“You know, Sir,” Captain Lewis murmured, “there’s something a little weird about this.”

“Weird? How so?” D’Orville asked absently, watching the missile traces streaking towards Hemphill’s wall of battle.

“Their counter-fire’s mighty light,” Lewis said, frowning down at his own displays, “and it’s scattered pretty wide, not concentrated.”

“Umpf?” D’Orville craned his neck to glance at Tactical’s target projections, and it was his turn to frown. Lewis was right. Sonja was a great believer in concentration of fire—it was one of her few real tactical virtues, in D’Orville’s opinion—and given her numerical disadvantage, she ought to be pouring it on, hoping for a few lucky kills to decrease the odds. Only she wasn’t, and the admiral’s eyebrows drew together in puzzlement.

“Are you positive about the fix on her detached units?” he asked after a moment.

“That’s what I was thinking about myself, Sir. I’m certain our fix was solid, but what if the transmitting ship was all alone out there? You think she could be leading us into a trap?”

“I don’t know.” D’Orville rubbed his jaw and frowned harder. “It wouldn’t be like her, but Grimaldi might just have put her up to something along those lines. Bit risky if he did, though. She’d have to have them free-falling on the same base vector to pull it off, and we’ve got the edge in force levels even if her entire force were concentrated…” He wrinkled his forehead, then sighed. “Pass the word to Tactical to prepare for a radical course change just in case.”

“Yes, Sir.”

A single data code blinked angry scarlet amid the massive Aggressor formation in Honor’s display, and she grinned. She didn’t know if Admiral D’Orville’s spies (unofficial and strictly against the rules, of course) had penetrated the security screen around Fearless, but Admiral Hemphill’s spies had penetrated his own security. Not very deeply, but far enough to ID his flagship. That was one of the great potential weaknesses in any Fleet maneuver; each side had complete files on the electronic signatures of the other side’s units.

The chrono sped downward, and she raised her head to glance at McKeon and Lieutenant Venizelos.

“All right, gentlemen,” she said.

“Sir! We’ve got a new bogey, bearing—”

Captain Lewis’s frantic warning was far too late, and the range was far too short to do anything about it. Admiral D’Orville had barely begun to turn towards him when a crimson light glared on King Roger’s main status board, and damage alarms screamed as the vastly understrength grav lance smashed into the superdreadnought’s port sidewall. It was far too weak to inflict actual generator damage, but the computers noted it and obediently flashed their failure warning—just as an incredible salvo of equally understrength energy torpedoes exploded against the theoretically nonexistent sidewall.

The admiral jerked upright in his command chair while the visual display flickered and glared with the energy torpedoes’ fury. Then the display went blank, and his strangled, incredulous curse echoed across the hushed flag bridge as every weapon and propulsive system shut down.