New directives went out quickly. The warp point fortresses, already two-thirds destroyed by the preliminary bombardment, were abandoned to their fate. They would wreak whatever additional damage they could, but the mobile units which had been assigned to support them withdrew, falling back in the direction of the second warp point which must be defended. And as those starships retreated, the starships on the warp point the Enemy had so inexplicably failed to exploit simultaneously, moved to meet them.

The gunboats and kamikazes which had been deployed to cover the attack warp point continued to spend themselves in ferocious attacks upon the Enemy. His own gunboats and small attack craft were now in the system, engaging the kamikazes in savage dogfights, and the massive gunboat reserve-which had stood ready to respond to attacks on either or both of the two threatened warp points from a central position-moved to support them.

A fresh gunboat force was dispatched from the inhabited planet to replenish the Reserve. Those gunboats had been intended for the final, close-in defense of the planet in the event that the Enemy succeeded in fighting his way into the system. Now that the opportunity to prevent him from doing so had been offered, however, they would be needed to replace the losses the reserves were bound to take in crushing the single attacking force.

The Mobile Forces moving away from the quiescent warp point launched all of their own shuttles and gunboats to reinforce the combat space patrol covering it. It was always possible that the Enemy had intended to exploit both warp points at once and that his failure to do so represented only a failure in coordination, not in strategy. If that were the case, then the standing CSP must be reinforced in case a second, belated attack should materialize. In that event, it was unlikely that the CSP could actually stop the second assault, but the waves of gunboats and kamikazes would at least be able to inflict massive attritional damage on the Enemy as he entered. And if the united starships, supported by the reserves, could engage and destroy the first attacking force in isolation, then the Fleet's surviving units and the fresh gunboats from the planet would turn upon the second, severely battered force.

There was no assurance of victory, yet following the Enemy's serious error, the projections had suddenly become far more favorable.

Raymond Prescott stood on the flag bridge of Irena Riva y Silva, and his face was carved from stone as he studied the latest RD2 data. The range to Zhaarnak's warp point was too great for the drones to provide detailed reports, but the detonation of antimatter warheads and laser buoys would be obvious enough.

They would also be ninety minutes old when the drones detected them and returned to TF 71 with the word that Zhaarnak'telmasa and his farshatok were fighting for their very lives a mere light-hour and a half away across the star system . . . and God only knew how far apart between the star systems from which both halves of Seventh Fleet converged upon this system.

Prescott knew when the attack was supposed to begin, and he looked again at the time. If everything had gone precisely according to schedule, Zhaarnak had begun his assault twelve minutes ago. And if that were the case, then in another seventy-two minutes, Prescott and TF 71 would have proof of it, and-

"Admiral!" Jacques Bichet looked up from his own console and beckoned urgently at the main plot. "We just got a fresh drone wave back, and it's reporting something very strange, Sir."

" 'Strange' in what way, Jacques?" Prescott asked, striding across the flag deck towards the plot.

"I'm not really certain, Sir," the ops officer replied. "But according to the drones, all of the Bug mobile units have begun moving directly out-system from our warp point toward Fang Zhaarnak's."

"What?" Prescott's eyebrows rose in surprise. "Are we picking up any evidence that Zhaarnak began his attack early?" he demanded.

"No, Sir. Our drones haven't detected any indications of combat."

"Then why should they be pulling their starships away from our warp point?" Prescott wondered aloud, and turned to look at Amos Chung.

"I don't know, Sir," the intelligence officer responded. Then he frowned. "Unless . . ."

"Unless what?" Prescott prompted with an unusual testiness as the spook's voice trailed off. Chung looked up at the sharpness of the admiral's tone, then shook himself.

"Excuse me, Sir. I was just thinking. We've pretty much established that the Shiva effect transmits itself at greater than light-speed. We haven't seen any evidence of an actual FTL communication ability between their military units, but perhaps that's because we never looked for it, since we 'knew' no one had one."

"You mean you think the force on the other warp point has . . . telepathically informed the one on our warp point that it's under attack?" Bichet was obviously trying to keep his incredulity out of his voice.

"I suppose it's possible that that's what's happening," Chung said. "On the other hand, I'd think that if they were capable of the sort of complex FTL communication which would be required for tactical coordination we would have seen evidence of it before now. Unless we have seen it and just didn't recognize it because we knew it was impossible . . ."

He shook himself again, obviously tearing himself away from the fascinating possibilities by sheer force of will, and turned back to Prescott.

"On the other hand, they might not need that sort of communication ability to explain this, Sir. The casualties TF 72 would inflict in a warp point assault obviously wouldn't approach the threshold required to trigger the Shiva effect, but the impact might be sufficient for the Bugs on our warp point to sense them, even at this range."

"So what you're suggesting," Prescott said, "is that our Bugs may know that Zhaarnak is killing his Bugs even though their sensors can't pick up any more proof of it than our drones can?"

"I think it's certainly possible, Sir," Chung replied, then waved at the master plot's report of the departure of the guardian starships. "But whatever's causing it, it certainly looks like the distraction effect of the Fang's attack is already being felt."

Prescott grunted in agreement, and his mind raced. His own attack had been scheduled to begin exactly two hours after Zhaarnak's. That interval had been calculated in order to give the Bugs the opportunity to detect Zhaarnak's arrival and then get themselves at least thirty minutes out of position from TF 71's warp point before his own task force made transit. But if the Bugs were already responding to TF 72's assault, then his own attack could be moved up correspondingly. And the quicker he got his units through the warp point, the sooner his own diversionary effect would pull some of the pressure off Zhaarnak. . . .

He watched the plot change as a fresh flight of RD2s made transit. The Bug starships were clearly continuing their movement towards the other warp point. At the same time, the icons representing the defending CSP were denser and heavier than they had been, so apparently the Bugs were reinforcing their covering gunboats and kamikazes as partial compensation for the withdrawal of their starships. Which was what he'd anticipated they would do, although he hadn't expected them to do it this soon.

And it was also what he'd planned his tactics to take advantage of. He turned back to Bichet.

"We're moving up the assault, Jacques. If they're going to pull off the warp point sooner than we expected, we might as well take advantage of it."