“The older SDs are in better shape on a percentage basis,” he went on, “but they can’t pump the kinds of broadsides the SD(P)s can. We’ve got maybe another fifteen minutes. After that, we’ll be down to salvos too light to penetrate that damned defense of theirs from this range.”

“Alistair’s right, Honor,” Alice Truman said from her own screen. “And my LACs can’t catch them from here. Not before they make it across the limit. Alfredo’s could intercept, but we can’t support them.”

Honor nodded—not in agreement, but in acknowledgment of unpalatable reality. She’d sprung her trap perfectly and savaged the Havenites brutally. Her own losses were painful, but only a fraction of what she’d done to them, and she knew it. But even so, almost half of the enemy fleet was going to escape. They’d held together with too much discipline, and their missile defense doctrine had proven too hard a nut to crack without more MDM firepower then she had. And even if her LACs had been able to intercept, she knew what would happen if she committed them against the close-in defenses which had so badly blunted her missile attack.

Which was the reason she couldn’t possibly commit Alfredo’s LACs to an unsupported attack.

“You’re right—both of you,” she said after a moment. She looked back at her plot, where only a handful of missiles continued to launch from the shattered ranks of the Havenite fleet. The enemy was decisively routed and broken, but even though every bone in her body longed to run the survivors down and complete their destruction, she knew she couldn’t do it.

“We’ll continue the pursuit.” Her soprano was calm, giving no more hint of her intense frustration than it did of the pain of her own losses. “Alistair, I want you to reprioritize our missile fire. We’re not going to be able to hammer our way through those defenses by saturating them, so I want you to slow your rate of fire and pick your targets carefully. Use delayed activation launches to thicken your broadsides while the pods last and try to concentrate on SDs with undamaged impellers. If we can slow some more of them down, our older ships of the wall can take them out as we overhaul, or else we can commit Alice’s LACs to deal with them as we go by.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” McKeon acknowledged.

“Alice, I know you’re frustrated by not getting your LACs into this yet,” Honor went on, “but at least half a dozen of those Havenite ships are going to be too slow and too beat up to get away from you. When you’re free to commit to go in after them, I want you to be sure to offer them the chance to surrender first. They’re a long way from home and badly hurt, and I don’t want to kill anyone who wants to give up.”

“Of course,” Truman agreed.

“Very well then.” Honor sat back in her command chair and nodded to both of her senior subordinates. “Harper will pass similar instructions to Alfredo. In the meantime, we have a battle to finish up. So let’s be about it, People.”