He frowned unhappily at the thought of what that said about Manty sensors and their ability to track elusive targets, but LACs were still LACs. No matter how accurate they were, they couldn’t pack in the firepower to seriously threaten a waller! And the Manties had let the platforms get close enough to do a hard count on the SDs in Tango Two before they killed them, too. Which meant he knew there weren’t any more wallers hiding out there. No admiral this side of Sandra Crandall or Josef Byng would leave his ships sitting with cold impellers if there was even a chance missiles might be flying around shortly. And no matter how good Manty stealth might be, an SD’s impellers would have burned through it at that piddling a little range.

They’re close enough I can get to them and too far from Tango One for anyone to support them.

Anticipation glowed within him, even hotter because he’d never dared to hope Harrington would present him with an opportunity like this one, and he made himself stand back and think.

Alpha or Bravo, Massimo? he asked himself. Take it slow, or run right in?

He glanced at the chrono. His original ops plan had called for him to make the decision about his final approach to the hyper limit at about this point anyway, but the Manties’ faulty dispositions lent added urgency to the choice. Under Approach Alpha, Eleventh Fleet would begin decelerating, reducing its velocity to a relative crawl by the time it hit the limit in order to minimize how long it would take to get back across the limit, if that became necessary. Under Approach Bravo, the fleet would maintain acceleration all the way in, which would get it into effective range of the planet (and any defenders) as quickly as possible but also meant he’d have to go far deeper into the system before he could kill his approach velocity and get back to the hyper limit.

The truth was that he’d seen Bravo as a desperation move, the rush of a boxer trying to get close, inside a larger opponent’s longer, heavier reach where he might be able to get in a few punches of his own. And, he admitted, given the Manties’ reported higher acceleration rates, he hadn’t really expected it to work.