He activated the holo sphere around which they stood. In the inner-system display, the green icon that was Task Force 71 split into two smaller ones, which homed in on Planets I and III. Prescott himself would lead the attack on the innermost planet, leaving the outermost-the most populous and important of the three inhabited worlds, judging from the energy emissions-to Shaaldaar. Planet II would be dealt with later.
There was no argument, not even from Bichet. There was, however, an undercurrent that Prescott had no trouble detecting. They wonder if I'm predisposed to favor whatever interpretation of the facts allows me to get down to the business of sterilizing the system without delay.
I wonder if I am, too.
But Chung does make sense.
"Ah, one other matter, Admiral." Mukerji broke the silence. "I understand why you've found it necessary to split Force Leader Shaaldaar's task group into two elements, one of them under your own direct command. But you've also split Admiral Raathaarn's and Admiral Kolchak's task groups between the two elements. I'm concerned about the complications that introduces into the command structure."
"It's a little late to be bringing it up, Admiral Mukerji," Prescott observed mildly. Or it would be, if you were doing it for any reason except to build a case for possible later use in playing the blame game. But in that event, you'll probably be dead-proving the old adage about silver linings. "And, at any rate, I see no alternative. It's necessary to provide each of the two attack elements with comparable fighter strength, and this is the only way to do it."
"Of course, Sir," Mukerji murmured obsequiously, and Prescott suppressed an urge to wipe his hands on his trousers.
The task force continued on its sunward course, and increasingly detailed sensor returns from the scouts and RD2s brought the system's defenses into clearer focus. Each of the three inhabited planets had the array of orbital fortresses, with a mammoth space station as centerpiece, that Andrew had reported. Indeed, it was all very reminiscent of Home Hive Three, even to the low state of readiness. Equally quiescent were the mobile forces-twelve monitors, twelve superdreadnoughts, and eighteen battlecruisers-in orbit around the third planet. Their presence there tended to confirm the identification of that world as the system's demographic and industrial center of gravity.
Prescott studied the readouts in a black abstraction that no one was inclined to interrupt. He didn't take Mukerji's funk seriously, of course. But . . . where had they gone, those other ships that Concorde had detected? Thirty-five monitors and almost forty superdreadnoughts, not to mention their escorting battlecruisers, represented one hell of a lot of firepower. Something must have inspired the Bugs to send it elsewhere, but Prescott had been thoroughly briefed on all of the operations the Grand Alliance currently contemplated. Nothing on the schedule-except for his own offensive-should have required reinforcements that heavy. And Chung was completely correct in at least one respect: if the Bugs had been given any reason to suspect Seventh Fleet was en route to the system, the logical place to stop it would have been in AP-5, and none of the missing ships had been there. So where where they?
The obvious answer was that they could have gone anywhere. This system could be a staging area for any of the war's fronts, and even though the Bugs did appear to have reverted to the strategic defensive, they could have moved those ships for any number of reasons, not just in response to Allied moves. Given the Alliance's near-total ignorance of the internal warp layout of the Bugs' domain, who was to say where Home Hive One's open warp points might lead?
It was a reasonable question, but a basic stubbornness wouldn't let him simply file the matter away under the heading of "Answer Unknowable." This couldn't be an accident. There must, he felt with a certainty beyond mere logic, be some immediate significance to the absence of such an awesome assemblage of tonnage and firepower at this particular time in this particular place. And yet, like a dog without a bone or even a stick to gnaw, he lacked any solid basis for speculation. Given the unpredictable nature of the warp connections . . .
For lack of any other starting point, he cleared the holo sphere and summoned up a strategic-scale view of the warp lines he did know: the Prescott Chain, proceeding from what was now officially known as Prescott's Star through the glowing little orbs of four more systems before reaching AP-5. From AP-5, it ran through four more nexi, the last of which was El Dorado with its broken string-light closed-warp connection to Home Hive One . . . beyond which lay the unknown.
It called nothing to mind. The display was only a chain of lights, connecting two known points across an unknown distance with an unknown number of closed warp points on its flanks. He frowned thoughtfully at it, and then began to trace it in reverse. He worked backwards from Home Hive One to AP-5, where Andrew had met his death and where he was certain he would have to fight his own way through on his return, against whatever forces the Bugs had been able to rush through the closed warp point that system must hold. . . .
And all at once, dizzyingly, he knew.
There was one perfectly good reason why those massed formations of capital ships might no longer be in the system. He'd been correct in supposing that the Bug pickets still in AP-5 had summoned help to cover that system against his return. What he hadn't guessed then was that the help they required had been available from only one source-Home Hive One.
His imagination supplied another warp chain, one originating with an open warp point of Home Hive One and running parallel to the Prescott Chain, doubling back through some unknown but probably small number of intervening systems to AP-5, which it entered through a closed warp point. That closed point had allowed the Bugs to ambush Andrew there on his return leg . . . but they'd done so without any way of knowing just where he'd been returning from. And because they didn't know what he'd discovered for the Alliance, they'd reached, quite logically, for the closest nodal reaction force when Raymond's own, far heavier fleet crashed through AP-5.
The main Bug forces had been speeding frantically away from this system even as TF 71 had been advancing slowly but steadily towards it.
He brought his excitement under stern control and suppressed his instinct to share his theory with his staff and flag officers. He would have confided in Zhaarnak, had his vilkshatha brother been here. But he wasn't, and Prescott knew this couldn't be proved.
But he also knew that he needed no formal proof that the observed facts weren't mere coincidence. Coincidence simply wasn't that energetic. Of course, it was entirely possible that what seemed so clear to him might be somewhat less obvious to others.
No. This wasn't the time to make his staff any more doubtful about his ability to maintain professional detachment. So he'd just keep this insight to himself. And use it. . . .
As they'd done at Home Hive Three, Prescott and Shaaldaar timed their arrivals at Planets I and III to be simultaneous-a simpler problem in astrogation here, as these planets were so close together at their present approach. Still, "close" was a purely relative term when it came to interplanetary distances, so-again, as an Home Hive Three-there would be a communications lag. In the present case, it would be six minutes before either admiral would know the results of the other's attack, and it would take equally long to transmit any other information between them. But there was no alternative. All indications were that telepathy was instantaneous, operating on some level of reality where the light-speed limit didn't apply, so any real-time gap would allow one Bug planet to warn the other of what was coming.