"Maybe it does," LeBlanc said, still in devil's advocate mode. "But, by the same token, that could mean a lot of strength has been bled off from it to help those other home hives try to hold the Anderson Chain. You have to admit, your RD2s have detected very little in the way of heavy mobile forces."
"Which proves exactly nothing. The Bugs have been patrolling that warp point so heavily the drones haven't been able to penetrate any distance beyond it. Just because we haven't detected an ambush-"
"Relax!" LeBlanc sat up beside her. Their knees didn't quite touch. "I'm just pulling your chain. The fact is, I happen to agree with you. GFGHQ is suffering from a bad case of 'victory disease.' You'd think the losses in Operation Ivan would have cured it, but . . ." He trailed off into a brooding silence before resuming. "You're not going to protest it, though, are you?"
"No. I'll follow their orders. But that doesn't mean I have to share their cockiness. I've got a few precautions in mind."
"Yes, I know you do." LeBlanc brooded a moment longer. "I ought to be going with you," he repeated mulishly.
"No," Murakuma smiled, but her voice was very serious, "you shouldn't. You probably don't remember what we said to each other once-"
"-on a terrace on Nova Terra, looking out to sea, almost five years ago," LeBlanc interrupted, and she turned her head to stare at him.
"So you do remember! Then you must understand."
"No," he said flatly. "I didn't understand then, and I still don't. It's not your responsibility to keep those you care about alive, Vanessa."
"You're right: you don't understand. Can't you see? It's not a matter of some sort of moral responsibility, Marcus. It's fear." She turned her head and met his eyes unflinchingly as she finally admitted the truth and put it into words for them both. "It's bad enough having to function in the face of death, even though I've had to learn to do it. But if your life were on the line at the same time . . ."
And he did, indeed, see. He just didn't want to admit it, and so, without any words-he could think of none, anyway-he took her in his arms.
With the always fragile line of communication long since cut, it was impossible to know whether the other two remaining Systems Which Must Be Defended were still in contact with one another. Nor did it make any practical difference at the moment. This system was uncompromisingly thrown back on its own resources and those of the systems which serviced it.
Fortunately, those resources were far from inconsiderable. This, after all, was the most densely populated and heavily industrialized of all the Systems Which Must Be Defended. The enemy had no way of knowing the full extent of that population and industrialization, for none of his probes had gotten close enough to the secondary stellar component to detect the two fully developed planets that orbited it, for a total of five Worlds Which Must Be Defended. They could produce gunboats and small craft in virtually any desired quantity, to support the twenty-five monitors, seventy-two superdreadnoughts, seventy-two battlecruisers, and ninety light cruisers that stood behind the massive warp point defenses.
Arguably, however, the most valuable resource of all was the Enemy's strategic ignorance. He had no inkling that more of his own kind lay three systems away in the opposite direction, where they had faced the Fleet, stalemated, for so long. A coordinated two-front offensive would have been very difficult to deal with.
And this time, that strategic ignorance would be matched by tactical ignorance.
The Fleet had gone to great lengths to counter the Enemy's intensely inconvenient robot probes. It had smothered the space around the warp point with continuously patroling gunboats and armed small craft. Furthermore, it had pulled those capital ships not on full alert status well back from that warp point, and powered their drives down to standby level, rendering their emissions effectively undetectable.
And, of course, the Enemy couldn't possibly imagine the number of gunboats and small craft that crouched on the planetary surfaces. Or the new innovation with which those gunboats had been supplied.
Vanessa Murakuma permitted herself a grim smile when the sensor reports of awakening Bug starship drives began to light up TFNS Li Chien-lu's flag bridge threat board. She visualized Marcus, back on Zephrain, smiling the same way at the confirmation of their suspicions. . . . But no, he'd be too eaten away by worry to smile about anything.
At least he'd be pleased that their shared skepticism had led her to proceed cautiously into the system-now identified as Home Hive Two from analysis of the orbital fortresses through whose wreckage they were currently advancing.
There'd been forty-eight of those immense constructs, to say nothing of ninety-six defensive heavy cruisers and thirty suicide-rider light cruisers, all surrounded by a veritable haze of mines-eight thousand patterns of them-spangled with thirty-three hundred deep-space buoys. Murakuma had had no intention of rushing in against such defenses. She'd emplaced over half her total inventory of mines around the Orpheus 1 side of the warp point in thin shells which would have been largely useless against capital ships. But by accepting a lower density, she'd been able to emplace them in much greater depth, which would provide an attritional shield to absorb and blunt any gunboat counterattack. Then she'd committed her SBMHAWKs in careful waves, provoking the Bugs into activating shell after shell of ECM-equipped buoys and then sweeping them away with further waves of HAWK2-equipped missiles. Now, with her battle-line making transit against the crippled fortresses and the remnants of the cruisers, she still held a substantial emergency supply of SBMHAWKs in reserve.
It might be a good thing she did, she reflected, for the sensor readings continued to pour in, and the figures mounted and mounted. It wasn't so much the total numbers and tonnage opposing her-daunting though those were-as it was the Bugs' closeness to the warp point. And they were getting even closer, closing in for a point-blank duel.
"They were lying with their drives stepped down to almost nothing," Leroy McKenna stated, echoing her own thoughts.
"It would appear," Murakuma remarked, "that we've been had."
"I wasn't going to put it that way, Sir-" the chief of staff began.
"Nor should you," Murakuma cut in briskly. "Because it's inaccurate. I've been had. But at least most of our capital ships have already completed transit and our CSP is out." She glanced at Anson Olivera for confirmation of the last, and the farshathkhanaak nodded emphatically. "Good. If they want a toe-to-toe slugging match, I'm not averse to it."
She spoke loudly enough to be sure everyone nearby heard her, but it wasn't just bravado. She knew the quality of her personnel.
"And now, Captain Delbridge" she resumed, speaking into the intercom to her flag captain, "please sound General Quarters. This won't be long in coming."
The initial portion of the plan had worked.
Unfortunately, there were no perfect solutions to the problems the Fleet faced. Unlike starships, gunboats and small craft could not cloak, and the Fleet had begun to appreciate at least some of the advantages the Enemy's warp-capable missile pods bestowed upon him. Those advantages had become more pronounced as the Fleet's supporting resource base was carved away and the Enemy's industrial advantage became more and more overwhelming. In the final analysis, no combat space patrol of gunboats was survivable in the face of the unending hurricane of missile pods the Enemy could pour through a warp point, especially since the introduction of the missiles which point defense couldn't intercept.