Prescott read their thoughts, and he smiled again.

"Rest assured, ladies and gentlemen, I have no intention of waiting passively. As you may recall, we have unfinished business in this system."

"The other warp point defenses, Admiral?" Mandagalla queried.

"Precisely. We were, I believe, en route to Warp Point Three before the recent attack. I believe we can now resume our interrupted schedule."

It was intolerable. The Enemy was simply continuing the obliteration of the other warp point fortresses, ignoring the Mobile Force altogether. This placed the burden on the Fleet to either take action or remain in the role of a mere spectator to the destruction.

Fortunately, the Mobile Force could draw on the gunboat and small-craft reserves of the systems along the chain through which it had passed. That provided sufficient assets to constitute as many as three suicide formations, each theoretically capable of dealing with these Enemies.

So the Mobile Force refused to let itself be lured away from the warp point through which it had emerged. Instead, it would send those formations to pursue the Enemy wherever he might roam in the system.

"They would have been smarter to combine all their gunboats and pinnaces into one irresistible force at the outset, Sir," Stephen Landrum opined.

Prescott nodded in agreement. The kamikaze formations-or what was left of them-were belatedly doing just that. He and the farshathkhanaak were gazing into the holo sphere and watching three red icons crawl together and merge.

The Bugs' idea, Amos Chung speculated, had been for the three swarms of deadly midges to herd TF 71 away from the remaining warp point defenses and toward the waiting jaws of the heavy units at Warp Point Five. If so, it hadn't worked. Prescott had adroitly maneuvered away from them to prolong the chase, keeping his battle-line out of reach while sending long-range fighter strikes to repeatedly savage his pursuers. He'd whittled their strength down by as much as two-thirds while giving his fighter pilots more experience at this kind of combat.

But now they'd finally gotten wise. . . .

Prescott straightened up suddenly.

"I believe it's time to let them catch us," he told Landrum. "They can probably do so anyway, now that they're going to concentrate on it single-mindedly."

"You mean, Sir-?"

"Yes. Fang Zhaarnak's acknowledgment arrived just a little while ago. In real-time, he's about to launch his attack." Prescott turned matter-of-fact. "Our tactical doctrine will be unchanged. Please call the rest of the staff."

"Aye, aye, Sir." Landrum started to turn away, then paused. "Uh, Admiral, despite their losses, that's a more formidable force of kamikazes than the one that hit us last time. Our fighters are going to sustain more losses-and more of them are going to get through to hit our ships."

"I realize that, Steve. But that's unavoidable. And . . . every gunboat we destroy here is one less gunboat Lord Telmasa will face."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: ". . . and I'll take the low road."

Zhaarnak'telmasa exploded out of AP-5 behind a storm front of SBMHAWKs and SRHAWKs.

His most recent flights of RD2s had confirmed his vilkshatha brother's inference: one of the two mobile forces in the system had departed and now confronted TF 71 in Home Hive One. So TF 72 faced only (!) the second one-twenty monitors, sixty-seven superdreadnoughts, thirty-six battlecruisers, and seventy-five light cruisers-and by now the Bugs had learned to keep their starships well back from warp points that could suddenly belch forth torrents of SBMHAWKs. But the fixed warp point defenses were still very much in place: twenty-four massive orbital fortresses covered by two thousand laser-armed deep space buoys, shielded by four thousand patterns of mines and hiding amid six hundred ECM buoys. Zhaarnak intended to scorch the warp point's surrounding space clean of those defenses as though with a giant blow torch.

He had a new tool for the scorching. This was to be the debut of the new HARM2-an SBMHAWK-carried homing antiradiation missile. In addition to its SBMHAWK capability, it was able to home in on the later generation deception-mode ECM emissions as well as fire confusion ones. Everyone hoped it would be the answer to the clouds of ECM buoys the Bugs loved to deploy around warp points.

As Hia'khan emerged from the warp point into the maelstrom, a flood of data began to pour in from the ships of the initial waves that had preceded the flagship-mostly assault carriers and Gorm Toragon-class gunboat-bearing monitors. Kevin Sanders took a moment to glance across the flag bridge at Zhaarnak, who was stroking his whiskers with a smooth, almost caressing motion.

"Unless I'm mistaken, that's a look of great satisfaction," he murmured to Uaaria.

"So it is," the female Orion spook agreed. "He is observing the success rate of the HARM2 against the third-generation ECM buoys. He has a keen personal interest in the matter."

All at once, Sanders remembered the "April Fool" offensive Zhaarnak had led out of Zephrain. He also remembered that Orions did not enjoy embarrassment.

"Yes, I can see how those buoys might be rather a sore subject with him."

Uaaria gave him a quelling, slit-pupiled glare, and he hastily resumed his study of the data. Zhaarnak had assumed that the Bug capital ships wouldn't be sitting atop the warp point. Hence the composition of his first waves, which were now advancing sunward through the rapidly dissipating debris of the fortresses. Those monitors and CVAs, with their gunboats and fighters, were intended to counter the kamikaze gunboats and small craft that could be expected, sooner rather than later. So far, the Fifteenth Fang's predictions were proving out.

Sanders turned his attention to the system display.

Their warp point of entry lay five light-hours from the yellow Sol-like primary. The RD2s had detected only one other fortress-cluster of the precise composition that the Bugs-consistent to a fault-assigned to warp point defense. That consistency, Sanders reflected, certainly simplified the choice of where to go next. Unfortunately, that warp point was even further from the local sun than this one . . . and on a diametrically opposite bearing.

Between the two warp points, the inner planets warmed themselves around the hearth of the primary. One of them, Planet III, was life-bearing. From its energy emissions as reported by the RD2s, Uaaria and her subordinates had inferred a medium-sized population of no more than a few hundred million. This, clearly, was no home hive system. A colony, no doubt. Maybe a relatively new one, given the Bugs' propensity for multiplying up to the kind of ugly limits once prophesied by Malthus, who'd underestimated humankind's blessed disinclination to carry anything to its ultimate logical conclusion.

At any rate, even if there weren't tens of billions of Bugs here, there were Bugs. Acting on General Directive Eighteen and his own inclinations alike, Zhaarnak ordered the task force to shape a course for the inhabited planet.

Waves of gunboats and small craft began their suicidal attacks-if a word like "suicidal" was really applicable to a race with no sense of individual self preservation. Losses began to mount.

And yet . . .

Sanders had begun to notice it himself just before Zhaarnak stalked over to the intelligence station.

"Their capital ships are refusing battle," the Orion stated, leaving implicit his demand for an explanation.