He supposed that it was too much to hope that they would be all gone, but it would have been nice.

“Numbers?”

Carrow knew that it was bad when his sensor specialist hesitated. He just hoped it wasn’t too bad.

“Unknown. Data is still coming in, sir . . .”

He could hear the hesitation and a note of sheer panic in the younger man’s voice, so Carrow turned and looked him right in the eye.

“What is it, Soher?”

“Numbers are currently . . . one hundred and climbing . . . climbing fast, Captain.”

Carrow was stunned into silence himself for a moment. “That many? Why hold back over a hundred ships?”

“Sir, I don’t think they did,” Ensign Soher admitted, looking ill. “I’m running the extrapolation, based on the fact that we’re only getting the data at light speed . . .”

“And?” Carrow prodded him.

“If my numbers are right, they’ve got over a thousand, sir.” The green-looking ensign finally said, “That’s based on their pattern density and what I expect we’ll get from the other Trojan point, so I could be guessing high . . .”

“You could be guessing low, too . . . so many . . .” Carrow slumped a little.

He had to know, he had to be sure.

“Get me the Odysseus on FTL comm.”

“Yes sir!”

Admiral Gracen stared out into space for a moment after Captain Carrow signed off, almost afraid to give the order. It was only a moment, but she knew that it was a weakness that she couldn’t allow. Finally, she sighed heavily and nodded to where Winger was waiting.

“Go full active, across all FTL bands.”

“Aye aye, Admiral. Going full active.”

Michelle swore a moment later, causing Gracen to jerk around. She’d never heard the sensor specialist speak like that in her presence before, and didn’t think it could possibly be a good sign.

“Data . . . on displays now,” Michelle croaked out.

Gracen turned back to look ahead at the forward part of the wraparound display that surrounded the bridge, and she felt her own face turn ashen as well. The augmented display was lit up with angry red icons depicting “hostile” targets, enough so that even the ship’s prodigious computers were unable to make out one enemy vessel from another.

“How did they hide those?” Gracen asked softly, her voice horrified.

“Admiral, I’m still collating but . . .” Michelle hesitated.

“But what?”

“I think that they ate the asteroids in the Trojan point and just replaced them. With their power down we never could have told them apart from regular rocks out there, ma’am.”

“It was an ambush,” Gracen said quietly. And I blundered us right into the middle of it . . .

“Yes ma’am.”

“Ithan Chans, total rounds remaining for the waveguide cannons?” she asked, knowing that the answer almost didn’t matter.

“Fifty-eight shells, Admiral. Other ships in the squadron are similarly outfitted.”

Fifty-eight.