Just as Prescott and Zhaarnak knew that their own attack on Anderson Four must begin on schedule to provide the counterbalancing diversion Ynaathar would require to reduce the odds against him. And at least Seventh Fleet was once again at full strength and ready for the challenge it faced.
The human allowed his eyes to move from the warp links to the endless lists of task forces, task groups, squadrons, strikegroups, and battle divisions which filled the data display, spelling out the sheer, ponderous might of the force he commanded. Sixty monitors, forty-six superdreadnoughts, twenty-five assault carriers, thirty-one fleet carriers, thirty-one battlecruisers, twenty-one light carriers, and twenty light cruisers, all supported by more than forty-four hundred fighters, and over seven hundred and fifty gunboats. The stupendous firepower under his control was, as he and Zhaarnak had demonstrated only too grimly-sufficient to sterilize entire planets, yet Eighth Fleet was even more powerful. It had only half as many monitors as Seventh Fleet, but four times the superdreadnoughts and battlecruisers as compensation, and its more numerous assault and fleet carriers, coupled with the proximity of Centauri, more than balanced the twenty-one CVLs of Vice Admiral al-Sahla's TG 72.4.
Surely that crushing mass of destruction had to be enough, properly handled, to smash even the soulless, uncaring ranks of death which were a Bug fleet!
Of course it was, he told himself flatly, and his eyes hardened as he remembered his brother and all the men and women-human and nonhuman alike-who had died under his command since the Battle of Alowan to reach this moment. He no longer quailed under the weight of his blood debt to those thousands upon thousands of warriors and the billions of civilians who'd died under the monstrous tsunami of the Bugs' ravenous omnivoracity. It was a burden he'd been given no choice but to learn to bear, just as Ivan Antonov had learned, but Raymond Prescott knew the great secret Antonov had tried so fiercely and with so much success to hide.
Whatever one might learn to bear, one could never learn to forget. That much he understood perfectly when he looked into Vanessa Murakuma's eyes and saw the shadows and darkness no one else seemed to recognize. And those memories and that debt, and the cold, savage hatred for Andrew's death, came to him now as he inhaled once more and then turned to look into the slit-pupiled, alien eyes of the being who had become not just his comrade in arms but the brother Andrew had never known . . . and who shared Raymond Prescott's determination to avenge his death.
"You should return to your ship, brother," he said quietly in the Tongue of Tongues, his expression calm, almost serene. "We will begin the attack in three standard hours."
"May our claws strike deep," Zhaarnak replied, equally quietly, and Prescott nodded and laid a hand briefly on the Orion's broad, powerful shoulder.
"May our claws strike deep," he agreed.
It had worked.
The decision against opposing the attack of the New Enemies who had been joined by the Old had exposed the approaches to no less than two Systems Which Must Be Defended to potential attack, but it had also disordered the Enemies' battle plan. It was obvious that the two Enemy fleets had intended to attack in close coordination, staggering their assaults just enough to draw the Fleet into committing against the first threat before the second revealed itself. But the Fleet's withdrawal had caught the Enemies off-balance, instead.
Half of the Mobile Force which had been withdrawn before the first Enemy thrust stood in place, prepared to delay any thrust on his part. But the other half sped to join the other Mobile Force as it fell back before the second Enemy attack. The joint forces of two Systems Which Must Be Defended raced to rendezvous and throw themselves upon the second Enemy force, the one which had already slain two other Systems Which Must Be Defended, and for the first time in far too long, the Fleet knew that victory lay within its reach. Three hundred and fifty warships, headed by sixty-three monitors and ninety-six superdreadnoughts, reached out to wrap their tentacle clusters about a mere hundred and eighty Enemy ships and crush the life from them, and the unsuspecting Enemy continued blindly towards them.
Raymond Prescott stared at the plot and tried not to be sick.
The master holo sphere was set to system scale, and Anderson Four's primary was a yellow dot at the center of a system Prescott remembered only too well. Just over five light-hours from it, at nine o'clock, was Warp Point Three, through which Seventh Fleet had entered the system from Pesthouse, blowing away the defenses with minimal loss and proceeding across the system toward Warp Point One, which led onward along the Anderson Chain. That was a long haul, for their destination was four and a half light-hours from the primary on an almost diametrically opposite heading of two o'clock. Warp Point Three, whose terminus was still unknown, lay on a bearing of eight o'clock, at 5.6 light-hours.
But Prescott had eyes for none of that, much less for the system's lifeless planets. Like everyone around him on Riva y Silva's flag bridge, he could only stare at the swarming red "hostile" icons that his wide-ranging recon fighters had revealed.
The Bug deep space force in this system, pulling back ahead of Seventh Fleet, was bad enough: thirty monitors, sixty-six superdreadnoughts, ninety-six battlecruisers, and seventy-eight light cruisers. But he and Zhaarnak, though expecting a stiff fight, had pressed on into the system, confident of their ability to take that force. Until the new Bug forces had appeared, bearing down from Warp Point One. A detailed force breakdown was impossible as yet, but at least thirty-five monitors, forty-five superdreadnoughts, and sixty-five battlecruisers had streamed in from Anderson Three, where they were supposed to be fully engaged in the defense of Harnah. Nor was that the end of Warp Point One's capacity to spew forth death, for an estimated five hundred oncoming gunboats had now been detected behind that daunting array of capital ships.
Finally, the quiescent icon of Warp Point Two behind them had erupted with the scarlet of still more gunboats. Their number was unknowable as yet, but there were tides of them, streaming in from what Prescott was now sure must be one of the three remaining home hive systems.
All those converging red icons seemed to swim before his eyes, and he stared into a nightmare from which there would be no awakening.
Well, now we know how it happened. This system and Anderson Three are the conduits from at least two of the home hives. And now we're here, just like Second Fleet was. . . .
Amos Chung cleared his throat softly.
"Sir, it appears that they're using the same tactical disposition they did in Pesthouse."
He indicated the icon of the deep space force that had now turned on them. Then he gestured at an auxiliary plot with its tactical display. Yes, Prescott reflected. It was the same globular juggernaut of battlecruisers, light cruisers, gunboats, and kamikaze small craft.
He stared at them for a handful of endless heartbeats, then inhaled sharply, almost spitefully. He faced his sense of paralysis and drove it back into its kennel as he pulled himself ruthlessly together. This was not Operation Pesthouse all over again. Battle-hardened though Second Fleet had been by the time it reached Pesthouse, its temper couldn't have begun to match that of the blade he wielded. Seventh Fleet stood behind him, its monitor battle-line immeasurably more powerful than Second Fleet's had been, forged and hammered beyond common conception in the crucible of history's bloodiest series of campaigns and calm in the knowledge that the Bugs could be beaten. And he and Zhaarnak had made the decision to bring along the light carriers, not generally regarded as viable battle fleet units but able to augment the combat space patrol of fighters.