The staff, with their terminals flanked by untidy stacks of hard copy, filled the compartment. The senior flag officers attended electronically, and had taken up a fair amount of time bickering over who got which ship for which task force. But now Terence Mukerji was striking a new note, and she sighed inwardly as she composed herself to hear him out.
"Of course I can understand your orders to remain in cloak after we transit to Anderson Three, Sky Marshal," he was saying in his unctuous way. "And also your policy of using RD2s to probe the Anderson Three warp point and all subsequent warp points before we transit. After all, this system is the last one we can be certain the Alliance still controls. But we must consider that the Bugs may be—indeed, very probably are—sending blocking forces to bar at least one of these warp points."
"Then what's your point, Admiral?" she demanded, reining in her annoyance. "It's precisely to warn us of such a force that I ordered the probing of the warp points. But in this fluid situation, the blocking forces may not be in place as yet. That's why I insisted on haste in assembling this force."
"Yes, Sir," Mukerji murmured. "And why we didn't wait for additional forces to arrive from Sol."
Avram resolutely held her temper and continued as though the interruption hadn't taken place. "Likewise, remaining cloaked between transits will maximize our chances of advancing up this chain undetected if we can make it through the warp points before opposition crystallizes." She had to put up with Mukerji, whose most obvious talent was that of knowing which politicians to cultivate. More than once, she'd listened to Agamemnon Waldeck praise him as "an officer with a sound awareness of the political realities," and somehow refrained from gagging.
"Ah, yes, Sky Marshal. To be sure. At the same time . . . well, I would be derelict in my responsibility as second in command if I failed to point out that such a swift, undetected passage may carry its own risk."
"Precisely what are you talking about, Admiral?"
"Simply this, Sky Marshal. If enemy blocking forces of sufficient strength arrive in position after we've transited, and if we find that Second Fleet has already been destroyed or rendered too weak to be of assistance, then we would be trapped ourselves." Mukerji paused and, misinterpreting Avram's silence, pressed on. "So might I suggest that a more deliberate advance, coupled with attempts to ascertain Second Fleet's status, might be in order? This way we could avoid the possibility of, as it were, throwing good money after bad." He paused again, awaiting appreciation of his witticism. But what he saw in Avram's expression decided him against continuing. As the pause stretched and stretched, the noises in Xingú's conference room died, one after another, until there was utter silence.
Avram broke it. "Understand me, Admiral Mukerji . . . and everyone else in the sound of my voice. Rescuing Second Fleet is our only consideration. We will pursue any course of action that offers a possibility of doing so, and to that end, I'm prepared to risk the loss of this entire force. We are all expendable!" She glared directly at the pickup and noted out of the corner of an eye that Mukerji's face, normally the color of weak coffee, seemed to have acquired an extra dollop of cream. "Is that unmistakably clear, Admiral Mukerji?" You pusillanimous turd, she silently added. Without waiting for a reply, she cut the connection. Then she swung her glare towards the staff. With comical abruptness, the hubbub resumed. Avram spared a moment to look back towards the view screen, where the distant stars gave no sense of motion although she knew that they were proceeding towards the Anderson Three warp point with all the speed their drives could provide.
You would've squashed him flat long ago, Ivan Nikolayevich, she thought as she gazed at those frustratingly motionless stars. But I'm not you. Nobody is. Is that why I'm prepared to risk this force for any chance of getting you out alive? Or is it because Second Fleet is the cream of the TFN, and its loss is unthinkable? Either way, I'm making a logically unexceptionable decision, on the basis of cold calculation. Of course I am. Got to keep telling myself that.
* * *
"Red Seven-Two's picking up something ahead, Skip."
"What?" Commodore Lucinda Chou, officially Special Operations Officer for Fighter Operations but known to one and all as Second Fleet's farshathkhanaak, crossed quickly to her assistant's console. Chou would vastly have preferred to be out in her own command fighter, but Thor's CIC was the only logical place for her to be. Simple communications lag would have made it impractical for her to coordinate her recon shell from a point on its periphery.
"Not sure yet, Skip," Commander Ashengi replied. "Looks like a cloaked starship, but it's way out at thirty light-minutes. Seven-Two got dead lucky to pick up anything at that range."
"Maybe they've got a malfunctioning ECM suite," Chou murmured. She turned and looked into the huge holo tank—eight times the size of the one on Thor's flag deck—and rubbed her chin. The tiny light code was barely inside the perimeter of even CIC's plot, but it was almost squarely between Second Fleet and the Anderson Four warp point. That icon might be a sensor ghost, and she wanted to believe it was, but she didn't.
"Inform Admiral Taathaanahk and the Flag, Aucke," she said quietly. "Then set up an armed recon sweep. The Admiral may just want someone to go take a closer look at this."
* * *
Commander Aathmaahr led his mixed Terran-Ophiuchi strikegroup towards the contact. Aathmaahr had been a pilot—one of the elite Corthohardaa, whom the Terrans called "the Screaming Eagles" from the stylized hasfrazi head of their insignia—for over twenty Terran Standard years, but he'd never seen combat until the Bugs attacked. Now he'd seen more than he'd ever wanted to, and there seemed no end in sight. Well, he corrected himself, there is one possible end, but I will defer it as long as possible.
He clicked his beak in a grim chuckle and checked his instruments. Like most of his people, he felt disdain for the slower, clumsier gunboats. They were dangerous, yes, but they could never match a fighter's dogfighting maneuverability, and Aathmaahr had made ace (a Human concept the OADC had adopted with enthusiasm) in his very first engagement against them. Of course, that had been before they started carrying AFHAWKs. Trying to go in close now would be even more costly, but squadron for squadron, and despite their point defense, gunboats were still no match for fighters armed with FM3s.
Yet they can kill us, he reminded himself, remembering how the human Chou had become Second Fleet's farshathkhanaak. That post had been Captain Ythaanhk's . . . until he met one of the gunboat-launched AFHAWKs head on. Not that Chou wasn't a satisfactory replacement. She was less gifted than an Ophiuchi behind the controls, but she certainly understood fighter ops.
He checked his sensors again and shook off his daydreams. His strikegroup was beyond the recon shell perimeter now, and if that sensor ghost was truly a starship, his arrow straight course towards it would draw a response soon.
His fighters streaked onward, laden with three missiles each, and a worm of tension coiled within him. Surely the Bugs realized his purpose, and virtually all Bug starships carried gunboat racks. Only their pure missile platforms retained conventional XO racks, instead, and—
"Talon Leader, Talon Green One," a human voice crackled in his earbug. "Do you see what I see at zero-zero-zero?"
"Afffffirrmatttive, Grrreeen One," Aathmaahr replied. He felt a spike of pique that Lieutenant Brahman had gotten his report in before any of his Ophiuchi pilots, but it was distant and far away. The icons of Bug gunboats were blinking onto his plot in shoals, hundreds of them, with the instantaneous solidity possible only to small craft launching from cloaked starships.
Well, they've seen us, a small voice said deep within him.
"Aaaalphhhha One," he said to his tac officer, and Lieutenant Dahrmaar clicked his beak in assent. Long, strong fingers tapped at his console, flashing the order to the rest of the strikegroup, and Aathmaahr's squadrons closed in around his own fighter. The Bugs had left their launch just too late, he thought grimly. They were launching across a broad arc, which gave an indication of their
fleet's deployment, but it also meant they needed time to concentrate. No more than fifty or sixty gunboats could intercept him short of the icon he'd come to examine, and he had forty-eight fighters to throw against them.
Even odds are in our favor, he reminded himself as his pilot rammed the drive to full power, and took his strikegroup straight down the enemy's throat.
* * *
Attack Force One had waited eight days for the enemy. His long delay—probably to make repairs—had given the dispersed attack forces ample time to spread out to envelop him, whatever course he finally took, but it was obvious he had detected them at last. Fortunately, he had sent in only a fairly weak force of attack craft; unfortunately, the powerful reinforcements the core systems had sent up to support the attack forces' organic gunboat components were seventy light-minutes astern of Attack Force One . . . and so were the escort cruisers which were most effective against attack craft. Their inability to cloak had dictated their deployment, for it had been essential to hide the attack forces' presence from the enemy as long as possible.
But the enemy knew now, and com lasers sent their summons flashing astern at the speed of light. Even so, the message would take over an hour to be received, and Attack Force One's own gunboats raced to meet the enemy.
* * *
The fighters held their missiles until the last moment, then punched every bird straight down the Bugs' throat at a range of five and a half light-seconds—a half light-second beyond the range of their AFHAWKs. Aathmaahr was only peripherally interested in killing gunboats; his mission was to determine what the enemy had in the way of starships, and he flung everything he had at the only foes between him and his objective.
Forty-eight fighters salvoed a hundred and forty-four missiles. Seventy acquired lock and homed for the kill, and point defense engaged them as they closed. Thirty-four were destroyed short of their targets; thirty-six went home, and fifty-six percent of the gunboats died. But then the survivors salvoed their ordnance, and a hundred and twelve AFHAWKs came streaking back.
The strikegroup split apart, each squadron maneuvering hard in the Waldeck Weave and its Ophiuchi equivalent. There were enough missiles out there to kill the entire strikegroup twice over, but the Bugs had fired too soon. Accuracy was poor at that range, and the fighters' evasive maneuvers made it poorer. "Only" seventeen of Aathmaahr's fighters were blown apart, and the thirty-one survivors swept back in, drives howling, to tear into the twenty-eight remaining gunboats with internal lasers. Eight more fighters died, but they took all of the gunboats with them, and Aathmaahr led his shrunken group past the tumbling wreckage of friend and foe alike.
"One passs!" he cautioned his pilots as they swept in towards the range at which no ECM could hide a starship from them. There would be time for no more—not with the other gunboats closing in vengefully from all sides—but without their missiles, his fighters had a forty-five percent speed advantage. They could get their look, then evade and—
His thoughts broke off in disbelief as the Bug starship appeared suddenly on his sensors. Impossible! Nothing was that big! But the lumbering behemoth refused to vanish. It hung against the starscape, armored flanks studded with cavernous weapon bays, and he shook himself.
"Ffffalll backkk!" he barked over the com. "Tannngo Two!"
The twenty-three surviving members of SG 371 turned and fled for their carrier. Behind them, the stupendous ship they'd come so far to find ground steadily onward with its consorts.
CHAPTER FORTY
Even Legends Die
TFNS Colorado's flag bridge was deathly silent as the holo of an unbelievable starship hung in the tactical display. It wasn't a real visual, just computer imagery generated from the fighters' sensor data, but that made it no less terrifying. Twice the size of a superdreadnought, it hung there like a curse and chilled every heart with the firepower it must pack.
Too bad LeBlanc isn't here, Ivan Antonov thought distantly. He keeps insisting Bugs don't think like we do, and here is the proof. Three entire fleets, counting the one we just destroyed. Over five hundred starships—a hundred and sixty of them superdreadnoughts—God only knows how many gunboats, and the surrender of a populated star system just to bait a trap, and I walked straight into it.
He glared at the image, feeling the sickness and self-disgust at his core, then closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath.
No. It can't all have been a trick. They would have required omniscience to deliberately let us see them in Centauri just to lure us here. No. They set this up only after we destroyed their covering force in Anderson One, yet that makes it no better. I have led three quarters of Home Fleet into a death trap.
He opened his eyes once more and made himself think.
"Estimates on firepower?" he asked de Bertholet quietly.
"Impossible to say, Sir." The ops officer seemed almost grateful for the technical question. "We've never even considered building something that size, so I don't have any idea how much mass its engines eat up. At a guess, I'd say it probably has about a sixty or seventy percent edge over a superdreadnought in weapons' tonnage. It can't be a lot more, even as big as it is; the support systems for its crew have to be scaled up, as well."
"So it has only a seventy percent individual superiority, eh?"
Antonov's wry voice was poison dry, and de Bertholet surprised himself with a bark of strained laughter. He smoothed any sign of levity from his face instantly, but Antonov only produced a wintry smile without taking his eyes from the display.
"Unless their construction rate is far higher than our own, it must have taken at least two years to build such vessels," he spoke as if only to himself, then nodded. "Yes, that would make sense. Especially since they lacked command datalink at the outset. They couldn't match our datagroups' size, so they built bigger individual units to even the firepower." He frowned, rubbing his chin. "Yet why wait this long to commit them? Unless their breakthrough into modern datalink came as a surprise to them?" He cocked his head, then nodded again. "If that were the case, then they would have had to refit with the new command systems before committing them—possibly even redesign their entire armaments. We know they prefer specialized designs, after all. . . ."
He gazed at the holo a moment longer, then turned away. A raised hand summoned Stovall and Kozlov to join de Bertholet at his side, and he folded his hands behind him as he faced his senior staffers grimly.
"The level of threat has just risen," he said flatly. "We lack even the most imperfect estimate of the firepower this new class represents, nor do we know how many of them the enemy has. We have seen only one. There may be dozens, or they may have only a handful; the only way we can discover which is to engage them."
Stovall nodded with matching grimness. The others simply waited, eyes and mouths tense.
"Unfortunately, we must assume that whatever force their drones summoned also has such units. If this is true, a warp point assault against them becomes even more unacceptable. Nor can we risk a head-on engagement with the enemy force we have detected. If we take heavy losses against the single force we know about, we weaken ourselves—perhaps fatally—against any additional enemies."
He paused, and Stovall frowned. "You're correct, of course, Sir," he said slowly, "but they're between us and the warp point. To me, that suggests they must have had us under observation the entire time, probably with cloaked light cruisers, or they couldn't have positioned themselves so precisely. Assuming that's true, they have the advantage of knowing where we are. If we let them choose the time and place to hit us—" He shrugged, and Antonov nodded.
"True enough, but we have advantages of our own. Our ships' drives may be less than fully reliable, yet while they last, we retain our speed advantage, and for all we know, this new class is still slower. With a fighter shell posted sufficiently far out, we should be able to detect them—even cloaked—soon enough to evade them."
"While our drives last," Stovall conceded.
"And," Antonov went
on, "if they bring up light cruisers to screen their formations against our fighters, they'll become much easier to track, since their fleet-type CLs can't cloak. The same is true of their gunboats, the only vessels with sufficient speed to overhaul us. In short, they cannot force us to commit to close action until and unless we allow them to."
"But, Sir," de Bertholet said quietly, "sooner or later, we'll simply run out of supplies, or our drives will pack in. All they have to do is sit on our exit warp point long enough, and we'll have no choice but to come to them sooner or later."
"Precisely," Antonov said, and his staff blinked at his icy, armor-plated smile. "And that's why we must keep them from deciding to do just that. We must draw their attention and be certain we hold it—be certain they keep trying to overtake us rather than give up and fall back on the warp point—until the final component of their trap makes transit."
"That could take another ten or twelve days, Sir," Stovall said, "and they're going to be throwing every gunboat they can at us the entire time."
"Understood. It will be up to our fighters and escort vessels to hold them off. It will be difficult, and our orders must stress the absolute necessity of conserving ammunition, yet it is the only hope I see. We must stay alive long enough for their full force to arrive and then break out at a time of our choosing." He paused and swept his eyes slowly from face to face, and his deep voice was a subterranean rumble when he spoke again. "Whatever we may do, our losses will be heavy. Accept that now, for it is inevitable. But we must get whatever we can out of this trap."
One by one, his staff nodded. He was right. The task he proposed to accept was virtually impossible—evading multiple enemy fleets while playing matador to all of them would require maneuvers no navy had ever trained for—yet it was the only chance Second Fleet had. And if any flag officer in the Terran Navy could pull it off, the man before them was that officer.
"Very well," Antonov said. "We will alter course, Commander de Bertholet. Turn us away from them and take us above the ecliptic. We will begin by heading away from the warp point."