She shook her head at the other woman, declining to explain her humor. It wouldn’t have done much for her image as a calm, cool combat commander. Besides, she wasn’t sure how much of it was a tension reaction. Everyone had felt nerves tighten as Scanning got a better read on the seventeen point sources. They had expected two battlecruisers and three heavy cruisers; they’d gotten six BCs and four CAs, with two light cruisers as a screen. In the final analysis, the additional firepower shouldn’t make much difference, but that hadn’t kept the increased odds from making them all wonder what other surprises the Peeps might have in store for them.

Not that we don’t have a few surprises of our own, Honor thought more grimly. She glanced at a secondary plot, this one showing the two green icons hiding behind Niflheim, the outermost of Hell’s three moons. Krashnark and Bacchante held their positions, concealed from any Peep sensor in the moon’s shadow but ready to dash out firing at need. They wouldn’t add much to the orbital defenses’ sheer weight of fire, but their mobility gave them a tactical value all their own… not to mention what the realization that her people had already seized at least two enemy ships might do to the Peeps’ morale.

The convoy from Shilo made its last course alteration, swinging just outside the innermost ring of mines and settling into parking orbit. Their short-range active sensors were on-line, but that was no more than a sensible precaution this close to such a massive concentration of mines. It was always possible for the station-keeping drive on one or more mines to fail and send the weapons into what was supposed to be a safety zone, and no sane captain (even an SS captain, apparently) wanted to be taken by surprise when something like that happened. But the incoming ships obediently shut down their wedges as they came up on their assigned orbital positions, and Honor looked up as Phillips leaned towards her tactical officer.

“Any sign of active weapon systems?”

“No, Ma’am,” the lieutenant commander at Tactical replied. “And they’re powering down the nodes on the freighters.”

“Only on the freighters?” Phillips’ voice started out sharply, but she got control of it by the third word and smoothed it out quickly.

“So far,” the tac officer confirmed. “Wait one… We’ve got node power-down on the cruisers, as well, Commander, but the battlecruisers are showing standby power readings.”

Phillips said something under her breath, then glanced at Honor, who shrugged more calmly than she felt.

“It was always a possibility,” she said evenly. “If I were in command up there, I’d probably do the same thing with all my ships, not just the battlecruisers. It’s the only way they can hope to execute any radical maneuvers quickly enough to do some good if a mine does come adrift up there. But it won’t make much difference against the amount of firepower we can actually hit them with.”