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minutes. 
    Even though they had been on alert with the first fighters ready for launch, the short double-transition disoriented McAllister’s green crews. Many forgot to use their stimulant injectors, so it took a full 48 minutes after transition to launch all of her fighters — a rate that made her want to pull her hair in frustration. She might have, had she not been wearing a combat armor helmet at the time. By comparison, Carpenter had all 230 of his fighters launched and on their way towards the Federal fleet within 16 minutes. 
    Knowing he had the Yankees outgunned in fighters, Kalis’ strategy was to concentrate on eliminating what fighters the Federals did have, so all of Carpenter’s fighters carried anti-fighter loads. So did all 500 of the new Su-137 in-system fighters the Ginia Guard was launching. Since deployment of the Su-137’s the Confederacy bought from the Russians, the Ginia Guard actually had more fighters than it had trained pilots to man them. The Guard had trained on the Russian fighters, so their 250 Cobras could be transferred to other areas, or retained as replacements for combat casualties, as needed.
    Stillman’s 230 fighters began launching as soon as his carriers cleared their slips and reoriented their launch bays towards open space. Unlike Carpenter’s fighters and those of the Guard, Stillman’s fighters carried mixed loads. It took 32 minutes for Carpenter’s message to reach Kalis in the asteroids, but his 690 fighters began launching within 5 minutes of receipt of the message, all with full anti-ship loads.
    McAllister figured Kalis might have ships hidden within the asteroids, so she ordered a destroyer squadron to loop back behind her fleet to scan behind them, without suffering from plume distortion. In McAllister’s flagship, the USS Midway’s Combat Information Center was ablaze with contact notifications. Almost 1,000 fighters were coming in from the planet. McAllister worried, as she saw that the fighters inbound outnumbered hers by 3:2 and it would take over an hour for her destroyers’ scan echoes to return and tell her what was behind her. Figuring that only half of the planetary fighters had anti-fighter loads, her 685 with all anti-fighter loads to defend her fleet might put a nasty dent in Kalis’ fighter numbers. 
    As the two walls of fighters began to close on each other, Carpenter’s first wave of fighters launched medium range anti-fighter missiles at maximum range and then surprisingly peeled away. The startled Union pilots had plenty of time to engage active ECM and take evasive action, but none got off a shot at the retreating Confederates before they were again out of range. Less than one-in-four of the Confederate missiles actually resulted in a kill, but even at that low percentage, 43 Union fighters were lost with no corresponding losses for the rebels. 
    The Union fighters had just enough time to reform to meet the next wave of incoming rebs from Stillman’s TF-21. This next wave of rebels again popped off a salvo at maximum range and peeled away, but the Federal pilots popped off a salvo at maximum range of their own. Again the Federals went into evasive gyrations and, this time, 41 of them were hit. Unfortunately for the Federals, their missiles were in a tail-chase pursuing the fleeing Confederate fighters, and most of their rocket motors ran out of fuel before reaching their targets. Only six Confederate fighters were lost to the Federal fighters during that exchange, but 22 more were destroyed by long range anti-fighter missiles launched from McAllister’s fleet. 
    The third wave, consisting of Planetary Guard fighters, also popped a spread at maximum range, but instead of peeling away, as had occurred during the first two waves, they continued to bore in on the jinking and juking Federals. Before the Union fighters could reform, the rebs were within short, thermally-guided missile range and almost 1,000 missiles began screaming in on the