It was a reasonable question, but a basic stubbornness wouldn't let him simply file the matter away under the heading of "Answer Unknowable." This couldn't be an accident. There must, he felt with a certainty beyond mere logic, be some immediate significance to the absence of such an awesome assemblage of tonnage and firepower at this particular time in this particular place. And yet, like a dog without a bone or even a stick to gnaw, he lacked any solid basis for speculation. Given the unpredictable nature of the warp connections . . .
For lack of any other starting point, he cleared the holo sphere and summoned up a strategic-scale view of the warp lines he did know: the Prescott Chain, proceeding from what was now officially known as Prescott's Star through the glowing little orbs of four more systems before reaching AP-5. From AP-5, it ran through four more nexi, the last of which was El Dorado with its broken string-light closed-warp connection to Home Hive One . . . beyond which lay the unknown.
It called nothing to mind. The display was only a chain of lights, connecting two known points across an unknown distance with an unknown number of closed warp points on its flanks. He frowned thoughtfully at it, and then began to trace it in reverse. He worked backwards from Home Hive One to AP-5, where Andrew had met his death and where he was certain he would have to fight his own way through on his return, against whatever forces the Bugs had been able to rush through the closed warp point that system must hold. . . .
And all at once, dizzyingly, he knew.
There was one perfectly good reason why those massed formations of capital ships might no longer be in the system. He'd been correct in supposing that the Bug pickets still in AP-5 had summoned help to cover that system against his return. What he hadn't guessed then was that the help they required had been available from only one source-Home Hive One.
His imagination supplied another warp chain, one originating with an open warp point of Home Hive One and running parallel to the Prescott Chain, doubling back through some unknown but probably small number of intervening systems to AP-5, which it entered through a closed warp point. That closed point had allowed the Bugs to ambush Andrew there on his return leg . . . but they'd done so without any way of knowing just where he'd been returning from. And because they didn't know what he'd discovered for the Alliance, they'd reached, quite logically, for the closest nodal reaction force when Raymond's own, far heavier fleet crashed through AP-5.
The main Bug forces had been speeding frantically away from this system even as TF 71 had been advancing slowly but steadily towards it.
He brought his excitement under stern control and suppressed his instinct to share his theory with his staff and flag officers. He would have confided in Zhaarnak, had his vilkshatha brother been here. But he wasn't, and Prescott knew this couldn't be proved.
But he also knew that he needed no formal proof that the observed facts weren't mere coincidence. Coincidence simply wasn't that energetic. Of course, it was entirely possible that what seemed so clear to him might be somewhat less obvious to others.
No. This wasn't the time to make his staff any more doubtful about his ability to maintain professional detachment. So he'd just keep this insight to himself. And use it. . . .
As they'd done at Home Hive Three, Prescott and Shaaldaar timed their arrivals at Planets I and III to be simultaneous-a simpler problem in astrogation here, as these planets were so close together at their present approach. Still, "close" was a purely relative term when it came to interplanetary distances, so-again, as an Home Hive Three-there would be a communications lag. In the present case, it would be six minutes before either admiral would know the results of the other's attack, and it would take equally long to transmit any other information between them. But there was no alternative. All indications were that telepathy was instantaneous, operating on some level of reality where the light-speed limit didn't apply, so any real-time gap would allow one Bug planet to warn the other of what was coming.
It was too much to expect that they'd be able to close to point-blank range before being detected. Home Hive Three had been an unrepeatable piece of good fortune. Nevertheless, the space stations and orbital fortresses around the two target worlds were still struggling up to whatever passed for full alert among the Bugs when the attack forces drew into range to launch their fighters and gunboats.
Of the two admirals, Shaaldaar had the more complex tactical problem, for some of the mobile units at Planet III were undoubtedly at full alert at any given time, and the others would undoubtedly power up faster than the fixed defenses. So the plan called for him to send his Gorm gunboats, with their capacity to carry far more external ordnance than the fighters, to smother those awakening warships with FRAMs before more than a few of them were able to bring their weapons on-line. Meanwhile, his fighters would swarm like locusts over the space station and orbital weapons platforms.
Prescott, faced only with static defenses, had more options, and he'd opted to divert part of his attack waves to hit Planet I's surface while its orbital defenders were still under attack. Sensor returns had revealed a surprising plethora of ground installations on the planetary surface-it was the single most striking difference between this system and Home Hive Three that they'd yet observed-so there was no shortage of targets in the hemisphere where the extra fighter assets would be employed.
Prescott was studying a holographic image of the planet and its orbiting defenses as they approached launch range and the last few minutes of the countdown ticked away. Everyone on Flag Bridge was as determined as he himself to play the "I'm calm, cool, and collected" game as the pre-attack tension ratcheted higher and higher. He doubted that he was actually fooling anyone else any more than they were fooling him, but that didn't absolve any of them of their responsibility to try.
Any of them except Amos Chung, who chose that moment to approach his admiral with his habitual diffidence somewhat in abeyance.
"Sir. . . ."
"Yes, Amos?" Prescott prompted without looking away from the holographic that continued to absorb at least eighty percent of his attention.
"Uh, Sir, we're close enough now to get more detailed sensor readings of those ground installations all over the planet, and my people have just completed an analysis of the latest imagery, and-"
"Yes, Amos?" Prescott repeated. His voice wasn't exactly testy, but it had taken on a definite come-to-the-point undertone, and Chung drew a deep breath.
"Sir, it's my considered judgment that those are ground bases for gunboats. And, based on the number each of the installations-they're very standardized-could accommodate . . . Well, Sir, I think there are twenty-four hundred gunboats on that planet."
All at once, Chung had Prescott's undivided attention.
"Did I understand you to say-?"
"Yes, Sir." Chung braced himself anew. "And judging from the data downloads on Planet III we've gotten from Force Leader Shaaldaar, it looks like there are an approximately equal number of the bases on each of the other two planets, as well. His people hadn't identified them before they sent off their raw sensor download, but when I compared their take to what we'd already picked up here, it's sort of jumped up and hit me in the eye. Sir," he shook his head, "I just don't see anything else they could be."
Prescott didn't reply at first as he stared into Chung's face without even seeing the intelligence officer. Instead, for a sickening instant, the numbers swam before his eyes. Seventy-two hundred gunboats! And there's no way we can warn Shaaldaar that he's facing a third of them-not in time, not with a six-minute communications lag. And even if we could, by the time we turn on Planet II, the twenty-four hundred there will be in space, ready to swarm over us like a river of army ants eating elephants to the bone. . . .