Fleet of the Damned (25 page)

There was a final explosion—and the beginnings of a mystery. How could a convoy entirely vanish in a perfectly secure and guarded sector?

Sailors do not like mysteries but love to talk about them. Very shortly, the word was out—the Fringe Worlds were jinxed. Better not ship out with that destination, friend.

The convoy disappearance also forced the Tahn to divert badly needed escorts from the forward areas both for escort duty and to hunt for what the council theorized was some kind of Q-ship, an Imperial raider masquerading as a Tahn vessel.

Sten countermined four more fields before he ordered the tacships back to Romney.

They had begun to fight back.

CHAPTER FIFTY

"C
ommander Sten," Admiral van Doorman said, turning away from the screen that showed Sten's after-action report, "my congratulations."

"Thank you, sir."

"You know," van Doorman said, as he stood and paced toward one of the screened windows in his command suite, "I am afraid that it's just too easy in this navy to adopt a particular mind-set. One becomes set in his ways. You decide that there is only one group of standards. You think that the smaller the ship, the less capable it is. You think that a show of force is all that's needed to maintain Imperial security. You think—hell, you think all manner of things. And then one day you find that you are wrong."

That, Sten thought, was a fairly honest and accurate summation and indictment of the admiral. Maybe add in a love for bumf and spit and polish, and a streak of stubborn stupidity. Now will this make van Doorman do something sensible, like resign, or maybe take poison like the Tahn do when they custer the works? Ha. Ha.

"I have decided to award you the Distinguished Service Order, and authorize you to award four Imperial Medals to any members of your division whose actions you deem outstanding."

"Thank you, sir." Sten would rather have had two spare engines for his tacships and a full resupply of missiles.

"I would like you and whichever four you choose back at this headquarters by 1400 hours. Dress uniform."

"Yessir. May I ask why?"

"For the award ceremony. I'll arrange to have full livie coverage. And a conference afterward for the media."

"Sir… I, uh, don't think that's a good idea."

"Don't be modest, Commander! You have won a victory. And right now Cavite—not just Cavite but the entire Empire—needs some good news."

"I am not being modest, sir. Sir… there are four more booby-trapped minefields out there. If we put the word out on what happened… sir, that'd foul up the whole operation."

Van Doorman actually considered what Sten had said. He reseated himself at his desk and rubbed his chin in thought. "Would it be possible that a, shall we say, different explanation of the action be provided?" Translation: Can we lie?

"Possibly, sir. But… won't the livie people want to talk to my crew? I don't think they could carry it off. They aren't trained in disinformation."

Kilgour would slaughter Sten if he knew he had said that—Alex was one of the best liars in the line of duty whom Sten had ever met.

"It would be chancy," van Doorman agreed. "Perhaps you're right. I'll postpone the media conference for the moment." He changed the subject. "Commander, one further thing. I don't wish to change your orders—you're doing admirably as an independent. But I'd like you to consider a more immediate focus for your future actions."

"Such as?"

"Whenever possible, I would appreciate your division hitting the closer Tahn-occupied systems."

"That could be difficult, sir. Their cover is pretty tight."

"This is most important."

"A question, sir. Why the change?"

"I am preparing to mount an operation within the next few weeks that will need full fleet support. Unfortunately, I can't be more specific at present—we're operating under total security."

So much for van Doorman's brief flash of reality. Sten could have mentioned that he probably had a higher security clearance than anyone in the 23rd Fleet, including its admiral. Or that it was clottin' hard to support an attack—a retreat?—if one didn't know what was going on. Or that total security for the clotpoles on van Doorman's staff probably meant that it was all over the officer's club by now.

"Yessir," Sten said. "My staff and I will prepare some possible scenarios for you."

"Excellent, Commander. And again, my congratulations."

Sten highballed the admiral and left. He was wondering if van Doorman was contagious. Scenario? And staff? That would consist of four officers, one warrant officer, and a spindar plotting over a bottle. He started looking for Brijit.

Sten hoped to find her in some romantic setting—perhaps in a flowered glen out of sight and sound of the war. He also hoped that Brijit would have recovered from her mother's death enough to have a bit of lust in her heart.

He found her ninety feet underground, wearing a blood-spattered set of coveralls and maneuvering a gurney past a rockchewer.

Someone on van Doorman's staff had an element of brains and cunning. The Empire Day attack had packed Cavite's hospitals solidly, and this unknown planner evidently knew enough about the Tahn method of waging war to realize that putting the ancient red cross on a hospital roof provided an excellent aiming point. So the base hospital had gone underground into solid rock. It was also directly under the building that had been, years before, the Tahn consulate for the Fringe Worlds.

Sten helped Brijit slip the casualty into an IC machine, then asked when she got off shift. Brijit smiled tiredly and told him tomorrow. Sten would be long offworld by then. So much for romance.

Brijit managed another smile, one with some empathy. She had a fairly good idea what Sten had in mind. Instead, she took him to the crowded staff mess hall and fed him a perfectly vile cup of caff.

She had volunteered for the hospital the day after her mother's funeral. The prewar world of whites, boredom, and garden parties was burnt away.

Sten was most impressed and was about to say something, when he started really listening to Brijit's exhausted chatter.

It was Dr. Morrison this and Dr. Morrison that, and how hard Dr. Morrison was working, and how many lives had been saved. Brijit, Sten gathered, was Dr. Morrison's main OR nurse. And he realized that even if he were in that flowered glade with Brijit, all that would happen was that she would possibly ask him to make a garland for Dr. Morrison.

Oh, well. Sten couldn't honestly evaluate himself as being anyone's ideal main squeeze, even ignoring the fact that a tacship commander's life span is measured in mayflies.

Brijit's features suddenly softened and then brightened. Sten remembered that she had looked that way at him not too long ago.

"There she is now! Dr. Morrison! Over here."

Commander Ellen Morrison, Imperial Medical Corps, was, Sten had to admit, almost as beautiful as Brijit. She greeted Sten coolly, as if he were a prospective patient, and sat down. Brijit, almost reflexively, took Morrison's hand.

Sten talked for a few more minutes about inconsequentialities, finished his caff, made his excuses, and left.

War changes everything it touches. Sometimes even for the better.

A few days later, van Doorman got his famous victory, courtesy of the Imperial Tacship
Richards
, Lieutenant Estill, and Ensign Tapia. Or at least everyone except Tapia thought he did.

They were a week out of Cavite when they got their target. It was one of the monstrous Tahn assault ships that were the launch base for the in-atmosphere attack craft. The ship, according to the
Jane's
fiche, would be lightly armored and, if hit before the bulkheads that subdivided the hangar deck could be closed, should become an instantly satisfactory torch.

The problem was that the ship was escorted by one cruiser and half a dozen destroyers, and no one on the
Richards
was in a particularly suicidal mood that watch.

Tapia let Estill run up and knock down half a dozen attacks on the computer before she made her suggestion. Even though it was extremely irregular, Estill was learning from his time in the TacDiv. He turned the deck over to her and announced that if her idea worked, he would "fly" the Kali on the attack.

At full power the
Richards
sped ahead of the Tahn ships, made a slight correction in course, and then went "dead" in space, directly intersecting what Tapia calculated the Tahn ships' course to be. She shut down all power, including the McLean artificial-gravity generator. Then anything that wasn't armament was pitched out a port—chairs, rations, metalloid foil configured to provide excellent radar reflection, and even the two spare shipsuits.

Then they waited. With even the recirculators off, the air got thick very quickly.

Their passive detectors picked up the Tahn sensing beams.

They continued to wait.

A single Tahn destroyer flashed out from the pack and figure-eighted, its computer obviously analyzing just what was dead ahead.

"This'll be interesting," Tapia whispered unnecessarily to Estill.

Interesting was one way to put it. If their camouflage as a wreck didn't work, they would be staring at that destroyer on an attack run. Tapia didn't know if either their reflexes or the
Richards'
power would get them away in time.

The
Richards'
passive screens went dead, and Tapia started breathing again. If the ruse had failed, the screens would have told her that a ranging computer was on the tacship. "Any time you're ready, Lieutenant."

Estill nodded. Tapia fed power to his board. Estill put out a narrow ranging beam to the Tahn assault ship. Closing… closing… in range.

Tapia slammed her power board on… buzzed the engineer, who did the same… and the
Richards
came alive. Two seconds later, Estill launched his Kali.

Alarms blared on the Tahn ships. The destroyers went into an attack pattern, and the cruiser full-powered to protect her charge. The assault ship went to an emergency evasive pattern.

Tapia was too busy to see what was going on. She had full power on the
Richards
, an eccentric evasion orbit fed in, and was now interested in survival.

The Kali was only a few seconds from strike when the Tahn assault ship fired its forward bank of antimissiles.

They should have been useless.

Standard doctrine for any weapons officer using the control helmet on a missile was to stay with the bird through contact. But somehow to Estill this meant a kind of death. At the last moment he hit the firing contact and jerked the helmet away.

The explosion blanked the rear screens of the
Richards
.

"We got it!" Estill shouted. The helmet went back on, and he launched a flight of Goblins to track to their rear.

Tapia read a proximity indicator—there were Tahn missiles coming at them. Closing… negative. The
Richards
was outrunning them.

Tapia had only a moment to check the main screen for a blink. And that blink showed her the same number of Tahn blips as had been there ten minutes before.

No one believed her—except the Tahn. The Kali had indeed detonated on an antimissile. Four main frames of the assault craft were warped, but the forward Tahn repair yards would have the assault ship back in commission within days.

Tapia tried—but no one wanted to hear the truth.

Lieutenant Ned Estill was an instant hero. Van Doorman awarded him the Galactic Cross, even though technically the medal could be given only on direct Imperial authority. The livie people went berserk—Lieutenant Estill could not have been more of a hero if they had been able to custom design one. His face and deeds were blazoned Empire wide within hours.

Tapia privately reported to Sten what she thought had actually happened. Sten considered, then told her to forget it. He didn't give a damn about medals, the Empire could do with a few hero types, and Estill honestly believed that he had destroyed the assault ship.

He did order, though, that all officers and weapons specialists renew their capabilities in a simulator. Once was an error. If Estill made the same mistake again, he could end up very dead.

And Sten couldn't afford to lose the
Richards
.

Lieutenant Lamine Sekka still seethed. The conversation with Sten had started in acrimony and gotten intense from there. What made it worse was that the original idea had been Sekka's.

Sten had attempted to follow van Doorman's vague instructions to harry the nearby worlds as much as possible. Harrying required intelligence. Specific—such as which worlds were occupied by what forces in which conditions.

The tacdiv spent too many hours as spy ships before anyone could start determining targets.

Sekka had found one of the juiciest,

A distinguishing feature of one planet was a river many thousands of kilometers long. Above its mouth, which looked more like an estuary, was a huge alluvial plain. It was a perfect infantry staging base for the Tahn. They had put an estimated two divisions of troops on the floodplain, using it as a temporary base until the landing in the Caltor System.

Sekka had even been able to determine where the divisions' headquarters were most likely sited.

Sten was congratulatory. "Now. Go kill them, Lieutenant."

"Sir?"

Sten was very tired and a little snappish. "I said—take ship. Put armament on ship. Destroy Tahn."

"I am not a child, Commander!"

Sten took a deep breath. "Sorry, Lamine. But what's the problem? You found yourself a cluster of bad people. Take care of them."

"Maybe I'm not sure what—exactly—you want me to do."

"Let's see." Sten ran through his arsenal mentally. "Here's what I'd suggest. First yank your Goblin launchers. Put eight more chainguns in their slots. Get rid of all but two of the Fox countermissiles. You'll need extra canisters of projectiles.