Then, too, there was the way Fraser had stood up to Commodore Severno. Morganen had not heard Severno's reaction to Fraser's order to divert the fighters from the approach on Trothas V, but he had heard the Commodore's initial order.. .and then seen Fraser disobey it. Such a mingling of guts and arrogance Morganen had not expected. Or was it something more?
The battleship's officers and crew adored the man. Morganen imagined the fighter pilots adored him by now, too. Reassessment of Fraser the officer led to reassessment of Fraser the man, despite the bitterness that still lingered in Morganen's heart. Maybe you were right, Cara, he thought. 'A man to be proud of.' At least he knows how to handle a ship...
Memory hurt, but Morganen found the pain linked more to Cara now than to the man who had married her. Have I been that wrong? I don't understand him.. .Hell! I don't even understand myself!
The Miko Class carrier was burning, her internal fires visible through a hundred viewports and through rents in her hull where fuel and atmosphere still gushed flaming into vacuum. The Gael Warrior rocked slightly as she took a hit somewhere forward, but there seemed to be no heavy or coordinated fire coming from either ship.
The rest of the KessRith squadron appeared to be scattering, as the Gael ships entered the melee. As an oddly curved and blistered KessRith destroyer sagged and fragmented under salvo after salvo from the Gaidheal and the lolaire firing in concert, Morganen felt a sudden surge of emotion.
We're winning! We're actually beating them! He had wondered often if Tallifiero had been a fluke, a mere lucky accident. It was impossible to attribute what was happening here to luck.
"Uh oh," the secondary FCO said, and Morganen heard the alarm in his voice. "Look at that CC ship!"
The magnified image on the main screen showed the KessRith Command Control ship, a 300-meter cigar-shape distorted by the swellings and bulges of the scanners and communications gear packed into her hull. The vessel was pivoting, her shape foreshortening until only the flattened oval of her hull was visible. Scrolling data on the screen spoke of increased power readings, of changing vectors, and of a rapidly decreasing range.
"The bastard's closing!" someone else added.
"Closing, hell," the reserve FCO said. "They're trying to ram! Remember what the skipper said about K-R suicide tactics?"
"What, with a CC cruiser? That'd be crazy!"
"Hey, you think the K-Rs are sane? They don't have the guns to hurt us even if they close to point-blank. All they can do is ram! What else do you think they're doing?"
Someone pointed at the main screen. "Their communications ship is boosting out of orbit. Maybe the K-R bosses are buying them time."
"They're doing that, awright!"
"All hands," the Captain's voice came over the Combat Bridge speakers. It was calm and steady, inspiring confidence. "Stand by for maneuvering. Mr. Fairfax, be ready with the spinal mount. Let's see how they like the taste of one of our big crowbars."
Laughter rippled across the Combat Center. Morganen closed his fists to keep from wiping his palms on his pants and betraying his nervousness. The Gael Warrior had two choices if the enemy ship was attempting to ram. She could try to outmaneuver the smaller ship, either by boosting clear or by avoiding her rush at the last moment, or she could hold her figurative ground and hit the enemy with her heaviest weapons in a difficult bow-on shot.
"God!" the reserve FCO said. "He's going to cram a crowbar right
down their throats!"
"Crowbar" was old and time-honored shipboard slang for the mass driver cannon. The small mass drivers carried aboard fighters or mounted in the battleship's secondary turrets used magnetic fields to accelerate uranium-cored steel slivers to speeds measured in thousands of kilometers per second. The Gael Warrior's spinal mount weapon was a mass driver cannon designed to hurl larger chunks of steel-jacketed uranium or thorium at greater speeds measured in tens of thousands of kilometers per second. The kinetic energy released by a collision between one of those hurtling, heavy-metal projectiles and anything else liberated energy comparable to that released by a small nuclear explosion.
Morganen's eyes flicked from the main viewer to over-the-shoul-der glimpses of various console displays, then back to the viewer. Target-lock brackets closed on the rapidly growing ovoid of the enemy ship.
As the Gael Warrior's main batteries concentrated their fire on the enemy command cruiser, the screen lit up with the staccato pulsing of laser and particle cannon fire. The KessRith ship's shields darkened, their outline solidified by the blazing explosion of light. Craters appeared across the smooth hull, proof that many of the shots were slipping past the enemy's hard-driven shields.
"Main weapon firing," the FCO warned. The Combat Bridge lights dimmed, and there was a lurch solid enough to threaten Morganen's balance. He grasped the back of the FCO's seat to keep from stumbling back into the consoles behind him. The recoil of so much mass accelerated to such a high velocity was considerable, even when damped and masked by the ship's internal compensators. The energy required to accelerate the MDC projectile was such that other systems were momentarily slighted by the computers governing the battleship's power.
Before the bridge lights returned to full brilliance, a new light blossomed across the viewer. "Damn," the FCO muttered. "Intercepted." The enemy cruiser's shields had caught the projectile. The KessRith vessel was still closing.
"Hurt him, though," another man said. "His bow screens are failing...Ha!" More hits etched stark brilliance against the screen, drowning the blackness of space and the crawling, computer-generated images in white light.
Hurt or not, we'd better turn, Morganen thought. The range was down to thirty kilometers, but the Gael Warrior was holding her course, straight toward the enemy. And fast! That K-R's getting
entirely too close...
"Hold on! The skipper's ordered another..."
The FCO was interrupted by another dimming of the bridge lights, another lurch in the deck beneath their feet. The second MDC struck the target in the same instant, and the blaze of light was mingled this time with hurtling chunks of debris.
The Combat Bridge crew erupted in cheers, hoots, whistles, and claps. A ragged, glowing fragment of hull armor the size of a house tumbled out of the flowering storm of raw energy, striking the Gael Warrior's forward shield with a burst of light and showering sparks as it glanced off the ship's bow armor. The Warrior shuddered slightly under the impact transmitted through the hull. The reserve FCO pointed at the screen, and another round of cheering broke out.
"Got the bastard! Got him!"
The KessRith command cruiser was tumbling now, end swinging over end in a monstrous cartwheel, trailing shredded debris in a vast, spiraling arc. The CC cruiser was no longer approaching. Readouts showed her power was out, her drive dead. Her forward momentum had been largely canceled by the impact, and she was drifting now to the side. Each rotation brought her bow into view, shattered, gaping open, spilling wiring, support struts, and torn ducting in a ship-sized disembowelment.
"Her shields are down," the reserve scanner officer reported from his board across the bridge. He had to shout to be heard above the cheering. "Her fusion plant is shut down, weapons systems down, hull structure breaking up...I'm not even picking up life support..."
"There's a radio message, though," the Communications Officer added. "KessRith command vessel Djaqui K'klatdth is requesting... Hell! They're asking to surrender! We've beaten them! We've beaten them!"
The news had already swept throughout the ship. Morganen could hear the cheering in the passageway outside the Combat Center. Around him, ship's officers were yelling like madmen, pounding one another on the back, applauding.
They've won this battle, he thought. Them and Kendric Fraser. The man's a bloody military genius. He frowned, disturbed by the thought. I'm starting to admire him. Does that mean I start liking him, too? He shut the thought away and leaned closer to the screen, watching the death waltz of the shattered KessRith CC cr
uiser. All around him, the cheering continued.
The capital of Trothas was the city port of Lanathippes, a vast, sprawling crescent of modern buildings and tree-lined parks edging a large bay along the northern coast of West Continent. Together with the numerous ranching and tree farming communities that lay between the sea and the Hathespean Mountains, the region was home to over a quarter of the planet's total population.
Or had been. The skimmer ride from Lanathiport to the Aideles Palace had been a slow one. Despite the best efforts of cohorts of TOG legionnaires, the roads into the planetary capital had been clogged by endless lines of refugees, blank-faced men and women and children, many pushing or pulling piled-high possessions on makeshift carts. The Imperial programming of the Gael Warrior's computer encyclopedia had stated that the Hathespean District had a population of 128 million.
It seemed to Kendric that they'd passed at least that many on this one road alone.
The final collapse of the rebellion had come with startling swiftness. The KessRith Flame Marshal had scarcely surrendered his shattered command cruiser when the surviving KessRith vessels throughout the system began breaking contact with the Imperial ships and making their escape into T-space. Within hours, TOG communications monitors had received the first reports of widespread fighting on Trothas's surface. A counterrevolution was underway, it seemed, with pro-TOG factions fighting the rebels in a desperate street-bystreet action that was reducing much of Lanathippes to rubble.
Vice Admiral Graffen had been quick to seize the opportunity. Three legions of TOG infantry, plus contingents of Imperial Navy Marines, had grounded at Lanathippes' spaceport in a daring grounding carried out under intense fire from the surrounding buildings. Other forces landed at various of the planet's ports, command control centers, and defense facilities. Within twelve hours, the fighting was over, except for isolated incidents of sniping and terrorist bombings.
A young Pluiarchos assigned to Kendric at the port was piloting the skimmer. Named Alar Crews, the fair-haired soldier was cheerful in a way that Kendric found somehow disturbing. Perhaps it was the stark contrast between his light banter and incessant smiling and the endless line of refugees.
"So where are they all going?" Kendric asked his pilot and guide. "I'd think they'd be better off in the city."
"Damfino, Nav Fraser. Maybe they're all reb sympathizers and figure they're unwelcome among the loyalists in town."
"Not all of them, surely?" Had the rebellion had that much support
among the planet's population?
Crews answered with a shrug, and then the navy commander was lowering the skimmer to rest on the street as a burly Legionnaire in full combat armor motioned them to ground with one hand. His other hand was bracing a massive blast rifle that rested with its butt on his hip. There were roadblocks and checkpoints throughout the broken city. They had passed four already since leaving the port, but this was the first time they'd been stopped.
A gauntleted hand extended. "IDs, please."
Kendric and Crews handed their ID disks across to the sentry, who passed them on to one of the other soldiers. The Legionnaire slipped first one, then the other, into a reader clipped to his belt, then handed them back.
"You can go," the first guard said, returning the disks. His voice was harsh through the electronic filter of his helmet's mask-like faceplate. "But I'm afraid you'll have to park that thing and walk from here. Orders."
"What's the deal?" Crews asked, leaning with his arm across the skimmer's side. "The street blocked ahead?" That seemed unlikely. The streets here were broad avenues divided by parklike malls planted with spreading trees. It seemed that Trothas's inhabitants had liked open space, even within their cities.
The sentry's massively armored helmet swung back and forth in negation. "No sir. Please leave your vehicle here."
When no further explanation was forthcoming, they left the skimmer parked beside a charred brick wall and proceeded on foot toward the Aideles Palace.
The surface gravity of Trothas was less than three-quarters of a G, low enough to give Kendric's step an unexpected lightness. Here, toward the center of the city, there were no more refugees, though there were numerous Legionnaires and Imperial Marines moving in small groups. More than once, Kendric caught sight of sprawled bodies in civilian clothes or olive drab fatigues.
He stepped with care past a tumble of debris below the gaping and fire-scarred facade of what had once been a restaurant. "Is the whole city deserted, except for our people?" he asked.
Crews lifted the hem of his gold-bordered cloak to avoid the plaster dust that caked the rubble. "All but the prisoners, I suppose." He seemed indifferent. "The Army captured a good many, of course, but most escaped into the hills before the legions secured the approaches to the city."
"But surely, many of them were our allies?" It had been the counterrevolution that had made the infantry landings possible. "The majority of Lanathippes' population must be pro-TOG!"
"Possibly. Who knows? You must remember, Nav Fraser, that in any struggle such as this, the war is of concern to a handful of people on either side. The vast majority are concerned only with staying alive. When our transports grounded, most of them headed for the country."
Kendric let his eyes wander along the wide boulevard they were traversing. A number of trees were still standing, but many buildings had been ravaged by gunfire and laser burns, and signs or wreckage and destruction were everywhere. "Perhaps they'll return, now that the fighting has stopped. This was a beautiful city once."
"Doesn't make much difference, does it?" The naval commander grinned. "They come here and get rounded up by the Legionnaires, or they stay in the mountains and freeze. It gets cold here in winter, even near the equator. Eccentric orbit, y'know. Not like the seasons brought on by axial tilt."
"God, man...what are you saying? If only a few of them were troublemakers..."
The commander shrugged again. "Hell, I don't make policy, Captain, and praise Caesar for that! You live day to day... and be glad the bad stuff doesn't happen to you, right?"
They stopped before a wrought iron gate in a massive cliff of a wall. The gate was standing open, one of its halves suspended by a single, warped and battered hinge. A pair of marine sentries guarded the way, blast rifles at the ready.
"Captain Fraser to see Vice Admiral Graffen," Kendric said, holding out his ID disk. He wished he could see the soldier's eyes, but the dark-visored Legionnaire helmet completely masked the man's face. It took only a moment for the sentry to check their identification and orders.
"You're cleared, sir," the guard told him, returning the disks. "And you're expected. They're waiting for you in the palace." The Marine's voice sounded younger, less set in purpose than had the last guard's, though it, too, was distorted by the man's helmet.
"What's with the walk, Marine?" Kendric asked, jerking a thumb across his shoulder. "Too much noise for the Admiral?"
The sentry's laugh sounded odd through the helmet speaker. "In a way, sir. They've had a couple of suicide attempts against the palace this morning."
"Suicide..."
"Aircars, loaded with explosives." The Marine shrugged under his armor. "So, no skimmers or other vehicles are allowed within 200 meters of the front gate. No aircars or flyers off the ground within five klicks...Vice Admiral Graffen's orders."
They stepped past the ruined gate and entered the palace grounds. Kendric felt numb. People had been desperate enough to try a suicide attack against the palace? He'd heard enough stories about KessRith suicide attacks, but this was something beyond his experience. The KessRith, after all, were alien... and could not be expected to think the same way as Humans. Their Death Code held honor more important than life.
But people? He thought of the endless line of blank faces along the road. Those people?
The thought of suicide bombers attempting to destroy the palace in order to get at the men who now occupied it—the very idea seemed insane, totally outside th
e experience of his own culture. What would drive a civilized people to such extremes? By all accounts, the rebels had been in control of Trothas for less than a month before the arrival of the TOG fleet. Surely that had not been time for the rebels to win many recruits to their cause, nor to instill the people with such a fanatical hatred of TOG. The suicides must have been escaped rebels—leaders of the movement, perhaps, who feared capture or TOG questioning. Perhaps they were insane, in a way, at that. Fear that Imperial truth drugs would force them to reveal the names of accomplices might lead them to choose death before capture.
Nonetheless, Kendric had trouble believing that they would fear the TOG Military psychs that much. Imperial psychs were not monsters. Kendric had seen them work on several occasions while he was a cadet at Grelfhaven. Those training experiences had demonstrated conclusively that modern military interrogation was, after all, a painless process. Surely, exile to a TOG correctional facility on some frontier world was preferable to death!
Or had someone been spreading lies among Trothas's inhabitants about the Terran government? Possible, he thought. We still don't know what the KessRith were doing here. But what Human would take the word of an alien about something like that!
"Have any KessRith been taken?" he asked the commander as they walked. The palace lay spread out before them now, a wide, low structure with sloping pastel walls and neo-Imperial columns. From a distance, it did not appear to have been damaged in the fighting. As they drew nearer, though, Kendric could see scars and pockmarks where bullets or beams had smashed wood or scorched stone.
"Oh, yes, quite a few, sir. Traders, mostly.. .people who happened to be in the city when the fighting broke out." He laughed. "As you can
see here..."
They stepped through a thick stand of ornamental, purple-leafed trees and descended broad stone steps. Beyond the trees was a flagstone concourse that opened onto a wide, tree-lined walk leading toward the palace.
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