There was, however, a positive aspect to the situation. The asteroids could be deflected from their courses-or, in the case of the smaller ones, actually broken up. It would not be easy, but with antimatter weapons it could be done. And the Enemy must be as aware of that fact as the Fleet was, so his freedom of action was limited by the need to defend those incredible kinetic projectiles as they followed their immutable hyperbolic courses in free fall, at a velocity which, while high on the standards of normal interplanetary bodies, was practically stationary to vehicles using reactionless drives.
There could be no further thought of waiting in defensive posture on and around the planets. Those asteroids must be intercepted as far away as possible. All available gunboats and small craft must be fitted with antimatter loads and launched immediately. And the Deep Space Force must go with them.
"Well, we expected it, Sir."
"So we did," Vanessa Murakuma replied to Leroy McKenna's observation. The response was purely automatic. Her entire consciousness was focused on the approaching Bug formation-a classic "Bughouse swarm."
Yes, she had expected it. Not even an idiot or a politician could harbor any remaining doubts about the Bugs' capacity to reason from observed data-or, at least, to perform some process that filled the same function as reasoning. They understood what that formation of asteroids meant, and they were committing everything they had left to what they knew was their final stand against apocalypse.
She studied the readouts on the mobile force that trailed behind the tens of thousands of kamikazes: sixty-seven superdreadnoughts, fifty-two battlecruisers and a hundred and thirty-four light cruisers. At least there were no monitors; evidently intelligence was correct in supposing that the Bugs had had insufficient time to complete any new ones since she and Lord Khiniak had made their last, regrettably uncoordinated incursion into this system.
Her eyes went to the holo sphere on whose scale that formation shrank to a single scarlet icon, moving to intercept a cluster of tiny green lights representing the asteroids and the combined fleets' battle-line, together with the fighter screen spread before them by Small Fang Meearnow'raaalpha's eighty light carriers.
Finally, she let her gaze rest on another emerald icon, near the inner fringes of the asteroid belt-one which she hoped and believed appeared on no similar displays aboard the Bug ships whose course it was paralleling.
Anson Olivera approached. The farshathkhanaak had had his eyes on that remote green icon from the first.
"Admiral, we've gotten another call from Fang Koraaza's staff. They want to know if it's time to-"
"Not yet. A little longer, I think." Murakuma had a multitude of figures, actual and projected, at her fingertips. But in the end it came down to a matter of feel, complicated by the need to factor in communications time-lags.
Still, Olivera only had a minute or so longer to fidget before Murakuma straightened up abruptly.
"All right, Anson," she said crisply. "Signal Small Fang Iaashmaahr."
The signal flashed across the light-minutes to Iaashmaahr'freaalkit-ahn, commanding her own Task Force 63 and also Third Fleet's TF 33-thirty-four assault carriers and forty-eight fleet carriers, which had gone into cloak and maneuvered among the asteroids until they were in position to cover the Bugs' anticipated course. The signal was received, and thirty-four hundred primary-pack-armed fighters launched undetected.
They couldn't remain undetected quite long enough to reach their targets, of course. The ships of the Bugs' deep space force managed to launch their gunboats into the path of the fighter strike, and other gunboats hastily detached from the "Bughouse swarm" joined them. But that desperately erected barrier could barely even slow Orion and Terran and Gorm pilots who smelled blood. One Bug starship after another died in a stroboscopic cluster of fireballs, and the com frequencies rang with cries of triumph in three languages, from three different sets of vocal apparatus.
Then the fighter strike was through, emerging into clear space and sending reports flooding into the databases of Fleet flag.
"It worked, Admiral!" Ernesto Cruciero exclaimed. "The data are incomplete, of course, but most of the deep space force ships were either destroyed outright or damaged so severely they won't be able to keep formation . . . and wouldn't be much use if they could!"
Murakuma permitted herself a brief smile at the ops officer's enthusiasm.
"Very good, Ernesto. Convey my congratulations to Small Fang Iaashmaahr-and also my desire that she expedite the recovery of her fighters so she can rendezvous with us as quickly as possible." Cruciero and Olivera both looked somewhat crestfallen. "Let's face it, gentlemen. Crippling the deep space force, while certainly desirable, was really something of a sideshow. That's the real threat." Murakuma pointed at the innocuous-looking ruby icon that represented clouds of antimatter-laden gunboats and shuttles. "And we're going to need Iaashmaahr's fighters very badly to deal with it."
There was a basic inelegance to it: the Allies had to defend the asteroids and the Bugs had to neutralize them, and both sides knew it. All of which left little scope for finesse.
Iaashmaahr's carriers remained in cloak for their run to rejoin the rest of the combined fleets, so they had the benefit of one more undetected launch. Those fighters, and the nineteen hundred others from Small Fang Meearnow's Mohrdenhaus (whose usefulness even the Terrans were coming to appreciate), went out to meet the Bug kamikazes in a dogfight whose scale was exceeded only by its desperation.
As always, the fighters cut great gashes through the massed Bug formations. And, as always, they couldn't possibly kill enough of those endless, uncaring hordes. Like water pouring through a collapsing dike, streams of kamikazes closed in on the asteroids.
The battle-line slid in, interposing itself, suffering hideous losses as it burned away hundreds more of the kamikazes. Vanessa Murakuma lay in her command chair crash frame, trying to disassociate her mind from her bruised body as Li Chien-lu shuddered from hits that sent even a monitor's mass reeling. It was all she could do. She'd already given sufficient orders: stand and fight.
Again, many of the attackers broke through-into a latticework of death around the asteroids, whose defensive installations were directed by Taliaferro's command ships. And again, not all the kamikazes could be denied their rendezvous with death. Two of the smaller "Hammer" asteroids were shattered into pieces which wouldn't even stay on trajectories that would bring them into collision with Planet III to burn up in its atmosphere, for their fragments-unlike their intact sisters-were no longer accelerating down their precisely calculated track. But not even the ultimate violence of antimatter annihilation could break up the big planetoids.
At last it was over, and Murakuma and her staff surveyed the readouts of carnage.
"Their remaining kamikazes are falling back to Planet III to regroup," Marina Abernathy concluded.
"We need to do the same thing," Murakuma pointed out, and turned from the intelligence officer to address the ops officer and the farshathkhanaak.
"Ernesto, Anson, I want a schedule for our carriers with undamaged drives to shuttle back to Orpheus 1 and Bug-06 in relays for replacement fighters. We have a long way to go, and the Bugs will be back."