There wasn't actually all that much to choose between the individual offensive power of the two classes, which, given the difference in their tonnages, only went to prove that even the Star Knights' design was less than perfect. Powerful as the Star Knights were, too little of their volume was allocated to offensive systems, in Honor's opinion, and too much was used on defense, probably as a reaction against the perceived shortcomings of their predecessors.

The newer class's more powerful sidewall generators, heavier armor, better electronic warfare capabilities, and more numerous point defense systems made them at least thirty percent tougher than the older Prince Consorts, and BuShips fully recognized the need for a better balance between offense and defense. Unfortunately, the need for cruiser flagships meant the yards were churning out Star Knights as quickly as they could, given the limited amounts of space which could be diverted from capital ship construction for any sort of cruiser, and that had significantly delayed introduction of the new Edward Saganami-class ships. The Saganamis, ten percent larger than the Star Knights and designed to take full advantage of the Navy's current battle experience and to incorporate the best balance of Grayson and Manticoran concepts, should have entered the construction pipeline over three T-years ago, but BuShips had decided it couldn't afford to divert building capacity to a new class (which, undoubtedly, would have its own share of production-oriented bugs to overcome) when the need for volume production was so acute. And so the Star Knights continued to be built to a basic design which was now eighteen years old. To be sure, their design had been on the cutting edge when it was finalized, and, like the Prince Consorts, they had been materially upgraded since, but even with as heavy a refit schedule as deployment pressures would permit, the class was losing its superiority over the Peeps.

In a way, Honor thought, standing to one side while she watched McKeon’s bridge crew, that illustrates the entire problem Earl White Haven and I... disagreed over. (She was slightly, and pleasantly, surprised to feel only the smallest twinge as she thought about the earl.) We've still got the tech edge on a ship-for-ship, ton-for-ton basis, but it's shrinking. We can't afford that, but unless we can somehow find a way to break the traditional building patterns, our advantage is going to continue to erode. It won't be anything dramatic or obvious in the short term, but in the long term...

She gave herself a mental shake and commanded herself to stop woolgathering and pay attention as Lieutenant Commander Sarah DuChene, McKeon’s astrogator, completed her final course adjustments and looked at her captain.

"Ready to translate in eight minutes, Sir."

"Very good. Communications, inform the flagship," McKeon said.

"Aye, aye, Sir. Transmitting now." Lieutenant Russell Sanko, Prince Adrian’s com officer, depressed a key to send the stored burst transmission. "Transmission complete, Sir."

"Thank you. Very well, Sarah. The con is yours."

"Aye, aye, Sir. I have the con. Helm, prepare to translate on my command."

"Aye, aye, Ma'am. Standing by to translate," the cruisers helmswoman replied.

Honor walked quietly over to stand beside McKeon’s command chair, careful to stay out of his way but placed to watch his repeater plot more comfortably, and he looked up to give her a small smile. Then he turned to Lieutenant Commander Metcalf.

Honor nodded to herself as he and the tac officer began a quiet discussion. Unlike her flagship, Prince Adrian had no internal FTL transmitter. The technology hadn't existed when she was built, and finding room to retrofit the impeller node modifications required to project the gravity pulses upon which the system relied would have required complete rebuilding, not just a refit. Any ship could use its standard gravitic detectors to read an FTL message (assuming it knew what to look for), and Prince Adrian’s recon drones, built to a more modern design than their mother ship and with enormously smaller impeller nodes, mounted less powerful transmitters for long-range reconnaissance missions. But the ship's onboard transmission capability was limited to light-speed, which meant that, since Alvarez was still nine light-minutes astern of Prince Adrian in hyper-space (which translated to an n-space distance of almost nine light-days), the message Sanko had transmitted would take approximately six minutes to reach the flagship, during which Alvarez and her charges would continue to advance through hyper at sixty percent of light-speed (which translated to an apparent velocity of 2,500 c in normal-space terms). The main body of Convoy JNMTC-76 would reach the point at which Prince Adrian had translated into n-space seven minutes after that, but rather than follow McKeon immediately out of hyper, the other ships would decelerate to zero and wait another two hours before beginning their own translations. The delay was designed to give Prince Adrian time to sort out her sensor picture and move far enough in-system to be sure no nasty surprises awaited them.

That precaution was almost certainly unnecessary here, and some convoy commanders would have skimped on it, but the safety of those ships and all the people and material aboard them was Honor's responsibility. Time wasn't in such short supply that she couldn't afford to spend a couple of hours insuring against even unlikely dangers, and McKeon’s quiet double-checking of his tactical sections preparations with Metcalf showed that he shared her determination to do things right.

"Translation in one minute," DuChene announced, and Honor felt a shared, unstated tension grow about her. No hardened spacer ever admitted it, but no one really enjoyed the speed at which warships routinely made transit from hyper. Prince Adrian wasn't contemplating a true crash translation, but she'd translate on a steep enough gradient to make every stomach aboard queasy, and her crew knew it.

"Translating... now!" DuChene said crisply, and Honor grimaced and gripped her hands more tightly together behind her as the bottom dropped out of her midsection.

"Hmmm... ."

Citizen Commander Luchner, executive officer of PNS Katana, looked up at the soft, interested sound from his tactical section. Citizen Lieutenant Allworth was hardly in the same league as Citizen Rear Admiral Tourville’s new tac witch, yet, but he was learning from her example. For that matter, so was Luchner. Katana had been part of the citizen rear admiral's task group for almost a year, and that task group had done well, by the Peoples Navy's standards, during that period. But Foraker, now... She'd brought something new, an almost innocently arrogant confidence, to the task group, and it seemed to be contagious.

Luchner hoped so, anyway, as he watched the citizen lieutenant make very slow and careful adjustments at his panel. Allworth’s eyes were rapt, focused on his readouts with unusual intensity, yet that wasn't particularly noteworthy. The tac officer managed to find something to interest him on any given watch. But he seemed to be taking longer than usual to decide that he'd picked up some natural phenomenon, and Luchner walked over to stand beside him.

"What?" he asked quietly.

"Not sure, Citizen Exec." Allworth might be emulating Citizen Commander Foraker's professional competence, but he had no intention of imitating her occasional, dangerous lapses into counterrevolutionary forms of address. Not until my reputation is as good as hers, anyway! he thought absently. "It could be nothing... but then again, it could just be a hyper footprint."