Aboard GSS Adversary, the Guardian Fleet Flagship

Admiral Bernard Strickland, Guardian Navy, was pleased by the performance of his ships and men. The breakout into the space around the barycenter had been performed with impressive skill and precision. It had taken endless maneuvering, constant stops and starts of the engines for every ship in the fleet, in order to jockey everyone into position.

But they had come in on the League at exceedingly close range. The baryworld was a rather small lump of rock and there was no other large mass in the area to speak of—the two Guardian fleets had been able to drop back into normal space almost right on top of the League forces. The lead ships of the Capital fleet would be within range of the enemy in minutes. The Outpost fleet, which was flying practically as an autonomous unit, was smaller and moving not quite as crisply, but they'd pass muster. So far all was going well. No cat-and-mouse sneak attack as at Britannica this time—the Guard forces were staging an all-out frontal attack from two directions at once.

The League ships were maneuvering, pulling back away from the baryworld. Suddenly his tactical display scrambled, blanked out, and restarted, showing only empty space. For a wild half second, Strickland thought the entire League force had entered C-squared space en masse. But no, that was ridiculous. The tactical display started to show a few League ships again, very faintly. Obviously they were using some sort of jamming equipment to cover their pullback. "Tactics officer! Clear the real-time display and give me projections based on tracks up until jamming commenced. Detection. Punch through that jamming somehow! Weapons! How long until we are in effective range?"

"Allowing for our best guess at enemy maneuvers, they'll be within engagement range of the Outpost fleet in twenty minutes, sir.'

"So they take their first crack at the smaller fleet. Very well. Let's see how they do," Strickland said.