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much velocity built up in generating an intercept vector towards Baldwin to intercept the actual strike package.
    Veronica counted off twenty seconds just to be sure. “Here we go.”
    The strike group broke away from the sensor distortion of the carrier ’s drive plume, building velocity from the base vector of the ship with every second.
    Josephson recognized the ruse as soon as the third group emerged, but her fighters already committed to meeting Baldwin ’s. They were too far for visual confirmation, but some of Baldwin’s craft were already evincing the characteristic fuzzy-edged signature of a decoy drone at close range. She could send her trailing reserves to reinforce the carrier’s CAP, of course, but most of her defenders would be unable to engage the main body of the attack.
    Veronica shifted course just slightly and thumbed the missile release on her joystick. Two wholly simulated Sandtrap missiles lanced out from her fighter ’s belly and simulated the act of turning two actual Wasp interceptors into simulated scrap. The planes obligingly powered down and tumbled several hundred kilometers outboard past Veronica’s attack group as the first volley of notional torpedoes launched from her bombers, and the carrier’s triple-A lit up space with a furious barrage of safely underpowered energy weapons fire.
    Any fighter struck by even the lightest capital weapon was instantly tagged as dead, but the carrier ’s opening volleys were focused on million-dollar decoys and turned them into very expensive simulated scrap while the actual spacecraft of the attack continued toward terminal assault range.
     
    *
     
    As the last fighters landed from the exercise, Lieutenant Veronica Gray finished her shutdown checks and stood up, hanging her helmet on the sill of the canopy. Josephson was standing at the bottom of her boarding ladder with a tight grin on her face.
    “ Lieutenant Gray, next exercise, stay away from the drive field. I have no idea how you got Baldwin to approve a move like that,” she snapped. There was an edge of grudging admiration in her voice, but only that–an edge .
    Veronica bit the inside of her lip and ran her fingers back through her helmet-soaked hair, leaving a trail of blonde spikes behind them. “He knew a good idea when he saw one. Besides, the enemy’s not going to hesitate to use a dirty trick like that if they can, so training our people to recognize it is a job well-done, wouldn’t you say?”
    “ Lieutenant, no offense, but who’s going to have the balls to do that?”
    Veronica grinned, “Commander, I did, and Chief Alyse helped me on it, and that means sooner or later, someone else’s going to as well.”
    “ Fair enough, and I’m probably just mad that Baldwin wiped the beer he owes me off the drink list. Bastard.” Josephson’s grin answered hers and she clapped the younger woman on the shoulder. “Let’s hit the showers, then the briefing room. You did well out there.”
     
    *
     
    Hair still wet from her shower, Veronica stood at impassive attention as Captain Harding apparently had decided to tear a stripe off her. It was working, and she bit the inside of her cheek as his rant continued, to keep herself focused on the facts and not the captain’s anger. The tight grey corridor seemed as though it were even tighter, and she felt as though she should crouch to avoid the pipes overhead. Or maybe that was just Captain Harding making her feel awkward.
    “ Lieutenant Gray, what you did out there today was one of the most irresponsibly over-aggressive moves I’ve seen in my years in this man’s Navy. What were you thinking?”
    Veronica compressed her lips into a tight line. She thought she ’d been prepared to handle professional criticism over her aggressive tactics, but she hadn’t expected the carrier’s skipper to personally step in. “Sir, we were outside of any danger radius at all times. The ship’s drive field posed no danger to any of my