The Peeps had CLACs… and no one had even suspected it. Or, even worse, if anyone had, they’d kept their suspicions to themselves. And this was the result. Disaster unmitigated.

Even as the huge cloud of LACs flashed towards her, some detached observer in her brain was visualizing all of the other system pickets. Most of them, unlike Tequila, had at least a division of capital ships, or a battlecruiser squadron, or a dozen cruisers or so, to back up the LACs expected to bear the brunt of system defense. But it wasn’t going to matter. If the Peeps had committed three CLACs to Tequila, where they had to know the picket was so understrength, then they’d committed more to the systems where they expected something approaching respectable resistance. And no one in any of those systems knew what was headed for them any more than al-Salil and Schumacher had.

It would be like an avalanche. Not one of snow and tumbling boulders, but of laser heads and grasers. Waves of LACs and thundering broadsides. Of broken Manticoran starships and shattered light attack craft. And there was nothing at all that anyone could do to stop it. Not now.

She heard her own voice issuing orders, overriding the COLAC’s targeting designations. Her own Shrikes’ tac officers responded quickly, almost as if they didn’t realize how complete the catastrophe was. She heard al-Salil frantically issuing commands of his own, but she paid them little heed. They were half incoherent to begin with, and even if they hadn’t been, it was too late.

Her squadron launched even while al-Salil was still gibbering away. She launched on her own authority, with no orders, and at the oncoming enemy LACs rather than the starships whose defenses her Shrikes’ light missile loads could never have penetrated.

Then she hunkered down in her command chair, braced her forearms on the armrests, and watched the holocaust come.

· · • · ·

De Groot grimaced as a single Manty LAC squadron launched every bird it had. The rotary launchers which were the central feature of modern LAC design couldn’t be “flushed” in a single salvo the way the old-style box launchers could be. But they could come close, and that single squadron got every offensive missile away before her own squadrons reached launch range.

That fire reached deep into her LACs’ formation. Eighteen of them were destroyed outright. Seven more were crippled, five so badly that there wouldn’t be any point in repairing them. Another eight took lighter damage.

But then it was the turn of the remaining seven hundred and sixty Cimeterres.

Commander Clapp’s “triple ripple” roared outward. The magazines of two hundred of the Republican vessels fed that onrushing wave of missiles. The other five hundred and sixty held their fire, waiting.

Agnes de Groot watched the first wave of ferocious detonations sweeping away Manty EW drones like a broom of brimstone. Even from here, she could almost feel the despair enveloping the enemy as they realized what was happening, but it was far too late for them to do anything about it.