Still, she told herself grimly, the Peeps would at least know they’d been nudged. And she owed it to her own people not to let her own crushing sense of despair affect her own effectiveness. If they were going to die anyway, then it was her job to keep her own head clear and make their deaths mean at least something by expending them as effectively as possible. And, who knew, maybe—The plot changed suddenly, and Sarah Flanagan’s heart seemed to stop.

Apparently the Peep commander wasn’t quite the idiot she’d thought.

· · • · ·

Agnes de Groot smiled like a hungry wolf as the master plot changed.

The incoming Manty strike was a confusing mass of red light dots. That was their infernally effective onboard ECM, coupled with the capability of their decoys and jammers. Still, as far as de Groot could tell, there were fewer EW birds covering them than had been projected, and CIC seemed to be getting a better count on the hostiles than she’d hoped for. It was always possible, of course, that they were being allowed to get “a better count” by Manty electronics officers with their ECM in deception mode, but she didn’t think so. It looked to her as if she had genuinely caught the Manties completely unprepared and with very little idea of how to respond to the unanticipated threat.

Which, she thought ferociously, had just become an even greater threat than they’d imagined.

The large green beads of three of her “superdreadnoughts” were suddenly surrounded by clouds of smaller green fireflies, dashing away from them, as they launched full groups of Cimeterre-class LACs. NavInt’s sources all confirmed that the Manties had stuck with their original, basically dreadnought-sized CLACs. Given the compensator advantages which the Manticoran Alliance had enjoyed for years, it gave them the best combination of LAC capacity and acceleration. But the Republican Navy had adopted a different philosophy. Its CLACs were visualized as primarily defensive platforms, mobile bases for the LACs intended to protect the wall of battle from long-range Manty LAC strikes. As such, there was no reason to make them any faster than the superdreadnoughts they would be protecting, and all of that lovely tonnage advantage could be put into additional LAC bays.

Which meant that whereas a Manty CLAC could pack approximately one hundred and twelve LACs into its bays, a Republican Aviary-class carried well over two hundred.

Now seven hundred-plus Cimeterres went charging outward to meet less than a third that many Manty LACs which were far too close at far too high a closing speed to even hope to evade them.

· · • · ·

They were all dead… and for nothing.

The thought stabbed through Sarah Flanagan’s mind with cold, unspeakable bitterness as she realized how utterly the Royal Navy had failed in its most basic responsibilities to its Queen and to its own people. It wasn’t just al-Salil and Schumacher after all. It was the entire Navy, from ONI to Flanagan herself, and something deep inside her—the something which had sent her into her Queen’s uniform in the first place—shriveled in shame.