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reminded us that fighting as a team is much better than a bunch of ships battling individually. You’ve loosened a lot of the controls the Syndic government put on you, Asima. Be careful you don’t let too much freedom into your military forces.”
    “But this is better,” Diaz argued.
    “It is. Just remember the need for balance, for tying everything into the goal of creating an effective military team that makes as much use as possible of the individual skills of your people.”
    “You always make things complicated,” Marphissa grumbled. Her ships had steadied out on their new vectors, but were still accelerating, aiming to match the velocity of the oncoming Syndicate flotilla. “I was thinking, you said
Pele
should operate separately from my own formation, and I still agree that is a good idea. But if I timed
Pele
’s attacks to match my own, we would present CEO Boucher with a complication, but still she would be dealing with one set of attacks at once, then have time to recover while we repositioned for our next attack.”
    “That’s true,” Bradamont agreed.
    “But if I just cut Kontos loose, tell him to hit the escorts and keep hitting them, and conduct my own attacks independent of him, then CEO Boucher will face more frequent attacks, from different angles. It will be harder for her to keep track of things and decide which recommendation to accept from her automated combat systems. And Kontos,” Marphissa added with a sly smile, “is likely to do something unexpected, something that the combat systems on the Syndicate ship do not anticipate.”
    “Kontos still doesn’t have a lot of experience himself,” Bradamont reminded her. “He’s good. Hell, he’s brilliant at times. But he’s young, and he hasn’t been doing this long. A miscalculation on his part, a risk whose magnitude he doesn’t fully appreciate because of a lack of experience, could be disastrous when we’re facing a battleship.”
    “True.” Marphissa pondered the matter as her ships finally matched the velocity of the Syndicate flotilla. The two formations were now tearing through space, separated by four light-minutes, heading toward a much faster intercept with
Pele
. “I believe that Kontos can do this, Honore. President Iceni moved him to command of
Pele
because she has confidence in him. President Iceni is a good judge of character. You know as well as I do that we need something extra. Something big extra. We might be able to destroy every escort that Syndicate battleship has got, but stopping the battleship itself with what we’ve got is going to take a miracle.”
    “It’s your call, Kommodor,” Bradamont said. “You are right about how hard it will be to hurt that thing without losing all of our own ships in the effort.”
    Marphissa tapped her comm controls. “Kapitan Kontos, I want you to use your three ships to conduct attacks on the enemy independently of my formation. We want to eliminate the battleship’s escorts, confuse and frustrate the Syndicate commander, and ultimately wear down the battleship’s defenses. Keep me informed as necessary of your intentions and planned actions. For the people, Marphissa, out.”
    “Syndicate flotilla is accelerating,” the combat watch specialist reported.
    “Match their acceleration using automated controls,” Marphissa ordered the maneuvering watch specialist. “Maintain four light-minutes’ distance between us.”
    “You could let CEO Boucher get closer,” Bradamont murmured to Marphissa. “Let her think she’s slowly gaining on you.”
    “I’m not trying to lead her anywhere,” Marphissa said. “I want to taunt her and frustrate her, like a cat on a fence, just out of reach of the dog trying to get it.”
    “Kommodor,” the senior watch specialist said, “our systems assess that the battleship is exceeding safe limits on main propulsion. If they continue to push their acceleration at the current rate, the chances of catastrophic component failure