a destroyer,
percent
a destroyer, and we have exactly one starboard sidewall generator."
Terekhov grimaced. They were no unexpected revelations in Nagchaudhuri's report. Indeed, if anything surprised him it was that they had even one broadside energy mount left.
"And our people?" he asked quietly, and Nagchaudhuri winced.
"We're still working on the numbers, and we've still got people unaccounted for who may be alive in the wreckage. But so far, Skipper, it looks like sixty dead and twenty-eight wounded."
Terekhov's jaw clenched. Eighty-eight might not sound like very much compared to what the Monicans had lost. Or the other ships of his own squadron, for that matter. But Hexapuma's total company, including Marines, was only three hundred and fifty before her earlier casualties and detachments. Nagchaudhuri's numbers—which still weren't complete, he reminded himself—represented thirty percent of the people he'd taken into battle with him.
And Hexapuma was one of the lucky ships.
"What about the rest of the Squadron?"
"Aegis is the closest thing we've got to combat-capable, Sir, and she's down to sixty-two missiles and five grasers. Warlock doesn't have a single operable weapon left, and Aria is almost that bad. Lieutenant Rossi says—"
"Excuse me, Skipper." Terekhov looked up. It was Jefferson Kobe.
"Yes, Jeff? What is it?"
"Sir, Helen's arrays are picking up several Monican warships headed our way. It looks like half a dozen LACs, four destroyers, and a pair of light cruisers. And we've just received a message from an Admiral Bourmont. He demands that we surrender or be destroyed."
Terekhov looked at him, then at Nagchaudhuri. The lieutenant commander's expression was tight, his eyes dark, and Terekhov understood that, too. Obsolete though the regular Monican Navy might be, it was more than adequate to destroy his own shattered survivors.
"How long for their first unit to get here?"
"Toby says four hours for a zero/zero, Sir. Three hours, fifty minutes if they settle for a flyby firing pass."
"Very well." Terekhov strode out of the briefing room onto Hexapuma's bridge and waved for Kobe to resume his station at Communications. He felt his bridge crew's tension, felt them wanting to turn and look at him even as discipline kept them focused on their displays. These people hovered on the ragged brink of exhaustion, and they knew as well as he that they couldn't fight the Monicans.
"First, Jeff," Terekhov said calmly, "get Commander Badmachin