In truth, Gideon Tarkin was deeply wary of Yago-Dur, and Matt Hona was no different.
The High Command on Dawn Star Planet had long prepared several contingency plans for the fall of the Yago-Dur system. The most extensively planned option was to turn Kinyen into a second fortress world and use it to further resist the Galactic Republic's invasion.
But as the Gran homeworld, Kinyen was naturally far less powerful than the Givin homeworld, and the Kinyen system lacked the natural barriers of the Three-Body system of Yago-Dur.
Once a fleet battle broke out in the Kinyen system, it would become a pure contest of strength between the two sides. That was exactly the kind of situation the Duchy of Dawn had always sought to avoid.
And once the Yago-Dur system fell, how much time would they have left to establish a new defensive line in the Kinyen system? Not much. So why not begin building it now? In fact, they already had, but not much had been invested, and progress was slow. Most industrial capacity was still being devoted to new weapons, equipment, and warships.
There was one more crucial question: how determined were the Gran to resist the Galactic Republic to the bitter end on their own homeworld?
The Gran were not a particularly resolute species. The reason they had been willing to fight the Galactic Republic to the end alongside the Dagg in the Battle of Malastare was, on one hand, that the battle had not actually been all that brutal and the Galactic Republic had not committed many troops. On the other hand, Malastare was not their homeworld after all.
So if the Gran decided to withdraw from the war, then Ainlee Tim—who held enormous political prestige within the Confederacy of Independent Systems, was Tang Xiao's