“Warn her not to waste any time about it,” Maitland emphasized. “We know they have multi-drive missiles now. If ONI can be that completely wrong about one thing, they can be wrong about another. So I wouldn’t be surprised if a CLAC or two turned up in their order of battle.”

“Yes, Sir.” The chief of staff paused for just a moment, then nodded his head sideways at the master plot. “Speaking of LACs, Sir, what about ours?”

“They’ll continue the attack. After all, they can’t run if we lose Incubus,” Maitland said harshly. Then he grunted again. “Just in case Rontved doesn’t make it out, though, detach one of the tin cans. We need to be certain someone gets home with a warning.”

· · • · ·

Lieutenant Commander Jeffers stood at Henry Stevens’ shoulder, staring down the tactical display while Starcrest continued to accelerate towards the hyper limit at maximum military power. The fact that their inertial compensator might fail at any moment and turn all of them into so much strawberry jam was completely beside the point as they stared at the chaos and devastation behind them.

Two of Rear Admiral Maitland’s superdreadnoughts were already gone, and the flagship was dying. Incubus was still in action, but her acceleration had fallen by over fifty percent as the damage to her beta nodes mounted. The only reason she hadn’t been destroyed outright, Jeffers thought grimly, was that her ship-to-ship combat capability was so limited. The Peeps had concentrated on anyone who might hurt them first; they could always finish Incubus off any time they chose.

It hadn’t been entirely one-sided—only almost.

Maitland’s single pod-spawned wave of missiles had hammered one Peep superdreadnought into an air-bleeding wreck and damaged two more of them. His internal launchers had concentrated on one of the two wounded SD(P)s and inflicted substantially more damage on her, and one Peep battlecruiser had been destroyed outright, while another seemed to be in little better condition.

But that was it. The LACs had done their best, and their efforts had helped to account for the one destroyed battlecruiser and inflicted damage on most of her consorts. But the Peeps aboard those starships were no longer confused and panicked by the mere sight of an impossible “super LAC.” They’d had time to think and analyze, and they recognized the weaknesses of such small, relatively fragile attackers. The LAC crews had bored in with all the guts and gallantry in the universe, and they’d actually managed to inflict at least a little damage in the process. But these superdreadnoughts’ sidewalls were intact, the vulnerable throats of their wedges were protected by bow walls almost as good as the RMN’s own, their point defense and energy gunners were waiting, and the massive armor protecting their flanks was fully capable of withstanding the pounding of even a Shrike-B’s graser long enough for their defensive fire to kill the LAC.

Incubus’ group had gotten in one good firing pass on the ships of the wall. After that, the survivors had been swatted almost negligently when they tried for a second one.