Kilgour would slaughter Sten if he knew he had said that—Alex was one of the best liars in the line of duty whom Sten had ever met.
"It would be chancy," van Doorman agreed. "Perhaps you're right. I'll postpone the media conference for the moment." He changed the subject. "Commander, one further thing. I don't wish to change your orders—you're doing admirably as an independent. But I'd like you to consider a more immediate focus for your future actions."
"Such as?"
"Whenever possible, I would appreciate your division hitting the closer Tahn-occupied systems."
"That could be difficult, sir. Their cover is pretty tight."
"This is most important."
"A question, sir. Why the change?"
"I am preparing to mount an operation within the next few weeks that will need full fleet support. Unfortunately, I can't be more specific at present—we're operating under total security."
So much for van Doorman's brief flash of reality. Sten could have mentioned that he probably had a higher security clearance than anyone in the 23rd Fleet, including its admiral. Or that it was clottin' hard to support an attack—a retreat?—if one didn't know what was going on. Or that total security for the clotpoles on van Doorman's staff probably meant that it was all over the officer's club by now.
"Yessir," Sten said. "My staff and I will prepare some possible scenarios for you."
"Excellent, Commander. And again, my congratulations."
Sten highballed the admiral and left. He was wondering if van Doorman was contagious. Scenario? And staff? That would consist of four officers, one warrant officer, and a spindar plotting over a bottle. He started looking for Brijit.
Sten hoped to find her in some romantic setting—perhaps in a flowered glen out of sight and sound of the war. He also hoped that Brijit would have recovered from her mother's death enough to have a bit of lust in her heart.
He found her ninety feet underground, wearing a blood-spattered set of coveralls and maneuvering a gurney past a rockchewer.
Someone on van Doorman's staff had an element of brains and cunning. The Empire Day attack had packed Cavite's hospitals solidly, and this unknown planner evidently knew enough about the Tahn method of waging war to realize that putting the ancient red cross on a hospital roof provided an excellent aiming point. So the base hospital had gone underground into solid rock. It was also directly under the building that had been, years before, the Tahn consulate for the Fringe Worlds.
Sten helped Brijit slip the casualty into an IC machine, then asked when she got off shift. Brijit smiled tiredly and told him tomorrow. Sten would be long offworld by then. So much for romance.
Brijit managed another smile, one with some empathy. She had a fairly good idea what Sten had in mind. Instead, she took him to the crowded staff mess hall and fed him a perfectly vile cup of caff.
She had volunteered for the hospital the day after her mother's funeral. The prewar world of whites, boredom, and garden parties was burnt away.
Sten was most impressed and was about to say something, when he started really listening to Brijit's exhausted chatter.
It was Dr. Morrison this and Dr. Morrison that, and how hard Dr. Morrison was working, and how many lives had been saved. Brijit, Sten gathered, was Dr. Morrison's main OR nurse. And he realized that even if he were in that flowered glade with Brijit, all that would happen was that she would possibly ask him to make a garland for Dr. Morrison.
Oh, well. Sten couldn't honestly evaluate himself as being anyone's ideal main squeeze, even ignoring the fact that a tacship commander's life span is measured in mayflies.
Brijit's features suddenly softened and then brightened. Sten remembered that she had looked that way at him not too long ago.
"There she is now! Dr. Morrison! Over here."
Commander Ellen Morrison, Imperial Medical Corps, was, Sten had to admit, almost as beautiful as Brijit. She greeted Sten coolly, as if he were a prospective patient, and sat down. Brijit, almost reflexively, took Morrison's hand.
Sten talked for a few more minutes about inconsequentialities, finished his caff, made his excuses, and left.
War changes everything it touches. Sometimes even for the better.
A few days later, van Doorman got his famous victory, courtesy of the Imperial Tacship Richards, Lieutenant Estill, and Ensign Tapia. Or at least everyone except Tapia thought he did.
They were a week out of Cavite when they got their target. It was one of the monstrous Tahn assault ships that were the launch base for the in-atmosphere attack craft. The ship, according to the Jane's fiche, would be lightly armored and, if hit before the bulkheads that subdivided the hangar deck could be closed, should become an instantly satisfactory torch.
The problem was that the ship was escorted by one cruiser and half a dozen destroyers, and no one on the Richards was in a particularly suicidal mood that watch.
Tapia let Estill run up and knock down half a dozen attacks on the computer before she made her suggestion. Even though it was extremely irregular, Estill was learning from his time in the TacDiv. He turned the deck over to her and announced that if her idea worked, he would "fly" the Kali on the attack.
At full power the Richards sped ahead of the Tahn ships, made a slight correction in course, and then went "dead" in space, directly intersecting what Tapia calculated the Tahn ships' course to be. She shut down all power, including the McLean artificial-gravity generator. Then anything that wasn't armament was pitched out a port—chairs, rations, metalloid foil configured to provide excellent radar reflection, and even the two spare shipsuits.
Then they waited. With even the recirculators off, the air got thick very quickly.
Their passive detectors picked up the Tahn sensing beams.
They continued to wait.
A single Tahn destroyer flashed out from the pack and figure-eighted, its computer obviously analyzing just what was dead ahead.
"This'll be interesting," Tapia whispered unnecessarily to Estill.
Interesting was one way to put it. If their camouflage as a wreck didn't work, they would be staring at that destroyer on an attack run. Tapia didn't know if either their reflexes or the Richards' power would get them away in time.
The Richards' passive screens went dead, and Tapia started breathing again. If the ruse had failed, the screens would have told her that a ranging computer was on the tacship. "Any time you're ready, Lieutenant."
Estill nodded. Tapia fed power to his board. Estill put out a narrow ranging beam to the Tahn assault ship. Closing... closing... in range.
Tapia slammed her power board on... buzzed the engineer, who did the same... and the Richards came alive. Two seconds later, Estill launched his Kali.
Alarms blared on the Tahn ships. The destroyers went into an attack pattern, and the cruiser full-powered to protect her charge. The assault ship went to an emergency evasive pattern.
Tapia was too busy to see what was going on. She had full power on the Richards, an eccentric evasion orbit fed in, and was now interested in survival.
The Kali was only a few seconds from strike when the Tahn assault ship fired its forward bank of antimissiles.
They should have been useless.
Standard doctrine for any weapons officer using the control helmet on a missile was to stay with the bird through contact. But somehow to Estill this meant a kind of death. At the last moment he hit the firing contact and jerked the helmet away.
The explosion blanked the rear screens of the Richards.
"We got it!" Estill shouted. The helmet went back on, and he launched a flight of Goblins to track to their rear.