To Blair's surprise, Maniac ambled to his table. "Colonel," he said, giving him a nod.

"Major," Blair replied. He waited a moment before going on. "Something I can do for you."

Maniac grew visibly uncomfortable, all his cockiness disappearing as he stammered a response. "Er . . . fact is, I wanted to tell you . . . I wanted to say . . . Maverick, that was a damned impressive show back at Ariel. The way you faked that first bunch out of position . . . and the way you kept your cool after the cats pulled their little magic trick." He looked embarrassed. "I know we don't always operate on the same frequency. . . but I thought I should give credit where it's due."

Blair raised an eyebrow. "Well. . ." He wasn't sure how to respond. Maniac Marshall had never before made such an overture. "Thanks for the vote of confidence. It was touch and go there for a while, though."

"Yeah," Marshall agreed. "Tell me about it. When they made that jump point disappear . . . God, I almost lost it. I never thought I'd feel that way, Maverick. Never.

"You kept your head pretty well, all things considered," Blair told him. "We couldn't have nailed that destroyer without you and Flash."

"We could have taken her out by ourselves, if you and Cobra had let us," Maniac said with a trace of his old spirit. "But . . . yeah, it was a good score all the way around." He looked out the viewport and continued with a sour note in his voice. "You think Chief Coriolis was right about the Kilrathi using a cloak on the jump points, Maverick?"

"That's the official verdict," Blair said. "The analysis the captain ordered turned up sensor traces consistent with the use of cloaking generators. That's the report he ordered dispatched to Sector HQ."

"So we only have to worry about them pulling something like that in a nebula, huh?" Marshall looked solemn. "I guess that's good news, at least."

"It also means we won't be stuck, next time out," Blair said. "It might take longer, but we could use a cloaked jump point providing we already had it thoroughly plotted on our charts."

"Does that mean we're going back? To finish the mission? Or with this weapon everybody's talking about?"

"That'll be up to the brass," Blair told him. "But I doubt it. If we're going to use an experimental weapon under difficult conditions, why borrow even more trouble? Of course, I'm not an admiral. Maybe they could find a good reason, but it seems like a silly risk to me."

"Hope you're right," Maniac said. He studied the view outside in silence for a long moment. "Nebulas and asteroid belts . . . I'll be glad to see the last of them. Give me a stand-up fight, not all this dodging and ducking and worrying about what your sensors aren't showing you."

"Look at the bright side, Maniac," Blair told him.

"There's a bright side?"

"Sure. The bad guys don't like flying through all this space junk any more than we do."

"Maybe not," Maniac said. "But they can take more risks out there than we can. After all, they've got nine lives."

"NOW, GENERAL QUARTERS, GENERAL QUARTERS ALL HANDS TO BATTLE STATIONS! REPEAT, ALL HANDS TO BATTLE STATIONS!"

Blair turned in his chair to face a monitor and punched up an intercom link to the bridge. "This is Blair. What's going down?"

The screen showed Rollins in the foreground, with the running figures of bridge crewmen hurrying to their posts visible behind him. From somewhere out of the picture the sensor officer was talking. "I'm reading multiple contacts, Captain. Eight . . . no, ten capital ships. Four of them are carriers. Configuration. . . they're Kilrathi, sir. No doubt about it."

Rollins turned to look into the camera. "We've got a mountain of trouble out there, Colonel," he said "A whole damned cat task force just popped onto our scopes."

The image in the monitor broke up, replaced by Eisen's heavy, scowling features. "I'll take it, Lieutenant," he said crisply. "Colonel Blair, we have four carriers plus escorts incoming. No fighters yet, but you can bet they'll launch a flock of them when they've closed the range."

"That's pretty long odds," Blair said slowly. "Delius Station doesn't have much firepower."

"Not enough to make a difference," Eisen agreed. "We're breaking orbit and heading for the nearest jump point. There's no sense in buying it here."

"And our orders? The flight wing?"

"Get ready for a magnum launch, Colonel. Get your birds ready. We may need them to buy the ship enough time to reach the jump point." Eisen's look was grim. "Another bug-out, Colonel. I'm sorry, but it looks like you'll be covering our tails one more time."

"Understood, sir," Blair said.

Eisen had already turned away from the intercom, issuing orders to his bridge crew. "Navigation! Plot course to the nearest jump point. Helm, break orbit. Proceed at full thrust. Gunnery. . . be ready to clear a path if the debris field gets too thick . . ." The intercom went dead.

Blair slapped the red switch that issued the magnum launch alert. A new alarm shrilled, followed by the computer's public address announcement. "LAUNCH STATIONS! LAUNCH STATIONS! ALL FLIGHT WING PERSONNEL TO LAUNCH STATIONS MAGNUM LAUNCH!"

Blair checked his instruments for what seemed like the hundredth time, knowing that nothing had changed yet feeling compelled to do something. Every one of Victory's fighters was crewed and ready, even a pair that the technical staff had down checked as unreliable. Now they were waiting, and that was an agony worse than any combat situation.

The carrier had opened up a fair lead over the Kilrathi ships, bulling her way through the asteroid field with weapons blazing to clear away any chunk of rock big enough to pose a threat to the ship. The Imperial vessels were more cautious, keeping to a tight formation and lumbering slowly after Victory as if reluctant to commit themselves to an attack. Perhaps they had learned to respect the Terrans in earlier clashes . . . or perhaps they simply regarded it as triumph enough to drive the ship away from Delius Station, leaving the Terrans there — including a small contingent of the carrier's crew still on liberty — completely at the mercy of the Kilrathi task force.

Blair was starting to hope they might not have to beat off any genuine attack, but the threat remained. They wouldn't be able to relax their guard until they made the jump to Tamayo, if then.

"Colonel, sensors are reporting a launch in progress from the lead Kilrathi carrier." Rollins gave him a welcome distraction, however grim his news might be. "It's the flagship . . . Hvar'kann. Looks like you'll be having a party after all. ''

"Acknowledged," Blair said. "Flight wing, from Blair. Begin launch sequence on my mark."

At that moment his comm panel went crazy. The visual display broke up in a kaleidoscope of patterns and colors, and the speakers in his helmet squealed and whined. It took several seconds for the noise to fade and the screen to come back on-line. Blair stared at the monitor, as if it might give him some clue to what had just happened.

A glowering Kilrathi face filled the screen, a face Blair had seen many times before.

Thrakhath.

The image jumped and jittered again, then returned. Blair studied it thoughtfully, wondering what was causing the distortion. Ship to ship video transmissions used computers to encode and decode messages, and to provide automatic translations of foreign languages. For the computer to have this much trouble reconstructing whatever message Thrakhath was broadcasting meant the signal content must be massive. Evidently, the Kilrathi were trying to overload Victory's whole comm system and Jam every frequency the Terrans might be using.