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when it came right down to it, had no business at all on Hexapuma's bridge—sat to one side of Wright, in one of the jump seats the ship's midshipmen usually used when observing the astrogator. From his expression he was pretty sure there was still a shoe waiting to drop . . . and he was right.
"What I was going to say is five hundred thousand's fairly close . . . for someone who has trouble counting to eleven with his boots on," the XO said, and Terekhov chuckled.
It was a somewhat absent chuckle, and his attention was back on the plot, checking alignments. The Squadron had made its alpha transition in close formation and relatively gradually from a base velocity in hyper of 62,500 KPS. With the inevitable velocity bleed-off, that gave them an n-space velocity of almost exactly 5,000 KPS . . . headed directly for Eroica Station. At the moment, they were decelerating at 350 gravities in order to stay with the ammo ship, which was braking as hard as she could to stay clear of the hyper limit, and their formation looked close to perfect.
"Commander Badmachin reports Volcano is rolling pods, Sir," Amal Nagchaudhuri announced.
"I have them on lidar, Sir," Abigail Hearns confirmed from Tactical. "Warlock's picking up her allotment now."
"Very good," Terekhov acknowledged.
"Sir, we're being challenged by the Monicans," Nagchaudhuri said, and Terekhov snorted.
"That was fast," he said dryly. Of course the fact that Eroica Station was so close to the hyper limit meant the transmission lag was only a little over ninety seconds. "No response yet," he continued to the com officer. "We'll let them sweat a little longer."
"Yes, sir."
"Lieutenant Bagwell," Terekhov said, still never looking away from the plot, "let's get the EW platforms deployed."
"Aye, aye, Sir. Deploying now."
"Very good. Ms. Zilwicki."
"Sir?"
"Deploy the recon shell."
"Deploy the recon shell, aye, aye,

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