Harrison drummed his fingers on the desk in a staccato pattern that was making Anderson crazy. Wheels were turning in Harrison's head, and being the man he was, he had to give voice to the thought process.
"Everyone agrees. If we're thinking about fighting back, if we were going to commit ourselves to a war... there's no way we would last. That point's simply inarguable. We just don't have the numbers. We would lose. It'd only be a question of how long we could keep it up, and just think about how much we'd have to sacrifice before the end. There'd be no recovery.
"We can't provoke them. We can't subject ourselves to their attack. Everyone knows that. But everywhere we look we see our own destruction. What options do we have?
"Why are we here, Colonel? What are we about to do?"
The monitor flickered. Four.
