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realized that she must have dozed. For her head and shoulders tilted at a considerable angle in her chair. She froze, almost falling out of the seat, and saw the asteroid swarm from a slightly different angle than she had sitting upright in her command chair.
    “Praise be Allah,” she said softly.
    “To Allah, all praise,” responded Tawfik automatically, recognizing the change in J.D. at once. To the depths of his soul, he knew when the Merciful One breathed genius into his Blessed One, but he had never seen it so clearly before.
    J.D. stood, now fully awake, and rerouted the fleet in the holo-tank. “The asteroid swarm is shearing across our path almost ninety degrees from our course. That means that the debris we have been running into is also being blasted out of our way. So we need to move the fleet ninety degrees behind the plow. We must maintain course and speed, just change our position.”
    “The farther down the line a ship is, the more likely it will get hit by cross debris,” cautioned Maria. All heads nodded in agreement. “My flotilla will take the end position.”
    “No. The Warprize will take the end position,” said J.D. firmly. She was met by a wall of silence. However, J.D. knew it was of the dangerous sort—that of firm rejection. “My orders will be obeyed,” she said with a throaty growl.
    “Admiral, if Ceres is lost, we lose the war,” said Charles.
    “I know, Charles.”
    “And if you are lost, we lose the war.”
    “No one person—,” she began
    “Bullshit, Admiral,” interrupted Maria, “anyone else, maybe, but not you.”
    J.D. looked at the convocation before her. “I cannot fight this war from safety. If I’m indispensable, we have already lost.”
    “Blessed One,” Tawfik said, “if you must die for the Alliance, then you must. But if you die leading us to victory against Admiral Trang and all he fights for, your death will free us. If on the other hand, you die in the trackless wastes of the solar system, pounded by asteroids far from any battle, your death will doom us. Tell me I’m wrong,” challenged Tawfik, smiling with the knowledge that he was not.
    J.D. pushed her lips up against her teeth and tried to come up with a better argument against the young engineer’s reasoning but could find none. “You know, Tawfik, your mother had that same annoying habit.” Tawfik, J.D. could see, was deeply touched by the public praise he’d just received. “Very well,” she said, “the Warprize will take up a position in the upper third—”
    “Ahem,” was the sound of all six people clearing their throats loudly and simultaneously.
    “Very well, the upper fifth to the plow.” And then she proceeded to give quick and concise orders that were followed as always with dedication and speed.
    *   *   *
     
    The image of the ships forming three to a rank going back ninety-six ranks was done with a precision and skill that seemed effortless, however it was anything but. Twelve ships did not take part in the maneuver, being too badly damaged or, sadly, already destroyed. The surviving ships promptly altered course to avoid the asteroid swarm and would regroup at Saturn to repair and await further orders.
    But for the rest of their lives, the spacers of “the Fleet,” as it was now considered even by their enemies, would remember that moment. A moment when they used skill, experience, and faith to brave the fury of the solar system and the cruelty of time—all for the merest hope of victory.
    As the fleet entered the asteroid swarm, impact after impact struck the ice shield of the plow. The surviving crew would later describe these myriad collisions with a combination of awe and dread. It was as if the asteroids were not inanimate rocks flying through space but rather the enraged antibodies of a solar system deeply offended by what humanity had done to its formerly undisturbed and eternal movements. Over drinks at bars not yet created, told to spacers not yet born,