Staff officers and civilian dignitaries were already waiting.
In the ionosphere, the Tahn assault ship opened its bays, and small attack craft spewed downward.
Sten's problem, after lift, was where to hide. If he was correct and Cavite was about to be hit, it would be hit hard. He had full confidence in his tacships—but not in an orbital situation where he might be facing a battleship or six.
Nor was the cloud cover the answer, as any ship attacking from offworld would be using electronics. The clouds wouldn't even show up on most shipscreens.
Sten's best solution was to take his flotilla out over the ocean, some twenty kilometers away from Cavite, and hold at fifty meters over the sea. He figured that he would probably be buried in ground clutter and very hard to pick up.
Foss was the first to pick up the attacking ships.
"All ships," Sten ordered. "Independent attacks. Conserve munitions and watch your tails. We're at war!"
Kilgour had the Gamble at full power, headed back for Cavite.
The first V-wing of Tahn launched air-to-ground metal-seeking missiles at 1000 meters, pulled momentarily level, and scattered frag bombs down the length of the field.
The parade ground became a hell of explosions.
Van Doorman had time enough to see the missiles, gape once, and throw himself on top of his wife and daughter before all thought vanished and sanity became trying to hold on to the pitching ground under him.
The Tahn ships lifted, banked, and came back on a strafing pass. Most of the dignitaries and staff officers not killed by the bombs were shattered with chaingun bursts.
Van Doorman lifted his head and saw, through blood, the ships coming back in. That was all he remembered.
He didn't see the Richards and Claggett come in on the flank, their own chainguns raving, or the thinly armored Tahn ships cartwheel into the field, their pin wheeling wreckage doing as much damage to the 23rd Fleet's ships as the missiles had.
Seeing the Richards and Claggett pull ahead of him, Sten changed his mind and his tactics. He ordered the Kelly into wingman's slot and climbed for space.
The Tahn assault ship was not expecting any response from the maelstrom below and was an easy target. The Gamble's weapons systems clicked through Kali choice to Goblin, and Kilgour fired.
The hull of the ship gaped, and red flame seared out.
In the Kelly, Sekka had taken away his weapons officer's control helmet—he was the warrior of generations. The chant he was muttering went back 2,000 years as his sights crossed and settled on the huge bulk of the Forez. Without orders, he launched the Kali.
Even under full AM2 power, the Kelly jolted as the huge missile chuffed out the center launch tube, and its own AM2 drive launched it.
For Sekka, there was nothing but the growing bulk of the Tahn battleship in his eyes as he became the Kali.
The missile was well named. It struck the Forez on a weapons deck. Two-hundred-fifty Tahn crewmen died in the initial explosion, and more were killed in the blast of secondary explosions.
Sekka allowed himself a tight smile as he pulled off the helmet, seeing, onscreen, four attacking Tahn destroyers. That was nothing. And if they killed him, what was death to a Mandingo warrior?
It was possible that the two Tahn cruisers did not ever expect attack from a ship as small as the Gamble. Certainly they seemed to take no significant evasive action and launched only a handful of countermissiles before Kilgour had Goblins at full power, targets locked.
Sten knew that the Goblins could injure a cruiser, but he did not expect the nearly simultaneous explosions; seeing the screen begin flashing no target under acquisition, Alex lifted his weapons helmet.
"Lad, wha's th' matter wi' their blawdy cruisers?"
Sten, seeing a pack of destroyers coming in, too late to save their charges, was busy with evasive action.
Lady Atago, on the bridge of the Forez, braced herself as the battleship shuddered under another explosion. Part of her brain was pleased—in spite of catastrophe, the men and women she had trained were responding efficiently and without panic.
"Your orders?"
Atago considered the choices. There was only one. "Admiral Deska, cancel the landing on Cavite. We cannot proceed with only one capital ship. The other landings on the secondary systems may proceed. You and I shall transfer our flags to the Kiso. Order the Forez to proceed to a forward repair base."
"Your orders, milady."
Sten saw the Tahn fleet begin its withdrawal as he and his ships returned to base.
It wasn't much of a victory. Below on Cavite, the 23rd Fleet, the only Imperial forces in the Fringe Worlds, was almost completely destroyed.
The Tahn war had just begun.
BOOK THREE
TAKING THE BLADE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
The attack on the Caltor System and Cavite was not the actual beginning of the war. That had occurred one E-hour earlier in an attack against Prime World and the Emperor himself.
Nearly simultaneously, thousands of Tahn ships savaged the Empire. Missions varied from invasion to base reduction to fleet battles. At the end of the initial phase, the Tahn estimated their success at better than eighty-five percent. It was one of the blackest days in the Empire's history.
The attack coordination had been exceedingly complex, since the Tahn wanted to reap the maximum benefits possible from Empire Day. Technically the minute of vengeance—what more prosaic cultures might call D-day—was at the same tick of the ammonium maser clock that each fleet commander had on his or her bridge.
Actually, of course, there were adjustments, since each of the Imperial worlds used its own time zoning. There also were readjustments to keep the attacks within a close enough time frame to prevent the Empire from coming to full alert.
Almost more important to the Tahn was a "moral" readjustment. Somehow the Tahn felt it perfectly legitimate to begin a war without the usual roundelay of escalating diplomatic threats but dishonorable to not strike at—their phrase—the throat of the tiger.
Prime World.
The Eternal Emperor.
The choice of Empire day to begin the war was made for several reasons. The Tahn correctly assumed the Imperial military would be collected and relaxed; there would be, if the attacks were successful, an inevitable lowering of Imperial morale; and, finally, because this was the one day of the year when everyone knew where the Emperor was—at home, expecting visitors.
Home was a oversize duplicate of the Earth castle Arundel, with a six- by two-kilometer bailey in front, surrounded by fifty-five kilometers of parkland. Housed in the bailey's V-banked walls were the most important elements of the Empire's administration. The castle itself contained not only the Emperor, his bodyguards, and considerable staff but the command and control center for the entire Empire. Most of the necessary technology was buried far under Arundel, along with enough air/water/food to withstand a century-long siege.
The visitors the Emperor was expecting were his subjects. Once a year the normally closed-off castle was opened up for a superspectacle of bands, military displays, and games. To be invited or somehow to wangle a ticket to Empire Day at the palace was an indication of signal achievement or purchase.