He watched a small cluster of icons speeding even further outward as the rest of the strike wheeled to return to their motherships to rearm and reorganize. Those were Foxhound's recon fighters, splitting up to sweep down reciprocals of both gunboat waves' tracks to seek out the ships from which they'd come. If SF 62 was lucky, those ships would be the old, original Bug designs, with commercial grade engines Prescott's own starships could easily outrun.

If SF 62 was lucky.

"It's confirmed, Admiral," Chau said unhappily. "We probably don't have a complete count on them-Foxhound only carries six recon birds, and the Bugs are still cloaked-but we've positively IDed a minimum of five Antelopes and two Antlers in Force Alpha." Prescott nodded. Force Alpha was the one which lay between them and their escape warp point. "We have military grade drives on all but five of the other Alpha units our pilots saw, as well," Chau went on. "The commercial-drive ships look like Adder-class BCs, which makes sense, given the weight of gunboats we saw coming at us. Our IDs on Beta Force are more tentative, but it looks like there may be a higher percentage of Adders out there."

"I see." Prescott rubbed his jaw thoughtfully while he glanced around at the com images of his ship commanders and Commander Hiithylwaaan, his Ophiuchi farshathkhanaak. A matching awareness of what that meant looked back at him from every face, and he hid a mental sigh.

The Adders were gunboat carriers, with only standard missile launchers to back up their attack groups, and they were from the old, slow philosophy of Bug warship design. Antlers and Antelopes were very different propositions, however, for they were capital missile ships, at least as heavily armed as his own Concorde and the flotilla's five Dunkerque-C-class ships. They had not only the speed to match SF 62 stride for stride, but also the weapons fit to engage it from well beyond the range of most of its starships, and if his recon pilots had seen seven of them, there were probably more with the forces already engaged against him. Even if there weren't, it was highly likely that still more Bug ships were headed towards him, either already in-system or en route for it.

Much of the Bugs' shipboard gunboat strength must have been killed, but that, unfortunately, didn't necessarily mean as much as it might have, given gunboats' ability to make transit on their own. There could be hordes of the things lurking just beyond his sensor range, waiting to pounce, although he tended to doubt it. If they were present in that kind of overwhelming strength, the Bugs wouldn't have bothered with fancy attritional tactics. They would simply have bored straight in to overwhelm the flotilla and be done with it.

But their data on his strength was almost certainly at least as good as his estimate of theirs. And whether they knew it or not, they were between him and his exit warp point. Worse, their speed meant they could stay between him and his warp point unless he could somehow drop back into cloak. Which he couldn't do as long as they had any gunboats with which to shadow him. And since said shadowers were too spread out for him to get all of them, that meant the only way to prevent the Bug starships from intercepting him was to destroy or at least lame those ships so that they could no longer catch his own vessels.

Which meant fighter and gunboat strikes at extreme range, he admitted unhappily to himself. He didn't like it, and he hated the thought of the casualties his strikegroups would suffer. But he had no choice, for only six of his own battlecruisers were armed with capital missiles. He would be outnumbered and outgunned in any duel with the similarly armed Antelopes, and his ships would be just as vulnerable to drive damage as they would . . . except that any of his ships slowed by damage would be doomed, for the rest of the flotilla could not slow its own pace to cover them.

"We'll have to take them out-or at least slow them down-with fighter strikes," he said finally, unable to keep the heaviness from his tone. "And we're going to have to do it in a way that leaves us enough reserve fighter strength to catch and finish off their shadowers once the starships are dealt with. Can your people hack that, Commander Hiithylwaaan?"

"I believe so, Sir," the fierce-beaked Ophiuchi replied after a moment. "It will not be easy, but we should have the strength for it, especially with the gunboats to assist." It was a mark of the direness of their straits that not a trace of the habitual Ophiuchi disdain for the slow, heavy-footed gunboats colored his manner. "I suggest that we engage the Antelopes and Antlers first, then go back and kill the Adders later if we must. We are unlikely to catch them with gunboats actually on their racks, but they will probably commit their surviving gunboat strength to the combat space patrol role against our strikes on their faster units, which will give us the opportunity to engage and destroy them in passing."

"I agree," Prescott said, nodding sharply. "But I don't want to expose your pilots to high attrition with repeated strikes, so let's try to do this in a single wave if we can. I want two-thirds of the fighters fitted with primary packs. The remaining third can fly escort with missiles, but a primary-armed squadron or two should be able to take out enough of an Antelope's engines to cut its speed in half in a single pass."

"It will mean more exposure to their close-in defenses," Hiithylwaaan pointed out, then made the small gesture his people used for a shrug. "But you are correct, Admiral. We will have to enter their defensive envelope anyway; best to engage with our most effective crippling weapon so that we need not enter it a second time."

"Very well, then." Prescott turned to Leopold and Chau. "At the same time, the flotilla will alter course to follow the strike towards Alpha Force. I want to be close enough to take them out completely if the strike results warrant it, and I don't want to get any closer to any of Beta's surviving gunboats than we have to. I don't want us in missile range of Alpha yet, either, but there's no point pretending they don't have a damned good idea of where we are already."

"No, Sir, there isn't," Leopold agreed. "On the other hand, closing the range on them will make it even easier for them to track us . . . and harder for us to drop back into cloak if the opportunity presents itself."

"Josh, every time we launch or recover-or engage one of their strikes-they'll find us all over again, anyway, and as Ba Hai just pointed out, we have a much poorer idea of what Beta has. On top of that, Alpha is the one between us and our warp point, and until we can cripple at least one group badly enough to give us a chance of outrunning it-and deal with their damned gunboats once and for all-we're not going to shake them. That being so, I'd rather keep our combat strength concentrated and give our pilots as short a recovery flight time as possible."

"Yes, Sir," Leopold said, and Prescott nodded.

"All right, then, people. Let's do it," he said briskly.

Sensors detected the sudden resurgence of drive sources as the Enemy launched his attack craft once more. It was unfortunate, though scarcely unexpected. Clearly the Fleet units between him and escape must be destroyed or disabled if the Enemy were to have any hope of disengaging and evading successfully. And it was quite possible he would succeed, for rather more of his attack craft survived than the plan had allowed for at this point. But there were ways that situation might be redressed, and orders went out to the special units to prepare to initiate the new anti-attack craft tactics.