Which meant fighter and gunboat strikes at extreme range, he admitted unhappily to himself. He didn't like it, and he hated the thought of the casualties his strikegroups would suffer. But he had no choice, for only six of his own battlecruisers were armed with capital missiles. He would be outnumbered and outgunned in any duel with the similarly armed Antelopes, and his ships would be just as vulnerable to drive damage as they would . . . except that any of his ships slowed by damage would be doomed, for the rest of the flotilla could not slow its own pace to cover them.
"We'll have to take them out-or at least slow them down-with fighter strikes," he said finally, unable to keep the heaviness from his tone. "And we're going to have to do it in a way that leaves us enough reserve fighter strength to catch and finish off their shadowers once the starships are dealt with. Can your people hack that, Commander Hiithylwaaan?"
"I believe so, Sir," the fierce-beaked Ophiuchi replied after a moment. "It will not be easy, but we should have the strength for it, especially with the gunboats to assist." It was a mark of the direness of their straits that not a trace of the habitual Ophiuchi disdain for the slow, heavy-footed gunboats colored his manner. "I suggest that we engage the Antelopes and Antlers first, then go back and kill the Adders later if we must. We are unlikely to catch them with gunboats actually on their racks, but they will probably commit their surviving gunboat strength to the combat space patrol role against our strikes on their faster units, which will give us the opportunity to engage and destroy them in passing."
"I agree," Prescott said, nodding sharply. "But I don't want to expose your pilots to high attrition with repeated strikes, so let's try to do this in a single wave if we can. I want two-thirds of the fighters fitted with primary packs. The remaining third can fly escort with missiles, but a primary-armed squadron or two should be able to take out enough of an Antelope's engines to cut its speed in half in a single pass."
"It will mean more exposure to their close-in defenses," Hiithylwaaan pointed out, then made the small gesture his people used for a shrug. "But you are correct, Admiral. We will have to enter their defensive envelope anyway; best to engage with our most effective crippling weapon so that we need not enter it a second time."
"Very well, then." Prescott turned to Leopold and Chau. "At the same time, the flotilla will alter course to follow the strike towards Alpha Force. I want to be close enough to take them out completely if the strike results warrant it, and I don't want to get any closer to any of Beta's surviving gunboats than we have to. I don't want us in missile range of Alpha yet, either, but there's no point pretending they don't have a damned good idea of where we are already."
"No, Sir, there isn't," Leopold agreed. "On the other hand, closing the range on them will make it even easier for them to track us . . . and harder for us to drop back into cloak if the opportunity presents itself."
"Josh, every time we launch or recover-or engage one of their strikes-they'll find us all over again, anyway, and as Ba Hai just pointed out, we have a much poorer idea of what Beta has. On top of that, Alpha is the one between us and our warp point, and until we can cripple at least one group badly enough to give us a chance of outrunning it-and deal with their damned gunboats once and for all-we're not going to shake them. That being so, I'd rather keep our combat strength concentrated and give our pilots as short a recovery flight time as possible."
"Yes, Sir," Leopold said, and Prescott nodded.
"All right, then, people. Let's do it," he said briskly.
Sensors detected the sudden resurgence of drive sources as the Enemy launched his attack craft once more. It was unfortunate, though scarcely unexpected. Clearly the Fleet units between him and escape must be destroyed or disabled if the Enemy were to have any hope of disengaging and evading successfully. And it was quite possible he would succeed, for rather more of his attack craft survived than the plan had allowed for at this point. But there were ways that situation might be redressed, and orders went out to the special units to prepare to initiate the new anti-attack craft tactics.
Commander Hiithylwaaan, OADC, led the massed pilots of SF 62 towards their foes. The Cormorants' gunboats came with them, but they were too big and slow, relatively speaking, for the close-in attack role. Instead, they carried AFHAWKs once again, and the plan was for them to lie well back and provide long-range supporting fire against any Bug gunboats which might attempt to intercept the main strike.
Unfortunately, the Bugs seemed disinclined to commit their gunboats . . . and their ECM was more effective than usual, making exact unit identification difficult. It couldn't successfully disguise a military-grade drive as a commercial one, yet there was more uncertainty than Hiithylwaaan could have desired, and a few additional military-drive ships had turned up. Some of them clearly weren't Antelopes or Antlers, but that was about all he could say for certain. It was even possible they represented a new class no Allied force had previously encountered. In any case, they wouldn't have had military drives unless the Bugs thought it was important for them to be able to keep pace with Allied designs, and that made them worthwhile targets.
Four or five of the unknowns lay between his strikegroups and the Antelopes, and he began to tap commands into his onboard computer, designating them as the first targets. The Bugs had allowed a gap to open between them and the rest of their fast starships, he noted, putting them beyond the range at which the Antelopes' point defense could assist their own close-in defenses, and he clicked his beak in the Ophiuchi equivalent of a smile. He would hit each of them simultaneously with a two or three-squadron attack, he decided. That would swamp their own point defense and let him kill them quickly, with minimal losses, before he turned on their more distant consorts.
The special units watched the Enemy strike bear down upon them, noting the distribution of drive sources. It would appear that the deception measures had succeeded. The removal of certain weapons and systems and the reconfiguration of the special units' shields had significantly altered their emissions signatures. The Fleet had hoped that the alteration would prevent the Enemy from guessing what the special units truly were-rather as the Enemy had done to the Fleet by disguising his antimatter laden gunboat lures as standard missile pods. There was, of course, no way to be certain that the deception had succeeded in this instance, yet the developing pattern of the attack appeared hopeful. Certainly the Enemy seemed to have decided to sweep the special units aside before they could fall back within the defensive perimeter of the remainder of the Fleet.
Fortunately, the special units had no intention of doing anything of the sort.
Hiithylwaaan's eyes narrowed as his five-pronged strike's components reached their IPs and turned in to the attack. At this range, his fighters' scanners should have been able to see through the Bug EW and recognize their targets, and they couldn't. Or, at least, what they were seeing didn't match any Bug ship types in his onboard computer's threat recognition files.