"All right, Nick," she said flatly, "we should have the range in another few minutes. Dust off the tac net and kill me some Trolls."

"Aye, aye, Ma'am!"

BatDiv Ninety-Two continued to overhaul at close to ninety percent of light-speed, winding down its translation gradient steadily. Commodore Santander heaved a surreptitious sigh of relief as the multi-dee generators dropped back from emergency over-boost to saner power settings. Something decidedly unnatural had been done to those Kanga multi-dees to wring such performance out of them, but the higher power margin of the human generators was still sufficient-barely-to outperform them. And once they were in the same eta band level, fire control would become far more effective... .

"Dropping into dimensional synchronicity-now!" Miyagi reported.

"Gunnery, fire plan alpha!"

"We have a second launch, Ma'am. Two launches! Bandits Two and Four are launching full salvos at Sentinel!"

"Replenish the decoys! Stand by to interdict!"

Five of Defender's MDMs spewed out. Kanga decoys blossomed on her plot as Sentinel spat out a second quintet of missiles, but human MDMs were smarter-and faster-than anything the Kangas had. Even in a pursuit curve, they streaked past the enemy's decoys before the return fire could range on the human lures, and she felt a savage grin stretch her lips as one group of missiles ran in on each of the two rearmost Trollheims.

Troll reflexes were quick, but their predictors were less efficient than BatDiv Ninety-Two's. Interdiction fields destroyed seven missiles in bursts of light like brief suns-but the other three went home, and the capital ship odds were suddenly even.

Yet sixteen Kanga MDMs still raced into the teeth of the depleted squadron's defenses. Decoys called to them and died. Interdiction fields flared with eye-stabbing intensity as they crashed into the barriers and disappeared uselessly. And one slid past everything both dreadnoughts could throw at it.