[Val]

Title: Ashes of Victory
Author: David Weber
ISBN: 0-671-57854-5
Copyright: © 2000 by David Weber
Publisher: Baen Books

There were only a few T-years' difference in their ages, but Ashford, part of HMS Minotaur's original LAC wing and now the COLAC of HMS Incubus, had already enjoyed almost a year of hands-on training with actual hardware. Incubus was officially carried on the Ship List as CLAC-05, and she was rather closer to the original Minotaur in design than Hydra was. Not that the differences were pronounced, although Hydra, on a bit less tonnage, actually carried twelve more LACs. She paid for it with somewhat lower magazine capacity for her shipboard launchers, but given the fact that a LAC carrier had no business getting close enough to other starships to shoot at them (and be shot at by them), that was a trade-off Tremaine was perfectly happy to accept. But Hydra would be CLAC-19 when she finished working up in another month or so, and her own LACs were only beginning to arrive. Which meant that unlike Ashford, Tremaine and his wing had been forced to do almost all of their training in simulators.