I’ve been thinking about Virginia’s relative lack of involvement in Light Bringer compared to Dark Age after finishing my re-read of Light Bringer, and with the benefit of hindsight, I feel like the direction of her plotline was an unfortunate but logical consequence of the state the Republic is in at the end of DA.
Because it didn’t really register to me until I was re-reading LB just how devastating the previous two books were for the Republic.
There were only four named fleets of the Republic in Iron Gold – the First and Second Fleet are the navy of the Free Legions, and the Fourth fleet is the Ecliptic Guard that defends Mars, meaning that the Third Fleet is the Home Guard that defends Luna.
The first two fleets were wiped out by Atalantia at the battle of Caliban between Iron Gold and Dark Age, and the millions of Republic soldiers on Mercury in Dark Age were either killed or captured by the end, with only about 2,211 troops out of a force numbering over ten million making it off the surface after The Long Night.
Luna is under The Syndicate’s control, but Apple mentions Earth having its own fleet in Dark Age separate from Luna’s that Atalantia destroys when the Rim and the Society retake Earth.
We don’t know if the Republic has a separate fleet just for the asteroid belt, but either way between all of those losses and the fact that we don’t know if the Vox had any control over Earth after the Day of Red Doves, the Republic lost between 67 and 80% of its forces by the end of Dark Age.
Which means that at the beginning of LB, Virginia’s in a position where she has to keep the war going with at best a third of the resources that she had at her disposal two books ago. The dockyards on Phobos allow them to build new ships and repair old ones, but only as long as they can mine enough metal. Atalantia even says as much when she outlines her strategy to Lysander in LB chapter 15:
“As Luna cannibalizes itself for want of food, Mars does the same for want of circuits, Blues, nickel, even uranium. All the little things from the Belt and Mercury and Earth that make their fleets run.”
By the opening of LB, the Rim has spent nine months systematically whittling down the Republic’s control over the asteroid belt, attacking outposts and presumably mining colonies. And the more of the belt they take, the fewer resources the Republic has to be able to repair and build ships.
All of this means that Virginia is in a position where she has no other option but to play defense. She and Victra and the Telemanuses have to focus on both protecting the positions they still hold and also making sure as few ships are lost as possible.
