Fleet of the Damned (35 page)

He heard only one dying gurgle before Kilgour's head peered back out. The kukri was unbloodied. Not bad, Sten thought. The lad still has his moves.

He waved the eleven sailors inside. And they waited for dawn.

Sten, Foss, Kilgour, and Tapia kept watch on the track's screens. At this point, the plan deteriorated into opportunity. Sooner or later, sometime around nightfall, Sten thought, there should be some sort of troop movement forward. More chaos. No one would question a group of soldiers moving from a command post toward the front lines. He hoped.

They would move in Tahn uniforms. At first, Sten thought that every man-jill would be so outfitted—one of the barges was full of sealed paks labeled "Uniforms, Issue, Mk. 113." But there was further translation: "Full Dress, Temperate Climate (White)."

Sten thought that if he put his swabbies into those uniforms, they'd probably get out of the CP's lines smoothly—but just might have trouble when they encountered their first Tahn combat troopie.

But there would be another option.

In the early afternoon, Sten thought he'd found it. Combat cars hissed in from the lines, and Tahn officers dismounted.

A command conference, Sten guessed. When this breaks up, we should be able to get up and go.

Then there was a rumble, and a large troop-carrying gravsled hissed toward the command center. A thousand meters above it whined two Tahn battle cruisers.

"Clottin' hell," Alex observed. He had been watching the screen over Sten's shoulder. "Th' brass ae surfacin't."

The gravsled grounded, and a ramp dropped. A line of combat-uniformed Tahn soldiers doubled down it.

"Ah dianne ken th' Tahn be raisin't Goliaths!"

The soldiers
were
very tall. And very broad.

The giants formed two lines on either side of the ramp.

And Sten knew what was going to happen next.

He turned away from the screen and looked at Alex. The heavy-worlder's face was pale.

"W' dinnae hae ae choice, do we, lad?" he whispered.

No, Sten thought. We do not.

He picked up the willygun leaning next to the screen's control panel and checked its sights and load. Then he moved toward the entry port and cautiously eased it open.

Sten was a survivor.

He was also an officer of the Empire.

Situation posited: Formally dressed bodyguards in plain view. Waiting. As are assembled high-ranking officers.

Deduction: Someone of high rank will make an appearance.

Question: Who is that someone?

Answer: Lady Atago. Or Deska.

Question: Is the death of Deska desirable—regardless of sacrifice?

Answer: Probably.

Question: Is the death of Lady Atago desirable?

Answer: Absolutely.

Regardless of the cost, Commander Sten?

Regardless of the cost.

Sten took a hasty sling around his arm, braced against the supply sled's port, and aimed, making sure that the muzzle of his willygun didn't protrude into plain sight.

If Atago came down that ramp, she would die.

And shortly afterward, so would Sten and the sailors he had so carefully tried to keep alive.

Kilgour was moving behind him, shaking people into alertness and whispering.

About 150 meters away, the bodyguards and the Tahn officers snapped to rigid attention.

And Lady Atago started down the ramp.

Aim carefully, Sten, he thought. If it's stupid to die, it's even stupider to get killed after you miss.

The cross hairs of his sight moved across Atago's red cloak and stopped on the center of her green tunic. The Anti-Matter Two round would blow a fist-sized hole in that green.

Sten inhaled, then exhaled half the breath. His finger took up the slack in the trigger.

And then Atago's bodyguards moved, as swiftly and skillfully as a corps de ballet, closing around their charge.

All Sten could see was the white of their uniforms instead of green.

He swore, then lifted his eyes.

Atago was still surrounded. And then, still in phalanx, the circle of white giants marched into one of the commandtracks, the Tahn officers straggling behind them.

Sten lowered his willygun.

He was breathing as deeply as if he had just run five kilometers or had sex. And the part of his brain that was and always would be a street criminal was reading him the riot act. You. You're disappointed because you're still alive? What the hell is the matter with you? And then that survival brain chortled. Sorry, cheena. I didn't realize you held fire to make sure you wouldn't get blasted. Didn't mean to get critical.

That thought made it worse.

Maybe he had. Maybe he had.

Sten was very quiet and very thoughtful for the remainder of the day.

Kilgour took over. He stripped uniforms off the bodies of the Tahn crewmen he'd killed and ordered five of the sailors to get into them.

Near dusk, the Tahn conference broke up. Lady Atago returned to her gravsled completely shielded by her bodyguards. There was never a minute when Sten could have tried again.

S'be't, as the Jann would have said. Now to worry about the future—and staying alive.

It was very simple, in the whine and hiss of departing officers and scurrying troops, to move straight out from the perimeter, unchallenged, toward the lines.

Kilgour found a shell crater, where they waited until full dark.

He slid up to Sten. "Lad, dinnae fash. We'll hae a chance again," he whispered.

Sten grunted.

"A wee thing more, Skipper. Ah dinnae how to say—but Ah been hae'in't troubles wi' m' bowels."

"So?" Sten managed.

"Those bales ae white uniforms?"

"GA."

"They nae be white n' more."

Sten came back to reality and managed a smile.

Now for the last worry—getting killed by their own troops.

If he were commanding a Mantis section, Sten thought, the first time the Imperial troops would realize they had been penetrated was when Sten and his people lined up for morning rations.

But these were sailors.

He found a shelter for his people in some ruins and went forward on his own. Alex lifted a bushy eyebrow, but Sten shook his head.

He moved forward like a weasel from patch to patch of darkness. His ringers found a tripflare, and his body lifted over the wire. A booby mine—avoided.

There—a two-man outpost, both men alert, gun barrels questioning the dark.

He went past them.

Then there was the bunker—the reaction element. No. Too trigger-happy. Sten continued on.

A Guard patrol, coming in from the lines, crept past him. Sten followed them at a discreet distance. One hundred meters farther on, there was a gleam of light as the patrol entered their command post to report.

Sten counted: ten seconds for welcome; ten seconds for the patrol to dump their weapons; another ten as they poured caff.

He went down the bunker steps and slipped sideways through the blackout curtain—a torn blanket—before any of the Imperial guardsmen could react. Then, deliberately casual, he said, "I'm Commander Sten. Imperial Navy. I've got some people outside the wire to bring in."

And they were home.

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

G
eneral Mahoney and Admiral van Doorman were glowering at a holographic situation map that filled most of Mahoney's command track when Sten reported in.

"What took you so long?" was Mahoney's sole reaction. Oh, well. Sten hadn't expected exactly the chubby calf treatment—Mahoney's highest compliment when he had been running Mercury Corps had been "duty performed adequately."

Then he saw Mahoney hide a grin and felt better.

He scanned the map and felt worse—the Empire was between a rock and a hard place.

Mahoney touched a control, and the overall battlefield vanished, to be replaced with a projection of one segment.

"What's left of your command is holding a section of the line—" Mahoney's pointing finger went through a miniscule half-ruined boulevard. "—just here." For some reason, Sten thought the area looked familiar.

"Since we have a, uh, certain surplus of ramp rats without any ships to service, your people became infantry. I put your senior warrant—a Mr. Sutton, I believe—in charge. He's got your unit, plus I scavenged up another seventy-five clerks, chaplain's assistants, PIO types, and so forth."

Sten kept his poker face. Great, he thought. Not only do my combat people get destroyed, but all my wrenches are dead, too.

"Oddly enough," Mahoney continued, "they've done an exceptional job of holding their positions. For some reason the Tahn have only hit them hard a couple of times."

"The navy knows how to fight," van Doorman put in.

Mahoney would not respond to that, especially in front of a lower-ranking officer.

"But since you've decided to rejoin the living," he continued, "I'm going to pull your detachment back. I want you to take over this position."

Again, the table showed another part of Cavite City: a low, bare hillock, not many kilometers from the navy base, surrounded by destroyed housing complexes.

"We thought this was just a park. But one of my G-2 types found out it's an old fort.

"One hundred fifty years ago or thereabouts, whoever was running the 23rd Fleet decided that the base needed additional security. I guess the Imperial appropriations were fat that year. About ten years later the money must've run out, because they abandoned it and let the grass grow. But we think it's still active."

Mahoney turned to another screen and keyed up a projection. This was a cutaway of the hill itself. There were vertical passages leading to flush-mounted turrets and four horizontal levels below them.

"Typical passive defense," Mahoney commented. He hit another button and got a vertical schematic of the fort. "Four AA chaincannon here… here. The turrets are popup, and the cannon can be swiveled down to fifteen degrees below horizontal. Each of the main turrets has antipersonnel projectile guns. There are twelve missile silos, but you don't want to get near them. These two little mounts have quad projectile mounts. And that's going to be your new domicile. Any questions?"

"Yessir. First, you said you
think
it's defensible?"

"Hope could be better. As far as the records show, the fort was kept as a reserve strongpoint. So it still should have rations, fuel for the gun mounts, and ammunition. I said don't worry about the missiles—they'll be unstable as all hell by now. If there's no ammunition for the guns in the fort, you're drakh out of luck—all the calibers are as obsolete as the
Swampscott
."

Van Doorman
harrumphed
but didn't say anything.

"Anything else?"

"Why didn't you move my people out there before?"

"Weel," Mahoney said, "there's a slight problem. Seems this fort is about three kilometers inside the Tahn lines. I didn't think your OIC would be a real swiftie at snoop and poop.

"Once you get positioned, give me a full status report. You'll coordinate through this command as to when you begin operations. I'm sure you won't have any trouble finding targets of opportunity."

"Thank you, sir." Sten saluted. So whatever remained of his people was going to be used as a fire brigade.

"One thing more, Commander. I'll let you pick a call sign."

Sten thought a minute.

"Strongpoint Sh'aarl't," he decided.

"That's all."

The first order of business, Sten thought, was finding out how badly the Tahn had savaged his crew of innocent technicians.

He expected a disaster.

Sten and Alex flattened as a Tahn rocket screamed in, scattering multiple warheads across what had been a complex of shops. Shock waves hammered at them, and then the ground decided to stabilize for a moment.

Cavite City lay in ruins, ruins sticking up toward the sky like so many hollow, rotten teeth. The streets were almost unusable for ground traffic, blocked by shattered buildings. And in the city there were only two kinds of people—the dead and the moles. The dead had been either left entombed by the blasts that killed them, or hastily cremated when they had fallen. But the city stank of death.

Everything living was underground. Deep trenches had been dug and roofed against overhead blasts. There was no such thing as a civilian anymore—the Imperial settlers and the few Tahn who had decided to stay loyal to the Empire were now indistinguishable from the fighting troops. They served as medics, cooks, and even fought from the same bunkers as the Guardsmen. And they died—the Tahn were very nondiscriminatory about who was and who was not a combatant.

Anyone with no immediate assignment discovered a new fondness for digging. The shelters got deeper and deeper as the siege lengthened.

Sten thought he saw Brijit vanish into an unmarked trench entrance as he and his twelve people worked their way forward, but he wasn't sure. If the trench housed a hospital, it would not have been marked—the eons-old Red Cross provided the Tahn with an excellent aiming point.

The closer they came to the lines, the worse it became. Sten was prepared for his own personal catastrophe.

Instead he got the first pleasant surprise since… hell, since Brijit had gone to bed with him. This war was becoming burdensome, he thought.

Actually, there was a series of pleasant surprises.

Now Sten saw why he had vaguely recognized the area his support people had been assigned to. It was at the slum end of Burns Avenue. Mr. Sutton had established his command post in the still fairly undamaged Rain Forest restaurant. Still better was the fact that two of Sr. Tige's sons had stayed with their business/home. The old man had disappeared on the third day after the landing. The sons preferred not to speculate but concentrated on cooking.

Even though the dome was shattered, the birds and insects were either dead or had fled, and the waterfalls were now stagnant green pools, there was still the food. Tige's sons managed to make even the issue rations more than palatable.

Mr. Sutton chuffed three times in succession when he saw the thirteen people who had been given up for lost. He went emotionally overboard and patted Alex on the shoulder once—the equivalent, for spindars, of hysterical joy.