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knew that everyone had seen the sensor reports. The creation of the vias in the outer orbits had created so much disruption in the debris of the solar system that old navigation maps were useless, and new ones had not been made due to the war. Normally this was not a problem, as the vias connecting the outer planets were swept clean and monitored with near religious devotion and no one would be stupid enough travel the outer orbits any other way.
    “The odds of a swarm this big in just this place,” Maria said bitterly.
    Susan Cho rolled her eyes. “Please, Maria. We’re the anomaly out here, not the random asteroid streams. We’ve got enough on our plates as it is to start second-guessing God.”
    “Poor God,” Charles broke in, “getting blamed for this.”
    “This has nothing to do with God,” protested Maria. “I’m merely pointing out the coincidence.”
    “The question is,” asked David, “what are we going to do about it?”
    “We have to change our course or our rate of deceleration,” said Francine with her characteristic practicality.
    “We can’t.” It was Tawfik. There were bags under his eyes, and his shoulders were hunched. On all the displays in the six command spheres an image of the fleet with a line leading straight toward Saturn appeared in red and a smaller line in gold showed it leaving Saturn and intercepting Ceres. “Our course and deceleration were precisely planned to not only rendezvous with Saturn but do so in such a way as to make it possible for us to reach Ceres at a specified time. But our gas tanks are going to be empty when we leave Saturn. The Saturnians have already positioned all the hydrogen they had in orbit at just the right location and velocity for us to be able to fuel up and continue to Ceres without pausing. And we must get that hydrogen because we will have to burn our thrusters at full to slow down enough to intercept Ceres at less than hello/good-bye speeds.”
    “Can’t they simply move the hydrogen blocks to match our new course?” asked Charles.
    “They damaged most of the block thrusters moving that much hydrogen to where we needed it with such short notice. I doubt they have enough to move twenty percent of what we need in the time we could give them. We will be at Saturn in twenty hours. It’s just not enough time.”
    “Then we go through,” J.D. said.
    “Admiral,” implored Francine, “that’s suicide, and you know it.”
    J.D. nodded. “Yes,” she answered, looking every bit as haggard as Tawfik, “I do. But I also know that if we deviate from this course and arrive too late, Ceres will be destroyed—and if it’s destroyed, we lose the war. End of story.”
    “You have debris the size of softballs, Admiral,” said Francine. “It was a few of those traveling in a clump that destroyed the Pickax. That swarm has hundreds that size and thousands the size of baseballs and tens of thousands the size of golf balls. At our calculated speed, the swarm’ll destroy us. What good will it do the Alliance if it loses the fleet and Ceres at the same time?”
    And that was the question to which J.D. did not have a good answer. Without a good answer, J.D. knew she was going to have to order a minor course correction that would lose them the war. But she could not see what to do. Suddenly she felt tired to her soul and her mind refused to work. All the sleep she’d put off since she awoke in the hollow moon with her three hundred hidden ships was now extracting its price, and the three hours she’d gotten with Katy just before were not nearly enough to make up for the endless days of constant demanding decision.
    Allah, I beg of you, she thought, don’t let me fail your children. They need me to lead and I have nothing. Surely it is not your will that we enter the swarm and die? Help us for their sake if not for mine!
    “Admiral,” Tawfik said softly and seemingly from far away. “Blessed One, are you with us?”
    J.D. brought herself to and