"Furthermore, after our carrier losses here, our surviving fighters can fill the great majority of the hanger bays we have left. Isn't that true, Steve?"
Caught off guard, the farshathkhanaak answered automatically.
"It is, Sir. Eighty-two percent of them, to be exact."
"That's what I thought. And in light of those factors, I've decided to resume our advance without pausing to replenish our fighter strength."
The staffers' shock, combined with their realization that the admiral hadn't even remotely invited discussion, left silence to reign unchallenged in the briefing room. Raathaarn, not physically present-and, in any event, far nearer to Prescott in rank than most of those who were in it-finally broke it.
"Addmirrrallll-"
Prescott raised a hand-his artificial one, some recalled.
"One moment, Admiral Raathaarn. I have an additional reason for making that decision." He spoke a quiet command to the computer, and the main flat display screen lit with the same warp line chart Chung had shown him back in Home Hive One, extended now to show this system and the two the recon drones had probed from it.
"As I said, I don't believe the few Bugs who escaped through Warp Point Two constitute a serious threat to our rear. Nevertheless, there is a potential threat to it." He used a light-pencil to indicate the warp chain that stretched from Home Hive One to Alpha Centauri-the Anderson Chain. He left the dot of light resting on the Pesthouse System, and resumed, ignoring the frisson that ran through the compartment.
"Bug forces converged on Pesthouse to ambush Second Fleet," he said quietly, and he glanced at his staff. Aside from Landrum, all of them had been with him and Task Force 21 throughout that hideous ordeal. "One of those forces came from Home Hive One . . . but the others came from somewhere else. Bugs from that 'somewhere else' may move in behind us and reoccupy Home Hive One at any time."
Prescott suppressed a wintry grin as he saw Terence Mukerji's face go ashen. Having accepted the political admiral's apology (Why, he wondered, not for the first time, did I ever let Kevin Sanders talk me into that?), he could hardly exclude him from full staff conferences like this one. At least Mukerji had learned caution and seldom spoke up, but now terror overcame that caution.
"Ah, Admiral, are you saying . . . that is, do I understand that you believe the Bugs have led us into a trap?"
"Not really, Admiral Mukerji. I don't seriously believe that they would have sacrificed the planetary population here just to bait a trap. Admittedly, they abandoned Harnah to Admiral Antonov to help bait the trap they sprang on Second Fleet. But if there's any truth to our assumptions about the economic straits in which they now find themselves, then I think it's unlikely that they'll be quite as . . . cavalier as they were about writing off industrial capacity. But we can't ignore the possibility. For that matter, there might not be any deliberate 'trap' involved in it-they might simply have been unable to produce a sufficiently reinforced mobile component to hit us before we got this deep.
"In any event, we have to allow for the possibility that a strong Bug force could appear in Home Hive One while we're busy ferrying fighters through it. And what do you suppose a force like that would do to the unescorted carriers doing the ferrying?"
Mukerji wasn't encouraged. He started to wipe his brow, thought better of it, and looked around the room. Some of the expressions he saw suggested that he wasn't the only one just waking up to the full strategic implications of their new astrographic knowledge. That emboldened him to speak up again.
"Admiral, this is terrible. If the Bugs do reoccupy Home Hive One in force, we'll be isolated here in this warp chain, cut off from the Federation, with no path of retreat!"
"Admittedly, we're in a somewhat vulnerable position compared to Task Force 72, which has a clear, unthreatened route back to Federation space," Prescott acknowledged. "And that, ladies and gentlemen, is precisely the point."
He leaned forward, and all at once his face wore an intensity that was out of character even now, and would have been far more so before his brother's death.
"The way out of the potential danger we face is very straightforward. We'll advance along this chain until we break through whatever lies between us and Zhaarnak's task force. I'm confident all of you understand this. But I want it clearly understood by every squadron commander and every ship captain in Task Force 71, as well. We will resume our advance as soon as our repairs are made, and those repairs will be completed as rapidly as possible. See to it that they know that . . . and that I will accept no excuses."
With the sole exception of Anthea Mandagalla, none of Prescott's staffers, even the ones who'd been with him through the hell known as Operation Pesthouse, had ever really known Ivan Antonov. They'd been too junior then. But now, all at once, they understood what the old-timers meant. They hadn't understood it before, looking at their short, compact, quiet-spoken admiral. But now they did, even though he still hadn't raised his voice.
In retrospect, it had probably been a mistake for the Mobile Force to stand and fight where it had, in a system with a colony planet.
The reasons had seemed compelling enough at the time. The Fleet had developed a new sensitivity to losses of industrial capacity, and of the noncombatant population that sustained it. And not one, but two, colony planets had been at stake, including the one in the system in which what was left of the Mobile Force was now bottled up. The Fleet, after all, would have no function if it did not at least attempt to defend the remaining population centers. Furthermore, the Enemy's advance from both ends of this warp chain had left so few systems that a forward defense had seemed advisable.
Nevertheless, it was now clear that the Mobile Force should have made its stand one system further along. Granted, there were no warp point defenses there to lend their support. But there was also no population in that barren system for the Enemy to annihilate, and so leave the Mobile Force in an ineffectual torpor.
But it was too late for regrets. The decision had been made. And now even the fallback strategy had failed. The Enemy was declining to be lured into following the survivors into this dead-end system-effectively lost anyway, in economic terms, now that it was isolated-and thus delaying his advance. Instead, that advance was continuing inexorably towards the empty system that was next along this warp chain.
There was nothing there to resist the Enemy. And beyond lay Franos.
Irma Sanchez told herself that VF-94 had been unreasonably lucky.
The squadron had come through the battles in Home Hive One without losing a single pilot. Not many could say as much. For a while, she'd thought the charm would hold through the slugging match in this system.
Maybe, she thought, that was the problem. Maybe she'd gotten too cocky, and relaxed the extra effort she'd always made to keep an eye on Davra Lennart and yell at her any time she seemed to drift out of the squadron's latticework of mutually protective fields of fire.
But, she repeated to herself, VF-94 was doing a damned sight better than the task force as a whole, to have come this far and lost only one pilot.
The first one it's lost since I assumed command . . .
Desperately: What's that expression again? Oh, yes: an acceptable loss ratio. Yes, that's right. Have to keep thinking that.
How many times did the Skipper . . . did Bruno go through this?