Governor: Spoilers

1: Be sure to start at the beginning. They added a chapter early on

2: Ran across a big tactical oops. Chapter 33:

Of course, while the counter-missile’s acceleration rate could be adjusted to match that of the shipkiller, its endurance couldn’t be. Under normal circumstances, even the shipkiller’s Hauptman coil burned out well before the missile reached its target, and there wasn’t really a problem in simply giving it a longer ballistic phase than it would normally have had. But while the shipkiller had that fusion stage for midflight correction and terminal maneuvers, the counter-missile didn’t. From the instant its coil burned out, it was only an expensive, inert hunk of hardware traveling helplessly through space.

In this case, unfortunately, none of that mattered, since the entire missile cloud was traveling ballistic at Dragon Gamma’s base velocity at launch. None of them had put any time on their Hauptman coils at all.

“We don’t know how much good the counter-missiles will do them, but they have to take a bite out of our defensive fire. Not to mention the fact that they’ll make damned good decoys until Tracking can differentiate acceleration rates. So this is going to be a hell of a shootout, people.

They're being attacked by ~2k missiles on ballistic paths. The shipkiller missiles can kick on their fusion drives to avoid incoming counter missiles.

But the counter missiles can't.

Which means the Feds should have fired a salvo of 2k counter-missiles at the incoming League missiles.

The shipkillers could dodge, but the counter-missiles couldn't. Which means they now have all the counter-missiles identified. And they've either been destroyed, or else forced to light off their Hauptman coils early

In either case, they're still not going to be around to defend the shipkiller missiles.

Note: I thought of this within 5 seconds of reading the above text.

The Feds should have done the same.

The chief of staff’s voice trailed off as he and Murphy stared in disbelief at the master plot while detail after detail filled in. Ishtar had gone sublight a hundred and forty-five light-minutes from the M3v star labeled Yuxi on their charts, and whatever those charts may have said about “uninhabited star systems” had obviously been in error. The range was long, but the Federation’s optical systems were very good, and even if they hadn’t been, a solid blaze of power sources stretched around the inner system. The sheer size of the installations beggared the imagination. Venus Futures’ primary yard could have been tucked into one corner of the mammoth building complex and scarcely noticed.

Not only was the mammoth building complex enormously larger than they’d believed possible, it was also far more heavily automated than any of Naval Intelligence’s estimates of League capability. League construction techniques had always been more labor intensive than the Federation’s, but this installation appeared to rely even more heavily on robotics than most of the Federation’s Heart World yards did.

I guess we know where the Terran Empire's first major shipyard will be.

I guess the only question is: can they make Fasset drives there?

“Admiral Murphy,” she said in perfect, if accented, Standard English, “I am Commander Xie Cai. I have been instructed to tell you that, regretfully, Second Admiral Xing died of wounds suffered in New Dublin. Captain Ding was also killed in action. Commander Chen has assumed command as senior officer aboard. He has instructed me to tell you that he is prepared to surrender upon terms.”

...

He cut the recording, sat back in his chair, and folded his arms, and O’Hanraghty shook his head wryly.

“Damn,” he said. “That was hard core, Terrence. I like it!”

“Well, unless Than was lying to us—and I don’t think he was—they are, and I don’t much like that.”

No, they weren't lying.

"I have been instructed to inform you" is an entirely true statement. Sher didn't claim that Xing was dead, just that she was told to say that Xing was dead.