Dathum's last shield went down, and two gunboats got through with ramming attacks, as well, damaging her drive and ripping at her hull. Her armor buckled, but she shook off the damage, holding her station. KONS Fikhar was less fortunate. A tornado of missiles battered the Tabby battleship's shields flat, smashed her armor, and tore deep into her hull. She staggered in extremis, and her agony drew the attention of other gunboats. They howled in, ramming again and again, and suddenly one of them reached her magazines. Every antimatter warhead detonated at once, and the fireball licked away another half dozen Bugs as she died.

Fikhar was gone, and three of Prescott's battle-cruisers were mangled wrecks, but the combination of TG 37.2's defensive fire and the unexpected SBMHAWKs proved decisive. The remnants of the Bug strike broke off, fleeing back to its own battle-line, and Prescott drew a deep, shuddering breath. He'd been hurt, but the core of his task group was intact and that had to have been the bulk of the Bugs' gunboats.

Of course, he thought as the enemy superdreadnoughts started forward, that leaves the rest of their damned fleet!

"Damage report from Dathum?" he demanded.

"She's lost an engine room, but she's still as fast as we are," LaFroye replied. "Damage control is bringing her shields back up now. Her armor's a sieve, but most of her weapons are in one piece, and Captain Haarmak says he's still combat capable."

"Good. We're going to need him. Com, send the second-flight drones."

The gunboats had proved less effective than anticipated, and the proof that the missile pods could target them had grim implications for future actions. But the enemy remained too weak to meet the Fleet's battle-line head on, and thirty-eight superdreadnoughts and three battle-cruisers started forward, screened by their light cruisers.

"Great Claw Pressscott has done well," Zhaarnak purred, studying the drone readouts. He and his Human ally had structured TG 37.2 as a mace to smash through the shell of the defenses, but TG 37.1 was a rapier, and it was time to bring it into play. "We will advance, Theerah."

Twenty-one carriers and their escorts scorched into the warp point at max.

The Fleet paused as fresh enemy units suddenly materialized and began launching attack craft. The gunboats were still fleeing back to the twelve battle-cruisers detached to rearm them, and the Fleet could not reach the warp point before these new enemies completed transit. It could neither seal the point against them nor afford to be destroyed if the new missiles proved ineffective, so it turned ponderously away, retreating until it saw how well the new technology worked. There would be time to return to the warp point if the missiles fulfilled predictions.

Raymond Prescott heaved a surreptitious sigh as Zhaarnak made transit, molested only by a handful of gunboats. Stragglers from the last Bug strike tried to penetrate to the carriers, but the old cliché about the snowflake in Hell came to mind as the Tabby squadrons pounced on them.

The task groups made rendezvous, and Prescott scratched the unshaven side of his head as he studied the plot. The Bugs were moving slowly away from the warp point rather than trying to close. They'd never done that before, and something seemed to crawl down the back of his neck as minutes dragged past without a single offensive act out of them. Zhaarnak held his own force on the warp point while his recon fighters swept outward to assure him no cloaked Bugs waited to pounce, but somehow Prescott was sure none did. Yet if not, what were the bastards up to?

"Great Claw Pressscott?" He turned from the plot to his com as Zhaarnak appeared on it.

"Yes, Sir?"

"My pilots have swept a light-minute sphere without contact. Least Claw Theerah and Commmodorrre Jaaackssson agree it is time to launch the next phase. Do you concur?"

"Of course, Sir. However..." Prescott paused a moment, rubbing his upper lip, then shrugged. "I urge caution," he said. "They are not reacting in usual fashion, and I distrust an enemy who does exactly what I want him to do."

"Most surprises represent only misinterpretations of known data," Zhaarnak agreed. "Yet if they wish to stand, we can only attack and discover what it is they wish us to misinterpret."

"Truth, Great Claw. Strike deep."

The enemy was finally ready, but his delay had been helpful. The gunboat's greatest tactical limitation was its inability to dock internally. To rearm, it must return to its mother ship's external rack, and the mother ship must shut down her drive to reload its ordnance racks. The enemy probably had not learned that—yet—but his tardiness was still of immense value.

Though not, it was to be hoped, as much value as the new missiles.

The Zheeerlikou'valkhannaieee would launch the first strike. It was less a matter of honor than of practicality, for there were far more Orion fighters, and the chance of confusion between pilots who couldn't speak one another's languages had to be minimized. The less numerous Terrans were detailed as the task force's covering CSP for the opening phase. Once the Bugs had been hammered a time or two and their gunboats had been finished off, Commodore Jackson's strikegroups could be used to help complete their destruction.

Besides, there would be more than enough action to go around.

Raymond Prescott watched three hundred Tabby strikefighters arrow into the attack. Least Claw Theerah and Zhaarnak had studied Fifth Fleet's combat reports intensively. They knew how dangerous the Cataphracts were, and they'd taken a page from Admiral Murakuma's book: their pilots would go for the screen, using longer-ranged FM2s to pick off the Carbines, Cannons, Cleavers first, then go for the Cataphracts with FRAMs.

It was a good plan—and it came apart the instant the fighters tried to execute it.

The attack craft flashed closer. Their targets were obvious, and the screen adjusted its formation slightly. There were only eighteen Cataphracts, and two dozen Carbines formed a solid wall between them and the enemy, daring him to waste his fire upon them.

Farshathkhanaak Iaouusa'hairniak led the attack. Gee forces drew his lips back, baring his fangs, and his eyes glowed as the Bugs shifted formation. The dairshnahki were actually moving his designated targets out where he could get at them!

Wait! What was th—?

Iaouusa never finished the question as the very first Bug AFHAWK ever used in action scored a direct hit on his fighter.

Prescott slammed his fist down on the arm of his command chair. AFHAWKs! The bastards had AFHAWKs! No wonder they hadn't tried to attack! They'd been waiting to spring their ambush when Task Force 37 attacked!

Surprise was total. It shouldn't have been. He and Zhaarnak should have allowed for the possibility, but so little time had passed since the Battle of Alowan that such a radical shift in the tactical balance hadn't even occurred to them, and Zhaarnak's pilots paid a fearful price. The missile-heavy Carbines, suddenly infinitely more dangerous than the Cataphracts, poured devastating fire into the lead squadrons, and the fighters had known they were beyond threat range. None had even taken evasive action... and seventy-one died in the first, terrible salvo.

The survivors reacted like the elite pilots they were. They broke instantly, in apparently total confusion, only to drop into the Orion version of the TFN's "Waldeck Weave." They twisted their base vectors together in a tangle of competing target sources to confuse the enemy's fire control, and despite their shock, carried through against their targets. Some managed to break lock, maneuvering hard against the AFHAWKs which had acquired them; others were less fortunate, but none turned aside, and the survivors salvoed their missiles into their briefed targets.