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were Karelian SOFOR teams, who were let in on the ‘fun’ as a quid pro quo for their cooperation, and eight were almost certainly smugglers before the war had swept them into the military. None were married or had any living immediate family.
    All knew it was a reckless venture, and the chances of a homecoming were vanishingly small. Simulations predicted that they could expect only ten to twelve of the starclippers to survive the transit. There was a one-third chance less than half would. Further, the efficacy of the forged IFF systems could not be tested. The exact capabilities of the surveillance systems around Haslar itself were unknown. Their exit, if they made it that far, was by guess and by God. Yet none of them would have given up the chance to ‘ride the Elephant’—as CEF mariners put it—for anything else in this world, or the next.
    The operation got underway beneath stygian cover. Fleet commands were not notified. Even Third Fleet’s CO, Vice Admiral Hamish Burton, did not learn of the operation until TF 34 was due to arrive at Outbound Station, and was then required to submit to the indignity of being held incommunicado with all the other station personnel, under strict orders from Admiral PrenTalien.
    Astoundingly, things went off without a hitch, and Trafalgar was even able to make rendezvous seventy-two hours early, allowing them to advance the timeline by that much. This stroke of good fortune was explained by the participants according to their lights: the Karelians credited the good offices of Saint Helen, a young woman who’d helped save Karelia during an invasion by Syrdar centuries before. The smugglers attributed it to the god who looks after fools and drunkards. What Christina Yeager or Trin Wesselby might have thought, they did not share.
    Three Terran months and seven days after Colonel Yeager had proposed the idea, and two months and fourteen days after Trin Wesselby had found a way to make it work, the eighteen starclippers took off, bound for Haslar, and TF 34 set course for Miranda, little guessing what lay in store there.
    Huron got up and refilled his cup. The slightly narrow-eyed look he wore as he rose from his seat, gave Kris an inkling of just how much she was missing.
    “So—for the most part—that’s it,” Kris probed, echoing his last comment.
    “That’s it,” repeated Huron, fooling no one, least of all Kris. Seeing he wasn’t going to budge on this one, she changed the subject.
    “Okay. Then what about the big dance we just had? Can you fill me in? Or do I have to go all 20-Questions on that too?”
    They collectively assured her she did not. Kris’s experience of the battle had been limited to her squadron being scrambled as soon as they dropped into normal space, boosting out to engage the forces of a Dom carrier and then spending the rest of her PM mixing it up in one of the worst dogfights anyone had ever seen. Two and a half days in sickbay—that half-day, she’d been unconscious for—had not done much to enlighten her.
    Now her flight mates—on firmer ground where there was no danger of trespassing on official secrets—were eager to supply this lack. The result was a little disjointed, and at one point Krieger and Tole got into a spirited debate about exactly which ships engaged IHS Revanche , and whether the fatal salvos had been fired by the battlecruiser LSS Intrepid or the heavy cruiser LSS Arizona (the former command of Trafalgar’s captain), leading to raised voices and veiled imputations of disloyalty.
    Huron quelled the debate at this point, pointing out that neither man had been anywhere near the light carrier at the moment she exploded, and somewhat chastened, they continued the narrative, helped along by occasional editorial commentary from N’Komo. What Kris came to understand from it all was this:
    Recovering their fighters from Kalervo Station, they’d jumped back to Miranda and stumbled upon a major engagement in progress. Unbeknownst