No, what had worried her had been that she’d had to commit her ship and Jackie Harmon’s LACs to her plan immediately if they were to get into position. And that meant that if Truitt had rejected her suggestion, the LACs could have found themselves pitted against the Peeps all alone. But that wasn’t going to happen, and she smiled evilly as she watched the time display tick downward.

“Got ’em, Skipper!” Ensign Thomas announced.

“Well enough to guarantee lock-on?” Harmon asked sharply.

“I’ll have to go active to guarantee that, Ma’am,” Thomas said a little less exuberantly, and Harmon grunted. Her LACs were almost at their prebriefed attack points, coasting in ballistically with their wedges up but at minimum power. The range was a little under a light-second, and grasers were light-speed weapons. If everything worked perfectly, the Peeps would have no more than two seconds—certainly no more than four—to realize what was coming.

“All right,” she said. “Stand by for energy weapons and missiles. Mike, I want the bow sidewall first, then full power to the rest of the wedge. Bring the wall up the instant Tommy gets his missiles away.”

“Understood, Skipper,” Gearman replied tautly.

A light began to blink on Citizen Commander Diamato’s panel, and he frowned. He punched a query into the board, and his frown deepened as CIC responded.

“We’re picking up something to port, Citizen Captain,” he said.

“Something?” Citizen Captain Hall spun her command chair to face him. “What sort of ‘something’?”

“I don’t really know, Citizen Captain,” he admitted. “It’s too weak to be a ship’s impeller signature or an incoming missile, and we’re picking up at least a dozen point sources… unless it’s some sort of scatter?” He frowned, then shook his head. “No, Ma’am,” he said, this time using the old style address without even thinking about it. “It’s definitely separate sources; I’m confident of that. But there’s nothing like it in our sensor or threat files.”

“Could it be some sort of drone?” Hall asked intently.

“That’s what CIC thinks, Ma’am,” Diamato said. “But I don’t think so. It doesn’t… feel right, somehow. And faint as it is, it’s too strong for a stealthed Manty recon drone.”

“Bring the jammers and decoys up now!” Hall snapped, and Diamato’s thumb jabbed at the button.

· · • · ·

“What the—?” Citizen Captain Hector Griswold, CO of PNS Citizen Admiral Tascosa, frowned as Tascosa’s sister ship Schaumberg suddenly brought her defensive electronic systems fully on-line. He looked at the readouts for a second or two, then switched his eyes to his com officer.

“Anything from the Flag?” he asked.

“No, Citizen Captain,” the com officer replied, and he turned towards Tactical.

“Why did the flagship bring her EW on-line?” he demanded.

“I don’t know, Citizen Captain,” the tac officer replied.

“Damn!” Ensign Thomas swore as a single Peep battleship suddenly lit off every defensive electronics system she had. Those systems remained considerably inferior to the Manticoran equivalents, but they were an awful lot better than they’d been eighteen or twenty T-months earlier, and he swore again as the single ship vanished into a ball of electronic fuzz which made it impossible to see anything as small as a train of towed missile pods.