Fireballs began to glare all along the cliff face of that moving mountain of suicidal death. It was incredible. They were actually so close together that an exploding kamikaze's antimatter load could take out two-even three-additional small craft by simple proximity. It was worse than shooting fish in a barrel; it was like dynamiting them in a fish bowl!

And yet, if you could accept the sacrificial logic of massed kamikaze attacks in the first place, then that hideous hurricane of exploding small craft made perfectly good sense. Yes, the fighters could kill anything they could see, but the Bug formation was so dense, so compact, that the strikegroups could see only a tiny fraction of them at a time, and while they were killing the ones they could see, the others were sweeping closer and closer to the Fleet at over twelve percent of light-speed.

That was why the protective fighters had to envelop them, had to capture them in a net of coordinated crossfires and finely sequenced squadron-level pounces.

But there were too many attackers to envelop, and no time to work around the perimeter. There was time only for each squadron to salvo its missiles head-on . . . and then follow them straight into that maw of destruction. It was sheer, howling chaos, with absolutely no possibility of centralized direction. Strikegroups came apart, shredding into individual squadrons-sometimes individual fighters-as they fought for their own lives and the life of the battle-line.

But they were used to that, had been ever since the Bugs introduced their gunboat-mounted jammer packs. Nor did it matter much; there were plenty of kamikazes for everyone to kill. Enough, and more than enough.

"All right, people," Irma said as she finished her formal orders and VF-94's spot in line flashed closer at a combined closing speed of over .25 c. "Try to keep some kind of formation and watch each others' backs. But mostly . . . kill the bastards!"

And then they were in among the vastest dogfight in history, and there was plenty of killing for everyone.

Even for veterans of the war against the Bugs, there was something horrible about the way the seemingly illimitable ranks and columns and phalanxes of gunboats and small craft advanced. There was absolutely no tactical finesse. This was an elemental force that existed for the sole purpose of reaching the screen, and passing through it to the capital ships and carriers.

They know-in whatever weird way they "know" things-that this is their last stand, Irma thought in some sheltered recess of her mind, even as she blew two kamikazes out of the plenum, so close together and in such rapid succession that the fireballs merged. And we know this is the last real battle we'll have to fight. That's why there's a kind of madness about this carnage . . . from both sides.

Then the tatters of the Bugs' first waves came into contact with the screen, and it became clear that there was going to be something else about this battle that was unique.

"Report! I want answers!" Leroy McKenna's strain broke through his usually rock-steady surface as he snapped at the staff intelligence officer. Murakuma decided that this wasn't the time to reprove him. Instead, she concentrated on trying to match the studied imperturbablility that Kthaara'zarthan radiated as he stood beside her.

Marina Abernathy glanced up, then exchanged a few more hurried words with a knot of specialists before she turned to face the chief of staff.

"It's clear enough, Sir-we just never anticipated it. The Bugs have developed and deployed a system analogous to the jammer packs they've been using against our fighters. But this version disrupts the datalink systems of starships."

"But . . . but there's nothing bigger than gunboats out there!" McKenna waved at the master plot showing the oncoming torrent of tiny red lights that was coming up against the cruiser screen . . . and suffering far fewer losses from its fire than it should have. "They can't carry second-generation ECM on something that small!"

"They're not. It's a much weaker system than that, with what seems to be a maximum range of not more than two light-seconds-probably closer to one and a half. But within that range, it has the same effect."

Murakuma decided it was time to step in.

"Does it radiate an easily detected emissions signature, like the earlier generation jammer packs?"

"According to the preliminary reports, it does, Admiral."

"Very well, then." She turned to Ernesto Cruciero and pointed to the teeming plot, where the swarms of emerald fighters were still snapping at the heels of the masses of kamikazes. "Ernesto, get with Anson. Our fighters must understand clearly that their first priority is detecting and killing the jamming gunboats."

"Aye, aye, Sir. We'll pass the word-and it looks like several of our strikegroups are already doing just that, on their own initiative."

Murakuma nodded. She would have expected no less.

"I agree we need to kill the jammers," Abernathy put in, "but the destruction of the jamming system does not imply instantaneous restoration of the datalink it was jamming. It's going to take at least a little time to put the net back up, so no matter what our fighters can do. . . ."

The spook left the thought unfinished.

"Both points are well taken," Murakuma acknowledged formally. "But however well it works-or doesn't-it's still the only game in town. Send the orders, Ernesto."

"Also, Ahhdmiraaaal Muhrakhuuuuma," Kthaara said, speaking up for the first time, "it would be well to alert all fleet commands to what the battle-line can expect. They are already at General Quarters, of course. But . . ."

He indicated the plot, where the scarlet ocean was beating against the dam of the cruiser screen. The dam was already starting to spring leaks.

"The battle-line," the old Orion resumed, "including, needless to say this ship, should prepare for heavier kamikaze attacks than we had anticipated."

The battle rose, if possible, to an even higher pitch of insanity. The cruisers of the screen, many of them now fighting individually rather than as elements in the precision fire control of datagroups-poured out fire in a frenzy of desperation. Fighters corkscrewed madly through the dense clouds of kamikazes in grim efforts to seek out and destroy the jamming gunboats.

There weren't as many of those last as might have been expected from earlier experiences with the first-generation jammer packs. Probably, it was a new system the Bugs hadn't had time to put into true mass production. But great as that mercy might have been, there were still enough of them to make a difference. For all the frantic efforts of the fighters and the cruisers of the screen, more and more kamikazes broke through and hungrily sought out the massed formations of monitors and superdreadnoughts, and the carriers sheltering behind them.

Most especially, they hunted the command ships-like Seventh Fleet's Irena Riva y Silva, a ship by now almost as legendary as the admiral whose lights she flew.

A thunder god's hammer smashed home, and the entire world rang like one enormous bell. Even in the shelter of his armored, padded command chair and its restraining crash frame, Raymond Prescott momentarily lost consciousness as the latest kamikaze impacted.

That was the wrong word, of course. It wasn't the direct physical collision that not even a monitor could have survived. The last-ditch point defense fire had prevented that, and it very seldom happened in space war anyway. But what had happened as the searing ball of plasma reached out and slammed into the flagship's drive field was bad enough.