In the Stormy Red Sky-ARC

by David Drake

  A fire-shot cloud of brick rose skyward, spread into an anvil, and rained down for a half mile in every direction. Daniel even heard the clunk—it was too dull to be a slug—of a fragment hitting the Milton.

  What Sun had very cleverly done was to wait to fire into the military reservation until the angle let him enfilade a row of ten company barracks with each bolt. The Brotherhood had been chewing up the two-story structures with their automatic impellers from across the harbor, but they hadn't known which of the buildings were occupied by the garrison among the much larger number which were empty and available for transients.

  Adele—or perhaps Cory?—had looked at power meter records to determine the question. In general, the Sissie's faster-firing four-inch guns would've been better for support in a sprawling camp like this one, but Sun's careful aim had allowed him to use the eight-inch weapons to their full effect.

  The Milton had reached the harbor moles. Daniel began to swing her cautiously, holding the cruiser at a steady five hundred-foot altitude. Even a corvette like the Princess Cecile was too big to fling around like an aircar.

  In the middle of a battle, Daniel's intellect had to fight the adrenalin coursing through his system. Feeding in too much thrust was likely to start the ship rolling, spinning, or diving uncontrollably toward the surface which at the moment was scarcely her own length below.

  An automatic impeller began raking the cruiser. Daniel might not have noticed it if a slug hadn't ricocheted through the field which provided real-time imagery forward: his electronic equivalent of a window to look out the bow. The neon-bright streak of osmium bouncing at high velocity from steel was unmistakable if you'd seen it before, as Daniel certainly had.

  Once he knew it was happening, he registered the cling-cling-cling of short bursts, three to five slugs each, that continued to rain on the cruiser. The hull was impervious and it wouldn't be a matter of real consequence either if a spacer or spacers were killed a a round through an open hatch.

  Daniel had accepted the likelihood of a few casualties when he decided to let the crew use their small arms during the attack. They wouldn't have much effect on the enemy at this range, but it helped the crew's morale if they were a part of the battle instead of waiting blindly while giants slugged it out.

  A slug that hit a thruster's Stellite nozzle would put it out of action till it was replaced. That too would be a hassle, but there was bound to be damage during a battle. This single impeller was no more real danger to the Milton than a wasp was to the crew of an armored vehicle. But like the wasp it was irritating and insistent, and it might cause Daniel to make a mistake. There was nothing he could do about—

  "I have him," said Adele sharply on the command channel. "Her. Can somebody deal with her? She's knocked out one of my sensor arrays. Over. Out?"

  The general display highlighted a guard tower on the southern edge of the military reservation. It had been unmanned at the start of the attack, but an Alliance soldier had put it into action, probably on his own initiative.

  Daniel touched the icon beside the caret, bringing up a greatly magnified view of the tower's interior. The four-sided roof sheltered an automatic impeller on a central pintle. A grimly determined woman crouched behind the weapon, her hands on the spade grips. It was a pity that the mounting allowed the gun full rotation rather than just the ability to sweep the area beyond the fence line. She was aiming across the reservation, an obviously dangerous practice if anybody less skilled had been doing it.

  A fluorescent haze spurted from the impeller's muzzle: the aluminum driving bands vaporized by the flux that accelerated the projectiles up the barrel. Instants later, Daniel heard another cling-cling-cling, then bwow-w-w! as the last slug of the burst skidded from a hull plate on its own wild course.

  He didn't allow himself to adjust the throttles to tighten the turn the way he wanted to do. The tower was a mile and a half away, but when the ship's side was toward the reservation again there was a reasonable chance that massed luck if not marksmanship would put an end to the irritation.

  WHANG!

  A ventral plasma cannon had fired. Dust lifted from a graveled parade ground and swirled about the track of the bolt slanting low across it. The inset guard tower was a white flare. A three-story tenement in the civilian district beyond exploded outward, flinging brands in all directions. Other buildings began to burn.

  Daniel hadn't expected that Sun would have a clear shot with either turret. He'd done a very nice piece of work, stabbing the bolt between a pair of empty barracks to clip the top of the guard tower beyond. One could call it a surgical job, though the civilians who'd been downrange of the target probably wouldn't have been so positive about the result.

  WHANG!

  The sidewalls of a large building, probably a garage, blew outward. The roof of extruded plastic fluttered down like a dark red blanket. Secondary explosions lifted the roof in tatters, belching gouts of orange flames. A truck wheel flew up like a flipped coin, then spun back into the pall of black smoke which rippled to cover the remains of the roof.

  WHANG!

  On the harbor side, fifty yards of perimeter fence blazed white and vanished, including a pair of guard towers. The turf for twice that distance beyond was blackened and the woven-wire fencing sagged. Sun had timed his shot to sweep as much of the fence line as he could. Though nobody had been shooting from the towers he'd destroyed, soldiers spilled from others. Some threw away their guns as they ran.

  Armored personnel carriers had been driving off the Wartburg while squads of Brotherhood infantry fanned out to eliminate anything that might have been a threat on the north side of the harbor. The empty vehicles raced to shore over the water itself, each sending up a great roostertail.

  There were two ramps up from the water in the warehouse district. The APCs climbed them, then glided purposefully along the esplanade to the infantry which had double-timed to shore along the floating walkway from the transport's entry hold.

  WHANG!

  The bolt hit a domed amphitheatre in the military reservation. Such structures served for assemblies during bad weather and as additional barracks space when needed, as well as for entertainment purposes. It was probably empty at the moment, but because it was the largest building on the post it made a spectacular target.

  The benches and even the paint on the interior concrete walls flashed into a flame which the slanted ramps channeled upward. The orange bubble shot a thousand feet into the sky and vanished into itself with a loud bang. It was even more stunning than the jet of plasma which had brought it to life.

  The spacers and Marines were firing with renewed vigor through the Milton's hatches. Daniel knew how hard a stocked impeller recoiled. Excitement was keeping the spacers going, but in the morning the shoulders of many would be too bruised for them to make a fist with that hand. Most would be lucky to hit a house at this range, let alone a human target, but the rain of slugs out of the sky would dispirit any Alliance soldier who hadn't been left numb by the eight-inch plasma bolts.

  APCs laden with Brotherhood troops started around the harbor by streets a block in from the water, moving in pairs. They were simply battle taxis, not fighting vehicles, though each mounted an automatic impeller to provide covering fire while its infantry squad cleared buildings with grenades and sub-machine guns.

  "Daniel, they're surrendering!" Adele said on a two-way link. "Commodore Donald Harmston, the Base Commander, is offering to capitulate to avoid further bloodshed. He's asking for medical help for his aide-de-camp. Ah, the aide's name is Harmston also. Over."

  "Cease fire!" Daniel ordered on the general intercom channel. Taking no chances, he used the command console to lock out the main guns' firing circuit. "All personnel, cease fire immediately. I mean it, Millies, cease bloody fire or there'll be court martials!"

  The crew had its blood up, and there were bound to be Alliance troops on the ground who hadn't gotten the word and would by shooting give the Millies justification. Fortuna
tely, the fighting—the shooting, at least—had gone on long enough that as soon as the spacers stopped, they were going to notice the throbbing pain of their bruised shoulders.

  Likely enough there'd been a few broken collarbones as well. Inexperienced shooters often held the stock a half inch from their shoulder, thinking to reduce the shock. Instead the weapon, recoiling without the body's additional mass to slow it down, hit like a hammer instead of like a heavy medicine ball.

  "Signals, inform Colonel Stockheim that the enemy is surrendering," Daniel said as he adjusted his thrusters to bring them to a hover. "And inform the Hydriote ships in orbit that they'll be able to begin landing within the hour. Six out."

  He took a deep breath. "Ship, we're about to land on Bolton, the newest possession of the Republic of Cinnabar. Fellow spacers, the Republic thanks you, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart! Up the Milton!"

  "Up the Milton!" shrieked hundreds of voices, till the thrusters licked the harbor's surface into a deafening thunder of steam.

  CHAPTER 19

  St James Harbor, Bolton

  "Captain," said Vesey over the command channel, "this is Five. The transports will be landing at two minute intervals starting in seventeen minutes. I've assigned the ships berths in both the civilian and the naval portions of the harbor, but I can't determine billets for the personnel until we have an inventory of how many barracks remain undamaged, over."

  The Milton clanked and sizzled in her slip. Most of the A Level hatches remained open though Daniel had ordered the marksmen away from them, so steam continued to boil in. The mugginess carried the usual stench of burned muck.

  "Roger, Five," Daniel said, suppressing his smile in case Vesey was watching an image of his face and thought he was mocking her. For an extremely able officer, Lieutenant Vesey seemed often to be on the verge of tears. "Well done. I think the Fonthill Militia—"

  That was the name he'd come up with to regularize Master Beckford's former slaves.

  "—can sleep for another night aboard their transports if necessary. Six out."

  "Six, this is Three," reported Pasternak from the Power Room. "The ship is secure. All thrusters are shut down but operable. There's no problems there, though one of the High Drive motors apparently took a slug during the fighting. I'll have her changed out in an hour after things have cooled down, though being one motor short won't affect our performance if we have to lift, over."

  Daniel started to reply but had to cough instead to clear the sharp dryness at the back of his throat. It felt for a moment as though he'd tried to swallow a mouthful of burrs. There was smoke in the air as well as steam.

  The Gods alone knew what all was burning. Anything that could combine with oxygen would do so when hit by a plasma bolt, including all metals and some rocks.

  Daniel swallowed his phlegm, then resumed, "Roger, Three. One of the Alliance soldiers was bound and determined to die for the Guarantor, and it seems that she did some damage before Sun obliged her. Get us shipshape as soon as you safely can, but I'm not expecting to lift for several days."

  He coughed, this time as a pause in which he could word his thought correctly. "Chief Pasternak?" he said. "The Power Train operated without a hiccup during our low-level approach and the firing passes. The thrusters gimballed smoothly, and the flow to each nozzle remained precisely where I set it. My regards to your personnel, and please inform them that they can all expect a drink on their captain when next we have a chance at liberty. Which I'm afraid won't be any time soon, however. Six out."

  The topgallant section of the Dorsal A Ring antenna locked in place with a cling which vibrated through the ship. It was a familiar sound in the ordinary course of things—but not in an atmosphere. Here it had a deeper, richer tone than when the ship was preparing to insert into the Matrix.

  "What's that?" demanded Senator Forbes as she entered the bridge. DeNardo, showing his usual bovine calm, and Platt who seemed on the verge of frightened tears, were with her, but the pair of servants/bodyguards were not. She was in a cream business suit with shoulder flounces rather than senatorial robes, the sort of thing she might wear during office hours while the Senate was in session.

  "I've raised an antenna because the sensors at the masthead will give us a twenty-mile panorama," Daniel said, looking up with a smile. Things had gone very well thus far, but from the Senator's sour expression she wasn't sure of that. "If we have to lift off too suddenly to bring it down properly, it'll go by the boards. But that's unlikely, and in that event I'm sure we'll have worse problems."

  Fires were burning all over St James City. Most were in the military reservation—Vesey had been right to wonder if there'd be barracks for the laborers-become-garrison—but six or eight spots on the north side of the harbor licked flame into the smoky haze. Unless some were coincidental with the attack, the heavy plasma charges had flung blazing debris up to a quarter mile from the impact sites.

  "I've been watching through the display in my suite," Forbes said, seeming to warm slightly. She'd had sense enough to keep out of the way during the fighting, but it would have rankled her nonetheless to be on the sidelines. "I won't pretend I understood much of what was going on, though, except that apparently we weren't all about to die the way the noises made me expect. That is correct, isn't it?"

  "The worst noises were us shooting at Alliance positions," Daniel said, encouraging his smile to widen. "I've arranged a meeting with Commodore Harmston to formally accept his surrender of the planet. I hope you'll accompany me?"

  The Senator really was doing very well for someone who was used to thinking of herself as one of the dozen most important people in the Republic of Cinnabar. If she got peevish, she was nonetheless behaving better by an order of magnitude than Corder Leary would've done in similar circumstances.

  Daniel didn't care if Forbes preferred to sit in her cabin and twiddle her thumbs—or DeNardo, for that matter. What he really hoped was that she'd be pleased at the invitation. Since the meeting was between military commanders, she couldn't demand to be present by right.

  The Senator's eyes narrowed, but after a moment she smiled wryly. "In fact I was hoping, shall we say," she said, "to be present. Which is why I'm in this—

  She pinched the ruff over her right shoulder.

  "—instead of something less ornate."

  Major Mull, wearing battledress and holding his sub-machine gun at the balance instead of slinging it, stamped into the compartment. He'd lifted the face-shield of his helmet.

  "Sir!" he said, quite clearly ignoring the civilians. "Request permission to put a squad of marksmen on the hull for security before we lower the boarding ramp!"

  Daniel's eyes narrowed. "Major Mull," he said. He didn't raise his voice unduly—the Marine was just short of shouting—but it snapped nonetheless. "I will remind you that the bridge is the captain's territory, and that at present the captain is in conference with her Excellency, Ambassador Forbes. Is that understood?"

  Mull slammed to attention. "Sir!" he said, focusing his eyes on a spot on the bulkhead. "Understood sir!"

  He's older than I am, and this—Daniel had checked the major's record—is his first shipboard command, though he's served as a junior officer on two battleships before his promotion. Mull didn't have a chip on his shoulder, but he was an unimaginative man who had never before taken orders from someone outside the Marine hierarchy.

  "At ease, Major," Daniel said aloud. "And yes, that's a good idea, but I'll want twenty of your people to accompany the Senator and me when we take the surrender of the—"

  "Daniel, mine tender R16 in Fleet Berth Four is preparing to lift off!" said Adele, speaking through his commo helmet.

  "Belay that, Mull!" Daniel said as he dropped onto his console again. He hoped Senator Forbes wouldn't feel offended, but that wasn't his first priority any more.

  "Six, I'm on it!" cried Sun on the command push. The bone-deep rumble of the dorsal turret—the ventral turret had been withdrawn for landing
and was now below the harbor's surface—would have made that obvious anyway.

  "All personnel get off the hull!" boomed Vesey's voice from the PA system and the ship's outside speakers. "Prepare for gunnery exercise! All Milton personnel get inside now or you'll be fried. Move it, Millies!"

  Vesey was on the ball too, as expected, though Daniel wouldn't have been surprised to learn that it had been Cory who cut in the external speakers. He wasn't sure he'd have been able to manage that unusual task so quickly himself, though of course he'd never have to with Adele as his signals officer.

  Just as he didn't have to worry about directing his next transmission. "R16, this is RCS Milton. Shut down or you will be destroyed. Shut down and acknowledge, over!"

  There were scores of ships on the civilian side of St James Harbor, several of them freighters bigger than the Wartburg. The naval base to the south was almost empty by contrast, though the extensive docks were built to handle a fleet including battleships. The Milton was by far the largest ship present, but the harbor facilities dwarfed her.

  A pall of steam rose from a slip near the eastern end of the naval harbor. From ground level the vessel floating there wouldn't have been visible over the quay at this stage of the tide, but Daniel's masthead sensors let him peer down on it. Another hundred-foot mine tender like the one the Milton had destroyed in orbit was trying desperately to escape and warn Admiral Petersen of the disaster.

  "R16, this is Captain Daniel Leary!" Daniel said. "Shut down immediately! You will not escape, you cannot escape. Shut down now and avoid dying for no purpose, over!"

  Text crawled across the bottom of Daniel's display: voltaire 6, this is tiger. get your personnel beneath overhead cover immediately, repeat, seek overhead cover, out.

  Voltaire 6 was Colonel Stockheim's call sign, while Tiger was the Milton. Adele was keeping Daniel informed of her transmission without interfering with what he was doing.