by Chris Bunch
The private was slightly proud of himself for having survived this much of the war. He had an eye for good cover, excellent fear reactions, and an unwillingness to volunteer—mostly. Heebner had made a brilliant discovery during training. Volunteer duties were mostly in two categories—the extremely hazardous and the extremely dirty. Dirty, however, frequently meant safe.
Heebner specialized in getting on those kind of details—digging holes for any purpose, bringing rations up through the muck, unloading gravsleds, and so forth, since he had learned that they generally weren't done under fire. And so he had survived.
His willingness to accept the drakh details even got him promoted one notch. Heebner now had to be wary—if he continued doing well, they might make him a noncommissioned officer. Which meant, to Heebner, a bigger target. He was contemplating whether he should commit some minor offense—enough to get him reduced in rank but not enough to earn a beating from his sergeant.
That morning the company his squad was part of had been ordered into the attack against the cursed Imperial fort. The Tahn infantry had nicknamed it AshHome: attacking the fort was a virtual certainty that one's cremated remains would be sent out on the next ship—assuming that one's remains were recovered. Many Tahn bodies lay unrescued in the mire around the fort, buried and then resurrected by exploding rounds.
Superior Private Heebner was lagging just behind the line of advancing troops when Tapia opened fire on the two assault tracks supporting his company. He dived for cover, heard shouts from his sergeant to keep moving, picked himself up—and a round from the monitor slammed in. Heebner went down again, stunned. He was still out when his squad advanced—straight into a burst from Alex's antipersonnel quad mounts.
Heebner staggered back to consciousness and his feet. Behind him the tracks billowed greasy smoke. There was no sign of his squad or company. Most of them were dead. Heebner's mind told him that there was no point continuing the attack if everyone else had given up. He should return to his own lines.
He waded through the mire, concentrating on not falling down again. Cannon rounds splattered nearby, and Heebner ate dirt.
Not dirt, he corrected himself. He was lying against metal. But no one was shooting at him. And there were no cascades of mud falling on him from exploding shells.
Heebner took stock—and moaned in horror. Somehow he had gotten turned around. Instead of finding his way back to his own lines, the Tahn private was lying on the low mound that was the Imperial fort. Next to him was the shiny, if dented, barrel of a gun turret. Heebner considered prayer. But there were no bullets slashing at him. He was lying next to the unmanned antipersonnel turret, the one that the monitor's seventh round had blown open.
Very well. He could just wait here until night and then escape. And then he remembered that great spaceship somewhere up there. One of those shells would spread him like oil over the fort's carapace. Another realization—he could see a gap between the four muzzles sticking out of the turret and the turret itself. He crawled toward it. The blast had bent back the guns’ bullet shield.
Sheer panic impelled Heebner to take the next step. He slid through and thunked down onto concrete. As he landed, his brain began working again. You just entered this fort. Where there are Imperials who probably have fangs the size of pruning hooks?
And then another round from the monitor slammed in, and Heebner was out for close to an hour.
He came fuzzily awake, surprised that he was still alive and not resident in one of the Empire's cooking pots. Heebner, like most of the uneducated Tahn soldiers, believed that the Imperial troops ceremonially ate their enemies.
But he was alive. Uninjured.
And thirsty. He drank from his canteen.
He was hungry, too. His company had attacked carrying only ammunition.
Heebner looked around the inside of the turret. There were lockers against the turret. He explored them. Gas suits ... radiation suits ... and emergency rations. Heebner fumbled a pak open and sampled. He smiled. Meat. It was something that a Tahn of his class would be permitted only once or twice a year. The next pak was also meat. It joined its brother in his stomach. The third was beans. Heebner sniffed at them, then set the pak aside. Other cans went into his combat pack.
What now?
More of his brain, possibly stimulated by the beef, woke up. They told us this fort was full of soldiers. Why, then, is this position not manned? Was it hit?
There were no signs of damage to the walls.
Heebner found that he had two choices—either he could remain where he was, or he could flee. If he stayed in the turret, eventually that monstrous cannon would kill him.
If he fled back toward the Tahn lines, there would be questions. Why was he the only survivor of his squad? Had he hid? Had he avoided the attack? The penalties for cowardice under fire were most barbaric.
Wait. If he came back with some valuable information, they might not punish him. Such as?
Of course. Fellow soldiers could use this gap in the turret to take the fort! But wait. If all you return with is a way into the fort, won't your officers expect you to guide the assault formation?
Heebner grimaced. That could be an excellent way to become dead. He brightened. If he returned with some very interesting piece of information, they would send him up to higher headquarters with it, while other unfortunates made the attack.
What could he bring back?
The hatchway leading down into the bowels of the fort was nearby. Heebner undogged it and climbed downward.
The ladder ended in a large room with bunks. Heebner looked wistfully at one of them. Even though it smelled, it was still better than anything he had slept on since he had landed on Cavite.
A large room with bunks ... a large, deserted room? How many Imperials are in this fort, he wondered? He found the courage to investigate.
Heebner went out of the ready room into a central passageway. Seconds later, another shell from the monitor earthquaked down. It must have missed by a considerable distance. Heebner heard the clatter of feet and peered out. A group of Imperials ran out of another ready room and climbed up into one of the main turrets. Heebner counted. Only ten? How many people were there, anyway?
Was it possible that there were only a handful of Imperials holding back the Tahn? So it would appear.
That was enough for Heebner. This would be valuable information. Enough to keep him from being sent forward again. The intelligence might be valuable enough, he hoped, for him to report to company headquarters instead of to his platoon leader. If his company commander still lived. This could be an excellent way to stay out of the assault.
Superior Private Heebner made his way out of the fort, made the nightmare journey back to his own lines, and reported.
And found himself standing in front of Lady Atago, more terrified than he had been inside the fort. He was not required to make the final assault on Strongpoint Sh'aarl't. Instead, he was promoted to fire team leader, given a medal, and reassigned to the rear.
Heebner was safe. That was enough. It did not matter to him that he wasn't mentioned in the livies trumpeting the reduction of the Imperial fort.
That honor went to Tahn Assault Captain Santol, a far more heroic-looking Tahn. And if it was an honor, he earned it.
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CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
STEN WONDERED WHAT would come next when the monitors’ shellfire stopped. He wondered if they would run out of projectiles but rather dully hoped that both ships had chamber explosions.
Worry about what comes next when it comes next, he said, and ordered dinner—breakfast? lunch?—up for his people. He rotated a third of the crews down to the mess hall to eat. After everyone was fed, he planned to go to fifty percent alert and let at least some of his sailors sleep.
It didn't work that way.
Contreras stepped off the ladder from the command level to the ready room and burped. A full belly led her to consider other luxuries. Sleep
... a bath ... a clean uniform ... hell, she told herself, why not wish for everything. Like a discharge, spending her accumulated pay on a tourist world where the most primitive machine was a bicycle, and falling in love with a handsome officer. Officer? She caught herself. Too long in the service, woman. Clot the military. A rich civilian.
A smile crept across her lips just as the Tahn projectile blew most of her chest away.
The Tahn assault teams had managed to approach the fort without being seen. Since the fort's computer still showed the jammed antipersonnel carrier as being housed, the warning sensors showed no movement in that sector. Actually the beams were being returned—bouncing—off the turret, returning to the transmitter and being automatically disregarded as part of ground clutter.
Lady Atago's analysis from Private Heebner's report was very correct, giving about an eighty-five percent chance that the area beyond that jammed turret would be in a dead zone.
Captain Santol's navigation had been exact—the assault elements closed in on the fort along that sector, no more than two abreast. Between the shifts for eating and the sailors’ exhaustion, the Tahn weren't noticed on any of the visual screens still active.
Once inside the turret, Captain Santol put two trusted sergeants in front, armed with riot weapons.
Behind them were grenadiers and one tripod-mounted heavy projectile weapon, and then Captain Santol and his senior sergeant behind them.
Contreras wasn't the first to die—two sailors had been jumped from the rear and garroted. But she was the first to be shot.
The explosion clanged down the corridors of the fort.
Sten bolted up, and his plate spattered beans and beef across the deck. Accidental discharge ... like hell, he realized, as he saw Tahn soldiers scuttling forward on one of the command center's internal screens.
He slammed the alarm and opened a mike.
"All personnel.” His voice was quite calm. “There are Tahn troops inside the fort. All personnel, secure entry to your areas. Alex?"
"Sir?” Even on the com there was a bit of a brogue.
"Can you see how these clots got in?"
There was a pause. “Tha's naught on the screens, sir. Ah'll bet tha'll hae come in frae’ a turret."
That left two possibilities: Either of the two inoperable turrets—one, the second antipersonnel quad projectile turret; two, the second Turret B—could be breached. But the computer showed both secure.
"Turret C,” Sten ordered. “Local control. Target—Tahn infantry approaching the fort. Fire at will."
He switched to another channel.
"Turrets A and D. Send five troops down to secure your ready rooms. There are no friendlies moving.
Kilgour. If you've got anybody loose, get them to the command center."
"On th’ way. Wait."
Alex should have stayed at the antipersonnel turret. But it took only one person to fire the quad projectile weapon. He left that one and, with six others, went looking for blood.
Sixteen sailors manning Turret A went out of their turret, headed toward the Tahn. The two forces met in a corridor. The battle was very quick—and very lethal. The AM2 rounds from the willyguns mostly missed. But hitting the concrete walls of the corridor, they exploded, sending concrete shrapnel shotgunning into the Tahn.
Captain Santol lost two squads before he could get a crew-served weapon firing. And then the sixteen sailors went down in a swelter of gore as projectiles whined and ricocheted.
Santol waved a squad forward, over the bodies and up into the turret. The rest of the sailors assigned to Turret A died there.
A second maneuver element of the Tahn tore into the element from Turret D. The sailors fought bravely—but weren't a match for the experienced Tahn soldiers.
Sten swore as he watched on a screen.
The Tahn were between his command center and the still-fighting Turret C. Sten had Foss and three computer clerks for an assault element. This would be stupidity, not nobility. But again—he had no options.
The Tahn assault company was spread out through the fort's corridors. They were good, Sten had to admit. Their tactic was to spray fire around a corner, send one man diving across the corridor for security, put two men in place as guards, and move on. And still another Tahn company was filing in through the damaged personnel turret.
Then the counterattack hit.
This was not Kilgour's pathetic strike force of seven, which was still moving down the long tube that led to the fort's center. This attack came from underneath—from the storage spaces.
There were five humans, including the two Tahn brothers. They were led by the spindar, Mr. Willie Sutton. They were pushing in front of them a small gravpallet. On it there were fifteen or so tall metal cylinders. Emergency oxygen tanks.
The counterattack came out of an unnoticed hatchway, halfway down a corridor. At the far end was Captain Santol and his command group.
Sutton was bellowing like a berserk siren as he rumbled forward.
"Shoot them! Shoot them down,” Santol shouted, and projectiles crashed down the corridor.
The six Imperial sailors were cut down in the blast. The gravpallet drifted on another ten meters before it slowed to a stop.
Santol ran toward the bodies, a reaction team behind him. There would be more Imperials coming out of that hatch.
He slid around the gravsled ... and Sutton reared up in front of him. Scales were ripped away, and ichor oozed from his wounds and mouth. The spindar loomed to his full height over the Tahn officer.
Santol's pistol was coming up, but late, too late, as claws sprang out of Sutton's forearm and bludgeoned forward, ripping away most of the Tahn's face. Santol screamed and went down.
His soldiers were firing. Sutton staggered back, against the wall, then forward again. From somewhere, he pulled a miniwillygun, brought it up, and fired—not at the Tahn but behind them, at the gravpallet. The round tore a cylinder open. Oxygen hissed, and then a ricocheting round sparked.
The corridor exploded, catching the Tahn in a miniature firestorm created by the exploding oxygen. Half of Santol's company died along with their commander. The disoriented survivors fell back toward the entrance.
Kilgour was waiting at a cross-tube. Again, the Tahn were not expecting an ambush. They fell back still farther.
It was the best chance Sten would have.
He found the nearest wall com. “All stations. All stations. This is Sten. Evac to entry. I say again. Evac to entry."
He and his four people linked up with Alex's crew and the one troop that had been left in the AP turret, and set up a rear guard.
It was not necessary. The CO of the second Tahn assault company had ordered most of the soldiers out of the fort. They would regroup and counterattack.
By the time they did, Tapia's entire crew had made it to the fort's exit.
They went back down the underground passage leading to the flattened maintenance shed, splashing through the deep muck. The shed was gone, but the hatch still operated.
Sten stood by it, taking a head count as his surviving sailors wearily climbed out. There were thirty-two left.
He formed them up and started across the flattened wastes toward the Imperial perimeter. Half a kilometer away, Sten took a small transmitter from his belt, snapped off the two safety locks, and pressed a switch.
Three minutes later, det charges would go, and Strong-point Sh'aarl't—or Sutton, or Tige, or whoever—was going to be a large crater in the ground.
The Tahn could have the privilege of naming it.
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CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
TWO HOURS BEFORE dawn, Tanz Sullamora's shielded gravsled was cleared to land in the ruins of Arundel Castle.
There were only two man-made objects above ground. One was a transportable shielded landing dome, very common on radioactive mining planets but most incongruous in the heart of the Empire. The second was a very tall flagpole. At its peak hung two flags—the
gleaming standard of the Empire and, below it, the Emperor's house banner, gold with the letters “AM2” superimposed over the negative element's atomic structure.
All Imperial broadcasts showed the ruins and the flag as their opening and closing shots. The symbol may have been obvious—but it signified. The Emperor, like the Empire itself, may have been hard-hit, but he was still standing fast and fighting.
Rad-suited guardsmen led Sullamora, also in antiradiation gear, from his ship through decon showers and into one of the drop shafts leading down toward the Imperial command center below the palace ruins.
At the shaft base, Sullamora clambered out of his suit, was decontaminated once more, and was ushered into the center. Two Gurkkhas escorted the merchant prince down long paneled corridors that, even at this hour, were filled with scurrying officers and techs. Sullamora caught tantalizing glimpses, through portals that slid open and shut, of prog boards, huge computer screens, and war rooms.
He did not know that his route led through what the Emperor called a dog and pony show. The work was real, and the staff beings were busy—but everything he saw was nonvital standard procedures such as recruiting, training status, finance, and so forth.
The Emperor's own suite had also been carefully decorated to leave visitors with certain impressions.
There were many anterooms, capable of holding any delegation or delegate isolated until the Emperor was ready to meet. The walls were gray, and the furniture was two shades above Spartan. Wallscreens showed mysterious, unexplained maps and projections that would be replaced periodically with equally unknown charts and graphs. The Emperor's quirky sense of humor had decided that some of them were battle plans from wars fought thousands of years previously. Thus far, no one had found him out.
The Emperor's own quarters were a large bedroom, a kitchen that resembled a warship's mess area, a conference room, a monstrous computer center/briefing room, and a personal library. These were also fairly simply furnished, not so much to continue the command center image but because the Emperor had little real interest in the tide of pomp and thrice-gorgeous ceremony.
