Eleventh Fleet’s alpha translation had been as neat as any Filareta had ever seen, with minimal scatter of its units and on almost the exact heading he’d wanted. Oh, Uruguay had been off slightly—he’d wanted to shave the margin on the hyper limit even tighter—but that was inevitable after such a long hyper trip. The hyper log gave an astrogator a reasonably accurate running position, but “reasonably accurate” over interstellar distances could leave just a bit to be desired, and allowing for the difference in intrinsic velocities between departure point and the arrival star system could be tricky, too. Getting an entire fleet to the right place at the right time, in the right formation, and keeping it that way through an alpha translation while simultaneously carrying the desired relative velocity across the hyper wall was an art, as well as science, in a lot of ways.

On the other hand, skilled at her job or not, Uruguay would have been much too senior for a staff astrogator, in most navies, even on the staff of a fleet the size of Filareta’s current command. He knew that, and ever since this business with the Manties had blown up, he’d been thinking about the rank inflation that was such an integral, ancient, and time-honored part of the Solarian League Navy.

Assuming we don’t end up finishing this whole business this afternoon, he reflected, we’re going to have to do something about that. Our entire rank structure’s so frigging bloated it’s no wonder we’ve all got hardening of the professional arteries! But I have to say, Yvonne did do a damned good job.

“How long do you think it’s going to take them to get around to challenging us, Sir?” Admiral Burrows asked.

“Well, they have to have noticed we’re here,” Filareta replied dryly. “We didn’t exactly go for subtle, after all.”

He pursed his lips thoughtfully, considering Burrows’ question. His orders had left how he presented the League’s demands to the Manties to his own discretion, and he and Burrows had considered the matter at some length. One thing Filareta had been determined to avoid was any repeat of Sandra Crandall’s asinine antics at Spindle. He wasn’t going to hold any two-way conversations with minutes-long delays built into the middle of them. And he wasn’t going to hang around for a couple of days before getting down to business, either.