"Yes, Sir. We'll do our best, but there's no way we can get complete coverage with so few units for a sphere that size."

"I know. Do your best, and concentrate on the most likely approach vectors from Seaford. Even if we don't have anyone in position to 'spot' them the minute they arrive, we may be able to maneuver someone into position using the pulse transmitters."

Corell nodded and punched more notes into her pad, and the admiral smiled at his subordinates.

"I'm beginning to feel a little better about this," he announced. "Not a lot, you understand, but a little. Now I want you to make me feel even better by suggesting the best possible way to use the tactical resources we hope to have available. The floor is open, ladies and gentlemen."

It was quiet on Nike's flag bridge. Twenty-six hours of frantic conferences and frenzied staff work had translated intentions into reality, and now Vice Admiral Sir Yancey Parks' forces moved to execute his orders.

No one seemed inclined to casual conversation as Admiral Sarnow and his staff watched the massive dreadnoughts and superdreadnoughts form up in their loose cruising formations, each ship well clear of her sisters' impeller wedges. The flag deck holo sphere blazed with the crawling fire of their light codes as their drives came on-line, and far flung necklaces of light cruisers and destroyers glowed ahead of them and on either flank, sensors probing the endless dark as they guarded their massive charges. The stronger drive signatures of heavy cruisers, still infinitely lighter than the ships of the wall, formed closer, tighter necklaces about each squadron, and the whole, enormous formation began to move, like a newborn constellation crawling across the sphere.

It was impressive, Honor thought, standing at Sarnow's elbow and staring down into the display with him. Very impressive. But all that ponderous firepower was headed away from them, and Battlecruiser Squadron Five's handful of emission sources seemed shrunken and forlorn as they were left to defend Hancock Station alone. She felt the chill of abandonment in her heart, and took herself sternly to task for it.

"Well, there they go," Captain Corell said quietly, and Commander Cartwright grunted agreement beside her.

"At least he left us the pods and the minelayers," the ops officer remarked after a moment, and it was Sarnow's turn to grunt. The admiral brooded down on the sphere for a long, silent minute, then sighed.

"Yes, he left them, Joe, but I don't know how much good they're going to do." He turned his back on the display, the gesture somehow deliberate and almost defiant, and looked at Honor. His mustache twitched as he smiled, but his face looked wearier and far more worn than she'd ever seen it before.

"I'm not knocking your input, Honor," he said quietly, and she nodded. He didn't omit the honorific "Dame" often. Whenever he did, she listened very carefully, for she'd learned it meant he was speaking to his tactical alter ego, not simply his flag captain.

"That was a brilliant idea about the minelayers," he went on, "and you and Ernie were right to suggest we might be able to modify our fire control to handle the pods, too. But even though Houseman may be an asshole—hell, even though he is an asshole—he was right, too. We may dazzle them with our footwork at the start, even get in a few good licks they don't expect. But if they bring in ships of the wall and keep coming, we're dead meat."

"We could always abandon the system, Sir," Cartwright suggested wryly. "After all, if Admiral Parks is willing to give up Zanzibar, he shouldn't have much room to complain if we make an, um, tactical withdrawal from Hancock."

"Mutinous sentiments if ever I heard them, Joe." Sarnow smiled again, tiredly, and shook his head. "And I'm afraid it's just not on. The Admiral overlooked a couple of points, you see—like how we evacuate the base personnel if we withdraw."

A deeper, colder chill touched Honor's heart, for that was a thought she'd tried hard not to consider. The ongoing expansion of Hancock's facilities had swelled the station's work force enormously, and the ungainly repair base was home to almost eleven thousand men and women. The squadron and its screening units might squeeze sixty or seventy percent of them aboard—assuming none of the ships were lost or badly damaged in action first—but only at the expense of ruinously overloading their environmental services. And even if they did, thirty or forty percent of the yard dogs would simply have to be left behind. And she knew one officer who would insist that it was his duty to remain if any of his people did.

"He did sort of miss out on that one, didn't he?" Captain Corell murmured, and this time Sarnow chuckled. It wasn't a very pleasant sound, but there was a germ of true humor in it, and Honor felt strangely moved after the confident front he'd projected at the squadron meeting.

"I noticed that," he agreed, and stretched his arms in an enormous yawn. "On the other hand, he had a point about the relative value of Hancock. If we lose all our allies in the area, there's not much need for a base here. More to the point, there's no way we could hold it if they set up strong blocking positions to cut us off from the rear and come at us full bore. Besides, he has to balance the possible loss of thirty or forty thousand Manticorans in Hancock against the risk to billions of civilians in the inhabited systems we're here to defend." He shook his head. "No, I can't fault that part of his reasoning. It's cold, I grant you, but sometimes an admiral has to be cold."

"But he could have avoided it, Sir." Deferential stubbornness edged Corell's voice, and Sarnow looked her way.

"Now, now, Ernie. I'm his most junior admiral. It's easy for the low man on the totem pole to urge an aggressive response—after all, it's not his head that'll roll if his CO takes his advice and screws up. And Dame Christa was right about the potential for a collision neither side really wants."

"Maybe. But what would you have done in his place?" Cartwright challenged.

"Unfair supposition. I'm not in his place. I'd like to think I'd have taken my own advice if I were, but I can't be sure of it. Heavy lies the head that wears a vice admirals beret, Joe."

"Nice evasive action, Sir," Cartwright said sourly, and Sarnow shrugged.

"Part of the job description, Joe. Part of the job description." He yawned again and waved a weary hand at Corell. "I need some rack time, Ernie. You and Dame Honor mind the store for me for a few hours, okay? I'll have my steward haul me out in time for that conference on defensive exercises."

"Certainly, Sir," Corell said, and Honor seconded her with a nod.

The admiral walked from the bridge without the usual springy energy Honor associated with him, and his three subordinates exchanged glances.

"There," Captain The Honorable Ernestine Corell said softly, "goes a man who just got royally screwed by his own CO."

Vice Admiral Parks stood watching his display as his detachments' vectors began to diverge, and his face was grim. He didn't like what he'd just done. If the Peeps came at Sarnow before Danislav arrived—

He suppressed the thought with a mental shudder. The nagging possibility that Sarnow had been right, that he'd persuaded himself into less than the optimal response, worried at him, but there were too many imponderables, too many variables. And Sarnow was too damned aggressive. Parks allowed himself a small snort. No wonder the rear admiral got along so well with Harrington! Well, at least if he had to delegate a possible fight to the death to one of his squadrons, he'd just picked the one with the command team best suited to the task.

Not that he expected it to help him sleep any better if it turned out he'd been wrong.