Into the Maelstrom - eARC

by David Drake

  “You won’t remember me,” said a woman with gold feathers arranged in a crown which did nothing to hide the fact that she had a face like one of Paxton’s draft animals. “But we met at your last reception in this very hall before you took up your command at Oxford.”

  Actually Allenson remembered her very well. She had been one of the first to sidle out of the by a side door to go to pay her respects to the new governor.

  “I just knew you would beat those awful Brasilians, General. I never doubted your victory,” the woman gushed.

  Allenson tightened his rictus grin. After a few more lies Venceray disengaged him. Next up in the queue was a man who stood out simply because he wore the nondescript outfit of a Heilbron Ascetic.

  “That man of yours in charge of security,” the Ascetic began, scowling at Allenson, “seems to be some sort of aristo sympathizer. He has treated some of Our People rather roughly.”

  The capital O and P were clearly enunciated.

  “Colonel Hawthorn is quite right to enforce law and order,” Venceray replied before Allenson could select an appropriate answer. “Your People should learn to respect the property of their betters.”

  “Just what I’d expect from you, Venceray, being a bit of an aristo yourself,” sneered the Ascetic.

  Allenson smoothed the argument over with a firm commitment to look into the matter, a promise he had not the slightest intention of keeping. That was the primary advantage of political promises. They were an alternative, not a prelude, to action.

  Todd retreated to an alcove to examine his datapad. Allenson kept a watch on him from the corner of his eye as he exchanged pleasantries with an elderly man and his daughter. He didn’t want to stare and draw attention to his aide. The daughter kept her head lowered and gazed up at him through her fringe. Allenson found this somewhat disconcerting and wondered if she had a neck condition.

  Todd returned and passed Allenson a note without comment. He glanced at it before screwing it up and putting it carefully in his pocket. It wouldn’t do to lose it. Someone might pick it up and read the contents.

  “Something important was come up?” the elderly man said, cocking his head to one side like a bird that has just spotted an unusually interesting worm.

  “Nothing serious,” Allenson replied. “Just the usual bureaucratic palaver. It’ll keep.”

  The note was from Ling. It warned him that a fleet had been detected by Morton’s Canaries assembling in the Continuum above Port Trent. The itch to rush out of the Hall and back to the operations room was almost overwhelming but there was nothing he could do that Ling wouldn’t already have underway. The last thing these people needed to see was an anxious general.

  Next up to the crease was a short man who was as wide as he was tall. He was stuffed into a lime-green suit with transverse bands of steel gray. These clothes and his disconcerting habit of swaying when he spoke gave him the appearance of a child’s spinning top. Allenson had to fight the urge to give him a prod to see whether he would bounce back upright by gyroscopic action.

  He addressed Venceray, rather than Allenson.

  “A bunch of bloody plebs broke into my warehouse and lifted ten cases of imported wine, Venceray. They left a note saying that they had as much right to it as Home Worlder snobs. They sprayed Leveler slogans all over the place.”

  The short man appeared to be as disturbed by the slogans as the loss of his property.

  “Like what?” Allenson asked, genuinely curious. He hadn’t come across levelers before.

  “Property is theft and so forth. Calls for cancellation of debts and a redistribution of wealth.”

  “Indeed!” Allenson raised an eyebrow.

  “I know,” Venceray said, soothingly. “One wouldn’t care if they even appreciated what they had stolen. The average pleb can’t distinguish imported wine from tractor fuel.”

  “I don’t care whether my customers appreciate the stuff or not. They can feed it to their pigs for all I care—provided they pay me,” the short man said, oscillating more furiously from foot to foot.

  “The new authorities are committed to protecting private property,” Allenson said firmly. “I can’t promise we’ll always catch criminals but we’ll try. Perpetrators will be punished.”

  The oscillations slowed.

  “Good chap,” the short man said. “Only reason I went along with this independence nonsense was because I thought we could trust a Manzanitan gentleman not to have any truck with Levelers.”

  Wine and other socially-smoothing beverages flowed and the dignitaries coalesced into groups of friends, giving Allenson some peace. He was selecting a canapé when a sharp-eyed woman addressed him.

  “The sea food is very good but unless you have a well calloused stomach lining you might want to stick to the mince.”

  “Thanks,” Allenson replied, changing his choice. He liked sea food but the stronger varieties sometimes didn’t like him.

  “You’re very relaxed,” she said, taking a canapé and biting into it with even white teeth.

  “It is a social occasion. Why shouldn’t I be relaxed?” Allenson replied.

  “Possibly because my people have sent me word that a Brasilian counterattack is under way?”

  Allenson smiled. “You are very informed Lady . . . ?”

  “Esmeralda.”

  “But your people aren’t entirely accurate. They haven’t started landing yet.”

  “So we have time to finish our party and beat the Brasilian fleet,” she said. “Another glass of wine?”

  Another half hour or so and Allenson detached himself from the festivities. He left leaving the more hardened topers relentlessly pouring vintages down their throats. Todd arranged a small buggy fleet outside. They sped to HQ with an escort from Special Projects clearing the way.

  The lights were dimmed in the control room. The situation holograms hung like slabs of tinted glass suspended in midair. There was a stillness in the room, an air of anxious expectation like the atmosphere in the fathers’ waiting room of a maternity hospital. Whatever their supposed function everyone in the room had their eyes fixed on the central display, which tracked the movements of the Brasilian fleet.

  The operational control room was really Port Trent’s civilian traffic control center. It possessed better equipment than anything the army could supply. An aide next to Ling slid out of his chair for Allenson to sit down.

  Ling nodded to Allenson and picked up a hologram marker.

  “They have a rendezvous set up in the Continuum equivalent to about twenty-five kilometers above the surface one thousand klicks to the northwest. They’ve held position now for nearly four hours while stragglers arrive.”

  The Brasilian fleet’s behavior was consistent with a pack of civilian ships of various cruise capabilities and crew competencies. That answered one question. Allenson had been almost certain that the Brasilians would be forced to use ad hoc transport but it was nice to have it confirmed that they would not be facing a crack assault fleet.

  “I suspect this is a navy flagship coordinating the invasion,” Ling said pointing to a blip on the hologram that was transmitting a strong beacon signal.

  Allenson flirted with dispatching Morton’s Canaries stiffened by a couple of light infantry regiments on light frames; a swift hit and run might panic some of the merchant skippers. He reluctantly abandoned the idea. It was too risky.

  He had no idea what defenses the fleet employed. For all he knew they were hanging there as bait waiting for a rash countermove. He couldn’t risk a reverse at the start of the battle. The morale impact would be disastrous. He sighed remembering simpler times when he had a lot less to lose than an entire nation.

  They sat and watched the hologram for the next hour but no more stragglers arrived.

  “Some of their ships haven’t turned up,” Ling said, grinning.

  “It would seem so,” Allenson replied cautiously.

  He didn’t elaborate his suspicion that the Brasilian i
nactivity was a trap in case Ling though him hopelessly paranoiac.

  “Energy readings increasing,” said an excited voice.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant,” Ling said calmly.

  Allenson intently watched the cursors representing the Brasilian ships. They moved, slowly at first but with increasing speed. Ling keyed a side screen that showed the geographic coordinates and velocity of the fleet. They were descending towards the surface, moving southeast towards the city.

  “It seems that Buller was right to predict a landing to the northwest of us,” Allenson said.

  The ships kept coming, not particularly quickly but resolutely. After a few more minutes the navigation system plotted an extrapolation of the fleet’s vector. Ling displayed the predicted landing zone. At this stage the ninety-five percent reliability estimate illuminated an area of about fifty kilometers diameter that encompassed most of the area around Port Trent.

  The prediction zone shrank as the fleet approached and the prediction certainty hardened. The landing zone centered more and more directly on the city.

  “They will no doubt change vectors when they reach their landing zone to a near vertical descent in case we have defense systems,” Ling said.

  “No doubt,” Allenson said.

  He wondered whether he was reassuring Ling or the other way around. The Brasilians must know that the colonials had no weapon systems capable of hitting ships except for the short-range point defense cannons in Port Trent itself. If they thought otherwise they would not be employing civilian transport. Unless it was a complex bluff. Maybe they had a naval assault fleet pretending to be merchantmen. Maybe they hoped to lull the Streamers into a false sense of security until they dropped right on the city.

  But that was nonsense.

  The Brasilians wouldn’t need to bluff if they had that strong a force. Unless . . . he shook his head, the endless speculation getting him nowhere. No doubt the Brasilian commander was just being cautious. Your thinking changed when one wrong move could lose the war in an afternoon. You saw danger everywhere.

  He smiled remembering when he could take chances and damn the consequences. Allenson was suddenly aware that everyone in the room was watching him. He saw expressions of awe from the younger officers. They interpreted his half smile as sang froid. If only they knew!

  “Energy blip, the fleet is part phasing and changing course,” a young female voice said.

  Game on, Allenson thought. The predicted landing zone flickered then changed location. Allenson expected it to move northwest as the Brasilian fleet descended.

  It didn’t.

  Ling leaned forward to gaze at the hologram.

  “What the fornicating hell are they up to?”

  CHAPTER 21

  Hurry Up and Wait

  The Brasilian fleet flattened their descent. The predicted landing zone moved out over the Douglas Hundreds. The ships crossed the city dephased at a height of around three thousand meters with all their lights on. A frustrated lasercannon operator triggered a wild and pointless burst. He may as well as waved at the ships for all the good it did.

  “Makes you wish for a decent strategic defense system,” Ling said with a grunt of disgust.

  “May as well wish for a state of the art battlefleet while you’re on,” Allenson replied. “What puzzles me is where the hell they think they’re going.”

  The fleet descended steeply until it disappeared from Port Trent’s tracking system somewhere over the south of the peninsula.

  Allenson touched a key.

  “Morton?”

  Captain Morton’s head and shoulders formed above the console.

  “We’ve lost contact with the enemy somewhere over the southern Hundreds. Get a team in the air and find them,” Allenson said.

  “On my way, sir.”

  Morton’s arm reached forward and his hologram winked out of existence.

  Allenson took an injector out of his pocket into which he had preloaded a Nightlife stimulant. He hadn’t been sleeping well lately. The tube hissed when he flipped off the safety and pressed it against his wrist. Within seconds his weariness dropped away. The lights in the control room shone starker and the holograms sharper. He felt like an athlete on the balls of his feet waiting for the starting pistol to crack. There would be a price to pay later.

  “Now what?” Ling asked.

  “Now we wait,” Allenson said, sinking back in his chair. “It’s going to be a long night. Put the army on alert, First Brigade to be ready for deployment at one hour’s notice.”

  “They already should be,” Ling replied.

  Allenson noted that his chief of staff had his hands behind his back. He probably had his fingers crossed.

  “Remind them again,” Allenson said. “Just in case.”

  Ling nodded.

  The night dragged on with no word from Morton. The clock on Allenson’s datapad ticked over. Each second lasted for at least a minute. Partly that was the situation but partly it was the Nightlife. Ling had put his chair back and closed his eyes. Allenson should have tried to get some sleep but the wide-awake juice did its job.

  Oh well, too late now, as the man said stepping into the empty lift shaft. He could take a sleeper and then redose on Nightlife later. He could also go barking mad.

  Allenson chuckled out loud at the absurdity of it.

  Ling woke up startled.

  “Any news?” he said, stabbing at his console.

  “Sorry Colonel, I didn’t mean to disturb you. It’s just that sometimes life is just too ridiculous to take seriously.”

  Ling looked at him as if he had taken leave of his senses. Allenson hastened to explain.

  “You know the old army joke: hurry up and wait. Can you imagine how the troopers on standby are cursing us?”

  “Yes, sir, Ling said, doubtfully.

  The junior officers tittered sycophantically, any joke made by a general being considered hilarious no matter how weak it would have sounded from a second lieutenant.

  At that point the console chimed and Morton’s head and shoulders appeared.

  “About bloody time,” Allenson said under his breath.

  “Sorry sir,” Morton replied.

  The gain on Allenson’s console must be extraordinarily sensitive.

  “Never mind that, Captain, where are they?”

  “They’ve landed on one of the islands making up the reef to the south of the Douglas Hundreds peninsula.”

  “What?” Allenson replied. “I didn’t know there were any islands there.”

  “They’re very small and uninhabited so they probably wouldn’t be shown on your maps,” a local officer said over Allenson’s shoulder. “Waves go right over them when a tornado hits.”

  He keyed up a small-scale map of the area showing a rocky archipelago.

  “One of them’s inhabited now,” Morton said. “The invasion fleet’s a ragbag of merchantmen and one assault ship running point defense. I lost two men before we knew it was there. The Brasilian Navy have all communications around the island jammed. That’s why we had to wait until I got back to the mainland to report. I’m sending the data now.”

  A red cross appeared on an island about five hundred meters off the point of the peninsula. Another hologram opened to show a movie of the landing site. The assault ship sat on its skids on a flat plate of broken reef that had partially collapsed under the large vessel’s weight.

  Small tramp ships perched on rock outcrops nearby. At least two had toppled over into the shallow water. Allenson wondered how the Navy had gotten merchant owners to take such a risk with their property. The method of persuasion probably involved naval petty officers equipped with lasercarbines and bad attitudes standing behind the merchant skippers during the landing. It would never have occurred to him to use that level of ruthlessness—but then Allenson had to live in the Stream after the war. The Brasilian admiral didn’t.

  Larger merchantmen had landed in water channels between the outcrops. One of them
had broken its back on a hidden reef just below the waterline. Men disembarked from the merchantmen and the assault ship deployed equipment using its cranes and lifts.

  He toyed with ordering an immediate fast strike by First Brigade while the Brasilians were vulnerable. The problem was the scene was already an hour old. If the Brasilian commander knew his stuff, and there was no reason to assume he didn’t, then he would have prioritized the deployment of point defense systems to boost the cover provided by his ship. That was probably what was being unloaded from the assault ship in the recording.

  The damaged merchantmen wouldn’t slow down deployment all that much. In the Brasilian’s shoes, Allenson would just blow open the hulls where necessary to create new unloading hatches.

  He decided to stick to the plan and wait for the Brasilians to attack Trent’s fortifications. His raw troops would perform much better in fortified positions. The thought reminded him of something, the Buller Line across the Douglas Hundreds faced the wrong way but did the line matter anyway?

  He resisted the urge to send Buller a “told you so” message. Allenson had approved the defense layouts which made them his responsibility irrespective of their originator.

  “There’s something wrong,” Ling said.

  He had been rerunning the video clip and checking it against maps and picture of the archipelago.

  “Colonel Buller was convinced that the Brasilians would land on the mainland rather than the Douglas Hundreds because they would be trapped in the peninsula in a maze of canals, right?”

  “Yes,” Allenson replied.

  “But surely all those issues still apply to their landing zone only with polished nobs on. Have a look at that island chain.”

  Ling keyed up a picture.

  “It’s a mass of shallow low-lying coral reefs separated by deep water channels. It’s going to be a nightmare to transport troops across. Those reefs have never been surveyed so the Brasilians won’t be able to use anything much bigger than a shallow-draft lighter. They’ll be moving in penny packets and then only onto the Douglas Hundreds. Only a maniac would try to cross the mouth of Trent Bay in a lighter. One ocean storm and . . .”