by Chris Bunch
Direction-finder gravsleds swept down the streets and over the buildings themselves.
Before the next wave of Tahn tacships came in for the launch, forty-seven guidance sites had been found; either the sites were eliminated along with their operators, or the Tahn fled, leaving their gear behind. The dozen or so left were IDed and removed after they attempted to illuminate the bomb targets.
The bombs scattered across the city. Harmlessly, if looked at from the military sense—only three significant targets were damaged. But they shattered Cavite City. There were 6,000 civilian casualties. The military defines its terms most selfishly.
The Tahn, however, did not escape unscathed. Sten's three tacships and a flight of patrolcraft were waiting on an anticipated orbit pattern. Twelve Tahn tacships were destroyed. The Tahn, expecting that their attacks would disrupt Cavite's air defenses, had sent in second- and third-class ships.
Three more waves came in, again at the Tahn-dictated interval of three hours. All three attacks were decimated.
All three bombing missions went wild. And more citizens, both Imperial and Tahn, died.
Then Lady Atago changed her tactics.
So did Sten.
* * * *
"She's gone till her father's garden,
And pu'd an apple, red and green;
Twos a’ to wyle him, sweet Sir Hugh,
And to entice him in."
* * * *
Alex stopped muttering and looked at Foss. “What're y’ gawkin't a', swab?"
"Didn't know you spoke any foreign languages, sir."
"Dinna be makin't fun ae th’ way Ah speak. Ah hae yet't’ makit up thae fitness report."
"So? There'll be no promotion/This side of the ocean/So cheer up my lads/Clot ‘em all,” Foss also quoted. “Sir."
The person to be wiled was of course not Sir Hugh, but the Tahn commander. And Sten was not planning to use an apple, either green or red. Instead, hung under each of the three tacships was a long, streamlined pod. It contained a full, destroyer-intended ECM suite, far more powerful if not as sophisticated as the countermeasure equipment on the Bulkeley-class tacships. Signals were fed from the pods and the tacships own electronics down a half-kilometer-long cable to strange and wonderfully configured polyhedrons below. The tacships hung about 200 meters above the main landing field.
"D’ y’ really thinkit this'll go?” Alex asked.
"Why wouldn't it?” Sten said.
"Ah. Try a differen’ way. Supposin't it works aye too well?"
"We go boom."
"Ah no mind bein't expendable—but thae's no joy in bein't expugnable."
Sten had figured that when the operator-guided bombing missions failed, the next approach would be more conventional.
It was. Four Tahn destroyers multiple-fired operator-guided missiles from in-atmosphere, 1000 meters above the ground and about 400 kilometers away from Cavite City.
"I have a launch ... I have multiples...” Foss suddenly announced in a monotone, his eyes pinned t a screen. Equal reports chattered in from the Claggett and the Richards."All ships ... stand by,” Sten ordered. “On my order, activate ... now!"Foss touched a switch, and the electronic countermeasure pod hummed into life. The Tahn operators were navigating their missiles with both radar and visual sensing fed into their control helmets. The visual range was extraordinarily easy to jam. Without excitement, the Tahn controllers put full attention on their radar guidance.
Their sensors punched through the clutter that was Cavite looking for their targets: large metallic objects.
This strike was after what was left of the 23rd Fleet and the few ships Mahoney had remaining.
The skilled Tahn controllers found targets ... their weapons computers kept all missiles from homing on a single ship ... and the targets grew in the operators’ radar eyes.
Narrow beams kept any of them from seeing those stationary ships move.
"Half speed,” Sten ordered.
The tacships climbed.
"Do you have them?"
"Uhh ... that's an affirmative. All missiles homing as projected."
"Full power ... now! Drive power ... now!
The tacships bolted into space.
The missiles were very close to the Imperial ships—or so the operators thought. What they were closing on were the radar-spoofing polyhedrons instead of the 23rd's grounded ships. Almost all of the missiles had their own automatic homing mechanisms active and, therefore, tried to follow the ships.
Stabilizing guidance systems tumbled, and the missiles spun out of control. A few, still under operator control, lost their targets and kept on keeping on while the controllers tried to figure out what had happened. A warship cannot vanish tracelessly.
Six of the missiles managed to track the false targets for a few moments until their fuel ran out and the missiles self-destructed.
A few AUs out, Sten ordered power cut, counted noses, and realized that they had gotten away with it.
But that, he knew, would be a one-time-only gimmick.
He wondered what would happen next.
[Back to Table of Contents]
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
TIME BECAME A blur for Sten and his crews. Their clocks and calendars were events half-remembered in mumbled exhaustion: That was the day we ran that recon patrol. No. We were escorting the sweepers then. Remember, that's when the Sampson blew up? You're full of drakh. We were out on a doggo ambush then.
No one knew for sure. Any of them would have traded their chances on an afterlife for two shifts of uninterrupted sleep, a meal that wasn't gobbled cold from a pak, or—don't even whisper it—a bath.
The ships stank almost as much as the sailors did, smelling of fear, fuel, ozone, sweat, and overheated insulation. They were also starting to wear out. The Kali launcher on the Richards was kaput. That did not matter too much—there were only three of the giant missiles left. Both chainguns on the Claggett were capable of only intermittent fire, and its tell-me-thrice battle computer had lost a lobe. Sten's own ship, the Gamble, had only six Goblin launchers that still tracked.
All of the Yukawa drive units needed teardown—they were many, many hours outside the regulated service intervals. The AM2 drives still functioned, unsurprisingly since they had approximately as many moving parts as a brick.
But the navcomputers were all causing problems—projected courses had to be run four times and averaged. When there was time, at least.
And the Tahn forces kept getting stronger and bolder. Sten almost hoped for the day of invasion to come.
In the meantime, there were the missions. Escort X ships ... patrol Y sector ... escort Guard Unit Z and provide cover until its forward firebase is secure...
Routine missions.
It was on one such “routine” mission that they encountered the ghost ship.
A stationary sensor had reported an inbound transport following a highly abnormal course. The transport did not respond to any communication attempts, nor did its IFF give the correct automatic responses for the assigned time period. Both radar and a flash visual identified the ship, however, as a standard-design Imperial fleet tender.
Sten assumed some sort of Tahn trap.
He positioned the Gamble and the Claggett at an intersection point on the transport's orbit and waited. The Richards was grounded, partially torn-down on Romney. Sutton and his crew were sure that this time they had figured out what was wrong with the Yukawa drives and promised a quick fix.
The transport broke the detector screens a few hours later. The two tacships waited. Sten expected that a couple of Tahn destroyers would be lurking somewhere behind the tender. But there was nothing. The Gamble's Jane's fiche identified the transport as an Atrek-class tender, the IFT Galkin.
Sten chanced challenging the transport. The automatic IFF response was weeks out of date. Foss could not get any sort of response other than that, nor was the transport broadcasting on any wavelength that could be received by the Gamble.
Sten launched his eye-modified Goblin to have a closer look. Possibly the transport was a dummy.
There was no response.
Sten matched orbits with the transport, put a recorder on, and circumnavigated the ship. Both locks and all cargo ports were sealed. There was no sign that any of the life-ships had been launched. Finally Sten brought the Goblin in until one fin touched the outer lock door. If the transport was a booby trap, that should set it off.
The detectors still reported no other ships onscreen. Still, Sten had a crawling feeling that the Galkin might be the bait for a nasty Tahn surprise.
He opened the tight beam to the Claggett to discuss the situation with Sh'aarl't. She was in complete agreement with him. It smelled very much like a trap. There was only one way to find out. Someone had to board the ship.
"Sh'aarl't ... Kilgour and I are boarding. I want you about a light-second off, on the transport's back orbit."
Sh'aarl't came back at him instantly. “That doesn't sound too wise to me, Sten,” she said. “If we are jumped, the Claggett would be outgunned by almost anything the Tahn threw at us—practically down to a lifeboat."
She had a strong point. Sh'aarl't and her weapons officer, Ensign Dejean, would check things out. The Gamble would play rear guard. Kilgour moved the ship into position and they both watched the screen as the Claggett's AM2 drive flared. A few moments later, the Claggett was docking with the Galkin.
Even at close range, there was nothing strange noted visually by either Sh'aarl't or Dejean. Their suit sensors also showed nothing beyond the normal. Sh'aarl't keyed her mike. “We're boarding."
Sten buried the instinct to say something stupid, like “be careful.” Instead, he bent his head closer to the monitor, listening to the crackle of the two voices.
Dejean, expecting a bolt of lightning to leap from the ship to his suit glove, touched the outer lock control. It obediently irised open. Sh'aarl't and Dejean hesitated, then entered. Sh'aarl't's perceptions swung as the Galkin's McLean gravity generators provided a new “down” for them. Their boots touched the inside of the lock—again there was no sudden explosion.
"My suit shows normal atmosphere,” Dejean reported. “But I have no intention of trusting it."
They kept their suit faceplates sealed. Sh'aarl't touched the inner lock control. It, too, opened.
She increased transmitter output power enough to punch through the ship's atmosphere and outer hull. They rhinoceros waddled in their armored combat suits into the Galkin.
They found nothing. The ship, from machinery spaces to the engine room, was completely deserted. None of the lifeships had been launched. All spacesuits, from survival type to the small, two-person work capsules, were racked.
Both beings found it more comforting to continue the search with weapons ready. Sh'aarl't turned on a recorder at her waist and fed the information back to the Gamble.
They checked the crew quarters. Not only were they deserted, the lockers that should have held the crew's personal effects were empty.
Dejean checked the ship's stores. They were bare, as if the Galkin had never been supplied before it took off.
Sh'aarl't ignored the crawl of fear down her carapace and went to the control room. She found the ship's log and ran it back. The Imperial Fleet Tender Galkin, Captain Ali Remo in command, had taken off from the planet of Mehr some six cycles previously. Complement forty-two officers, 453 enlisted. Captain Remo carefully noted they were six officers, thirty-four men under authorized complement. The Galkin had been ordered to reinforce the 23rd Fleet on Cavite. She key jumped to the log's last entry:
* * * *
IMPERIAL DATE ... SHIP DATE 22, THIRD WATCH. OFFICER OF THE WATCH: LT. MURIEL ERNDS, SECOND OFFICER ENSIGN GORSHA, ENGINE ROOM CHIEF ARTIFICER MILLIKEN. COURSE AS SET, NO UNPLOTTED OBJECTS DETECTED. 2240 SHIPS HOURS GENERAL QUARTERS DRILL ORDERED PER CAPTAIN'S INSTRUCTIONS. TIME TO FULL READINESS 7 MINUTES, 23 SECONDS. STAND DOWN FROM DRILL ORDERED, 2256 SHIPS HOURS. 2300 STANDARD REPORT INPUT
* * * *
...and the log automatically recorded the readout monitoring the Galkin's condition. Sten paced the control room of the Gamble, listening intently to everything Sh'aarl't said.
"It all looks perfectly normal,” she reported. “Except for the fact that sometime after 2300 hours, every man, woman, and being on the Galkin decided to vanish."
Sten looked at Alex. The stocky heavy worlder looked very unhappy."Ah noo believe in ghosts,” he said, “but—"
"Wait a minute! I think we got something!” Sh'aarl't's voice crackled excitedly over the monitor.
Sten waited much longer than a minute. He became impatient. “Report, Sh'aarl't! What have you got?"
"Well, according to the log—” There was an eerie silence as her voice stopped in mid-sentence. It was if the Gamble's com system had gone dead.
Before Sten could say a word, Foss sat bolt up in his chair."Skipper! I don't understand it! They're gone!"
Sten rushed to his side and looked at the screen. The large blips that had represented the Claggett and the Galkin had disappeared.
"It's gotta be some kind of malfunction with the system,” Sten said, knowing even as he said it that it wasn't so.
"Not a chance, sir,” Foss said, his voice cracking.
It wasn't necessary to give any orders—within bare moments, the Gamble was at battle stations, the drive at instant readiness. Foss ran every test and every electronic search pattern in the book, plus a few more he had invented.
Once again: nothing.
There was nothing on the radar, nothing on the intermediate or deep sensors, and no directional pickup on any broadcast frequency, including emergency. At one light-second, the two docked ships should have been on visual. But the screens were blank.
"Quarter power,” Sten ordered. “Bring us up over that ship real slow."
All inputs remained negative.
"Back-plot the orbit. Mr. Kilgour, I want a figure-eight search pattern. Half speed."
"Aye, sir."
They searched in a gradually widening moving globe pattern for three full E-days. But the Claggett, Sh'aarl't, her two officers, and nine enlisted had vanished along with the Galkin.
There was no explanation. And there never would be one.
[Back to Table of Contents]
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
THREE HOURS OUT of Romney, the com began yammering onscreen, the message sent en clair:
ALL SHIPS ... ALL SHIPS ... CAVITE UNDER ATTACK. INVASION BY TAHN UNDER WAY. ALL SHIPS RETURN TO HOME BASE. ATTACK, REPEAT ATTACK.
Foss already had the fiche in the navcomputer.
"On command,” Sten said. “Commit."
"Attack repeat attack,” Alex snorted. “Tha’ dinnae be a command! Thae's an invite't’ Culloden."
Kilgour was right. No Claggett ... no Kelly ... Sten assumed the Richards was getting slapped back together on Romney. Sten had no intentions of plummeting his very thin-skinned tacship—or, come to think about it, his own rather thin-skinned body—into the middle of a fleet melee.
He turned the intercom on and read the broadcast from Cavite to his crew without allowing any emotion to enter his voice. Then he said equally flatly, “If anyone's got an idea on what we do when we hit Cavite, input, please."
Alex reached across and kept his finger on the intercom button. “A wee modification as wha’ our commander's sayin'. Ideas tha’ dinnae win ae of us medals what be posthumous. Mr. Kilgour's mum dinnae be boas tin’ as her lad comes home ae a box."
There weren't any ideas.
"Great,” Sten muttered. “We're about as thick in the tactics department as van Doorman."
"Dinnae fash. We'll do flash fakin't it."
* * * *
Lady Atago and Admiral Deska had made very sure that there was no possibility of the invasion failing a second time. More than 500 ships swarmed the Caltor System. The Imperial 23rd Fleet wasn't outmanned so much as buried.
Mahoney had stati
oned Guard detachments on every world and moonlet of the system. Each detachment was given as sophisticated a sensing system as possible. That was not much, even though every detector that could be found had been stripped out of downed or civilian ships, and emplaced. The strike-back weaponry was equally jury-rigged.
Everything from missiles to private yachts to out-atmosphere runabouts to obsolete ships had been hung in space and linked to the improvised guidance systems. Even Ensign Tapia's tug had been roboticized, its control room a deserted spaghetti of wiring.
Most of these improvised missiles were either destroyed long before they found a target or went wonky and missed completely.
But some of them got through.
"Go for the transports,” Mahoney had told his guardsmen. They tried. Troopships were ripped open, sardine-spilling Tahn soldiers into space or sending them pinwheeling and igniting like meteorites into atmosphere.
But the Tahn were too strong.
Mahoney watched from his new headquarters, burrowed a hundred meters into a hillock near Cavite Field as, one by one, his com teams lost contact with the off-Cavite detachments. Mahoney's face was quite impassive.
A tech glared down at her general from a com set on one of the balconies above the central floor. Solid imperium, she thought in fury. The clot doesn't even care.
In actuality, Mahoney was trying to analyze what he felt. Not one report, he thought with approval, of any of my people breaking. What about you, Ian? You've taken ... let's see, about twenty-five percent casualties. What does that feel like? Not too bad, he thought. No worse, say, than getting your right arm amputated without anesthetic. Don't feel sorry for yourself, General. If you do something dumb like crying or swearing, your whole division could break.