“The kill ratio is off the charts, Captain.” Accari shook his head in disbelief. “Even counting the two Jacobsons as friendly fire, our first volley had an effective kill rate of ninety-three percent. Forty-six enemy ships destroyed or disabled.”

“And they’re not even moving to fill in the gaps from the lost ships?” Barrett asked.

“No, sir,” Accari and Adler said in unison. The Icarus was sitting at relatively close range and the data coming over the Link from their scattered drone network had very little lag, so Celesta was able to see that the Darshik were just taking hits and not bothering to respond in any way … not even to try to get out of the way of the next fifty Shrikes that were coming in, and the fifty behind that. Something felt very, very wrong about this.

“Ma’am, personal message from the New York coming in for you,” Lieutenant Ellison said. “It’s from Admiral Wilton.”

“What classification?”

“No classification and it came over the general Fleet channel,” Ellison said.

“Send it here.” Celesta moved her terminal over and adjusted the speaker volume so that only she and her executive officer could hear it.

“Captain Wright, all of our Shrikes have been launched and I’m ordering the heavy missile cruisers back out of the system. They’re currently accelerating to hit the Juwel jump point,” Admiral Wilton said, his visage as stern and humorless as she remembered. “We’ve reviewed the logs of the attack on Ninth Squadron; you did well in turning what could have been a loss of three ships into a sound victory. I was also impressed with your sensor network you’ve deployed via the Jacobson drones. All things we’ll discuss in debrief.

“We’re currently covering the missile cruisers’ withdrawal, but we’ll soon be coming down to mop up whatever the Shrikes leave behind. It will be the New York and five Fourth Fleet destroyers, all Intrepid-class ships. Wilton out.”

“Eight destroyers and one boomer against whatever is left,” Barrett said. “He seems pretty confident that the Shrikes will make this a quick fight.”

“I’m inclined to agree with him based on what we know,” Celesta said. “The first part of this operation was supposed to be the hardest, and so far it’s been shooting fish in a barrel.”

The second and third waves of Shrikes hit as she’d expected and there were only six Darshik ships left flying once the drones rescanned the entire area. Celesta had a hard lump in her stomach. This was all wrong and her crew could sense it too. Faces looked worried and apprehensive as they went about their tasks.

“Coms, have Flight OPS send three of our drones to survey the surface of the Ushin world,” Celesta said. “OPS, make sure to send the New York our final target assessment just to back up what they’re seeing through the Link.”

“Aye, ma’am,” Accari said, unusually subdued.