The Shiva Option

by David Weber & Steve White

Also in this series:

Insurrection

Crusade

In Death Ground

Baen Books by David Weber

Honor Harrington:

On Basilisk Station

The Honor of the Queen

The Short Victorious War

Field of Dishonor

Flag in Exile

Honor Among Enemies

In Enemy Hands

Echoes of Honor

Ashes of Victory

Edited by David Weber:

More than Honor

Words of Honor

Changer of Worlds

Mutineers' Moon

The Armageddon Inheritance

Heirs of Empire

Path of the Fury

The Apocalypse Troll

The Excalibur Alternative

Oath of Swords

The War God's Own

With John Ringo:

March Upcountry

March to the Sea

Baen Books by Steve White

Eagle Against the Stars

Emperor of Dawn

Prince of Sunset

The Disinherited

Legacy

Debt of Ages

PROLOGUE

Their hands were still tightly clasped when the universe reappeared.

Feridoun had taken Aileen's hand in his just before TFNS Jamaica made warp transit. No one else on the flag bridge had noticed the thoroughly unmilitary gesture as he reached out to his admiral, for they'd been fleeing with the hounds of Hell baying at their heels. The rest of Survey Flotilla 19's battered survivors had already preceded the flagship into the unknown. Then it had been Jamaica's turn, and Aileen had returned the pressure of his hand and smiled with the knowledge of a personal discovery that had come-as such things will-at the worst imaginable moment. That pressure, and that smile, had continued as the appropriately blood-red star had seemed to vanish down a well of infinity astern, and the two of them had gone through a hole in the continuum as one.

But then reality stabilized, and they were in a new stellar system, God knew how many light-years away in Einsteinian space, and reports of successful transit began to arrive from the ships ahead of them. As though with an electric shock of embarrassment, they each released the other's hand, and were once again simply Rear Admiral Aileen Sommers, Terran Federation Navy, commanding Survey Flotilla 19, and Captain Feridoun Hafezi, her chief of staff.

Not that the flotilla was much of a command anymore. It had escaped-barely, and with hideous losses-from the most horrifying enemy humankind had ever faced, or dreamed of facing. But the escape was only temporary. The Arachnids had witnessed their transit, and so should have little trouble locating the warp point they'd used. No, she corrected herself: would have little trouble. After the events of the past three and a half standard Terran years, no human was apt to underestimate Arachnid capabilities.

So she took command of herself and ordered the flotilla onward into the system under cloaking ECM, getting lost in the immensity of space before the Bugs could follow them through the warp point. She also sent the Hun-class scout cruisers ahead to begin surveying. They reported almost immediately that the system wasn't one of those in the Terran Federation's databases, and there was no point in searching for a native high-tech civilization. This star was a red giant, and like some insane god of ancient myth it had long since devoured any planetary children it might once have possessed. So Sommers ordered the Huns to search for warp points other than the one they'd just transited-warp points through which they could continue their hegira.

She wanted to pause and appease a lack of sleep which had almost exceeded the human organism's capacity to function. But there was no time. Instead, she called a staff conference.

At some point, Hafezi had somehow managed to repair the hagardness of battle. Sommers, gazing across the conference table at him, saw that he'd even restored his beard to its neatly sculpted norm . . . but she detected a salting of gray hairs among the black. Is it possible, she wondered, that what we've been through over the last few weeks could've done that already?

Or maybe it's been there all along and I've just never looked closely enough to notice.

Since the escape from the last system, their behavior towards each other had been scrupulously correct. Not, she thought wryly, that they'd had much opportunity for incorrectness. And not that they'd actually avoided each other-their duties would've made that difficult. No, they'd just worn formality as armor against their own feelings. Feelings they couldn't openly express under the present circumstances, even if they'd known how.

One crisis at a time, Sommers told herself firmly. And preferably not the personal one first. She concentrated on listening to Feridoun's-no, her chief of staff's-report.

Concentrating was hard, though. She already knew most of the facts he was reciting, and they were too painful to bear thinking about.

First, her loss figures. Out of SF 19's original strength of seven battlecruisers, one fleet carrier, two light carriers (both from the space fleet of Terra's Ophiuchi allies), nine light cruisers, and two freighters, she'd lost two battlecruisers, three light cruisers, and a freighter-every one of which she felt like a stab wound. And it was worse than it sounded, for practically all the survivors-including and especially Jamaica-were damaged in varying degrees. And besides . . .

Hafezi voiced her own gloomy thoughts as he summed up.

"Both the battlecruisers we've lost were Dunkerque-A-class, out of the four we originally had. The impact on our firepower-"

"Yes, yes," Sommers interrupted. The Dunkerque-A's were rated as BCRs: ships that combined a very respectable battery of capital missile launchers with a battlecruiser's speed and nimbleness at the expense of sacrificing almost everything else. They were formidable missile platforms, especially when knitted into datalinked firing groups by Jamaica and her other two Thetis-A-class command battlecruisers. All three of those had survived. But . . . her lips quirked into what could almost be mistaken for a smile. "Still just as many chiefs, but not as many Indians," she said aloud.

Hafezi looked puzzled for a moment-the joke belonged to her cultural background, not his. But then he caught the sense, and he responded with a smile as humorless as hers. It was a mistake, for their eyes met in a more direct contact than they'd known since the battle. Hafezi's shied away, and he hurried on.

"Furthermore, the carriers suffered heavy losses in their fighter squadrons." The figures appeared on the conference room's display screen. "And all our depletable munitions are in short supply after the loss of Voyager."

"That last loss worries me more than all the others. And not just-or even principally-because of the missiles she was carrying," Commander Arbella Maningo, the logistics officer, put in. In the earlier stages of their flight, she'd wavered on the ragged edge of panic. But she'd steadied as the situation had grown more desperate, as people sometimes did, and the freighter Voyager had been her special concern.

Sommers was inclined to agree with the logistics officer's observation. Still, she wished Maningo hadn't brought it up, for there was nothing they could do about it, and just thinking about it gave her the beginnings of a migraine.

With no other alternative but annihilation, Survey Flotilla 19 was fleeing outward into the unknown in the forlorn hope of eventually finding itself back in known space. The notion wasn't completely unrealistic-the warp connections sometimes formed clusters of interconnected nexi, and the Terran Federation and its allies encompassed a lot of warp points. But its chances of success were directly related to the length of time they could sustain the search. Under such circumstances, the loss of fifty percent of the flotilla's logistics support was a catastrophe so overwhelming that discussing it was pointless. Sommers had refrained from placing everyone on short rations; in the odd blend of shell shock and euphoria that had followed their escape, the morale impact of such a move would have been imponderable but almost certainly not good. She wouldn't be able to put it off much longer, though. . . .

 "What happened?" Maningo was continuing, as much to herself as to the conference at large. "Where did they come from?" Sommers felt no inclination to slap the logistics officer down; she wasn't reverting to her former jitters, just voicing the question that had been in everyone's mind since the Arachnid ships had appeared behind them in the expanse of nothingness that was a starless warp nexus.

"That's clear enough," the electronic image of Captain Milos Kabilovic growled. Kabilovic, CO of the fleet carrier Borsoi, wasn't a member of the staff, but he was virtually present as commander of SF 19's "gunslingers"-the term for the explorers' Battle Fleet escorts that continued to be used even though the distinction between Battle Fleet and Survey Command had faded more than a little since the war began.

"It was a closed warp point," he went on, "either in that warp nexus or, more likely, one of those on the other side. The Bugs-" it had been years since anyone had called the Arachnids anything but that "-closed in on us as soon as they became aware of our presence."

At first, nobody showed any inclination to dispute the carrier commander's analysis. The anomalies in space and time known as warp points-usually, but not always, associated with stellar gravity wells-had been known to humans for over three centuries, ever since the day in 2053 when the exploration ship Hermes, en route to Neptune, had abruptly found itself in the system of Alpha Centauri, instead. They'd been known even longer to humanity's sometime enemies and current allies the Orions, the only known race to have theorized the phenomenon's existence rather than accidentally stumbling over it. Knowledge of the so-called closed warp points, invisible even to those who'd learned how to detect ordinary warp points by their associated grav surge, was of more recent vintage. But it was nonetheless common knowledge in this room, one of the fundamental background hazards of survey work, against which precautions were routinely taken. And SF 19's precautions had gone beyond routine. . . .

"But we were operating continuously in cloak!" Hafezi protested. "And we didn't even emplace any courier drone nav buoys at the warp points we passed through, just in case the Bugs had any cloaked pickets in those systems. How could they have found us?"

"None of that's foolproof. They could have detected us on any one of our warp transits, if they already had pickets in those systems." Kabilovic addressed the individual who had the most intimate knowledge of sensor systems. "Isn't that true, Lieutenant Murakuma?"

Fujiko Murakuma nodded slowly as everyone awaited her opinion, respectful of her expertise despite her junior rank. She was the flotilla's specialist in the new second-generation recon drones which had revolutionized survey work by marrying the technology of advanced sensors to that of the SBMHAWK missiles that allowed a bombardment of an unseen enemy at the other end of a warp line. Probing through unknown warp points in advance of the ships that launched them, the RD2 had removed some of the "shot-in-the-dark" quality from warp point exploration . . . and, with it, maybe some of the mystique, which was why certain old-timers affected to despise it. A generation which had grown up with the likelihood of Bugs on the far side of any unsurveyed warp point had little patience for such romanticism, on the other hand. It belonged to the days when survey ships had fared heedlessly into an illimitable frontier, seeking worlds to study and colonize rather than to incinerate.

Fujiko Murakuma belonged to the generation which had come to grips with the harsher, infinitely more terrifying present reality, and Sommers studied her. The fact that she put her individual name before her surname wasn't unusual; many Japanese-derived cultures had by now adopted that Western practice. Indeed, her name was more Japanese than her appearance, for she was tall and slender, her hair held a reddish glint in its midnight depths, and her eyes, despite a perceptible epicanthic fold, were hazel-green. But any ambivalence in her background was unimportant. What mattered was her professional competence, and as to that there was no uncertainty at all.

"That's true, Sir," she replied to Kabilovic. "I'm firmly convinced that the Bug force that attacked us entered one of the star systems through which we'd already passed-or, to be precise, one of the warp nexi, with or without a star system-rather than the one in which they attacked us. We weren't aware of their entry because of our lack of coverage of those nexi, even with nav buoys."

It could have been interpreted as a veiled criticism of Sommers' decision not to emplace such buoys, since their absence meant it was impossible for any courier drone to find its way home with word of the flotilla's fate. But emplacing them would also have been a tell-tale trail of bread crumbs for any Arachnid picket or survey force which had chanced upon them, and the lieutenant's odd eyes met the admiral's squarely. Looking into them, Sommers detected nothing behind the words except a junior officer gutsy enough to say what she thought even at the risk of misinterpretation. What she did detect was a desire on Murakuma's part to say more, to go beyond the expert opinion Kabilovic had solicited.

"Do you care to theorize any further, Lieutenant?" she inquired, clearing the way for Murakuma to speak up in the presence of her superiors.

"Well, Sir . . . May I?" Murakuma indicated the holographic display projector at the center of the conference table. Sommers nodded, and the lieutenant manipulated controls. A series of colored balls connected by sticks, rather like a very simplified representation of a molecule, appeared in midair: warp nexi and the warp lines that connected them. There were nine of the immaterial spheres, and everyone present recognized the display as SF 19's route. It had, of course, no relation whatsoever to those various stars' relative positions and distances in real-space. Nobody except astronomers thought in such terms when the warp points allowed interstellar transits without crossing the intervening light-years.

"We began here," Murakuma began, using a light-pencil to indicate the ball representing the Anderson One system. Then she flashed the immaterial pointer four balls further along the string. "And here's where they attacked us. When they appeared, they didn't give the impression of a force that had just piled into the system and was still in the process of getting itself organized. That's why I believe they entered a closed warp point in one of the intervening warp nexi." She created the broken strings that denoted warp lines leading to closed warp points, indicating hypothetical routes into the three nexi they'd transited before the Bugs had overtaken them.

"Precisely," Kabilovic said with a satisfied nod, but Murakuma wasn't finished.

"But the question then becomes," she went on, "why did they wait so long to attack us?"

"Well," Hafezi ruminated, running his fingers through his beard in a nervous gesture he'd only recently acquired, "we were operating in cloak. Even if they were aware of our presence in a general way, maybe they took a long time to locate us precisely."

"But, Sir," Murakuma persisted, "it wouldn't have taken them long to do that if they'd come out of cloak themselves to hunt aggressively for us. Maybe they were unwilling to do so."

"Why?" Sommers demanded.

"Well, Admiral, if we'd become aware that there were Bugs in this warp chain, wouldn't our first order of business have been to get at least one ship back with the warning? And with them out of cloak, we might have detected them soon enough to do just that. So it could make perfectly good sense to them to stay cloaked to keep us from doing that. But," Murakuma continued relentlessly into what had become a profound silence, "why did they suddenly stop worrying about it?"

She made further adjustments, expanding her display to include the warp line of the far side of Anderson One, leading to Alpha Centauri with its eight other warp points, one of which connected with . . . Sol.

She said nothing. Nothing was needed. They all sat, no longer a staff but rather a collection of individuals, each alone with his or her own horrified speculations.

Sommers knew she needed to bring them out of it. But she couldn't, at first. She, too, was face-to-face with a nightmare from which there was no awakening.

But because she was in command, and habituated to looking at the big picture, she ran her mind over the events that had led them, and the rest of the human race, to this point.

It wasn't that humankind's expansion into the galaxy had been a peaceful process.

Quite the contrary.

Oh, it had been at first. After Hermes had shown the gateway to the stars-or, more accurately, blundered through it-colonization of what were now called the Heart Worlds had proceeded without any difficulties other than those humans had created for themselves. No dangerously advanced aliens had been encountered, and after the dodged bullet called the China War, no human with the brain to organize an effective opposition had challenged the peaceful hegemony of the Terran Federation. Earth and its children had settled comfortably into the belief that the universe was a fundamentally benign place, holding no real enemies, only those to whom one had somehow given offense and with whom one should therefore make amends. That attitude had always been common enough, at least among peoples who'd enjoyed a vacation from history. (Sommers, whose ancestry was North American, winced mentally.) And experience had finally seemed to be confirming it.

Then, one fine day in 2205, humanity had met the Orions.

The First Interstellar War had been only the first movement of a symphony of carnage. One threat after another had materialized out of a galaxy which the conventional wisdom had never expected to hold so many species at essentially the same technological level in the same cosmological eyeblink of time. Next had come the three-cornered clash of Terran, Orion, and Ophiuchi known as the Second Interstellar War. Then all three erstwhile enemies had found themselves allies in the Third Interstellar War, for the Rigelians had offered none of them anything but equal opportunity genocide. But then had come a diminuendo of sorts, as the Terran Federation had dealt unaided with the truly weird Theban jihad for which humans were at least arguably responsible. That had been around the turn of the twenty-fourth century. Afterwards, there'd been no armed conflict to speak of for six decades. Even in this era of extended lifespans, that had been long enough to convince most humans that peace was the natural state of things.

The majority, as always, had been wrong. The orchestra of history hadn't come to a triumphant finale. It had barely paused before launching into the soul-shaking atonalities of what wasn't even like music composed by a madman . . . for a madman is, after all, human.

Nothing in history had prepared the human race-even that minority capable of learning from history-for the horror that had begun when a survey mission had stumbled onto the Arachnids. Nothing . . . not even the Rigelians, who'd been like a ghastly caricature-or, perhaps, surrealist painting-of the worst religious and ideological fanatics of Old Terra's past. (And presumably still were, on the few planets where they now existed, closely watched by orbital stations under standing orders to obliterate anything more advanced than a steam engine or a black powder muzzleloader.) The Bugs were something else altogether. And after three and a half years of war, no one was any closer to fathoming what that something else was than they'd been in 2360.

The Bugs were, of course, sentient . . . weren't they? Because they had to be . . . didn't they? Nonsentient lifeforms didn't build starships, or organize the kind of industrial base that had overwhelmed all initial resistance by sheer numbers, tonnage, and firepower. And yet . . . in all those three and a half years there had been no communication of any kind with them. Instead, mind-numbingly immense fleets had advanced in dead silence, indifferent to losses, grinding the defenses of one system after another to powder with a nonfeeling relentlessness even more horrible than Rigelian malevolence. Fantasies of runaway machine-life had soon been dispelled, however; the Bugs were organic. It would have been better if they hadn't been. The Frankenstein robots of popular fiction wouldn't have needed organic food. The Bugs did . . . and they regarded conquered sentients as a source of it. As they'd advanced along the Romulus Chain, whole human populations had vanished. So had Orion populations, after the Bugs broke into the Kliean Chain. Two races which had thought themselves inured to war had finally looked true horror full in the face.

Desperate fighting had eventually brought the war to a deadlock. And the Allies had finally gotten a break: the discovery of a system, Zephrain, which gave warp access to what was clearly an important system of the Bugs' unknowably large domain. Admiral Ivan Antonov-the victor of the Theban War, recalled from retirement as head of the Alliance's joint chiefs of staff-had begun to prepare an offensive, to be launched from that system. Not only would that offensive strike at a critically important Bug system, but it might well also open a fresh line of advance-a new point of contact which might allow Antonov to create a war of movement and put an end to the brutal, grinding, head-on war of attrition against an enemy who didn't seem to feel its losses.

But then the Bugs had appeared in the skies of Alpha Centauri, humanity's gateway to the galaxy, only one warp transit away from the home system itself. It was also the Grand Alliance's headquarters, and Antonov had abruptly changed his plans. Taking personal command of the forces being assembled for the Zephrain offensive, he'd led them through the previously unsuspected closed warp point that had admitted the Bugs into humanity's heartland.

Antonov's hastily organized Second Fleet had blasted its way into the system on the far side of that warp point, which he'd dubbed "Anderson One" in honor of his old friend and mentor Howard Anderson, hero of the first two interstellar wars. Then, judging the risks to be outweighed by the chance of putting a quick end to the war-and the Bugs-he'd pressed "Operation Pesthouse" onward towards the warp point into which the Bug defenders had fled.

But Anderson One had held a third warp point, and Antonov had been too canny an old campaigner to ignore the dangers that might lurk beyond it. Thus it was that Survey Flotilla 19 had departed through that third warp point, shortly after Second Fleet had fared deeper into the unknown.

They'd set out just after Antonov's first couriers had returned from his next conquest. Censorship had blanketed those couriers' tidings, but too late to prevent some disturbing rumors from circulating about what Antonov had found on Anderson Two's life-bearing world. Sommers had rejected those rumors out of hand as unthinkable. Yes, everyone knew the Bugs ate captured sentient beings. But ranches of such beings, raised as food animals that knew they were food animals . . . ? And there were human worlds that had been under Bug control for three years now-worlds on which there'd been children and adolescents. . . .

No! Once again, Sommers' mind dismissed the thought with a spasm of revulsion.

Anyway, there was nightmare enough without it.

Murakuma's voice resumed, bringing Sommers back to the present.

"The Bugs appeared from behind us, so they have precisely what we were dispatched to warn against: a way into Anderson One, enabling them to cut off Second Fleet."

The implications were lost on no one. Every pair of eyes was on the holo display, and every mind was following the arrangement of prettily colored lights to its logical conclusion.

Was there still a Second Fleet?

Even as Sommers watched, the horror on certain faces deepened visibly as those faces' owners allowed their eyes to follow the warp chains in the other direction from Anderson One, to Alpha Centauri . . . and Sol.

In their fight for survival, they'd had no time to contemplate their aloneness, cut off from the rest of the human race. But now people began to make hesitant eye contact, as they silently asked each other the question no one dared utter aloud: Are we now really alone?

Maningo's features began to tremble. Sommers opened her mouth, prepared to forestall whatever the logistics officer was about to release into the oppressive air of the conference room.

But Hafezi beat her to it, tossing his head like a tormented horse and speaking angrily-although who or what his anger was directed against was not immediately apparent.

"No! It's not possible! We've only been gone nine months. And the Bugs jumped us only about a month and a half ago. There hasn't been time for . . . well, anyway, remember all the other worlds we've settled! They're still there, even if . . . if . . ." He couldn't continue, nor was there any need for him to complete the thought. Everyone knew what he meant, and no one wanted to hear it. He rallied himself. "Whatever's happened, there's still a Federation for us to find our way back to. And there's still our duty!"

They all sat up a little straighter, and even Maningo's incipient quivering solidified into determination. Thank you, Feridoun, Sommers thought, and in that fierce hawklike face she thought to glimpse the Iranian mythic hero whose name he bore.

She didn't dare allow her gaze to linger on that face.

"Commodore Hafezi is correct," she rapped, reasserting control of the meeting. "We can't allow ourselves to dwell on speculative possibilities. All that can accomplish is to cripple our will. Our sole concern must be the accomplishment of our mission and the return to safety of the people entrusted to our command. To that end, we must locate another warp point as soon as possible." She felt no useful purpose would be served by mentioning the possibility that this might be one of the occasional "dead end" systems with only one warp point. Instead, she decided to attend to what she'd been putting off. "In the meantime, it's necessary for us to restrict our consumption of nonrenewable supplies, especially in light of the loss of Voyager. Therefore, effective immediately, we'll-"

The whoop of the general quarters klaxon shattered the air.

The voice of Jamaica's captain came from Sommers' chair arm communicator, speaking to no one, for she was already off at a dead run for Flag Bridge. She needed no explanation of what that whooping meant.

Well, she thought as she ran, at least I won't have to worry about breaking the news to people that we're going on short rations.

She stood beside Hafezi and watched doom approach in the holo sphere.

"I'd hoped they wouldn't find us so soon," she said quietly. Not so long ago, she wouldn't have made a remark like that to her chief of staff. Now . . .

He didn't reply. His eyes, like hers, remained fixed on the display of the Bug pursuers, approaching on what wasn't quite a stern chase they could run directly away from and which would therefore intersect their course with the inevitability of death.

The wavefront of that oncoming force was composed of what humans termed gunboats-larger than fighters. In fact, they were larger even than the auxiliary small craft carried by starships, but they generated an intermediate form of reactionless drive field which conferred speed and maneuverability far greater than that of any conventional starship. Indeed, their speed approached that of the fighters the Bugs, for whatever reasons, couldn't or at least didn't use . . . and, unlike fighters, they could make unassisted warp transit. They were a Bug invention, and had come as a shocking surprise to the Allies, who hadn't thought the Bugs could invent. At least they had some countervailing disadvantages; they were energy hogs, and in consequence had emissions signatures that made them as readily detectable-and targetable-as full-sized starships.

Not that the Bug force would have been all that hard to detect in any case, for its second wave consisted of battlecruisers, advancing uncloaked in justifiable contempt of their quarry. Lots of battlecruisers . . . all the survivors from their fight in the last system, in fact. Some were simply gunboat tenders, but the majority were fighting vessels comparable to her own Dunkerque-A-class BCRs-the classes the Alliance's intelligence had dubbed Antelope, Antler, and Appian. Enough of them to smother SF 19's defenses with missiles.

"Commodore Hafezi," she said crisply. (Even at this time, there was no need to deny him the traditional courtesy "promotion" accorded to anyone aboard a ship other than its skipper whose normal rank-title was "captain." Indeed, Sommers was beginning to understand what she'd always read, that tradition became particularly important at times like this.) "We need to be able to launch the fighters at the precise moment when interception becomes unavoidable. Notify Captain Kabilovic." Milos, after all, wasn't aboard this ship. Tradition . . . again. "And order the Huns to stay well clear and continue their present survey pattern."

Hafezi's nod showed his understanding. The scout cruisers might, after all, find another warp point. And their combat value was almost negligible.

"Aye, aye, Admiral," he replied with a crispness matching hers. Then, as though by common consent, their eyes met in a way they hadn't been allowed to meet of late. And, a tremulous instant later, so did their hands.

What does it matter, now that we're all dead? She turned, with a look of what might have been called defiance, to face any of the flag bridge crew who might have seen them.

Some had. They were staring openly. But not with amazement. They were grinning.

The amazement was all Sommers'.

They knew? But how long . . . ?

Then, all at once, her sense of the ridiculous came bubbling up. Surprise, outrage, and even despair all drowned in it. She turned back to face Feridoun. A smile began to tremble on her lips. . . .

"Admiral!" Fujiko Murakuma-not one of those who'd been grinning-shattered the brittle moment, calling out in a puzzled voice from the sensor station where she'd been observing the Bugs. "We're picking up something else."

Wingmaster Demlafi Furra, commanding Sixth Strike Wing, felt a need to relieve her tension. So she spread her wings a little-not to their full two-meter span, of course, here in the confines of her flag bridge-and waved them gently back and forth. The mild enhancement of her blood's oxygen, though nothing like the full rush of flight, did its work, and she turned with renewed calmness and energy to the holo display.

The strike wing had been on full alert ever since the scout destroyer's courier drone had emerged from one of Pajzomo's three warp points, shattering the boredom of a routine patrol of vast emptiness lit by the sullen red glare of Pajzomo. But now they were closing to within eleven light-seconds of the hunters who didn't know yet that they were being hunted. And the need of everyone in the strike wing, from Furra on down, to open fire was becoming a sensual thing.

"Wingmaster," the flag captain, as humans would have called him, interrupted Furra's thoughts, "what about the other group of aliens?"

"I haven't forgotten them, Nestmaster." The imprinted caution of generations had prevented Furra from trying to contact the unknowns when they first appeared. And after that, any electronic emissions that might have revealed the strike wing's presence to the Demons had been out of the question. Now she gazed at the icons representing those ships, whose unimaginable crews must be preparing themselves for their last battle. "What about them?"

"Well, Wingmaster," the flag captain spoke diffidently, "I mention this only as a possible option, but . . . we could wait and let the Demons overtake them. They don't stand a chance, of course. But they'd probably leave fewer Demons for us to deal with afterwards."

Furra didn't reprove him for a suggestion flagrantly contrary to the precepts of Kkrullott. She had her faults, but sanctimoniousness wasn't one of them. Neither was hypocrisy . . . and the same idea had crossed her own mind. Nevertheless, she gave her head the backward jerk that meant what shaking it would have to most humans. "No. Aside from the ethical issues involved. It occurs to me that we may be looking at an opportunity here."

"Wingmaster?"

"These beings are obviously enemies of the Demons." Which, she reflected, was merely to say they had encountered the Demons. "This makes them potential allies of ours."

"But how useful? They're in headlong flight!"

"These ships are, granted. But that doesn't mean the rest of their race isn't still holding out somewhere." Furra straightened up into a posture which put an end to discussion. "We'll proceed as planned. If the unknown ships initiate hostilities against us, we will of course defend ourselves. But if they try to communicate with us, we'll respond."

The flag captain gestured understanding and obedience and they resumed their waiting. It wasn't long before they closed to within the preplanned range of the unsuspecting Demons.

Furra leaned forward in a crouch and gazed at the icons of the Demon ships for another instant-a dreamy gaze, almost. Some might have thought it a loving gaze, completely misinterpreting the nature, but not the intensity, of the emotion it held.

But then she bared omnivore's teeth, and no one, of whatever species or whatever culture, could possibly have misunderstood any longer.

"Disengage cloaking," she ordered the flag captain. "And . . . kill!"

* * *

The Fleet had run the Enemy to ground once more, and this time there would be no escape. This group of Enemy ships had proved as troublesome as any the Fleet had yet encountered, and there was no reason to suppose they would prove less troublesome once the Fleet managed to close with them. Still, it was obvious, despite their attempts to cloak themselves from the Fleet gunboats' sensors, that they'd taken serious losses and damage in their last clash with the Fleet. Indeed, had it not been for the fortuitous discovery of yet another warp point by the Enemy's scout ships, the Fleet would have finished them off the last time. It was a pity that the Fleet had never previously discovered that warp point for itself. Had it known that it existed, it might have been possible to place ships on this side of it to await the Enemy in ambush. In that case, none of the survey ships could possibly have survived. As it was, it was essential to overtake the Enemy and destroy him utterly lest he find yet another warp point somewhere in the depths of this unexplored star system and escape once more.

At least the infernally fast small attack craft which had done so much to fend off the Fleet's last attack had suffered heavy damage in the process, and it seemed apparent that there could not be many of them left. The Enemy was obviously aware of the Fleet's presence-the maneuvers of his surviving units was sufficient proof of that-yet the small attack craft had not yet been committed.

The battlecruisers held their courses, covered by the protective shield of the gunboats, waiting to pounce upon the Enemy small attack craft when they finally were committed, but the Fleet allowed itself to feel a cold anticipation of the upcoming victory. As the range dropped, the emissions signatures of the Enemy starships had become increasingly clear, and the evidence of severe damage to his long-range missile ships had been still further promise that the troublesome survey force and its escorts would soon be dealt with.

That would be good. Once the survey ships had been erased from existence, this component of the Fleet could retrace its steps and rejoin the remainder of the Fleet committed to the carefully prepared counterattack upon the Enemy core system from which the Enemy had emerged. And when that hap-

* * *

The first Bug starship blew up with no warning at all.

The Antelope-class battlecruiser on the flank of the Arachnid formation had never even realized its killer was there. All of its sensors had been locked upon the Allied survey flotilla fleeing before it, and it had never occurred to the beings which crewed that battlecruiser that there might be anyone else to worry about. And because it hadn't occurred to them, they were taken fatally by surprise as the missile salvo erupted out of the blind zone astern of it, created by the sensor interference of its own drive field. There were no point defense counter missiles, no fire from close-in laser clusters, and the lethal salvo smashed home like so many hammers of antimatter fury.

The battlecruiser's shields did their best, but the savagery of the attack was scarcely even blunted, and the entire ship vanished in a sun-bright bubble of fire.

The Antelope was the first to die; it wasn't the last. The other salvos which had accompanied the one that killed it began to arrive almost in the same instant, and ship-killing blasts of fury marched through the Arachnid formation like the hobnailed boots of some demented war god. A second battlecruiser, a third-and then the killing spasms of flame came for the gunboats, as well. They were smaller, easier and more fragile targets, without the shields that protected their larger consorts, and-like the battlecruisers-they'd never even guessed that any danger might lurk behind them. A single hit was sufficient to kill any one of them, and the hits came not in singletons, but in dozens. Shattered and vaporized hulls, clouds of plasma and blast fronts littered with the splintered fragments of battlecruisers . . .

The Arachnid fleet reeled under the devastating impact of the totally unanticipated carnage. For a handful of minutes, even the boulderlike discipline which had sent attack force after attack force of Bug superdreadnoughts unwaveringly into the teeth of the Alliance's most furious firepower wavered. The sheer surprise of their losses, far more than the scale of those losses-grievous though they were-stunned them, and separate squadrons reacted as separate squadrons, not the interchangeable units of the finely meshed machine their enemies were accustomed to facing. Some of them, in the absence of any order to the contrary, continued to close in on the fleeing remnants of Survey Flotilla 19, even as successive waves of missiles sliced into them from astern. Other squadrons of battlecruisers, and even more of the harrowed gunboats' survivors, turned abruptly to charge towards the source of that fire.

Even those who continued to close upon the Allied survey force were at least no longer taken completely unawares by the fire screaming down upon them. Their command datalink installations had taken charge of their point defense systems, concentrating counter missiles and laser clusters alike upon the incoming weapons which any unit of any battlegroup could see. Some of those missiles still got through, of course. Not all of them could be seen by any member of the battlegroups they targeted, and the uncaring laws of statistics said that even some of those which could be seen would evade all fire directed upon them. But the defensive systems managed to sharply reduce the number of warheads getting through to their targets, and whoever had suddenly attacked them found himself forced to concentrate his fire upon the hostile warships suddenly charging straight towards him.

The Fleet staggered under the sudden, merciless fire ravaging its neat formation. It couldn't be coming from the Enemy survey force the Fleet had been pursuing, for there had never been a sufficient number of survey ships or escorts to generate the number of missiles sleeting in upon it.

Besides, the sensor sections reported as the Fleet quickly began to recover its balance, the Enemy had never used weapons similar to some of those blasting into its ships. No, these missiles carried warheads of types the Fleet had never seen before, and even if the Enemy had somehow developed them and put them into production without the Fleet realizing it, the survey ships would surely have used them in the previous battle had he possessed them.

Which meant that the Fleet had encountered yet another Enemy.

On Jamaica's flag bridge, puzzlement at the strange ships that had suddenly emerged from cloak gave way to stunned incredulity as one Bug battlecruiser after another vanished in the hell-glare of antimatter annihilation.

Sommers was the first to recover.

"Commodore Hafezi! Order Captain Kabilovic to launch every fighter he's got, and take those gunboats. And have Nomad and the Huns proceed on course, but get the rest of the flotilla turned around. Move!"

The last word was yelled as much for the entire bridge crew's benefit as for Feridoun's. Everyone was staring, open mouthed, as two more Bug battlecruisers vanished from the threat board, and all but two of the others were rendered naked by some totally unknown weapon-some sort of missile warhead which evidently stripped away electromagnetic shields. It was too unexpected, too sudden a reversal of the inevitable course of whatever brief lives remained to them. Sommers was as whipsawed as the rest of them, but she couldn't let herself-or anyone else-remain paralyzed.

She rose from her command chair and strode towards the com console.

"Raise those unknown ships!" she commanded. As the com officer fumbled to obey, she watched data codes blossom beside the icons of the unknowns on her plot as the computers received more sensor data. She gulped as tight formations of superdreadnoughts appeared. But even those ships, she saw, were going to have to move in to closer range, now that the Bugs were aware of their presence and fighting back. One of the Bug squadrons had survived entirely intact, and now that it had turned to face its enemies, its datalinked point defense was proving impervious to the long-range missile bombardment that had been so devastating coming from the blind zones of surprised ships.

She spared a glance for the status of her own flotilla. Feridoun had passed her orders along, and the fighting ships were performing the kind of course reversal that was merely difficult nowadays, rather than impossible, as it would have been in the days of reaction drives. And either Kabilovic had set new records in responding to her command to launch his fighters, or else he'd already begun to do so on his own initiative.

Feridoun joined her.

"Are you sure this is wise?" he muttered.

"What do you mean? Joining the unknowns' battle with the Bugs? Or trying to communicate with them?"

"Both."

Sommers smiled in the way that transformed her appearance in a way she'd never suspected . . . any more than she'd ever realized how inaccurate her idea of that appearance as "mannish" was.

"There's an old saying: 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend.'"

"I've heard that saying. It doesn't necessarily follow."

"No, it doesn't, really." She drew a breath. "But what choice do we have, Feridoun? To continue fleeing in the hopeless way we have been?" Inasmuch as she was the one who'd been driving them so mercilessly in precisely that direction, she wouldn't have dared say such a thing to anyone else. Hafezi didn't respond, and she pressed on. "Besides, we know the Bugs are enemies. These new arrivals may turn on us and finish us off after they're done with the Bugs. But we don't know that. And maybe we can at least put them in our debt by helping them finish off this battle, first."

"Still . . ."

"Admiral!" The com officer cut Hafezi's skeptical voice off. "We're getting a response! They're-"

All conversation halted as the image appeared on the com screen.

Flying sentient races were one of those theoretical possibilities which had never panned out. It wasn't hard to understand why. If a species was going to specialize, it generally specialized in only one thing. Besides, it took a large body to support a large brain, and in any normal environment an avian couldn't afford a large body. At most, a formerly avian race like humanity's Ophiuchi allies might exchange flight for the ability to use tools in an evolutionary trade-off.

But Sommers, looking at the long arms of the being on the screen and the membranes they supported, had no doubts. Even in their present folded state, those wing-membranes were obviously too extensive to be vestigial. Despite the short, downy sand-colored fur and the red-trimmed black clothing, the overall impression was vaguely batlike-much as the Orions suggested bipedal cats to humans, who recognized the fallacy of the comparison but still couldn't avoid making it.

The being's mouth was working to produce sound: gibberish, of course. The com officer checked his readouts, nodded to himself, and turned to Sommers.

"The translator software is starting to kick in, Sir. Of course, it'll need some time to pull together enough vocabulary to start building on. The more he or she or whatever talks, the more it'll have to get its teeth into," he added, "and assuming that they've got similar capability, the more you talk, the faster they'll be able to translate what you're saying."

Sommers glanced at the plot again. Kabilovic's fighters were beginning to engage the surviving Bug gunboats. So were destroyer-sized vessels of the new arrivals.

"I don't think we've really got much in the way of options, Feridoun," she said quietly. And she began to speak, very distinctly, into the com pick up.

CHAPTER ONE: Gathering Stars

By the standard dating of Old Terra, it was the year 2364, and the month was May. But that had nothing to do with the revolution of the Nova Terra/Eden double-planet system around Alpha Centauri A, and wan winter light slanted through the lofty windows, making the air of the spacious conference room-well heated and crowded with human and other warm-blooded bodies though it was-seem chilly.

Which, thought Marcus LeBlanc, was altogether too damned appropriate. How could it be anything else, when every being sitting in that room was only too well aware of the catastrophic events which had swirled about them since Ivan Antonov had launched Operation Pesthouse?

They'd had such hopes. Even LeBlanc, whose job it was to remind them all of how little they truly knew-even now-about the Arachnids, had been unable to believe that any race could sacrifice so many ships, entire fleets of superdreadnoughts, even planets inhabited by its own kind, just to set a massive trap. Yet that was precisely what the Bugs had done, and Operation Pesthouse had turned into the most overwhelming disaster in the history of the Terran Federation Navy. The Arachnids had lured Antonov's Second Fleet on and on with sacrifice gambits beyond the bounds of sanity . . . then they'd closed in through undiscovered warp points in the systems through which he'd passed. They'd sprung a trap from which Antonov, with the help of a hastily organized relief force headed by Sky Marshal Hannah Avram herself, had only just managed to extricate less than half his force-not including himself, and not including Avram.

It was hard to say which had been the more paralyzing body blow to the TFN: the deaths of two living legends, or the loss of ships-more than a quarter of the fleet's total prewar ship count, and more than half its total prewar tonnage destroyed outright. And that didn't even count the crippling damage to many of the survivors. Nor did it count the two survey flotillas that had been probing beyond the warp points through which the Bugs had come . . . and which must have been like puppies under the wheels of a ground car against the massive armadas into whose paths they had strayed.

The losses were so horrifying that the survey flotillas scarcely constituted a material addition to the sum of destruction. But, the more LeBlanc thought about it, the loss that really couldn't be afforded was Antonov. His reputation had been that of a ruthless, unstoppable, unfeeling force of nature-in short, humankind's answer to the Bugs. If he could be overwhelmed, what hope had everyone else?

Ellen MacGregor and Raymond Prescott-whose brilliant execution of Antonov's escape plan had enabled some of Second Fleet to survive-had halted the tumble of Terran morale when they smashed the Bug counteroffensive that had followed the fleeing survivors of Operation Pesthouse into the Alpha Centauri System. The "Black Hole of Centauri," as it had come to be called after MacGregor's savage prediction of what the Bug invaders were going to fall into, had been only a defensive victory, but it had been one the Grand Alliance had needed badly. And it evidently had left the Bugs incapable of any further offensives for the time being, as there had been no such offensive since. So a lull had settled over the war as the TFN began to rebuild itself.

Yet even beginning that rebuilding had been an agonizingly painful process, and the dispersive demands of frightened politicians, terrified for the safety of other star systems whose population levels approached that of Alpha Centauri, hadn't helped. So, yes, he understood why a room which should have been warm felt anything but.

He was seated among the staffers who lined the room's periphery, well back from the oval table in its center. As a rear admiral, he had about as much chance of getting a seat at that table as did the young lieutenant beside him.

That worthy seemed to share his mood. Kevin Sanders looked as foxlike as always, with his reddish sandy hair and sharp features. But the usual twinkle was absent from his blue eyes as he turned to LeBlanc, and his whisper was subdued, even though it held the customary informality that obtained between them.

"Quite a change since the last time I was here," he said.

After a moment's blankness, LeBlanc gave a nod of understanding. Sanders, then an ensign, had been in this very room three and a half years before, when the Grand Allied Joint Chiefs of Staff had first convened. That had been before he'd joined LeBlanc's intelligence shop of Bug specialists-before it had existed, even-and he'd been present as a subordinate of Captain Midori Kozlov. She hadn't been a captain then, when Ivan Antonov had been named the joint chiefs' chairman, and she'd served as his staff intelligence officer.

And now Kozlov, like Antonov himself and so many others-too many others, hundreds of thousands of others-existed only as cosmic detritus in the lonely, lonely depths of space where Second Fleet had gone to find its doom.

"Yes, quite a change," LeBlanc murmured in reply as he studied those positioned at the oval table.

Two members of the original joint chiefs that Sanders remembered were still there: Admiral Thaarzhaan of Terra's Ophiuchi allies, and Fleet Speaker Noraku of the Gorm, whose relationship with the Orions defied precise human definition. But Sky Marshal Ellen MacGregor now represented the Terran Federation, and there were others besides the joint chiefs, crowding the table's capacity. Admiral Raymond Prescott, who was to have commanded the Zephrain offensive, was seated beside Ninety-First Small Fang of the Khan Zhaarnak'telmasa, Lord Telmasa, who was to have been his carrier commander . . . and who, more importantly, was his vilkshatha brother, for Prescott was the second human in history to have held that very special warrior's relationship with an Orion. Across the table from them was another Orion, Tenth Great Fang of the Khan Koraaza'khiniak, Lord Khiniak, just in from Shanak, where he commanded Third Fleet on the stalemated second front of the Kliean Chain. Fleet Admiral Oscar Pederson of the Federation's Fortress Command was also there, in his capacity as the system CO of Alpha Centauri. And, at the end of the table . . .

There, LeBlanc's eyes lingered. Beside him, Sanders chuckled, once more his usual self.

"I wonder if there's ever been so much rank at one table?" the lieutenant mused. "You'd think it would reach critical mass!"

When he got no response from LeBlanc, he glanced sharply at his chief. Then he followed the rear admiral's gaze to the woman on whom it rested.

Admiral Vanessa Murakuma had the red hair, green eyes, and elvish slenderness of Irish genes molded by generations on a low-gravity planet. The initial impression, to eyes accustomed to the human norm, was one of ethereal fragility.

"Yeah, right," Sanders muttered to himself sotto voce.

Murakuma, thrust into command of the frantically improvised defenses of the Romulus Chain in the early days of the war, had fought the Bug juggernaut to a standstill in a nightmare thunder of death and shattered starships. She'd fallen back from star system to star system, always desperately outnumbered, always with her back to the wall . . .  always aware of the civilians helpless beyond the fragile shield of her dying ships. Sanders knew that he would never-ever-be able to truly understand the desperation and horror which must have filled her as she faced that implacable avalanche of Bug warships, saw it grinding remorselessly and unstoppably onward towards all she was sworn to protect and defend. Yet somehow she'd met that avalanche and, finally, stopped it dead. She'd nearly died herself in the process, yet she'd done it, and in the doing earned the Lion of Terra, an award that entitled her to take a salute from anyone in the TFN, regardless of rank. And the intelligence analyst who'd been beside her throughout the entire hideous ordeal had been then-captain Marcus LeBlanc, the only intelligence officer the TFN had thought loose-screwed enough to have a prayer of understanding the Bugs.

And now, as Sanders watched, she made a brief eye contact with Rear Admiral LeBlanc, and smiled ever so slightly.

Once again, Sanders looked at LeBlanc, who was also smiling.

He wondered if the rumors were true.

But it seemed that his boss had heard him, after all.

"Yes," LeBlanc agreed, still smiling. "There are a hell of a lot of stars, and the various other things nonhumans use for flag-rank insignia, up there. But there's more to come."

"Attention on deck!" the master-at-arms at the main doorway announced, as if on cue.

Everyone rose as Kthaara'zarthan, Lord Talphon, Chairman of the Grand Allied Joint Chiefs of Staff, entered with the prowling stride of the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaiee-a name which humans, for reasons too obvious for discussion, preferred to render as Orions, after the constellation which held the heart of their interstellar domain.

Most Orions, including Zhaarnak and Koraaza, came in various shades of tawny and russet. But there was a genetic predisposition, which kept popping up in the Khanate's noblest families, toward fur of midnight-black. Kthaara epitomized that trait, and even though he was beginning to show the frosting of age, he still suggested some arcane feline death-god. It was an impression few humans, even those used to Orions in general, could avoid on first seeing him. And it had grown more pronounced since Operation Pesthouse.

Everyone had heard the stories of Kthaara's reaction on learning of the fate of Ivan Antonov . . . or Ivan'zarthan, as he was also entitled to be known, as the very first human to be admitted to vilkshatha brotherhood. It had been Kthaara who'd admitted him, at the height of the Theban War, when Antonov had allowed the Orion to serve under him because he'd understood the blood debt Kthaara had owed to the killers of his cousin, Khardanizh'zarthan. As he'd listened to the reports that Antonov's flagship had not been among the battered survivors that had limped back from Operation Pesthouse, the Orion hadn't emitted the howl a human, misled by the catlike countenance evolutionary coincidence had put atop a body not unlike that of a disproportionately long-legged man, might have expected. Nor had he made any sound of all. Nor any movement. Instead, like black lava freezing into adamantine hardness, he'd seemed to silently congeal into an ebon essence of death and vengeance.

Since then, his trademark cosmopolitan urbanity, the product of six decades of close association with humans, had returned somewhat. It was in evidence now as he sat down at the place at the head of the table he'd inherited from his vilkshatha brother and addressed the meeting.

"As you were, ladies and gentlemen," he said in the Tongue of Tongues. Orion vocal apparatus was incapable of pronouncing Standard English, and that of humans was almost as ill-adapted to the universal Orion language. No Orion had ever been able to speak Standard English, and only a tiny handful of gifted mimics-like Raymond Prescott-had ever been able to reproduce the sounds of the Tongue of Tongues. But the two races could learn to understand each other's speech, and many of the non-Orions present-including LeBlanc and Sanders-could follow the Tongue of Tongues. Those who couldn't (like Vanessa Murakuma, who was Orion-literate but whose tone deafness made it impossible for her to comprehend the spoken version of the language) had earplug mikes connected to a translators who could.

Several new Orion-English translation software packages were in development, spurred by the absolute necessity the Grand Alliance had created for human-Orion communication across the incompatible vocal interface which separated them, but they still left a lot to be desired. Memory requirements were very large, which limited their use to systems-like those on planets, large space stations, and capital ships-which could spare the space from other requirements. Worse, however, was the fact that they tended to be very literal-minded, and Orion was not a language which lent itself well to literal translation into English. Which was one reason organic translators were employed at plenary meetings like this one, where clarity of understanding was essential. The steady improvement in the software, especially by the Orions (who were the known galaxy's best cyberneticists) was bound to solve all of those problems-probably fairly soon, to judge by current results-but in the meantime, the software was reserved for occasions when misunderstandings would be less critical.

"I wish to welcome Lord Khiniak, Lord Telmasa, Ahhdmiraaaal Murraaaakuuuuma, and their staffs," Kthaara continued. "You have been recalled because I consider it necessary to bring all our principal field commanders up to date on our current status and future intentions. This will occupy an extensive series of conferences and briefings, as you already know from the material you have received. The purpose of this initial session is twofold. First of all, I wish to inform you that the last six months' strategic lull is soon going to come to an end."

That got the undivided attention of everyone who'd been expecting to sit through lengthy platitudes. Kthaara smiled a tooth-hidden carnivore's smile.

"The course of events leading up to the lull," he added, "is, of course, well known to us all."

That, LeBlanc thought with a fresh inner twinge of pain as he recalled his own earlier thoughts, was one way to put it.

It's still felt . . . odd to hear an Orion say it, though. Or, rather, to hear an Orion say it as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Not so long ago, that position would have gone as a matter of course to a representative of the Terran Federation, the Alliance's technological pacesetter and industrial powerhouse, as well as its premiere military power. But now the TFN lay prostrate, its proud tradition of victory tarnished and the sublime self-confidence born of that tradition badly shaken. True, the awesome shipbuilding capacity of the Federation's Corporate Worlds remained intact, and the reconstruction of the Navy had commenced. Yet for the time being, the Orions would have to take the lead in any initiatives the Alliance attempted. So the chairmanship had fallen to Kthaara-the logical choice anyway, in terms of seniority and prestige as well as his unique experience in dealing with humans.

And now his voice continued in the Tongue of Tongues ("Cats copulating to bagpipe music," as a human wit had once described the sound), bringing LeBlanc back to the matter at hand.

"It is therefore unnecessary to review those events at any great length. Instead, I would like to use this initial plenary session to bring everyone up to date on our intelligence specialists' evaluations of the wreckage retrieved from the force that attempted to penetrate this system. Ahhdmiraaaal LeBlaaanc, you have the floor."

LeBlanc stood, unconsciously smoothing back the sparse hairs on his scalp and then stroking the beard he'd grown to compensate. He manipulated a small remote unit, and a holo image appeared in midair above the table. An image of a warship of space.

A low rumbling arose from his audience, hushed with shock.

"That, ladies and gentlemen, is the new Arachnid ship type that BuShips has dubbed the 'monitor,' " he stated without preamble. "You've probably seen the computer-generated imagery based on the sensor data from Second Fleet." He saw Raymond Prescott, who'd brought that data back, wince. "But that was only inference. Accurate inference, as far as it went-this ship is approximately twice the tonnage of a superdreadnought, just as that initial data suggested." The room grew very quiet. "But now, on the basis of closer acquaintance, we're in position to show you what it really looks like. We've also identified three classes. This one, which seems to be the 'basic' monitor, we've assigned the reporting name of the Awesome class." A few grim chuckles at the appropriateness barely dented the silence, and they ceased abruptly when a holographically projected display screen showed the class's armament. "As you can see, it's primarily a missile platform. Given the time it must take to construct such a thing, they have to have laid the class down before they acquired command datalink-presumably in an effort to compensate for that very lack by packing the maximum possible firepower into a single ship. Now, of course, they have command datalink, and our analysis of the attack on this system indicates that they've retrofitted at least some of the Awesome class with it-we call the refitted version of it the Awesome Beta class. Their datalink seems to be as capable as ours, as well; it can coordinate the offensive and defensive fire of up to six of these ships."

LeBlanc noticed eyes flickering toward MacGregor and Prescott, who'd faced an invasion led by those leviathans . . . and stopped it cold. If any of the people in this room hadn't grasped what that meant before, they did now.

He manipulated his remote, and the image was replaced by another, about the same size but visibly different in detail.

"This is what we've designated the Armageddon class. It's primarily a gunboat tender. We've been aware for some time that the Bugs' gunboats are significantly larger than ordinary auxiliaries, so internal boat bays can't accommodate them. Rather, they're carried externally, using these racks." He used a light pencil to indicate the hull features. "The class has twenty-five of them. At the same time, as you can see from the armament specs, it also carries enough force beams to make it formidable at close range. And, like the Awesome class, it has a version refitted with command datalink."

LeBlanc could read his listeners' minds without difficulty. They were trying to imagine going up at close range against a battle-line with that many force beams-the deadly application of tractor/presser beam technology that overstressed the molecular bonds of matter at a distance-especially when the ships mounting those beams had the capacity these had to soak up punishment. And they were contemplating the fact that fighting that way was only this class's secondary function.

Without comment, he brought up a third image.

"Finally, this is the Aegis class. It also carries twenty-five gunboats. But it's primarily a command ship, with less ship-to-ship armament but-as you can see-very tough defenses."

He dismissed the holo imagery and faced his very subdued audience.

"In addition to information on these new ship classes, we've been able to glean something even more important: a new insight into the nature of the enemy we're fighting. As you all know, such knowledge has been in extremely short supply throughout the war. I'll now turn the briefing over to Lieutenant Sanders, who initially grasped the significance of the data we were seeing and subsequently developed the theory he'll be presenting."

As a lieutenant who'd only recently shed the chrysalis of j.g.-hood, Sanders was easily the most junior officer in the room. It didn't seem to bother him in the least as he got jauntily to his feet and accepted the remote from LeBlanc. What did bring a small frown to his face was that the audience had come unfocused, dissolving into little clusters from which rose the worried buzz of discussion concerning the Bug monitors. Quite simply, a lieutenant wasn't inherently important enough to be taken seriously, much less to command their attention.

Sanders smiled lazily, like a man who knew just the solution to a dilemma. He touched the remote, and where the images of the monitors had floated there appeared . . . something else.

The radially symmetrical being bore neither relation nor resemblance to any Terran lifeform. But the six upward-angled limbs surrounding and supporting the central pod, the whole covered with coarse black hair, made it easy to see why the term "arachnid" had been applied. Those limbs rose to pronounced "knuckles" well above the central pod before angling downward once more, and two other limbs ended in "hands" of four mutually opposable "fingers," while above the eight limbs were eight stalked eyes, evenly spaced around the pod's circumference. And if all that hadn't been sufficient to show that this thing had evolved from nothing that ever lived on Old Terra, there was the mouth-a wide gash low in the body-pod, filled with lampreylike rows of teeth and lined with wiggling tentacles. Everyone present knew what those tentacles were for: to hold living prey immobilized for ingestion.

The discordant buzzing of many unfocused conversations ceased. Instead, a single low sound, below the level of verbalization, arose from the room in general. That sound was like a single musical note sounded by a whole orchestra of instruments simultaneously, for while the mode of expression varied with species and temperament, the overall tone was uniform. A Terran dog, laying its ears back and growling low in its throat, couldn't have been any less ambiguous.

All right, Kevin, LeBlanc thought desperately in his young subordinate's direction. That'll do. You've got their undivided attention.

But Sanders knew what he was doing.

"The face of the enemy, ladies and gentlemen," he announced rather theatrically. Then he switched off the holographic Bug and continued in a more matter-of-fact tone. "Unfortunately, what his face-and the rest of him-looks like is just about all we've ever known about him. That, and the fact that I should be saying it rather than him, because contrary to an early misconception, the Bugs are either neuter workers and warriors, or hermaphroditic breeders. Every attempt to communicate with them has been an abject failure. It's not even clear that they could communicate with us if they wanted to. We assume, in the absence of any plausible alternative, that they're exclusively telepathic. We've captured mountains of electronically stored records-none of which has ever been made to yield an iota of intelligible output. We know nothing about their society, their government, their objectives-"

"Their objectives," Sky Marshal Ellen MacGregor cut in, "seem to be crystal clear." She was a Scot of the "old black breed" and her dark-brown eyes held none of the liquidity of similarly colored eyes from warmer climes. They were like chips of black ice, and Sanders had the grace to look abashed under their level, frigid weight.

"True, Sky Marshal, at least as viewed from our perspective," he agreed. "But we haven't had a clue as to how they're organized-until now."

That sent a rustle of interest through the audience, and he went on.

"I must emphasize that a 'clue' is all we've got even now. But our analysis of the Bug wreckage has led us to the conclusion that there are different . . . 'subsets' among the Bugs."

"What does that mean?" Pederson demanded.

"Simply this, Admiral: the ship classes we've long since identified, as well as the new monitors, can actually be subdivided into five groupings based on differences in construction."

"But," Fleet Speaker Noraku protested in his race's basso profundissimo but quite intelligible Standard English, "there are always some differences within a class. No two ships are truly identical." His face-unsettlingly humanlike despite its gray skin, broad nose, and double eyelids-looked perplexed, and he shifted his massive hexapedal form on the saddlelike couch that served the Gorm as a chair.

"Granted, Fleet Speaker. But we're not talking about slight variations or upgradings here. Rather, we're looking at different construction techniques, too pronounced to be accidents-especially since they're not random, but fall into five definite patterns. In other words, there are four or five sources of Bug warships, all of them working from the same blueprints, but each with its own idea as to how those blueprints should be translated into actual hardware.

"The details of the analysis that led us to this conclusion will be made available for your perusal. We can't say whether these sources of ship construction represent different systems or clusters of systems within a more or less decentralized Bug empire, or autonomous Bug star nations acting in alliance, or . . . something else. So, for the time being, we're assigning the convenience-label 'Home Hive' to each of them, with a number that was arbitrarily assigned as the distinctive construction technique was identified. Is assigned, I should say, given that the identification effort is an ongoing process, since we can't be certain there aren't still more of them out there."

Raymond Prescott sat up straighter, and spoke as much to himself as to Sanders. "So the system that the warp line from Zephrain leads to . . ."

"That's occurred to us, Admiral. The massive high-level energy emissions from that system's inhabited worlds, and the density of drive fields around them, clearly indicate a major industrial center. We would be very surprised if it wasn't one of the home hives. We're not in a position just yet to speculate as to which one it is. But, as you no doubt recall, the Bug system at the end of the Romulus Chain that Commodore Braun's survey flotilla discovered-and was ambushed in-at the very start of the war was also quite obviously a major center of population and industry. Presumably, it's supplied the bulk of the ships we've faced on that front. And, now that we know what to look for in the wreckage Admiral Murakuma retrieved after the Fourth Battle of Justin, we're prepared to go on record and identify it as Home Hive Five."

There was a thoughtful silence as they all assimilated what this whippersnapper had told them. It might not be much, but it was the first hint of detail or texture in what had been a featureless cliff-wall of menace and mystery. Kthaara allowed them to consider it for a moment, then spoke.

"Thank you, gentlemen," he said to the intelligence officers, then turned back to the gathering as a whole. "And now, we will adjourn, as we all have an early start ahead of us tomorrow." The word tomorrow was conventional usage. Actually, it would be nighttime. But none of the Allied races was accustomed to a day nearly as long as this double-planet system's sixty-one-hour rotation around its components' center of mass.

The meeting broke up, and the room began to empty. Sanders finished clearing the display from the holo system and stood up and spoke over his shoulder.

"Well, Sir, shall we-?"

Once again, he became aware that his boss wasn't listening to him. He turned around.

Among the scurrying figures still remaining, one was standing quite still. From across the room, Vanessa Murakuma held LeBlanc's eyes.

Sanders sighed, gathered up his things, and departed, whistling softly.

Murakuma and LeBlanc approached each other slowly, oblivious to anyone else. They paused within a few feet, but didn't touch-they still weren't entirely alone in the room.

"How are you?" she asked tentatively.

"Hanging in there . . . Sir." LeBlanc said, and gestured towards the row of French doors that lined one end of the room. Wordlessly, they went out onto the terrace. The nano-fabric of their black-and-silver uniforms adjusted its "weave" against the winter chill so automatically that neither of them even noticed.

The building, which the planetary government of Nova Terra had placed at the disposal of the Grand Allied Joint Staff, crowned a low cliff overlooking the Cerulean Ocean to the west. The ocean extended around the globe in that direction, covering the opposite hemisphere where the permanent tidal bulge created by the companion planet Eden submerged all but a few scattered chains of islands, including New Atlantis, where LeBlanc's intelligence outfit had its isolated digs.

He leaned on the balustrade and gazed westward. Alpha Centauri A hung at its protracted afternoon, but the clouds had rolled in to cover it, and there was a low rumble of distant thunder. Heavy weather coming, he thought with a small fraction of his mind, while the rest of it sought to organize his thoughts. Finally, he turned to meet Murakuma's gaze, which had never left him.

"Have you had a chance to see Nobiki?" he began lamely. Murakuma's older daughter was serving with Alpha Centauri Skywatch. LeBlanc hadn't actually spoken to her in over two months, however, and looking at the mother he felt a sudden pang of guilt over the neglect of his semiofficial uncle's duties to the daughter.

"No." Murakuma shook her head unsteadily. "I hope to manage while I'm here. She and I have a lot of talking to do." Her eyes flickered for just a moment. "Especially about Fujiko."

LeBlanc savored the sensation of having put his foot in it up to mid-thigh.

There was no excuse. He'd just been thinking of the lost Survey Flotilla 19 earlier, and he'd allowed himself to forget that Vanessa's younger daughter had been one of those who'd vanished tracelessly into the darkness with it. He should have remembered. Should never have let himself forget the night Nobiki, despite the reserve of her upbringing, had wept for her sister on his shoulder. Perhaps it was the very pain of that memory which explained his failure to recall it now, but that was only the reason, not an excuse for it. No, there was no excuse-so he made none.

Instead, he started over. "I've missed you," he managed.

"And I you," she whispered. His heart leapt, but the accumulated hurt of many months would not be denied.

"You haven't answered my letters in a while," he got out in a very level voice, and she gestured vaguely.

"I've been . . . occupied."

"Occupied? With what, out there at Justin?"

The instant it was out of his mouth, he realized it had been precisely the wrong thing to say. Her eyes flared with green flame.

"Oh, nothing, of course! Just wait for the Bug offensive that never comes, and-"

"Vanessa, I'm sorry! I didn't mean that!" He shook his head, cursing himself for timing his maladroitnesses so close together. There were only three points of contact between the Alliance and the Bugs: the Romulus Chain, the Kliean Chain, and Alpha Centauri. There would be a fourth once the Zephrain offensive finally began, but until then only those three existed . . . and LeBlanc knew most of the human race prayed nightly to God that it would stay that way.

"Look," he said after a very brief moment, "I know you're running a third of this war! Maybe you're bored, but it's thanks to you that it's been so quiet for so long out there. The very fact that you're covering the Justin System, and that you kicked the butts the Bugs haven't got out of it-"

"Yes. So I can still look down at that planet and all its ghosts, and wonder whether they'd still be alive if I'd done . . . something different."

All at once, LeBlanc understood. He remembered the day her Marine landing force had reported the hideous death toll on Justin. The virtual annihilation-the consumption-of the millions of civilians the TFN-and, especially, its commander, Admiral Vanessa Murakuma-had been responsible for defending. The civilians they hadn't been able to defend, because if they'd stood to fight in their defense, they would have died and left the billions of civilians behind them unprotected.

It wasn't proper procedure for an intelligence officer of the TFN to hold his admiral in his arms while she sobbed her heartbroken grief and guilt, but "proper procedure" hadn't been very important to him just then.

"So you think you've been left in command of a stalemated front as a kind of exile?" he said quietly. "Because people blame you for the losses on Justin?" He took a deep breath. "Listen Vanessa: nobody blames you for that, except possibly yourself. You couldn't have prevented what happened there, and you know it. Hell, I've already told you all this in person! No one could have-and at least most of the people who died went down fighting because of the weapons and the advisors you left them. And, I might point out, if you hadn't retaken the system, the Bugs would still be occupying it. And we all know what that would mean!"

"Yes, yes," she muttered, and turned her back, turning away from both LeBlanc and that to which he was alluding. Ever since Ivan Antonov had entered the Anderson Two System and discovered the planet that had been named Harnah, the human race had lived with the knowledge that there were worse things than genocide.

The first grim lesson in that awareness had come over a communications link to an occupied planet from some forever unknown reporter's camera. The horrifying footage that anonymous witness to atrocity had recorded had been humanity's first hint that their utterly unknown, implacably advancing foes were, like the Orions, carnivores. But that same footage had also revealed that that was the Bugs' only point of similarity to the Orions, for they preferred their prey living . . . and human children were precisely the right size.

That had been horror enough for anyone. By itself, it had been enough to wrack Vanessa with guilt-indeed, to consume the entire human race with guilt and terror alike. Yet even that had paled beside what Second Fleet had discovered upon Harnah, where the local Bug population had fed upon vast herds of the domesticated animals who'd once built their own flourishing civilization . . . and who clung still to the broken fragments of that culture even in the shadow of the hideous predators who battened upon them.

And that, too, Vanessa Murakuma's heroic stand had stopped short of the millions upon millions of human beings who lived in and beyond the Romulous Chain.

"Yes," she repeated dully, gazing westward at the Cerulean Ocean. "I know all that-at least with my forebrain. But even if the Navy doesn't blame me, maybe they think I'm . . . burned out." She laughed harshly. "Sometimes I wonder if I am."

"Being bored isn't the same as being burned out."

"Maybe not. But still, I've made up my mind; I'm going to request a transfer, to take part in the Zephrain offensive."

"What? But Vanessa, that's already locked in. Raymond Prescott and Zhaarnak'telmasa are-"

"Oh, I'm not expecting to command it. I know I won't get another shot at command of a fleet. I just want to do something, in some capacity. You may be right that being burned out is one thing and being bored is another, but the fact remains that, at a minimum, I am bored."

"You're not going to get any sympathy from most combat veterans. They like being bored!" The corners of Murakuma's mouth quirked upward, and a ghost of the old jade twinkle arose in her eyes. LeBlanc pressed his advantage. "And as for being burned out . . . do you really think they'd leave a burned-out admiral in command of forces that've been built up to the level yours have?"

Her head began to nod, as though acting on its own, but then her innate self-honesty stopped the gesture. Whatever else she might think, she had to admit that Fifth Fleet had been reinforced to a size that amply justified the presence of a full admiral as CO. And she'd been able to use the time to shake that massive force down into a smoothly functioning whole, its parts commanded by flag officers she understood and trusted.

"Yes, you're right of course. And you haven't told me anything I didn't already know. So . . ." She turned to face him, smiling, and the old Vanessa Murakuma was back. "So why do I feel so much better?"

"Sometimes you can know something and still need to hear it from someone else. Especially from someone who . . ." He didn't continue, nor was there any need for him to.

The raw ocean breeze had driven everyone else inside, leaving them alone on the terrace. As he took her hands in his, the weather finally fulfilled its promise with a gust of wind and a spatter of rain, and waves began to hiss and crash against the base of the cliff.

"I suppose we'd better get inside," Murakuma suggested.

"Yeah." LeBlanc nodded. "Uh, I've been assigned temporary quarters here. They're not far."

Moving as one, they turned away from the balustrade and, for a while, left the storm behind.

CHAPTER TWO: Forging the Sword

The VIP Navy shuttle drifted slowly through space. Although it was far larger than the cutters which normally played deep space taxi for the TFN's flag officers, it remained less than a minnow beside the looming bulk of the ship it had come here to see.

The trip wasn't really necessary, of course. Every one of the high-ranked officers aboard the shuttle, human, Orion, Ophiuchi, and Gorm alike, had seen the titanic hull time and again in holographic displays and on briefing room screens. By now, any one of them could have recited the design philosophy behind the vessel and even the major specifics of its armament. And yet, despite that, the trip had been necessary. These officers worked every day of their lives with electronically processed data, but there were still times when they had to see with their own eyes, touch with their own hands, to truly believe what the reports and briefings told them.

And this, Oscar Pederson told himself, is one of those times.

The shuttle was luxuriously equipped, as befitted the craft assigned to Pederson in his role as CO of Alpha Centauri Skywatch, but the quality of its fittings wasn't the reason it was here today. No, like the four other shuttles keeping formation upon it, it had been chosen for its passenger capacity. Even with all five of them, it was going to take at least six trips to transport all of the rubbernecking admirals (or their other-species equivalents) who wanted to see the gleaming alloy reality.

Horatio Spruance, the first monitor ever commissioned by the Terran Federation Navy, was a mountain beyond the transparent viewport. Pederson was no stranger to huge artificial constructions. The vast majority of the major space stations serving the Federation's inhabited planets were even larger. Of course, all but a tiny fraction of each of those space stations was devoted to commerce, freight, repairs, passenger transfers . . . anything and everything other than the deadly weapons of war. Still, the massive OWP from which he commanded the Centauri System's fixed defenses certainly was armed, and it was actually larger than Spruance. But there was a major difference even there, for that orbital weapons platform was designed to stay exactly where it was. It was, as its very name suggested, a fixed weapons platform, a fortress, armed and armored to fight to the death at need in defense of a specific planet or warp point.

Horatio Spruance wasn't. This menacing mountain of missile launchers and beam projectors was designed for mobility. It wasn't designed to defend, but rather to project power. It floated there, looming like a titan over the construction ships and the suited yard workers clustered about it like microbes as they worked around the clock to put the finishing touches upon it. And a titan was precisely what it was . . . or perhaps that hopelessly overused cliche 'juggernaut' truly applied in this case. Slow and cumbersome compared to any other warship ever built, even a superdreadnought, it was also twice as large and powerful as that same superdreadnought.

And she's also a more conservative design than I really would have liked, Pederson admitted to himself. Balancing long-range and short-range weaponry has saved the Navy's ass more than once. And there's definitely something to be said for having something to shoot at an enemy who manages to get to any range of your ship, instead of limiting yourself to one ideal "design" engagement range. But it may just be that this time the Bugs had a better idea what they were about than we do. A six-ship battlegroup of ships this size could throw down one hell of a weight of fire if they were all pure missile designs.

Of course, he could hardly complain that no one had asked his opinion, because BuShips had done just that. In fact, they'd solicited design suggestions from every Fortress Command system CO in the entire Federation, as well as the Battle Fleet flag officers who would actually take those designs into combat. And, to be perfectly fair, they'd incorporated quite a few of the Fortress Command suggestions. And, again, to be perfectly fair, even without a pure missile design, a battlegroup of Horatio Spruances would still be able to pump out an awesome quantity of missile fire.

It's just that, good as they are, they could have been so much better . . . if we'd only had time, he told himself.

He sighed quietly as the shuttle drifted around one flank of the behemoth he and his fellows had come to see. Lord Khiniak stood just to Pederson's left, and the Terran admiral smothered a smile as he heard a soft, rustling purr from the Tabby fleet commander. It wasn't easy to strangle that smile, either, because Pederson had become enough of a "Tabby expert" to recognize the Orion equivalent of his own sigh, and he knew exactly what had produced it.

Lord Khiniak, too, regretted the desperate haste with which the Spruance design-and that of her Orion counterparts-had been finalized. But not, of course, for quite the same reasons. It wasn't the missiles which could have been crammed into the design that he missed; it was the fighter bays.

Vanessa Murakuma had also heard Lord Khiniak's sigh, and she was actually forced to turn away to hide her own expression as she recognized Pederson's struggle not to smile. It would never do to give in to the most unprofessional giggle threatening her own self-control, but she knew precisely what the Fortress Command admiral was thinking. She hadn't personally discussed design concepts with Third Fleet's commander, but she didn't really need to, for Lord Khiniak was a regular contributor to the Heearnow Salkiarno Naushaanii.

Although her tone deafness had always prevented her from understanding spoken Orion, she was completely fluent in the written forms of both High and Middle Orion-a fluency she'd acquired in no small part to follow the Khanate's military journals in their original forms. As a result, she knew that Lord Khiniak was a highly respected (despite a certain iconoclastic streak) commentator in the Heearnow Salkiarno Naushaanii's pages. Yet even though the functional equivalent of the Federation Naval Institute Journal could wax just as contentious on matters of strategy and force projection concepts as its Terran counterpart, the Heearnow's articles and editorials were far less fractious on an operational or tactical level, for the Orion Navy had no doubts at all about the proper tactical mix for its fleet units.

The arguments in favor of that tactical mix were impeccably logical and occasionally downright brilliant, yet in the end, all that rationality was the handmaid of cultural imperatives so deep-seated that they might as well be instinctual. That was as true for Terrans as for Tabbies, of course, but the Orion honor code of Farshalah'kiah-"the Warrior's Way"-required the individual warrior to risk his pelt in personal combat and had come over the centuries to enshrine an unhesitating commitment to the attack. Even when forced to assume the strategic defense, an Orion automatically looked for a way to seize the tactical offense. Cover your six was a Terran idiom that did not translate well into the Tongue of Tongues. When humans had first met them, the Tabbies had fought in swarms of dinky ships, although even then there'd been no technological barrier to constructing a smaller number of more capable and better protected ones-like the ships with which the unpleasantly hairless, severely outnumbered aliens from Terra had defeated them. In the end, they'd been forced to accept a similar design theory, even if they'd done so kicking and screaming the entire way. If they'd wanted a fleet which stood a chance in combat, they'd had no option but to match the combat capability of their opponents, because the disparity in effectiveness had meant that there'd simply been no other choice.

Until, that was, the Rigelians had introduced the single-seat strikefighter and restored individualism to space war. It might be going a bit far to argue, as some TFN officers occasionally did, that the Tabbies were actually grateful to the Rigelians (who, after all, had cherished their own genocidal notions where Orions and humans alike were concerned). Yet there was no denying that the KON had never been truly happy until the fighter gave its warriors back their souls. Ever since ISW 3, all their capital ships had featured integral fighter squadrons, despite the inefficiency involved in designing launch bays and all of their associated support hardware into ships that weren't purpose-built carriers. Show them a ship even bigger than the superdreadnoughts they'd never really liked anyway, and their reaction was totally predictable: By Valkha, imagine how many fighters something that size could carry! And they were disposed to see the bright side of whatever tactical models rationalized that predisposition.

Pederson, on the other hand, had never belonged to the TFN's strikefighter enthusiasts. His idea of a proper warp point assault ship leaned much more heavily towards missile launchers and beam weapons protected by the heaviest possible shields and armor, and he couldn't quite conceal his skepticism over the Tabby ideal, although the crusty old fire-eater was obviously doing his manful best.

"A most impressive vessel," Lord Khiniak said now, and despite her tone deafness, Murakuma thought she detected a certain sly amusement in the angle of the fang's ears and the tilt of his head as he glanced sidelong at Pederson. It was hard to be sure without the body language cues, especially since her earbug was tied into the translating software of the shipyard building Spruance, and this particular package had a particularly irritating, nasal atonality. "Of course, it will not be possible to realize the full potential of a military hull of this size until the carrier version reaches production. As a fighter platform capable of surviving long enough in a warp point assault to carry its fighters through and then launch them, it will make it possible for us to-"

"Yes," Pederson interrupted just a tad briskly. "We've all seen the specifications for your Shernaku class, Great Fang. Ninety-six fighters . . . very impressive. But it will be a while before it can be put into production." At least the Fortress Command admiral was too tactful to add, In Terran yards, although Murakuma suspected it had been a near thing. "And to be honest, there are some modifications I'd like to see in the Spruance design, myself. But we don't really have the latitude to experiment with the initial classes. You must admit that given the pressure to get our own monitors into production as quickly as possible, more conservative designs must have priority. In fact, you have admitted it, with the other two classes you've shown us. Those are balanced designs, and-"

"We don't need to go into that at the moment," Ellen MacGregor cut in.

As Sky Marshal she was completely familiar with the design features of all of the Allied monitor designs. Like Pederson, she would really have preferred a somewhat greater degree of specialization in the Terran designs, but the Fortress Command admiral was quite correct about the time pressure. BuShips had decided-with her own not entirely enthusiastic support-that it was more important to go with tried and proven hardware and weapons mixes which could be put into production in the shortest possible time rather than to waste months the Grand Alliance might well not have in trying to come up with the perfect design before they even laid the first ship down. In fact, the Spruance design had been frozen within three months of Pesthouse's disastrous conclusion, with construction commencing exactly fifty-nine days after the design was sealed.

Which let us set a new all-time record for the speed with which any TFN ship has ever moved from concept to construction . . . much less something like this one, she reminded herself. And at least the designers had been given two additional months to work on the Howard Anderson class which was the command ship equivalent of the Horatio Spruances. That had paid substantial dividends in the final design, and without setting it back too badly.

And then there's the "escort" design, she thought in something very like a gloating mental tone. BuShips was still arguing internally over what class name to assign to the MTE design, but that was perfectly all right with MacGregor. The bookmakers were putting their money on the Hannah Avram class, but what mattered to the Sky Marshal was what the ships would be capable of, not what they would be named. She'd argued for years that it was a waste of fire control capacity to fill one or more of the datalink slots in a battlegroup with some little dipshit light cruiser. Using up that much command and control capacity on a dedicated anti-fighter/anti-missile platform that small (and lightly armed) had made absolutely no sense with battleship and superdreadnought battlegroups . . . and it made even less with these things. Stripping out the Spruance-class's capital missile launchers and heavy beam projectors had allowed the new design to cram in a huge number of standard missile launchers and point defense clusters. The clouds of counter missiles it could put out ought to put a crimp into any Bug missile salvo-even one from one of their own monitor battlegroups! And the first mob of Bug kamikazes which tried to swarm one of them was going to get a most unpleasant surprise, as well. Not to mention the fact that it would be a monster in ship-to-ship combat once the engagement range dropped into the standard missile envelope.

Satisfying as that thought was, however, MacGregor wasn't about to dwell on it at the moment. The MTE design, in particular, represented a triumph for BuShips and the Corporate World shipyards, which had not only produced it in record time, but had actually found ways to bring it to the construction stage without dislocating the building plans for the Spruance or Anderson class ships. No one else in the explored Galaxy could have pulled that off . . . and she wasn't about to trust Oscar's uncharacteristic attack of diplomacy to keep him from mentioning that the Orion "generalist" monitor designs were lower-tech than their Terran counterparts, or that their keels hadn't even been laid yet.

"The diversity of our design philosophies," she went on, with a carefully tight-lipped, tooth-hiding smile at Lord Khiniak, "is one of the Alliance's strengths. With our various races bringing their unique viewpoints and insights to bear on the problem, our chances of arriving at the optimal weapons mix are maximized."

Murakuma was impressed. Damn, but she's gotten good at that sort of thing since becoming Sky Marshal! Bet she's even learned how to deal with those svolochy in the Legislative Assembly. She smiled to herself, realizing she'd thought the Russian word for "scum"-one of Ivan Antonov's milder epithets for politicians. But then the smile quickly died. It was too painful, recalling the living legend who'd accompanied her as she'd blasted her way back into the Justin System. Hannah Avram, then Sky Marshal, had torn a strip off her for letting the Chairman of the Grand Allied Joint Chiefs of Staff put his superannuated ass at risk like that, and . . . But, no. That memory also hurt too much.

"Are there any other specific features of the design which any of you would like to observe more closely before we return to Nova Terra?" MacGregor asked, bringing her back to the present. No one replied, although one or two of the oh-so-senior flag officers aboard the shuttle gazed through the viewports with the wistful expressions of children hovering on the brink of playing hookey for just a little longer. If MacGregor noticed, she gave no sign, and the shuttle turned away from the drifting ship it had come to observe.

A quiet murmur of conversation filled the passenger compartment, but Murakuma leaned back in her comfortable seat and closed her eyes, projecting an unmistakable image of deep thoughtfulness. It wasn't really that she wanted to avoid the Ophiuchi vice admiral who was her seat mate. It was only that she had something else entirely on her mind, and-

A soft, musical chime sounded in her earbug, and she stiffened in her seat as she recognized the priority of the attention signal.

"Admiral Murakuma," a respectful voice from the shipyard com center told her over the private channel, "the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff extends his compliments and asks to see you in his office as soon as convenient upon your return to Nova Terra."

Murakuma's heart began to race a little faster as she pulled out her personal communicator and tapped in an acknowledgment of the politely phrased order. Then she leaned back once more, turning her head to gaze out the viewport at the glittering jewel box of the stars while her mind raced.

Already? I hadn't expected any action on it so soon. Is that a good sign, or a bad one?

It was a question she couldn't answer . . . not that she didn't keep trying to all the way back to the planet.

As the receptionist ushered her into Kthaara'zarthan's office, she saw that he had a human-style desk and chairs, although the piled cushions of ordinary Orion domestic furnishings were in evidence elsewhere. Behind that desk was a large eastward-facing window, and this was a sunny morning. Silhouetted against the glare, she could see that the Chairman already had two visitors, and as she advanced across the expanse of carpet, one of them-human, male, rather on the short side-rose from his chair.

"Ah, welcome, Ahhdmiraaaal Muhrakhuuuuma," Ktharaa greeted her via her earbug. "I assume you have met Fang Zhaarnak' and Fang Presssssscottt."

"Only briefly, Sir." She examined the two, especially the human, to whom Kthaara, like every other Tabby, always referred by the Orion form of his rank title.

She'd heard stories about how much of Raymond Prescott was prosthetics by now, but he'd adjusted to it so well that no one would ever notice. And although his hair was iron-gray, with white streaks radiating back from the temples, he didn't look prematurely aged, as one might have expected. Not, that was, until one looked closely at his hazel eyes.

He had, presumably, risen in deference to her as a wearer of the Lion of Terra. But there was really little to choose between them in that regard, she thought, gazing at a certain blue-and-gold ribbon nestled among the rest of the fruit salad on his chest. The TFN had had to design that one hastily, for the Orions didn't use ribbons to represent decorations, and no one had ever expected a human to be awarded the Ithyrra'doi'khanhaku. Both of the only two non-Orions in history who'd won it had been Gorm, and the assumption had been that no TFN officer would ever find himself in a position where even the possibility of his receiving it might arise.

Until, that was, Raymond Prescott and a xenophobic, human-hating bigot named Zhaarnak'diaano had been thrown together in the defense of the inhabited twin planets of the Orion system of Alowan and the multibillion Orions civilians beyond it. Their combined forces had been, if anything, even more brutally outnumbered than her own had been in the Romulus Chain, but somehow-by dint of what sacrifices she doubted anyone who hadn't been there would ever truly understand-they'd held. Not only that, but they'd actually counterattacked, against vastly superior forces, and retaken the Telmasa System . . . which had saved yet another billion and a half Orions. In the process, Prescott had left one arm behind him forever; Zhaarnak'diaano had become Zhaarnak'telmasa, the first Khanhaku Telmasa and the ultimate first father of the proud warrior clan whose name would forever preserve the honor of the battle he'd fought; and both of them had received the Ithyrra'doi'khanhaku. Among other things.

"I've been hoping to talk to you at greater length, Admiral Prescott," she said extending her hand. "I wanted to tell you personally how instrumental your brother's scouting mission in the Justin System was. It was also one of the most amazing displays of nerve I've ever seen."

Prescott smiled at her.

"Andrew's always been the daredevil of the family. I'm the more cautious type-"

"So we have all noticed," Zhaarnak interjected dryly.

"But I must admit, he excelled himself with that stunt," Prescott continued with a brief smile at his vilkshatha brother. "Volunteering to stay behind in Justin when you'd withdrawn to Sarasota was nervy enough. But lying with his engines shut down so he would have been dead meat if the Bugs had happened onto him. . . !"

Prescott shook his head and chuckled, but Murakuma nodded back much more seriously.

"True, he would have been unable to maneuver if he'd been caught. But his ship's lack of emissions was probably the very thing that prevented him from being caught. We'd given him up for lost when we didn't hear from Daikyou for a month. But when he finally risked sending a courier drone through, the information he sent back was absolutely crucial."

"Yes," Prescott agreed in a more sober tone. "As I understand, that information made your attack back into the system possible. So it was fortunate for several thousand of Justin's citizens that . . ."

The look on Murakuma's face brought Prescott to a puzzled halt. What could have bothered her about an allusion to the Justin Raid and the thousands of refugees she'd managed to pluck from the jaws-literally-of death in one of her most renowned exploits? After all, it wasn't as if anyone blamed her for the civilians who hadn't been retrieved. God and Howard Anderson together couldn't have gotten them all out.

After a moment, Murakuma's expression smoothed out, and she spoke quietly.

"Indeed. I couldn't have been happier when he received the accelerated promotion to commodore I'd recommended. I was only sorry to lose him."

"Let me take this opportunity to thank you for that recommendation," Prescott said, relieved to be moving on past whatever ghost he'd unwittingly awakened to flit across Murakuma's path. "Since then, he's really found his niche as a 'gunslinger' over in Survey Command."

"Confidentially," Kthaara put in, "Sky Maaarshaaal MaaacGregggorr has informed me that he is on the short list for yet another promotion. Which reminds me of the reason I asked the three of you here."

Even Murakuma recognized Kthaara's getting-down-to-business tone, and she and Prescott both took their seats.

"This concerns the projected Zephrain offensive," Kthaara began. He actually pronounced it as Zaaia'pharaan, the name assigned by the system's Orion discoverers. But Murakuma's mind automatically rendered it into the form used by the humans to whom the Khanate had ceded it. And her heart leapt.

If she showed any outward sign, Kthaara gave no indication of having noticed.

"First of all," he continued, "I want to reaffirm my commitment to commencing the operation as soon as possible, despite the risks involved in resuming the offensive before our monitors are ready. There is no real need for me to recapitulate those risks, of course, as they have been aired quite thoroughly by Human politicians." Tufted ears flicked briefly in Orion amusement, and Murakuma knew the sable-furred Tabby was hearing a rumbling string of Russian obscenities as clearly as though Ivan Antonov had been in the room. "And, to be fair, many of my own race also shrink from the prospect of exposing the population of the Rehfrak System, only one warp transit from Zephrain, to the possibility of a monitor-led counterattack. However, I and the rest of the Joint Chiefs are convinced that these risks are outweighed by the need for us to regain the initiative as quickly as possible. And-" a significant pause "-I am authorized to tell you that the Khan'a'khanaaeee has accepted our view of the matter, and commanded full participation by his fleets."

All three of his listeners abruptly sat up straighter.

Humans, on first hearing the title of the Orion ruler, had immediately shortened it to Khan, and dubbed his domain Khanate. Orions like Kthaara who knew their human history weren't quite sure how to take this. But they had to admit that the associations weren't altogether unfair when applied to a polity which, in its expansionist period before the First Interstellar War, had been given to practices such as "demonstration" nuclear strikes on inhabited planets. And the nomenclature was appropriate in another way as well: the Khan was an absolute monarch, his power restrained only by the ultimate and almost-never-invoked sanction of removal by the Khanhath'vilkshathaaeee, the "Caste of Assassins." To Orions, democracy was just one more manifestation of human eccentricity-or silliness, as most of them had better manners than to say. If Kthaara had sold the plan to his imperial relative, then that settled that as far as the Khanate was concerned.

Zhaarnak gave a low, humming growl.

"Personally, I hope they do counterattack with monitors!" He turned hastily to his human vilkshatha brother. "Oh, yes, Raaymmonnd, I know. The building projects in Zephrain have required the establishment of a substantial Human population on the habitable planet, I forget the name they have given it-"

"Xanadu," Prescott supplied.

"-and I do not ignore the potential danger to them. But consider: since we ceded it to you Humans, you have fortified Zephrain with orbital fortresses and minefields until it is almost as strongly held as this system. If you and First Fang MaaacGregggorr could butcher them here, then we can butcher them there! And their losses in monitors here have forced them to relinquish the initiative ever since."

"That's just inference," Murakuma put in. "We can't be sure that's why they haven't mounted any new offensive operations."

"But it makes sense," Zhaarnak insisted. "We ourselves are confirming how expensive monitors are, and how long it takes to construct them. We still have no idea of the size of the enemy's industrial base-not even your Cub of the Khan Saaanderzzz claims to know that. But surely no one can continue to lose monitors in wholesale lots indefinitely without feeling the loss!"

Kthaara smiled at the fiery younger Orion.

"There is much in what you say, Zhaarnak'telmasa. And these very considerations were among those which led the Strategy Board to conclude that the risk of a counteroffensive was an acceptable one. As for actually seeking to lure the Bugs into a counteroffensive . . ." For the second time that morning, Murakuma heard the rustling Orion sigh. "Such a suggestion is a political impossibility, whatever you-or anyone-may think of its merits. So I suggest that you put it from your mind."

"Of course, Lord Talphon," Zhaarnak said in a perceptibly smaller voice.

"And now," Kthaara resumed briskly, "I have certain announcements to make." He looked from Prescott to Zhaarnak and back again. "When the Zephrain offensive was initially discussed, it was assumed that Eeevaahn'zarthan-Ahhdmiraaaal Antaanaaav, I meant to say-would command Sixth Fleet personally, with you, Fang Presssssscottt, as his second in command, and you, Lord Telmasa, as the carrier commander. More recently, the assumption has been that each of you two would simply move up one rung, with Fang Presssssscottt in command." His gaze remained on Prescott and intensified, though his voice remained expressionless. "I have now decided, with Sky Marshaaal MaaacGregggorr's concurrence, that you, Zhaarnak'telmasa, will command Sixth Fleet, with you as deputy . . . Raaymmonnd'presssssscott-telmasa."

In the ensuing silence, Murakuma reflected that Kthaara's use of the Orion form of Prescott's name carried a large and complex freight of meaning.

In the first place, by calling attention to a human's membership in a vilkshatha bonding, he was reminding everyone present that he himself had initiated the first such bond. If there was one sin of which any court under Heaven would have to acquit Kthaara'zarthan, it was Orion chauvinism. On another level, he was reminding these two of their own brotherhood, and the relative insignificance of which rectangle within an organization chart each of them occupied.

Despite that, Zhaarnak's discomfort would have been obvious even to a human less familiar with Orions than Murakuma.

"Ah, Lord Talphon, this . . . unexpected announcement places me in a most awkward position. I cannot in good conscience-"

Prescott turned to him with a lazy smile which was pure Orion and spoke in the Tongue of Tongues.

"Say nothing more, brother. It is of no consequence. And besides, Lord Talphon is right." He turned back to Kthaara. "I understand entirely. For the present, we humans are a zeget recovering from a deep wound. If the offensive is to commence without delay, as we all agree it should, then the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaiee must bear the brunt of it. Under the circumstances, it is appropriate that-"

"No member of my race would object to serving under you," Zhaarnak protested hotly. "And if one did, he would hear from me! Besides," he looked away ever so briefly, then met his vilkshatha brother's eyes levelly once more, and his voice was quieter, yet even more intense, "you have already served under me once when the command should have been yours."

If Prescott appreciated the irony of this outburst from an Orion who, a scant two years before, had been noted for his anti-human bigotry, he gave no sign. His smile remained that of a drowsy carnivore.

"Still, Zhaarnak, it is better this way. Does it truly matter, when brother serves with brother, which of them holds the official command? And as for what passed between us in Alowan-" He gave a completely human-style shrug. "The circumstances were very different, and had things worked out other than as they did, neither you nor I would be here to have this argument!"

Murakuma sat very still, almost as if by doing so she could avoid drawing attention to herself. So, there'd been a kernel of truth in the rumors after all. She'd wondered at the time . . . even as she'd wondered if in Prescott's position she could have willingly served under an officer junior to her when she also knew that that officer hated her species. But it seemed that the stories which insisted Prescott had done just that-more, had done it without ever even allowing Zhaarnak to suspect that he was senior to the Orion-had been true after all.

Now that same Orion sat gazing at that same human with troubled eyes and ears half-flattened in dismay. Prescott gave him a few more seconds, then chuckled.

"Do not be so concerned, Zhaarnak. We humans will not always have to rely on our allies to take the lead. Maybe our roles will reverse again before the war is over. But either way . . . may our claws strike deep, brother!"

Kthaara let a silence heavy with unspoken meaning continue for a human heartbeat, then spoke in a quiet voice.

"Thank you, Raaymmonnd'presssssscott-telmasa. You react as I thought you would." That said, he turned to Murakuma, his briskness back. "Also on the subject of the command structure for the Zephrain offensive, Ahhdmiraaaal Muhrakhuuuuma . . ."

"Yes, Sir?" Despite her resolve to maintain tight self-control, she leaned forward expectantly.

"Each of the Alliance's constituent navies retains full control of its own personnel assignments. However, postings of high-level flag officers to crucial positions are a matter of concern to the entire Alliance. So Sky Marshaaal MaaacGregggorr and I have taken counsel regarding your request to be relieved of Fifth Fleet's command and reassigned." He held her green eyes with his amber ones and spoke with a surgeon's merciful swiftness. "Your request is denied."

It was as if the trapdoor of a gallows dropped open under Murakuma's feet, leaving her hanging in a limitless, empty darkness which held only one thought: So they do blame me for all those civilian dead in Justin. It will never end. . . .

"With all due respect, Sir," she heard her own voice, from what seemed a great distance, "I'd like to hear that from Sky Marshal MacGregor."

"That is your right. But before you exercise it, I ask that you hear me out. You see, I would like nothing better than to have you take an active role in the Zephrain operation."

In Murakuma's current mental state, it took a moment for the seeming paradox to register. "Uh . . . Sir?"

"Unfortunately, I need you precisely where you are, for at least three reasons. First, the Strategy Board considers it a very real possibility that our attack from Zephrain will provoke the Bahgs into launching an attack of their own elsewhere, in an effort to regain the strategic initiative. If they should do so, their options will be limited to those points at which we have contact with them. One of those is here, and they are aware of how strongly held this system is." Kthaara showed a flash of teeth. "Very well aware. So we think them more likely to attempt one of the other two: Justin or Shanak. And to show their hand in Shanak would be to give up one of their most priceless strategic assets, the location of their closed warp point in that system."

"You mean-?"

"Precisely. We believe Justin is the more likely target. And, on the basis of your past record, we want you there in case this does happen."

"But, with all due respect, Sir, no counterattack may ever be launched. We've been wrong about their intentions before-inevitably, given the alienness of their mentality."

"Truth. And we hope we are wrong in this case. Because, you see, my second reason is that we hope to use Fifth Fleet as a kind of training command, cycling officers through it before sending them to fronts where we are on the offensive." Kthaara held up a clawed hand in a forestalling gesture which, like so many others, he'd picked up in the course of decades among humans. "Do not think of this as a negative reflection on your capabilities as a combat commander. Quite the contrary. The very reason we intend to 'raid' Fifth Fleet for command personnel is that we have been deeply impressed by the way you have molded your subordinates into a superbly organized command team. We want to expose as many officers as possible to that same seasoning experience.

"Third-and I believe you will find this reason more congenial than the others-we are already thinking ahead to possible uses of Fifth Fleet in offensive operations."

"But, Sir, the Bug defenses at the other end of the Justin/K-45 warp line-"

"Do not misunderstand me. We have no intention of throwing away your command in a useless, headlong attack into such concentrated firepower. Rather, I refer to offensive operations elsewhere." Kthaara steepled his fingers in yet another human gesture, although the clicking together of his claws somewhat spoiled the effect. "When the static warp point defenses in Justin-the minefields, the orbital fortresses and fighter platforms, and all the rest-have been built up to a level which allows us to be confident of their ability to stop any attack unaided, we intend to deploy Fifth Fleet elsewhere, to exploit the opportunities for future offensives that we hope the Zephrain operation will open up."

"I hope not to be within earshot of Lord Khiniak when he hears that Fifth Fleet, and not Third Fleet, is earmarked to go on the offensive," Zhaarnak remarked. "Permanent hearing loss could result."

"But," Prescott argued, this time in Standard English, "after he's given vent to his feelings, surely he'll see why it has to be that way. We can't pull our mobile forces out of Shanak, because they're all we've got there. In that system, the threat is an invasion through a closed warp point. A fixed defense is workable in Justin only because we know where its warp points are."

"Not that he would really enjoy conducting such a fixed defense even if it were possible," Kthaara opined. "The prospect of a war of movement should reconcile him to continuing to mount guard against a possible Bahg attack on Shanak. But at any rate," he continued, turning back to Murakuma, "Fifth Fleet's destiny is otherwise. And when it assumes the offensive, I cannot imagine anyone but yourself in command of it. Fifth Fleet is your farshatok." The Orion word had no precise Standard English translation; it encased the term "command," but like so many other Orion words, it implied considerably more. "So, to repeat, I need you where you are. The Alliance needs you there."

What an old smoothie, Murakuma thought. But she was smiling as she thought it.

For a split second, Murakuma wondered who the no-longer-really-young commander was who stood up as she entered the room. Where's Nobiki? She was supposed to meet me here, and she knows we've only got a few minutes.

But then the commander turned to face her, and it crashed into her.

My God! It can't be! But, came the small, hurt thought, it's been so long. . . .

"Hello . . . Sir." Nobiki Murakuma gave a smile that was too much like Tadeoshi's.

"Hello, Nobiki." Yes, she's always looked more like Tadeoshi than . . .  The thought broke off, flinching away in familiar pain from a name she dared not let herself think of overmuch. Once again, she felt the ambiguity that shouldn't have been there, not when setting eyes on her older daughter for the first time in years. But how are we going to get through this conversation? How do we dance around the subject of Fujiko?

They hugged-this was a small private meeting room Murakuma had managed to reserve, and formality could be discarded.

"I can't stay," she began, a shade too chattily. "The final conference has been moved up, and afterwards I have to leave at once. I'm just glad you were able to get in from Skywatch without any delays."

"Yes, I was lucky." The smile grew tremulous. "This is always the way it seems to be, isn't it?"

"Well, at least this time we're able to . . ." Murakuma's voice trailed off. She began to feel a little desperate, but Nobiki drew a deep breath and faced her squarely.

"I don't suppose you've heard anything new? I mean, anything you can tell me."

She's braver than I am, Murakuma thought. She felt ashamed because her daughter had been the one to broach the subject, and even more ashamed for being relieved by it.

"No, Nobiki. You know I'd tell you anything I knew. But no, there's absolutely nothing. And there won't be, either. We can't let ourselves cherish any false hopes in that regard, and I think we both know it. It's been well over a year now-and SF 19 departed through a warp point that was almost certainly one the Bugs came through to trap Second Fleet. It must have been like running into an avalanche. And even if they'd somehow survived that, or evaded the attack force by hiding in cloak, the Bugs still hold that warp point." She shook her head, and her nostrils flared as it was her turn to inhale deeply. "No," she repeated very, very quietly. "Even if they'd survived, there's no road home."

"They could have pressed on, and tried to find another way back to Alliance space," Nobiki said, as though fulfilling a duty to say it.

"The odds against that are incalculable." Murakuma drew another breath and closed her eyes briefly, fiercely against the pain. "And even if that was what they tried, they must have run out of supplies by now. No. If that's the alternative, I hope they . . . I hope Fujiko found a clean death instead." There, I've spoken the name. And it doesn't help. "We have to go on with our lives."

"Whatever that means, nowadays." Nobiki wasn't going to cry-Murakuma was certain of that. But, looking at her daughter's face, she was certain the tears would come later. "What kind of lives are we-are any humans-looking at?"

"No lives at all-if the Bugs win!" Murakuma stopped and reined herself in. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to snap at you. But we've got to carry on as if this war is going to have an end. Otherwise, Fujiko's-" She caught herself. "Otherwise, what happened to Fujiko will have no meaning."

"Meaning? I'm not even sure what that is anymore."

For an instant, the barrier of years wavered and Murakuma glimpsed the girl Nobiki had been. And, with renewed sadness, she knew she was having trouble calling to mind all the details of that girl's face, because she'd never seen enough of it at any one given age.

"I wasn't much of a mother to you, Nobiki," she said softly. "And it's too late now."

As though with one will, they embraced, and held each other tightly for a long time. And still neither mother nor daughter could let herself weep.

The weather was a little better, but otherwise the terrace overlooking the Cerulean Ocean was unchanged since the other time they'd stood at the balustrade, as though the intervening weeks had never happened.

"Where did all the time go?" Vanessa Murakuma wondered aloud.

The round of conferences and briefings was over, the concluding session had just broken up in the same hall where the opening one had taken place, and a line of skimmers waited outside to take the various commanders to the spacefield. Murakuma really had no business pausing to step through the French doors. But she'd known who would be there.

"It wasn't long enough, was it?" Marcus LeBlanc's question was as rhetorical as hers had been, and he interposed his body between her and any prying eyes that might still be lingering inside the doors as he took her hands in his.

"How many years will it be this time?" he asked.

"I don't know." She drew a deep, unsteady breath. "I've got to go."

"Yes, I suppose you do." But he made no move to release her hands, even though they'd said the real goodbyes the previous night, in his quarters. "Vanessa, someday this will all be over. And then-"

"No, Marcus." Her headshake sent her red hair swirling, and she withdrew her hands. "We can't talk about it now. The war's going to last for a long time, and a lot more people are going to be killed, and neither of us is immune, any more than-" She jarred to a halt.

"Any more than Tadeoshi was," LeBlanc finished for her quietly, and she dropped her eyes.

"I've been through it once, Marcus," she said in a voice the wind almost carried away into inaudibility. "Twice now, with Fujiko, and this time there's not even the closure of a confirmed death. And Nobiki. All the years, all the wasted, empty years when she-and Fujiko-were little girls, growing into wonderful young women my career never gave me time to know."

She gazed out over the wind-whipped ocean, and more than the wind alone put tears in the corners of her eyes.

"I've lost too much, failed too many people," she told the man who knew she loved him. "I can't risk it again. Oh, I suppose you're risking it any time you let yourself care about someone. But now, with what's coming in this war . . . No, I can't take that kind of risk again. And I won't let you take it, either."

She took his hands once more, with a grip stronger than she looked capable of, then released them and was gone.

CHAPTER THREE: "I am become Death . . ."

There was a long moment of brittle tension on the flag bridge after TFNS Dnepr emerged from the indescribable grav surge of warp transit. But then surrounding space began to crackle with tight-beam communications, and Commander Amos Chung, the staff intelligence officer, turned eagerly to Raymond Prescott. His face, despite its Eurasian features, was light-complexioned-his homeworld of Ragnarok had a dim sun-and now it was flushed with excitement.

"It worked, Admiral! We're in, and there's no indication that they've detected our emergence!"

"Thank you, Commander," Prescott acknowledged quietly. He didn't really want to deflate the spook's enthusiasm, but at times like this the most useful thing an admiral could do was project an air of imperturbable calm and confidence.

And, after all, it wasn't so surprising that Sixth Fleet had succeeded in entering the Bug system undetected. This was a closed warp point of which the Bugs knew nothing, little more than a light-hour out from the primary. The "vastness of space" was a hideously overused cliche, and like most cliches it tended to be acknowledged and then promptly forgotten. People looked at charts that showed the warp network as lines connecting dots, and they tended to lose sight of the fact that each of those dots was a whole planetary system-hundreds of thousands of cubic light-minutes of nothingness in which to hide.

Besides, Sixth Fleet had spent over a year stealthily probing this system with second-generation recon drones from Zephrain. They knew all about the scanner buoys that formed a shell around the system's primary at a radius of ten light-minutes. Armed with a careful analysis of the sensor emissions of those buoys, Commander Jacques Bichet, Raymond Prescott's operations officer, and his assistants had been able to rig a "white-noise" jammer to cripple their effectiveness. Coupled with the Allies' shipboard ECM, that ought to enable them to emerge unnoticed from this closed warp point and vanish back into cloak before anyone noticed them.

It was the kind of trick that could only work once. But evidently it had worked this time. So far, the long-awaited Zephrain offensive had succeeded in defying the great god Murphy.

Prescott stood up from his command chair and stepped to the system-scale holo display, already alight with downloaded sensor data. As per convention, the system primary was a yellow dot at the center of the plot. Just as conventionally, Prescott's mind superimposed the traditional clock face on the display. Warp points generally, though not always, occurred in the same plane as a system's planetary orbits, which was convenient from any number of standpoints. The closed warp point through which they'd emerged was on a bearing of about five o'clock from the primary. No other warp points were shown-they hadn't exactly been able to do any surveying here-but planets were. The innermost orbited at a six-light-minute radius, but at a current bearing of two o'clock. The second planet's ten-light-minute-radius orbit had brought it to four o'clock. An asteroid belt ringed the primary at fourteen light-minutes, and other planets orbited still further out, but Prescott ignored them. Planets I and II were the ones Sixth Fleet had come to kill.

A display on this scale wasn't set up to show individual ships or other astronomical minutiae. In a detailed display, those two planets would have glowed white hot from the neutrino emissions of high-energy technology and nestled in cocoons of encircling drive fields. This system was almost certainly one of the nodes of Bug population and industry that Marcus LeBlanc's smartass protégé Sanders had dubbed "home hives." It would have been a primary target even in a normal war-and this war had ceased to be normal when the nature of the enemy had become apparent. The Alliance had reissued General Directive Eighteen, which had lain dormant since the war with the Rigelians. For the second time in history, the Federation and its allies had sentenced an intelligent species to death.

If, in fact, an "intelligent species" is what we're dealing with here.

Prescott dismissed the fruitless speculation from his mind. The question of whether the Bugs were truly sentient, or merely possessed something that masqueraded as sentience well enough to produce interstellar-level technology, was one which had long exercised minds that he freely admitted were more capable than his own. It wasn't something he needed to concern himself with at the moment, anyway, and he turned to the tactical display.

One ship after another was materializing at the warp point, their icons blinking into existence on the plot, and as Sixth Fleet arrived, it shook down into its component parts. Prescott smiled as he watched. He and Zhaarnak had had four months since they'd returned from Alpha Centauri to Zephrain. They'd used the time for exhaustive training exercises, and it showed as the swarming lights on the display arranged themselves with a smoothness that had to be understood to be appreciated.

Sixth Fleet comprised two task forces. Prescott commanded TF 61, which held the bulk of the Fleet's heavy battle-line muscle: forty-two superdreadnoughts, including both Dnepr and Celmithyr'theaarnouw, from which Zhaarnak was flying his lights, accompanied by six battleships, ten fleet carriers, and twenty-four battlecruisers. Force Leader Shaaldaar led TF 62, and the stolidly competent Gorm's command was further divided into two task groups. TG 62.1, under 106th Least Fang of the Khan Meearnow'raaalphaa, had twelve fast superdreadnoughts and three battlecruisers, but those were mainly to escort its formidable array of fighter platforms: twenty-seven attack carriers and twelve fleet carriers. In support was Vice Admiral Janet Parkway, with the forty-eight battlecruisers that made up TG 62.2.

It was strictly a fighting fleet. There was no fleet train of supply ships, no repair or hospital ships, no assault transports full of Marines. None were needed, for the objective was not conquest and occupation, but pure destruction.

As he watched, Shaaldaar implemented the plan that had been contingent on an undetected emergence from warp. He detached ten of Meearnow's fleet carriers and temporarily assigned them to Parkway, with orders to stand ready to take out all the buoys within scanner range of the warp point the instant the main force was detected. Prescott gazed closely at TG 62.2's icons as they maneuvered away from the warp point and headed in-system to reach attack range of the buoys. And to be sure Parkway was far enough from the warp point when her carriers eventually launched that their fighters, whose drive field emissions couldn't be cloaked, didn't give away its location. They were Terran carriers-Borsoi-B-class ships-and they were more dangerous than they looked. Prescott had lobbied and fought and finally achieved his goal of putting two squadrons of Ophiuchi fighters aboard every TFN carrier in Sixth Fleet. The two species were sufficiently similar biologically that putting both aboard the same ship didn't complicate the supply picture too much . . . and those fighter squadrons were well worth whatever inconvenience they did cause. The ancestral proto-Ophiuchi might have traded the ability to fly for the ability to use tools, but renunciation of the innate sense of relative motion in three dimensions that went with natural flight hadn't been included in the evolutionary deal. Even the Orions grudgingly admitted that they were the best fighter pilots in the known galaxy.

As Parkway's reinforced command peeled off, a call from the com station interrupted Prescott's thoughts.

"Signal from the flagship, Admiral."

"Acknowledge."

Zhaarnak looked sternly out from the com screen. This, Prescott knew, wasn't a personal message-Shaaldaar and Meearnow were also in the hookup. It was the Fleet commander, not the vilkshatha brother, who spoke.

"As our arrival has gone undetected, Sixth Fleet will execute Contingency Plan Alpha."

Having delivered an order that his chief of staff could have passed along, Zhaarnak drew a breath and continued.

"In the past, the Alliance's offensive operations have only been in the nature of counterattacks, usually to liberate systems of our own. Even Operation Pesssthouse, our first venture into enemy space, was in response to the enemy's appearance in the Alpha Centauri System. But now, for the first time, we are striking at one of the enemy's home systems, from a quarter he has no reason to suspect poses any threat whatever to him. We possess complete strategic and tactical surprise. If we fail to capitalize upon those advantages, the fault will be ours alone, and we will have no excuse. However, I am confident that everyone in Sixth Fleet will live up to the unique opportunity that is ours."

Zhaarnak's eyes flashed yellow hell, and his speech grew more idiomatic.

"This is the beginning of the vilknarma, the blood-balance. The ghosts of Kliean, and of the Human systems which have fallen to these chofaki, fly with us, shrieking for vengeance!" He let a heartbeat of silence reverberate while the lethal fire of Orion retribution blazed in his eyes, and then he repeated the prosaic command, "Execute Contingency Plan Alpha," and signed off.

Prescott passed the command formally to his chief of staff. Captain Anthea Mandagalla nodded in reply, her eyes gleaming in her night-black face, and began firing off the long prepared orders-in space warfare, a flag officer's chief of staff performed many of the functions that the wet navies of old had assigned to his flag captain.

TF 61 shaped a course for its objective of Planet I, a flat hyperbola with the local sun to port. TF 62-meaning, in practical terms, TG 62.1-moved outward toward Planet II.

"It's Fleet Flag again, Sir," the com officer called out.

"Put him on." Prescott smiled. He had a feeling this one was going to be a personal message.

"Did I overdo it, Raaymmonnd?" Zhaarnak asked, looking unwontedly abashed. For all the sincerity of his emotions, his last speech had been most un-Orion, for the Tabby ideal eschewed volubility, and the more important the occasion, the fewer words they were likely to use. But Sixth Fleet's personnel-and flag officers-were drawn from every one of the Alliance's races, and Zhaarnak had tried to adjust his words accordingly. Which, unfortunately, had carried him into unknown territory.

"Not at all," Prescott assured him. "Although some might take exception to your use of the word chofaki." The Orion term, delicately translated into Standard English as "dirt-eaters," meant beings so lost to any sense of honor as to be inherently incapable of ever being amenable to the code of Farshalah'kiah. It was also one of the two or three deadliest insults in the Tongue of Tongues. "Lord Talphon, for example, claims that using it for the Bugs is like debasing currency, as it pays them too much honor."

"I lack his way with words. I must use the insults I know, even at the risk of diluting them." Zhaarnak straightened. "At any rate, the time for words is past. We will speak to the Bahgs in another language when we arrive at Planet I."

Prescott nodded, and his eyes strayed to the view-forward display. A tiny bluish dot was slightly less tiny than it had been when they'd begun accelerating.

All expanses of deep space are essentially alike, even when they possess a sun for a reference point. It takes the curved solidity of a nearby planet to create a sensation of place. Depending on the planet, it can also create a psychological atmosphere.

The planet ahead did that, in spades.

Prescott told himself that there were perfectly good practical reasons to view that waxing sphere with apprehension. Planet I was the primary population center of this system, and its defenses were commensurate with its importance: twenty-six orbital fortresses, each a quarter again as massive as a monitor and able to fill all the hull capacity a monitor had to devote to its engines with weaponry and defenses. But the space station that was the centerpiece of the orbital installations dwarfed even those fortresses to insignificance. They were like nondescript items of scrap metal left over when that titanic junk sculpture had been welded together.

But none of that accounted for the psychic aura that affected even the most insensitive. Planet I was a blue-and-white swirled marble, glowing with the colors of life against the silent ebon immensity of the endless vacuum. Prescott had seen that gorgeous affirmation of life more times in his career than he could possibly have counted, yet this time its very beauty only added to the surreal hideous reality his mind perceived beneath the reports of his eyes.

Space itself seemed to stink with the presence of billions upon billions of Bugs. Despite its familiar loveliness, it was all too easy to imagine that the planet itself was nothing more than an obscenely pullulating spherical mass of them. For this was one of the central tumors of the cancer that was eating the life out of the galaxy.

Prescott was bringing TF 61 as close to it as he dared. Shaaldaar, with faster ships and less distance to cover, had already placed TF 62 within easy fighter range of Planet II-a relatively cold, bleak place by human standards and less heavily populated than Planet I, but just as well defended. And now he, like Parkway, waited. There was no indication that the Bugs suspected the presence of any of them.

Zhaarnak checked in again.

"Is it time, Raaymmonnd?"

He was neither ordering nor nagging. But, as Fleet commander, he had a legitimate interest, for Shaaldaar and Parkway were to commence their attacks as soon as they detected Prescott's. In effect, the human would give the go-ahead signal for all of Sixth Fleet.

"Almost," Prescott replied. He was glad Zhaarnak's flagship was in TF 61's formation. They could carry on a conversation-which, as the sage Clarke had foretold, was impossible across even the least of interplanetary distances, whatever the capabilities of one's com equipment. If Prescott had been talking to Shaaldaar or Parkway, minutes would have elapsed between each question and answer.

The same time lag would apply to the energy signatures by which they would know he'd launched his assault. It was another factor that had to be taken into account. . . .

"Excuse me, Sir," Jacques Bichet interrupted his thoughts. "We're coming up on Point Vilknarma."

"Yes, I see we are. In fact, I believe we're in a position to commence a countdown."

"Will do, Sir." The ops officer turned away and began giving orders, and Prescott looked back into the com screen.

"I'll have the countdown transmitted directly to Celmithyr'theaarnouw's CIC," he told Zhaarnak. "I'll be giving the order to launch immediately after it reaches zero."

Zhaarnak gave a human nod and added the emphasis of his own race's affirmative ear flick. He spared a smile for the name Prescott had given to the point at which they would be too close to the planet ahead to have any realistic hope of remaining undetected. Then he signed off.

They reached Point Vilknarma and slid past it, and Prescott spoke one quiet word to Bichet.

"Execute," he said.

Long-prepared orders began to go out, and TF 61 responded with drilled-in smoothness.

Prescott's ten fleet carriers were Orion ships of the Manihai class. In accordance with Orion design philosophies, they were pure fighter platforms, with forty-two launching bays and little else. Now they flung half their fighters-two hundred ten new Terran-built F-4's, to which the Orion pilots had taken with predatory enthusiasm-toward the Bug orbital fortresses. The deadly, fleet little vessels streaked away, homing on their prey like so many barracuda flashing in to rend and tear at a school of sleeping killer whales, and the capital ships, all thought of concealment forgotten, roared along in their wakes.

Prescott watched the plot anxiously as the fighters neared their targets. The F-4's carried full loads of close-attack antimatter missiles, whose suicidally over-powered little drives built up such tremendous velocities in the course of their brief lives as to render them virtually immune to interception by point defense . . . but which also made them very short ranged on the standards of space warfare. The fragile fighters would have to get very close. Whether or not they could survive to do so all depended on how complete the surprise was.

As he watched, he saw that it was very complete indeed. He saw it even before Bichet turned from his and Chung's analysis of the incoming data.

"Admiral, those forts don't even have their shields up!" the ops officer exulted.

"So I see, Jacques."

Even as Prescott spoke, carefully keeping his matching exultation out of his voice, the fighters began to launch, and the fortresses began to die. Those warheads held only specks of antimatter, but they were striking naked metal, and their targets vanished in fireballs like short-lived suns. The intolerably brilliant flashes of fury in the visual display gouged at his optic nerve, even at this range and even through the display's filters, but he didn't look away. There was a hideous beauty to those lightning bolts of destruction, and something deep within him treasured the knowledge that thousands of Arachnids were dying at their hearts, like spiders trapped in so many candle flames.

Then the battle-line entered missile range of the space station, and Prescott made himself look away from the dying fortresses as he faced his second worry. How well would that station coordinate its fire with the as yet unknown defensive installations of the planet below? He had a bad moment as the computer traced a luminous dotted line around the schematic of the station, indicating that its shields had just come on-line. But as his capital ships' missiles went in, there was no point defense from the planet . . . nor even from the station. And, as detailed sensor readings began to come in and scroll up the plot's sidebar, he could see that the shields weren't state-of-the-art ones, either.

Chung didn't state the obvious, Prescott noted with approval-he was getting better. Instead, he merely offered a diffident observation.

"They must not have thought it was worthwhile to refit this station, Sir, since this is obviously one of their core systems-and therefore, by definition, not on the front lines."

"No doubt, Commander. Also . . ."

Prescott closed his mouth and didn't allow Chung's look of frank curiosity to tempt him into completing his thoughts aloud. The losses they've suffered, between Operation Pesthouse and the Black Hole of Centauri, may have forced them to concentrate on starship construction, to the exclusion of upgrading their orbital installations. No, this wasn't the time to float that concept.

Nor was it the time to be thinking of anything at all except the reports that poured in as the missiles reached the space station. With no point defense to thin out that onrushing wave front of death, the shields' level of sophistication hardly mattered. They flashed through a pyrotechnic display of energy absorption that a living eye-had it remained living and unblinded in such an environment-could barely have registered. Then they went down, and devastating explosions began to rock that titanic orbital construct with brimstone sledgehammers as antimatter met matter.

Each of TF 61's ships had flushed its external ordnance racks, and the tidal wave of massive capital ship missiles slammed lances of searing flame deep into the now unprotected alloy. But the station was titanic-so huge that its mass seemed to belie its obvious artificiality, for surely nothing so colossal could be an artifact. So huge that it could absorb a great deal of damage-even the kind of damage dealt out by antimatter warheads. A major portion of it lasted long enough to get its point defense on-line, and Prescott needed no specialist's analysis to see that his missile fire had suddenly become markedly less effective as fewer warheads evaded the active defenses long enough to strike their targets.

Well, there was a solution for that. A little unprecedented, but . . .

He turned to the intraship communicator in his command chair's armrest and spoke to Dnepr's commanding officer. Certain things still lay in the province of the flag captain, especially where the leadership of the battle-line was concerned.

"Captain Turanoglu, you will proceed at maximum speed to beam-weapon range of the space station and . . . engage the enemy more closely."

Prescott couldn't be sure Turanoglu recognized the quote, which lay outside his cultural background. But the banditlike Turkish face showed no lack of understanding.

"Aye, aye, Sir!" he barked, and he'd barely cut the circuit before Dnepr, with the rest of TF 61's capital ships behind her, surged forward.

Mandagalla, Bichet, Chung, and everyone else near enough to have overheard the exchange stared at Prescott. He could understand why. Missiles, unlike directed-energy weapons, were equally destructive regardless of the range from which they were launched. And at missile range, the Allies' generally superior fire control and point defense had always given them the advantage. No Terran admiral had ever closed to within energy-weapon range of the Bugs if he could help it, and Prescott braced himself for a call from Zhaarnak.

None came. His vilkshatha brother was being as good as the word he'd given on Xanadu before they'd departed: TF 61 was Prescott's, and as fleet commander Zhaarnak would support to the hilt whatever decisions the human made. So the task force's capital ships swept onward in formation with Dnepr-including Celmithyr'theaarnouw, for Zhaarnak's body, as well as his honor, stood behind his promises.

They drew still closer, the space station swelled to gargantuan dimensions upon the visual display . . . and the stares of his staffers turned into looks of comprehension. The key words in Prescott's orders to Turanoglu had been maximum speed. It stood to reason that the Bugs, taken by surprise by the missile-storm and struggling to bring their systems on-line, would have given priority to their point defense. So, Prescott had reasoned, their anti-ship energy weapons might well still be silent. And so it proved, as his battle-line closed to point-blank range, pouring unanswered fire into the disintegrating mass of the flame-wracked station. The holocaust blazing against the serene blue and white backdrop of the planet TF 61 had come to kill doubled and redoubled as force beams, hetlasers, and the unstoppable focused stilettos of primary beams ripped and tore.

Yet even that unimaginable torrent of energy and the dreadful waves of antimatter warheads seemed insufficient to the task. The space station bucked and quivered as the carnage streaming from the capital ship gnats stinging and biting at it hammered home, yet still it survived. And as Prescott watched the plot's sidebars, he realized that his ships' sensors were detecting the first Ehrlicher emissions as somewhere inside that glaring ball of fury Bug warriors fought to bring their own surviving force beams and primaries into action.

"Admiral," Mandagalla reported in an awed voice, "our projected course will bring us within ninety kilometers of the station."

Prescott's mouth opened, then closed. That can't be right, had been his initial reaction. It simply didn't sound right. In space warfare, ranges weren't measured in kilometers!

But even at minimal magnification, the space station now filled much of the big viewscreen with its death agony. It was a spectacle none of them would ever forget. The Brobdingnagian structure burned, crumpled, collapsed in on itself, shed streamers of debris. Rippling waves of stroboscopic explosions ran across its shattered surface as a new volley of missiles, in uninterceptable sprint mode now that the range had dropped so low, struck home.

Then Dnepr was past, and the dying wreck was receding in the screen. Another superdreadnought followed in her wake, adding to the conflagration with force beams, lasers, and everything else that could be brought to bear.

And then, all at once, the uncaring computer calmly and automatically darkened the screen to spare its organic masters' vulnerable eyes. The space station had entered its final cataclysm, with a series of secondary explosions that blew the ruined hulk apart. When the view returned to normal, all that was left of Planet I's orbital defenses were drifting, glowing chunks of wreckage.

Prescott ignored the cheers and glanced at the chronometer. Less than twelve minutes had elapsed since he'd given the order to commence the attack. Shaaldaar at Planet II, and Parkway back in the vicinity of the warp point, would have detected his attack and commenced their own about two minutes ago. It was, of course, far too soon for any reports from them.

"Fleet Flag, Sir."

The com officer had barely spoken before Zhaarnak's face appeared, a mask of fierce exultation held grimly in check.

"Congratulations, Raaymmonnd! But let us not delude ourselves that this walkover will continue indefinitely."

"No. We achieved total surprise, beyond our wildest hopes. But it's wearing off. Have you looked at the sensor readouts from the planet in the last few seconds?"

Zhaarnak's eyes flicked to something outside the pickup's range, and a low growl escaped him.

The electronic indications of active point defense installations were winking into life all over the planet. And, like a fountain of tiny icons, two hundred and fifty ground-based gunboats were rising to the attack.

Prescott fired off a fresh series of orders. TF 61's battle-line had swung past the space station on a hyperbolic course which was now curving away from the planet, and he commanded it to continue on that heading, opening the range to the planet and forcing the gunboats to follow. With no other option, they accepted the stern chase he'd forced upon them. Even with their superior speed and maneuverability, the need to overtake from directly astern would slow their rate of closure considerably . . . and expose them to what he'd held in reserve for them.

The Orion fighters that had swept Planet I's skies clean of orbital fortresses were now back aboard their carriers, rearming. Even as they did so, the other half of those carriers' fighter complements roared out into the void. Once in free space, they jettisoned the external ordnance that they hadn't taken time to have offloaded in their launching bays. The close-range FRAMs with which they had been armed in preparation for attacks on the orbital defenses were too short-ranged to be truly effective against these new, smaller foes. Perhaps even worse, they lacked the reach to permit them to be fired from beyond the range of the fighter-killing AFHAWK missiles the gunboats could carry on their own external racks. If the Bug vessels had been properly configured to engage fighters, FRAMs would only degrade the maneuverability which might allow the strikefighters to survive within the Bugs' weapons envelope. And at least the F-4's integral heterodyned lasers would enable them to kill gunboats with lethal efficiency once they managed to close.

The Orion pilots screamed in to meet the gunboats head-on, and a hungry snarl of anticipation sounded over the com links as they realized that the Bug ground crews had been too surprised, too rushed, to arm them against fighters. The unexpectedness of the sudden, savage attack-and the need to get the gunboats launched before the Allies got around to taking out the ground bases from which they came-had left too little time to adjust what must have been standby armament loads. The gunboats had gotten off the ground with whatever ordnance they'd had on their racks when the attack came in . . . and none of that ordnance included AFHAWKs.

But as the onrushing gunboats and defending fighters interpenetrated and the killing began, it became apparent that what the Bugs were carrying was quite as bad as any AFHAWK might have been. Not for the fighter jocks, perhaps, but then the fighters weren't the gunboats' true targets anyway.

Prescott watched the suspicious ease with which his fighters clawed gunboats out of existence, and his jaw tightened. The Bugs weren't really fighting back-they were just trying to break through. But breaking through sometimes required combat, and those observing the combat had an unpleasant surprise when a few fighters came in close and died in the blue-white novae of antimatter warheads.

"So the Bahgs have developed the close-attack antimatter missile." Zhaarnak was now in continuous com linkage with Prescott, and his voice was ashen.

"So they have," Prescott acknowledged. "But why should we be surprised? It was bound to come eventually."

"Truth. But perhaps a matter of greater immediate concern is the fact that they seem uninterested in using their new weapon against our fighters, except as a means to the end of breaking through to reach our battle-line."

Prescott instantly grasped the point. Zhaarnak had put two and two together: the Bugs' long-established indifference to individual survival, and their new possession of antimatter gunboat ordnance. Now the human admiral did the same sum and swung toward his ops officer and chief of staff.

"Anna! Warn all ships to stand by for suicide attacks!" he barked, and had it been possible, Anthea Mandagalla would have blanched.

"Aye, aye, Sir!"

Prescott turned back to the plot, and his anxiety eased somewhat. The Orion fighter pilots were slaughtering the gunboats too fast for the computer to keep the kill total up to date. The incandescent, strobing fireflies of gunboats, consumed by their own ordnance as hits from fighter lasers disrupted the warheads' magnetic containment fields, speckled the visual display like the dust of ground dragon's teeth. Only a handful of the Bugs survived at the heart of that furnace, but the few gunboats that got through proceeded to prove Zhaarnak a prophet. They made no attempt to fire at the capital ships. They merely screamed in to ram.

Of those few, fewer still reached their targets. The humans and Orions who crewed those targets' defensive weapons were, to say the least, highly motivated. But whenever a gunboat with a heavy load of antimatter-armed external ordnance did succeed in ramming a capital ship . . .

Prescott winced as the violence of those explosions registered on the sensors. A ship so ravaged, even if not destroyed outright, would almost certainly have to be abandoned and scuttled.

But as the last of those gunboats died, Prescott met Zhaarnak's eyes in the com screen, and neither needed to voice what they both knew. Planet I had no defenders left in space.

"And now," Zhaarnak said quietly, "we will carry out our orders and implement General Directive Eighteen."

The gunboats raced ahead of the monitors and superdreadnoughts as the Fleet's units moved away from their station at the only warp point from which, it had been believed, this system need fear any threat. They had commenced the maneuver the moment their own sensors had detected the Enemy forces' announcement of their inexplicable presence with salvos of antimatter missiles.

Yet it had taken many minutes for the signatures of those missiles' detonation to cross the light-minutes to the Fleet, and it would take far longer than that for the Fleet to respond. By the time even the gunboats, at top speed, could hope to reach the system's two Worlds Which Must Be Defended-both of which were presently on the far side of the primary-those worlds would long since have come under direct attack. Clearly, losses were inevitable, despite all that the planetary defense centers might hope to achieve. Losses which must be considered very serious.

Unacceptable losses, in fact. For these were Worlds Which Must Be Defended.

The Fleet's ships' interiors were labyrinthine corridors and passages, forever dimly lit, filled only with the muffled scuttering of their eternally mute crews' feet and claws as they went about their tasks in silent efficiency. But now those interiors were filled with grinding, rasping noise and harshly acrid smoke of drive systems straining desperately against their safety envelopes to crowd on more speed.

The Bugs, it seemed, didn't favor massively hardened one-to-a-continent dirtside installations like the TFN's Planetary Defense Centers. Instead, the planet's whole land surface was dotted with open-air point defense installations. But even though they might be unarmored, there were scores of them, and each of them was capable of putting up a massive umbrella of defensive fire against incoming missiles or fighters.

And they'd gotten that point defense on-line. That became clear when the first missile salvos went in.

Zhaarnak and Prescott looked at the readouts showing the tiny percentage of the initial salvo which had gotten through. Then they looked at each other in their respective com screens.

"The task force doesn't have enough expendable munitions to wear down anti-missile defenses of that density," Prescott said flatly.

"No," Zhaarnak agreed. "We would run out of missiles before making any impression. But . . . our fighter strength is almost intact."

At first, Prescott said nothing. He hated the thought of sending fighter pilots against that kind of point-defense fire. And, given the fact that TF 61's fighter pilots were Orions, it was possible that Zhaarnak hated it even more.

"I did not want to be the one to broach the suggestion," the human finally said in the Tongue of Tongues.

"I know. And I know why. But it has to be done." Steel entered Zhaarnak's voice, and it was the Commander of Sixth Fleet who spoke. "Rearm all the fighters with FRAMs-and with ECM pods, to maximize their survivability. And launch all of them. This is not the time to hold back reserves."

"Aye, aye, Sir," Prescott responded formally, and nodded to Commander Bichet. The ops officer had recognized what would be needed sooner than his admiral had made himself accept the necessity, and he'd worked up the required orders on his own initiative. Now they were transmitted, and more than four hundred fighters shot away toward the doomed planet's nightside.

It helped that the Bugs initially made the miscalculation of reserving their point defense fire for missiles. Perhaps they expected the fighters to be armed with standard, longer-ranged fighter missiles. Or perhaps they even believed that the fighter pilots were acting as decoys, trailing their coats to deceive the defenders into configuring their point defense to engage them instead of the battle-line's shipboard missiles in hopes of helping those missiles to sneak through. But then the defenders realized they were up against FRAMs, against which no tracking system could produce a targeting solution during their brief flight, and they began concentrating on the fighters that were launching those FRAMs.

A wave of flame washed through the Orion formation, pounding down upon it in a fiery surf of point defense lasers and AFHAWK missiles. It glared like a solar corona, high above the night-struck planetary surface, and forty-one fighters died in the first pass.

But despite that ten percent loss ratio, the remaining fighters put over two thousand antimatter warheads into the quadrant of Planet I which was their target on that pass.

The darkened surface erupted in a myriad pinpricks of dazzling brightness. From those that were ocean strikes, complex overlapping patterns of tsunami began to radiate, blasting across the planetary oceans at hundreds of kilometers per hour like the outriders of Armageddon. More explosions flashed and glared, leaping up in waves and clusters of brilliant devastation, and as he watched, a quotation rose to the surface of Raymond Prescott's mind. Not in its original form-classical Indian literature wasn't exactly his subject. No, he recalled it at second hand. Four centuries earlier, one of the fathers of the first primitive fission bomb, on seeing his brain child awake to apocalyptic life in the deserts of southwestern North America, had whispered it aghast.

And now Raymond Prescott whispered it, as well.

"I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

Amos Chung was close enough to hear.

"Uh . . . Sir?"

"Oh, nothing, Amos," Prescott said, without looking up from the display on which he was watching a quarter of a planet die. "Just a literary quote-a reference to Shiva, the Hindu god of death."

Chung was about to inquire further, but something in the computer readouts caught his eye and he bent closer to his own display. After a moment, he spoke.

"Admiral, something very odd is going on."

"Eh?" Prescott finally looked up from the visual display and frowned. The intelligence officer was visibly puzzled. "What are you talking about?"

"Sir, the computer analysis shows that, all of a sudden, there's been a dramatic degradation of the defensive fire from the rest of the planet. The percentage of our stuff that's getting through confirms it."

"What?" Prescott blinked, then glanced across at Bichet. "Jacques?"

"Strike reports from the follow-up squadrons confirm the same thing, Sir," the ops officer said. "And Amos is right-it does look like it's a planet-wide phenomenon . . . whatever 'it' is!"

"Put the material on my screen, Amos," Prescott said. Chung did so, and the admiral's eyebrows went up. "Hmm . . . maybe the planetary command center was in the quadrant we just hit, and we put a FRAM right on top of it."

"But, Sir, this seems to be more than just a case of losing the top-level brass. The fire from their individual installations has become wild and erratic. And besides," Chung went on, military formality falling by the wayside, as it often did when an intelligence specialist warmed to his subject, "it generally takes time for the effects of a loss of central command-and-control to percolate downward through a large organization. This was abrupt!"

Prescott studied the data. Everything Chung had said was true. And yet, something below the level of consciousness told him he shouldn't be as surprised as he was. Was there some connection he wasn't making . . . ?

Then it burst in his brain like a secondary explosion.

"Commodore Mandagalla! Order all capital ships to resume missile bombardment of the planet. And," he continued without a break, turning to the com station, "raise Fleet Flag."

"Actually, Sir," the com officer reported, "he's already calling us."

"Raaymmonnd," Zhaarnak began without preamble, "have you been observing-?"

"Yes! And I think I know what's happening." Prescott paused to organize his thoughts. "We've been assuming the Bugs are telepathic merely because that was the only way to account for their apparent lack of any other kind of communication. It's just been a working hypothesis. Now I think we've just proved it."

"I do not follow-" Zhaarnak began, and Prescott recognized Orion puzzlement in the unequal angles of his ears.

"Our fighter strike just killed God knows how many of them in the space of a few minutes," the human said urgently. "Every Bug on the planet-maybe in the entire system-must all be in some form of continuous telepathic linkage. The sudden deaths of that many of them disoriented the rest-sent them into a kind of psychic shock."

"But, on other occasions, we have inflicted high casualty rates on Bahg forces, and never observed anything like this among the survivors."

"It may be a matter of absolute numbers, not percentages. We've never killed this many of them before. And, to repeat, we killed them all at once." Prescott drew a deep breath, protocol forgotten as completely as Chung had forgotten it. "Look, Zhaarnak, I'm just theorizing as I go along-blowing hot air out my rear end. But it's a theory that accounts for the observed facts!"

"Yes," the Orion said slowly, as he watched his own tactical display. TF 61's missiles were arrowing in through ineffectual point defense fire. "So it does. We can turn those data over to the specialists for analysis later. For now, continue to employ your task force in accordance with your instincts." Zhaarnak sat back with the calm that comes of irrevocable commitment to a course of action. "I only hope Force Leader Shaaldaar and Least Fang Meearnow are finding that this . . . phenomenon is system-wide in scale, not just planetary."

"Oh, yes." Prescott felt unaccustomedly sheepish. By now, Sixth Fleet's other elements would have reported to Zhaarnak. "What's the word from them and Janet?"

"Ahhdmiraaaal Paaarkwaaay has swept her assigned sector clean of sensor buoys. All of them which might have been able to track us to the warp point have definitely been destroyed. Indeed, she believes her fighters destroyed as many as a quarter of the total number of such buoys in this system, without encountering a single hostile unit."

"Good." The fleet's egress was clear . . . unless, of course, some cloaked picket ship managed to get close enough to shadow its withdrawal.

"As for Shaaldaar," Zhaarnak went on, "he faced orbital defenses around Planet II which had rather more warning than the ones here-their shields and point defense alike were functional when he struck. But he was also able to launch far heavier fighter strikes against them."

"That's one way to put it." TG 62.1, while it lacked Prescott's heavy battle-line, had three times as many fighters as TF 61.

"Least Fang Meearnow lost three percent of his fighter strength, but obliterated the orbital works. At last report, Force Leader Shaaldaar was ordering him to rearm his fighters and send them in against the planet. In fact, that assault should have commenced only shortly after your attack on this planet did in real-time."

Prescott said nothing. Instead, he thought of all those Terran and Ophiuchi and Orion fighter pilots in TG 62.1 and hoped his theory was right.

"All right, people," Lieutenant Commander Bruno Togliatti, CO of Strikefighter Squadron 94, operating off of the Scylla-class assault carrier TFNS Wyvern, said. "Don't get cocky! Whatever is going on, I'll have the ass of anybody I see relying on it. Until the last frigging Bug on that dirt ball is dead, we assume their defenses are at one hundred percent. So I want a tight formation maintained, and all standard tactical doctrines observed. Acknowledge!"

"Aye, aye, Sir," the pilots chorused, each from the cockpit of his or her F-4. Lieutenant (j.g.) Irma Sanchez answered up with the rest, but most of her attention was elsewhere. Some of it was on the planet looming ahead, with its white expanses of desert, its less extensive blue oceans, and its gleaming polar caps. But mostly she was seeing a night of horror, more than four years earlier.

She and Armand had been climate-engineering techs on a new colonization project at the far end of the Romulus Chain. The "colony" had been a drab five-thousand-person outpost, and Golan A II had been an oversized dingleberry misnamed a planet-and the two of them had never noticed, because they'd been together, and she'd been carrying their child.

Then the warships had appeared, the rumors of some horrific threat had begun to spread, and martial law had been imposed . . . along with an order to evacuate all pregnant women and all children under twelve to the warships of the scratch defense force, whose life systems could not support everyone.

She and Armand had said their goodbyes on the edge of the spacefield amid the chaos of that night-the sirens, the floodlights, the masses of bewildered human misery, and the Marines looming like death-gods in their powered combat armor. Then she'd gotten in line behind the Borisovas, a pleasant, harmless couple in Agronomics. Ludmilla had been on the verge of hysterics when her two-year-old had been taken from her, and Irma had yielded to a sudden impulse and promised to look after the child. She'd also pretended to believe the narcotic line the Marines were pushing-it was all only temporary, those left behind would be picked up later, more transports were on their way-while hating them for making her an accomplice in their lies.

After that, it had been a succession of overcrowded warships, almost equally overcrowded transports, and bleak refugee camps, always with Lydia Sergeyevna in tow. She'd been about to give birth in one of those camps when the word had spread, despite all ham-fisted efforts at censorship, of what had happened to the populations of the Bug-occupied worlds. That was when she'd finally broken down, which was doubtless why she'd lost the child who would have preserved something of her lover who now existed only as Bug digestive byproducts.

The therapists had finally put her mind back together. Afterwards, she'd done three things. She had legally adopted Lydochka. She had returned to her parents' home on Orphicon and left her daughter in their care. And then she'd gone to the nearest recruiting station.

She'd never thought much of the military, and she'd thought even less of it since that night on Golan A II. But if putting on a uniform was the only way she could assuage her need to do something-anything-then so be it.

She'd been prepared to push papers, or direct traffic, or shovel shit, if she could thereby free someone else to go kill Bugs. But for once, BuPers had gotten it right. Their tests had recognized in her the qualities of a natural strikefighter pilot-including, and most especially, motivation. She'd gone directly to the new combined OCS/fighter school at Brisbane, on Old Terra.

Wartime losses plus rapid Navy expansion had created a voracious need for fighter pilots. The result had been a radical de-emphasis of what the old-school types called "military polish" and certain others called "Mickey Mouse" without knowing the term's origin. An incandescently eager Irma had never appreciated that fact. But it still took time to train a fighter jock; and she did come to appreciate-later-that the seemingly eternal program had kept her at Brisbane too long to be shipped out for Operation Pesthouse.

"Attention Angel-Romeo-Seven!" The sharp voice in her earphones that snapped her back to the present belonged to Captain Dianne Hsiao, the task force farshathkhanaak. Unlike some of the older, broom-up-the-ass regulars she'd been forced to put up with, Irma didn't find it at all strange that the TFN had contaminated the pristine purity of its own operational doctrines by adopting a Tabby innovation. The title translated roughly as "lord of the war fist" (which Irma considered entirely too artsy-fartsy), but what it actually meant was that Hsiao was the senior fighter jock of the entire task force. She represented all of them at the task force staff level, she was in charge of their operational training and planning, and she chewed their asses when they screwed the pooch. But she also fought their battles against their own brass when that was necessary, too, and from what Irma had heard, she had a hell of a temper when it cut loose. No doubt all of that was important, but all that really mattered to Irma Sanchez, was that Hsiao was talking to her carrier's strikegroup now . . . and that the farshathkhanaak was the voice of command which would free her to kill.

"Angel-Romeo-Seven, execute Omega!" Hsiao's voice snapped now. "I say again, Execute Omega!"

"Follow me in!" Lieutenant Commander Bruno Togliatti, VF-94's CO, barked like a basso echo of Hsiao's soprano voice of doom, and the entire squadron rolled up behind him, put their noses down, and hit their drives. No detailed instructions were needed. They all knew the area of the planet they'd been assigned, and they all knew the standing orders to hit "targets of opportunity," meaning the dense concentrations of sensor returns that indicated Bug population centers.

The squadron followed Togliatti in, and presently Irma heard a thin whistle as her F-4 bit into the uppermost reaches of Planet II's atmosphere. The defensive fire was as sporadic and ineffectual as they'd heard. She didn't try to understand why-she merely dismissed it from her mind and concentrated on her heads-up display where her small tactical plot superimposed downloaded sensor readings on a scrolling map.

VF-94's target area rolled onto the HUD while missiles which should have torn bleeding holes in its ranks went wide or staggered and wove like drunkards and energy fire stabbed almost randomly into the heavens. Irma locked in her targeting solutions-or rather, instructed the F-4's narrowly specialized but highly effective computer to do so. In turn, it signaled her as she swept into launch range.

Her FRAMs flashed away, and as they screamed downward, she pulled up, vision graying as she went to full power and sought the reuniting formation. Ahead there were only the clean, uncaring stars . . . and Armand's face against them, smiling as she remembered him while her weapons shrieked downward at the same monsters who'd murdered him. She stared upward at the memory of the man she'd loved, and the memory of that love only made the anguish and loss-and hatred-burn even hotter at her core.

Behind and below her, bits of antimatter were released from their nonmaterial restraints and the planet rocked to energy releases beyond the dreams of any gods human minds had ever imagined. For an instant, an entire planetary quadrant was one vast, undifferentiated glare. Then as it faded, enormous fireballs were seen to swell, often touching each other and merging, growing until their tops flattened because they'd reached altitudes where there was insufficient air to superheat.

Irma became aware that the sound she was hearing as she stared down at that Valkyrie's-eye view of Hell was that of her own teeth, grinding together in a grimace of fulfilled hate.

"Out-fucking-standing, people!" Togliatti yelled. "If everybody did that well, we may not need a second strike!"

Irma felt like a kid who'd been told it might not be necessary to miss another day of school because of snow.

As it turned out, they did go back. Nevertheless, and despite having started their attack later, they finished it before TF 61 was done with Planet I.

Zhaarnak and Prescott didn't know that at first, of course, given the communications lag. What they did know, as they drew away from Planet I an hour and ten minutes after launching their first missile at it, was that they had killed at least ninety-five percent of its population outright, and that the few survivors were too irradiated to live long enough to experience nuclear winter on that dust-darkened surface.

They knew something else, as well. They knew that the Bug mobile forces they'd known must be somewhere in the system were sweeping down upon them.

The wavefront of gunboats had arrived in the vicinity of Planet I just as TF 61 departed. Far behind, but coming into sensor range, was a battle-line from Hell: thirty monitors, seventy superdreadnoughts, and twenty-two battlecruisers, including gunboat tenders.

But whatever had rendered Planet I's groundside defenders so ineffectual was also infecting those ships. That had been obvious from the moment the gunboats were detected; Prescott hadn't needed Chung's prompting to recognize signs of confusion and disorder in that array. Zhaarnak had seen it, too, whatever doubts he might still have harbored about the "psychic shock" theory.

Now it was uppermost in their minds as they gazed into their respective plots at identical displays in which their task force and Shaaldaar's moved from Planets I and II respectively, on courses that converged to join TG 62.2 at the closed warp point whose location, Parkway firmly assured them, no Bug knew. They turned to their com screens and met each other's eyes.

"It has never been part of our plan to fight a fleet action here," Zhaarnak said. But his eyes kept flickering away from the pickup, and Prescott knew he was looking at the red icon of the disordered force pursuing them.

"No, it hasn't. And that plan was formulated even before we knew the Bugs had developed the FRAM."

"Truth," Zhaarnak admitted dutifully.

"Furthermore," Prescott continued, warming to his role as devil's advocate, "Admiral Parkway assures us she's eliminated all scanner buoys that could track us through the warp point, and her fighters can deal with any gunboats likely to get close enough to shadow us. And, of course, their battle-line can't possibly catch us, especially with those monitors to slow it down. In short, we can withdraw without compromising the warp point's location."

"As was our original plan," Zhaarnak finished for him. "And which will leave Zephrain completely secure."

"Lord Talphon did indicate that that was a high-priority consideration."

"So he did." Zhaarnak gave his vilkshatha brother a vaguely disappointed look. "I suppose it is, arguably, our duty to follow the course you are advocating," he said, but then his ears flew straight up in surprise as Prescott gave the human laugh he had learned not to misinterpret.

"Zhaarnak, the only thing I advocate is that we take them!"

Zhaarnak hadn't had Kthaara'zarthan's decades of familiarity with human mannerisms. Nevertheless, his lower jaw fell in a most human way and his ears flattened.

"But . . . after all that you have been saying-"

"I only wanted to get all the objections out on the table now. Look, Zhaarnak, we can wait for the intelligence experts' verdict on what's caused the Bugs to be so shaken up ever since our attack began. But for now, we know that, whatever the reason, the ships chasing us are. How often are we going to get a chance like this?"

"But, Raaymmonnd, there are thirty monitors out there!"

"Thirty monitors we can kill! Haven't we been arguing for months now that a lighter, faster battle-line with adequate fighter support can beat monitors if it's handled aggressively? Well this is our chance to prove it!"

"But we will give them a chance to pinpoint the location of the Zephrain warp point!"

"Granted. But we both know how strongly held Zephrain is. Those defenses can deal with anything that might get past us-not that I expect anything to."

Zhaarnak stared at him for a moment, then spoke with an obvious effort.

"Lord Talphon did say we were not to try to lure the Bahgs into a counterattack on Zephrain."

"Yes, he did, didn't he? I believe he called it a 'political impossibility.' " Prescott looked morose for a moment, then brightened. "But, strictly speaking, we're not actually 'luring' them, are we?" he asked, and Zhaarnak's amber eyes gleamed.

"No. Of course not. We are merely taking a calculated risk of revealing the warp point's location in order to seize a priceless strategic advantage and destroy a major enemy fleet. No reasonable person could adopt any other interpretation."

"Of course not." Prescott and Zhaarnak exchanged solemn nods, having talked each other into the conclusion they'd both wanted to reach from the first.

Fresh orders went out. The three elements of Sixth Fleet proceeded to their rendezvous, heavily cloaked and screened by a cloud of fighters. Then they completed their rendezvous . . . and Zhaarnak'telmasa, using fine-honed military skills to effectuate the instincts of a thousand generations of ancestors, turned on his pursuers.

And then something completely unexpected happened.

For only the second time in the war, a powerful Bug battle fleet-not a decoy like those in Operation Pesthouse-tried to refuse battle.

It was hard-so hard-in their stunned disorientation. But the intelligences that controlled the Fleet knew they must avoid battle until they could function at something like their normal level.

Nothing like it had ever happened before. Never had a World Which Must Be Defended been seared clean in such a manner. So there had been no way to foresee its effects.

The Fleet had continued on its course towards the first stricken planet by sheer inertia, after that first stunning psychic impact, and the others that had followed in rapid succession. By the time it had arrived, the attackers had been departing. The obvious course of action-therefore the only course the Fleet was capable of adopting in its present state-had been to follow them across the system, seeking to determine the location of the closed warp point by which they had entered it.

But now the Enemy had reunited his various elements and was seeking battle. And the controlling minds had recovered sufficiently to realize they were in no condition to fight such a battle. They must avoid one until they could function at something like their normal capabilities.

Sluggishly, the Fleet gathered itself and began to turn away.

Sixth Fleet had the speed advantage, its command and control functions were unimpaired, and Zhaarnak'telmasa had no intention of letting the Bugs decline battle. They did their best to evade him, but in four days of relentless maneuvering, he'd finally brought them to bay.

Now he sat on Celmithyr'theaarnouw's flag bridge and watched his plot as a tidal wave of fighter icons streaked towards the enemy. The diamond dust of the icons was a densely packed mass, belying the wide separations that even such small vessels required when traveling at such velocities in precise formations. Yet there was a greater truth to the illusion of density than to the reality of dispersion, for those light codes represented a maximum-effort strike from every carrier in his force. It was a solid mailed fist, driving straight down the throat of the Bug fleet.

Ophiuchi pilots from the TFN carriers went in first, blasting a way through the Bugs' gunboat screen with missiles, and the familiar eye-tearing fireballs of deep-space death began to flash and glare as the gunboats sought clumsily to intercept. Had it been possible for a warrior of the Khan to feel pity for such soulless chofaki, Zhaarnak would have felt it as he sensed the desperate, drunken effort with which the gunboats fought to protect the larger starships.

For all its desperation, that effort was the most ineffectual one Zhaarnak had seen since the war began. The gunboats stumbled this way and that, some of them actually colliding in midspace, as helpless as hercheqha under the claws of zegets. All their frantic efforts accomplished was the destruction of fewer than twenty Allied fighters-most of them killed by nothing more than blind luck-even as the antimatter pyres of their own deaths lit a path to the starships they had striven to protect for the main attack wave of strikefighters.

The Terrans and Orions who'd followed the Ophiuchi in ignored the tattered handful of surviving gunboats. They left the Ophiuchi to pursue the remainder of their prey; they had targets of their own, and they slashed inward, seeking out the monitors.

The leviathans within the Bug formation were easy sensor targets, and the fighters streaking vengefully down upon them carried a new weapon: external pods with primary beam projectors. The primary, with its very intense but very narrow and short-duration beam of gravitic distortion, did little damage per shot compared to its wide-aperture cousin, the force beam. But its tight-focused fury burned straight through shields and armor, like a white-hot knitting needle through butter, to rend at a ship's vitals.

The nimble little F-4s could have maneuvered into the lumbering monitors' blind zones even if the minds controlling those monitors hadn't been reeling from psychic trauma. And armed with the recognition data Marcus LeBlanc had provided, they sought out the command ships.

That, too, was easier by far than it ought to have been. The emissions signatures of the ships were distinctive enough to have been picked out with ease, but one of the functions of ECM was to disguise those signatures. Only the Bugs' ECM was as disorganized and confused as any other aspect of the Arachnid fleet's operations. The primary-armed fighters picked them out of their battlegroups with ease.

Disoriented or not, the Bugs had their wits-or whatever-about them sufficiently to follow standard tactical doctrine. Indeed, it almost seemed that standard doctrine was all they were capable of, for they executed it with a sort of rote, mechanical fatalism, like poorly designed robots executing a program which had been written equally poorly.

Yet however clumsy they might have been, they remained deadly dangerous foes for such fragile attackers. The monitors were positioned to cover each others' blind zones, and whatever might have happened to the organic intelligences aboard them, the cybernetic ones remained unaffected. The monitor battlegroups threw up solid walls of missiles and laser clusters, force beams, and even primaries. Space blazed as the close-in defenses vomited defiance, and yet . . .

The Bugs' cybernetic servants did their best, and many fighters died. But there were limits in all things, including the effectiveness of computers and their software when the organic beings behind those computers were too befuddled and confused to recognize that their efforts to direct the defensive effort actually undermined it. Even as Zhaarnak watched, entire broadsides of missiles and force beams flailed away at single squadrons of attackers. Whenever that happened, the squadron under attack ceased to exist, for nothing could survive under such a massive weight of fire- certainly not something as fragile as a strikefighter. But those concentrations of defensive fire came at a terrible price for the defenders. It was obvious that the Bugs responsible for repelling the attack were pouring the fire of every weapon they had at the first squadron which attracted their attention. And as they compelled their computers to concentrate exclusively upon the single threat their shocked organic senses were capable of singling out, dozens-scores-of threats they hadn't engaged streaked through the chinks they'd opened in the wall of their defensive fire.

The vast bulk of the attacking fighters swept past the fireballs and expanding vapor where less fortunate strike craft had died. Their pilots knew what had happened-how dearly such an opening had been purchased for them-and they pressed in grimly. They swarmed about the Bug command ships, stabbing deeper and deeper with their needlelike primaries until the unstoppable stilettos of energy reached the command datalink installations.