"Does this mean you plan to withdraw to AP-4, Admiral?"
"Absolutely not, Admiral Mukerji. Have you forgotten the ships we left behind in AP-6? What do you think will happen to them if we abandon this system and leave them cut off?"
"But, Admiral, all of us will die if you don't retreat up-chain!"
"Commodore Mandagalla," Raymond Prescott said in a voice of cold iron, all the time holding Mukerji's eyes, "let me clarify my previous orders. We will fall back toward Warp Point Three on an oblique angle, with a view to allowing the Bugs to get between us and the warp point."
What followed wasn't really silence-there was still too much damage control work going on for that. When Mukerji finally spoke, his near-whisper was barely audible.
"You're mad!"
"And you, Admiral Mukerji, are under arrest for insubordination," Prescott replied pleasantly. Mukerji gaped at him in disbelief, but Prescott ignored him and turned his attention back to the plot.
Mukerji looked around the flag bridge helplessly, as if unsure exactly what to do with himself. None of Prescott's staffers would meet his eye, and he started to turn towards the elevators, then stopped and turned back to Prescott, his sweat-streaked face working with a panic that included more now than the simple fear of death.
If Prescott was even aware of the vice admiral's existence, he gave no sign of it as he stared fixedly into the display which showed the data codes of the task force, angling more or less towards the violet dot of Warp Point Three . . . and the scarlet rash of Bug capital ships, starting to slide in between those two icons. Mukerji's own eyes dropped to the same icons, watching them with the same mesmerized horror with which he might have watched his executioner honing the guillotine's edge, and an agonizing silence stretched out. Even the last of the damage control parties seemed hushed as TF 71 deliberately sailed straight into a death trap from which there could be no escape.
And then, all at once, Prescott seemed to see something he'd been watching for in the display. He straightened up, motionlessness buried in a sudden dynamism.
"Jacques, Anna! Implement the course change we discussed."
"Aye, aye, Sir."
The ops officer began to fire off a series of orders. Mukerji listened unbelievingly, but there was no mistake. On the display, the task group's icon began to turn onto the heading Bichet had just ordered-a heading away from Warp Point Three, and into the depths of the AP-5 System.
Mukerji stared at the admiral, as if Prescott were a cobra . . . or the very madman the vice admiral had called him.
The Bugs began to change course in pursuit, presenting their sterns to Warp Point Three, and Mukerji finally found his voice once more.
"Admiral," he began hoarsely, "I-"
Then, suddenly, the warp point began to flash with green fire . . . and Mukerji's mouth closed with a click as the first Orion carriers emerged.
After a stunned moment, the flag bridge erupted into a pandemonium that no one tried to control.
Tiny green icons began to speed ahead as the emerging carriers, barely taking time to stabilize their launch machinery after transit, began to send out massive waves of fighters.
"Given the shortness of the range," Prescott mused aloud, "I imagine that each of those fighters is carrying two primary packs." He turned back to his chief of staff and his ops officer. "Anna, you and Jacques should start getting our course reversed. We may be able to get back there in time to trap some of the Bug elements between us and Task Force 72."
"Aye, aye, Sir!" Mandagalla replied with a huge grin, and Mukerji shook himself.
"How-?" he began, then clamped his mouth shut once more as Raymond Prescott turned an icy eye upon him.
"I knew Fang Zhaarnak was coming, Admiral," the Seventh Fleet commander said in a voice of frozen helium. "In fact, you may recall that I mentioned that, a time or two."
"But you never mentioned this!" Mukerji spluttered, pointing accusingly at the display.
"Not to the task force at large, no," Prescott agreed, his tone as frigid as ever. "There was no reason to, and I'd decided not to continue to insist that Zhaarnak would get here in time, since . . . certain persons had begun to question my confidence. But that didn't mean that I ever doubted he'd be here, so two days ago, I had Commodore Bichet dispatch a courier drone to Commodore Horigome."
Almost despite himself, Mukerji nodded. Commodore Stephanie Horigome flew her lights aboard TFNS Cree, the Hun-class cruiser which was the senior ship of the six-ship battlegroup of cloaked pickets stationed in AP-4.
"That courier drone contained a complete, detailed download on the known Bug forces in this system, to which I had appended my analysis of their probable intentions and my belief that powerful enemy reinforcements would be arriving here shortly. It also instructed Commodore Horigome to make contact with Fang Zhaarnak upon his arrival and to communicate that data to him, along with my suggestion that he send his carriers through first at the appropriate moment. Since there was no way to be certain that the Bugs weren't maintaining a close sensor watch on the warp point, I further instructed Commodore Horigome and Fang Zhaarnak not to send any courier drones confirming Task Force 72's arrival in AP-4. Instead, Commodore Horigome was to send a drone through no later than oh-seven-hundred Zulu this morning if Fang Zhaarnak hadn't arrived. It was essential that the Bugs not suspect we were in close communication with a reinforcing force of our own, and so Fang Zhaarnak has used RD2s to maintain a close watch on AP-5 ever since his arrival in AP-4 in order to pick the most opportune moment for transit."
Prescott showed his teeth in what not even the most charitable soul could have called a smile, and Mukerji seemed to wither.
"Unlike some people, Admiral Mukerji," he said with the scalpel-like precision of complete and utter contempt, "I had no doubt at all that Fang Zhaarnak would recognize precisely what I was doing and know precisely how to best take advantage of our maneuvers and the Bugs' response."
"Admiral Prescott, I . . . I don't . . . That is-"
"I really don't believe you have anything more to say to me, Admiral," Prescott said coldly. "I suggest that you go to your quarters . . . and stay there."
He turned his back on Mukerji and crossed to stand beside Mandagalla, watching the icons in the main plot as the Orion fighters ripped into the Bug capital ships with the devastating fury of their primary packs. Terence Mukerji stared at him for a long moment, his eyes filled with an indescribable mixture of lingering terror, shame, and hatred.
And then, finally, he turned and stumbled towards the flag bridge elevator.
The attack craft strike from the newly arrived Enemies was a blow from which the Fleet's position in this system could not recover.
There was no room for doubt that the Enemy knew the location of the closed warp point. So Franos was vulnerable to attack, and there would be no one to defend it if the forces in this system perished-as they would, for with his fresh attack craft strength the Enemy would be able to annihilate them from beyond their own shipboard weapons' range.
There was no alternative to an immediate disengagement and withdrawal. Further losses were unavoidable, in the course of the retreat. But most would escape to protect Franos.