Arguably, however, the most valuable resource of all was the Enemy's strategic ignorance. He had no inkling that more of his own kind lay three systems away in the opposite direction, where they had faced the Fleet, stalemated, for so long. A coordinated two-front offensive would have been very difficult to deal with.
And this time, that strategic ignorance would be matched by tactical ignorance.
The Fleet had gone to great lengths to counter the Enemy's intensely inconvenient robot probes. It had smothered the space around the warp point with continuously patroling gunboats and armed small craft. Furthermore, it had pulled those capital ships not on full alert status well back from that warp point, and powered their drives down to standby level, rendering their emissions effectively undetectable.
And, of course, the Enemy couldn't possibly imagine the number of gunboats and small craft that crouched on the planetary surfaces. Or the new innovation with which those gunboats had been supplied.
Vanessa Murakuma permitted herself a grim smile when the sensor reports of awakening Bug starship drives began to light up TFNS Li Chien-lu's flag bridge threat board. She visualized Marcus, back on Zephrain, smiling the same way at the confirmation of their suspicions. . . . But no, he'd be too eaten away by worry to smile about anything.
At least he'd be pleased that their shared skepticism had led her to proceed cautiously into the system-now identified as Home Hive Two from analysis of the orbital fortresses through whose wreckage they were currently advancing.
There'd been forty-eight of those immense constructs, to say nothing of ninety-six defensive heavy cruisers and thirty suicide-rider light cruisers, all surrounded by a veritable haze of mines-eight thousand patterns of them-spangled with thirty-three hundred deep-space buoys. Murakuma had had no intention of rushing in against such defenses. She'd emplaced over half her total inventory of mines around the Orpheus 1 side of the warp point in thin shells which would have been largely useless against capital ships. But by accepting a lower density, she'd been able to emplace them in much greater depth, which would provide an attritional shield to absorb and blunt any gunboat counterattack. Then she'd committed her SBMHAWKs in careful waves, provoking the Bugs into activating shell after shell of ECM-equipped buoys and then sweeping them away with further waves of HAWK2-equipped missiles. Now, with her battle-line making transit against the crippled fortresses and the remnants of the cruisers, she still held a substantial emergency supply of SBMHAWKs in reserve.
It might be a good thing she did, she reflected, for the sensor readings continued to pour in, and the figures mounted and mounted. It wasn't so much the total numbers and tonnage opposing her-daunting though those were-as it was the Bugs' closeness to the warp point. And they were getting even closer, closing in for a point-blank duel.
"They were lying with their drives stepped down to almost nothing," Leroy McKenna stated, echoing her own thoughts.
"It would appear," Murakuma remarked, "that we've been had."
"I wasn't going to put it that way, Sir-" the chief of staff began.
"Nor should you," Murakuma cut in briskly. "Because it's inaccurate. I've been had. But at least most of our capital ships have already completed transit and our CSP is out." She glanced at Anson Olivera for confirmation of the last, and the farshathkhanaak nodded emphatically. "Good. If they want a toe-to-toe slugging match, I'm not averse to it."
She spoke loudly enough to be sure everyone nearby heard her, but it wasn't just bravado. She knew the quality of her personnel.
"And now, Captain Delbridge" she resumed, speaking into the intercom to her flag captain, "please sound General Quarters. This won't be long in coming."
The initial portion of the plan had worked.
Unfortunately, there were no perfect solutions to the problems the Fleet faced. Unlike starships, gunboats and small craft could not cloak, and the Fleet had begun to appreciate at least some of the advantages the Enemy's warp-capable missile pods bestowed upon him. Those advantages had become more pronounced as the Fleet's supporting resource base was carved away and the Enemy's industrial advantage became more and more overwhelming. In the final analysis, no combat space patrol of gunboats was survivable in the face of the unending hurricane of missile pods the Enemy could pour through a warp point, especially since the introduction of the missiles which point defense couldn't intercept.
The only way gunboats or small craft could be hidden from the Enemy's sensors-and so from destruction-was to hold them entirely beyond sensor range of the warp point or to retain them on the external gunboat racks and in the internal boat bays of starships which could cloak. Unfortunately, if they were held beyond sensor range, then they were also beyond any range at which they could immediately intervene against an Enemy incursion. But if they were held on the racks and in the bays of their motherships, only the number which the mobile units had the capacity to support would be available.
Faced with this dilemma, the Fleet had decided that some gunboats and kamikazes would be superior to none. And so, as the Enemy advanced inward from the warp point and the starships of the Deep Space Force brought their drives on-line and revealed themselves, a mass wave of small craft erupted from them.
No one in Sixth Fleet was surprised by the sudden appearance of the gunboats and kamikaze assault shuttles. Indeed, if there were any grounds for surprise, it was that the Bugs hadn't made a greater effort to coordinate the swarms of gunboats which must be just beyond sensor range with the commitment of their starships.
But I suppose it's not really that surprising after all, Murakuma thought as she watched the icons of the Bug small craft dashing towards her battle-line. After all, how much coordinating could they do? Their capital units are still slower than ours, so the only way their battle-line could reasonably hope to intercept ours is to catch us within relatively close proximity to the warp point, before we have time to disappear into cloak and use our speed to dance rings around them. But if they'd kept their gunboats close enough to the warp point to intervene, then they'd have been in our sensor envelope and we could have sent the SBMHAWKs after them.
Which was all very interesting, no doubt, but didn't change the fact that she had to deal with the scores of gunboats and hundreds of shuttles coming straight down her throat.
Anson Olivera's fighter squadrons went to meet them, and the plot was suddenly speckled with thousands of even tinier icons as anti-fighter missiles and gunboat-killing FM3s crossed between the two forces. Scarlet "hostiles" began to vanish in appalling numbers, but a handful of the bright green "friendlies" went with them, and the Bugs' success at hiding their starships meant the kamikazes had only a very short way to go, as distances went in deep-space combat.
Fortunately, these Bugs weren't employing the globular version of the "Bughouse Swarm" formation which had given Seventh Fleet so much difficulty. The defensive fire from the gunboats and the scores of pinnaces scattered among the assault shuttle kamikazes was bad enough, but at least Murakuma's fighters didn't have to break through a solid barrier of ship-launched AFHAWKs before they could even get at their true targets. It was possible that that was an indication that this home hive system had been completely cut off from its fellows long enough that whichever Bug lord high admiral had devised the new doctrine had been unable to communicate it to them. Murakuma reminded herself not to put too much faith in any such assumption and checked the seal on her vacsuit, then locked her shock frame as the first gunboats broke past the CSP.