Which was especially true, Chernock reflected, when you organized an operation like this with such haste. Neither of the Roughnecks were configured to carry the bulky missile pods, and the only interstellar bulk carriers in the system had been two enormous and ridiculously slow old tubs which would have more than doubled their transit time to Cerberus.

“The battlecruisers have the most magazine capacity and the most powerful missiles,” Yearman continued. “I intend to take advantage of that capacity and range and hold the lighter ships for the cleanup work after we open the main breach. My staff will coordinate fire distribution from Tammerlane, but I want all of you to watch your plots carefully. We’ve got the capability to tear the defenses apart if we have to, but in the absence of any missile resupply we can’t afford to waste what we brought with us, and there’s going to be a hell of a lot of confusion when warheads start going off inside a densely packed shell of platforms like the one around Hades. It’s entirely possible that you, or one of your tac officers, will see some problem—or potential opening—that we’re missing from Tammerlane. If that happens, I want to hear about it in time to adjust our fire, not from your after-action reports. Understood?”

Heads nodded around the table, and he nodded back.

“Those are the high points of my intentions,” he said. “My staff has put together a more formal briefing, and we’ll get to that in a moment. Before that, however, I want to say just one more thing.

“We’re a scratch-built task group, people. Some might go further than that and call us jury-rigged, and we all know where our problems lie. I’ve worked you hard in an effort to overcome them, and I just want you to know that I’m pleased with how well you’ve responded. I feel confident that we can carry out our mission to Citizen General Chernock’s satisfaction, and I want you to pass that expression of my confidence along to your crews, as well. They’ve worked just as hard as you and I have, and if we are called to action, they’re the ones who will make it all come together in the end. Please be certain they all know I realize that.”

He looked around one more time, making eye contact with each of them in turn, then glanced at his chief of staff.

“And now, Citizen Commander Caine, why don’t you get down to the details for us?”

Chapter Forty-Eight

HONOR smiled as Nimitz crunched enthusiastically on a celery stick beside her. The ’cat sat upright on the stool to which one of her machinists had added a padded, upright rest that took the strain off his crippled midlimb, and he radiated a sense of vast contentment. The new strength their link had acquired on the planet Enki let her experience his blissful pleasure in full as he devoured the celery, and she’d discovered that the change made it much more difficult for her to ration his supply, even if he couldn’t digest Terran cellulose properly.