Fleet of the Damned (21 page)

"To be frank," Fehrle said, "we intend to launch a full-out attack."

All three of Sr. Ecu's stomachs lurched. Their linings had been sorely tested in the past, to the point where he had been sure he would never be able to digest his favorite microorganisms again. This, however, was true disaster.

"I beg you to reconsider, my lord," he said. "Are your positions really so far apart? Is it
really
too late to talk? In my experience…"

"That's why I asked you here," Fehrle said. "There is a way out. A way to avoid total war."

Sr. Ecu knew the man was lying through his gleaming teeth. However, he could hardly say so. "I'm delighted to hear that," he said. "I suppose you have some new demands. Compromises, perhaps? Areas of concern to be traded for firm agreements?"

Fehrle snorted. "Not at all," he said. "We will settle for nothing less than total capitulation."

"If I may say so, that is not a very good way to resume negotiations, my lord," Sr. Ecu murmured.

"But that is where I intend to begin, just the same," Fehrle said. "I have a fiche outlining our position. It will be delivered to you before you leave for Prime World."

"And how much time shall I tell the Emperor's emissaries they have to respond?"

"Seventy-two E-hours," Lord Fehrle said flatly, almost in a monotone.

"But, my lord, that's impossible. It would take a miracle for me to even
reach
Prime World in that time, much less to set up the proper channels."

"It's seventy-two hours just the same."

"You must listen to reason, my lord!"

"Then you refuse?"

Now Sr. Ecu understood. Fehrle wanted a refusal. Later he could say that he had done his best to avert full war but that the Manabi would not undertake the mission. He had to admire the plan, as in a way he admired how perfectly ugly the man's garden was. Because there was no way in his race's coda that Sr. Ecu could undertake the mission.

"Yes, my lord. I'm afraid I must refuse."

"Very well, then."

Lord Fehrle turned without another word and stalked off across the white sand. Sr. Ecu rippled his wings and in a moment was soaring away, his own self-esteem and his race's neutrality shattered.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

T
he weather report for Empire Day was disappointing: overcast with occasional rain, heavy at times. Rotten weather for a holiday—but it would save the lives of several thousands of beings on Cavite and, perhaps, be responsible for Sten's survival on that day.

Sten had restricted his crews to the flotilla area twenty-four hours beforehand. There had been grumbles—Empire Day for the 23rd Fleet was not only show-and-tell day but a rationale for some serious partying. Not that there was much time for bitching—they were too busy loading and resupplying the ships. And quickly the crew members, seeing live missiles and ammunition being not only loaded but racked and mounted, figured that something very much out of the ordinary was going on.

The ships were ready to launch at 1900 hours. Sten was amused to see that the final load actually was fireworks, acquired by Sutton from some of his black-market contacts. Sten put everyone under light hypno sleep and tried for a little rest himself—without result.

Wearing a slicker against the occasional spatters of rain, he spent the middle hours of the night pacing around his ships and wondering why he had ever wanted to be the man in charge of anything.

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.

BOOK THREE
ON THE WIND

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

T
he 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 dishonorable 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.