six

Masadan ships on the proper incursion vector even with light-speed communications, and the Grayson commander had selected very nearly the exact course change Yu had projected. Anyone but an idiot—or someone as badly rattled as Sword Simonds—would have allowed for how vast the field of maneuver was. Yu would have settled for getting one of his ships into attack range; as it was, both of them would have the reach, if only barely.
“They’ll cross your range more than six hundred thousand kilometers out at almost point-five cee!” Simonds went on. “And look at that vector! There’s no way we’ll be able to fire down their wedges, and that makes Thunder’s energy weapons useless.”
“Sir,” Yu said even more patiently, “no one can count on having an enemy voluntarily cross his own T. And if we have to take on their sidewalls, that’s the reason our missiles have laser heads.”
“But—"
“They may not be on the exact vector we wanted, Sir, but our flight time will be under forty seconds at their closest approach. Principality’s will be somewhat longer, true, but they won’t even know we’re here until we launch, and there’s no way they can localize us to shoot