"Yes." he met all four task force commanders' eyes, one com screen at a time. "I assume, at least provisionally, that anyone fighting the Bahgs is a potential friend of ours. On the strength of that assumption, I am prepared to commit Eighth Fleet to the unknowns' support."

No one commented, and Ynaathar saw no disagreement in the screens. He also saw no great regret over the fact that he, and not they, bore the burden of such a decision.

It was, Commander Thaamaandaan decided, difficult to fight a battle and readjust one's reality structure at the same time.

The weariness of a long flight in a fighter's cramped quarters didn't help.

Eighth Fleet's fighter strike had come close to its goal of catching the Bugs' gunboats and kamikazes before they could engage the enigmatic fleet which was their target. Indeed, considering that the fighters had had to cross almost four of the light-hours the Humans had made standard for the Alliance, the closeness was rather remarkable. But the unknowns had launched their own fighters with unexpected promptness, and those fighters had come to grips with the Bugs shortly before Thaamaandaan and his fellows could join the battle. So it had worked out well after all, in that the Bugs were now caught between two fires.

But it gave Thaamaandaan food for thought which he had little time to chew as he led his squadron into the maelstrom of battle.

That the Ophiuchi fighter pilots were the best in existence had been acknowledged for so long that it had assumed the dignity of a natural law. The Corthohardaa weren't insufferable about the advantage they derived from their evolutionary heritage; that would have been bad form. They merely took it as axiomatic.

Now, Thaamaandaan saw, they'd never be able to do so again. These strangers used their fighters like a hanaakaat master used his talon spur. Their dogfighting skill was such that he had to believe they were, to an even greater extent than his own race, born to it.

But as the range closed the sensors revealed something even more disconcerting. These fighters that had appeared so unexpectedly out of the infinite depths of the galaxy were replicas of the human-designed F-3 that Thaamaandaan himself had piloted a scant four years ago, before the F-4 had superseded it. Exact replicas.

But now he was in among the Bugs himself, and there was no time to ponder these matters. There was only time for killing and staying alive.

Ynaathar's trademark sang-froid was somewhat in abeyance.

In his holo sphere, the vast dogfight was a snarling, writhing pattern of fighters, gunboats and kamikazes, like some multicolored poisonous scorpion thrashing about as it tried to sting itself to death. But he could spare it little attention. The Bug capital ships had turned at bay, and Eighth Fleet, with its fighters otherwise engaged, had had no choice but to meet them ship to ship. So a titanic battle-line engagement now rose to crescendo, echoing on a larger scale the battle still raging between the unknowns and the remnants of the Bugs' Warp Point Two defense force.

Thus far, Hiarnow'kharnak hadn't sustained any hits in the bizarre, three-cornered battle. Ynaathar almost wished it had. At least it would have taken his mind off the rising tally of ships which had been damaged . . . or destroyed.

But the loss ratio was still in Eighth Fleet's favor. And the battle the strangers were fighting against the fixed defenses had not only started earlier; it had also been one-sided from the first, once the Bugs' mobile forces were prevented from intervening directly. Ynaathar was confident that they would soon be in a position to come to his own fleet's aid.

He wished he was equally confident that they would be inclined to do so. Their motivations were as enigmatic as everything else about them and might or might not include gratitude.

There was, of course, no point in even trying to establish communication with them at this point. Even at their leisure, getting past all the incompatibilities of technology, protocols and language would be a lengthy and tedious job. In the midst of a battle . . . ! No, there would be plenty of time later-

"First Fang," the communications officer diffidently interrupted Ynaathar's thoughts, "we are being hailed by the unknown fleet's flagship."

Ynaathar stared. "Did I understand you correctly?"

"Yes, First Fang." The communications officer's whiskers were aquiver with suppressed excitement and perplexity. "They are using Terran protocols-several years old, but nonetheless recognizable."

Ynaathar ordered himself to come out of shock.

"Acknowledge, and put them on," he ordered, then turned in the direction of the intelligence station. "Cub Saaanderzz, we are about to establish contact with the unidentified fleet. Please join me, as I believe your insights may be helpful."

"Aye, aye, Sir," said Sanders, just as the screen awoke.

Ever since entering this system and detecting those enigmatic strangers, they'd all given free rein to their imaginations. But none of the unheard-of lifeforms they'd visualized would have been as stunning or unexpected as what the screen now revealed.

"This is Rear Admiral Aileen Sommers, Terran Federation Navy, commanding Survey Flotilla 19," said the early-middle-aged human female in TFN black-and-silver, speaking like one finally delivering a message rehearsed over and over in the course of years-a message she'd doubted she would ever have the chance to utter. "I wish to report my flotilla's somewhat belated completion of the mission on which it departed this system approximately five and a half standard Terran years ago." She turned and beckoned, and a second being entered the pickup-smaller than herself, sandy-furred but vaguely batlike to Sanders' eyes with its large folded wings. It raised a four-digited hand in what was presumably a greeting, and Sommers resumed. "I also wish to report, in my capacity as de facto ambassador from the Terran Federation to the Star Union of Crucis, that the Grand Alliance has a new member."

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: "I suppose we must approve. . . ."

"Well, Warmaster," Aileen Sommers said as they emerged from the conference room, "now you know what it's like to be an ambassador."

"Yes-an officially accredited one," Warmaster Robalii Rikka, now ambassador from the Star Union of Crucis to the Terran Federation, the Khanate of Orion and the Ophiuchi Association, shot back rather pointedly.

Sommers silently acknowledged the accuracy of the barb. But she couldn't help being struck by the irony of Rikka's appointment to a diplomatic position. "Diplomatic" was one of the last words she would have thought of applying to the warmaster, a fighting admiral with a reputation for being aggressive to a fault. He'd justified that reputation not long since, at the Second Battle of Skriischnagar, when he'd smashed open the road to Pajzomo-and, beyond it, the warp chain along which SF 19 had once fled, leading back to Anderson One and thence to Alpha Centauri. But his desire-no, his need-to slaughter as many Demons as possible had pushed his innate boldness almost over the edge into rashness. It was a need his family line came by honestly, and it was what gave him so keen an edge as the Star Union's sword. But it was also a two-edged weapon, and his losses had been so heavy that he'd only narrowly avoided the unthinkable calamity of the destruction of his entire force of two Grand Wings. Afterwards, he'd taken stock of himself and brought his lust for vengeance more firmly under the command of his training and discipline.