreliance on luck.”
“Unfortunately, Mister Prime Minister, luck has been our most reliable tool all too often lately,” General Casey said. “If we had more ships available to enable us to distribute our forces across Coalition space, this conflict would suddenly be less about luck and more about skill.”
“We’re working as hard and as fast as we can to achieve tactical parity with the Romulans,” Black said. “But these things don’t happen overnight.”
“Then we still have a fundamental problem,” said Casey. “We need as many fast ships as Starfleet can build—otherwise our troops won’t be able to reach the war’s hot spots in time to do anyone any good. Semper invictus becomes a joke when Starfleet’s motto seems to be Nunquam adventus.”
Samuels tried to let the general’s bitter, counterproductive joke sail right past him. Nunquam adventus meant “Never arrived.”
Black’s eyes were hard as daggers as he replied to the blunt-spoken MACO leader. “Our NX-class shipbuilding efforts are already running round the clock at multiple sites,” he said.
“One of which the Romulans have already destroyed at enormous cost to us,” Gardner said, poker-faced. “We’re still scrambling to recover from that.”
Casey glared back at both the admirals. “So what Starfleet is really saying is that we’re stuck with having to rely on luck. And that’s to bolster a defensive strategy that’s a loser in the long run anyway. We have to keep rolling the dice, hoping that one of our far-too-rare NX-class ships will happen to be near enough to a Romulan target to get there in time to mount a defense. I trust you are aware that you lost