“All right,” she went on a moment later. “I’ll take a look at Truman’s message. Meanwhile I think you and Franz should probably get on the net and touch base with our squadron commanders. Be sure we’re not looking at any unanticipated delays.”

* * *

“Captain Robillard would like to speak to you, Fleet Admiral,” Sherwood Marceau said, and Tsang looked up from her CIC repeater.

“Put the Captain through,” she said.

“Yes, Ma’am.”

The image of Adrienne Warshawski’s commanding officer appeared on Tsang’s com a moment later.

“Sanelma,” Tsang said. “What can I do for you?”

“I just wanted to report we’re ready to proceed, Ma’am,” Robillard replied, and Tsang suppressed an ignoble temptation to smile. Her flag captain’s tone could not have been more respectful, yet there was a certain tartness to it. She was obviously still irritated by Takeuchi’s decision to wake Tsang—and to order the entire task force (including her ship) to bring up its impellers—before he woke Robillard. She must have been sitting there, watching the engineering displays with her thumb on the call key to make sure she got Tsang notified before Takeuchi could. For that matter, she might even have instructed her engineer not to simultaneously report readiness to her and the task force operations officer, as SOP required.

“Thank you, Sanelma,” the fleet admiral said as gravely as she could.

“You’re welcome, Ma’am,” Robillard responded with barely a trace of satisfaction, and Tsang chuckled as the display blanked.

“So I guess I did piss her off,” Admiral Takeuchi observed with a wry smile.

“She’ll recover,” Tsang said dryly, and glanced at Admiral Quill.

“Let’s get the task force moving, Franz,” she said.

“At once, Fleet Admiral!”

Of all of Tsang’s staffers, Quill came closest to being genuinely enthusiastic about Operation Arbela. In fact, he was the one who’d come up with the operation’s name. Personally, Tsang was less confident than he was that it was going to work out as well for TF 11.6 as the original battle had for Alexander of Macedon, but she’d been willing to go along with his chosen name. And at least it wasn’t as if Quill were one of those hidebound, blinkered, Solarian bigots who refused to acknowledge the possibility that the Manties might actually be able to give the SLN a genuine fight. A skeptic where the more extravagant claims about Manticoran technology were concerned, yes, but not a blind skeptic…unlike certain other officers Tsang could have named.

She stood watching the master plot for two or three minutes as her task force began accelerating towards the terminus. Then she turned back to Marceau.

“Sherwood.”

“Yes, Ma’am?”

“I suppose you’d better go ahead and notify Terminus Traffic Control that we’re going to be making transit shortly.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”