Gar was the fourth planet in its system, a little smaller, colder and drier than Earth. The most striking aspect of the system was its lack of activity. Just as Vymander had said, there were no ships, no stations, no orbiting satellites. Although we approached the planet cautiously, there was no sign that we had been noticed.
“What do you make of that?” I asked Cardoni. I indicated the viewscreen where the computer map had picked out the spaceport. There was, apparently, only the one for the entire planet. “If I read this right, there are beam weapon emplacements sited around the port.”
“Yes, but it has been a long time since that port saw scheduled space traffic. Those beams are probably relics.”
“The computer shows those sites as operational.”
Cardoni was undaunted. “From what Vymander said, and what Andrave is picking up, the local politics are unstable. That port is probably important for reasons unrelated to spacecraft and those beams will be used for defense against atmosphere-only craft.”
“Which would still pose a hazard for our landing boats,” I pointed out.
“True.” Cardoni frowned. “But, there is no reason for them to be expecting an attack from space. They won’t be looking.”
I didn’t need a degree from the Imperial Academy to know wishful thinking when I heard it. “Coming from space or not,” I said, “we still have to get down to the ground. Once the boats hit atmosphere, it would be hard to avoid spotting them. Is it realistic to think that they could be on the ground before the locals fire at them?”
“No,” Ruoni answered. “In any case, they would be unable to take off again without being fired upon. However, I think we can take them out.”
“Are you sure?”
“No, but look at the data we have.” Details scrolled down the screen. “The weaponry is low intensity and badly sited. Judging from the specs and the layout, it was probably installed centuries ago when freebooters first became a problem in this region. The most recent update in the computer on Gar dates from that period, which agrees with our information that Gar has had no contact with the empire since then, so I doubt the equipment has been updated since it was installed.”
He went on. “I would prefer space to ground torpedoes for this kind of work, but the beams we have should suffice. Even if we can’t destroy all of the defenses, we should be able to provide adequate covering fire. Here. I think this is a good commentary on the defenses we face.”
The magnification on the screen increased and the focus shifted slightly. It highlighted an old Imperial city, just to the planetary west of the port and within the covering arc of the defenses. Another jump in magnification gave a close-up aerial view of the city. Now, I could see that the central part of the city had been obliterated by three huge craters. Shattered buildings and rubble surrounded the craters. Whether the strike had come from space or on-planet was impossible to say, but the corpse of the city proved that the nearby defenses were not much good.
Ruoni’s argument was convincing. Still, I wanted to hold our fire until our boats entered the atmosphere. If there were ground forces at the port, it would minimize the time they would have to prepare for the attack. There was no reason to tip our hand any sooner than necessary. Once the computations had been made, I nodded to Andrave. He closed a switch and the alarm hooted overhead.
“This ship is in action,” Andrave’s voice boomed after the siren stopped. “Strike Force to the landing boats.”
“Command, weapon systems are ready for action,” Ruoni reported.
Identical reports came from the other departments, followed by Cardoni’s terse, “Ship is secured for action, Command.”
I acknowledged each one. We might be a ragtag bunch of pirates attacking a worthless whistle-stop in a ship falling apart under us, but once “ship in action” sounded the crew all slipped into Imperial Battle Language as though they were going into action with the Fleet. The Battle Language was a very functional jargon designed to minimize the risk of confusion and misunderstood orders. One of its features was the identification of personnel solely by function, rather than by name or rank. Consequently, I became “Command,” not Captain or Danny. If I were killed, Ruoni, or the senior surviving officer, would be “Command” until the action ended.
The reports I had received told me that the ship was ready to go, but said nothing about the Strike Force. That report should have come from Strike Force Command right after “ship is secured.” Instead, I had to wait. And wait. I could see from the tension on every face on the bridge that such a delay was unexpected.
Finally, after what seemed like an age, I heard, “Command, Strike Force is ready.”
Ruoni cursed softly. “It is too long by threefold. They’d better be quicker on the ground.”
“Helm, you may launch the Strike Force,” I said.
The jolt of the boats’ takeoff shook the Flower violently. The ship had never been built to sustain three simultaneous breakaways at maximum thrust. Soon afterward, the screen showed the boats’ paths, headed planetward.
“Navigation, when can we expect them to reach the atmosphere?”
“Countdown is onscreen, Command.” Large numerals appeared below the flight paths.
The empire runs on base sixteen, which I find a pain, but all countdowns end in zero. “Fire Control, you may fire at the mark,” I said.
Ruoni gave instructions through his headset and made the necessary adjustments on his board. In the depths of the ship, power was channeled from the main engines to the weapons, where it would be used to create the intense beams of charged particles. When the countdown ended, all of Flower’s main beams fired simultaneously. The faint purple beams lashed out, becoming more intensely colored when they went through the atmosphere, targeting the defensive installations around the old port.
The Flower couldn’t hit every site at once, but she could hit them all without having to change her orbit. The defensive beams were poorly shielded to begin with. Even worse for them, atmosphere attenuates the shielding field more than it does the particle beam. It didn’t require too many pulses to burn through a shield, searing the defenders and turning their positions into slag. Say this for the locals, they were quick to respond. From the surface, beams reached up at the Flower, ending in a sparkling cascade against our shielding. It was a one-sided match. The planetary weapons were weak and they suffered from their atmosphere, while our shielding was unaffected. It showed just how hard it was to defend against a spaceship from the surface of a planet, with the beams hampered by the air and any missiles crippled by the gravity well. No wonder any planet worth defending kept its first line of defense in space.
Meanwhile, three streaks of light grew on the screen. Braking hard for a fast descent, the landing boats trailed fire across the sky. There were no beams directed against them. The defenses seemed totally absorbed in their futile counterbattery fire at the Flower. The tension I had felt when we launched began to ease as site after site was neutralized. The operation was going to be about as difficult as mugging a seventy-year-old lady.
Ruoni was still dueling with the remaining ground beamers when the streaks vanished from the screen.
“Landing boats are down,” Andrave announced.
“Thank you. Communications, please link us to the ground.” Clouds over the port prevented us from obtaining a detailed view from the main ship, the Flower not being equipped to conduct ground searches. I’d taken this possibility into account, however. Number one landing boat had a full array of drones and sensors through which we could receive a video feed and maintain a two-way audio link with the Strike Force. This coach had every intention of calling the plays from the sideline.
Andrave set up the patch and the scene on the screen shifted to a view of the port from the landing boat. It was depressing, to put it mildly. A three-story rectilinear building, a scaled-down version of the one on Thjonarodni, sat at the edge of the field, maybe a hundred yards from the boat. Three drones launched from the boa
t and the screen windowed to show all of the views. The field was strewn with junk. Some of it looked like the wreckage of port equipment similar to what I’d seen on Thjonarodni. Some looked more like trash that had simply been dumped. A swath some forty yards wide had been cleared next to the building. At the left edge of the main window, I could see part of the Strike Force disembarking from Landing Boat Three.
The cakewalk ended abruptly then, as purple beams spat from multiple points along the building, sending the troops diving for cover amid the debris. Amidst the other beams were the reddish ones of two heavy blasters coming from a corner position on the upper story. Those were bad news and would have to be neutralized before we could storm the terminal. At that range they would easily burn through the half-armor. In fact, they could probably have taken down troops in half-armor in a sweep. When I saw no move against them, I decided to take a hand.
“Communications, get me Strike Force Command.”
It took all my effort to keep to the Battle Language when Andrave replied, “I’m sorry, Command. It cannot be done.”
“Why not, Communications?”
“I have video feed, Command, but there is no audio link. The onship equipment is functioning, so the problem is either on the boat or at Strike Force Command. Whether it has malfunctioned or been turned off, I can’t say.”
“Great.” I had a terrific view of what was going on, but without the audio link I had as much impact as a fan watching a game on television.
The unseen defenders had waited until the Strike Force had completely disembarked before opening fire. The crew had reacted to this threat by scattering and taking cover in the junk between them and the terminal building. They left behind a half dozen still forms on the open field. It was a stalemate. The Strike Force just hunkered down as though they were waiting for the rain to stop. They were not moving, out of communication and headed for disaster.
“Fire Control,” I asked, “can you use the ship’s beams to take out some of those defenders?”
Ruoni shook his head. “I can hit the building, Command, but with an atmosphere to shoot through, I can’t hit it very precisely. It is quite possible that doing it might damage or destroy the material we’re after.”
I shuddered at that. Ruoni was right and blasting our spare parts to pieces would be as bad as losing the Strike Force itself.
“No, don’t try it,” I said.
“I can free enough beams to interdict the approaches to the port,” Ruoni offered. “At least, that will prevent the defense from being reinforced.”
“Do it,” I ordered. If I wanted to give up and retrieve the crew on the ground, of course, we could slag the terminal, but I wasn’t about to do that. They would have to sit there until they took the target or died.
The latter possibility began to look increasingly likely. Those heavy blasters cut through what looked like adequate cover and the casualties began to mount. Andrave had managed to raise the pilots of the boats only to find that they had no contact with the Strike Force either. Aside from the pilots, the boats were empty. There was no one to use as a messenger. I don’t think I have ever felt so frustrated in my life.
I was once again debating the idea of risking one shot from the ship to take out the heavies, when my eye caught a flapping motion near the cleared area in front of the terminal. Normally, I would never have noticed something that minor in one of the secondary screen windows, but in our static situation it stood out. Someone had worked their way forward. I watched the area where I had seen movement and waited. Shortly, I was rewarded. Someone was indeed moving up, very carefully narrowing the distance between them and the defenses in the building. Then my heart froze. The motion I had seen was the flapping of a cloak, and there was only one someone on the Flower who wore a gray cloak. Jaenna! How in God’s name had she gotten down there?
I put that question aside as I strained to see what was happening. Andrave maneuvered the drones to focus on her and increased the magnification at the cost of losing the view of the rest of the field. It was a small loss, since there was no way to communicate what the screen showed anyway. At the higher magnification, there was no question that it was Jaenna. She kept low, moving from one piece of junk to another, always headed forward. She drew fire, but it hardly slowed her progress. She stopped behind a ground effect vehicle leaning on its side. Beyond it was open pavement the rest of the way to the building entrance.
Quickly, she straightened up. I could see that she was carrying one of the two medium blasters we had available. In a single motion, the blaster came up and Jaenna fired. Orange-yellow flared at the terminal. From the upper corner where the heavy blasters were situated, a dark object fell across the front of the building. Jaenna dropped flat the instant she fired. Return fire scorched the car in front of her. Jaenna rolled away to her right, then popped up and fired again. There was no more heavy blaster fire.
Jaenna rolled away again, coming out of the roll on her feet. She fired two quick bolts at the entrance to the terminal. Then, waving the blaster over her head, she darted around the overturned car and sprinted for the terminal. A beam flashed against her shoulder, but I could see half-armor under the cloak and she kept going. Behind her, it was as though a spell had broken. Her charge pulled the crew up to pour fire into the building. Armed men raced across the pavement after her. Two of them went down hard, but the rest gained the entrance. Meanwhile, more followed them across. Within minutes, the field in front of the terminal was quiet and empty, except for the garbage and the dead.
Within twenty minutes one of the boats called in to report that the terminal building had been taken. The equipment had been located, apparently intact, and there was an even greater quantity than we were expecting. It was then only a matter of waiting for the cargo sleds to float across to the terminal, pick up their loads and return to the boats. Once again, we had to run a shuttle service with the boats. The machinery took up too much room to bring it, and the Strike Force, up at the same time.
The first boat up brought explanations along with the spare parts. We’d had no link to the Strike Force because Sligo had deliberately silenced his communications when they landed. Whether he had done this out of concern that his signals could be intercepted, or to avoid interference from me, was unclear. It would never be clarified because Sligo had fallen victim to one of the heavy blasters.
His death canceled one of the confrontations I was expecting. The other one had to wait until Jaenna came up with the last boat. My bridge crew was worried and with good reason. It was clear that somebody was making an effort to relieve the defenders at the port. The clouds had cleared enough to expose their movements to us, which left them open to Ruoni’s bombardment, but not until the boats had lifted off the last of the Strike Force did I quit worrying that some of them would slip through. When Jaenna’s boat docked, I was waiting in the corridor outside the lock.
Jaenna popped through with a grin on her face. It broadened when she saw me. She was wearing half-armor that was too big for her, marred by a scorch mark at the right shoulder. “Ho, Danny!” She waved. “It worked! We got everything.”
“I know. I saw. What I want to know, though, is how you got there.”
The grin vanished. I think she was surprised by my lack of enthusiasm. “Your friend Angel arranged it.”
“Angel? Angel got you onto the Strike Force?”
“Yes.” The grin was back in place. “He wasn’t going, so I told him I wanted to go, and he let me take his place.”
Somehow, I doubted it had been that simple. “Jaenna, the whole idea has been to get you back to Kaaran, not for you to get killed on some lousy junkyard of a planet.”
“Well, I didn’t get killed, did I?” she retorted. “Danny, I told you I had to do something to earn my passage and this seemed like the best way to do it. I wasn’t worried. Old Haranyi taught me how to shoot and how to take care of myself under fire.”
“Who is old Haranyi?”
“Commander o
f my father’s guard. He’s the one who really saw to my education.” Her face looked impish. “It’s nice when the things they teach you really work.”
I let out a sigh. I couldn’t stay mad at Jaenna. Besides, she had undoubtedly saved the operation.
“All right. Jaenna, your debts are long since paid, and you don’t need to worry about earning your passage. Without that stunt of yours, none of us would be going anywhere. Can we call it even? Just take it easy until we reach Kaaran.”
“Sure, Danny,” she laughed. “There is one more thing, though.”
“What might that be?”
“That Strike Force of yours needs a lot of work if you want to hit anything with real defenses.”
“Tell me something new, Jaenna.”
“I told you I had a thorough education. I know how Haranyi trains his small units.”
“Jaenna, are you trying to tell me you’re some kind of military expert?” I hadn’t intended it sarcastically, but it made her defensive.
“Expert, no,” she said. “I wouldn’t claim that. But you saw that action. You don’t need an expert to know what happened.”
She was dead right on that score. I wasn’t prepared, however, for what came next.
“I want to see what I can do with your Strike Force.”
I stared at her. “You’re telling me that you want to train the Strike Force?”
“Yes, I am. Didn’t you tell me, Danny, that where you come from male and female do the same jobs?”
Lord bless a fool. She was right, I had said that.
“My home is a long way away,” I countered, “What matters is whether they will listen to you here.”
“Don’t worry about that. After what happened down there, they’ll listen.”
Maybe so, but still … “Jaenna, I told you that you had earned your passage. It’s certainly true from my point of view and I think it should be from yours, too.”
My Life: An Ex-Quarterback's Adventures in the Galactic Empire Page 15