"We had a little gal there on signals," Cordelle told him.

Mary screamed in horror as Cordelle tried to haul her away.

Cordelle bent his head and began frantically punching the pad again.

Cordelle cleared his throat and raised a hand to attract attention to where he was standing with Linsay's group.

"It's breaking out everywhere," Cordelle said, shaking his head.

"We couldn't have done it without Cordelle there," Krantz confessed.

Cordelle asked as they emerged into the sunlight and turned to head toward the Egghead Block.

Only a skeleton staff was left after everybody else had departed either to the shelters or to join Cordelle's defense lines around the spokes.

Eric Cordelle has recently launched a single malt whisky craft distillery.

"You'd better believe it," Cordelle threw in from behind Krantz's shoulder.

"That's always the way it goes," Cordelle told him in a slow unchanging Carolina drawl.

At length he sat back in his chair, looked up at Danny Cordelle, who was watching with interest, and nodded.

He looked back at Jassic and Cordelle.

"Have the capsules loaded and prepared for release at any time," Krantz said to Cordelle.

"Those Spartacus ships are getting pretty, close," Cordelle commented.

Mary shrieked from behind Cordelle.

Cordelle looked impressed.

Behind him Danny Cordelle had paused in his task of organizing the Rim defenses to listen.

"Let's get outta here," Cordelle whispered.

Cordelle nodded.

Cordelle departed with his crew to take charge of his assigned Haystack duties back in Downtown.

Cordelle inquired.

"They were at Northport," Cordelle reminded him.

Cordelle shifted his weight onto his heels and rubbed the palms of his hands across his chest.

He cut off the pad and turned toward Cordelle, who was using another pad in an attempt to summon the nearest destroyer-equipped kill-team.