"Skipper-!"
"Yeah, I know." Her own fighter's computer had already screamed "Incoming!" at her. "Evasive action, everybody! And follow me in!"
She rolled her fighter inward with practiced ease, to engage the gunboats while letting the computers fend off the AFHAWKs. Like trying to fight a karate bout with a swarm of bees buzzing around your head, she thought. And no Ophiuchi. . . .
Then they were in among the gunboats, and there was no more time for thought.
Liang was the first to die.
Raymond Prescott kept his face expressionless as he watched the loss figures add up.
We've gotten spoiled, he told himself. I can't even remember the last time we lost more fighters than the Bugs did gunboats in an engagement like this.
It had been the AFHAWKs from the Bug battlecruisers, of course. But in spite of them, in spite of everything, the fighters had smashed the Bug formation's outer gunboat layer. Now their survivors were returning to be rearmed, and the battlecruiser screen was placing itself in the Bugs' path.
Those battlecruisers were BCRs of the Terran Dunkerque-C, Orion Prokhalon II-B, and Gorm Bolzucha-C classes, able to dance away from heavier foes while delivering blows with the capital missiles that constituted their exclusive offensive armament. They needed that agility now, lest the Bug formation get close enough to crush them beneath the weight of its hoarded kamikazes. Their need to stay away from the kamikazes meant that they couldn't stop that formation's inexorable progress. They could, however, inflict losses entirely out of proportion to the twenty-seven of their own who died in the missile exchange. More important by far, they weakened the formation's integrity, for every Bug battlecruiser slowed by engine damage was left behind. So it was a badly weakened globe of Bug cruisers that finally delivered the kamikazes within striking range of Seventh Fleet's battle-line. In the cold, remorseless calculus of combat, Prescott was willing to accept the loss of well over a quarter of his total battlecruiser strength for that result.
He dragged his attention back to Jacques Bichet's most recent report.
"The Bug light cruisers-particularly the Epee-class and suicide-riders-are still trying to press home attacks. But our own cruiser screen has stopped all of them well short of the battle-line. It looks-"
What it looked like to the ops officer would remain forever unknown, for at that moment the shrunken Bug globe-formation in the display dissolved.
It really was that abrupt. The carefully husbanded kamikazes at the center of the now almost nonexistent battlecruiser shell joined with the remaining battlecruisers and streamed toward Seventh Fleet's battle-line in a crimson tide of death.
"Commodore Landrum," Prescott said quietly to the farshathkhanaak, "inform Vice Admiral Raathaarn that it's time to commit the Ophiuchi fighters."
"That's the last of their light cruisers, Sir," Mandagalla reported wearily.
Prescott nodded. Four hundred fighters with fresh Ophiuchi pilots had massacred the Bug kamikazes before a single one of them had reached Seventh Fleet's battle-line. After that, it had been a simple matter to eradicate the unsupported Bug cruisers from long range. And yet . . .
"What about their heavy units?"
Mandagalla's weariness seemed to deepen.
"They're still in the process of transiting through Warp Point One, Sir. Of course, there's no way we can get there in time to-"
"Of course." The Bugs' attack might not have so much as scratched the paint of Prescott's heavy units, but it had bought time for their battle-line to escape to Anderson Four before his badly disorganized strikegroups could get themselves sorted back out and swarm over them.
He dismissed his disappointment with a headshake. At a cost of twenty-nine battlecruisers (plus another six seriously damaged), three hundred and two gunboats, and 2,781 fighters, Seventh Fleet had secured Pesthouse.
Zhaarnak agreed with his conclusions as the two of them conversed later via com screen.
"The loss ratio was overwhelmingly in our favor, Raaymmonnd. They lost well over three hundred cruisers of all classes. Of course, our own battlecruiser losses are disturbing."
"Especially given that we've just seen a demonstration of how essential a battlecruiser screen is against their new kamikaze formation. We're going to have to be a little stingier with ships of that class in the future."
"That could hamper our tactical flexibility," the Orion said glumly.
"Truth. But . . ." Prescott straightened up. "Never mind. There are still the warp point fortresses to worry about. Let's get them cleaned up. I want every living Bug out of the system."
"Of course."
Zhaarnak, who hadn't been at the First Battle of Pesthouse, looked at Prescott, who had. Very few people who hadn't survived Second Fleet's agony in Operation Pesthouse could have understood what was happening behind Raymond Prescott's round-pupiled Human eyes, but Zhaarnak'telmasa had been at Kliean. His task force had been driven out of that system . . . and he'd commanded another, far more powerful task force, when Third Fleet fought its way back in and discovered that two entire core world planetary populations had been annihilated. So, yes, he understood what taking this system meant to his vilkshatha brother as he watched Prescott's gaze shift to the outside view of the spaces lit by Pesthouse's blue giant star.
The ghosts were still there. But now they were appeased.
"Yes," Raymond Prescott said after a moment. "By all means, let's finish sanitizing the system."
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: Who are those people?
Kthaara'zarthan might be under a direct personal command from the Khan to leave Operation Ivan to others and remain in the Alpha Centauri system. But-so he reasoned-nobody had said he had to stay dirtside on Nova Terra.
So it wasn't quite disobedience when he came almost four light-hours out, to the vicinity of the closed warp point behind which Anderson One lurked. And now, with the prowling gait age had finally begun to stiffen, he moved through the passageways of Hiarnow'kharnak, flagship of the newly organized Eighth Fleet.
As he entered the conference room and acknowledged its occupants' greetings, Kthaara consoled himself, as he often did, with the thought that it wasn't everyone who had two First Fangs to execute his plans in his stead. Not that the Humans called Ellen MacGregor that, of course. The Sky Marshal was to remain here with a weakened Terran Home Fleet, supported by a massive shell of mines, fortresses and buoys, to secure Alpha Centauri-and Sol behind it-while Ynaathar'solmaak led Eighth Fleet through the closed warp point and down the Anderson Chain to meet Seventh Fleet.
Those two weren't the only ones in the conference room. Marcus LeBlanc had beaten Kthaara here by hours, which meant he'd had time to study the news that had brought both of them rushing out from Nova Terra.
"Well, Ahhhdmiraal LeBlaaanc?" Kthaara prompted as he lowered himself onto the cushions, less smoothly and more cautiously than he once had.
LeBlanc cleared his throat.
"As we all know, Sir, the Bugs have long since figured out what our second-generation recon drones are for-although they haven't duplicated them yet, for reasons which, inevitably, remain obscure. And, unfortunately, even the stealthiest drone isn't completely invisible if you know what to look for. So now they routinely patrol their warp points heavily, and we have to send enormous waves of RD2s through to assure the survival of any of them. Continuous, ongoing RD2 surveillance is a thing of the past."