"New RDS signatures popped up deep within the system. They belong to those Tritons, sir," Lieutenant Falcone said from Tactical. "All twelve ships are now accelerating at over five hundred Gs and splitting up. The Xinjian ships are now way out of position. They won't be able to recover and make an intercept, sir."

"This is it," Jackson said.

"Still no lock on the command ship?" Barrett asked.

"No, sir," Hori said.

"Coms, TF1 channel, please," Jackson said, asking for the open channel that piped onto the bridge of all the other taskforce ships.

"Go, sir."

"This is Admiral Wolfe. You're seeing the same thing we are. Go to general quarters and set your conditions to 2SS. Don't worry about any visible thermal plumes or grav signatures at this point. We need to be ready to hop into the fray when we see our opening. Wolfe out."

"Go to general quarters!" Barrett ordered. "Set condition to 2SS. Prepare the Nemesis for battle."

As it always did, a chill ran down Jackson's spine as he felt a mighty warship stir beneath his feet as she prepared to fight. The vibrations of thousands of feet running to their posts and the heart of the ship, her powerful fusion reactors, ramping up to feed weapons that could lay waste to an entire planet. It was a heady rush, yet frightening and humbling at the same time. In the back of his mind, a small voice always said no single person should ever be in control of so much power. It had taken Vadim Kohl to prove that voice right.

"Ships are now at six-hundred and eighty Gs of acceleration and holding, well beyond the structural tolerances of that class, sir," Hori said.

"Hell of a ruse," Barrett commented. "They must have them braced up inside and slapped the biggest RDS pod they made on the back of them."

"Do we have any possible targets yet?" Jackson asked.

"CIC is running probabilities. Both com drone platforms are high, the others are going for military orbital emplacements and fleet formations. None are going for the planet, sir," Hori said.

"Which means Kohl wants to clear the obstacles out before he moves his ships in," Barrett said. "Do we bother to jump in and try to intercept any of them?"

"No," Jackson said after a moment of thought. "The loss of life is regrettable, but they're not the main mission. We're here to stop Kohl from wiping out the governmental structure of the ESA, not save every spacer and technician in the system. Capable as they are, we only have six ships."

"Understood, sir. OPS, tell Commander Hawkins he better find me the enemy command ship."

"Telling him, sir."

Now that the Triton decoys had fired up an RDS drive, the taskforce was able to track it in real-time despite the distances involved. Something Fleet R&S had discovered back during the Expansion War was that a ship using a gravimetric drive could use its own drive fields to detect the presence of other RDS-equipped ships. The gravimetric wake caused detectable interference they were able to quantify and calibrate sensors to. The old system needed to have the detecting ship's drive up to at least one-third power to work. The newest version could do it at idle.