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will rise rapidly.”
    “How long?” Marphissa demanded. “Do we have an estimate of how much longer they can accelerate at current rates?”
    “There are some uncertainties, Kommodor. But they cannot sustain their current effort for more than another sixteen minutes at the most.”
    Marphissa stared intently at her display, imagining the scene on the bridge of the battleship. She had been in such situations before, the workers or junior executives warning of danger, a clueless CEO insisting that the current effort be continued, the sub-CEOs and most of the senior executives seeking foremost to avoid confronting the CEO and thus refusing to back up their juniors as danger readings crept closer toward disaster. More often than not, automatic safety routines had finally activated while senior ranks still denied or debated.
    It was one area where automated systems had saved a lot of Syndicate ships.
    Sure enough, the entire Syndicate flotilla kept accelerating at a rate that was unsustainable for the battleship. Kept accelerating for another twelve minutes, at which point the main propulsion on the battleship abruptly cut back.
    “Syndicate battleship is now accelerating at eighty percent of capacity,” the senior watch specialist said. “That is the standard recovery rate for overstressed systems.”
    “Reduce our acceleration to match,” Marphissa ordered.
    “Kommodor, the Syndicate flotilla has ceased accelerating and is changing course slightly.”
    On her display, Marphissa watched the long curve of the Syndicate flotilla’s projected path shift. Four minutes ago, the enemy had bent their path a few degrees to port. “CEO Boucher is trying to position herself between us and
Pele
.”
    “She wants to prevent
Pele
from joining our formation?” Kapitan Diaz asked.
    “Syndicate doctrine,” Marphissa replied. “Concentrate forces. We still look Syndicate because we use Syndicate equipment, so Boucher is assuming we’ll still fight like the Syndicate. She will soon learn otherwise.”
    Marphissa knew that she had to sound confident even though she still had no specific idea how to stop that Syndicate battleship. Any hint of uncertainty, of fear, in her voice and attitude would be scented by the specialists on the bridge and race through this ship and the rest of flotilla like a plague moving at the speed of light. She could lose this battle before a single shot was fired if her crews lost confidence in her.
    At least her next move was fairly simple. Both her formation and the Syndicate formation were now racing through space along almost the same path at point two light speed, which meant their relative velocity was zero, the two groups of ships staying the exact same distance apart even though both were moving very quickly. It reminded Marphissa of two ground vehicles on a highway, both moving fast in the same direction at the same speed.
    Her formation, in front, would need to slow down to get within weapons range of the Syndicate formation. “We’ll need to brake down to point one light,” she told Diaz as she set up the maneuver. “The timing is right for us to hit the Syndicate flotilla just as
Pele
is about to get there. Hua is going to have to watch both of our formations and decide what to do.”
    Marphissa considered options, then decided to stick with automated control of the maneuver one more time. “All units in Midway flotilla primary formation, I have sent the command for our ships to pivot one hundred eighty degrees and begin braking.”
    Thrusters on
Manticore
and the other ships pushed their bows up and over, so that the ships were now moving stern first through space, their bows facing the oncoming Syndicate flotilla. To an observer on a planet, their feet firmly planted in a place with an up and down, Marphissa’s ships would have appeared to have looped onto their backs, the crews now upside down compared to their previous alignment. But to the crews, nothing felt different or looked