Jackson had worried that Ellsworth bunched up too tightly and had approached too close in his run, but second guessing a dead man's tactical decisions wasn't something he was keen on at the moment. Especially not a man he'd respected and considered a friend.

"Tell the Broadsword they're now lead ship," he said, talking around the lump in his throat. "Get them back up past the fourth planet and tell them to standby. Maintain a defensive posture."

"Admiral, a large section of the Gladius is still whole. It's the stern and the engines appear to be intact. Our standing orders are to—"

"I understand, Commander," Jackson said. "Tell Captain Risher to handle it. Check for escape pods, and then leave nothing for the enemy to analyze."

"Yes, sir."

The crew worked with their heads down as Hawkins directed Risher to fire a missile back at the tumbling hulk of the Gladius's stern section. The Super Valkyrie was loaded with so much bleeding edge tech they couldn't risk the Alliance getting ahold of it and analyzing the materials and engineering behind it.

Jackson had taken losses before, but that didn't mean it ever got easier. The toughest part for him was the fact he was required to still be an authoritative figure and lead in the face of tragedy. There was no pause to reflect or for recriminations when he thought his orders had led to needless deaths. He had to press on. There was also the guilt that came with those feelings as he angrily told himself the deaths of his spacers wasn't about him.

"Sensors, let me see everything we have on that ship hiding behind the moon of the fourth planet still," he said. The operators quickly brought up all the data they'd collected and put it on the main screen and sent it to his seat terminal for him to review.

The single ship still hadn't give them a good enough look to get a full radar profile for it, but he felt in his gut it had to be the Implacable. There was no other logical explanation—other than propulsion issues—why a single ship would be left behind. He looked at the system topography, seeing what was there he could use to mask his approach.

Jumping the Nemesis in too close was an enormous risk with little reward, so he needed to determine the best way to come at the target. He could come in at speed, guns hot, and try to catch them by surprise, or he could try a slow stalk and hope they weren't running active radar in their effort to hide.

He could also order Captain Risher up to the moon to try and flush the ship into the open and identify it, but after losing two Federation destroyers in a fight to protect the capital world of their enemy, he no longer felt comfortable putting them in harm's way.

"What's your analysis of the battlespace, Commander," he asked Hawkins.

"The loss of two of his formations has collapsed Kohl's strategy in the inner system," the CIC OIC said, pointing to the latest Link data. "Unless he brings down his reserve forces from the outer system, Captain Chang now has the advantage. The remaining Xinjian ships should be able to block the remaining ships above and below while pinching in and taking them out. They'll take losses, but not as many as they would have without our intervention." Jackson nodded his head at Hawkins's concise grasp of the overall picture within the system.