But what was possible for the generating warship was impossible for its foes. Civilian impeller drives generated a single stress band in each aspect; military impeller drives generated a double band and filled the space between them with a sidewall, for good measure. Hostile sensors might be able to analyze the outermost band, but they couldn’t get accurate readings on the inner ones, and that was why no one could target something on their far side.

“Admiral Hemphill’s deceleration is holding steady, Sir.” His chief of staff broke into D’Orville’s thoughts with a fresh update from Tactical. “We should enter missile range in another twenty minutes.”

“What’s the latest on her detached squadron?”

“We got a good cross-cut on their transmissions about twelve minutes ago, Sir. They’re way the hell and gone in-system.”

Captain Lewis’s completely neutral tone almost shouted his derision for their opponent, and D’Orville hid a smile of agreement. Sonja was going to look mighty bad when they got done kicking her posterior clear back to the capital, and that was exactly what was going to happen to her if she tried a stand-up fight without those detached dreadnoughts. She should have gone on running until they could join up, not challenged this soon, but at least their absence explained her course. She was well off a direct heading for the planets she was supposed to be defending for the simple reason that it was the shortest route to the ships she’d forgotten to bring to the dance, and D’Orville was sadly tempted to ignore her and go kiting straight for the objective. It would be highly satisfying to “nuke” Manticore without letting Sonja fire a single shot in its defense, but his assigned objective was to capture the capital planet, not just raid it. Besides, no tactician worth his gold braid would pass up the opportunity to crush two-thirds of the enemy’s forces in detail. Especially in one of the rare cases in which the opposition couldn’t disengage without uncovering an objective they must hold.

“Is our deployment complete?” he asked.

“Yes, Sir. The scouts are falling back behind the wall now.”

“Good.”

D’Orville glanced into the huge main tactical tank, double-checking Lewis’s report in pure reflex. His capital ships had spread into the traditional “wall of battle,” stacked both longitudinally and vertically into a formation one-ship wide and as tight as their impeller wedges permitted. It wasn’t a very maneuverable arrangement, but it allowed the maximum possible broadside fire; and since they could no more shoot out through their impeller bands than an enemy could shoot in through them, it was the only practical way to accomplish that.

He checked the chronometer against Tactical’s projections again. Seventeen minutes to extreme missile range.

The first missiles went out as the range dropped. Not a lot of them—the chances of a hit at this distance were slight, and not even capital ships could pack in an inexhaustible supply of them—but enough to keep the other side honest.