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She paused again, waiting to see if there were any questions. There were none, and she resumed.
"In addition to the naval units and repair ships, the drone also picked up half a dozen large freighters. There's no way to know why they were there, but it seems like an excessive concentration of merchant to
She banished the schematic of Eroica Station back to the borders of the system display and a green line drew itself from a point just outside the system hyper limit to an arrowhead pointed directly at the Station.
"In the broadest possible terms, what we intend to do is make our alpha translation just beyond the hyper limit. As soon as we emerge into normal-space, Volcano will begin decelerating, since we have no intention of taking your ship into the path of any missiles, Captain Badmachin."
"That's nice to know, Commander," Commander Badmachin said with a throaty chuckle. "My hull's too thin to react well to sharp pointy objects or lasers."
"That's what the Captain thought, too," Kaplan told her with a grin. "At the same time as you begin decelerating, however, you'll also begin deploying missile pods. We're reverting to older tactics, and we'll go in with heavy loads on tow. Eroica Station may have Solly capital missiles for its tubes, but there's no way they have anything that can match the powered range of our pods or Hexapuma 's Mark 16s.
"Once the pods are distributed, we'll continue towards Eroica Station. We'll make turnover to decelerate to rest relative to the Station at approximately eight million kilometers, which should put us a million and a half klicks outside their best range. That will enable us to keep them under our guns while we negotiate. We'll also deploy a shell of sensor remotes to cover our flanks. Frankly, it would be suicidal for the remainder of the Monican Navy to try to engage us, even if it had a chance of sneaking through our sensor coverage, but we don't intend to take any chances.
"If the Captain and Mr. Van Dort achieve a negotiated resolution, we'll also be close enough to get positive sensor confirmation of their evacuation of Eroica Station. Once we're reasonably confident the Station has, in fact, been evacuated, we'll send in the Squadron's Marines in pi
"Even the most accurate bombardment with laser heads is going to inflict collateral damage," she said, looking up from the system plot to meet their combined gazes squarely. "At eight million klicks, our fire control should give us good accuracy, and we'll do our level best to restrict our fire to the battlecruisers. Our objective is to neutralize those ships, Ladies and Gentlemen, not to kill Monicans and not to wreck Eroica Station. We aren't even interested in destroying their defensive missile launchers or their point defense stations, if we can take out the battlecruisers without engaging those installations. Nonetheless, if it comes down to it and we're required to open fire, we are going to inflict serious damage to at least the military component of the Station, and we are going to kill Monican perso
She fell silent again, looking at them while they looked back, then nodded slightly.
"That's the general outline," she said. "Now I'll take you back through it in more detail and discuss individual ship assignments. I'd appreciate it if you'd hold questions till the end, when I'll try to go back and answer them all as fully as possible."
She waited until everyone nodded in understanding, then began.
"As soon as we make our alpha translation, Captain Badmachin, your ship will-"