“I don’t know, but somebody clearly needs his ass kicked up between his ears, Ma’am!” Takeuchi replied harshly. “And, frankly, a part of me wishes his damn system-defense force really would try to stop us.”

Tsang grunted in agreement, but her brain was busy with the potential ramifications. And with that secret clause of her orders. She hadn’t liked it when she’d seen it, but she’d comforted herself that it was going to remain a moot point. Now it looked like it might not, and the potential consequences of the Beowulfers’ position appalled her.

Her task force consisted of just over a hundred superdreadnoughts, accompanied by two dozen supply ships and transports and screened by twenty-five cruisers and forty destroyers. That was a hell of a lot more tonnage than she could possibly fit through the Beowulf Terminus in a simultaneous transit, but the ops plan called for her to provide additional reinforcements for the main body of Eleventh Fleet after the Manties’ surrender. And it was also the next best thing to three times the total combat strength of the Beowulf System Defense Force’s thirty-six superdreadnoughts. If the Beowulfers were stupid enough to provoke a shooting incident, it would be a very short and—from their perspective—very ugly affair.

That’s probably what Crandall was thinking before Spindle, a corner of her brain suggested, but then she scowled.

Maybe so, she told that corner, but Crandall was going up against Manties, and whatever new designs the Manties may’ve come up with, we know what Beowulf has. Oh, they might have a couple of little wrinkles we don’t know about, but they sure as hell don’t have the Manties’ new damned designs! If they did, we’d know about it already.

“They’ve got to be bluffing, Ma’am,” Takeuchi said. “They can’t really want to get thousands of their people killed just to protect a bunch of neobarbs against their fellow Solarians!”

“You’re probably right,” Tsang agreed. “At the same time, let’s not let ourselves invest too much confidence in that theory.”

“Are you—Forgive me, Ma’am, but are you serious?” Takeuchi demanded, and she barked an unhappy laugh.