CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: "And then there were two."

"It was well that you held back a reserve of SBMHAWKs, First Fang," Robalii Rikka said.

"It is still more fortunate, Warmaster, that you suggested sending a wave of gunboats into this system ahead of our ships."

Ynaathar's courtesy was equal to the Crucian's. It was even sincere, and Rikka's image in the com screen inclined its head in acknowledgment. Ynaathar's gaze wandered across Hiarnow'kharnak's flag bridge to the big screen, currently set to simulate the naked-eye outside view. This lifeless system's primary-a red dwarf three and a half light-hours distant, and lying aft in any case-wasn't visible, of course. Neither was the wreckage their initial SBMHAWK bombardment had left of the warp point defenses.

Their estimate of the fixed warp point defenses had proven accurate, and the SBMHAWKs they'd allocated had been sufficient. However, they'd had no current information on mobile units, and the ninety-six heavy cruisers and twenty suicide-rider light cruisers might have proven troublesome for the first wave. But, at Rikka's suggestion, Ynaathar had let gunboats lead the advance, and they'd provided the information that had enabled Ynaathar to target his reserve SBMHAWKs. In addition to the gunboat losses, it had required the expenditure of more of his total SBMHAWK inventory than he'd planned on. But it was a basically unscathed Eighth Fleet that was now proceeding toward the system's other warp point, a mere forty-eight light-minutes outward from the primary, and no Bug mobile forces barred its way.

Though he lacked any hard data to back up his opinion, Ynaathar was convinced Home Hive Four lay on the other side of that warp point. He doubted very seriously that he would continue to advance unopposed.

This had come at the worst possible time.

This System Which Must Be Defended, true to its accustomed role of concentrating on the Old Enemies, had feared that the closed warp point in the system through which those enemies had passed had been located. The Fleet's cloaked scouts had skirmished with the Old Enemies' pickets there, and there was no guarantee that one of the scouts hadn't been tracked. So the Deep Space Force, its battle damage only just repaired, had been dispatched two systems in that direction, to guard against any incursions. And now the attack had come from the opposite direction-the Old and New Enemies in league, now only one warp transit away from the System Which Must Be Defended.

The Fleet was doing what it could, of course. The Deep Space Force had been summoned back with maximum urgency, and the available mobile forces in the system the enemy had entered-thirty-seven battlecruisers and thirty suicide-rider light cruisers-were now shadowing the enemy's advance, cloaked against detection.

They wouldn't be alone for long. Even now, with the enemy still too remote to observe its emergence from warp, the massed small-craft strength of the System Which Must Be Defended was transiting to attack.

It had been a long time since Ynaathar had left the flag bridge. But he sternly ordered fatigue to heel and remained where he was, for he was awaiting a certain report.

The incoming kamikazes had dispelled his last doubts that Home Hive Four lay immediately ahead-nothing less could have dispatched those massed formations. He'd ordered Eighth Fleet's entire fighter strength, barring a small reserve, sent out against them, overruling the caution of Admiral Haathaahn, his carrier commander. He'd soon had second thoughts, for the Bug battlecruisers shadowing him had seized their opportunity, dropping out of cloak and leaping to the attack behind the wavefront of their own gunboats and suicide-riders. None of them had gotten past Eighth Fleet's screen of battlecruisers and Crucian heavy cruisers, but in the absence of fighter support that screen's losses had made Ynaathar give the flattened ear flick that answered to a human wince.

Nevertheless, he didn't regret his decision to commit practically all his fighters against the waves of kamikazes from Home Hive Four. Those kamikazes had been burned out of the continuum before reaching the screen. And better still, their vector had been plotted and analyzed, and it narrowed the search for their warp point of entry to a very small volume as interplanetary spaces went. Now Ynaathar awaited word from the Hun-class scout cruisers of Survey Squadron 234, which had been attached to Eighth Fleet for this very purpose.

It didn't take long. Even as Kevin Sanders approached with the dispatch, Ynaathar saw the warp-point icon flash into being in the holo sphere, and its precise coordinates appeared on the board. He gave orders to prepare the RD2s.

"As you can all see," he said later to a hastily assembled meeting of his core staff, with the task force commanders attending via com screen, "while only a few RD2s returned, their findings leave no room for doubt. This is Home Hive Four."

He didn't speak in crowing tones-it was foreign to his nature, and at any rate these officers had all agreed with him from the first. The system display the task force commanders could all see in the master plots on their respective flag bridges merely confirmed what they'd believed.

The two innermost planets of the yellow star the RD2s had found were inhabited, and to the drones' esoteric senses they'd blazed with starlike intensity, for theirs was the electro-neutrino output of worlds industrialized the way only Bugs industrialized them, and they nestled amid a firefly-swarm of lesser emission-sources: the fleets of freighters that were a Home Hive's circulatory system. Detecting those planets had been no great problem, for the drones had emerged from a warp point in the inner system, only one light-hour from the G-class primary.

"The promptness with which we located the warp point," Ynaathar continued, "has given us a priceless advantage. We need not spend as much time surveying as we normally would. We can press on and, perhaps, catch them off balance."

"Yes, by Valkha!" Shiiaarnaow'maazhaak exploded. The Task Force 82 commander, must, Ynaathar thought, imagine himself back in the good old freewheeling days before the Khanate had encountered the Terrans-one of whom, Francis Macomb, now gave a growl of agreement.

Robalii Rikka shifted his folded wings back and forth.

"I understand the force of this argument," the warmaster said. "And yet . . . we expended more SBMHAWKs than anticipated in breaking into this system. It's a pity we have no replacements for them."

Shiiaarnaow looked about to burst, but to Ynaathar's relief he kept his response more or less within diplomatic bounds.

"We cannot wait for more SBMHAWKs to be brought up! We must sink our fangs into these chofaki while they are still stunned by the rapidity of our advance."

"Otherwise," Macomb declared, "we piss away the very advantage the First Fang just mentioned."

"Agreed," Rikka conceded.

"Ideally," Force Leader Haaldaarn, commanding Task Force 83, put in, "I would like to have more complete reconnaissance of that system. The RD2s revealed no Bug capital ships. Perhaps they're waiting in cloak."

"They also might not be there," Shiiaarnaow shot back.

"A risky supposition," Haaldaarn rumbled.

"Nevertheless," Rikka said, "if true, it offers us a golden opportunity. Despite my earlier reservations, I am inclined to seize that opportunity." The Crucian's eyes shifted to something outside the com pickup. They all knew he was looking at the holo display of what was, to him, the very home of the Demons. When he turned back to the pickup, he wore a new expression . . . and by now they were all familiar enough with his species to be chilled. "I would like very much to enter that particular system-especially inasmuch as the 'Shiva Option' can be applied there without compunction."