Fleet of the Damned

by Chris Bunch

  At that point, she returned to Romney and consulted with Sten and Kilgour.

  It was pretty easy to determine what couldn't be done. Dumping a missile straight down at the dump wasn't very likely to be successful. Even a MIRVed Kali—and nobody was sure that the missile could be so modified—wouldn't get past the satellite, let alone the ring of AA batteries.

  Possibly a specialized Wild Weasel ship might be able to suppress the target acquisition systems long enough for a raid—but Wild Weasels were just one of the many craft the 23rd Fleet was fresh out of.

  "The problem is,” Sh'aarl't said, “there's no way in."

  "Correction, lass,” Alex said. “Tha's noo high-tech way in. An’ Ah'll wager th’ Tahn are thinkit th’ same ae you."

  Sten got Alex's hint. “Maybe,” he said doubtfully. “But first I don't think Doorknob's gonna loan us any of his marines for a landing force. And even if he does, you want to bet they're any more ept than the rest of his people?"

  "Ah was noo thinki't aboot borrowin't misery when there's need for but twa of us."

  "Us,” Sh'aarl't snorted. “Who is us?"

  "Why, me an’ Fearless Commander Sten, ae course."

  "I'll assume you aren't trying another bad joke."

  "Nope. Ah'm bein't dead straight."

  "That's drakh, Mr. Kilgour,” Sh'aarl't said. “You two aren't supercommandos. I don't know what you did before, Kilgour, but our death-defying leader was just a straight old Guards officer. Remember?"

  Yes. Well, that was the cover that both Sten and Alex had on their service record to hide their years in Mantis.

  "Y're noo hesitatin', are y'? Worri't aboot keepin't up wi’ an old clot like me, Commander? Or p'raps y're feelin't soft. Ah hae noticed your wee paunch a’ late."

  To Sh'aarl't, this was rank insubordination. She waited for the thunder. Instead, Sten looked injured.

  "I am not getting fat, Kilgour."

  "Ah, you're right, lad. It's naught but the hangin’ ae y'r coverall."

  "You two are serious!"

  "Maybe it's the only way to do it,” Sten said.

  "You know that Imperial regulations has an article saying that an officer has the duty to relieve his commander in, and I quote, ‘instances of incapacitating injury, failure to perform the ordered mission, or'—my emphasis—'mental injury,’ end quote?"

  "In this fleet ae th’ damn't, lost, crazy, an’ brainburnt, Lieutenant, who'd be th’ judge?"

  "All right. One more try. There's no way that two swabbies can take out an entire arms depot. That only happens in the livies."

  Sten and Alex looked, at each other. A clotting arms depot? Hell, there were several system governments that had found Sudden Change thrust upon them courtesy of a couple of Mantis operatives.

  "I assume that you've got a plot more than just going in cuttin’ and thrusting?” Sten asked.

  "Ah dinnae hae a plot a’ yet,” Alex admitted. “But som'at'll come to mind."

  "Dinnae fash, Mr. Kilgour. A thought has occurred to me."

  "Thinkit, noo. We're in th’ crapper for sure."

  "On your way out, would you ask Foss to haul his butt in here?"

  Sh'aarl't looked at them analytically. She was not stupid. “Very interesting,” she observed. “Either both of you have gone bonkers—or somebody's lying to me."

  "Pardon?"

  "I remember somebody told me once that when somebody gets scooped up by the Imperial sneakies, their service record gets phonied up. Any comments?"

  "Great story, Sh'aarl't. We'll have to talk about it sometime. Well, Mr. Kilgour? Time's a-wastin'."

  * * * *

  The implementation of Sten's plan would be low-tech, but the method of attack was exceedingly technical. Or possibly antitechnical.

  Sten would not have known what a petard was if one had been set off in his air lock—but he, along with Hamlet, hoped that it would indeed be great sport to hoist the Tahn by their own.

  The possible solution lay in the sophistication of current fire-control and antiaircraft systems.

  The days of brave, keen-sighted gunners crouched behind their weaponry and opening up on overhead aircraft were long gone. A missile launch site or laser blast would be remoted to a central, fixed operation fire-control center. This center—Sten theorized it would be located in the valley's center—would have a current sitrep on aerial traffic, fed in by radar, the orbital satellite, and other air- or ground-based sensors.

  If the controlled airspace was intruded on, the fire-control system would evaluate the threat, bring the antiaircraft complex to alert if necessary, allocate targets to the various weapons, and open fire.

  The individual weapons might or might not have the capability of local control in the event of the center's destruction. But the maximum crew the individual guns would have could be a gunner or two, certainly a couple of service techs, and possibly a few guards for ground security.

  Since the weapons would be remotely aimed and fired, positioning them required a bit more work than just exact geographic siting. It was also necessary to program each gun with a no-fire zone, so that regardless of what an attacking aircraft might be doing, it would be impossible for any gun to fire, for instance, across the valley if another weapon was in its line of fire. Also, since the guns overlooked a highly explosive ammo dump, under no circumstances would it be possible for any weapon to fire down into the valley.

  Sten proposed to alter those circumstances.

  Blueboxing a local fire-control system was, Foss said, as easy as going to sleep listening to one of Kilgour's stories. The problem would be hooking it up.

  Fortunately, not all of the Tahn ships shot down on Cavite on Empire Day had been completely destroyed. Sten and Foss grubbed through the wreckage, carefully examining all possible connections the Tahn used. They also examined the abandoned weaponry—Sten assumed it would have come from Tahn sources—on Romney.

  Fortunately, there were no more than a dozen options. Foss also assumed that there would be a certain number of similarities between Imperial weapons controls and those of the Tahn.

  The final device, dubbed by Foss a “fiendish thingie,” consisted of one control box, anodized the same color as the electronic boxes found in the wreckage, dangling cables, and a separate power source. They fit into two backpacks and weighed about twenty-five kilos each.

  Sutton managed to find in some storehouse two sets of the phototropic Mantis-issue camouflage uniforms that semifit Alex and Sten. A combat car was given a radar-absorbing anodizing and fitted with a sensor-reflecting overhead cover. Neither of them would work perfectly, but Sten was working from Alex's original supposition—that the Tahn wouldn't be looking that hard in his direction. He hoped.

  Sh'aarl't insisted that the Claggett make the insertion—she had found the target, and even if she wasn't going to mount the attack, it was still her eggsac. Sten couldn't tell whether her ruffed hair meant that she was angry, convinced that her CO was mad, or worried.

  She brought the Claggett in-atmosphere on the far side of the satellite, then contour flew until the tacship's sensors began picking up the signals from the Tahn depot. Again, she assumed the superiority of the Imperial sensors.

  Sten and Alex unloaded and broke the combat car out of the slung cargo capsule below the Claggett. Their pickup point would be the same, two planetary days away.

  Sh'aarl't waved a mournful mandible, the lock hissed closed, and the Claggett hissed away.

  Sten and Alex boarded the car and, very slowly, floated, barely a meter above the ground, in the general direction of the arms depot. Their course was not plotted as a direct line but zigged toward the valley. If the unknown object that was their combat car was picked up by the Tahn, possibly a route that didn't point directly at the valley could be disarming.

  Both men were lightly armed—if the drakh came down, their only plan would be to throw down a base of fire and then go to ground.

  They had miniwillyguns and four bester
grenades. Sten and Alex both carried kukris—the curved fighting knife they had learned to use and admire while serving with the Gurkkhas—and Sten had his own tiny knife buried in the sheath under the skin of his forearm.

  Sten landed the combat car when they were about ten kilometers away from the valley and waited for darkness. Through the twilight, he could see the mountain ring surrounding the valley. The view through binocs suggested that the valley might be an old volcanic crater. Certainly the mountain walls around it were very steeply sloped. That was all to the good—maybe no one would expect visitors from that direction.

  At full dark, Sten crept the car forward, grounding it finally at the base of the walls. They pulled on hoods fitted with light-enhancing goggles, shouldered their packs, and started up.

  The climb was a hard scramble, but they didn't need to rope up. The biggest problem was the loose shale underfoot. A slip not only would send them broadsliding back down but probably would set off alarm devices. Their pre-plotted course led them up toward one of the laser blasts near the canyon mouth.

  It seemed as if Kilgour's tactical thinking was correct—no one would be looking for some stupid foot soldiers to try an insertion.

  The first alarm was wholly primitive—a simple beam break set about a meter above the ground.

  Whatever smaller creatures inhabited the world could pass under the beam and not disturb any guard's somnolence.

  Sten and Alex became smaller creatures and did the same.

  The second line of defense might have taken a bit longer to circumvent, consisting of a series of small hemispherical sensors intended, most likely, to pick up an intruder of a certain physical type—it could be preset to go off when it picked up something moving of a certain size, a certain body temperature, or even by light ground disturbances set off by body weight. Kilgour was ready to subvert that sensor with a standard-issue Mantis bluebox, the so-called Invisible Thug transmitter. That proved to be unnecessary—the system wasn't even turned on. But just to make sure it wouldn't be turned on after they passed, Sten slid his knife out of his arm, slit the sensor's metalloid housing open, and stirred its electronic guts vigorously.

  So far, the mission was very standard—a recruit halfway through basic Guard training could have infiltrated the site.

  Next should have been a contact alarm set of wires. It was, and was carefully stepped through by the two men.

  They shut the power down on their see-in-the-dark hoods, lay on their stomachs inside that wire, and started looking for the sentry. Ahead of them was the cliff rim, and bulking above it the laser gun, and beside it two mobile vans that would house the crew.

  Sten scanned the area with his binocs set for light amplification, passive mode. If someone else was using a scope, the binocs would pick it up first. Negative. He switched to active mode.

  He found the guard. He was sitting on the steps of one of the vans, his projectile gun leaning against the van walls. His attention seemed to be focused on the ground between his boots.

  Sten could imagine Alex mentally purring “No puh-roblem.” They turned their hoods back on and slid forward the laser.

  Kilgour found the fire-control center input leads to the laser and, after making sure they weren't alarm-rigged, disconnected them. They sorted through the octopus of leads on their own bluebox. Luck was in session—one of Foss's leads fit perfectly.

  The new lead was fed down the gun and under its base plate. Bluebox and backup power sources were then bonded to the base plate. Alex loosened the lock on the bluebox's one external readout, and it glowed dimly. If everyone was right, they were go, and the petard was hissing.

  Sten and Alex became part of the night again and slithered downslope to the combat car. Sten knew this would not work—nothing that sneaky ever performed vaguely up to expectations.

  The next stage, after and if they were picked up by the Claggett, might be interesting.

  The Clagget's command deck was armpit to elbow, since both Sten and Alex had insisted on witnessing the results, if any, of their great ploy.

  Sh'aarl't had brought her tacship in-atmosphere at a distance carefully calculated to be just within the range of the Tahn satellite's sensors, then dived for the ground.

  That, they hoped, would put the antiaircraft systems on full alert.

  Then Sh'aarl't launched two remote pilot vehicles that had been modified to give sensor returns matching the tacship. Sh'aarl't and her weapons officer each wore control helmets—Sh'aarl't's looked more like a figure-eight safety mask that sat just above her eyes—and sent the RPVs streaking for the valley.

  Four kilometers distance ... Sh'aarl't murmured, “They have us” ... three kilometers ... and the fire-control system ordered all tracking weapons to open fire.

  One of those tracking weapons, of course, was the laser that Sten and Alex had boogered. It swung, not away from the valley but toward its center. Its bell depressed, unnoticed, toward the valley's floor. The RPVs were two kilometers away from the valley when the cliff walls exploded into flame and violet light, as did a seventy-five-meter-high by 200-kilometer-square stack of ship-to-ship missile containers. The fireball rolled across the flatland, and two other dumps went up.

  The fire-control system wasn't concerned with what was happening inside the valley. It continued firing. One RPV was hit by two laser blasts and three missiles. It vanished, and Sh'aarl't, back in the Claggett, swore and pulled her control helmet off.

  An analysis computer—part of the fire-control system's backup—realized that one laser gun was dysfunctional and cut it out of circuit. That triggered the bluebox's own power source and activated a second program. On quickfire, the laser pulsed light beams back and forth across the valley.

  Alarms in the gun's mobile vans clanged up and down. The techs darted out and saw that their gun was systematically destroying what it had been intended to protect.

  They ran toward the override controls just as the second RPV, almost inside the valley's mouth, veered in flames into a cliff wall, and the entire arms depot blew.

  Sh'aarl't had the Claggett screaming for space, one set of eyes scanning screens for any Tahn interceptions but most of her attention focused on the screen that showed a boil of flame and smoke on the horizon, blasting almost to the fringes of the atmosphere.

  Sten and Alex looked at each other. “It worked,” Sten said in some surprise.

  "Aye. When dinnae a ploy ae mine ever misfire?"

  "Of yours?"

  "Ah, leave us no be't choosy. A plan't ours."

  "Well,” Sten said resignedly. “I guess I should be glad he's giving me some of the credit."

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  FLEET ADMIRAL XAVIER Rijn van Doorman's battle plan was ready to implement. He'd dubbed it “Operation Riposte.” Sten might have named it “Lastgasp,” but he guessed it wasn't apropos to disillusion one's heroes before they trundled into the valley of death.

  Not that van Doorman had been particularly optimistic when the briefing began.

  There had been eight beings in the room: van Doorman; Sten's instant enemy, Commander Rey Halldor; four captains; two lieutenants; and Sten. The captains were destroyer skippers; the two lieutenants helmed minesweepers.

  Van Doorman had introduced everyone, then said that his initial appreciation was not to go beyond the briefing room under any circumstances. Probably quite correctly, since what he said was completely depressing. Most accurate, but still depressing.

  The Tahn, he had begun, must be only days away from mounting a second invasion attempt on Cavite. If such an assault was made, van Doorman admitted frankly that the 23rd Fleet would be unable to stop it.

  But it was intolerable to just sit and wait to be hit.

  Van Doorman's strategy was not unlike Sten's operations—he wanted to hit the Tahn now and get them off guard. It was possible that what was left of the 23rd Fleet might be able to keep the Tahn off guard until the Empire could support Cavit
e, and then drive the Tahn off the Fringe Worlds.

  From the intelligence operations Sten had seen, the Empire might be a long time in doing that.

  But at least van Doorman had a plan, Sten had to admit. It was not, surprisingly, all that bad—at least in the briefing.

  "I propose,” van Doorman began, “to detach four of my destroyers to be the main striking element of what I have named Task Force Halldor.” He nodded at the commander beside him. “Commander Halldor will be in direct charge of the combat maneuvering. Commander Sten and his tactical division have determined that the Tahn are moving planetary assault forces to the following systems."

  A wallscreen lit up, showing the immediate space around Cavite. Four systems gleamed. “The Tahn are taking no chances—they're moving their troop and assault ships in system, using the system ecliptics for screens, and moving close to the planets themselves, thereby utilizing them for cover. While they are providing heavy escort for these convoys, Commander Sten reports escort elements are very light between the convoys and the planets themselves. Gentle-beings, that gave me the plan."

  The plan was for the task force to lurk just out-atmosphere of one of the planets that lay on the Tahn convoy route. There should be enough screen clutter to prevent the task force from being detected by the oncoming Tahn escorts.

  "This will be,” van Doorman went on, “the attack configuration to be used."

  Another screen lit.

  The two minesweepers would be in front of the destroyers, which would be spaced out in finger-four formation. This, van Doorman admitted, was not the ideal attack configuration. But with only six destroyers still intact, and having committed four of them to the task force, he was very unwilling to lose any of them to a Tahn minefield.

  Sten's tacships would provide flank security for the destroyers. Van Doorman hoped that the task force could get inside the escort screen before they were discovered.