Fleet of the Damned

by Chris Bunch

  He roused his people at 0100.

  The Kelly, Claggett, Gamble, and Richards lifted near-silently on Yukawa drive at 0230. Dawn would be at 0445. Admiral van Doorman would open the ceremonies at 0800.

  * * * *

  The Tahn, too, had their timetable. It was based around that of the 23rd Fleet.

  A month earlier, a Tahn working inside fleet headquarters had copied the Empire Day schedule fiche, and it had been immediately relayed offworld. The fiche occupied a small screen on one side of the Forez's bridge. Neither Lady Atago nor Admiral Deska needed to consult it.

  Nearby hung a second, newly completed battleship—the Kiso—of the same class as the Forez. The Tahn battlefleet waited just on the edge of Cavite's stellar system. Nearly numberless cruisers, destroyers, attack ships, and troopships filled out the fleet.

  Other battlefleets, equally massive, had been assigned other targets in the Fringe Worlds. Lady Atago was to destroy the 23rd Fleet and its base on Cavite.

  On the tick, Atago ordered the attack.

  Remote sensors scattered offworld were destroyed, jammed, or given false data to transmit. To make sure there was no alert, at 0500 five squads of commando Tahn, some of whom had been trained on Frehda's farm, hit the 23rd Fleet's Siglnt center. Other Tahn, correctly uniformed as Imperial sailors, took over the center.

  At 0730, the main elements of Atago's battlefleet were just out-atmosphere. The two picket boats, their crew members hung over and their screens focused, against orders, on the display field below, barely had time to see the incoming Tahn destroyers before they were destroyed.

  On the field, Admiral van Doorman, flanked by Brijit and his wife, checked the time—ten minutes—and then started up the steps of the reviewing stand.

  Staff officers and civilian dignitaries were already waiting.

  In the ionosphere, the Tahn assault ship opened its bays, and small attack craft spewed downward.

  * * * *

  Sten's problem, after lift, was where to hide. If he was correct and Cavite was about to be hit, it would be hit hard. He had full confidence in his tacships—but not in an orbital situation where he might be facing a battleship or six.

  Nor was the cloud cover the answer, as any ship attacking from offworld would be using electronics. The clouds wouldn't even show up on most shipscreens.

  Sten's best solution was to take his flotilla out over the ocean, some twenty kilometers away from Cavite, and hold at fifty meters over the sea. He figured that he would probably be buried in ground clutter and very hard to pick up.

  Foss was the first to pick up the attacking ships.

  "All ships,” Sten ordered. “Independent attacks. Conserve munitions and watch your tails. We're at war!"

  Kilgour had the Gamble at full power, headed back for Cavite.

  * * * *

  The first V-wing of Tahn launched air-to-ground metal-seeking missiles at 1000 meters, pulled momentarily level, and scattered frag bombs down the length of the field.

  The parade ground became a hell of explosions.

  Van Doorman had time enough to see the missiles, gape once, and throw himself on top of his wife and daughter before all thought vanished and sanity became trying to hold on to the pitching ground under him.

  The Tahn ships lifted, banked, and came back on a strafing pass. Most of the dignitaries and staff officers not killed by the bombs were shattered with chaingun bursts.

  Van Doorman lifted his head and saw, through blood, the ships coming back in. That was all he remembered.

  He didn't see the Richards and Claggett come in on the flank, their own chainguns raving, or the thinly armored Tahn ships cartwheel into the field, their pin wheeling wreckage doing as much damage to the 23rd Fleet's ships as the missiles had.

  * * * *

  Seeing the Richards and Claggett pull ahead of him, Sten changed his mind and his tactics. He ordered the Kelly into wingman's slot and climbed for space.

  The Tahn assault ship was not expecting any response from the maelstrom below and was an easy target. The Gamble's weapons systems clicked through Kali choice to Goblin, and Kilgour fired.

  The hull of the ship gaped, and red flame seared out.

  In the Kelly, Sekka had taken away his weapons officer's control helmet—he was the warrior of generations. The chant he was muttering went back 2,000 years as his sights crossed and settled on the huge bulk of the Forez. Without orders, he launched the Kali.

  Even under full AM2 power, the Kelly jolted as the huge missile chuffed out the center launch tube, and its own AM2 drive launched it.

  For Sekka, there was nothing but the growing bulk of the Tahn battleship in his eyes as he became the Kali.

  The missile was well named. It struck the Forez on a weapons deck. Two-hundred-fifty Tahn crewmen died in the initial explosion, and more were killed in the blast of secondary explosions.

  Sekka allowed himself a tight smile as he pulled off the helmet, seeing, onscreen, four attacking Tahn destroyers. That was nothing. And if they killed him, what was death to a Mandingo warrior?

  * * * *

  It was possible that the two Tahn cruisers did not ever expect attack from a ship as small as the Gamble. Certainly they seemed to take no significant evasive action and launched only a handful of countermissiles before Kilgour had Goblins at full power, targets locked.

  Sten knew that the Goblins could injure a cruiser, but he did not expect the nearly simultaneous explosions; seeing the screen begin flashing no target under acquisition, Alex lifted his weapons helmet.

  "Lad, wha's th’ matter wi’ their blawdy cruisers?"

  Sten, seeing a pack of destroyers coming in, too late to save their charges, was busy with evasive action.

  * * * *

  Lady Atago, on the bridge of the Forez, braced herself as the battleship shuddered under another explosion. Part of her brain was pleased—in spite of catastrophe, the men and women she had trained were responding efficiently and without panic.

  "Your orders?"

  Atago considered the choices. There was only one.

  "Admiral Deska, cancel the landing on Cavite. We cannot proceed with only one capital ship. The other landings on the secondary systems may proceed. You and I shall transfer our flags to the Kiso. Order the Forez to proceed to a forward repair base."

  "Your orders, milady."

  * * * *

  Sten saw the Tahn fleet begin its withdrawal as he and his ships returned to base.

  It wasn't much of a victory. Below on Cavite, the 23rd Fleet, the only Imperial forces in the Fringe Worlds, was almost completely destroyed.

  The Tahn war had just begun.

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  BOOK THREE

  ON THE WIND

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  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  THE ATTACK ON the Caltor System and Cavite was not the actual beginning of the war. That had occurred one E-hour earlier in an attack against Prime World and the Emperor himself.

  Nearly simultaneously, thousands of Tahn ships savaged the Empire. Missions varied from invasion to base reduction to fleet battles. At the end of the initial phase, the Tahn estimated their success at better than eighty-five percent. It was one of the blackest days in the Empire's history.

  The attack coordination had been exceedingly complex, since the Tahn wanted to reap the maximum benefits possible from Empire Day. Technically the minute of vengeance—what more prosaic cultures might call D-day—was at the same tick of the ammonium maser clock that each fleet commander had on his or her bridge.

  Actually, of course, there were adjustments, since each of the Imperial worlds used its own time zoning. There also were readjustments to keep the attacks within a close enough time frame to prevent the Empire from coming to full alert.

  Almost more important to the Tahn was a “moral” readjustment. Somehow the Tahn felt it perfectly legitimate to begin a war without the usual roundelay of escalating diplomatic threats but dis
honorable to not strike at—their phrase—the throat of the tiger.

  Prime World.

  The Eternal Emperor.

  The choice of Empire day to begin the war was made for several reasons. The Tahn correctly assumed the Imperial military would be collected and relaxed; there would be, if the attacks were successful, an inevitable lowering of Imperial morale; and, finally, because this was the one day of the year when everyone knew where the Emperor was—at home, expecting visitors.

  Home was a oversize duplicate of the Earth castle Arundel, with a six- by two-kilometer bailey in front, surrounded by fifty-five kilometers of parkland. Housed in the bailey's V-banked walls were the most important elements of the Empire's administration. The castle itself contained not only the Emperor, his bodyguards, and considerable staff but the command and control center for the entire Empire. Most of the necessary technology was buried far under Arundel, along with enough air/water/food to withstand a century-long siege.

  The visitors the Emperor was expecting were his subjects. Once a year the normally closed-off castle was opened up for a superspectacle of bands, military displays, and games. To be invited or somehow to wangle a ticket to Empire Day at the palace was an indication of signal achievement or purchase.

  It had taken four years for the Tahn to prepare for their attack on Arundel. The only possible assault that could be made was a surgical strike—there was no way that the Tahn could slip a fleet or even a squadron of destroyers through the Empire's offworld security patrols.

  Except for Empire Day, the airspace over Arundel was sealed. All aerial traffic on Prime World was monitored, and any deviation from the flight pattern put the palace's AA sections on alert. An intrusion into the palace's airspace was electronically challenged once and then attacked. It was equally impossible to approach the palace on the ground—the only connection between Arundel and the nearest city, Fowler, was by high-speed pneumosubway.

  Except for Empire Day...

  On Empire Day huge troop-carrying gravlighters were used to move tourists from Fowler to the palace. The security precautions were minimal—all passengers were, of course, vetted and searched. The lighters themselves were given a fixed flight pattern and time, in addition to being equipped with a IFF—Identification-Friend or Foe—box linked to the palace's aerial security section.

  These precautions were ludicrously easy to subvert.

  Oddly enough, the Tahn may have felt it dishonorable not to attack the Emperor—but, on the other hand, they preferred to do the dirty work through a cutout. “Honor” in a militaristic society is most often Rabelaisian: “Do what thou wilt shalt be the whole of the law."

  Three highly committed Tahn immigrants—revolutionaries from the late Godfrey Alain's Fringe World movement—had been chosen and moved into position by Tahn intelligence two years previously. One was instructed to find a minor job at Fowler's port, Soward. A second found employment as a barkeep. The third was hired as a gardener by the occupants of one of the luxurious estates that ringed the Imperial grounds. He was an excellent gardener—the merchant prince who employed him swore he had never had a harder or more conscientious worker.

  The method of attack would be by missile, a rather specially designed missile. The Tahn surmised correctly that Arundel was faced with nuclear shielding, so a conventional nuke within practical limits would not provide complete destruction. The final missile looked most odd. It was approximately ten meters long and was configured to provide a very specific sensor profile, a profile closely matching that of a much larger Guard gravlighter.

  Inside it were two nuclear devices. Tahn science had figured out how to utilize the ancient shaped-charge effect—the Munro effect—with atomics. For shrouding and cone they used imperium, the shielding normally used to handle Anti-Matter Two, the Empire's primary power source. Behind the first device was the guidance mechanism, and back of that was the second device. The missile's nose was sharply pointed, less for aerodynamics than for blast effect.

  Besides the guidance system, the missile also contained a duplicate of the IFF box that would be used by the grav-lighters on Empire Day.

  The missile had been smuggled, in three sections, onto Prime World some months previously, transported to a leased warehouse, assembled, and set in its launch rack by a team of Tahn scientists.

  The three Tahn from the Fringe Worlds were never told the location of the missile; they were merely instructed to be in certain locations with certain equipment at a certain time.

  Two days before Empire Day, the Tahn who was a ramp rat at Soward installed a small timer-equipped device in a specified gravlighter's McLean generator.

  One day before Empire Day, the controller for the three men boarded an offworld flight and disappeared.

  At 1100 on Empire Day, the three men were in place.

  The gardener sat ready behind the controls of one of his employer's gravsleds. No one in the mansion would notice—two canisters of a binary blood gas had seen to that.

  The other two were atop a building in Soward, near the launch site, one watching a timer, the other counting grav-lighters as they lifted off toward Arundel.

  Number seven was “theirs."

  On the field, the pilot of the sabotaged gravlighter applied power. The lighter raised, belched smoke, and clanked down. The field's dispatcher swore and ordered a standby unit up to cross-load the passengers.

  On the building, the timer touched zero, and the first man fingered a switch on his control box. At the warehouse, explosive charges blew a ragged hole in the roof. McLean-assist takeoff units lifted the missile into the air, then dropped away as the Yukawa drive cut in and the missile smashed forward at full power.

  Kilometers away, the third man also went into action. At the commanded time, he lifted the gravsled straight up. His mouth was very dry as he hoped that the palace's aerial sensors would be a little slow.

  His own control panel beeped at him—the missile was within range. He focused the riflelike device toward Arundel, dim in the morning haze, and touched a switch. A low-power laser illuminated Arundel's gateway. A second beep informed him that the missile had acquired the target.

  For the three Tahn, their mission was accomplished.

  Now their orders were to evade capture and make their way to a given rendezvous point outside Soward. Of course, Tahn intelligence had no intention either of making a pickup or of leaving a trail. Both the launch and the aiming control boxes contained secondary timers and explosive charges. Seconds after the missile signaled, they went off.

  No one saw the explosion that vaporized the Tahn as they scurried toward a ladder, but a watch officer at Arundel saw the gravsled ball into flame and pinwheel down. His hand was halfway to an alert button when the automatic sensors correctly interpreted that the gravlighter headed for the palace was moving at a speed far beyond reason and screamed warning.

  The Eternal Emperor was in his apartments alternately cursing to the head of his Gurkkha bodyguards about the necessity to wear full-dress uniform and pinning on various decorations. Captain Chittahang Limbu was half listening and smiling agreeably. Limbu was still somewhat in awe of his current position. Formerly a Subadar major, he had been promoted to Sten's old job as head of the Emperor's bodyguard. This was the highest position a Gurkkha had ever held in Imperial history.

  He was fondly remembering the celebration his home village had thrown for him on his last leave, when the overhead alarm bansheed its warning.

  The Emperor jumped, sticking himself with a medal pin. Limbu was a stocky brown blur, slapping a switch on the panel at his waist and then manhandling the Emperor forward, toward a suddenly gaping hole in the wall.

  Whatever was happening, his orders were clear and in no way allowed for the Gurkkhas’ love of combat.

  The missile's impact point was almost perfect. The thin nose squashed as designed, allowing the missile to hang in place for a microsecond. The first nuke blew, and its directional blast tore through the shielding. The
missile continued to crumple, and then the second bomb exploded.

  And Arundel, heart of the Empire, vanished into the center of a newborn sun.

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  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  STEN ITEMIZED CHAOS as he slowly steered his combat car over the rubble that had been Cavite City's main street. This was not the first city or world that he had been on when the talking stopped and the shooting started. But this appeared to be the first time he had been in on the ground floor of a Empire-wide war.

  Experience is valuable, he reminded himself, which avoided his worry about Brijit.

  Sten had brought his miraculously undamaged ships down onto Cavite Base at nightfall. Sometimes dishonesty pays—he had located his supply base in a disused warehouse in the test yards. As a result, the weaponry and supplies that Sutton had acquired had not been touched by the Tahn attack.

  He ordered his boats to resupply and return to low orbit immediately. He would try to find out from fleet headquarters how bad things really were.

  Cavite Base was a boil and confusion of smoke and flame.

  Sten commandeered a combat car and headed for the Carlton Hotel. If it still stood, he assumed that what remained of van Doorman's command staff would be there.

  Cavite City hadn't suffered major damage, Sten estimated. Imperial Boulevard—the central street—had absorbed some incendiary and AP bombs or rockets, but most of the buildings still stood. There weren't any civilians on the night-hung streets other than rescue workers and fire-fighting teams. Contrary to legend, disaster generally made people pull together or retreat into their homes—rioting in the streets had always been a myth.

  Sten veered the combat car aside as a gravsled, hastily painted with red crosses on the landing pads, whistled past. In the distance, he could hear the sounds of combat. That was the storming of the Siglnt center—since the Tahn had not been able to land, those revolutionaries who had occupied the center had died to the last man.