Tapia read a proximity indicator—there were Tahn missiles coming at them. Closing... negative. The Richards was outrunning them.
Tapia had only a moment to check the main screen for a blink. And that blink showed her the same number of Tahn blips as had been there ten minutes before.
No one believed her—except the Tahn. The Kali had indeed detonated on an antimissile. Four main frames of the assault craft were warped, but the forward Tahn repair yards would have the assault ship back in commission within days.
Tapia tried—but no one wanted to hear the truth.
Lieutenant Ned Estill was an instant hero. Van Doorman awarded him the Galactic Cross, even though technically the medal could be given only on direct Imperial authority. The livie people went berserk—Lieutenant Estill could not have been more of a hero if they had been able to custom design one. His face and deeds were blazoned Empire wide within hours.
Tapia privately reported to Sten what she thought had actually happened. Sten considered, then told her to forget it. He didn't give a damn about medals, the Empire could do with a few hero types, and Estill honestly believed that he had destroyed the assault ship.
He did order, though, that all officers and weapons specialists renew their capabilities in a simulator. Once was an error. If Estill made the same mistake again, he could end up very dead.
And Sten couldn't afford to lose the Richards.
Lieutenant Lamine Sekka still seethed. The conversation with Sten had started in acrimony and gotten intense from there. What made it worse was that the original idea had been Sekka's.
Sten had attempted to follow van Doorman's vague instructions to harry the nearby worlds as much as possible. Harrying required intelligence. Specific—such as which worlds were occupied by what forces in which conditions.
The tacdiv spent too many hours as spy ships before anyone could start determining targets.
Sekka had found one of the juiciest.
A distinguishing feature of one planet was a river many thousands of kilometers long. Above its mouth, which looked more like an estuary, was a huge alluvial plain. It was a perfect infantry staging base for the Tahn. They had put an estimated two divisions of troops on the floodplain, using it as a temporary base until the landing in the Caltor System.
Sekka had even been able to determine where the divisions' headquarters were most likely sited.
Sten was congratulatory. "Now. Go kill them, Lieutenant."
"Sir?"
Sten was very tired and a little snappish. "I said—take ship. Put armament on ship. Destroy Tahn."
"I am not a child, Commander!"
Sten took a deep breath. "Sorry, Lamine. But what's the problem? You found yourself a cluster of bad people. Take care of them."
"Maybe I'm not sure what—exactly—you want me to do."
"Let's see." Sten ran through his arsenal mentally. "Here's what I'd suggest. First yank your Goblin launchers. Put eight more chainguns in their slots. Get rid of all but two of the Fox countermissiles. You'll need extra canisters of projectiles.
"Take the Kali out. There's a busted-up close-support ship over in the boneyard. It should still have a belt-fed Y-launcher. Turn that around and mount it nose first down the Kali tube.
"You'll want to use two-, maybe three-kt mininukes. When you come in, I'd suggest you put the launcher on a five-second interval."
"Is there anything else, Commander?" Sekka's voice was shaking.
"If I knew where we could get some nice, persistent penetrating nerve gas... but I don't. I guess that's all." Sten was deliberately not noticing Sekka's reactions, hoping he would not be required to respond. He was wrong.
Sekka was on his feet. "Commander, I am not a murderer!"
Sten, too, was up. "Lieutenant Sekka, I want you at attention. I want your ears open and your mouth shut.
"Yes. You are a murderer. Your job is to kill enemy soldiers and sailors—any way you can. That means strangling them at birth if somebody would invent a time machine! Who the hell do you think operates those ships you've been shooting at? Robots?"
"That's different."
"I said shut up, Lieutenant! The hell it is! What did you expect me to tell you to do? Wait until those troops load into their tin cans and then hit them? Would that make things more legitimate? Or maybe wait until they land here on Cavite?
"Maybe your family has been living on legend too many generations, Lieutenant Sekka. You had best realize that if it wasn't for war, every warrior would be tossed in the lethal chambers for premeditated homicide.
"That's all. You have your orders. I want you offplanet in forty E-hours. Dismissed!"
"May I say something, sir?"
"You may not! I said dismissed!"
Sekka brought up a perfect salute, pivoted, and went out. Sten slid back down into his chair. He heard a low chuckle from the other entrance to Gamble's mess hall.
Alex walked in and found another chair.
"I'm not running a combat unit," Sten groaned. "This is a clottin' divinity school!"
"Puir tyke," Alex sympathized. "Next he'll be thinkin't tha be rules a' war. P'raps it'd cheer y' lad, if Ah told th' story ae th' spotted snakes again."
Sten grinned. "I'd keelhaul you, Alex. If I had a keel. Come on. Let's go put our Rover Scouts to bed."
Sekka had followed orders and lifted off. His insertion plan had worked perfectly—and its perfection tasted like ashes. He had brought the Kelly in-atmosphere at night and under cover of a storm, far below the horizon, at sea. He had submarined his tacship into the river's mouth and then carefully navigated upriver until his ship sat on the bottom, directly next to the Tahn base. The Tahn did not bother to run any sea or river patrols on the world, which was in a highly primitive stage of evolution.
His crew members were as grim and quiet as he was.
Sekka had decided that what he had been ordered to do was wrong—but he would do it as perfectly as he knew how. Remembering his own days in training, he decided that the most vulnerable time any army has is about an hour after dawn. Even if the unit practices dawn and dusk stand-tos, an hour later everyone is busy with personal cleanup, breakfast, and evading whatever noncoms are looking for drakh details.
At the time click he brought the Kelly out of the water and, at full Yukawa drive, on a zigzag pattern crossing directly over the headquarters areas. He had the ship set for contour flying at four meters.
When he crossed the perimeter, he ordered the crew members manning the additional chainguns to open fire. He personally triggered the Y-launcher and saw the small nuclear bombs arc thousands of feet into the air before they started their descent. By the time they hit and exploded, he would be many kilometers away.
Sekka had all rear screens turned off. He was a murderer. Possibly Commander Sten was right and all warriors were murderers. But he did not need to be a witness.
The attack, by one small ship, lasted for twenty minutes. At its end, when the Kelly climbed for space and went to AM2 drive, one divisional headquarters was completely destroyed and the second had taken forty percent casualties. Of the 25,000-plus Tahn soldiers, nearly 11,000 were dead or critically wounded. Both divisions had ceased to exist as combat formations.
Lieutenant Lamine Sekka refused a proffered medal, requested a three-day pass, and stayed catatonic on drugs and alcohol for the full three days.
Then he treated his hangover, shaved, showered, and went back to duty.
Sh'aarl't had found herself a great target. The problem was that no one could figure out how to destroy it without getting blown out of the sky in the process.