The very first InSec system CO had taken it upon herself to instigate the procedure as a “security measure,” and no one had ever bothered to countermand her orders. As nearly as Honor could figure out, the high transit had been designed as an additional means of identification. Because it represented an atypical approach pattern, Camp Charon’s tracking officers would be able to recognize friends even before they transmitted their IDs in-system. Given how much sensor reach and tracking time Charon had, the maneuver was among the more pointless ones Honor had ever come across. The planetary garrison had ample time to identify anything that came calling long before it reached their engagement envelope, and over the years, the high approach had probably cost hundreds of millions of dollars in gradual, unnecessary wear on the alpha nodes of the ships that had executed it.

But it had never even been questioned. Indeed, by now, she suspected, no one had the least idea why the measure had been instituted in the first place. It was simply a tradition, like the equally irrational RMN tradition that light cruisers and destroyers could approach one of the Star Kingdom’s orbital shipyards from any bearing, but heavy cruisers and capital ships always approached from behind, overtaking the yard in orbit. No doubt there had once been a reason (of some sort, at least) for that; today, neither Honor nor anyone else in the Navy knew what it had been. It was simply the way things were done.

But if the reason for the SS’s traditional approach to Hell really didn’t matter at the moment, the fact that it had offered Honor the chance to lay the equivalent of a deep space ambush certainly did, and she’d grabbed it. There was always the chance that someone would break the pattern, but if they followed it, she could make a much more precise prediction than usual of where they would drop into normal-space… and of the course they would pursue after they did. That was why she had chosen to hold her ships where they were while her crews worked doggedly in the simulators. She could have kept them in orbit around Hell or hidden them behind the planet’s moons, but they could carry out sims as well here as there, and if someone happened to come calling in the meantime…

As someone had, she told herself, and opened her eyes once more.

“Their time to Hades?” she asked Thurman crisply.

“CIC makes it roughly six and a quarter hours, with turnover a hundred and eighty-two minutes after arrival, Ma’am.” Thurman glanced at her pad, then checked her chrono. “Call it another six hours even from right now for a zero-zero intercept.”

“They won’t go for a zero-zero,” Honor said, and one or two of the people seated at her table looked at her a bit oddly as they heard the absolute assurance in her voice. She felt their reservations and turned her head to give them one of her crooked grins. “Think about it, people,” she suggested. “They didn’t bring all those escorts along just to say hello to Warden Tresca! The fact that they’re present in such force indicates that they have to be suspicious, at the very least. And that means that whoever’s in command over there has no intention whatsoever of straying into Camp Charon’s powered missile envelope.”