"They're falling back, Sir!" Captain Mandagalla sounded as if she couldn't quite believe her own report. Crete and the rest of Prescott's fast superdreadnoughts and battle-cruisers led Second Fleet towards the enemy, covered by the smoothly practiced strikegroups of TF 21's CVLs, and Prescott felt his matching surprise as his plot confirmed his chief of staffs report. They were falling back, and that itch of worry stirred again.
It wasn't the first time the Bugs had retreated, yet he couldn't quite quash the itch. They couldn't retreat fast enough to avoid action forever, and given the massive gunboat force those ships must mother, the logical move would have been to linger just beyond SBMHAWK range, then rush the warp point behind a wall of gunboats and kamikazes. They probably couldn't have stopped Second Fleet-especially if Antonov had deployed reserve SBMHAWKs-but it would certainly have been their best chance to hurt it badly. So why hadn't they?
"Anything from the recon fighters, Jacques?" he asked sharply.
"No, Sir," the ops officer replied. "They're over ten light-minutes out already. If there were anything out there, they'd have seen it by now."
The cloaked battle-cruisers watched from fifty light-minutes out as the enemy moved to pursue the retreating deep space force. He was not moving at the full speed of which he was capable. That was good; it would take him longer to overtake and destroy his targets.
The battle-cruisers waited until the last enemy vessel had cleared the mines, then began their stealthy advance towards the warp point at twenty thousand kilometers per second. It would take them over twelve hours to reach their destination, but that had been calculated from the outset. They were too few in number to affect the outcome of the battle to come, anyway . . . and perfectly sufficient for their mission.
Commander Francis Lafferty, acting CO of the brutally wounded CVA Norn, let himself sink into the astrogator's command chair with a carefully suppressed groan of exhaustion. He was just as happy Captain Duk's chair had been destroyed by the hit which killed her. He'd liked the captain almost as much as he'd respected her; sitting in her chair would have seemed a slap at her memory, yet Regs and tradition alike would have left him no choice if it had survived her.
At least we've got the command deck pressurized again, he thought bitterly. That's more than half our compartments can say.
Norn would fight again, thanks entirely to the engineers who'd designed her for maximum survivability, but Lafferty felt another wrench of anguish as he thought of the hundreds of people who wouldn't be aboard when she did. The anguish only intensified when he added the already confirmed losses her strikegroup had suffered, and he jerked himself away from that painful subject and looked at the visual display. TFNS Hyacinth, the Dunedin-class CLE detached to stand by the big assault carrier, floated in its depths like a reminder there were still friends in a hostile universe, and just seeing her was an enormous psychological relief.
His com panel chirped, and he pressed the key. "Bridge, Comman-Captain speaking," he corrected himself with a grimace.
"We've got Drive Four and Five back on-line, Sir." Lieutenant Driscoll, Norn's senior surviving engineer, had worked nonstop for twenty hours since the rest of Second Fleet had left the CVA behind to lick her wounds. Her dirty face was etched with deep lines on the com screen, and Lafferty wondered if she would ever look young again.
"Good work, Jeanette," he said sincerely, and was rewarded by a wan smile. Norn could make half her designed speed now, and he turned his chair-one of the irritating things about its location was that it required him to turn to see his bridge crew-to face his helmsman. "As soon as Lieutenant Driscoll signals readiness, take us to maximum available. I'll feel better with a little more space between us and the warp point."
"Aye, aye, Sir," the helmsman replied.
Lafferty was just turning back to his panel when the acting tac officer spoke.
"Drones transiting the warp point," he announced, then paled. "They're not ours, Sir!"
Lafferty jumped out of his chair and crossed to Tactical, and his face went as pale as the tactical officer's as he saw not simply dozens but scores of drones streaking past his ship.
"Vector?" he snapped.
"They're heading straight up the chain, Sir," the tac officer said grimly, and Lafferty's stomach froze. A few drones passed close enough for Hyacinth's point defense to kill, but ninety percent got through, and he could think of only one reason for the Bugs to be sending them.
"How many drones do we have left, Com?" he demanded.
"Uh, ten-no, twelve, Sir, but two are damaged. I don't know how reliable they are."
Lafferty's mind raced. With no way to know what course Second Fleet had pursued since his own ship had been detached he couldn't use courier drones to alert the Admiral from here. He could warn the Fleet Train and Alpha Centauri, but to warn Antonov-
He faced the implications squarely, then drew a deep breath. "Stand by to record."
"Standing by, Sir."
" 'Enemy courier drones have just been dispatched past this ship,' " Lafferty told the pickup in a flat, overcontrolled voice. " 'They are headed up the chain towards Centauri. I repeat, towards Centauri. I will attempt to advise Admiral Antonov.' " He started to say something more, then stopped himself. Anyone who received that message wouldn't need him to tell them the Bugs wouldn't have launched drones unless there was someone to receive them.
Someone lurking along Second Fleet's only line of retreat.
"Got it?" he said instead.
"On the chip, Sir."
"Very well. Append our log and be sure the location and time chops are current, then transmit it to Hyacinth. Inform Commander Watanabe that I want him to download it to his drones, then launch half of them for Centauri and the other half to Admiral Chin."
"Aye, aye, Sir. And our own drones?"
"Download the same message and set them for a circular search pattern. Tag their beacons with an all-ships signal and lock in the Code Omega release sequence."
"But-" the com officer began, then closed his mouth as Lafferty met his eyes. He hesitated a moment longer, then nodded. "Aye, Sir," he said quietly, and Lafferty stared down into the plot. He felt the tac officer beside him and tasted the other man's fear as he worked through the logic Lafferty had already followed to its terrifying conclusion.
"We don't have much speed," Lafferty said almost thoughtfully. "If whoever sent those drones is covering the warp point, we'll never be able to outrun them. But if we take Hyacinth back through with us, one of us may be able to get a transmission-or at least a drone-off to the Admiral."
He didn't add "before they kill us," but the tac officer swallowed audibly, then nodded. Unless there was time for Plotting to get them a bearing on the rest of Second Fleet, they couldn't even use lasers or give their drones a definite vector. They might have time for an omnidirectional transmission, but in twenty hours, Antonov could have moved as much as a hundred light-minutes. That was too far for an omnidirectional message-and if the Bugs who'd launched those drones were directly atop the warp point, it would take far longer than they were likely to have to get the com lasers a bearing. Which meant it would all come down to the twelve drones Norn still had, and on a blind search pattern. . . .