Zhaarnak gave the low growl that answered to a Human grunt.

"Very good. We had not expected any, of course, this side of AP-5. Still, if they emerged unexpectedly into that system, it is not impossible they could do the same elsewhere."

"At least, Fang," Sanders said smoothly, "these precautionary scouting missions can be carried out by sensor drones, and don't entail any delay."

Zhaarnak glanced up sharply. Sanders' eyes-of that weird bluish color-met his unflinchingly. He has recognized my impatience, he thought. Then he had to laugh inwardly at himself. No great feat! I have not exactly made a secret of it.

Sanders raised his eyebrows, and his lips quirked upward.

He has recognized my amusement at myself, as well, Zhaarnak thought. He is remarkably-almost disturbingly-perceptive about a race that is not his own.

He also has a way of inspiring frankness.

"Yes, Cub Saaanderzzz, as you and everyone else are aware, I am impatient. Desperately so." Zhaarnak glowered at the display again. "What you perhaps are not aware of is the reason for my impatience. Just before we departed-after my vilkshatha brother was already beyond ICN range-the decision was made to use this task force to escort a convoy of freighters carrying replacement fighters for Task Force 71. I argued that speed was of the essence. But I was overruled."

Even Sanders was a bit hesitant, in the face of the glimpse he'd gotten into the depths of Zhaarnak's frustration, when he spoke again.

"Perhaps, Fang, the fighters will be badly needed after Admiral Prescott has fought his way out of Home Hive One."

"Oh, I do not doubt that the fighters will be welcomed. But the point is, we are scheduled to rendezvous with Task Force 71 in the AP-5 System at a certain time. And despite everything I have done to make up the time it cost to assemble the convoy, we will not make that rendezvous. Nor," Zhaarnak had begun pacing again, and this time he didn't even notice that he was, "has it been possible to inform Task Force 71 of the delay, because of the decision against extending the ICN along the Presssssscott Chain. I have sent a dispatch boat ahead, but I was unable to send it off until I knew what my true schedule might be . . . which I have only recently learned. It will not arrive greatly in advance of the entire task force, and TF 71 will know nothing of the alteration in schedule until it does. I only hope Raaymmonnd'presssssscott-telmasa is not counting on me to make the schedule of which I had advised him before the convoy escort mission was decided upon."

Abruptly, the intelligence officers forgotten, he whirled around and strode to the com station.

"Inform the staff that I want a report containing detailed proposals for decreasing our transit time."

No one in earshot dared to exclaim, "Another one?"

* * *

There was nothing quite so chilling as a starless warp nexus.

It was only there that humans ever experienced actual interstellar space and came face-to-face with the reality that the warp network generally allowed them to ignore: the absolute, illimitable, unending, soul-destroying emptiness of the universe. This was the true Void. With no nearby star to give a reference point, the mind could get lost in those vast, meaningless spaces and never find its way home again.

TF 71 was now traversing such a space-a segment of nothingness defined only by the presence of two warp points and labeled AP-6. Raymond Prescott had ordered the outside view turned off.

The briefing room holo sphere didn't even show a display of this "system." It was too mindlessly simple: two warp points, one of which they'd emerged from, and one they were approaching, beyond which lay AP-5 . . . and the Bugs.

Instead, the AP-5 System was displayed. A white light-point represented its primary star in the center of the sphere. The planets were shown, but they were unimportant. Everyone's attention was focused on the warp points, arbitrarily designated number one (through which they would enter the system), number two (the closed warp point which gave the Bugs access), and number three (leading onward along the Prescott Chain, which meant that Zhaarnak's task force would emerge from it). All three were in the outer system, four light-hours or more from the local sun. Warp Point One was at nine o'clock from that sun, Warp Point Two at twelve o'clock, and Warp Point Three at eleven o'clock.

"There are two essential facts to bear in mind," Prescott said, sweeping his hand in a half-circle that encompassed the holo sphere. "First, both we and the Bugs now know where all three of these warp points are. Considering this system as a battleground, there are no 'terrain features' that are going to come as a surprise to either side. And both of us have cloaked scouts already there, aware of each others' presence, watching all of the warp points and feeling each other out.

"Secondly, our options are limited by the fact that we have to proceed to Warp Point Three, and the Bugs know it."

"Why, Sir?" Landrum inquired. "Why can't we just skulk around the system and wait for Task Force 72 to arrive?"

"Think about it, Commodore. Fang Zhaarnak will be entering the system without a preliminary SBMHAWK bombardment. So if we allow the Bugs to take up an undisturbed position within point-blank range of Warp Point Three . . ."

"'My enemy cannot help but engage me,'" Mandagalla quoted sotto voce. "'For I attack a position he must succor.'"

Prescott gave her a wintry smile.

"Precisely, Commodore. Sun Tzu would understand our predicament, if not its setting." He grew brisk, and turned to Bichet and Landrum. "Have the two of you finalized the plan for consolidating our strikegroups?"

"Yes, Sir," the ops officer answered. "We'll be moving eight hundred and forty-six assorted fighters from their current carriers to the Minerva Waldeck-class monitors, our seven undamaged Ophiuchi assault carriers, and our two undamaged Terran command assault carriers. We've consulted with Commander Ruiz on the supply aspects."

"Complications are bound to arise from such a scrambling of personnel of different races, Sir," the logistics officer said, understating the case considerably. "But I believe we can handle it."

"I recognize the difficulties you're all facing," Prescott said, with a quick smile. "But in the sort of engagement we're going to be fighting, nimbleness and quickness will be even more important than usual. We can't afford to encumber ourselves with any vulnerable or ineffective ships. So I want the rest of the carriers, as well as our worst damaged superdreadnoughts and battlecruisers, to remain here in AP-6. They're to take up a position far from either warp point-and I mean light-hours from it."

The staffers exchanged glances. Then Mandagalla spoke hesitantly.

"Aye, aye, Sir. Ah . . . that means, of course, that those ships will be left stranded here in AP-6 if . . . That is . . ."

Prescott smiled more broadly into the chief of staff's misery.

"I don't plan for this task force to meet with . . . anything untoward, Anna."

Mandagalla smiled back briefly, but a streak of stubborn integrity wouldn't allow her to simply shut up and take the out Prescott had given her.

"Actually, Sir, I wasn't thinking of that. What I meant was . . . Well, what if, at some point, a situation develops in which it becomes possible-and seems advisable-for us to withdraw from AP-5 via Warp Point Three and rendezvous with Fang Zhaarnak in AP-4? With our cripples and our empty carriers left behind here in AP-6, we won't have that option."

"We don't have it in any case, Commodore," Prescott said very quietly. Then he leaned forward and swept his hand once again through the holo sphere's display of the AP-5 system, where his brother had died. "This is Terran space!"

Two standard days had passed since they'd entered AP-5.

They'd been two days of cat-and-mouse with the Bug battle fleet that had entered the system through its closed warp point at essentially the same time TF 71's leading elements had emerged from Warp Point One. Those hundred and forty-one Bug ships (to Prescott's hundred and forty-six) were more numerous than could be accounted for by Home Hive One's missing mobile forces alone-but that merely meant they'd picked up help along the way. Their arrival, in a virtual heat with TF 71, had proved out Prescott's gloomier suppositions.

Now, after two days of edging across the system and feeling out his opposition, he was ready to offer battle. He'd used his ships' superior speed-and the ability of his engineers to baby their military-grade engines through that kind of long-term maneuvering-to hold the range between them open, because every Allied flag officer had developed a healthy respect for the threat posed by kamikaze assault shuttles. The shuttles might be slower, and have less capacity for sustained flight than gunboats did, but with their cargo spaces packed full of antimatter, they were actually more dangerous kamikazes than the larger and faster gunboats.

Keeping as far away from them as possible was one way to blunt their effectiveness. Not only did they have less life-support endurance than gunboats did, but their speed advantage over starships was considerably lower, which meant they would be forced to risk engine burnout in order to reach and overhaul their targets. The difference between their performance and maneuvering envelopes and those of a gunboat also made it difficult to manage a coordinated shuttle/gunboat kamikaze strike, yet without the close support of covering gunboats, shuttles were unlikely to be able to penetrate the layered defense of an unshaken Allied task force. That was yet another area in which holding the range open favored TF 71, because it would give the task force's combat space patrols more depth-which equated to more time-in which to intercept and kill the kamikazes while they were inbound. For all of those reasons, fighting the action at as long a range as possible offered many advantages . . . and, unfortunately, a few disadvantages.

Which was the point of the present discussion.

"If we launch against their battle-line from this far out, we'll have to send our fighters in without primary packs, Sir," Stephen Landrum pointed out in respectful but clearly unhappy tones, and Prescott nodded glumly.

The Grand Alliance's possession of the strikefighter had been one of its greatest assets from the outset. The gunboat offered many formidable tactical and strategic advantages of its own, but in close combat, the strikefighter-especially in its latest marks-continued to hold the upper hand by a decisive margin. And although it was much shorter ranged than the gunboat and incapable of independent warp transit, a strikefighter fitted with extended life-support packs could attack effectively at intrasystem ranges at which kamikaze shuttles could not. Unfortunately, if the necessary life support was mounted, the available menu of offensive ordnance packages shrank dramatically.

In particular, the generating machinery for the brief but incredibly intense pulse of space-twisting gravitic energy that was a primary beam could only be miniaturized down to a certain point. Like life-support packs, primary packs were large enough to place extravagant demands on a fighter's external ordnance capacity. In fact, primary-armed fighters launched at their maximum possible range from the target couldn't carry anything but primary and life-support packs . . . which would automatically exclude the ECM and decoy missiles that would keep them alive.

Trade-offs! Prescott thought, as though it were a swear word. Which, in fact, it was for anyone who had to agonize over optimum ordnance mixes.

"I take your point, Commodore," he said after a moment. "But if we let the Bugs think they're almost succeeding in getting close enough to launch a coordinated shuttle/gunboat attack, we can launch our fighters from beyond their theoretical life-support range, and let the Bugs continue to close the range and meet them."

Landrum blinked, and Prescott felt all of his staffers staring at him in surprise. Vice Admiral Raathaarn eventually broke the silence from his com screen.

"Darrrrring, Ssssssir. And risssssky."

"Granted. And pulling it off will require that we be quick and agile . . . and that our timing be perfect," Prescott said. "That's why I had the task force strip down to the minimum possible number of units consistent with maximum possible combat effectiveness. Like everyone else, I would've liked longer for the composite strikegroups to shake down together, but we've operated together as a task force long enough that I expect them to come through when it matters.

"Of course, even under the best conditions, pulling off the maneuver I have in mind will require a certain degree of cooperation from the Bugs," he admitted. "If they realize what we're up to and turn away, they can hold the range open to one at which only our gunboats could reach them. By the same token, though, we won't really be any worse off if they pull back than we would have been if they'd never come in at all. If they turn away, we'll simply recall the fighters." He shrugged. "We'll have expended a lot of time and burned up a lot of life support, but that's about all. Well, that and we'll have to figure out another way to get at them."

"Pulling that off will require some pretty careful management between the primary-armed fighters and the support squadrons Sir," Landrum pointed out, and Prescott nodded.

"You're right about that, Steve, and I'll want you and Jacques to assist Admiral Raathaarn in working out exactly the right launch range to make it work. And I'm afraid we'll also have to place the entire task force at State One Readiness-and keep it there. Timing is going to be critical, so I want the flight crews for all of our fighters in their ready rooms, ready to launch on a moment's notice. And I want the launch bay crews just as ready to arm and launch their birds. Clear?"

A rumble of assent went up, but Landrum leaned close to Bichet's ear and whispered, "I hope this doesn't take too long!"

It didn't.

Irma Sanchez had begun to wonder if she and the other surviving personnel of the original VF-94 had set a record for the number of ships they'd been attached to in the course of a single campaign.

She just gotten used to TFNS Banshee when the latest reorganization had landed the squadron aboard the Minerva Waldeck-class MT(V) Angela Martens. It was her first experience of a monitor, and she considered it a change for the worse. First of all, the old rule (which dated back to the wet navies of pre-space Terra, had she known it) still held true: the bigger the ship, the more junior officers got packed into a single berthing compartment. Larger berthing compartments in absolute terms, granted, but smaller per occupant. Second, to her acquired sensibilities a strikegroup of eighty-four fighters seemed just simply too damned big. Third, while she might not have gone so far as to call Commander Strikegroup 137, Commander Jason Georghiu, a prick, it was widely rumored that he had to keep his tunic's standing collar fastened up to hide his circumcision scar.

All of which had paled in comparison to the time they'd spent waiting by their fighters and launch bays, subsisting on low-residue chow. But finally the word had come, and the mass drivers had flung them out into space. To Irma, it was like a homecoming.

They'd taken fewer losses after entering the Bugs' defensive envelope than they'd dared to hope. No question about it, Vice Admiral Raathaarn knew his tactics. The fact that each of the F-4's could carry a primary pack, an ECM pack, a life-support pack, and a decoy missile-assuming that the Bugs were going to continue to cooperate by closing with the task force-had given him a degree of flexibility he'd taken full advantage of. The Ophiuchi squadrons flying behind the wavefront of Terran and Orion ones carried no primary packs at all, for they were tasked to support the Terrans and Orions with flights of additional decoys and to fend off counterattacking gunboats as the attack wave swooped in on the Bug superdreadnoughts and monitors.

Those massive ships met them with hair-raisingly dense patterns of point defense fire, especially the Aegis-class command monitors and Arbalest-class command superdreadnoughts. But Raathaarn had thought of a way to turn that defensive firepower to the Alliance's advantage. He'd had all the data Captain Chung and his own intelligence types had amassed on the command ships analyzed and found a way to identify them regardless of all the sophisticated ECM they mounted.

The Bugs, recognizing the absolute need to protect the ships whose command datalink installations made the battlegroup-level coordination of offensive and defensive fire possible, had crammed the Aegis and Arbalest ships with a horrific array of point defense and defensive missile launchers which no other unit in their inventory could match. Which meant that it didn't matter how good their ECM was if you could see how much defensive fire they were pumping out. The very strength of their defenses actually made it possible to identify them for attack.

The technique wasn't without its price tag. Over half of KONS Kompakutor's strikegroup had just died to draw the fire that revealed the identity of their killer, which now lay dead ahead of VF-94 in visual range.

"All right, people," Togliatti said over Irma's headset. "It's definitely an Aegis-that's the word from the CSG."

Georghiu might be a lifer of the deepest dye, but nobody had ever called CSG 137 a desk jockey. He was out here in person, leading his entire strikegroup. Togliatti was only one of fourteen squadron skippers involved in the strike.

Togliatti's orders came crisply and quickly, succinctly identifying a set of tactical contingencies. Irma punched them into her computer-voice recognition software was fine and dandy in a great many contexts, but combat was not one of them. Then they were off, piling on acceleration, and their titanic prey grew rapidly in the view-forward as they stooped on it from astern.

The Aegis never even saw it coming.

The stupendous command ship was still preoccupied with the distracting survivors of Kompakutor's strikegroup when VF-94 came screaming up from behind. One of the things fighter jocks hated most about command datalink was the way that it permitted other units of a battlegroup to pour defensive fire into the blind zones of their group mates. Before command datalink, no starship could effectively protect another from missiles or strikefighters which had targeted it, and no ship's fire control was able to see targets that small directly astern of it, which had created the classic blind spot from which all fighter jocks were trained to attack. Now, any unit of any battlegroup could fire upon any target that any of its members could lock up . . . including missiles and fighters in someone else's blind zone.

Strikefighter losses had gone up astronomically as a result. Improvements in fighter ECM, decoy missiles, and defensive tactics had offset that to some degree, but command datalink had probably killed more fighter pilots than any other technological innovation in the history of space warfare. Indeed, some fighter tactic pundits maintained that it was now all a matter of cold, uncaring statistics. They argued that an unshaken battlegroup of capital ships was such a dangerous target that the only solution was to swamp it and swarm it under by sheer weight of numbers, accepting the inevitably massive casualties in order to get enough survivors into attack range to get the job done.

Irma didn't much care for that school of thought . . . and neither did Vice Admiral Raathaarn. As VF-94 and the rest of Georghiu's strike group streaked in on the Aegis, an entire supporting strikegroup filled the space about them with decoys and jamming. The sheer multiplicity of targets-false ones generated by the decoys, as well as genuine threats-swamped the Bugs. Their fire control systems were probably capable of sorting out the chaos, but the organic brains behind those systems weren't. Individual survival instincts didn't even come into it. It was simply a matter of engaging the threats they could actually pick out from the swirling madness, and the Bugs aboard the Aegis chose the wrong targets. They-and, by extension, all the other units of their battlegroup-were too busy firing at Kompakutor's survivors (and the decoy missiles covering them) to see Angela Martens' group until it was too late.

Even tactical battlegrounds in space are immense. On the visual display, it almost looked as if VF-94 were all alone, charging single-handedly against the Aegis. In reality, the other seventy-eight fighters from Martens' Strikegroup 137 were in close support, dancing and bobbing in the complex, fire-evading pattern known to the TFN as the "Waldeck Weave." Other navies had their own variations and their own names for the Weave, but the essentials were the same for all of them, and what looked from the outside like utter confusion was actually an intricately choreographed, precisely timed maneuver which brought every single dispersed fighter together at exactly the critical instant behind the Bug monitor.

The strikegroup lost three fighters on the way in. At least one of them was lost to pure accident. In a fluke coincidence so unlikely that Irma couldn't even have begun to calculate the odds against it, a lieutenant in VF-123 actually collided with one of his own covering decoy missiles, and so proved that the Demon Murphy was alive and well. Of the other two, one fell afoul of a stray Bug gunboat which got in one screaming pass and plucked its victim out of space fractions of a second before the fighter's vengeful squadron mates killed it in turn. No one ever knew exactly how the third pilot bought it, because no one actually saw her go.

But the rest of the strikegroup was intact when it delivered a perfectly coordinated attack.

The primary packs took so long to recharge between shots that, unlike laser packs, each could effectively fire only once per firing pass. But that still meant that eighty-odd needlelike stilettos pierced the monster's vitals within the space of a few seconds. The actual primary beams were invisible, and the five-centimeter holes they punched effortlessly through the toughest armor were far too small to be seen on any visual display, but that didn't mean the damage wasn't obvious. As those deadly rapiers stabbed the leviathan to its heart, a blood trail of gushing atmosphere haloed it instantly. Water vapor, oxygen, carbon dioxide . . . Irma's blood blazed with vengeful triumph as her instruments detected the proof of internal death and destruction.

The fire of the Aegis' entire battlegroup faltered, losing its cohesion and focus as someone's primary fire sought out and destroyed the command datalink installation. And as they flashed on by, the fighters lacerated the huge ship with their internal hetlasers, splintering the armor the primaries had simply punched through.

Maybe the intelligence types would be able to use drastically slowed down imagery to infer the details of just exactly what happened to the monitor. But in Irma's view-aft, the rapid fire series of secondary explosions coalesced almost immediately into one, and then a short-lived sun awoke, from whose equator a disc of debris rapidly spread until it dissipated.

Well, she thought, I was wondering about records. That's got to be the shortest time it's ever taken to vaporize a monitor.

* * *

"The totals are in, Sir!" Chung was almost babbling with excitement as he and Bichet reported to Prescott. "The Ophiuchi fighters killed three hundred and seven of their gunboats, and the Terran and Orion squadrons and the Gorm gunboats got seven superdreadnoughts and four monitors. And three of the superdreadnoughts and two of the monitors were command ships!"

"That's got to hurt their battle-line." The admiral nodded soberly. "What about our own losses?"

Chung's animation faded, and Bichet shook his head.

"Sixty gunboats, Sir. And as for the fighters . . . Well, we haven't accounted for all of them yet, so I can't give you an exact figure. But we're talking almost a quarter of our total fighter strength."

Prescott nodded again, and did some mental arithmetic. Twenty or thirty fighters for a monitor-say thirty-five flight crew for a ship with a complement of three or four thousand . . . Many would have thought it the kind of loss ratio of which dreams were made. But he had to think in terms of his own available resources, which were limited. He couldn't keep losing fighters at this rate.

"Bring them back, Steve," he said quietly to Captain Landrum.

It was clear what the Enemy was up to. In its concern to protect its critical command ships, the Fleet had never considered that those ships' lavish defensive armaments might serve to identify them. But the Enemy's single-minded targeting of them left no doubt on the matter, and the resultant losses were making it difficult to maintain datalink integrity.

It was equally clear that the Enemy had been maneuvering his way towards the warp point through which he had originally entered this system, all the while adroitly preventing the Fleet from closing the range and launching a coordinated strike by gunboats and shuttles.

Now, however, the Enemy attack craft were retiring, after expending most of their external ordnance. Perhaps this was the time to send out the gunboats.

Jacques Bichet stiffened as the Bug fleet suddenly spawned a shoal of blood-red icons. They streamed into existence as the gunboats they represented separated from their motherships, and a solid wall of hostiles flowed across the plot towards TF 71.

"Plotting makes it more than eight hundred of them, Sir!" he told Prescott. "It must be their entire surviving gunboat strength."

"Admiral," Landrum's voice was urgent, "our fighters can turn on them now!"

"No," Prescott replied. "Order them to jettison their remaining external ordnance and return at maximum speed to rearm. Our gunboats will fight a delaying action."

"But, Sir," Landrum took his courage in both hands, "you've already ordered our capital ships to turn away from the gunboat strike-which means away from our returning fighters."

The other staffers held their breath as Prescott turned to face the farshathkhanaak. They knew what Landrum meant. The carriers' high-speed turn away would slow the fighters' ability to overtake them and recover to their launch bays. In turn, that would delay their return to combat . . . and require them to expend even more life support, which some of them were already running out of. Landrum might not have put that into so many words, but he hadn't really needed to, and the staff waited for the admiral's explosive reaction to the implied criticism. But Prescott spoke mildly.

"I realize that, Commodore. But if we let them turn to engage now, we'll have to hold the carriers-which means the entire task force-where they are, or the fighters will definitely have insufficient life-support to recover. If they jettison, their 'clean' speed will be enough for most of them to rendezvous with their carriers without exhausting their life support even if we continue on our present course." The inertial "sump" that made reactionless drives possible was far shallower for a craft as small as a fighter, which meant that external ordnance loads significantly degraded its performance. "They should also be fast enough to recover and rearm before the Bug gunboats can reach us-especially if our gunboats can delay them. And whether we can get them all rearmed and relaunched in time or not, we have to get them refitted with anti-gunboat munitions before we send them in."

Landrum opened his mouth, as if to protest, then closed it, because the farshathkhanaak knew Prescott was right. The slow-firing primary packs were virtually useless as dogfighting weapons, and a strikefighter equipped only with its internal hetlasers would be at a serious disadvantage against AFHAWK-armed gunboats. What was needed were missiles of their own, for the long-range envelope, and gun packs when it fell to knife range.

But the captain wasn't at all sure it would be possible to recover and rearm his fighters before the Bugs came in on them. The carrier deck crews in TF 71 were all veterans, and Landrum knew better than most just how good they really were. But Prescott was about to ask the impossible of them . . . and some of the fighters weren't going to make it home before they ran out of life support whatever happened. Their pilots' powerful locator beacons might be picked up by post-battle search and rescue efforts after they bailed out . . . but they might not be, too. Landrum, knew there were times, especially in fighter ops, when risks had to be run, but much as the farshathkhanaak respected and admired the admiral, at this moment he couldn't forget that Prescott had come up through the battle-line. He wasn't a fighter pilot-had never even commanded a fleet carrier. Did he truly understand what he was about to demand from Landrum's flight and deck crews?

But then Landrum looked at Prescott's expression and knew the subject was closed.

"Aye, aye, Sir," he said.

"This is Vincent Steele, Trans-Galactic News, and I'm here, on the hanger deck of TFNS Angela Martens, where urgent preparations to repel an anticipated Bug attack are under way."

Vincent Steele crouched in an alcove in the battlesteel bulkhead of Fighter Bay 62 with his shoulder-mounted microcam and felt his pulse hammer while he stared out at the frantically busy Navy personnel.

He wished now that he'd paid more attention to the official Navy briefers who'd gassed on interminably about the flight deck procedures. At least then he might have had some genuine idea of what was going on.

It would have helped if Sandra Delmore were here, too, but the brown-nosing bitch had disappeared the minute that pompous asshole Morris had ordered "all nonessential personnel" out of the hanger spaces. Stupid bastard. Just because the precious Navy had decided to annoint Sherman Morris as the captain of one of its monitors, the arrogant prick thought someone had died and made him God!

Well, Vincent Steele had news for Captain King Shit Morris. He hadn't risen to number four at TGN's prewar military affairs desk without learning how to bust the balls of people a lot more important than one miserable captain with a god complex. Lord knew he'd uncovered enough dirt on the Navy before the Bugs turned up. He was forced to admit, not without a certain degree of chagrin, that since Survey Command had fucked up the Federation's first contact with the Arachnids, the Navy had finally found something to do that actually justified all the millions of megacredits which had been wasted on it during peacetime. Of course, if Survey Command had done its job properly in the first place, this entire war might have been avoided. At the very least, the incompetent jackasses should have been able to retire through a closed warp point without showing the Bugs where it was! But, no. And this was the result.

To be honest, the thing Steele hated most about his present assignment was his producers' demand that he pander to the viewing public's current adulation of all things Navy. He'd spent his entire career trying to get the monkey of military spending off the Federation's back, and now this! It offended every ethical bone in his body to betray a lifetime's principles this way, but he had no choice. Trying to stand up to the sycophantic gushing about the Navy's courage, and the Navy's dedication, and the Navy's dauntless spirit would have been professional suicide. And being assigned to work with Sandra Delmore was the final straw. While he'd been ferreting out all of the Navy's prewar abuses of its position and misuse of its funding, she'd been writing ass-kissing odes to it as if the uniformed deadbeats who couldn't have found jobs in the civilian economy if they'd tried were some kind of paladins.

What really stuck in his craw sideways, though, was the way all of the Navy old-timers were so delighted to see her. Every one of them seemed to remember some little "personal interest" piece she'd done on them, or on their families, or on someone they knew, or on their dogs, for God's sake! They invited her to join them in their messes, bought her drinks in the O-Club, and set up special deep-background briefings for her, and they never even seemed to realize that she was nothing but a third-rate stringer. Of course, it was probably too much to expect any of those uniformed Neanderthals to recognize a serious journalist when they saw one.

But Steele's nose for news hadn't deserted him. Everybody in Task Force 71 seemed to think Raymond Prescott could walk on water, but Steele hadn't forgotten the way the Bugs had made a fool out of him at his famous "April Fool" battle. The reporter hadn't been able to make up his mind whether Prescott really was the loose warhead that people like Bettina Wister thought he was, or if he was just an unreasonably lucky screwup. The Orions certainly thought highly of him . . . which, given their history and lunatic warrior-cult "honor code," was probably a bad sign.

Up to this point, however, and almost despite himself, Steele had been leaning towards the theory that Prescott might actually be as good-in a purely and narrowly military sense, of course-as his vociferous supporters insisted. He'd done a thorough job of destroying Home Hive One, at any rate. Although, Steele reminded himself, all anyone really had to prove that he had were the reports and imagery the Navy itself had handed out.

But now . . .

Steele tucked himself into a smaller space, squeezing further back into the alcove in the launch bay bulkhead. Even Delmore had gotten more and more tight-faced as the two of them listened to the occasional situation reports Captain Morris had put out over the general com system for the benefit of his crew. The official press pool had been pretty much closed down for the duration of the battle-officially to keep the reporters out of harm's way, although it also just happened to mean no media watchdogs would be in position to report any screwups which might occur along the way. But even the reports Morris was willing to share had indicated that things were getting pretty tight.

Other people had been less reticent, though . . . and less inclined to play jolly cheerleader than the captain. Steele had spent weeks-months-working on contacts of his own aboard Angela Martens. Delmore might have her stooges among the officers, but Steele knew where to go if you wanted the real dirt. The officer corps always closed ranks to protect the Navy's "good name"-and their own, of course, although that was never mentioned. So if you wanted to get at the things the Navy didn't want you to know (which, by definition, were the ones it was most important to bring to the public's attention), you had to do an end run around the official information channels. If you looked long enough, you could always find someone who was dissatisfied enough-often over the most trivial things, but a man had to work with what he could find-to tell you anything you wanted to know.

Sometimes that someone was a disgruntled officer, sometimes it was an enlisted person or a nomcom. Aboard Angela Martens, it was Petty Officer Third Class Cassius Bradford, a much put upon individual, who, in his own unbiased opinion, should have been at least a chief petty officer by now. The fact that he wasn't had proved a fertile source of information when Steele suggested that perhaps the support of a friendly news report or two might provide PO 3/c Bradford's career with the upward impetus it deserved. Which was how Steele had happened to learn that Admiral Hot Shot Prescott had screwed the pooch.

Again.

For the first time since his assignment to Seventh Fleet, Vincent Steele had truly come face-to-face with his own mortality, and it was Prescott's fault. Angela Martens was a carrier, not a battle-line unit. Even Steele knew carriers weren't supposed to get into missile range of enemy starships-that was why he'd specifically requested a carrier assignment. Oh, intellectually he'd realized that even carriers could be destroyed, but any half-competent admiral would do his best to keep the carriers out of the main fray, if only to preserve the bases from which his own fighters operated.

But that asshole Prescott had managed to get himself caught with his fighters out of position and armed with the wrong external ordnance loads while every damned Bug gunboat in the universe came charging down on TF 71! And, of course, a carrier built on a monitor hull was far too slow and clumsy to dodge kamikazes. Which meant that Angela Martens, as a direct consequence of Prescott's latest screwup, was about to be attacked by waves of antimatter-loaded gunboats whose sole purpose in life was to destroy her and everyone on board her . . . including one Vincent Steele.

Bradford had all but pissed himself when Steele buttonholed him and the petty officer babbled out the latest news-news, which, Steele had noted, Captain Morris hadn't seen fit to put out over the net just yet. Prescott had managed to get all of them into a situation from which they could be rescued only by a miracle. The only way they could possibly beat off the waves of gunboats streaking towards them was to somehow recover their own fighters and manage to get them rearmed and relaunched before the Bugs arrived.

Which, Bradford had assured him, was effectively impossible.

Raw terror threatened to overwhelm Steele, but he'd shoved it aside. There was nothing he could do about what was about to happen, but assuming he himself survived-and despite all Bradford had said, he resolutely refused to consider the possibility that he might not-he could at least ensure that there was proof of the degree to which Prescott had screwed up this time.

He hadn't even considered enlisting Delmore's aid. If she'd known what he was really up to, she might well have turned him in to Captain Morris herself, given the extent to which she'd allowed herself to be co-opted by the Navy. Besides, she was a stickler for obeying every petty military instruction she received. The fact that it was at least as much her job to find out the things the Navy didn't want her to know as to faithfully parrot the things the Navy did want her to know never even seemed to occur to her. She-and the rest of the press pool-had been told the hanger bays were off limits during flight operations, and there was no way she would have accompanied Steele down here. Which was a pity. She might be a brown-nosing bitch, but she did know her way around the guts of these stupid ships a lot better than he did. He could probably have gotten here in half the time if he'd been able to count on her to help. Not to mention the fact that he would have been able to understand a lot more of what was going on with her to interpret.

But she wasn't here, so he'd just have to do the best he could without her.

He edged cautiously closer to the mouth of the alcove in which he'd hidden himself and manipulated the camera control to pan it back and forth across the scene outside it.

Despite his own sophistication (and fear), he had to admit that it was incredibly exciting to watch. He vaguely remembered the briefer who'd escorted his own small clutch of reporters around the hanger decks when they first came aboard. The young woman had seemed far too youthful for her rank as a full lieutenant-more like a teenager in uniform than a real officer. But someone had told him later that she was a Fringer, from one of the out worlds where the antigerone treatments were universally available, so she'd probably been quite a few years older than he'd thought at the time.

But what stuck in his mind now was the way she'd told them that a carrier's hanger deck was the most dangerous assignment in the entire Navy. He'd put it down as hyperbole intended to impress the ignorant rubes of the press, but now he wasn't so sure.

He was glad he was wearing the standard Navy-issue vacsuit he'd been issued from ship's stores. Everyone else was wearing one, too, of course-vacsuits were the Navy's standard battledress, which was probably one of the more reasonable policies it had ever decreed. Although Steele's suit bore the word "PRESS" across the front of the helmet and the shoulder blades, the label was less evident than one might have expected, especially if the person looking at it had something else on his mind. Aside from the press identification, however, Steele's vacsuit looked remarkably like that of an Engineering officer. That was because he was assigned to a life pod attached to Communications, which, in turn, was assigned to the Engineering techs assigned to Com maintenance.

At the moment, however, what was most important about his suit was that its Engineering branch color coding had sufficed to get Steele to his present position without being challenged along the way. Well, that and the fact that as he watched the steady stream of strikefighters sliding in through the monopermeable forcefield which closed the hanger deck off from space, he was profoundly happy to have a vacsuit between himself and what would happen if that forcefield failed.

He zoomed in on the returning fighters as the hanger bay tractors stabbed them and drew them into their positions. Some of them, he knew, would not be returning. No one aboard Angela Martens knew how many of her fighters had been lost in the battle so far, but everyone knew that at least some of them had. According to Bradford, some of those which might have been recovered wouldn't be because their pilots had run out of life-support-the consequence of yet another questionable decision of Prescott's. And some of the fighters which had come home bore the scars of battle.

He zoomed in even closer on one of them, making sure he got good imagery of the battle damage which had shredded one side of its transatmospheric lifting body. Even he knew how incredibly lucky the pilot of that fighter was to have made it back to base. The rule was that any hit which got through to a fighter and managed to penetrate the surface of its drive field was always fatal. In this case, however, what had gotten through had obviously been an energy weapon of some sort-probably a laser-rather than a warhead, and the hit had been a grazing one, which had somehow managed to shatter a divot out of the fighter's fuselage without taking anything vital with it.

He made sure he got good footage of the battle damage as the fighter slid past him in the grip of its tractor beam, then panned the camera across the hordes of hanger deck technicians who were converging at a run on each fighter as it was deposited on the servicing stand in its individual bay.

He held the view steady on Fighter Bay 62's deck crew as it swarmed about the fighter assigned to its care. He had to be careful to stay well back in his hiding place, because he knew for certain that they'd kick his butt out if they spotted him. Fortunately, the alcove in which he sheltered was deep enough and had enough shadows that it was extremely unlikely anyone would notice his presence. Especially not anyone who was concentrating as much on the task at hand as these people were. Despite any reservations he might still have about the Navy and the personnel who normally served in it, Steele had to admit that he'd never seen anyone move as quickly as the members of the deck crew he was watching.

He'd decided not to record any more voice-over just now. Not because he was afraid of being overheard-the crews servicing the fighters were making too much noise for him to worry about that, even if everyone hadn't been wearing the helmets regulations required at all times here. No, it was mostly because he really didn't have much of a clue what any of the people he was watching were doing. Maybe he could get Delmore to help him with the details later-after she finished pissing and moaning over the way he'd gotten the footage in the first place. For right now, he would just concentrate on getting as much imagery as he could. After all, he could always shape the story later. Who knew? If Prescott managed to luck out again, Steele might even turn it into still another piece praising him as a tactical genius . . .  instead of lambasting him for getting himself caught with his trousers down this way.

He and his camera watched the deck crew as they flowed around the fighter like participants in some high-tech ballet. Umbilicals were dragged out of recessed compartments in the deck and plugged into ports on the belly of the fighter. More techs disappeared underneath the fighter's fuselage with mag-lev pallets. In what seemed only seconds, they were crawling back out from under, hauling the pallets behind them, and Steele panned the camera over the external ordnance packs they'd removed. He wasn't certain exactly what type of ordnance it was, but that was something else Delmore could tell him.

The heavy canopy of the fighter slid back, and Steele swung the camera hastily back to the pilot. Unfortunately, the pilot-he couldn't even tell if it was male or female from outside its heavy combination grav-vacsuit-made no move to remove the opaque-visored helmet. Someone passed up a small container. After a moment, Steele recognized it as a zero-gee beverage bulb, and the pilot attached the strawlike drinking tube to a helmet nipple.

Steele grimaced. Maybe a little bit of that sort of thing could be used as a human interest angle, but it wasn't what he was here for, and he turned back to the deck crew.

Two of the techs had crawled up on top of the fighter, plugging still more umbilicals into ports behind the opened canopy, and another trio of them were undogging access panels on either side of the nose and directly beneath the needle-sharp prow. Once again, Steele wasn't all sure what he was seeing, although he seemed vaguely to remember something about the "internal hetlasers" which were part of the latest generation Navy fighter's armament. The techs seemed to be inspecting and adjusting whatever was inside the panels, which wasn't all that interesting, so he tracked back around to the ones with the pallets.

They were shoving the pallets up against a bulkhead. Normally, Steele knew, the Navy was downright fanatic about always properly securing gear, but right now, haste was obviously more important than dotting every "i" and crossing every "t." One of the techs working on the hetlasers (if that was what they were actually doing) had already narrowly missed being squashed. He might not even realize it, given his absolute concentration on his own task, but one of the mag-lev pallets had missed him by less than a meter as it was dragged back out of the way. Steele suspected that regulations would normally have prohibited having both sets of technicians working away at once in such a confined space, but this wasn't a day for "normally," and the pallet-towing techs only pushed their charges as far to the side as they would go. Then they used a pair of portable tractor grabs to hoist the ordnance packs off them before they turned and started across the bay, almost directly towards Steele.

Steele felt a moment of consternation. There was no way he could evade detection if they walked right up to him, and that seemed to be exactly what they were going to do. But then his consternation eased. As busy as everyone was, he might even be able to talk his way off the hanger deck without their ever summoning an officer to turn him in to. And even if he couldn't, what were they going to do to him? It wasn't as if anyone could convince a jury that he was a spy for the Bugs, after all! Besides-

He'd switched his helmet microphone out of the circuit to his external speakers when he began filming. The camera had been able to hear him just fine through the internal circuit, and there'd been no point in making any noise which someone might have heard. But he'd left the external audio pickup live so he could hear what was happening around him.

He'd just reached for the wrist-mounted control panel and switched the internal microphone back on when he heard something over the external mike.

It came from behind him, and he turned in surprise.

Irma sat in her cockpit, nerves still jittering from the excitement and adrenaline of combat. Sitting here, her suit umbilicals still attached to the fighter's life support systems, while the service techs swarmed over the bird was a direct violation of about two billion regulations. Breaking regulations, in itself, normally didn't bother Irma very much, but these regulations, she approved of, for the very good reason that they were expressly designed to keep her butt alive. All sorts of things could go wrong while life support systems were purged, flushed, and replenished. Then there were the altogether too many interesting things that could happen when the depleted super conductor rings were replaced with a freshly charged set . . . without completely powering down the systems in the process. Of course, no one aboard the entire carrier would care very much if one of the weapons techs somehow managed to deactivate the antimatter containment field on one of the FM-3 missiles they were supposed to mount on her bird's hard points. After all, the explosion of one of those missiles inside the Martens would blow them all to Hell so quickly that they'd never even realize they were dead.

Normally, she didn't worry about things like that. But "normally" it took a minimum of almost thirty minutes to completely service and rearm an F-4 . . . and according to Togliatti, they were going to do it in ten. Which meant every safety margin The Book insisted upon was being completely ignored. Not just here in Bay 62, but everywhere aboard the MT(V).

As she watched the service techs moving in a sort of disciplined frenzy, she decided that she was undoubtedly safer sitting right where she was-possible unscheduled life-support surges or not-than she would have been out there in the middle of all that moving equipment.

She'd just finished the electrolyte-laden drink the crew chief had passed her when the screams began.

Vincent Steele didn't recognize the sound behind him. If he had, he might have been able to move in time. But instead of immediately flinging himself out of the way, he turned in place just as the hatch cover irised open . . .

. . . and discovered that the "alcove" in which he'd hidden himself was the hatch end of the high-speed magazine tube which delivered fighter ordnance to the bay.

There were six FM-3 missiles on the transfer pallet. Each of them was four meters long and sixty centimeters in diameter, and the pallet was traveling at well over two hundred kilometers per hour.

All things being equal, the reporter was unreasonably lucky that it only hit him at the mid-thigh level. He was equally lucky in the quality of the medical services aboard Angela Martens, and in the training of the corpsman who was there almost before the pallet finished severing his left leg entirely and crushing the right one into paste.

In the end, the Navy even paid for both his prosthetic legs.

Irma Sanchez swore vilely as the mass driver's tractors picked her fighter up and settled it into the guides. The Martens' strikegroup was launching in whatever order it could scramble back into space, and VF-94-which ought to have been one of the very first, given its experience level-was eleventh in line, and all thanks to that idiot reporter! Togliatti had held the rest of the squadron until she was ready, rather than peel her out of the squadron datalink, and she knew why he had. This was a maximum effort mission. If she'd lost her place in VF-94's net, they would have plugged her in with some cluster of stragglers from other squadrons. Georghiu wouldn't have had any choice-they needed every fighter they had, and they needed veterans with her experience even more. But the chances of her surviving combat in a furball like this with squadron mates she'd never flown with and who hadn't flown with her would have been virtually nonexistent.

So because an asshole of a newsie had been somewhere he had no business being, the entire squadron was launching late . . . and the only place worse than flying lead in a strike like this was to come in as Tail-End Charlie.

Prescott and his staff were still on the flag bridge, anxiously examining the statistics, when the last of the fighters came straggling back.

The rearming had been carried out-barely-and the already exhausted pilots had gone out to face gunboats that outnumbered them three-to-two. But their superiority at dogfighting had more than compensated, and they'd killed most of the attackers well short of the battle-line. Most . . . but not all. And the survivors had concentrated on TF 71's monitors, following their own ripple-fired FRAMs in as they sought self-immolation. Three monitors had been destroyed, along with three battlecruisers that had sought to screen them.

But the Bug gunboats had been wiped out. And TF 71 still had three hundred and sixty-one fighters left.

Bichet turned eagerly to Prescott.

"Admiral, this is our chance! The Bugs don't have any gunboats left for cover. If we rearm the fighters with FRAMs and-"

Landrum's eyes flashed. Like many of the fighter jocks, he'd initially looked askance at an operations officer whose background was exclusively battle-line. Since then, Bichet's demonstrated adaptability had laid his doubts to rest, and they'd worked well together. But the old preconceptions still lay dormant, stirring to life at certain times. This was definitely one of them.

"In case it's escaped your notice, Commodore," he said sharply, "our fighters have just taken heavy losses-in the course of two major actions, with barely a break between them. The pilots aren't robots, whatever you may think."

"I'm well aware of that-without the need for sarcastic reminders!"

"That will do." Prescott's quiet interjection killed the nascent shouting match instantly. "Steve is right, Jacques," he went on, deliberately avoiding the formality of rank titles. "We need to conserve our fighters to protect us from kamikazes. Furthermore . . . Well, we also need to consider something that none of us has cared to bring up."

"Sir?" Mandagalla asked.

"I think it's a given that while Home Hive One was the nearest source of major Bug forces to interdict us, they must have summoned reinforcements from further away, as well. We have absolutely no way to know how long those reinforcements will take to get here. So while Task Force 72 will be here in about another standard day, additional Bug forces could arrive first. If they do, we'll need our remaining fighters.

"So," the admiral continued, meeting the eyes of his suddenly sobered staffers, "instead of launching a fighter strike, we'll stop maneuvering to hold the range open, and close with them."

He smiled grimly at the stunned expressions that confronted him.

"I imagine the Bugs will be as startled as you are," he observed. "Which is one reason for doing it. But there are others. First, the Bugs' battlegroup organization has been weakened by their losses in command ships. So we're not likely to have a better opportunity for a successful battle-line duel. Second, I'm no longer concerned with keeping ourselves interposed between the Bugs and Warp Point Three, since they haven't established themselves there and TF 72 is only one day out." Again, the subtle but undeniable emphasis. "So, if there are no questions, let's get the orders out."

The staff broke up with a muted chorus of aye-aye-sirs, but as the operations officer started to turn away, Prescott spoke to him as though it were an afterthought.

"Oh, Jacques. A word in private, please. . . ."

The flag bridge air was tight with tension that couldn't be vented aloud.

The Bugs had refused battle, edging back toward Warp Point Two, and Prescott had followed, knowing that Zhaarnak was due at any time.

But two more days of maneuvering had passed, and now every pair of eyes on Riva y Silva seemed to hold the same unspoken question: Where is Zhaarnak?

Prescott found himself less and less able to meet those eyes.

It's partly my fault, he thought in an inner torment no one was allowed to see. I've kept reassuring everyone, building up their expectations. Everyone knows an exact arrival time can't be predicted for a voyage as long as Task Force 72's. But people have forgotten that because I was so determined to give them a definite, well-defined light at the end of the tunnel.

And besides . . . where is Zhaarnak?

He shook off the thought and gazed at the system-scale holo display. That didn't help.

I've let myself be drawn too close to Warp Point Two, he admitted to himself. Dangerously close. If only I had some recon drones on the other side of that warp point! Wry self-mockery drove out his self-reproach. If wishes were horses . . .

Decision came. He straightened up.

"Anna."

"Sir?"

"I believe it's time to open the range again and stop seeking engagement."

"Yes, Sir." Mandagalla kept her relief out of her voice with a care that couldn't have made it more obvious. "I'll tell Jacques-"

In the main plot, the icon that represented the closed warp point ignited into a flashing hostile scarlet.

The flag captain must have seen it, too, because without a perceptible pause, the General Quarters alarm began to wail. Prescott didn't even notice.

"Tactical scale!" he snapped, and the display zoomed in on the warp point. The scarlet resolved itself into the rash of a mass simultaneous gunboat transits.

Prescott and his chief of staff made an eye contact that carried a wealth of unspoken communication. It was the long anticipated Bug reinforcements, doubtless well-informed by courier drone of TF 71's current position. And the task force's fighters, awaiting the battle-line engagement Prescott had been seeking, were in ship-killing mode.

"Have the fighters rearmed, Anna," he said with a calmness he didn't feel.

Irma Sanchez came through the hatch at a dead run. (That was another thing she didn't like about monitors. They were so damned big, it took longer to get from the ready room to the launch bays.) Bruno Togliatti had only just beaten her into the long, open passageway connecting the squadron cluster of launch bays where VF-94's four remaining fighters lay ready for space.

"We didn't need to hurry so much, after all," he gasped, catching his breath and gesturing at the fighters. Techs were still swarming over them, and she saw gun packs replacing laser packs. "They're reconfiguring the external ordnance for gunboat hunting."

"Jesus H. Christ!" Irma leaned back against a bulkhead and ran a hand through her short bristle of black hair. "What a goddamned cluster-fuck!"

But despite the change in orders, the other two surviving pilots had barely arrived when the leading CPO gave Togliatti the thumbs-up and they sprinted for their fighters. Irma went through her checklist while the deckies plugged in her support suit's umbilicals, then closed her helmet as the mass-driver tractors lifted her fighter and settled it in place. Ahead of her was the monopermeable forcefield, and beyond that was only the star-studded blackness while the rumbling of other squadrons' launches vibrated through the ship's structure like distant, pre-space freight trains.

Then it was VF-94's turn. Togliatti was off first, then the g-force pressed Irma into her seat as the mass driver flung her through the forcefield. There was the usual instant of queasy sensations-departure from the ship's artificial gravity, and passage through the monitor's drive field, both almost too brief to be perceived-and then the brutal mass of Angela Martens, so different from the slender lines of a proper carrier, was tumbling away in the view-aft. Irma reoriented herself with practiced ease as the fighter's drive took hold. Then she looked at her tactical display.

She tried not to be sick.

Raymond Prescott was looking at the oncoming gunboats, too.

Even with the interpenetration losses they'd taken in the course of their mass simultaneous transits, there were more Bug gunboats than TF 71 had faced before-and it was facing them with far fewer fighters.

Fortunately-and no thanks to me, Prescott berated himself-the task force had been just barely far enough from Warp Point Two for the fighters to rearm and launch before the gunboats could reach it. Now they and the gunboats were meeting in a swirling frenzy of dogfights.

But the outnumbered fighters couldn't stop them all. More and more got through, and ships began to suffer the devastation of FRAMs salvos followed by kamikaze runs. And some of them began to die. . . .

"Incoming!"

The blood-chilling shriek of the collision alarm screamed in his ears as Prescott and everyone else on the flag bridge slammed their crash frames and sealed their helmets. They'd barely done so when TFNS Irena Riva y Silva began reverberating as though from blows of the gods' pile-driver.

It finally ended, and Prescott-unlike some others-retained consciousness. He almost wished he hadn't as he stood amid the scurrying damage control crews and observed the tally of Code Omegas.

Three Gorm monitors, he forced himself to recite, and four of their superdreadnoughts. An Ophiuchi assault carrier, and both of our command fleet carriers. . . . And it was worse than it looked, because a number of the other surviving units were even more heavily damaged than the flagship.

And, to complete the vista of despair, the Bug capital ships had followed their gunboats through the warp point, in wave after wave, to join those already in the system. Together, they outnumbered TF 71 by more than two-to-one. And they were closing in.

"Try and reorganize around the losses, Anna," Prescott said quietly. "Priority goes to the battle-line; we'll need their point defense. Jacques," he turned to the ops officer, "keep us between the Bugs and the carriers. I'd like to withdraw our fighters and get their datanets reorganized, too, but I can't. The Bugs are bound to launch kamikaze shuttles any minute now, and we'll need the CSP to cover against them."

As if he'd overheard the comment, Stephen Landrum spoke from the direction of the main plot.

"Admiral, they're starting to launch their suicide shuttles."

Irma Sanchez had been fighting too long and too desperately. And then she'd seen the distant fireball, and heard the screech of static, that meant Bruno Togliatti was dead. And now she had nothing left to give to this hopeless, meaningless battle.

But then she heard a voice in her headset-oh, yes, it was Lieutenant (j.g.) Meswami, the young puke who'd been bragging after Home Hive One. Now his voice held a quaver.

"Lieutenant, a whole flight of shuttles has gotten through! We can't intercept them! And they're heading for Martens!"

Why the fuck is he telling me this? Irma wondered dully. Then it came to her. Togliatti's new ops officer had also bought it. I'm the senior pilot left.

She checked her tactical. The kid was right, so she shut out her exhaustion and her grief.

"I think we can get back there in time to be some help," she responded. "Form up on me."

And, for a while, there was nothing in the universe but the need to kill those shuttles.

* * *

Raymond Prescott had watched as the tatters of his strikegroups fended off the kamikaze shuttles. Now he drew a deep breath, looked briefly up from the plot, and nodded to Mandagalla and Bichet.

"It's time to start falling back," he said quietly. "Put us on a course for Warp Point Three."

At some point during the chaos, Mukerji had come onto the flag bridge. Prescott was usually able to effectively exclude him from it at General Quarters, even though he couldn't be kept out of formal staff conferences in the briefing room. Now his sweat-slick face lit up with hope.

"Does this mean you plan to withdraw to AP-4, Admiral?"

"Absolutely not, Admiral Mukerji. Have you forgotten the ships we left behind in AP-6? What do you think will happen to them if we abandon this system and leave them cut off?"

"But, Admiral, all of us will die if you don't retreat up-chain!"

"Commodore Mandagalla," Raymond Prescott said in a voice of cold iron, all the time holding Mukerji's eyes, "let me clarify my previous orders. We will fall back toward Warp Point Three on an oblique angle, with a view to allowing the Bugs to get between us and the warp point."

What followed wasn't really silence-there was still too much damage control work going on for that. When Mukerji finally spoke, his near-whisper was barely audible.

"You're mad!"

"And you, Admiral Mukerji, are under arrest for insubordination," Prescott replied pleasantly. Mukerji gaped at him in disbelief, but Prescott ignored him and turned his attention back to the plot.

Mukerji looked around the flag bridge helplessly, as if unsure exactly what to do with himself. None of Prescott's staffers would meet his eye, and he started to turn towards the elevators, then stopped and turned back to Prescott, his sweat-streaked face working with a panic that included more now than the simple fear of death.

If Prescott was even aware of the vice admiral's existence, he gave no sign of it as he stared fixedly into the display which showed the data codes of the task force, angling more or less towards the violet dot of Warp Point Three . . . and the scarlet rash of Bug capital ships, starting to slide in between those two icons. Mukerji's own eyes dropped to the same icons, watching them with the same mesmerized horror with which he might have watched his executioner honing the guillotine's edge, and an agonizing silence stretched out. Even the last of the damage control parties seemed hushed as TF 71 deliberately sailed straight into a death trap from which there could be no escape.

And then, all at once, Prescott seemed to see something he'd been watching for in the display. He straightened up, motionlessness buried in a sudden dynamism.

"Jacques, Anna! Implement the course change we discussed."

"Aye, aye, Sir."

The ops officer began to fire off a series of orders. Mukerji listened unbelievingly, but there was no mistake. On the display, the task group's icon began to turn onto the heading Bichet had just ordered-a heading away from Warp Point Three, and into the depths of the AP-5 System.

Mukerji stared at the admiral, as if Prescott were a cobra . . . or the very madman the vice admiral had called him.

The Bugs began to change course in pursuit, presenting their sterns to Warp Point Three, and Mukerji finally found his voice once more.

"Admiral," he began hoarsely, "I-"

Then, suddenly, the warp point began to flash with green fire . . . and Mukerji's mouth closed with a click as the first Orion carriers emerged.

After a stunned moment, the flag bridge erupted into a pandemonium that no one tried to control.

Tiny green icons began to speed ahead as the emerging carriers, barely taking time to stabilize their launch machinery after transit, began to send out massive waves of fighters.

"Given the shortness of the range," Prescott mused aloud, "I imagine that each of those fighters is carrying two primary packs." He turned back to his chief of staff and his ops officer. "Anna, you and Jacques should start getting our course reversed. We may be able to get back there in time to trap some of the Bug elements between us and Task Force 72."

"Aye, aye, Sir!" Mandagalla replied with a huge grin, and Mukerji shook himself.

"How-?" he began, then clamped his mouth shut once more as Raymond Prescott turned an icy eye upon him.

"I knew Fang Zhaarnak was coming, Admiral," the Seventh Fleet commander said in a voice of frozen helium. "In fact, you may recall that I mentioned that, a time or two."

"But you never mentioned this!" Mukerji spluttered, pointing accusingly at the display.

"Not to the task force at large, no," Prescott agreed, his tone as frigid as ever. "There was no reason to, and I'd decided not to continue to insist that Zhaarnak would get here in time, since . . . certain persons had begun to question my confidence. But that didn't mean that I ever doubted he'd be here, so two days ago, I had Commodore Bichet dispatch a courier drone to Commodore Horigome."

Almost despite himself, Mukerji nodded. Commodore Stephanie Horigome flew her lights aboard TFNS Cree, the Hun-class cruiser which was the senior ship of the six-ship battlegroup of cloaked pickets stationed in AP-4.

"That courier drone contained a complete, detailed download on the known Bug forces in this system, to which I had appended my analysis of their probable intentions and my belief that powerful enemy reinforcements would be arriving here shortly. It also instructed Commodore Horigome to make contact with Fang Zhaarnak upon his arrival and to communicate that data to him, along with my suggestion that he send his carriers through first at the appropriate moment. Since there was no way to be certain that the Bugs weren't maintaining a close sensor watch on the warp point, I further instructed Commodore Horigome and Fang Zhaarnak not to send any courier drones confirming Task Force 72's arrival in AP-4. Instead, Commodore Horigome was to send a drone through no later than oh-seven-hundred Zulu this morning if Fang Zhaarnak hadn't arrived. It was essential that the Bugs not suspect we were in close communication with a reinforcing force of our own, and so Fang Zhaarnak has used RD2s to maintain a close watch on AP-5 ever since his arrival in AP-4 in order to pick the most opportune moment for transit."

Prescott showed his teeth in what not even the most charitable soul could have called a smile, and Mukerji seemed to wither.

"Unlike some people, Admiral Mukerji," he said with the scalpel-like precision of complete and utter contempt, "I had no doubt at all that Fang Zhaarnak would recognize precisely what I was doing and know precisely how to best take advantage of our maneuvers and the Bugs' response."

"Admiral Prescott, I . . . I don't . . . That is-"

"I really don't believe you have anything more to say to me, Admiral," Prescott said coldly. "I suggest that you go to your quarters . . . and stay there."

He turned his back on Mukerji and crossed to stand beside Mandagalla, watching the icons in the main plot as the Orion fighters ripped into the Bug capital ships with the devastating fury of their primary packs. Terence Mukerji stared at him for a long moment, his eyes filled with an indescribable mixture of lingering terror, shame, and hatred.

And then, finally, he turned and stumbled towards the flag bridge elevator.

The attack craft strike from the newly arrived Enemies was a blow from which the Fleet's position in this system could not recover.

There was no room for doubt that the Enemy knew the location of the closed warp point. So Franos was vulnerable to attack, and there would be no one to defend it if the forces in this system perished-as they would, for with his fresh attack craft strength the Enemy would be able to annihilate them from beyond their own shipboard weapons' range.

There was no alternative to an immediate disengagement and withdrawal. Further losses were unavoidable, in the course of the retreat. But most would escape to protect Franos.

"Have a seat, Lieutenant Sanchez." Commander Georghiu looked up from the printout he'd been reading as Irma sat down. "First of all, I know how you must feel about the loss of Commander Togliatti. He was a fine officer."

"Yes, Sir." So why don't you let me go and mourn for him in private, you pompous asshole?

"Also, you've been under his command for quite a while. I've been reviewing your record. You were with the Ninety-Fourth from the beginning of the Zephrain offensive. Your extensive combat experience stood you in good stead after Commander Togliatti's death. You did very well, getting yourself and the other surviving pilot back to the ship."

"Thank you, Sir."

"But now you and that pilot are the only survivors-and he was one of those whose disbanded squadron was merged into yours in Home Hive One. Essentially, Lieutenant, you're all that's left of the old VF-94."

Irma hadn't thought of it that way, but . . .

"Yes, Sir."

"Now, as you're aware, Task Force 72 has brought replacement fighters and pilots-sorely needed ones, if we're going to get our strikegroups even remotely back up to strength. But, given the losses we've taken, there're going to have to be some organizational adjustments. You and Lieutenant (j.g.) Meswami, along with VF-94's technical support personnel, will be reassigned to squadrons that still have viable command structures in place."

For perhaps one full heartbeat, Irma's reaction was one of relief-it's always a relief when the big news from the boss is that your own personal situation is going to remain essentially unchanged. She'd just keep doing what she always had, with some real military type in charge, with all the responsibility.

Then the implications of Georghiu's words hit her.

Disband the squadron? But . . . but . . .

"But you can't . . . Sir." It was out of her mouth and into the air of the tiny office before she even knew she had it inside her. She gulped and braced herself.

"It's regrettable. But it's also unavoidable-an organizational necessity. Why, the only alternative would be to put you in command, and give you some very green replacement pilots." Georghiu paused, and let the pause linger.

In command? Me? Ridiculous! The Skipper's always been there to handle all the administrative red tape and all the military chickenshit.

But . . . I'd be the Skipper!

At first, such a patently impossible contradiction in logic simply refused to register, and she gathered her breath for a flabbergasted refusal.

Only . . .

Break up the squadron? That would be like killing the Skipper a second time!

"I'd be willing to try it, Sir," she heard herself say.

Very briefly, the corners of Georghiu's mouth did something odd. A smile? Irma wondered. Georghiu? No. Impossible. Then the CSG was his usual self, and she decided it had just been her imagination.

"Understand this, Lieutenant: you'll never be allowed to keep that squadron. You're simply too junior. It's a lieutenant commander's billet, and you haven't been a lieutenant senior grade long enough for them to even consider promoting you. No, this will only be a temporary expedient, for the duration of the present campaign."

"Understood, Sir."

"Very well. I'll have the orders cut, and we'll make the announcement. And afterwards . . . I'll report to Captain Landrum that VF-94 still lives."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: "You Take the High Road . . ."

The repair crews still laboring busily in Irena Riva y Silva's boatbay somewhat spoiled the effect, but the Marine detachment still put on a good show. Its members snapped to attention in a mathematically perfect line of black trousers and dark green tunics as the Orion shuttle settled onto the deck, then presented arms as the hatch slid open and Zhaarnak'telmasa, Khanhaku Telmasa, emerged.

The fang responded to the formal military courtesies punctiliously, but his impatience was evident even through his grave demeanor to anyone who knew him well. The instant the formalities were over, the vilkshatha brothers clasped arms and Zhaarnak started in once again.

"I got here as fast as I could, Raaymmonnd, but-"

Prescott laughed, and spoke in the Tongue of Tongues.

"I know, brother, I know! I never doubted it for an instant. I knew a wild zeget could not keep you away from the fighting!" He glanced at Zhaarnak's staffers, beginning to emerge from the shuttle and descend the ramp, one familiar Orion figure after another . . . and then an incongruous human figure, walking with Uaaria. The sight surprised him into reverting to Standard English. "Say, isn't that Lieutenant Sanders, Marcus LeBlanc's man?"

"Indeed. Like the freighters, he was inflicted upon me at the last minute," Zhaarnak said sourly, and Prescott gave him a tooth-hidden grin and resumed the Tongue of Tongues.

"They may have slowed you, but my task force would be in poor case without the fighters those ships carry."

"It would be in even poorer case if the delay had kept me from arriving here for another day or two," Zhaarnak growled, and to that, Prescott could think of no reply.

Sanders reached the head of the line of visiting staff officers saluting Prescott.

"Welcome aboard, Lieutenant," the admiral said, returning his salute. "I hope you've brought us an update on Admiral LeBlanc's latest conclusions."

"I have, Sir. I'm also supposed to report back to him on what's happened out here."

"Well, in that case, you and Small Claw Uaaria should get with Commodore Chung as quickly as possible. Lord Telmasa and I have some catching up of our own to do, but I'd like our 'spooks' to combine forces before we start organizing fresh staff meetings. Commodore Chung can bring you and Claw Uaaria up to date, and the three of you can prepare a joint brief for me and Lord Telmasa."

"Yes, Sir." If Sanders felt any discomfort at being included with two officers who outranked him so substantially, he showed no sign of it, and Prescott's eyes glinted.

"In fact, Lieutenant, I think I'd like a preliminary written summary by seventeen hundred hours. Take care of that for me, would you?"

"Uh, yes, Sir!"

This time, Prescott was pleased to note, the unreasonably self-possessed young man looked more than a little anxious, so he smiled pleasantly and turned to the next officer in line.

For all of his high comfort level with the Tabbies, Kevin Sanders found it something of a relief to be once more upon a human starship. For one thing, the humidity level was considerably higher, since it was set to something humans were comfortable with. For another, there were a sizable number of personnel aboard Irena Riva y Silva who were young, attractive, female, currently unattached, and members of his own species. He really, really liked Uaaria, and he was fully aware that her sleek, dark-hued pelt and wide, golden eyes-not to mention the delicate arch of her whiskers and the cream-colored, plushy tufts of her felinoid ears-approximated very closely to the Orion ideal of feminine beauty. He found her quite attractive, himself, but in much the same way he might have found a cougar or a jaguar attractive. On a more . . . intimate level, the return to a human-crewed ship offered far broader opportunities.

But it was quite a different matter where sheer brain power and imagination were concerned. He rather doubted that he was ever going to meet anyone who was superior to Uaaria in those qualities, and he tipped back in his chair in Amos Chung's private quarters and listened appreciatively as she and Chung caught one another up.

It had been obvious to Sanders from conversations with Uaaria on the voyage out that she and Chung had an exceptionally close working relationship. The fact that Uaaria clearly regarded Chung as a friend, as well as a colleague, hadn't been lost on the lieutenant either. Yet for all of that, he hadn't quite been prepared for the way in which the two of them fitted together. Uaaria was the imagination of the partnership. She possessed the ability to think "outside the boxes" to a degree Sanders had never seen in anyone else, except, perhaps, Marcus LeBlanc himself. Chung was less intuitive, but he compensated with a logical, deductive approach and an exhaustive ability to research and pull the salient facts out of any analysis. He was the one who went out and found the data that didn't fit the conventional interpretation. Once he had it, Uaaria was the one who played with the pieces until she produced a hypothesis where they did fit. And once she had, Chung was her sounding board, perfectly prepared to shoot holes in her reasoning-and to have holes shot in his own, in return-until they produced a theory no one else could perforate.

Both of them also possessed the ability to accept criticism without taking it as a personal attack, and to offer it in the same way. That, Sanders had already discovered, was considerably rarer than simple brilliance, and he rather suspected it was that quality, more even than their shared passion for puzzle solving, which made them so effective. And the odd thing was, that even though it had taken the most horrible war in galactic history to bring the two of them together, it was obvious that both of them were having an enormous amount of fun working together.

At the moment, however, "fun" was in short supply.

"We knew you had suffered severe casualties, Aaamosssss," Uaaria said quietly, her eloquent ears half-flattened in dismay. She fidgeted with the glass on the table before her. Like many Orions, she'd developed a pronounced taste for Terran bourbon. Chung himself preferred wine, but he'd been able to fix Sanders up with the sort of nice blended scotch that a mere lieutenant would have had problems affording. Now Uaaria took a sip, and her whiskers quivered in an Orion grimace. "Severe, yes. That much we knew, but we had not realized they were that severe. And it is perhaps as well that Lord Telmasa did not know how desperate the situation here truly was before we reached AP-4."

"They were heavy, all right," Chung sighed, which, Sanders reflected, was one of the more substantial understatements he'd heard recently. Eight monitors, eleven superdreadnoughts, nine assault and fleet carriers, fourteen battlecruisers, and eighteen hundred fighters-not to mention virtually every gunboat TF 71 had possessed-certainly ought to qualify as "heavy" in anyone's book.

"On the other hand," Chung went on, straightening his shoulders like someone determined to look on the bright side, "even losses that heavy were an amazingly low price for what the Admiral managed to pull off. An entire home hive system, plus the damage we did to their mobile forces. If our original estimates-and Admiral LeBlanc's," he added, with a nod to Sanders, "-are accurate, then they only have three home hives left. And we shot them up in AP-5 at least as badly as they did us."

"Indeed," Uaaria agreed. TF 72's fighters had been responsible for the final pursuit of the fleeing Bugs, and she actually had better loss and damage totals than Chung did. "Our figures are not yet definitive, but if our fighter pilots' initial claims stand up, then, combined with what your own farshatok accomplished before we arrived, the Bahgs lost at least a third of their total strength before they could escape. Most of those who did manage to retire through the warp point were damaged in varying degrees, as well."

"That, unfortunately, is also true of Task Force 71," Chung observed wryly, then quirked a smile. "Still, our repairs are already underway, and the replacement fighters you brought along should let us fill practically all our surviving carrier capacity. And to be honest, the most satisfying damage we've done the Bugs is the insight we've obtained into the strategic situation. We've pinpointed the closed warp point here in AP-5, we know that warp point is the terminus of the chain between Home Hive One and AP-5, and we know approximately how long it took the Bugs to get to AP-5 from Home Hive One. Assuming average in-system real-space distances between warp points, we're probably looking at a maximum of five star systems, and probably less."

"Knowing Fang Presssssscottt and Lord Telmasa, I believe we may feel confident that they will soon be taking advantage of that knowledge," Uaaria agreed with a soft, hungry purr of agreement and touched the defargo honor dirk at her side. Every KON officer carried one of them, but the way in which her clawed hand caressed its hilt reminded Sanders that "spook" or not, Uaaria'salath-ahn was an Orion, and for just a moment, he felt a flicker of what might almost have been pity for any enemy besides the Bugs.

"From the kinds of questions the Admiral's been asking, I'd say you've got that one right," Chung agreed. "But in the meantime . . ."

He flipped the keyboard of his personal terminal up out of the tabletop and brought it on-line. He tapped a few keys, and a hologram appeared above the table. It showed a rough, hypothetical schematic of the local warp lines when it first came up, Sanders noted. Obviously, Chung had been putting in a little work of his own on the strategic possibilities, but he cleared that quickly and brought up an index of report headings.

"Since our guest," he grinned at Uaaria and then nodded at Sanders, "has a homework assignment from the Admiral, I thought it would be only kind of us to help him pull together his term paper. And since we have a lot of information to collate, it's probably time we got started."

At that very moment, in the far more palatial quarters the Terran Federation Navy had seen fit to assign to the admirals who commanded its fleets, Raymond Prescott and Zhaarnak'telmasa had pretty much finished catching one another up on their own recent experiences. Prescott had discarded his uniform tunic, kicked off his boots, and tipped back his chair while he nursed a bottle of dark, Bavarian-style beer from the planet Freidrichshaven. Zhaarnak, who had once been as fond of bourbon as any Orion, had obviously been corrupted by his contact with Kthaara'zarthan. Unlike Uaaria's glass, the one in his hand contained vodka. The only thing that Prescott wasn't completely sure about was whether his vilkshatha brother was drinking it because he actually liked it, or because it was Lord Talphon's beverage of choice. Given Zhaarnak's immense respect for Kthaara, either was possible.

"And so I managed to arrive in time after all, despite all that GFGHQ's quartermasters could do to prevent it," Zhaarnak observed with unmistakable relief.

"Yes, you did," Prescott agreed in the Tongue of Tongues. "I will not pretend that I would not have preferred to see you sooner, but things worked out quite well in the end, I thought."

"As always, you demonstrate your gift for understatement."

"A modest talent," Prescott said with a small smile. Then he finished off his beer, set the empty bottle on the table, and leaned forward, with a more intent expression.

"Now that you're here, though," he went on in Standard English, "I think it's time to move on to considering what we do next."

"Raaymmonnd," Zhaarnak began in a tone of unaccustomed caution, "Task Force 71 is in no condition to-"

"Don't worry. I have no intention of charging off before our repairs are completed and the dust from the reorganization of our strikegroups has settled."

"From which I am to infer that you do intend to charge off as soon as repairs are completed?"

"Well, perhaps not 'charge,' " Prescott said with another smile, this time allowing a slight edge of tooth to show. "On the other hand . . ."

He popped up his own terminal and called up a rough schematic of the local warp lines very like the one Amos Chung had been working on. The familiar Prescott Chain extended from left to right in the lower half of the display, a solid green line running from AP-4 through five warp nexi before continuing on to Home Hive One as the broken line of a closed warp point. There was, however, a second dotted line-this one indicating an unknown warp chain that started at Home Hive One and moved right through two nexi with scarlet question-mark symbols, to a third which a broken red line linked with AP-5 to complete the circuit.

"We know the location of the closed warp point here, and the Bugs know we know it. At the same time, we're as certain as anyone could be that the Bugs don't know where the closed warp point in Home Hive One is, and I intended to take advantage of their ignorance."

Zhaarnak gazed at the display and shifted uncomfortably, and not just because he was sitting in a human-designed chair.

"Why does something about your words cause my fur to rise?" he asked, and Prescott gave his uncannily Orion smile.

"Let me ask you this, brother. Would you feel less anxious at the prospect of going directly through Warp Point Two in the face of the Bug forces we know are awaiting us on the far side at this moment?"

"Well . . ."

"Then hear me out. I intend to take Task Force 71 back to Home Hive One and start taking out the warp point defenses we left there with attacks from the rear. That should elicit a counterattack, siphoning off some of the forces you'll be facing here. At that point, you'll lead Task Force 72 through Warp Point Two." Prescott gestured at the broken red line between AP-5's closed warp point in the unknown Bug system beyond, and the dotted red line extending beyond that to Home Hive One. "Then you can advance along this warp chain to meet me." He smiled again, this time grimly. "To quote an old bit of human doggerel, 'You take the high road, and I'll take the low road.' "

"I knew there was a reason my pelt wished to tie itself in knots," Zhaarnak growled.

"Nonsense." Prescott chuckled. "You just wish you'd thought of it first!"

"Very humorous. And what of the fresh Bahg forces which were about to dine on you when I arrived? They came from somewhere-presumably one of the three remaining home hive systems. And we have no idea of the route by which they came!"

"No," Prescott agreed, "but the fact that the reinforcements arrived only at such a late stage suggests that their home base isn't on the Home Hive One/AP-5 warp chain and is almost certainly considerably farther away than Home Hive One."

"That is all extremely vague and speculative," Zhaarnak grumbled.

"But it's the best we can hope for, given the present state of our knowledge," Prescott insisted. "I think we have enough information-or, at least, short inferences-to make this worth trying."

"But, Raaymmonnd, you know how difficult it is to coordinate widely separated forces! Are you not the one who has pointed out to me time and again that my own people's taste for 'complicated' converging maneuvers by several independent forces invites defeat in detail by challenging your Demon Murrrppheeee? How would I know when to commence my own attack?"

"There's going to be an unavoidable delay while we make our repairs and redistribute our fighters," Prescott replied. "I propose to use that time to do two other things: deploy com buoys in the systems from here to El Dorado, and probe through Warp Point Two with recon drones, so as to form an accurate picture of the forces facing us on the far side. As far as the ICN is concerned, there's clearly no good reason at this point to avoid 'bread crumbs' from here to El Dorado. It's not like the Bugs won't be able to figure out how we got from there to here. With it in place, though, our communications loop will be much shorter. As soon as I identify detachments from the force facing you in Home Hive One, I'll send you word. You'll hold yourself in readiness to move as soon as you receive that word, and since I'll know just how long the message will take to reach you, I'll also know when your attack will commence."

Zhaarnak tipped his own chair back, threw back a swallow of vodka in the approved, proper Russian style, shuddered briefly, then sighed.

"Very well. I know when your mind is made up-the fact that this is the sort of 'mad, over-complicated' plan a Zheeerlikou'valkhannaiee strategist would devise is obviously insufficient to dissuade you. I will not protest it further if you will agree, on your word as a father in honor of Clan Telmasa, that the entire operation will be contingent on Task Force 71's full readiness."

"You have my word, Khanhaku Telmasa," Prescott assured him in the Tongue of Tongues.

"Full readiness, Raaymmonnd," Zhaarnak stressed pointedly.

"Of course," Prescott affirmed innocently . . . in Standard English.

* * *

Kevin Sanders found himself standing behind Uaaria and Captain Chung as the staff meeting broke up. Prescott's proposed strategy had landed in the middle of the staffers like a bombshell. Even Captain Mandagalla had seemed taken aback, and Force Leader Shaaldaar had been more than a little dubious until Prescott assured him-with a sidelong glance at Zhaarnak which Sanders had fully understood-that the operation wouldn't begin until TF 71's damages had been fully repaired.

The one member of Prescott's staff who'd appeared completely unsurprised by the proposal was Amos Chung, which had given Sanders furiously to think, especially in light of the warp chart Chung had been studying. At the moment, however, the lieutenant had something else on his mind. Something much more pressing, given the very confidential briefing he'd received from Admiral LeBlanc before being sent here.

"Excuse me, Commodore," he said to Chung, with a diffidence that was quite out of character as Prescott's staff spook recalled it. "Ah, if I may ask . . . Well, I can't help being a little curious. I didn't see Vice Admiral Mukerji at the meeting."

"Admiral Mukerji," Chung replied, in a voice which was just that little bit too expressionless, "is confined to his quarters, Lieutenant."

Even Sanders blinked at that, although now that it was said, he had to admit it was unfortunately close to what he'd already suspected. He started to ask another question, then paused. He intended to acquire the information, one way or another, before he left the flagship, but Chung's tone suggested that perhaps he should seek another information source.

Fortunately, such a source was close at hand, for Uaaria'salath-ahn clearly didn't share her human colleague's reticence in this particular case.

"I have already heard the story, Aaamosssss," she said, and one lip curled to reveal a needle-sharp and fully functional canine. She glanced at Sanders. "Ahhdmiraaaal Muhkerzzhi displayed gross insubordination on the flag bridge at the critical moment of the recent battle, and Fang Pressssscott placed him under arrest for it."

Chung grimaced at the female Tabby's words, but not as if he were angry. It was more a case of someone who regretted the washing of the dirty family linen in public. Then he sighed and nodded, as if in recognition that the story was bound to become public knowledge sooner or later.

Sanders went absolutely poker-faced, looking back and forth between his two superiors. Then he cleared his throat.

"I see, Sir. May I ask if the Admiral has decided how he intends to proceed? Will he convene a court-martial?"

"Given Mukerji's rank," Chung said in a distasteful tone, obviously choosing his words with great care, "and the potential . . . conflict of interest in the Admiral's dual role as convening authority and principal in the case, I believe he intends to send Mukerji back to Alpha Centauri to await trial." The intelligence officer clearly disliked discussing the case at all, but by the same token, he seemed to realize that who he was really discussing it with-by proxy, at least-was Marcus LeBlanc. "I believe he plans to do so on the first occasion he has to dispatch a noncombatant ship to Centauri."

Since he can't very well stuff him into a courier drone, Sanders thought behind a face whose blandness matched Chung's.

"I see, Sir," he repeated. "And, since any such trial would probably require the Admiral's testimony, Admiral Mukerji may well spend some considerable time at Alpha Centauri awaiting it."

"Quite possibly, Lieutenant," Chung said in a tone clearly intended to politely but firmly close the discussion. Uaaria, however, wasn't prepared to abandon the topic just yet.

"It appears that Fang Pressssscott has found a way to rid himself of the political officer your government saddled him with," she remarked.

"Yes . . . a very risky way, politically speaking." Chung sighed-with good reason, Sanders thought. "Mukerji has powerful patrons . . . and he'll undoubtedly start pounding their ears with his 'version' of the facts the instant he arrives in Alpha Centauri."

Uaaria's ears flattened and she gave the sibilant hiss of serious Orion irritation.

"It is all beyond my comprehension. A coward like Muhkerzzhi is not worthy to roll in Fang Pressssscott's dung! Among the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaiee, such a chofak would long since have been killed in a duel. Assuming that anyone would soil his claws with his blood!"

Chung blinked, clearly a bit taken aback, despite his long acquaintance with her, by her vehemence, but Sanders only nodded.

"Yes, I know, Claw. You've got better sense than we do in that respect," he said, and realized as he spoke that it wasn't all diplomacy on his part. Since shipping out with Zhaarnak's task force, he'd experienced total immersion in the Orion warrior culture. Never subject to any xenophobic tendencies, he'd never thought of himself as a xenophile, either. Now he was beginning to wonder.

But most of his consciousness was occupied with composing his report to Admiral LeBlanc.

Marcus LeBlanc's eyes strayed, not for the first time, towards the strategic holo display that floated in the air of Kthaara'zarthan's office.

It wasn't what he was supposed to be focusing on, and he knew it. Nevertheless, his gaze kept wandering to the little spark that represented Zephrain. The display showed Alliance-controlled systems in green, and to LeBlanc the icon of Zephrain glowed with the light of jade eyes, haloed with an insubstantial swirl of flame-red hair.

Almost three standard years had passed since he watched Vanessa Murakuma depart from the terrace of this very building, seeming to recede into a distance greater than that which yawned between the stars. They'd communicated regularly for more than two of those years, as she'd done Kthaara's bidding and honed Fifth Fleet to a fine edge out in the remote Romulus Chain, awaiting Bug invaders who never came. Then, finally, had come the half-promised summons, offering her command of Sixth Fleet in place of the Prescott/Zhaarnak team that had moved abruptly on to Seventh Fleet in the wake of Andrew Prescott's last fight and the astrogation data it had brought home.

The offer to take over Sixth Fleet had been unexpected in every sense, LeBlanc knew. She'd expected to take Fifth Fleet with her when she moved on from Justin, but the JCS had decided that Justin continued to require a mobile fleet presence to back up the mammoth fixed fortifications which had been erected there. So if she wanted an offensive command, she was going to have to leave the fleet she'd spent literally years training.

In the end, she'd accepted the new assignment. Probably only because she knew that she'd be leaving Fifth Fleet in the hands of recently promoted Admiral Demosthenes Waldeck. Relative of Agamemnon Waldeck or not, Demosthenes was every inch a TFN admiral . . . and one of the few people Vanessa would trust to look after her people for her. And so she had set off to her new posting, to begin all over again, although at least she'd been able to take her entire staff along with her.

She'd passed through Alpha Centauri on her journey to Zephrain, and LeBlanc had had a tantalizingly brief time with her-so brief that it had left his hurt intensified rather than assuaged. Gazing at that little green icon was like tugging at a scab.

And, he told himself sternly, it's not what I'm here for. I'm supposed to be offering my alleged insights on Sanders' report. He turned back to the other two beings in the office.

"Well," he philosophized, "at least Prescott didn't heave Mukerji into the brig."

Sky Marshal MacGregor, however, was in no mood to be mollified.

"Thank God for that! There's going to be enough hell to pay when Mukerji arrives here and all this comes out-especially by me, for having sat on Sanders' report!"

"Maybe not, Sir," LeBlanc ventured. "Sanders says he's going to work on trying to get Prescott to accept some kind of face-saving compromise so it won't come to a trial. Perhaps the whole thing will blow over by the time the current election is over and the politicians have stopped trying to outdo each other in claiming credit for Prescott's victories-the parts of the report you haven't suppressed."

Kthaara'zarthan looked across his desk at the two Humans and ordered himself not to smile-his sadistic sense of humor had limits.

"The matter of Muhkerzzhi is doubtless worrisome. Possibly even dangerous. But what is interesting is confirmation of the 'psychic shock' effect on the remaining Bahg occupants of a system when vast numbers of them die with the speed at which lavishly employed antimatter weapons can depopulate planets."

"Yes, Sir," a suddenly more animated LeBlanc affirmed. "Now the effect has been demonstrated conclusively, including its instantaneous-propagation feature. The establishment physicists are still in deep denial over that last bit. They insist that telepathy must be limited to the sacrosanct velocity of light."

"My nose bleeds for them and their dogmas," MacGregor muttered. "The important thing is that this 'Shiva Option' offers an advantage we can exploit, at least in systems where there are enough Bugs available to kill."

"If Uaaria and Chung are correct, there are only a few such systems-the home hives. But once we take those systems, the war is effectively over."

"And now we've taken out two of the five." MacGregor finished LeBlanc's thought for him. "That has to hurt them. It has to have an effect on their war-fighting capability."

For a moment, all three were silent, each with his or her own thoughts. To his surprised irritation, LeBlanc found himself contemplating the fact that he and MacGregor had both used that sanitized bit of militarese "take out" for the extermination of an entire system population. Well, why not? he thought defensively. Does a word like "population" even apply to a lifeform like the Bugs?

"You know," he said, hesitantly but audibly, "this is the first time in history that genocide has been used as a means to a tactical end."

"Exterminating Bugs is no more 'genocide' than eradicating any other vermin, or wiping out disease bacteria with an antibiotic!" MacGregor declared, echoing LeBlanc's own earlier thoughts but without his faint ambivalence.

"In any event," Kthaara put in firmly, "General Directive Eighteen disposes of all such considerations, as far as we are concerned. Our rulers-your Federation and my Khan-have decreed the extirpation of the Arachnid species. By carrying out their command, we satisfy our honor as well as fulfilling our duty. If we can do so in such a way as to give us a tactical advantage, so much the better. And Fang Presssscott's campaign has brought our ultimate objective measurably closer."

"And I'm firmly convinced that the operation's next phase will bring it even closer," MacGregor declared. Sanders' report had, of course, also included Prescott's daring plan for a two-pronged offensive by himself and Zhaarnak.

"So you have no inclination to disapprove Fang Presssscott's plan?"

"Of course not! Quite aside from the fact that Prescott's achievements put him in a special class, the Federation has always had a tradition of giving its admirals wide latitude in fighting wars on the frontier."

"If it didn't," LeBlanc interjected, "there probably wouldn't be a Federation by now. Nobody can micro-manage military operations across interstellar distances, as much as certain politicians wish they could." And some senior admirals, he added mentally, but decided no useful purpose would be served by voicing the thought.

"That's not to say there aren't causes for concern in Sanders' report," MacGregor cautioned. "One is the condition of Task Force 71's strikegroups. Superficially, they look good: Fang Zhaarnak took enough replacements out there to fill all the carrier capacity Prescott has left. But those replacement pilots are green, while Prescott's suffered heavy losses among his more senior people. He's got lieutenants commanding entire squadrons of newbies!"

"I am sure he took those matters into account when assessing his task force's ability to carry out the operation." Kthaara sounded serene.

"A more fundamental worry is the Bugs' tactics, as Prescott's people have observed them," LeBlanc put in. "Especially the number of gunboats and assault shuttles employed in the kamikaze role. It appears that the Bugs have hit on the most cost-effective approach to system defense, given their total disregard for the lives of their own personnel."

"But," MacGregor protested, "it requires vast numbers. I thought you agreed with Captain Chung and Small Claw Uaaria that the Bugs are beginning to feel the economic pinch."

"I do, Sir. But that doesn't mean they can't continue to produce lots of kamikazes. Lots and lots of kamikazes. By a conservative estimate, they can turn out almost fifty squadrons of gunboats for the price of a single Awesome-class monitor! Not to mention the fact that it takes almost three years to build a replacement monitor and only about two months to build a replacement gunboat. From every perspective, that makes them a much more readily replenished combat resource. And while assault shuttles are a little more expensive than that, they can be built even more rapidly than gunboats, and they're also more lethal in the suicide role. That's especially true when they're being used in the large numbers Prescott has faced-the 'Bughouse Swarm,' as Captain Chung's dubbed it."

"And," Kthaara continued, "Fang Presssscott's experience with this tactic over the last few months has enabled him to devise counter-tactics, has it not? Cub Saaanderzzz' report indicates as much."

"Well . . . yes." MacGregor paid out the admission as grudgingly as stereotype held that her ancestors had paid out shillings. LeBlanc nodded in cautious agreement.

"Very well. In view of all these factors, and of the gradually widening technological gap between us and Bugs, I think it is time for us to rise above our engrained skepticism and consider the possibility that we may have reason to be confident of ultimate victory."

Silence descended once again. Neither of the humans had wished to tempt fate by uttering those particular words. But now the famously unsuperstitious Kthaara had done it for them, and there was something almost frightening about his daring.

"I believe you're right, Sir," LeBlanc ventured. "I also believe we have a long way to go . . . and that the price will be high." Once again the green spark representing Zephrain caught his eye, and he thought of who might be part of that price. "Horribly high."

"I had no wish to imply otherwise, Ahhdmiraaaal LeBlaaanc. In the words of one of the two or three politicians in Human history for whom my old vilkshatha brother had any respect, this is not the beginning of the end. It is, at most, the end of the beginning."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Familiar Space

From El Dorado, Raymond Prescott cautiously probed Home Hive One with recon drones. They confirmed that the Bugs hadn't located the closed warp point-and, indeed, had evidently given up trying to find it, for all their starships were gone. All that marred the system's lifelessness were the thirty-five immobile fortresses, attended by forty-two heavy cruisers, that guarded each of the five open warp points.

Only when he'd assured himself of that did Prescott lead his smaller but battle-hardened task force back into the system where they'd fought so hard before. And, in the absence of any data as to where the open warp points led, he'd picked one of them at random to begin his work of destruction.

None of the warp point defense forces individually possessed the power to seriously inconvenience him. So he smothered that first one under an avalanche of firepower, sent recon drones to peer at what lay on the far side of the warp point, and then moved on to the next one.

They'd repeated the process there, and were still just outside the second warp point's newly acquired nimbus of debris, when Amos Chung approached Prescott on the flag bridge.

"Ah, Amos, have you analyzed the RD2s' findings?" Prescott was as courteous as everyone expected of him, but there was no concealing his impatience to have done with this warp point and proceed to the third one.

"Yes, Sir. The star at the other end of the warp line is a blue giant."

"Hmmm." The relationship between the warp phenomenon and gravity was still imperfectly understood. But it was a fact that massive stars were more likely to have warp points, and to have them in greater numbers, than were less massive ones. (Nobody had been traveling the warp network long enough to answer the interesting question of what happened to those warp points when such a star attained its not too remote destiny and went supernova.) Thus, blue giants were less rare in the universe familiar to spacefarers than they were in the universe at large, where they constituted only a small fraction of one percent of all stars. And this was no astrophysical research expedition.

"No planets, of course," Prescott thought aloud. There never were.

"No, Sir."

"Very well, then. I think we can-" The spook's tightly controlled expression brought Prescott to halt. "Is there something else you want to tell me about that star?"

"Yes, Sir. As you know, the computer's programmed to automatically check these RD2 readings against all the systems in its database-which means all the systems the members of the Grand Alliance have on file. It's a rather simple job for a computer, despite the sheer number of such systems."

"No doubt."

"Now, no two stars are really identical, even if they belong to the same spectral class. Each one has a uniquely individual-"

"I'm not altogether unacquainted with these matters, Amos."

"Uh . . . of course not, Sir. Well, Sir, the point is . . . it's Pesthouse, Sir!"

A moment of dead silence passed. When Prescott finally spoke, he didn't waste air by asking Chung if he was sure.

"Are you aware of the implications of what you've just said, Amos?" he asked instead, very carefully.

"I believe so, Sir." Chung sounded more assured now that he'd finally blurted it out. He handed Prescott a datachip. "In fact, I've taken the liberty of preparing a flat-screen representation of those implications."

Prescott inserted the chip into a slot in the arm of his command chair. The small screen that extended from the arm came to life, showing the Prescott Chain and the hypothesized Home Hive One/AP-5 chain that paralleled it. Everyone in Seventh Fleet's command structure had become completely familiar with that. But now a new warp line extruded itself from Home Hive One to Pesthouse. As Prescott watched, a warp chain grew from the latter system-the Anderson Chain, as Ivan Antonov had dubbed it as he'd advanced along it to his death. Like a living organism, it grew through four systems, warp connection after warp connection. Then it reached the fifth system: Alpha Centauri. From there, eight other strings of light pushed out, one to Sol and the others to as much of the Terran Federation as the little screen had room to show.

"So," Prescott said, as much to himself as to Chung, "for the first time in this war, we've 'closed the circle'-traced a chain of warp connections from the Federation all the way through Bug space to another Federation system."

"Yes, Sir-and that Federation system's Alpha Centauri itself!" Chung's excitement was now on full display. "Uh, shall we . . . that is, shall I inform Commodore Mandagalla-?"

"No. I know what you're thinking, Amos. But I have no intention of rushing back into Pesthouse just because we can. As you'll recall, the Bug forces that ambushed Admiral Antonov in that system converged from several directions. I have no desire to be trapped the same way. So for now we'll continue to execute our original plan, as Fang Zhaarnak is expecting. In the meantime, though, I want you to do two things."

"Sir?"

"First of all, prepare a full report for dispatch to AP-5 without delay. I imagine Lieutenant Sanders and his boss will find it very interesting." Prescott's eyes traced the glowing string-light of the Anderson Chain to Anderson One, where massive Bug forces stood in deadlocked confrontation at the warp point leading to Alpha Centauri. "Very interesting indeed."

"Yes, Sir. I would think so."

"And secondly, I want you to make these findings generally known to the task force's personnel." Prescott raised a hand as Chung started to open his mouth. "I think we can disregard need-to-know considerations just this once, Amos. These people-the people who smashed Home Hive One-have a right to know. Oh, and don't bother spelling out the fact that one of the Bug forces that trapped Second Fleet must certainly have come from Home Hive One. They'll have no trouble figuring that out for themselves."

All at once, Chung understood. And a feeling of deep, grim satisfaction-a feeling of having partially avenged Ivan Antonov and the tens of thousands who'd died with him-spread through the intelligence officer, as it would shortly spread through all of Task Force 71.

"Aye, aye, Sir," he said quietly.

They were en route from what everyone was now calling the "Pesthouse Warp Point" to the next stop on their itinerary of destruction when the wide-ranging, carefully cloaked scouts flashed the report Prescott had been waiting to hear.

He called an informal conference of the operational "core" staff-Mandagalla, Bichet, Landrum, Chung, and Ruiz-on the flag bridge, with the task group commanders in attendance by com screen. It wasn't the most convenient possible way to do things, but it was the only way to exclude Mukerji. Prescott still wasn't sure why he'd let Sanders talk him into accepting a fulsome apology and dropping all charges against the political officer. It surely wouldn't stop Mukerji from seeking revenge later. But if the contemptible chofak wasn't going to be charged with anything, then logically he had to be returned to his originally assigned duties. Which, unfortunately, meant finding ways to keep him out of the way while the real work got done by the real officers assigned to Seventh Fleet.

He and his staffers stood around the system-scale holo sphere, and gazed at the same display of Home Hive One they'd viewed on their earlier visit-except, of course, that the three innermost planets were no longer keyed as "inhabited." The electronically-present task group COs had the same imagery in their own spheres, and, like Prescott, they were intently focused on the only icons that were truly important now: the ones representing the warp points.

Prescott studied those six icons. They'd been assigned numbers, and the closed warp point through which they'd come was number four. Its icon glowed in splendid isolation in the sphere, six light-hours from the local sun. The open warp point designated as number five was only seventy-two light-minutes from that sun, on a bearing sixty degrees counter clockwise from the closed warp point's. The other four open warp points were rather tightly clustered-as interplanetary space went-in a region between sixty and ninety degrees further clockwise, at distances from three and a half to six light-hours from the sun. Prescott had elected to begin with the latter group, leaving Warp Point Five to be dealt with on his return swing. So far, they'd obliterated the defenses of Warp Point One-the Pesthouse Warp Point-and Two, and were proceeding towards Three.

But everyone's eyes were on the bypassed Warp Point Five, which now flashed balefully on and off with "hostile" scarlet.

"The scouts were able to get fairly detailed readings on the gunboats' simultaneous transits," Chung summarized. "Even after interpenetration losses, there are well over eighteen hundred of them. They're proceeding on an intercept course-courier drones from the Warp Point Five defense force must have kept them up to date on our location. And now the first heavy units are beginning to transit."

None of the staffers, Prescott noted with satisfaction, had gone glassy-eyed at the number of gunboats racing toward them. After the last few months, such figures were no longer shocking.

"Well," Bichet observed to the meeting at large, "now we know which warp point leads to AP-5."

"And," Landrum added, "we can let Fang Zhaarnak know we've drawn the Bugs here as planned."

"That conclusion," Prescott said quietly, but very firmly, "and that course of action, are both premature, gentlemen. Until the Bug capital ships complete transit, we'll be in no position to positively identify them as the force our recon drones observed on the other side of AP-5's closed warp point. For now, we'll concentrate on our immediate concern: the gunboat strike now converging on us."

"Yes, Sir," the ops officer and the farshathkhanaak murmured in crestfallen unison.

"One poinnnt on that sssubject, Admiral," an Ophiuchi voice said in Standard English from one of the com screens. To anyone familiar with his race, Admiral Raathaarn's discomfort was obvious. "I realizzzze our tacticallll doctrinnnne hasss allllready been dissssscussed. But-"

"Yes, Admiral, it has," Prescott cut him off. He had no desire to be rude, but he knew he had to put his foot down. "I'm well aware that the Ophiuchi Association's fighter pilots are willing-no, eager-to uphold their matchless reputation and be in the forefront of the coming battle. But it's precisely because of the Corthohardaa's acknowledged preeminence that I must withhold them to deal with any kamikaze assault shuttles the Bugs may try to sneak past our defenses while our Terran and Orion fighters are occupied with the gunboats. We simply cannot afford to let anything as heavily loaded with antimatter as a shuttle kamikaze slip through, and unlike gunboats, shuttles can't be engaged with standard anti-starship weapons. That's why we're going to adhere to the plan as already framed. We'll keep the range open as they approach, and deal with them at long range with a combination of fighters and second-generation close-assault missiles."

He half-worried that he might be laying it on a little too thick, since the Ophiuchi were undoubtedly the least militant members of the Grand Alliance. They had no true organized military tradition of their own, in fact, which was why they'd adopted the rank structure-and even the Standard English rank titles-of their Terran allies during the Second Interstellar War. But if there was one thing which could turn even the cosmopolitan, pacific Ophiuchi into fire breathers, it was their pride in their strikefighter pilots' prowess. The Corthohardaa, or "Space Brothers," were one of only two bodies within the Ophiuchi Association's military who had a special, distinguishing badge: the stylized Hasfrazi head which the Terrans called the "Screaming Eagle." (The other branch to be so distinguished was the Dahanaak, or "Talon Strike," units, the equivalent of the Federation's Marine Raiders, whose emblem was a stylized representation of an attacking assault shuttle.) It was a standing joke among their Terran allies that the Corthohardaa were downright Tabby-like in their combativeness and sense of invincibility. Not even the Taainohk-the "Four Virtues"-which formed the basis of the Ophiuchi's characteristically dispassionate philosophy seemed able to temper it.

Or perhaps the Taainohk actually explained it, the admiral reflected. Queemharda, the first leg of the Taainohk required an Ophiuchi to truly know himself, to know both his strengths and his weaknesses. Naraham required him to develop a detached ability to stand aside from all distractions in the pursuit of the other virtues, while quurhok, or "place knowing," required each individual to recognize and fulfill his appointed function in life. And the fourth virtue, querhomaz, or "self determination" was the absolute determination to achieve qurrhok. So given the fact that the Ophiuchi were the best natural strikefighter pilots in the known galaxy, perhaps it was not only natural but inevitable that the Corthohardaa should-to paraphrase the TFN's human fighter jocks-all insist that they had "great big brass ones."

There were times when that could be a very useful thing. There were also times when the Ophiuchi urge to demonstrate their prowess could be a decided pain in the ass, and this had the definite potential to be one of them.

Prescott regarded Raathaarn for a moment, decided that the hammer he was using was about the right size, and turned to his logistics officer for the clincher.

"Commander Ruiz, I believe our stocks of SBMHAWK4s armed with CAM2 are still adequate?"

"Yes, Sir," Sandy Ruiz replied confidently. "The Wayfarers have an ample supply on board." Most of the freighters of Seventh Fleet's fleet train were still in AP-5 with Zhaarnak, but Prescott had brought along the Wayfarers, built on battlecruiser hulls and intended to keep up with survey flotillas, as ammunition ships.

"Very good. And your Ophiuchi fighter pilots, Admiral Raathaarn, will be our last line defense against any gunboats that get through everything else." Raathaarn looked slightly mollified. "So now, let's get down to details. . . ."

The image of the strikegroup's briefing officer faded from the holo stage of VF-94's ready room. Irma Sanchez stood up and faced her five pilots.

To the left was Anton Meswami, now her executive officer. She still had trouble thinking of that title in connection with the j.g. and not spluttering with laughter. But then she looked at the four replacements, and by comparison it became almost believable.

Jesus! she thought. Thank God I was never that young!

And now I suppose I have to say something.

"All right. You heard the man. The task force is going to turn away and send us and the Tabbies in to intercept the gunboats. We'll have some support in the form of SBMHAWKs with CAM2 packages. But it'll be mostly up to us. That's the plan because the people who have all the facts know that we can do it."

An uncertain murmur ran through the ready room.

What's the matter? Isn't that the kind of thing the Skipper would have said?

But I keep forgetting: I'm the Skipper. The only one these kids have ever known.

So I'll have to be myself.

"You've probably all heard the jokes going around," she resumed in a more conversational tone of voice. "Like the one about how they've had to add potty training to the curriculum at Brisbane."

The laughter was uncertain, with an undercurrent of resentment. But the miasma of unfocused fear was suddenly gone.

"Yeah," she continued. "All the lifers in this strikegroup-to say nothing of all the ship's company pricks on this goddamned fat-assed monitor-think you people are a big joke. And you know what? They think I'm a joke, too-that I haven't got any more business commanding the squadron than you've got being in one. They think VF-94's idea of flying in formation is two of us going in the same direction on the same day!"

All the uncertainty was gone, and the resentment had come fully into its own, but with no sullenness about it. Their laughter was as real as their anger.

"Well, it happens that I know better. We had a chance to train together back in AP-5, and I know what you can do, green as you are. And now, we're going to prove it to everybody. We're going to prove it by killing so many Bugs that they'll have to take us seriously. And we're going to come back from all that Bugs-killing alive, because we're going to do it the Navy way, by the numbers." My God, is this me talking? she wondered with a small part of her mind. "Is that clear?"

"Yes, Sir," they chorused.

"What's that? I can't hear you."

It wouldn't have played with people who'd been around a while. But these pilots weren't far removed from OCS.

"Yes, SIR!"

Irma leaned forward to face Ensign Davra Lennart, who'd had some problems keeping up with rapidly changing tactical configurations.

"Ensign, do you think you're up to it?"

"I . . . I think so, Sir," Leonard said, and Irma smiled.

"I understand Sergeant Kelso is still at Brisbane, Ensign," she said, and Lennart's eyes grew round.

"You mean she was there way back when you were, Sir?"

"Hell, they built the place around her! Yeah, she was my drill instructor, too. And I'll bet I can guess what she used to tell you: 'Lennart, when I give the command 'About face,' I want to hear your pussy snap!'"

It wasn't really much of a guess, as Irma merely had to substitute the name. But Lennart's jaw dropped, and the gales of laughter swept the last vestiges of tension from the ready room. Irma let the guffaws die down, then spoke seriously.

"Well, that's all behind you now. Out here, all that counts is doing the job. And I know you can all do it. You can do it because you have the training, because you have the motivation, and because if any one of you doesn't do it, I'll personally tear him or her a new asshole.

"Now, let's suit up!"

Sorry, Skipper . . . Bruno, I mean, Irma thought as the ready room emptied. I know that wasn't the way you would have done it. But I had to do it any way I could-any way that will make VF-94 live up to your memory today.

Prescott kept his expression one of calm satisfaction as he read the final tally. He hoped none of his staffers had heard his long, relieved sigh.

The fighters had done better than he'd let himself hope. They'd knifed into a gunboat wave that dwarfed those they'd faced four months earlier in AP-5, and killed and killed and gone on killing. Behind them had been the waves of SBMHAWK4 pods with their loads of CAM2s. Little more than two hundred of the gunboats had gotten through that outer barrier-only to be blasted apart by the short-range fire of still more CAM2s, this time from the capital ships' external ordnance racks, as they entered the inner defensive envelope.

The close assault missiles were the capital missile-sized equivalent of a sprint-mode standard missile-a weapon which streaked in at velocities too high for point defense to engage it effectively. Like a normal capital missile, it carried a significantly heavier warhead than missiles fired from lesser launchers, and it also had a longer effective range than standard sprint-mode missiles. It had originally been designed as a means to give capital missile-armed warships, like the TFN's Dunkerque-class battlecruisers, a weapon to use in close-in combat. Once it was available, it hadn't taken long for the Navy to recognize the increased effectiveness which an interception-proof missile could provide for its standard SBMHAWK pods, and the combination had proved deadly to any defending unit in close proximity to a warp point. The use of SBMHAWK pods under shipboard fire control was also one way to permit battle-line units to lay down heavy volumes of missile fire on incoming gunboat waves at extended range, and the CAM2's ability to pierce even starships' point defense like an awl made it an ideal gunboat-killer.

Fifteen gunboats had lasted long enough to perform the horribly familiar FRAM ripple-launch, followed by a suicide run. They'd taken TFNS Banshee with them, which hurt. But no other ship had suffered more than superficial damage, if that.

"Your fighter pilots did very well, Commodore Landrum," he said formally. "Including the young, inexperienced ones."

"Thank you, Admiral. I'll convey that to the CSGs, if I may."

"By all means." Prescott turned to the holo display, now set on system scale. He gave a command, and it zoomed in on Warp Point Five and the array of scarlet icons deploying slowly away from it in support of the fortresses. "It's possible, ladies and gentlemen, that the Bugs don't consider the gunboat strike to have been a total waste."

"Sir?" Mandagalla sounded puzzled. "I realize that they think of gunboats-and their crews-as expendable pawns. But eighteen hundred of them certainly outweigh Banshee and our fighter losses."

"We also had to expend more depletable ordnance that I would have liked," Sandy Ruiz mumbled with the pessimism that went with a logistics officer's billet.

"All true," Prescott acknowledged. "But I suspect that the main objective was simply to keep us occupied while the heavy forces completed their transit into the system. If that's true, they've succeeded."

No one remarked on the mind-set behind such a sacrifice for such an objective. They'd all been fighting Bugs so long that it was no longer a subject for shock, or even for comment.

"But," Prescott continued, "we've also achieved an objective. Amos, am I correct in supposing you've positively identified these hostiles as belonging to the forces facing Fang Zhaarnak?"

"You are, Sir," the spook replied, and indicated the icons in the sphere: twenty-five monitors, thirty-two superdreadnoughts, twenty-five battlecruisers. "It's the same strength as the organic mobile force that's been shuttling back and forth between this system and AP-5 since the start of the campaign. Analysis of the exact mix of ship classes confirms it."

"Very well. We'll dispatch an ICN message immediately to inform Fang Zhaarnak that we've succeeded in drawing away part of his opposition, and ordering him to commence his offensive."

"In the meantime, Sir," Bichet inquired, "shall we advance toward Warp Point Five?"

"Why should we, Jacques?" Prescott asked with a smile. "I'm in no hurry to engage them. The longer we can put off an engagement, the longer we keep them tied down in this system. Furthermore, it would be to our advantage to draw them out to engage us, away from the support of the Warp Point Five fortresses."

The staffers exchanged glances which contained several emotions, of which the uppermost was relief. Not that they'd dreaded seeking battle-that was a formidable Bug force, but over the past eight months they, along with the rest of TF 71, had gained an absolute confidence in themselves and their commander. No, their feelings concerned that commander himself. They hadn't been certain Raymond Prescott was psychologically able to forego an opportunity to seek battle with his brother's killers, however advantageous such restraint might be.

Prescott read their thoughts, and he smiled again.

"Rest assured, ladies and gentlemen, I have no intention of waiting passively. As you may recall, we have unfinished business in this system."

"The other warp point defenses, Admiral?" Mandagalla queried.

"Precisely. We were, I believe, en route to Warp Point Three before the recent attack. I believe we can now resume our interrupted schedule."

It was intolerable. The Enemy was simply continuing the obliteration of the other warp point fortresses, ignoring the Mobile Force altogether. This placed the burden on the Fleet to either take action or remain in the role of a mere spectator to the destruction.

Fortunately, the Mobile Force could draw on the gunboat and small-craft reserves of the systems along the chain through which it had passed. That provided sufficient assets to constitute as many as three suicide formations, each theoretically capable of dealing with these Enemies.

So the Mobile Force refused to let itself be lured away from the warp point through which it had emerged. Instead, it would send those formations to pursue the Enemy wherever he might roam in the system.

"They would have been smarter to combine all their gunboats and pinnaces into one irresistible force at the outset, Sir," Stephen Landrum opined.

Prescott nodded in agreement. The kamikaze formations-or what was left of them-were belatedly doing just that. He and the farshathkhanaak were gazing into the holo sphere and watching three red icons crawl together and merge.

The Bugs' idea, Amos Chung speculated, had been for the three swarms of deadly midges to herd TF 71 away from the remaining warp point defenses and toward the waiting jaws of the heavy units at Warp Point Five. If so, it hadn't worked. Prescott had adroitly maneuvered away from them to prolong the chase, keeping his battle-line out of reach while sending long-range fighter strikes to repeatedly savage his pursuers. He'd whittled their strength down by as much as two-thirds while giving his fighter pilots more experience at this kind of combat.

But now they'd finally gotten wise. . . .

Prescott straightened up suddenly.

"I believe it's time to let them catch us," he told Landrum. "They can probably do so anyway, now that they're going to concentrate on it single-mindedly."

"You mean, Sir-?"

"Yes. Fang Zhaarnak's acknowledgment arrived just a little while ago. In real-time, he's about to launch his attack." Prescott turned matter-of-fact. "Our tactical doctrine will be unchanged. Please call the rest of the staff."

"Aye, aye, Sir." Landrum started to turn away, then paused. "Uh, Admiral, despite their losses, that's a more formidable force of kamikazes than the one that hit us last time. Our fighters are going to sustain more losses-and more of them are going to get through to hit our ships."

"I realize that, Steve. But that's unavoidable. And . . . every gunboat we destroy here is one less gunboat Lord Telmasa will face."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: ". . . and I'll take the low road."

Zhaarnak'telmasa exploded out of AP-5 behind a storm front of SBMHAWKs and SRHAWKs.

His most recent flights of RD2s had confirmed his vilkshatha brother's inference: one of the two mobile forces in the system had departed and now confronted TF 71 in Home Hive One. So TF 72 faced only (!) the second one-twenty monitors, sixty-seven superdreadnoughts, thirty-six battlecruisers, and seventy-five light cruisers-and by now the Bugs had learned to keep their starships well back from warp points that could suddenly belch forth torrents of SBMHAWKs. But the fixed warp point defenses were still very much in place: twenty-four massive orbital fortresses covered by two thousand laser-armed deep space buoys, shielded by four thousand patterns of mines and hiding amid six hundred ECM buoys. Zhaarnak intended to scorch the warp point's surrounding space clean of those defenses as though with a giant blow torch.

He had a new tool for the scorching. This was to be the debut of the new HARM2-an SBMHAWK-carried homing antiradiation missile. In addition to its SBMHAWK capability, it was able to home in on the later generation deception-mode ECM emissions as well as fire confusion ones. Everyone hoped it would be the answer to the clouds of ECM buoys the Bugs loved to deploy around warp points.

As Hia'khan emerged from the warp point into the maelstrom, a flood of data began to pour in from the ships of the initial waves that had preceded the flagship-mostly assault carriers and Gorm Toragon-class gunboat-bearing monitors. Kevin Sanders took a moment to glance across the flag bridge at Zhaarnak, who was stroking his whiskers with a smooth, almost caressing motion.

"Unless I'm mistaken, that's a look of great satisfaction," he murmured to Uaaria.

"So it is," the female Orion spook agreed. "He is observing the success rate of the HARM2 against the third-generation ECM buoys. He has a keen personal interest in the matter."

All at once, Sanders remembered the "April Fool" offensive Zhaarnak had led out of Zephrain. He also remembered that Orions did not enjoy embarrassment.

"Yes, I can see how those buoys might be rather a sore subject with him."

Uaaria gave him a quelling, slit-pupiled glare, and he hastily resumed his study of the data. Zhaarnak had assumed that the Bug capital ships wouldn't be sitting atop the warp point. Hence the composition of his first waves, which were now advancing sunward through the rapidly dissipating debris of the fortresses. Those monitors and CVAs, with their gunboats and fighters, were intended to counter the kamikaze gunboats and small craft that could be expected, sooner rather than later. So far, the Fifteenth Fang's predictions were proving out.

Sanders turned his attention to the system display.

Their warp point of entry lay five light-hours from the yellow Sol-like primary. The RD2s had detected only one other fortress-cluster of the precise composition that the Bugs-consistent to a fault-assigned to warp point defense. That consistency, Sanders reflected, certainly simplified the choice of where to go next. Unfortunately, that warp point was even further from the local sun than this one . . . and on a diametrically opposite bearing.

Between the two warp points, the inner planets warmed themselves around the hearth of the primary. One of them, Planet III, was life-bearing. From its energy emissions as reported by the RD2s, Uaaria and her subordinates had inferred a medium-sized population of no more than a few hundred million. This, clearly, was no home hive system. A colony, no doubt. Maybe a relatively new one, given the Bugs' propensity for multiplying up to the kind of ugly limits once prophesied by Malthus, who'd underestimated humankind's blessed disinclination to carry anything to its ultimate logical conclusion.

At any rate, even if there weren't tens of billions of Bugs here, there were Bugs. Acting on General Directive Eighteen and his own inclinations alike, Zhaarnak ordered the task force to shape a course for the inhabited planet.

Waves of gunboats and small craft began their suicidal attacks-if a word like "suicidal" was really applicable to a race with no sense of individual self preservation. Losses began to mount.

And yet . . .

Sanders had begun to notice it himself just before Zhaarnak stalked over to the intelligence station.

"Their capital ships are refusing battle," the Orion stated, leaving implicit his demand for an explanation.

"Yes, Sir," Uaaria acknowledged. "They are drawing back, keeping out of range, sending in their suicide craft." She gestured at the tactical display, from whose outer margin yet another swarm of tiny hostile icons was sweeping inward. "From the numbers of gunboats and small craft we are encountering, I gather that few such have been withdrawn from the system. Perhaps they think they do not need to commit their battle-line."

Zhaarnak made a dismissive gesture.

"Nevertheless, there is a Bahg-inhabited planet in this system. It is unheard of for them to restrict themselves to standoff suicide attacks when such a world is threatened."

Uaaria and Sanders exchanged glances. Neither had any answer.

It was true. There was no possible doubt.

The system that had dispatched the Mobile Force-the most powerful of all the Systems Which Must Be Defended-had flatly refused to send any additional units to reinforce it.

It was unprecedented. It was an affront to the natural order of things. But it was also true.

No explanation had been offered, of course. But none had been needed. The entire Fleet knew that the long-accumulated Reserve had become dangerously depleted. This war had dragged on far longer than the Planners had ever contemplated, and the expense of sustaining it now had to be borne by only three Systems Which Must Be Defended, rather than the original five. Under these circumstances, the losses during the course of the present campaign had stretched to the limit even the massive Fleet which had been built up against the inevitable future meeting with the Old Enemies-the Old Enemies who had now reappeared (fortunately unbeknownst to these New Enemies) and placed yet another burden on the already overextended resources of the Systems Which Must Be Defended.

It was easy to recall the Old Enemies here in Franos, for one of this system's four warp points led to Telik, where the Fleet's advance against those Enemies had halted so long ago. It had halted for want of anywhere else to go. A closed warp point, of course. The Old Enemies had managed to conceal its location as they pulled out of Telik, and that had been the end of the Fleet's first war with them. And that potential avenue of attack had, so far, remained quiescent in the present war.

But these recollections were irrelevant to the present problem: the stark reality that the Mobile Force was on its own, and could expect no help in defending this warp chain, with its five systems and three inhabited worlds.

Nor was that the worst of it. The Enemy was advancing inexorably towards this system's colonized planet. Even if the Mobile Force drew back into the envelope of that planet's orbital and surface-based defenses, it might not be able to stop the attackers before they seared the surface with antimatter fire, especially if they made that their primary objective. And then . . . This was no World Which Must Be Defended, but there was no guarantee that the sudden annihilation of its population or a large percentage thereof would not have the kind of effects that had now been observed repeatedly. Precisely where the numerical threshold lay was, as yet, unknown.

The Mobile Force dared not run the risk of being left in a helpless state of stunned disorientation, to be disposed of at the Enemy's leisure. Then there would be nothing left to defend Franos, for the other Mobile Force was tied down in what had once been a System Which Must Be Defended, securing the other end of this warp chain.

No. From every standpoint, the indicated course of action was to withdraw, leaving the local defenses to take as high a toll as possible and preserving the Mobile Force to protect Franos. This system's population was smaller than either of the two inhabited worlds further along the chain. And it was, of course, expendable.

It would have been hard to say whether Kevin Sanders or Uaaria'salath-ahn looked more exhausted after the endless, running battle that had snarled its way across the system.

Aboard a Terran warship, Sanders would have been in a vacsuit, but the Tabbies were a bit less compulsive about such things. Hia'khan's flag deck was at the very center of her stupendous hull, and any damage which got through to it-particularly in the absence of any primary beam-threat-would have to virtually dismantle the entire ship first. Under the circumstances, the officers on that flag deck had decided, the efficiency-enhancing advantages of working in a "shirt sleeve" environment outweighed the risk of being killed by sudden depressurization.

The lieutenant harbored a few doubts about that particular line of logic, but he had to admit that it did have a tendency to reduce crew fatigue under normal circumstances. Of course, these circumstances were scarcely "normal," and his usual spruceness had disappeared into a discarded uniform tunic, a loosened blouse collar, shoulders that sagged, knees that had lost their spring, and hair that had taken on an undeniably oily look. None of the Orions on the flag deck seemed to have noticed when he shed his tunic-not surprising, perhaps, given the fact that none of them wore clothing at all, except in hostile environment conditions.

Even if she'd noticed, however, Uaaria wouldn't have commented on his disheveled state, for she shared it to the full. Orions, as a species, were even more fastidious about their personal grooming than the terrestrial cats which they so reminded humans of, and Uaaria was more fastidious than most. But now patches of her plushy fur were plastered with sweat, her whiskers drooped, and the usual natural musky scent which clung to her-and which Sanders normally found rather appealing, in a primal sort of way-had become something much stronger.

But he paid no more attention to her haggardness than she paid to his, for their attention was concentrated solely on the system-scale holo display at the flag bridge's intelligence station as they watched the icon of the Bug battle-line.

"They're really doing it," the human breathed as they watched that icon move past the inhabited planet, not stopping to close ranks with the planet's defenders but proceeding without a pause on a course for the warp point on the far side of the yellow sun.

"They are withdrawing," Uaaria said unnecessarily. "I never believed they would simply leave that planet to its fate."

"But not, unfortunately, defenseless."

The two intelligence officers started at the voice. Zhaarnak was standing behind them, looking over their shoulders at the display. His own matted, disheveled fur would have been shocking to anyone who knew the Orion obsession with staying well groomed-unless that person also knew what he'd been through as his task force had moved inward.

The Bug ships had moved with them, but well ahead, keeping the range open and sending wave after wave of kamikazes back to lash the task force. The need to reverse the vector of the ships that launched them meant little to gunboats and small craft with reactionless drives. And the rapidly widening gulf between them and their motherships meant even less, for theirs were one-way missions. They'd targeted the monitors and assault carriers, Zhaarnak's most valuable ships, but also the ones most capable of defending themselves and absorbing damage. The months of waiting in AP-5 had allowed the Orion fighter pilots and Gorm gunboat crews to assimilate the lessons in anti-kamikaze tactics that Raymond Prescott's task force had paid such a high tuition to learn, and now they put those lessons to use. Still, losses had mounted steadily, and everyone had expected the Bug starships to turn and fight at any time, or at least to stand at bay near Planet III and add their firepower to its fixed defenses.

But now those starships were receding sunward and beyond, on course for the warp point through which they would exit this system. Task Force 72, momentarily without the suicidal swarms that had tormented it so long, approached Planet III.

And Zhaarnak had spoken the truth. That planet's titanic space station loomed amid an array of seventeen monitor-sized orbital fortresses. And on the surface, sensor data indicated the presence of six vast installations, mostly buried but extruding the launch ramps for four hundred gunboats and a hundred pinnaces each through the planet's crust. Already, new waves of kamikazes were on their way to take up where those of the mobile force had left off.

Zhaarnak watched stolidly as his fighters wore those waves down. Even as Hia'khan came under attack, he remained expressionless, watching his ships take the losses that had to be expected from the ones that got through. By the time it was all over, that toll had risen to five monitors, seven superdreadnoughts, and two Gorm assault carriers. Many other ships had taken hits, though in most cases (including the flagship) the damage wasn't serious.

The Fifteenth Fang turned away from the screen on which the carnage was tallied. He activated an intercom speaker near the intelligence station and spoke to his chief of staff, still at the auxiliary control station he'd occupied since general quarters had been sounded.

"Rearm the fighters," he ordered without preamble. "The standard mix of FRAMs and ECM packages for planetary assault."

" 'Planetary assault,' Fang?" Uaaria ventured after he'd received acknowledgment and turned back to the intelligence displays. She indicated the tactical one, in which the icons of the orbital fortresses still glowed inviolate. "What about those?"

"They can wait, Small Claw. The fighters will bypass them, covered by ECM, and blanket the planet's surface with antimatter warheads."

To Sanders, Zhaarnak's tone, mild though it was, suggested that he didn't particularly desire further discussion. Uaaria, however, was an Orion, and Federation naval officers had been astonished many times since their first experiences with the Tabbies, by the-to humans-extreme freedom junior officers enjoyed in speaking their minds to their superiors. Some Terran observers were astonished that the prickly, honor-conscious, duel-fighting Orions could possibly tolerate such a situation.

Sanders, who'd seen more of Tabby interaction on this voyage than most humans saw in a lifetime, thought he'd figured out how it worked. In the end, it all went back to the honor concepts which were so central to all Orion life and to that unique bond whose manifold facets the Tabbies subsumed under the word farshatok. The chain of command and the deference patterns of a society which was hierarchical-indeed, feudal, in human turns-were as inflexible as iron, yet they enshrined a complex, interlocking weave of responsibilities, rights, and obligations between commander and commanded. To the Orion mind, an officer's subordinates could no more be denied the right to offer their own viewpoints for his consideration than a hand could survive without its fingers.

And so Uaaria faced the second in command of Seventh Fleet and said, "Fang, I understand your intention. But I can offer no assurance that the Bahg population here is large enough for its destruction to produce the effect you desire."

"You have not been asked to, Small Claw. We will determine the answer experimentally. We need to know whether that which the Humans have dubbed the 'Shiiivaaa Option' is, in fact, an option at all in systems less heavily populated than the home hives. That is one reason I am proceeding as I am-the other being that I would rather deal with those fortresses after their crews have been reduced to a state of psychic shock, if it is possible to do so."

This time, Zhaarnak's tone made it clear that the subject was closed. And just as the farshotak relationship gave Uaaria both the right and the responsibility to caution her commander even when he didn't wish to be cautioned, so that same relationship required her to submit and hold her tongue once the caution had been issued and Zhaarnak had made his decision anyway.

The intelligence officer flicked her ears in a graceful gesture which combined continuing reservations on her part with an acknowledgment of Zhaarnak's right of command and her acceptance of what he'd ordered.

Lord Telmasa gave her an approving glance, as much for having said her say as for having accepted his decision, and returned his attention to the display as the experiment in slaughter began.

The answer wasn't long in coming. The fighters took a certain percentage of losses from the fortresses' fire, despite their ECM cover. But then the FRAMs plunged downward through the planet's atmosphere, and the wavefront of fireballs began to advance across the continents like a forest conflagration, leaving nothing but charred lifelessness . . . and the fortresses' fire slackened, and grew sporadic and wild.

Murmured comments buzzed around the flag bridge. Zhaarnak made no response, letting his body language say he'd known it would work all along and not letting his relief show. Instead, he gave a curt series of orders, and his battle-line began to close in on the fortresses, behind a wall of SBMHAWK4s.

After it was over, Sanders pointed at the icon of the space station, now attended only by drifting wreckage.

"Fang," he said in tones of uncharacteristically diffident inquiry, "do you intend for the capital ships to proceed and deal with that? Or will you order the fighters rearmed?"

"Neither, Cub Saaanderzzz. I do not believe it will be necessary to engage the space station at this time." The young Human's reaction to this stereotype-shattering lack of bloodthirstiness was obvious, and brought a smile to Zhaarnak's face.

"The station has no capacity to project force into deep space," he condescended to explain. "And its shipyards are useless with no planetary population or industrial infrastructure left to furnish raw materials. So I see no reason to risk further losses-especially among our fighters-in reducing it. It can be left to . . . die on the vine, as I believe the Human expression goes."

Abruptly, his mood changed to grimness.

"No-we will wait here only long enough to send our carriers back to AP-4 in relays, to replenish our strikegroups from the stockpiles we have established there, and send a report to Raaymmonnd'presssssscott-telmasa. As soon as he indicates that the time is right to do so, we will proceed towards this system's other warp point."

"Through which," Uaaria put in quietly, "the last of their starships departed shortly before our planetary strikes began to go in."

"Naturally. They had no other exit from the system. That warp point must lead further along this warp chain. The word of what has happened here will reach the Bahgs at its other end, in Home Hive One, quite possibly before our report gets there. It will be interesting to observe the result."

The last elements of the Mobile Force had completed transit into the Franos system, and the courier drones were off, bearing the news to the other Mobile Force, three systems away.

It wasn't hard to predict the action that would be taken on the basis of that news. It was unavoidable, even if it courted potential disaster.

The new attack represented a more immediate threat to Franos than the sparring match at the other end of the warp chain. So the second Mobile Force would pull back one warp transit closer to Franos, even though it would mean giving up the Fleet's presence in the lifeless remains of what had been a System Which Must Be Defended-and the system which was this entire warp chain's only link with the rest of the Fleet. The two Mobile Forces would then be truly on their own.

The isolation would not necessarily be permanent, of course. The remaining Systems Which Must Be Defended would undoubtedly organize a counteroffensive as soon as possible, to reopen contact.

Still, it was far from an ideal option.

But options were becoming more and more limited.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Keeping Up the Pressure

"That's the last of them, Admiral."

"Thank you, Jacques," Raymond Prescott acknowledged the ops officer's report courteously, although it hadn't really been necessary. The admiral had watched in his plot as the last of the scarlet icons representing the Bug capital ships he'd expected to have to fight had merged into that of Home Hive One's Warp Point Five, and vanished.

The battle with the belatedly combined flotilla of gunboats and kamikazes could have been worse, though they'd taken the monitors Amos Huss and Torvulk with them and damaged a number of other ships before the combination of Allied fighters, gunboats, anti-fighter missiles, and CAM2s had blown the last of them to plasma. But then, shortly thereafter, their motherships had begun to exit the system.

"What you think it means, Sir?" Mandagalla asked.

"I think, pending confirmation via the ICN, that Fang Zhaarnak's assault has succeeded. They're pulling this force back so it can be closer to the front he's just opened up-shortening their defensive lines, as it were." Prescott glanced at Chung, and the intelligence officer nodded in agreement.

"Well, Admiral," Bichet ventured, I suppose this leaves us free to finish what we started."

"Eh?" Prescott looked up from the plot. His attention had been focused on Warp Point Five.

"Wiping out the rest of the system's warp point defenses, Sir," Bichet amplified.

"Oh, that." Prescott straightened up. "Yes, I suppose we might as well. We have to remain in the system anyway, while we replenish our fighters. Steve, I want you and Vice Admiral Raathaarn to organize relays of carriers to go back to AP-4 for replacements."

"Aye, aye, Sir."

"And, yes, Jacques, while that's progressing, we can finish sanitizing the system. But . . ." Prescott paused for a meaningful eye contact with each of the staffers in turn. "I want one thing clearly understood. The destruction of the warp point fortresses was never anything but a means to the end of drawing part of the Bugs' mobile forces here. In that, it's succeeded. But we must persist with the same strategy of whipsawing the Bugs between this task force and Zhaarnak's, which means it's necessary for us to keep up the pressure on them." He turned to the chief of staff. "Anna, we'll start sending RD2s through Warp Point Five immediately. As soon as our fighter losses have been made good, we'll advance through that warp point."

Mandagalla swallowed.

"Sir, I must point out that we have a number of damaged units-"

"We'll perform as much repair work as possible in the time we have. But to repeat, we cannot let up. We must advance without pausing any longer than absolutely necessary. Zhaarnak's relying on it, and he's held up his end of this operation. We have to hold up ours. Do I make myself clear?"

A mumble of assent ran through the staff.

The system beyond Warp Point Five proved to be a distant binary, a K-type orange star and a red dwarf, each with its own small planetary family. The viewscreen in Riva y Silva's flag briefing room was set to show the outside view, and now the light of the primary component flooded the room at second hand.

It was a subdued staff that met in that sullen light.

The battle had been a grim one. It might have had a very different conclusion, but for the way the Bug mobile force had depleted its gunboat and small craft strength in Home Hive One, leaving the capital ships to face Task Force 71 unsupported. But those capital ships, unlike the ones Zhaarnak had faced, had stood and fought. Chung was still setting up and knocking down theories to account for the difference. It was, Prescott suspected, a matter of small import to the crews of the eight capital ships and five carriers who had died in the course of the savage fighting that had snarled across the system for several days.

Fortunately, this system, like the one Zhaarnak had broken into, had held a medium-sized Bug population. So the task force had fought its way grimly in-system from the warp point through which it had come, crossing 5.4 light-hours to the innermost planet. There, while still fending off desperate attacks, Prescott had managed to get a fighter strike through to the planet's surface-with the now dreadfully familiar results. The afterglow of the last antimatter fireballs had still hung in the planet's dead air as the task force turned savagely on the disoriented Bug starships.

Few of those starships had escaped. Those who had, had fled even further sunward to a nearby inner-system warp point, obvious as such from its defenses, an array of fortresses identical to that which the task force's SBMHAWKs had reduced on its way into the system. There they'd vanished into warp transit, leaving Task Force 71 to nurse its wounds and contemplate its next move.

"The message to Fang Zhaarnak has been dispatched, Admiral," Mandagalla reported. "And our emergency repairs are proceeding."

"Good." Prescott turned to Chung. "Amos, have you had a chance to study the probe returns from Warp Point Three?"

Sending those RD2s through had been Prescott's first order of business after the battle. As in Home Hive One, they'd assigned numbers to the system's warp points. The one through which they'd come was number one; number two was the inner-system warp point through which the tatters of the Bug mobile force had departed. RD2s had ventured through it after them, and reported the usual array of warp point defenses and the neutrino spoor of another medium-sized planetary population. That left number three, even further from the primary than number one and on a bearing ninety degrees away from it. Prescott's eyes had seldom strayed from that icon.

"I have, Sir," the spook responded. "It's a red dwarf, with no evidence of any artificial energy emissions. Nor are there any Bug defenses. It's empty, Sir."

"Thank you." Prescott surveyed the entire staff. They looked uncomfortable. He would have expected nothing else, for Task Force 71 was advancing into the unknown, and for these people that was a situation calculated to conjure up the ghosts of Operation Pesthouse.

"The question now is whether Warp Point Two or Warp Point Three leads further along the chain towards Zhaarnak," he said. "Jacques?"

The ops officer cleared his throat.

"Admiral, I know the RD2s don't have the range to conduct a real warp point survey of the system beyond Warp Point Three. But that system's emptiness suggests that it's a dead end. At the same time, I'd certainly expect the Bug survivors to retreat toward their fellow Bugs-the ones opposing Fang Zhaarnak-by the most direct possible route. And they fled through Warp Point Two. My vote is for that one."

Prescott considered Bichet's argument for a moment, then nodded.

"Thank you. But before we decide, I'd like to ask Amos if he's been able to reach any further conclusions about the length of this warp chain." The admiral turned to the spook. "The important question, of course, is how many more systems lie between us and TF 72?"

Chung spread his hands eloquently.

"Admiral, I don't know. We can lop at least another five light-hours off the total real-space distance, and possibly as much as nine light-hours, depending on whether the warp point we really want is Warp Point Two or Warp Point Three," he pointed out, and Prescott nodded again. "Unfortunately," the intelligence officer continued, "that's all we can say with any certainty. Judging from our analysis of the time their mobile forces and courier drones seem to be taking to shuttle back and forth, the total real-space distance between Home Hive One and AP-5 is about twenty-four light-hours, which means that we're a maximum of nineteen light-hours from AP-5 as we stand right now. My best guess would make that no more than another three warp nexi between here and AP-5, which would mean two, between us and TF 72, assuming Fang Zhaarnak has indeed taken the next system on his list. But that's only a guess."

Bichet pounced.

"That reinforces the case in favor of Warp Point Two," he said firmly. "There isn't anything on the far side of Warp Point Three, much less the starships and fortresses there'd be in a system where they were preparing to make their stand against Fang Zhaarnak."

Chung looked uncomfortable. Intelligence officers were restricted line, ineligible for command in deep space-a caste distinction that lingered on, as real as it was unacknowledged. Worse, Chung's date of rank made him junior to Bichet. But he swallowed only once before speaking up.

"Granted: we know that the system is not the one in which we'll make contact with Fang Zhaarnak. But it would have to be an extraordinarily long distance between warp points for a single nexus to connect our present position to TF 72's. I believe there must be at least one more . . . and that we're looking through Warp Point Three at that additional system.

Bichet began to reply sharply, but Prescott shushed him with a gesture.

"Your reasoning, Amos?"

"First of all, Admiral, as the Bug remnants were retiring toward Warp Point Two, they dispatched courier drones across the system toward Warp Point Three. We detected their drive signatures. Why would they have sent courier drones into an uninhabited dead-end system?"

Bichet looked far from convinced, but his skepticism began to take on an overlay of thoughtfulness.

"Why," he countered stubbornly, "would they bottle themselves up by retreating into a cul-de-sac system?"

"I suggest," Prescott said quietly, before Chung could respond, "that the question supplies its own answer, Jacques. They hoped to draw us after them in a time-wasting detour that would allow them to concentrate against Zhaarnak. Failing that, they probably hope to make us hesitate to advance through Warp Point Three by threatening our rear. Fortunately, too few of them escaped to pose a credible threat."

"I gather, Sir," Mandagalla ventured, "that you've decided on Warp Point Three."

"Yes. I want you and Jacques to prepare a detailed operational plan for an advance through it as soon as the emergency repairs are completed."

"And as soon as we've sent carriers back to AP-4 for replacement fighters," Landrum prompted hopefully, but Prescott didn't take the cue. He looked over the entire meeting, but his eyes lingered on Landrum and on the com screen framing Raathaarn's avian face.

"I made my position clear back in Home Hive One," he said levelly. "We must maintain the momentum of our advance, without letup. All other considerations are secondary. Since I said that, we've put one more system between us and AP-4, which measurably increases the time it would take to ferry fighters forward from that system."

Landrum began to look alarmed, for he could see where the admiral was leading. He gestured for leave to speak, but Prescott continued inexorably.

"Furthermore, after our carrier losses here, our surviving fighters can fill the great majority of the hanger bays we have left. Isn't that true, Steve?"

Caught off guard, the farshathkhanaak answered automatically.

"It is, Sir. Eighty-two percent of them, to be exact."

"That's what I thought. And in light of those factors, I've decided to resume our advance without pausing to replenish our fighter strength."

The staffers' shock, combined with their realization that the admiral hadn't even remotely invited discussion, left silence to reign unchallenged in the briefing room. Raathaarn, not physically present-and, in any event, far nearer to Prescott in rank than most of those who were in it-finally broke it.

"Addmirrrallll-"

Prescott raised a hand-his artificial one, some recalled.

"One moment, Admiral Raathaarn. I have an additional reason for making that decision." He spoke a quiet command to the computer, and the main flat display screen lit with the same warp line chart Chung had shown him back in Home Hive One, extended now to show this system and the two the recon drones had probed from it.

"As I said, I don't believe the few Bugs who escaped through Warp Point Two constitute a serious threat to our rear. Nevertheless, there is a potential threat to it." He used a light-pencil to indicate the warp chain that stretched from Home Hive One to Alpha Centauri-the Anderson Chain. He left the dot of light resting on the Pesthouse System, and resumed, ignoring the frisson that ran through the compartment.

"Bug forces converged on Pesthouse to ambush Second Fleet," he said quietly, and he glanced at his staff. Aside from Landrum, all of them had been with him and Task Force 21 throughout that hideous ordeal. "One of those forces came from Home Hive One . . . but the others came from somewhere else. Bugs from that 'somewhere else' may move in behind us and reoccupy Home Hive One at any time."

Prescott suppressed a wintry grin as he saw Terence Mukerji's face go ashen. Having accepted the political admiral's apology (Why, he wondered, not for the first time, did I ever let Kevin Sanders talk me into that?), he could hardly exclude him from full staff conferences like this one. At least Mukerji had learned caution and seldom spoke up, but now terror overcame that caution.

"Ah, Admiral, are you saying . . . that is, do I understand that you believe the Bugs have led us into a trap?"

"Not really, Admiral Mukerji. I don't seriously believe that they would have sacrificed the planetary population here just to bait a trap. Admittedly, they abandoned Harnah to Admiral Antonov to help bait the trap they sprang on Second Fleet. But if there's any truth to our assumptions about the economic straits in which they now find themselves, then I think it's unlikely that they'll be quite as . . . cavalier as they were about writing off industrial capacity. But we can't ignore the possibility. For that matter, there might not be any deliberate 'trap' involved in it-they might simply have been unable to produce a sufficiently reinforced mobile component to hit us before we got this deep.

"In any event, we have to allow for the possibility that a strong Bug force could appear in Home Hive One while we're busy ferrying fighters through it. And what do you suppose a force like that would do to the unescorted carriers doing the ferrying?"

Mukerji wasn't encouraged. He started to wipe his brow, thought better of it, and looked around the room. Some of the expressions he saw suggested that he wasn't the only one just waking up to the full strategic implications of their new astrographic knowledge. That emboldened him to speak up again.

"Admiral, this is terrible. If the Bugs do reoccupy Home Hive One in force, we'll be isolated here in this warp chain, cut off from the Federation, with no path of retreat!"

"Admittedly, we're in a somewhat vulnerable position compared to Task Force 72, which has a clear, unthreatened route back to Federation space," Prescott acknowledged. "And that, ladies and gentlemen, is precisely the point."

He leaned forward, and all at once his face wore an intensity that was out of character even now, and would have been far more so before his brother's death.

"The way out of the potential danger we face is very straightforward. We'll advance along this chain until we break through whatever lies between us and Zhaarnak's task force. I'm confident all of you understand this. But I want it clearly understood by every squadron commander and every ship captain in Task Force 71, as well. We will resume our advance as soon as our repairs are made, and those repairs will be completed as rapidly as possible. See to it that they know that . . . and that I will accept no excuses."

With the sole exception of Anthea Mandagalla, none of Prescott's staffers, even the ones who'd been with him through the hell known as Operation Pesthouse, had ever really known Ivan Antonov. They'd been too junior then. But now, all at once, they understood what the old-timers meant. They hadn't understood it before, looking at their short, compact, quiet-spoken admiral. But now they did, even though he still hadn't raised his voice.

In retrospect, it had probably been a mistake for the Mobile Force to stand and fight where it had, in a system with a colony planet.

The reasons had seemed compelling enough at the time. The Fleet had developed a new sensitivity to losses of industrial capacity, and of the noncombatant population that sustained it. And not one, but two, colony planets had been at stake, including the one in the system in which what was left of the Mobile Force was now bottled up. The Fleet, after all, would have no function if it did not at least attempt to defend the remaining population centers. Furthermore, the Enemy's advance from both ends of this warp chain had left so few systems that a forward defense had seemed advisable.

Nevertheless, it was now clear that the Mobile Force should have made its stand one system further along. Granted, there were no warp point defenses there to lend their support. But there was also no population in that barren system for the Enemy to annihilate, and so leave the Mobile Force in an ineffectual torpor.

But it was too late for regrets. The decision had been made. And now even the fallback strategy had failed. The Enemy was declining to be lured into following the survivors into this dead-end system-effectively lost anyway, in economic terms, now that it was isolated-and thus delaying his advance. Instead, that advance was continuing inexorably towards the empty system that was next along this warp chain.

There was nothing there to resist the Enemy. And beyond lay Franos.