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propulsion units and could not slow down as quickly as the rest of the fleet. This had put them past the safety of the ice plow, but they’d insisted on keeping formation in hopes of repairing their propulsion systems and rejoining the fleet.
    Tawfik and her five commodores were floating images in a circle in front of her.
    Commodore Cortez had lost her brother in an earlier battle and seemed to view the entire war as an excuse to seek vengeance. She had not crossed the line to where vengeance was more important than discipline, but she had come close to that line on a few occasions. J.D. was aware that Maria was a hard charger who had the absolute loyalty of her subordinates and would never disobey a direct order.
    Francine Waterman was a strict professional, West Point trained and hired right out of the academy by SecureCo., one of the best mercenary companies in the solar system before the war. She wasn’t particularly creative in command, but could be relied upon to do what was ordered when it was ordered, and do it well.
    Susan Cho was interesting in that she was a daughter of the extremely powerful Cho clan, which had practically owned Saturn before the war, and was the sister of Saturn’s current governor, Karen Cho, and the Saturnian Congressional Janet Cho. Susan had been the typical family screw-up. The one who would have ended up psyche audited or mining a rock in the middle of nowhere to escape family obligations she neither cared for nor felt bound by. But when the war came, much to everyone’s surprise including her own, Susan had proved to be a superior spacer and then an officer eschewing all the privileges her family had to offer and even pretending to be of no relation for years. Whenever anyone had asked if she was one of “those” Chos, Susan would laugh and say, “If I were, do you think I’d have started out as a spacer third class?” and then buy the person a drink to commiserate her lousy luck to be born to the wrong family. J.D. would not have known except that a then Congressional Karen Cho had come to Susan’s ship when her sister made captain. J.D. was fairly certain that if she had not been accompanying the future governor, Susan would have barred her sister from her new command. But whatever the bad blood was, it seemed to drive Susan to excel at a field none of her family ever bothered with.
    Charles Lee Park reminded J.D. too much of her past, and as such she did not much like the man. He’d been an up-and-coming GCI executive who was making a real name for himself in the outer planets. Given his career track, he would’ve been on the board in thirty years or so. But when the war broke out, Charles had stayed in Neptune as the rest of his colleagues took the fastest transports back to the Core. For the longest time, it had been assumed he was a spy for the corporations, but he’d volunteered, like Susan, at the lowest grade of spacer, and the needs of the war and his natural ability had pushed him very high up the chain of command. J.D. still didn’t trust him completely, but the truth was, his background was not that much different from hers. Besides, he was a devious son of a bitch whom J.D. used to test her theories. He’d been very useful in second-guessing J.D.’s battle plan for the latest victory at Jupiter.
    David Paladin was one of the few fleet officers who’d started out as an assault miner and made the switch to spacer. It was an open debate whether the assault miners under David’s command were the best, but they certainly thought they were. J.D. knew many a person who would have loved to trip the commodore into a bunk. Deep in her thoughts, it had even occurred to J.D. But Paladin was famously loyal to his two husbands, one an engineer in Ceres and the other an agriculturalist who’d taken over soy production at thirty asteroids orbiting Saturn.
    Her thoughts in order, J.D. began. “By now, you know that there is an asteroid swarm directly in our path.” She