"So ordered. And sealed," Fehrle said. He turned to the screen showing Lady Atago. "That is all, Lady Atago. A full operations order shall be couriered to you when you return to your fleet."
Her screen blanked. Fehrle stared at the smooth gray-ness. And you had better have the luck of battles with you this time, he thought. Because if you fail once more, there shall be no way I can protect you.
Orders went out before Atago's battle cruiser could take off from Heath—three full Tahn landing forces, with supply, support, and attack craft, would be committed to her fleet, and the intelligence plants would be made at once.
None of this was necessary. The Eternal Emperor had already ordered Major General Ian Mahoney and his First Guards to establish a forward operating base on the world of Cavite.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
The only hope of survival that Sten and his four tacships had was never to be where or when they were anticipated. Even a Tahn corvette, forewarned, had more than enough armament to obliterate any of the Bulkeley-class ships. Sten's constant counsel was for them to think like a minnow in a school of sharks.
The next stage after finding a semihidden base of operations was to pick a target that the ships could hit and get out of with some expectation of survival.
The three systems nearest to Caltor swarmed with Tahn ships, all on constant alert and looking for glory. What Sten's people had to do was to hit where they weren't expected—and to hit where the maximum damage could be done.
That meant the Tahn supply route.
Of course the Tahn would have their supply lines more heavily guarded near the Caltor System. But what about farther out, closer to their own systems? It seemed unlikely that the Tahn would waste fuel, ships, or men, since the only Imperial forces within reach were the remnants of van Doorman's fleet. And they must think that the tacships that had worked over the Cavite landing force were far too short-ranged to reach deep into their own empire.
Indeed, the tacships were short-ranged—in terms of rations and armament, not fuel. Each of them had onboard enough AM2 to fuel their drives for half a year.
Sten hoped the Tahn were as logical as he was.
And so the four tacships became parasites. A survey ship whose drive mechanisms had been destroyed in the Tahn's first attack was borrowed, lifted off Cavite by the tacships—Tapia's tug experience was most valuable—and packed with supplies on Romney. Then, with Sten's own boats still linked to the survey ship, they took off.
Their initial course took them far to one side of the worlds now occupied by the Tahn. Somewhere between nowhere and lost, they reset their course toward the heart of the Tahn worlds.
They advanced very slowly, their sensors reaching out, hour after hour, keeping watch-on, watch-off. They knew—semi-knew/hoped like hell—that any Tahn ship could be picked up by them before they showed up on the Tahn screens. They were not searching blindly. Sten had assumed that at least one supply route would lead from Heath, the Tahn capital world, toward the newly occupied systems near Cavite. He projected that route as a line, and other, unknown routes coming toward those worlds.
Two weeks out, they made their final resupply from the survey ship, stuck it into a tight orbit around an uninhabited world, and crept on. By then, the small, overworked air recyclers in the tacships were groaning for relief, leaving the ships and crew smelling like very used socks. Sten wondered why none of the war livies ever pointed out that soldiers stink: stink from fear, stink from fatigue, stink from uncleanliness.
And then dual alarms shrilled. The four ships went to general quarters and waited for orders.
Four transports lined across one of Sten's screens. Their drives were, of course, unshielded, so the purple flare from the ships told Sten instantly that they were Tahn. But more interesting were a series of tiny flickers from another screen.
"Shall we take them?" Sh'aarl't asked from the Claggett.
"Negative. Stand by."
Sten, Kilgour, and Foss studied those flickers.
"Too wee't' be't ships," Alex said.
"Navaids," Foss suggested.
"Not this far out," Sten said. "Are they broadcasting?"
Foss checked his board. "Negative, sir. We're picking up some kind of low-power static. Maybe activating receivers on standby?"
"Some kind of transponder? Or a superantenna?"
"Bloomin' unlikely," Kilgour said.
Sten wanted a closer look. He slid behind Kilgour's weapon's console and put on a control helmet. "I want a Fox launch. Keep the warhead on safe."
Kilgour reached over his shoulder and tapped a key.
Sten, "seeing" space through the countermissile's radar, moved it toward the light flicker, keeping the missile barely above minimum speed. The flickers grew, and his perspective changed as his "vision" went to radar. He perceived dozens of the objects, now solid blips. Sten reversed the missile and applied power until he was no longer approaching the objects, then re-reversed and waited for some kind of analysis from his ship, which now seemed to be far behind him, even though he still sat motionlessly at the console.
"There's no interconnection between them," Foss said. "Physical or electronic. At least not in its present state."
"What it looks like," Sten said slowly, "is a minefield."
"Y're bonkers, lad. E'en th' Tahn whidna put out mines in th' void on th' zip chance some wee unfortunate'd wander into it."
"Do mines have to be passive?"
"Mmm. Strong point."
Sten lifted the helmet off and turned to the other two on the command deck. Foss was thinking, tapping his fingernails against his teeth.
"Maybe that static is from their receivers. You know, it wouldn't be too hard to set up. Sure. You could build it on a breadboard."
Electronics jargon hadn't changed all that much over the centuries... and still managed to leave Sten and Kilgour blank.
"I meant, sir, it'd be easy to jury-rig. You put a missile out there, with a receiver-transmitter. Your own ships have some kind of IFF, so the missile knows not to go after them. Anybody else comes within range, the missile activates and goes after them. If you wanted to get tricky, you could even program your missiles to move around or sweep themselves if you wanted to. Probably the circuit'd look something like this..." Foss blanked a screen and picked up a light pen.
"Later wi' the schematics, lad," Kilgour said. "The question is, What are we going to do about them?"
"Maybe they're not set to go after something as small as a tacship," Sten said.
"Will y' b' willin't't' bet on that?"
"My momma didn't raise no fools."
"Which means we cannae go down agin' th' convoys like a sheep ae th' fold, then."
"Not necessarily. And maybe we don't even need to. Mr. Kilgour, have the mate break out three shipsuits."
"A lad could get killed doin't this," Kilgour growled. The three men hung inches away from one of the Tahn mines.
Once Sten, Foss, and Kilgour had exited the Gamble, turning the deck over to Engineer Hawkins, they had used an unarmed Goblin and its AM2 drive to bring them closer to the mine. Sten was fairly sure the small Goblin wouldn't present enough mass to activate the mine. Fairly sure, he reminded himself, could get one fairly dead.
Half a kilometer away from one of the mines, Sten parked the Goblin, and the three used their suit drives to close in.
The mine was about five meters long and cylindrical, with drivetubes at one end. It was nested inside its launch/ monitor/control, a doughnut-holed ring with a diameter of about six meters.