She shook herself doggedly, sagging about her bones, and sensed the same reaction from her bridge crew. Then she focused on her plot once more, and a spasm worse than translation squeezed her heart.

"Ma'am," Miyagi said hoarsely, "Protector's-"

"I see it, Nick." She closed her eyes in grief. Three million tons of ship and nine thousand people-gone in an instant. And she'd thought Defender's drive was in worse shape than Protector's... .

"Launch from Bandit Three!" her tracking officer reported suddenly. "Multiple launch!"

"Target?" Santander demanded sharply.

"Tracking on Sentinel, Ma'am. Scan shows eight incoming."

Eight! That was a full load for a Trollheim's stern battery! Heavy fire, yet not heavy enough to be automatically decisive at this range-which sounded more like a Kanga's idea than a Troll's ... thank God.

"Deploy decoys," she ordered. "Stand by to interdict."

"Aye, aye, Ma'am."

Both remaining dreadnoughts vomited decoys. Each massed well under a hundred tons, with a drive of strictly limited life, but while they lasted their scan images exactly matched that of the ship which had launched them.

Gunnery's lock on the incoming missiles was tenuous under these conditions, despite the devious scientific tricks which shifted their scan signals up a couple of levels and made them FTL for their current band, yet the idea of evasive action was laughable. It was all up to the decoys and interdiction fields, and at least they had the advantage of human technology.

The Multi-Dimensional Missiles flashing to meet BatDiv Ninety-Two mounted no explosive warheads; they carried something far worse: small, powerful multi-dee generators of their own. They were huge-even Defender could squeeze in only twenty-four similar weapons-but they were carried despite the squeeze they put on magazine space for any other purpose because they were lethal to any multi-dee field. In the microsecond before contact, their onboard generators spun up to full power, and they hit their target's field as a directly opposed surge field, inducing harmonics guaranteed to drive any target into acoherency.