Shaaldaar spoke slowly from his com screen.
"I want as much as anyone to believe in this possibility, Admiral. But if the Bug command here in Home Hive One did, in fact, recall its battle-line from AP-5 when our attack began, it must also have sent orders to that battle-line to return there when it became clear that the system was doomed, so that even if we couldn't be stopped here, we could at least be intercepted on our return."
"You're probably right, Force Leader. And if you are, it's all the more reason for us to depart without delay." Prescott became very brisk. "Commodore Mandagalla, send out orders for the task force to retire on the warp point. Commodore Landrum, it will be necessary for the fighters and gunboats to cover our withdrawal and insure that no Bug scouts are in a position to observe our warp transit. The location of that warp point is a secret I mean to see kept."
"Aye, aye, Sir," the chief of staff and the farshathkhanaak responded in unison.
A dispatch boat was waiting in El Dorado.
For security reasons, GFGHQ, with Prescott's and Zhaarnak's strong support, had decided against deploying the sort of interstellar communications network which would have permitted light-speed message transmission across the star systems of the Prescott Chain. The ICN was the backbone of the command and control systems of major star nations like the Federation and Khanate and had already been of enormous strategic advantage to the Alliance, since the Bugs, with no equivalent of it, were forced to accept far greater delays in communication. The Bugs' offsetting advantage, however, was that by never emplacing the long chains of deep-space relay satellites which sent messages across star systems, or the crewed com stations hovering at each intervening warp point to shuttle courier drones back and forth, or even the navigation buoys which courier drones required to reorient for transit without such com stations, they left no "bread crumbs" behind. There was no trail of installations which might draw a survey force's attention to a warp point, or lead an invasion force along the critical warp lines of their domain.
If Seventh Fleet had been operating through space the Alliance knew the Bugs had already surveyed, that wouldn't have been a factor. But in this case, the Allies had no idea how much or how little of the Prescott Chain the Bugs might have explored, and so the Strategy Board had decided to take a page from the enemy's book and put up no signposts to help them out. Which was just fine from many perspectives, but meant that Seventh Fleet's communications were far slower and more roundabout than Allied commanders were accustomed to.
Prescott had detached small, cloaked picket forces in each of the star systems through which he'd passed, both as a security measure to watch his back and also to serve as communications nodes. But such pickets had to have freedom of maneuver to do their jobs, so courier drones couldn't be programmed with known coordinates to reach them. And, for obvious reasons, sending out drones with omnidirectional radio beacons the pickets might have homed in on was . . . contraindicated.
The only practical solution was to use dispatch boats-actual starships, all large enough to mount cloaking ECM, who played postman between the picket forces. Like the one which had just delivered TF 71's most recent mail.
Prescott, Mandagalla, Bichet, and Chung studied the data as Riva y Silva's computer downloaded it to the flag bridge's display. Finally, the spook looked up.
"You were right, Sir."
Prescott nodded absently. It was conclusive. The AP-5 pickets had observed the arrival of a Bug force there shortly before the standard date of February 2, 2367, when TF 71 had entered Home Hive One. That force matched the "missing" part of the units Andrew had observed in Home Hive One too precisely for coincidence.
But Prescott was more interested in the second message from the picket commander. One of the picket ships had gotten close enough to observe the Bugs make transit and pinpoint the coordinates of the warp point through which they'd entered. Beside the excitement of that news, the confirmation of his theory was of little moment.
"They copied everything they included in our dispatches up the Prescott Chain to GFGHQ, as well," Bichet observed, and Prescott nodded.
"So no matter what happens to us, the Federation will know the locations of the Bugs' closed warp point in AP-5," he agreed with profound satisfaction.
Mandagalla admired the boss's selflessness, but found herself unable to share it.
"Uh, Sir, we've got confirmation of where they came from, but there's nothing to suggest that the Bug force from Home Hive One was recalled from AP-5."
"No, there isn't. But . . ." Prescott did some mental arithmetic. "There wouldn't be. The dispatch boat hasn't been here long, so any later messages, reporting the Bugs' withdrawal, would still be on the way. We should encounter them somewhere between here and AP-5. For now, we'll continue to regard it is a possibility, and act accordingly. That is, we'll proceed at the maximum speed the task force can manage. I want our seriously damaged units taken in tow by Admiral Cole's Wolf 424-class tugs, so they won't slow us down."
The arrangements were made, and TF 71 fared onward.
Passing through AP-7, two transits from AP-5, they encountered a second dispatch boat. The news it delivered couldn't be suppressed, and the euphoria that spread through Riva y Silva was palpable.
The staff was no more immune than anyone else. Mandagalla's dark face was alight with joy as she looked up from the readouts on the flag bridge.
"You were right again, Sir! They've withdrawn from AP-5! They're on their way back to Home Hive One, and-"
"Unfortunately, Anna, Force Leader Shaaldaar was almost certainly right, too. At some point before the destruction of the last Home Hive One planet, they must've been ordered to resume station in AP-5." Prescott smiled grimly. "A human commander in the same position might have let them continue back to Home Hive One in the hope of a miracle, but I don't think the Bugs believe in miracles. And even if they did, whoever was left in command of their warp point fortifications certainly would have turned them around after we finished off Planet II. If you'll observe the date of this message, it's within the realm of possibility that they've already returned to AP-5."
"Do you really think they have, Sir?" Bichet asked.
"No . . . not yet." Prescott produced a very thin smile. "But it's going to be a horse race to see whether we get there first or they get back before we do, I think."
Bichet looked another question at him, and Prescott shrugged.
"If we assume that the picket force we destroyed on our way through AP-5 immediately requested reinforcements, and that the Home Hive One mobile forces were sent off as soon as the picket force's courier drone was received there, then we can make a fairly good estimate of the transit time for my hypothetical warp chain by noting when the reinforcements actually arrived in AP-5. Of course, we don't know how many star systems are actually involved, since there's no way for us to predict the distance between warp points in any given system along the way. But what matters for our purposes is how long it would take a courier drone from Home Hive One to reach AP-5."