Lorelei didn’t need to be in close proximity to anyone, and its emitters were much more powerful than Halo’s. The false targets Lorelei generated were still far weaker than those of genuine superdreadnoughts, but they could be interposed between those superdreadnoughts and the threat. More, they could be physically separated from the ships they were trying to protect…and the signatures they generated had been artfully camouflaged. Yes, they were weaker and dimmer than a true starship might have produced, but what they looked like was an all-up starship using its own EW systems to make its signature as weak and dim as possible.

And, as a final touch, over a third of Andrea Jaruwalski’s Loreleis had been deployed to keep formation on one another as complete, false squadrons of ships-of-the-wall. Squadrons which maneuvered in perfect synchronization with Eighth Fleet’s real squadrons but lay on the threat axis, deliberately exposed to the incoming tsunami of Solarian missiles.

Those missiles took the targets they’d been offered.

Not all of them were spoofed. Not even Lorelei was that good. But where multiple thousands of Manticoran laser heads had ravaged Filareta’s fleet, no more than seven hundred actually reached Honor’s, and they were no match for the defensive fire of her dispersed squadrons and their attached close-defense LACs. Seventeen of her superdreadnoughts took hits; only two took significant damage.

Honor looked at the main plot’s damage sidebar and felt her eyebrows rise. When she’d seen the initial acceleration rates on the Solarian missiles, she’d anticipated severe losses of her own. Instead—

“Simulation concluded,” a voice announced, and the displays froze. “I can see we’re going to have to go back to the drawing board to make you people work for it, Your Grace.”

“Thank you, Captain Emerson,” she said to the smiling senior grade captain whose image had just replaced her “tactical plot.” She nodded to him, then looked at her staff.

“Good work, People,” she told them. “That was solid. Dinner at Harrington House tonight, down on the beach. The beer’s on me; the surf forecast looks good; my dad’s already basting the barbecue; and Mac’s got something special planned for desert. So don’t be late—and bring friends, if you’ve got them!”

“All right!” Brigham responded, and Honor smiled as the others whistled and applauded enthusiastically.

“I hope it doesn’t take you very long to touch up those scuff marks on your paintwork,” another, closer voice said dryly under cover of the staffers’ obvious pleasure.

“Oh, I think we can probably manage our repairs fairly promptly,” she replied, still smiling as she turned to face Thomas Theisman.