“Seriously,” he continued, allowing his own smile to lapse, “the initiative’s ours. If anybody has had a last-minute thought, we can still put a hold on the operation while we consider it.”

He looked around the faces of his seated staffers and their assistants. Their expressions were sober now, but they met his eyes steadily. Then he surveyed the faces of his task force and senior squadron commanders, looking back at him from the solid wall of com displays. One or two of them looked a bit more nervous, but they, too, returned his measuring gaze levelly, and he nodded.

“Good! In that case, John,” he turned to Admiral Burrows, “let’s just hit the high points one more time.”

“Of course, Sir.”

The portly chief of staff stood and walked around to the lectern at the head of the flag briefing room’s table. Normally he would have remained seated in his usual place, but today was scarcely “normal,” and every man and woman in that compartment or looking in from the display wall knew it.

“The key to our plan is the system’s astrography,” he began formally, entering the command that zoomed in the holo display on Manticore-A and its planets. “In particular, the location of the planet Sphinx.” He entered another command, and a 22-light-minute sphere around the G0-class star suddenly turned amber. “As you can see, Sphinx’s position means that—”

* * *

“Well, better late than never, I suppose.” Mercedes Brigham made a face. “Not that I’m not grateful for the extra prep time, but you’d think even Sollies could hit within, say, a couple of days of their ops schedule.”

“Now, now,” Honor said mildly, studying CIC’s preliminary analysis. “We’ve missed a few operational schedules ourselves, Mercedes.”

“True, Your Grace,” Raphael Cardones agreed. Her flag captain had been standing beside her, studying the flag bridge plot, but now he turned away from it to look at the chief of staff. “And far be it from me to point this out, Commodore, but this is amateurs’ night. This is Battle Fleet, you know. Frontier Fleet might at least have been able to find its backside if it got to use both hands, but these people?” He shook his head. “They sit on their asses while Frontier Fleet does all the work, and you’ve seen the kind of ‘gimme’ sims Lady Gold Peak pulled out of their computers! For somebody with exactly zero real operational experience and such miserable training doctrine, coming this close to meeting their schedule is downright miraculous, when you get down to it.” He smiled sourly. “As a matter of fact, I’m still trying to cope with the surprise that Solly SDs were really able to make it all the way out here in the first place. I didn’t think the engine room hamsters had it in them!”

Honor’s lips twitched unwillingly, but she gave him a moderately stern glower.