It had taken four years for the Tahn to prepare for their attack on Arundel. The only possible assault that could be made was a surgical strike—there was no way that the Tahn could slip a fleet or even a squadron of destroyers through the Empire's offworld security patrols.
Except for Empire Day, the airspace over Arundel was sealed. All aerial traffic on Prime World was monitored, and any deviation from the flight pattern put the palace's AA sections on alert. An intrusion into the palace's airspace was electronically challenged once and then attacked. It was equally impossible to approach the palace on the ground—the only connection between Arundel and the nearest city, Fowler, was by high-speed pneumosubway.
Except for Empire Day...
On Empire Day huge troop-carrying gravlighters were used to move tourists from Fowler to the palace. The security precautions were minimal—all passengers were, of course, vetted and searched. The lighters themselves were given a fixed flight pattern and time, in addition to being equipped with a IFF—Identification-Friend or Foe—box linked to the palace's aerial security section.
These precautions were ludicrously easy to subvert.
Oddly enough, the Tahn may have felt it dishonorable not to attack the Emperor—but, on the other hand, they preferred to do the dirty work through a cutout. "Honor" in a militaristic society is most often Rabelaisian: "Do what thou wilt shalt be the whole of the law."
Three highly committed Tahn immigrants—revolutionaries from the late Godfrey Alain's Fringe World movement—had been chosen and moved into position by Tahn intelligence two years previously. One was instructed to find a minor job at Fowler's port, Soward. A second found employment as a barkeep. The third was hired as a gardener by the occupants of one of the luxurious estates that ringed the Imperial grounds. He was an excellent gardener—the merchant prince who employed him swore he had never had a harder or more conscientious worker.
The method of attack would be by missile, a rather specially designed missile. The Tahn surmised correctly that Arundel was faced with nuclear shielding, so a conventional nuke within practical limits would not provide complete destruction. The final missile looked most odd. It was approximately ten meters long and was configured to provide a very specific sensor profile, a profile closely matching that of a much larger Guard gravlighter.
Inside it were two nuclear devices. Tahn science had figured out how to utilize the ancient shaped-charge effect—the Munro effect—with atomics. For shrouding and cone they used imperium, the shielding normally used to handle Anti-Matter Two, the Empire's primary power source. Behind the first device was the guidance mechanism, and back of that was the second device. The missile's nose was sharply pointed, less for aerodynamics than for blast effect.
Besides the guidance system, the missile also contained a duplicate of the IFF box that would be used by the grav-lighters on Empire Day.
The missile had been smuggled, in three sections, onto Prime World some months previously, transported to a leased warehouse, assembled, and set in its launch rack by a team of Tahn scientists.
The three Tahn from the Fringe Worlds were never told the location of the missile; they were merely instructed to be in certain locations with certain equipment at a certain time.
Two days before Empire Day, the Tahn who was a ramp rat at Soward installed a small timer-equipped device in a specified gravlighter's McLean generator.
One day before Empire Day, the controller for the three men boarded an offworld flight and disappeared.
At 1100 on Empire Day, the three men were in place.
The gardener sat ready behind the controls of one of his employer's gravsleds. No one in the mansion would notice—two canisters of a binary blood gas had seen to that.
The other two were atop a building in Soward, near the launch site, one watching a timer, the other counting grav-lighters as they lifted off toward Arundel.
Number seven was "theirs."
On the field, the pilot of the sabotaged gravlighter applied power. The lighter raised, belched smoke, and clanked down. The field's dispatcher swore and ordered a standby unit up to cross-load the passengers.
On the building, the timer touched zero, and the first man fingered a switch on his control box. At the warehouse, explosive charges blew a ragged hole in the roof. McLean-assist takeoff units lifted the missile into the air, then dropped away as the Yukawa drive cut in and the missile smashed forward at full power.
Kilometers away, the third man also went into action. At the commanded time, he lifted the gravsled straight up. His mouth was very dry as he hoped that the palace's aerial sensors would be a little slow.
His own control panel beeped at him—the missile was within range. He focused the riflelike device toward Arundel, dim in the morning haze, and touched a switch. A low-power laser illuminated Arundel's gateway. A second beep informed him that the missile had acquired the target.
For the three Tahn, their mission was accomplished.
Now their orders were to evade capture and make their way to a given rendezvous point outside Soward. Of course, Tahn intelligence had no intention either of making a pickup or of leaving a trail. Both the launch and the aiming control boxes contained secondary timers and explosive charges. Seconds after the missile signaled, they went off.
No one saw the explosion that vaporized the Tahn as they scurried toward a ladder, but a watch officer at Arundel saw the gravsled ball into flame and pinwheel down. His hand was halfway to an alert button when the automatic sensors correctly interpreted that the gravlighter headed for the palace was moving at a speed far beyond reason and screamed warning.
The Eternal Emperor was in his apartments alternately cursing to the head of his Gurkha bodyguards about the necessity to wear full-dress uniform and pinning on various decorations. Captain Chittahang
Limbu was half listening and smiling agreeably. Limbu was still somewhat in awe of his current position. Formerly a Subadar major, he had been promoted to Sten's old job as head of the Emperor's bodyguard. This was the highest position a Gurkha had ever held in Imperial history.
He was fondly remembering the celebration his home village had thrown for him on his last leave, when the overhead alarm bansheed its warning.
The Emperor jumped, sticking himself with a medal pin. Limbu was a stocky brown blur, slapping a switch on the panel at his waist and then manhandling the Emperor forward, toward a suddenly gaping hole in the wall.
Whatever was happening, his orders were clear and in no way allowed for the Gurkhas' love of combat.
The missile's impact point was almost perfect. The thin nose squashed as designed, allowing the missile to hang in place for a microsecond. The first nuke blew, and its directional blast tore through the shielding. The missile continued to crumple, and then the second bomb exploded.
And Arundel, heart of the Empire, vanished into the center of a newborn sun.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Sten itemized chaos as he slowly steered his combat car over the rubble that had been Cavite City's main street. This was not the first city or world that he had been on when the talking stopped and the shooting started. But this appeared to be the first time he had been in on the ground floor of a Empirewide war.
Experience is valuable, he reminded himself, which avoided his worry about Brijit.
Sten had brought his miraculously undamaged ships down onto Cavite Base at nightfall. Sometimes dishonesty pays—he had located his supply base in a disused warehouse in the test yards. As a result, the weaponry and supplies that Sutton had acquired had not been touched by the Tahn attack.