And Elvis Santino had just proved he was one of those terrified officers. Worse, he had been caught unprepared, and insufficiently offensive-minded, and lacking in initiative… and whatever he chose to admit to his staff, inside he knew he had. Which only made his terror worse… and his desperate determination to prove he hadn’t been still stronger.

“Sir,” Jaruwalski said after a moment, her voice as calm and unchallenging as she could possibly make it as she sought another way to get through to him, “whatever you or I may want can’t change the facts of the tactical situation. And the facts of the situation are that our capital ships are outgunned by theirs by approximately five-to-one in grasers, five-and-a-half-to-one in lasers, and well over six-to-one in missile tubes… and that, of course, assumes they don’t have still more units hiding under stealth out there somewhere. Under the circum—”

“I am not giving up this system without firing a shot, Commander,” Santino said, and the sudden flat intensity of his voice was more frightening than his bellow had been. “I’ll evacuate the noncombatants, but there is no way—no way in hell, Commander!—that I am giving them Seaford Nine without a fight. I know my duty, even if other officers may not know theirs!”

“Sir, we can’t fight them broadside-to-broadside! If we try—”

“I’m not going to,” Santino said in that same flat tone. “You’re forgetting our missile pods and our edge in electronic warfare.”

“Sir, they have pods, too!” Jaruwalski tried to keep the desperation out of her voice and knew she was failing. “And ONI believes they’ve been using Solly technology to upgra—”

“Their pods aren’t as good as ours,” Santino shot back obstinately. “And even if they were, their point defense and ECM suck. We can close with them, fire at extreme range, and break off, and all of our superdreadnoughts have the new compensators. They’ll never catch us in a stern chase, and if they try to overhaul, it will only divert them from pursuing the evac ships.”

Jaruwalski felt a chill of horror as his eyes brightened with the last sentence. Oh my God, she thought despairingly, now he’s come up with a tactical justification for this insanity! He’s going to get us all killed because he’s too stupid—too afraid of showing lack of fighting spirit—to do the sensible thing, and now he’s found a “logical reason” he thinks he can use in his after-action report to justify his stupidity!

“Sir, it doesn’t matter if our pods have an edge if they have enough more of them than we do,” she said as reasonably as she could. “And—”

“You’re relieved, Commander,” Santino grated. “I need advice and some offensive spirit here, not cowardice.”

Jaruwalski jerked as if he’d slapped her, and her face went white—not with shame or fear, but with fury.

“Admiral, it’s my duty to give you my best est—” she began, and his hand slapped the tabletop like a gunshot.

“I said you’re relieved!” he shouted. “Now get the hell out of here! In fact, I want your gutless ass the hell off my flagship right now, Jaruwalski!” She stared at him, speechless, and his lip drew up in a snarl. “I’ll pass the evac order to the base in five minutes—now get the hell out of here!”