The Peeps could be here in roughly eighty-five minutes—into missile range, even with the jamming, in about eighty-four—and unlike the Peeps, Reynaud knew that the operational forts’ supply of missile pods was dangerously low. The two of them together probably couldn’t put more than a hundred and fifty into space. But Eighth Fleet’s first destroyer would arrive in eleven minutes… and its first superdreadnought would be here in twenty-six. And assuming White Haven could actually pull it off without turning his capital ships into billiard balls (or expanding plasma), another SD would arrive every one hundred and thirteen seconds after that. So he could have…

The Astro Control vice admiral’s fingers flashed, and a most unpleasant smile appeared on his face.

Vice Admiral Markham felt his heart spasm as the FTL net reported the arrival of still more enemies. He realized as quickly as Reynaud what the original Peep intent had been, and the bitterness and despair he fought to keep out of his expression deepened at the fresh proof of how utterly the RMN had underestimated the “defensive minded” People’s Navy.

But he also knew, thanks to the FTL com relays between the terminus and Medusa, that Eighth Fleet was on its way, and he bared his teeth in a death’s head grin as he, too, worked the numbers on its arrival time. It didn’t change what was going to happen to his own task group, of course. Nothing short of a direct act of God could have changed that. But it did change what was going to happen to the Peep bastards who thought they were going to kill the terminus forts and then wait to ambush Home Fleet if it tried to respond.

“Missile range in thirty-nine minutes, Sir,” his ops officer said quietly, and he nodded.

“I wonder how Citizen Admiral Giscard is making out,” Citizen Commisioner Leopold said quietly, and Darlington turned his head to meet his eyes. The people’s commissioner had spoken softly enough no one else could have heard, and the citizen admiral replied equally quietly.

“Probably just fine, so far, Sir,” he said. “I doubt he’s made contact with their main force yet.”

“I wish we could know what was happening to him,” Leopold said, and Darlington shrugged.

“If we had the FTL relays the Manties have, we could, Sir. Without them, we can only guess. But it doesn’t really matter. Nothing that happens that far in-system can have any immediate effect on us, and even if the Medusa picket turned out to be a hell of a lot heavier than we thought and it killed every one of the Citizen Admiral’s ships and then came after us, we’d have plenty of warning to hyper out before it got here.”

He glanced back up, and his mouth twitched as he saw the stricken look on Leopold’s face.

“I didn’t mean that I think anything of the sort is going to happen, Citizen Commissioner,” he said with a barely suppressed chuckle. “I only meant to present a worst-possible-case scenario.”