Revenge of the Damned (41 page)

Someone blundered.

The
Gogra
and one cruiser managed to collide. Collisions, in the macrodistances of space, never happened.

This one did.

There were no survivors from either ship, so no explanations as to exactly what had gone wrong were ever available.

Just beyond detection range of the Fringe Worlds, the Tahn fleets three-pronged for the assault, becoming the first, second, and third attack forces. The formations, timing, and deployment would have produced, from any prewar Tahn admiral, relief of at least half of the ships' captains and probably a tenth reminded of their "honor" and given one projectile round.

But there were not very many prewar Tahn admirals, let alone ship captains, left. Their bodies were desiccated in space, filmed across the bulkheads of shattered ships, or were simply a no-longer-visible contribution to entropy.

But war was the fine art of making do with what one had.

Plus the Tahn knew that destiny was on their side.

Destiny, of course, was generally on the same side as God.

And so the Tahn fleets attacked the big battalions.

The Tahn second attack force never made it to the Fringe Worlds.

Admiral Mason, commanding six destroyer squadrons from the bridge of a brand-new cruiser, was waiting. His ships were lying doggo, barely within detector range of each other, as the Tahn came in. The first DD making contact linked up, and Mason sent all in ships in carefully and endlessly rehearsed attack formations.

They broke the Tahn on the first sweep, then went independent. Mason's skippers might have been drilled to the point of brainburn, but secretly each of them was proud to serve under a killer like Mason—even if he was a complete clot, he still put them "in harm's way."

The Tahn battleship that was flagship for the second force center was killed by at least three launches from three separate ships, and all command of the ragtag fleets was gone.

At that point Mason grudgingly reported to his superior—and nine full Imperial fleets came in to finish the job.

One Tahn cruiser, eleven destroyers, and a handful of auxiliaries, all damaged, survived to break off and limp back to Heath.

Admiral Mason had to admit that his ships had performed adequately.

A full sector away, Fleet Admiral Ferrari fought his battle almost perfectly.

He had had more than enough time, since Intelligence had alerted him that the Tahn fleets had launched, to prepare himself.

He had run endless progs on several screens as to what exactly the oncoming first attack force would do. He even had an Imperial Intelligence strategic/tactical bio-fiche on the Tahn admiral in command. Some clot named Hsi, Ferrari thought, who's been piloting a bureaucracy for most of the war. Now, what did he do to get himself beached? He consulted another bio-fiche—one that, although Ferrari never knew it, had come from Sten and St. Clair's intelligence.

"The gentleman," Ferrari thought aloud, "appears to have managed to lurk up on four Imperial fleets way back when and make them unhappy. That should not mean that… mmh. Perhaps he has well-connected friends? No. Ah. Here is the tiny malfeasance. Appears to have lost control of his units during the midpoint of the battle. Incurred casualties. Mercy."

Ferrari smiled to himself. So the clot did not know his midgame.

Ferrari blanked all the progs. They were all incorrect. He
knew
where Hsi would attack.

Admiral Hsi had planned to use the "clutter" of the Sulu systems to mask his approach on the Caltor System and Cavite itself. There was no way that even the sophisticated Imperial detectors could pick up his fleets before they attacked.

Hsi had not calculated that the reverse was also true—the Tahn detectors showed the Sulu systems as a blur of asteroids.

They did not pick out Ferrari's waiting fleets until the last few seconds. Ferrari was slightly disappointed; he had hoped that the Tahn would come in even closer before he began the battle.

But it was enough—and he ordered action.

Looked at from "above," two-dimensionally, Ferrari's fleets came laterally across the spearhead of the Tahn force—what had been known as "crossing the tee." All Imperial weapons could acquire targets, but the Tahn weapons systems were "masked" by their own formation.

Ferrari hammered in on them. The battle, at that point, went from chess to the greater subtlety of battle-axes at one meter as the Imperial fleets slaughtered Hsi.

Hsi ordered his force to break off battle, retire, and regroup.

Ferrari sent his units after them, and the battle continued, a blind melee in the emptiness between systems.

Ferrari won, quite handily. Again, only a few Tahn ships survived.

But he had made one mistake.

When he had decided to go after Hsi, he had neglected to inform Mahoney, who was trying to coordinate the battle from Cavite, of his decision. He had left a large, undefended hole in the perimeter around the Fringe Worlds. And through that hole, three E-days later, poured the Tahn's third attack force.

There were no Imperial combat fleets between it and Cavite.

Someone once said that most heroes could be explained simply as sane people deciding to do something that was completely insane.

William Bishop the Forty-third would have defined the action that won him the Galactic Cross and his second star as something that only a nut who had managed to convince himself he was not a nut would have even begun.

So far, Bishop had not had that bad a war.

He had originally been a guardsman, an infantry sergeant who had gotten his share of gongs for ducking at the appropriate moment in the appropriate place. Realizing that if he went into places where people were shooting at him, eventually they were going to connect, he had volunteered for flight training.

His intentions were to graduate and then push big ugly clot transports around the sky until his time came up, then work quietly on his own abstruse mathematical figures. The only other medal he wanted was some kind of long service without getting caught doing anything too terrible award.

He was a natural pilot.

When he had graduated as part of Sten's flight training class, he had gotten the assignment he had wanted.

But things had caught up with him.

Perhaps it was that no one could believe that a man with that many medals, who looked like that much of a commando, had no interest in seeing any more combat. Or perhaps someone with a sense of history had looked up who William Bishop the First was.

But in any event, Bishop not only had been forcibly transferred from his REMF supply wagon to an assault transport but had been given more and more promotions.

Currently he was a one-star admiral in charge of two divisions of assault craft. Worse yet, he had been hand selected to be in charge of the Cavite landings.

A man could get dead doing things like that, he had thought. Going in.

But so far, not much had happened—not much, at least to Bishop's mind. The air-to-space missiles, the Tahn tacships, and the occasional suicide attack had been discounted.

Bishop was determined that it was not that bad a war. Survive this, he thought, and all I have to make it through is the final landing on Heath.

That produced a wince and another train of thought. It was more important to wonder whether Fermat was not right, after all. In the meantime, his assault ships went in on Cavite, their support transports cross-loaded, and the handful of combat craft kept the Tahn mosquitoes away.

At that point, the alarms shrilled.

Bishop found himself on the bridge of his assault command ship, looking at the incoming reports that input and then blanked as the oncoming Tahn third attack force came in.

Bishop then realized that he was a psychopath.

His orders were most clear. "Com… close beam to Com-Escort. Commander, stand by for orders."

"Admiral, we're getting—"

"We're getting hit by the whole clottin' Tafin spaceforce. I know. I noticed. Orders, I said. I want your ships out of orbit and headed out. Now."

"Toward what?"

Bishop groaned to himself. "Do you have a breakdown on the incoming Tahn?"

"Uh… that's an affirm. We have seven BBs, several tac-ship launchers, twenty-eight cruisers… you want more, Billy?"

"Negative. That's about what I show. Orders…" He motioned to his nav officer. "Stand by for relay. Contact orbit will be for the third—no, fourth battleship in line. Relay—"

His paling navigator nodded.

"—on transmit. Activate on a ten-second tick—from now."

"Further orders. Sir?"

Bishop stared into the screen at his escort commander. "Hell, no. You need any more?"

"Guess not. You know any good prayers, Billy?"

Bishop shook his head.

And the attack began.

One armored assault command ship. One cruiser. Twelve destroyers. Eleven escort ships. And seventeen tacships.

Attacking four Tahn combat fleets.

It was insane.

It
was
insane.

The Tahn admiral in charge of the third attack force saw the handful of ships incoming on a collision orbit and realized that he had fallen into a trap.

No one would attack like that. Not unless, behind those absurd attackers, was the full force of the Empire.

The admiral admired the temerity of the attackers. They could, truly, be Tahn. To be willing to die merely to pin down the Tahn fleets for a few moments, moments enough for the yet-to-be-detected Imperial battleships to strike.

The admiral issued a string of orders.

Break contact and re-form. Go back, beyond the Sulu systems. We shall let the Empire strike against emptiness, then come in again from the flank.

Four Tahn fleets fled back into emptiness. For the most logical of reasons.

The admiral in question never had a chance to realize what had happened and what had not happened, because his reassembly point happened to be only light-minutes from the orbital path of Ferrari's fleets, returning from the destruction of Hsi. There were no surviving Tahn ships.

Bishop looked at the receding Tahn fleets, retracted all those last words he had been muttering, and, reflexively, looked over his shoulder.

There was nothing "over his shoulder" or "behind" him on the screens.

William Bishop the Forty-third, not believing in bluffs, in what had happened, or, more importantly, in what had
not
happened, returned to his orbit off Cavite, seriously thinking about the virtues of early retirement and then perhaps joining an intensely religious monastery.

Lady Atago stood in the litter of disaster and read the onscreen message, sent en clair from General Lunga's command post on Cavite:

Imperial units have broken through. Contact lost with fighting elements. Last reports say all positions resisting to last man. This post now three combatants, no remaining ammunition. Will attack. Repeat. Will attack. My apologies to the council and to my race for failure.

Lunga

Atago turned away. She had her own honor—and her own pledge—to fulfill.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

W
ithout ceremony, the new
Forez
hurtled into space.

Lady Atago might have been the ultimate Tahn, but she had been more than grudgingly acquiescent to the Tahn's cultural love of ceremonies.

There were rituals for warriors choosing to go into battle, seeking the final victory of death: the touching of the home-world's earth to one's temple. A last sip of pure water. An oath over one's personal weapon, preferably one that had been in the family for generations. Exact instructions as to how the memory of the about-to-fall hero(ine) was to be honored.

Lady Atago chose to die in her own fashion.

The livie crews could cobble together some kind of scene from stock footage. In fact, she imagined, they probably were already hard at work doing just that.

Atago did not care.

After lift, the
Forez's
second officer had turned to her, eyes glistening, and stammered something about it all being a dream. The old and the new, culminating in a moment of history.

Atago puzzled at him for a second. Old and new? Oh. Yes. She remembered. The officer had been something or other on the old
Forez
, which was now probably being cut apart and recast into something or other. Atago did not know or care. A ship, like a weapon, was a tool and nothing more.

But she managed a frosty smile and a nod of agreement to the officer. If those were the thoughts he chose to carry into emptiness, so be it.

Atago was busy with her final plans—such as they were.

Any culture that managed to admire the slaughter of other beings also lionized the fighter who went to war in a hopeless cause. But to qualify for legend, that fighter also had to accomplish something by his death, even if it was nothing more than keeping the bad guys out of a pass for an hour or so.

That had been true even on ancient Earth. For instance, before Roland was an acceptable hero, his pigheadedness at Roncesvalles had to be changed from a minor ambush by irked Basques to a grand last stand against several million Saracens. Custer and his people
had
to be doing something worthwhile instead of what they actually were to get to Little Big Horn—drunk, untrained, ignoring intelligence, and having less than no idea of what they would do when they got wherever they were going.

There was an exception: the kamikazes—Second Global War—who went out to die with only the forlorn illogic that somehow their deaths would work magic and change history. Other cultures had tried to explain by claiming they were psycho cases, drunk, or using drugs. Only their home culture had made them into heroes.

The Tahn would have understood the kamikazes quite thoroughly.

Lady Atago's "battle plan" was to drive directly for Cavite. Somehow the
Forez
would battle through the surrounding Imperial fleets and somehow attack Cavite itself. Of course they would all die.