Admiral Cordwainer glanced at Cortez and crooked an eyebrow, wondering if the Fifth Space Lord had caught the same nuances she had. Probably. She might be a jurist by training, more alive to the things that weren't said—and the way they weren't—than most people, but Sir Lucien Cortez was a line officer who'd seen combat, and it had showed in his eyes and the tightening of his lips as he listened to Lady Harrington's cold, bloodless recitation of events.

Bat Cortez shook his head, and the JAG looked back at the woman behind the lectern.

"If there are any questions, we can view the rest of the transcript following your brief, Captain Ortiz," she said. "Carry on."

"Yes, Ma'am." Ortiz nodded and glanced down, tapping keys to scroll through the notes in her memo pad, then looked back up. "This next portion is the real reason I asked ATC to make the main tank available to us, Ma'am. What you're about to see is a recreation of the relevant portion of the actual engagement, drawn from the sensor logs of all surviving units of Task Group Hancock-Zero-Zero-One. There are holes in the data, due to the task group's heavy losses, but we've been able to fill most of them by interpolating captured data from Admiral Chin's dreadnoughts. Using that information, ATC's computers have generated the equivalent of a combat information center display at a time compression of—" Ortiz glanced back at her memo pad "—approximately five-to-one, beginning shortly before Admiral Sarnow's death."

She pressed buttons, and the lights dimmed once more. There was a brief blur of light in the stupendous HD tank; then everything snapped into sharp focus once more, and Cordwainer felt Cortez stiffen beside her as the glowing icons of a battle display burned before them.