Silence reigned at the table for a long while following Lewis' comment, as though a wing of Lynxs had flown through the window and swept away the conversation as easily as the Gallic fleets had subjugated the Taus. Hartman's lips curled into a grim smile; recalling fragments of video that had drifted back to the colonies. The Gallic fleet had torn through the no-man's land dividing Bretonia and Kusari faster then either belligerent nation could react, leaving broken ships and isolated outposts in its wake. Bretonia and Kusari had been distracted, war-weary, and surprised. Was it any wonder their militaries had crumbled like so much tissue paper beneath the Gallic onslaught? Liberty would be different.
"The Gallics only won through dumb luck last time. They were in the right place at the right time." Liberty's Navy hadn't faced a serious threat to its dominance since the Nomad War. Even then, the aliens hadn't dared to pit themselves directly against the full strength of the Navy, relying on subterfuge and manipulation. The newly-emerged house had thus far demonstrated no such inclination. "Come on, Reginald. You know the media. The way they blow these things up, we won't need high-explosive to win the war. Even if they're not exaggerating, that's a hell of a supply chain to maintain all the way back through the Taus. I was aboard Normandie, I've seen the mountains of supplies those ships need. I'll be damned if they can keep anything bigger than a cruiser group supplied that far out without taking Bretonia out of the picture. And we've already seen how loyal their sailors are." Her last sentence carried a twinge of bitterness.
As the first and only Libertonian Commanding Officer appointed to the former Royal Navy Flagship Normandie, Hartman had been the last officer to serve aboard the ship before it renounced all allegiance to the Republic and vanished with half its battle group. The possibility that it was her presence that had tipped the ship into mutiny still gnawed away at her, doubly so now that she was back in uniform. It was foolish and pointless to waste time in the past, yet the idea persisted, a treacherous thought lurking in the ravines of her mind. "And Bretonia ain't exactly about to go quietly off into the night. Even if the Gauls get a grip on the planets, the Royal Navy still has access to our ports for resupply. No." She leaned in to emphasize her point, a ripple of light from one the pub's dingy lanterns dancing across the line of scar tissue that stretched across her face."Either they rush into Bretonia and the Royal Navy shatter their supply lines, or they let the war drag on while we buff up the military even further and learn how they fight and they'll get pulled kicking and screaming to the guns of the an Overlord-Class. Either way, we'll be having dinner and champagne on New Paris long before the frogs put a foot on Republic soil."