“But now our Solly… associates have helped us upgrade our electronics and reduce their superiority in that area from probably a thirty to thirty-five percent or so advantage to no more than fifteen or sixteen percent. Even more importantly, however, we can now swamp their fire control with massive salvos, just as they’ve been doing to us ever since the Battle of Hancock.

“What that means becomes apparent when we look at the probable numbers here. Intelligence estimates that the Manties have a maximum of a heavy battle squadron, with screen, waiting for us—call it twelve SDs, maybe the same number of battlecruisers, and twenty or thirty cruisers and destroyers. Assuming previous engagements are any meterstick, they’ll choose a compromise between the maximum numbers of pods they can tow and their acceleration curves. They don’t like to reduce their max accel, so their superdreadnoughts will be good for ten to twelve pods each, but their battlecruisers will probably have a maximum of four on tow, with perhaps two more for each heavy cruiser. Taking the worst case estimate, then, they’ll have a hundred forty-four behind the SDs, forty-eight behind the battlecruisers, and call it thirty-two behind heavy cruisers.

“That gives them two hundred twenty-four pods, with a total missile load of about twenty-two hundred. We on the other hand, have a lot more tractor capability than they do, and the new Mars-class heavy cruisers have more brute impeller strength than their compensators can handle anyway.”

She chose not to complicate her little lecture by explaining that that was because the People’s Navy had hoped that either they would have captured intact samples of the Manties’ new inertial compensator technology or that their Solarian suppliers would have figured out how they worked by now. Neither had happened, which left the Mars-class ships ridiculously overpowered. But that had its good points, as well. For one thing, they could lose quite a few beta nodes before their maximum attainable acceleration dropped. For another, they could tow twice as many pods as a Manty Star Knight could for the same acceleration loss. And as far as the People’s Navy knew, the Manties didn’t yet have a clue that that was the case. Of course, if they’d had the compensator efficiency the Manties had, they could have towed three times as many pods, but who knew? The Republic might yet manage to acquire that efficiency somehow, and then…

“What all that means, Ma’am,” she went on, shaking off the reflexive thoughts, “is that we’ll be going in with twelve pods behind each battleship and six behind each heavy cruiser. It’ll reduce our max acceleration substantially—by about twenty percent for the cruisers—but it will give us four hundred fifty-six pods and well over seven thousand missiles in our opening salvo. Which,” she smiled again, with that same pearlescent ferocity, “is the reason I’m so looking forward to the Second Battle of Hancock.”

· · • · ·

“Coming up on translation in forty-five minutes, Citizen Admiral.” The tone in which Citizen Commander Lowe made the announcement carried that unmistakable edge of professional calm—the sort pilots or surgeons always seemed to drop into when things threatened to fall into the crapper. Lester Tourville recognized it, but the rules of the game required him to pretend he hadn’t, and so he simply nodded.