“Unrealistic, Sir?” Truman’s blue eyes were hard, and several of her juniors glanced apprehensively at one another as they felt the thunderheads gathering. “Unrealistic in what way, if I may ask?”

“In every way!” Holderman snapped. “The exercise parameters assumed none of the escort captains assigned to it had ever encountered one of the new LACs before. They were forced to engage them in total ignorance of their actual capabilities!”

“I see, Sir.” Truman cocked her head and bared her teeth in a tight almost-smile. “May I ask if any of the captains involved actually did have any knowledge of the Shrike’s capabilities?”

“Of course they didn’t! How could they have when it’s still on the Official Secrets List?” Holderman demanded.

“An excellent point, Sir,” Truman shot back. “But unless I misread my own briefing from the umpires, that was the objective of the exercise: to see how a force which had never encountered them would fare against them. Was I, perhaps, in error in that interpretation?”

Holderman turned a dangerous shade of red. Truman’s words were respectful enough, but the tone in which she’d delivered them was cold as a frozen razor. Worse, she was completely right about the simulation’s purpose.

“Whatever the object of the simulated exercise,” he grated, “the true test of the concept will be how it works in real space, in real time, against people who do know what’s coming, Captain. Eventually someone on the other side is going to figure out what they can do, after all, and begin taking steps to attack their weaknesses, now aren’t they? So don’t you think it might be a good idea to try and figure out those weaknesses for ourselves before we throw lives away against the Peeps? The Fleet would like to use these vessels—and their crews—more than once each, you know!”

“Certainly, Sir,” Truman agreed. “I only point out that the object of this exercise was to determine how we can expect them to fare in their initial employments.”

“ ’Initial employments’!” Holderman half-spat, and his lip curled. “Even granting that you’re correct in this instance, Captain, no simulation is going to prove much until its assumptions bear at least some resemblance to reality. Obviously anyone can stack the odds in an exercise to favor one side or the other!”

“Indeed they can, Sir,” Truman agreed in tones of deadly affability. “Of course, sometimes they fail to dictate the outcome they desire no matter how thoroughly they stack the odds, don’t they, Sir?”

Holderman went puce, and someone sucked in air audibly, for everyone in the briefing room knew what she was referring to—they just couldn’t quite believe she’d had the nerve to do it.

Rear Admiral Holderman had convinced the umpires to alter the immediately previous exercise’s ground rules by giving the officers assigned to command the simulated superdreadnought division opposed to Minotaur a detailed briefing on the Shrike and its capabilities. The briefing had been a major change from the original exercise plan approved by BuShips, Admiral Adcock’s BuWeaps, and the Bureau of Training, and everyone knew it had been intended to give the SDs a clear advantage. Despite that, however, both ships of the wall had been destroyed, although they had managed to take thirty of Minotaur’s LACs with them and damaged another eleven. It had been the carrier’s worst losses to date… and had still cost the defenders seventeen million tons of capital ship in return for only six hundred thousand tons of LACs. Not to mention twelve thousand crewmen as opposed to only three hundred and thirty-two from the LAC wing.