“Not on any sort of one-to-one basis, though,” Goodrick argued.

“Depends on how old the ship of the wall’s design is,” Brigham said. “Against a pre-pod ship, a Courvoisier has a damned good chance, actually. She can roll enough pods to throw salvos that can saturate even an SD’s missile defenses. Not a lot of them, maybe, but enough to do the job against one, maybe even two, of the older classes. And once she’s beaten down the SD’s offensive fire, she’s actually got the energy weapons to get through its defenses, as well. And if two or three Courvoisiers concentrate on a single target, even an SD(P) will find herself in trouble. She’d have to get through to them and start killing them really quickly if she didn’t want them to do exactly the same thing to her.”

Goodrick looked shocked by the very notion, and Brigham grinned at him.

“Not only that, and not only are the Courvoisiers a hell of a lot more dangerous in energy-range, but the designers used the new automation systems even more heavily than they did in the design of the Harrington class, as well. The crews are really, really small. As a matter of fact, you can run one of the new ships with a few as three hundred people if you really have to.”

“Three hundred?” Goodrick repeated in something very like disbelief, and Brigham nodded.

“Three hundred,” she confirmed. “That kind of reduction in life support requirements, coupled with the hollow core design, explains how they were able to pack an enormously powerful graser broadside into the new design. They only have about two-thirds as many mounts as their predecessors did, but the ones they have are just as powerful as those the Harrington-class mount.”

“Which was the real point of the design, when you come right down to it, Wraith,” Honor put in. “Oh, not the energy broadside, per se, and not the ability to go toe-to-toe with superdreadnoughts, either. What the Graysons have built is a battlecruiser to do to older battlecruiser designs what the SD(P) can do to older superdreadnoughts. So if the Andermani have been pursuing the same design philosophy, the ships Captain Bachfisch has just described to us are going to be even more dangerous than anything we’ve predicted this so far.”

“That was my own thought,” Bachfisch agreed.

“Have you seen—or heard anything about—proper pod-armed ships of the wall, Sir?” Lieutenant Commander Reynolds sounded more than a little anxious, and Bachfisch shook his head.

“No, I haven’t, Commander. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean they don’t have any; only that if they do, I haven’t seen them. By the same token, though, it occurred to me the other day that you can build battlecruisers a hell of a lot faster than you can build ships of the wall. It may be that they have SD(P)s in the final design stage or even under construction but not yet in commission.”

“Which could be why they’re still ratcheting up the pressure but haven’t actually made their move yet,” Rafe Cardones thought aloud.