The last three and a half days had been the worst of Raymond Prescott's life, worse even than the desperate days in Telmasa. For eighty-six hours, his ships, a full third of Ivan Antonov's total combat strength, had sat silent and still, watching Bug courier drones come and go but doing nothing while their consorts fought for their lives. The battle was far too distant for his sensors to pick up the starships, gunboats, and fighters fighting it, but nuclear and antimatter explosions were glaringly evident, even at extended ranges, and there'd been too many of them.

But at least they mean there's still somebody left . . . and they're headed this way at last.

He nodded at the last thought. The Admiral was beginning his run. He was still thirty hours out, but he was coming in, and Prescott felt his inner tension winding still tighter.

And he knew something Antonov didn't. Chin's drones had reported not only the massive strength of the gunboat strikes which had ravaged the Fleet Train but their timing.

The Bugs didn't use light-speed communication relays between warp points. Presumably, that-like the cloaked pickets they seemed to leave everywhere-was a security measure, intended to deny any enemy a "bread crumb" trail to their inhabited systems. The fact that they hadn't attempted to destroy the comsat chain Jackson Teller had left in Erebor might also suggest that the notion simply hadn't occurred to them, which might be the best news of this entire disastrous affair. If they didn't realize Second Fleet had established a comsat chain in its rear, they were almost certain to have significantly overestimated the time Centauri would require to respond. If that were so, any relief fleet was likely to arrive long before they expected it. But the important point just now was that the Bugs relied solely on courier drones as their only means of coordinating at interstellar distances, and Chin's drones had told Prescott how long the Bugs had taken to come within sensor range of the Fleet Train. And that data gave him a good idea, given the top speed of courier drones and gunboats, just how far the Bugs' warp point into Anderson Three had been from Chin-and thus from the warp point to Anderson Four. Which meant that, unlike Ivan Antonov, he knew the Bugs would be arriving within the next fourteen hours . . . and that Ivan Antonov had timed the climactic maneuver of his career perfectly. Now it was up to TF 21 to be certain it worked.

Ivan Antonov stared fixedly at the plot. It wasn't that he hoped to see anything there that he didn't already know. It was just that it was expected of him: Ivan the Terrible, displaying total, inhuman concentration and impassivity.

So instead of looking for hidden meanings in the display the computer constantly updated-a silicon-based idiot savant compulsively pawing its abacus-he let himself covertly contemplate the young people with whom he shared Flag Bridge, and the rest of Colorado, and the rest of the fleet.

So young. . . . Those youthful faces truly were from another time, another world, yet if any of them were to live, their survival depended upon him. They trusted him to get it right, and for just an instant, as their trust crushed down upon him like an extra layer of fatigue, he felt the weight of every endless year of his unnaturally extended life and knew he was too old.

He shook free of the thought. Surely all the experience one accumulated in a century and a half must count for something! Anyway, if the antigerone treatments really were a colossal counter-evolutionary mistake, humanity would simply be replaced by something that wouldn't make such errors, for it wouldn't deserve to survive. . . .

"Now don't go Russian-nihilistic on me, EYE-van." Antonov's lips curved in a smile no one else noticed as he heard the voice echoing across the gulf of seven decades. No, Howard, I won't, he thought. I can't afford to just now. I brought these people into this, and it's my duty to get as many of them as possible out of it.

And, it ought to be possible to get a fair number out . . . if only the timing was right.

Dear God, bozhe-moi, please let my timing have been right.

Attack Force Four had reached its final warp point. A fresh shower of courier drones went ahead, announcing its arrival, and its warships prepared for transit. Its losses against the enemy's support echelon left it thirty percent understrength in gunboats, but it still had over four hundred. The ships without gunboat groups would be left behind-someone had to watch the warp point-and the others would join the attack on the enemy's fleet.

"Ships transiting the warp point!"

The announcement from Plotting wasn't loud, yet it cracked like a whip in Flag Bridge's silent tension. Prescott handed his coffee cup to a steward and spun his command chair to face his plot, and his mouth tightened as the deadly stream of Bug warships flowed into existence.

The escorts came first: thirty-six light cruisers, Cataphracts and Carbines in a tighter transit than any Terran admiral would countenance. They made no effort to scout-after all, a dozen battle-cruisers had been watching the warp point for over twenty days-but flowed out into a spherical screen, and then the first of those stupendous warships followed them. One, two, five-eighteen made transit, and behind them came twenty-four superdreadnoughts, and after them the battle-cruisers. One hundred and three starships burst through the flaw in space and formed up, and Raymond Prescott realized he was actually holding his breath as he waited.

Then they began to move, and a fierce exultation flared within him. Six of the new leviathans and half the superdreadnoughts remained behind, but the others-all the others, even the battle-cruisers which had picketed the warp point for so long-headed in-system, and they were already launching their gunboats.

"All right, Anna, Jacques," he said flatly. "Pass the standby signal. Those big bastards are the priority targets, then the SDs."

"Twelve of the new . . . mobile fortresses. At least a dozen superdreadnoughts. The battle-cruiser and light cruiser totals should be available soon." Midori Kozlov's voice was an inflectionless drone as she studied the sensor readouts like a soothsayer peering into the depths of a crystal ball and read off the tally of the Bug forces sweeping forward to intercept them.

"How many have been left to cover warp point?" Antonov's tightly controlled voice might have fooled anyone who didn't know him well enough to notice the loss of definite articles.

"Unknown, Sir. We're still too far out."

"No matter. It is time." The admiral swung his bearlike bulk to face de Bertholet. "Commander, deploy the fighters."

All the fighters Second Fleet still possessed had been at alert for hours, their pilots holding exhaustion at bay with drugs and adrenaline. Now they launched as one and took up flanking positions against gunboat attacks.

At the maximum speed it could manage and still keep formation, Second Fleet arrowed directly towards the massed ranks of death coming to meet it.

"All right, people," Prescott murmured, eyes locked to his plot. TF 21 had crept in even closer, moving at glacially slow speed. They were barely half a light-minute from the warp point, directly behind the ships facing the rest of Second Fleet, and any Orion would have envied his fang-baring smile. "This is what we came for. Let's make it count. Are you ready, Jacques?"