by Chris Bunch
Garvin finished, wished he could find something inspiring to send them into battle with, then turned the detachment over to Njangu, who told them to report to their ships and dismissed them.
Jaansma noticed, as the troops moved away, under the harsh midnight glare of the dock’s floodlights, Darod Montagna. She saw his gaze, and smiled. Then she was gone.
He got into his lifter, told the pilot to take him to his own ship. Garvin wanted to know what destroyer she was crewing on, knew better than to ask. He wished he’d not seen her, for he didn’t need to be thinking of those six ships as anything other than bait.
• • •
“You be careful now,” Froude told Ho Kang.
She grinned. “I’m always careful, Danfin. Generally it’s the other fellow who isn’t.”
“I just want to make sure you come back,” he said.
“Oh, I’ll be back,” Kang promised, then told him, rather explicitly, what she wanted to do with him on her return.
He blew a kiss, cut the connection, turned and saw Ann Heiser looking at him slyly.
“Private coms on Force time, Doctor?”
Froude colored, then realized Heiser was grinning at him.
The com buzzed, and the technician on the board said, “Dr. Heiser … it’s Haut Hedley, from Force Headquarters. He wants to say good-bye.”
It was Heiser’s turn to flush. Froude wasn’t too much of a gentleman not to deliberately arch his eyebrows before going back to his sketch panel.
Kura/Off Kura Four
Drones were sent to just out-atmosphere, and Kuran planetary patrols reported two of them.
An E-day later, seven ships that might’ve been freighters, but could also have been armed Larissan fleet auxiliaries, lifted and formed a convoy off the planet. Five destroyers were escorting them.
The convoy was clumsily shadowed by two small Cumbrian patrol ships to the standard nav point, and went into hyperspace.
The two patrol ships jumped after it using full power, came out of N-space at the nav point they hoped the slower convoy would use.
A few seconds later, the convoy appeared in the same space, as if everything was quite normal, and the shadowers hadn’t been detected.
The six waiting Cumbrian destroyers moved in for the attack. The Larissans took a standard defense formation. Intent on the attackers, the Larissans paid little mind to the distant Kane control ship, whose presence they’d grown used to.
In its battle room, Hedley and Garvin watched Ho Kang’s chair as it boomed back and forth in the compartment, Ho calmly giving orders into a headset.
Hedley caught Garvin’s expression, grinned.
“Ain’t it a bitch when you’ve got to sit there and watch other people get their balls in the flipping wringer on your orders?”
“Damned uncomfortable, sir.”
“Get used to it,” Hedley advised. “I had to, the farther away I got from being up to my flipping belly button in the mud and blood.”
Ho’s chair dropped down over one technician, who was reading a screen. Suddenly her voice came through speakers next to the two officers.
“Your trap’s sprung. Two of the Naarohns, plus escorts, have entered this space.”
Garvin looked at the big screen, reading it well enough to see the two blips that suddenly simmed into tiny holograms of the Larissan battle cruisers.
Kang was giving more orders, and other, tinier, holograms appeared not far away from the two cruisers and their four escorts.
“Vann First Elements, this is Vann Control,” Ho said. “The biggies have shown up … you haven’t seen them … let ‘em close on you … all right. You’ve spotted them. Now general panic as practiced.”
The six destroyers, almost ready to engage the Larissan convoy escorts, broke into new courses. Two fired countermissiles behind them as they fled.
“All right,” Kang said. “You’re not jumping back into hyperspace yet … you think you’ve got speed on those Larissans … right … there’s a chance you’ll be able to come back on the convoy …”
She switched channels.
“This is Vann Control. You weren’t spotted. Go after them on independent control.”
Half a light-second away, in empty space, seven aksai lay doggo. They’d been released by mother velv, who went back to N-space in seconds.
“I want him, I want him, I want him,” Ben Dill chanted as his fingers danced across sensors.
His canopy was full of ships — the convoy to his left, their escorts just right of them, down and in the front the “fleeing” Cumbrian destroyers, far to his right and up was the Kane. Dead “ahead” were the two cruisers and their escorts.
“Proctologically speaking,” Ben said, “Dr. Dill is delivering a surprise. Launch one … launch two … launch three.”
More missiles spat from underwing mounts of the other fighter ships at the cruisers.
On the Kane, Kang keyed a sensor.
“Vann First Elements, this is Vann Control … on the count of five, jump for hyperspace … four … three … cancel that, jump now!”
She’d seen the flash from one of the cruiser’s escorts, realized the aksai or their missiles had been detected and the Larissan was firing.
Countermissiles were hastily launched by the Larissans, to mixed effect.
One missile, later to be hotly argued as to whose, closed on the rearmost cruiser, and exploded. Another blew up right behind it, and oxygen-fed flames from the cruiser jetted into space for an instant, were cut off. A secondary explosion shook the cruiser, and it canted forward, pinwheeling in its trajectory.
A missile almost got one of the aksai, blew up nearby.
Dill’s canopy showed a bull’s-eye. He was targeted by somebody’s Target-Acquisition devices.
“Nah, nah, you’ve not got me,” he said, fingers touching the ECM panel.
The missile from the cruiser, almost as big as Dill’s attack ship, swung in confusion, then, in obedience to basic programming, exploded harmlessly.
“All Vann Elements,” Ho ordered. “Break contact and withdraw.”
“Aw,” Dill muttered. “Just one more shot and that cruiser’s Ben Dill Sandwich Spread, dammit!” But he obeyed.
Alikhan ripple-launched his remaining missiles as he made rapid course changes toward the velv, which had come back from hyperspace for the pickup. He thought he saw one explode seconds later, which meant a hit on something. He considered reporting it, then told himself he was thinking entirely too much like a human. Glory should be self-evident, not advertised.
The Larissan destroyers started after the aksai, but were recalled to guard the crippled cruiser and its mate.
“Now, with any flipping luck,” Hedley said, “your little mousetrap should give Redruth even more reason to pause.”
Cumbre/D-Cumbre
“Very good,” Angara told the assembled officers. “Very subtle. Especially you, Jaansma. Your performance was in the best traditions of the Force.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“I think you’ll be a little less grateful when you realize the next thing to come is a circus.”
Garvin brightened visibly, then realized what Angara meant.
“Haut Hedley,” Angara went on. “Here’s the list of our performing bears, and the medals they’ll be getting.
“I think this is a good occasion to announce the cadre for the new Brigade. Initially, we’ll name you as CO of Second Brigade. Which means you’ve just been promoted to Caud. Mil Fitzgerald will take over this Brigade with the same rank. There’ll be other changes, of course.
“Just to keep matters from getting confused, I’m giving myself the brevet rank of Dant. This will be confirmed or rejected when we return to Confederation Command by higher command.
“That’s all.”
• • •
It was a circus indeed. A media circus that swarmed over Garvin as impossibly good-looking, Jon Hedley as the very picture of a young Force Brigade commander, if
a bit too thin and intense, Ho Kang as a scholar-warrior, the aksai pilots as daredevils of the skies, Alikhan as proof the Musth-Human alliance was very firm, and Ben Dill as, well, Ben Dill.
Medals cascaded in all directions, and after it was all over, everyone was given leave.
• • •
“Wold you let me turn over, you lummox?” Jasith complained. “There you are on the holo again. I want to see.”
Garvin obeyed, rolling over on his back.
Jasith stared at the projection. “Let me turn the sound up … oh, this is a clip I haven’t seen. You know, I’ll bet Loy is just grinding his teeth into powder, having to see you all over Matin.
“Garvin, aren’t you interested?”
“I know what I look like,” he said. “But as far as interested …”
“Oh. Don’t bite me there. Mmmh. That feels good. When you bite my neck, you send chills all the way down my toes. Garvin! Don’t you ever want to do anything else?” She stopped talking, moaned sharply. “Don’t stop! Don’t ever stop!”
Garvin did wonder about himself. All he did want was to eat, sleep, and be alone with Jasith, preferably naked.
It was a momentary, necessary curtain between him and the ugliness of war.
• • •
Two months passed.
Raiders went out against Kura, bold enough to strike the fringes of Larix. Now their prime targets weren’t the escorts, but the merchant ships they were escorting.
The cruisers only made careful, token appearances, when they were sure no ambushes had been laid.
The deployment of the robot trackers made it easier to make contact with the convoys, but the Larissan escort commanders had gotten more skilled, so casualties on both sides mounted.
The Force had destroyed about 20 percent more Larissan ships, about the same number of Larissan soldiers. But given the population of Larix and Kura, and the data Njangu had learned about Larissan production rates, these cold numbers said the war was slowly but inexorably being lost.
• • •
The first reports tumbled in from the distant alert stations, a report from M-Cumbre, then its signal went dead. Shortly thereafter, automatic stations on the planet broke off, then communication was lost with K-Cumbre.
The Larissans were attacking, systematically taking out any manned or unmanned tracking stations they could find, then sending missiles after them.
Half an E-day later, a research ship off the ice giant I-Cumbre reported ships, many Larissan, then it also went silent.
Patrol ships from the bases on G-Cumbre went out. A scattering survived to report an entire Larissan fleet was in the Cumbre System. Four of the gigantic Naarohns, forty or more destroyers, and a swarm of lighter support ships, patrol craft and auxiliaries.
The Force responded instantly. Kellys, velv, aksai, even a few wynt, the barely space-capable Musth armed transports, and Zhukovs came up from C-, D-, E-Cumbre, moons, and asteroid-monitoring stations. All six of the Kane-class controllers lifted with the motley formations.
Dant Angara was in the battle room of the command ship, the al Maouna. Ho sat in her chair, depressed to eye level with Angara.
“Damned if I can see why I didn’t find the time to learn how to run a battle from here,” Angara growled to Hedley.
“There’ll be no problem,” Kang said. “You tell me who you want and where you want them. We’ve set a small screen here that’ll give you just the inner planets, stationary to keep things simple, our ships in white, the Larissans in red. Projected orbits are those little green arrows.”
“All right,” Angara said. “Then let’s run these shit-heels back to where they came from.”
The Larissans closed on D-Cumbre, cutting inside its orbit, almost to C-Cumbre’s, then came back on the capital world.
They were in two inverted V’s, their support ships to the rear of the formation. Three Naarohns were in the lead V, the other with the second wing. That element had ten more destroyers.
“We go for the biggies,” Angara said, and the orders were commed.
Space in-sun from D-Cumbre became a swirling mass of fighting ships, trying for the cruisers. But the destroyer screen was too strong to break through. The cruisers fought from long-distance, their missiles longer-ranged and heavier.
A velv got close, hit one cruiser, not hard enough to take it out of battle, then was destroyed. The first V opened, trying to envelop the Cumbrian ships.
Angara ordered a pullback and regroup, flanked one wing of the V, and began shattering it in detail.
Ships fought, killed, and died, then the emergency com came — the rear V had broken away from the main formation, was not being held in reserve, but was going for D-Cumbre.
Angara’s reserves were out of position, but he ordered them in, better late than not at all, broke off his attack, and went after the second V, swearing at himself helplessly, knowing the Larissans would get in-atmosphere with their damned nukes and there’d be hell to pay.
But a formation of seven Kellys came from behind Bodwin, D-Cumbre’s moon, where they shouldn’t have been. They smashed into the Larissans, earning the formation commander a medal instead of a court-martial. The single cruiser took three missiles in as many seconds. Its bow blew off, and the cruiser spun off toward Cumbre’s sun.
Some of the Larissans broke to fight the Kellys as other Cumbrians hit the V. But four held course, and there was nothing between them and D-Cumbre.
People in D-Cumbre’s cities puzzled at the unfamiliar howl of sirens, realized what they meant, and scurried for the hastily designated shelters, mostly basements or even first stories of large buildings.
The Larissans crashed in-atmosphere, sonic booms whiplashing the sea and islands, and in finger-four formation came in on Dharma Island from the south. Bays opened just short of the city, and bombs dropped, black rows walking down the sky, sending fingers of fire across Mount Najim, over the Highlands, and rich Rentiers died as their mansions shattered. The last of the bombs dropped just on Leggett City’s waterfront, exploding glass in the Shelburne Hotel.
Redruth had changed his mind, realized radioactive real estate wasn’t worth conquering, and the bombs held conventional explosives.
The destroyers rolled, came back for another run, and aksai swarmed them, missiles filling the sky with smoke, fire. Two ships blew up, the third went for space, directly into the flight pattern of the fourth ship, and there was, very suddenly, nothing left to shoot at.
Angara had only a moment to feel relief before he ordered the Force to reassemble and go after the remaining Larissans. But they were in full retreat, and as soon as they cleared world limits, blipped, one by one, back into N-space to their homeworlds.
“I guess we won this one,” Hedley said, wincing as the casualty list of ships scrolled across a screen. “Flipping expensive.”
“Not as expensive as it’ll be next time,” Angara said. “Next time they come it’ll be an invasion.”
CHAPTER
21
The Force casualties were fairly grim — over a thousand dead, about the same number injured, sixteen ships lost, twenty crippled badly enough to be scrapped.
Civilian casualties were worse, all from Leggett City: eighteen hundred killed, three times that injured, billions of credits in damage. It was noted, though, that this battle had something unique in human history, as far as known: Most of the casualties were rich.
There were three good things to come of the Larissan bombing:
The half-ruined Eckmuhl, formerly the ‘Raum ghetto in the center of Leggett City and never seriously rebuilt after the rising, was nearly leveled. Architects privately licked their lips at being able, once this nonsense called war was over, at being able to completely redesign and build a city center from scratch;
The Planetary Council became a rubber stamp for any and every suggested emergency military appropriation;
Most importantly, recruiting for the Force skyrocketed, as the media showed endle
ss hours of the bombing, mixed with “heart” coverage of the victims. The already-passed Conscription Measure, which had been lackadaisically creaking through the bureaucracy, was immediately implemented, and able-bodied sorts who weren’t particularly patriotic or warlike suddenly realized they were quite likely to be grabbed. That, in turn, sparked more enlistments, as the Force made it loudly clear the choice assignments went to volunteers, and a draftee would have to be very well qualified in something to avoid becoming a greaser on a spaceship, an airfield sweeper, or a common duty soldier.
But Cumbre just didn’t have that many people. Angara thought enviously of the thundering herds on Kura and Larix, and wondered if, after the war, some genius like Froude would figure a way to educate the Larissans into something better than what the ancients had called Kadavergehorsamkeit — obeying orders with the mindlessness of a corpse.
But first there was the small problem of Redruth and his regime …
Angara hadn’t been being pessimistic when he predicted an invasion. It had to be coming, for Redruth had no other options. His family had gotten and kept power by constantly reminding the people of their enemies, including the now-not-considered-mythical Womblies. Now Cumbre was the new horror, and he had to destroy it, or the populace would eventually realize how downtrodden they were and rise against him. Whether that was the only probability, Angara didn’t know. But he did know that Redruth, like most autocrats, would believe there could be no other choices than violence.
So Angara pushed, shouted, ordered, and reasoned for more ships, more training, more men. He ran endless map exercises, field exercises, computer games, exploring every option his staff could arrive at. D-Cumbre would not be the only target. C-, D- and E-Cumbre were slated for landings. Redruth would first take and hold a foothold on one of the other worlds before moving in-system. And so on and so forth.
To further complicate his task, Angara also was preparing something that none of his own people nor Redruth would be expecting.
