It was a Tahn armaments dump. The Tahn had found a wide cliff-ringed valley. They had studded the rim of the valley with antiaircraft missiles and lasers and maintained overhead patrols as well as an armed satellite in a synchronous orbit just out-atmosphere. To make the situation worse, the world—Oragent—was under almost complete and constant cloud cover.
Sh'aarl't had tracked Tahn resupply ships to the world and figured out their approximate landing point. There had been more than enough traffic to arouse her interest. She assumed some kind of supply dump, since very few of the ships landing or taking off from Oragent were combat craft.
To narrow the field further, she stalked a single unescorted ship, bounced it, and launched a single missile, carefully steered to just remove the ship's power train. Then she had planned to dissect the ship with Fox missiles until she found out what it was carrying.
The missile exploded—and the Tahn ship was obliterated.
"We may theorize," Sh'aarl't told her weapons officer, "that barge wasn't carrying rations."
"Dunno, ma'am. The Tahn like their food spicy."
"Bad joke, mister. Since you're being bright today, how are we going to snoop and poop into that arms depot?"
It was a good question. Finding out what was under those clouds by manned recon could well have been fatal. Any other intelligence gathering would have to be done without alerting the Tahn.
Sh'aarl't put the Claggett down on one of Oragent's moons and thought about the problem.
Step one was to set up a stabilized camera with a very long lens. Infrared techniques and computer enhancement helped a little. She now could see the vaguely circular area that was the depot. She chanced a few laser-ranging shots and got enough input to suggest that the depot was in a valley. A series of infrared exposures, taken over time, also showed blotches of heat emanation from one area of the valley floor—what probably was the landing field—and occasional spatters from the cliff walls. AA lasers, most likely.
At that point, she returned to Romney and consulted with Sten and Kilgour.
It was pretty easy to determine what couldn't be done. Dumping a missile straight down at the dump wasn't very likely to be successful. Even a MIRVed Kali—and nobody was sure that the missile could be so modified—wouldn't get past the satellite, let alone the ring of AA batteries.
Possibly a specialized Wild Weasel ship might be able to suppress the target acquisition systems long enough for a raid—but Wild Weasels were just one of the many craft the 23rd Fleet was fresh out of.
"The problem is," Sh'aarl't said, "there's no way in."
"Correction, lass," Alex said. "Tha's noo high-tech way in. An' Ah'll wager th' Tahn are thinkit th' same ae you."
Sten got Alex's hint. "Maybe," he said doubtfully. "But first I don't think Doorknob's gonna loan us any of his marines for a landing force. And even if he does, you want to bet they're any more ept than the rest of his people?"
"Ah was noo thinki't aboot borrowin't misery when there's need for but twa of us."
"Us," Sh'aarl't snorted. "Who is us?"
"Why, me an' Fearless Commander Sten, ae course."
"I'll assume you aren't trying another bad joke."
"Nope. Ah'm bein't dead straight."
"That's drakh, Mr. Kilgour," Sh'aarl't said. "You two aren't supercommandos. I don't know what you did before, Kilgour, but our death-defying leader was just a straight old Guards officer. Remember?"
Yes. Well, that was the cover that both Sten and Alex had on their service record to hide their years in Mantis.
"Y're noo hesitatin', are y'? Worri't aboot keepin't up wi' an old clot like me, Commander? Or p'raps y're feelin't soft. Ah hae noticed your wee paunch a' late."
To Sh'aarl't, this was rank insubordination. She waited for the thunder. Instead, Sten looked injured.
"I am not getting fat, Kilgour."
"Ah, you're right, lad. It's naught but the hangin' ae y'r coverall."
"You two are serious!"
"Maybe it's the only way to do it," Sten said.
"You know that Imperial regulations has an article saying that an officer has the duty to relieve his commander in, and I quote, 'instances of incapacitating injury, failure to perform the ordered mission, or'—my emphasis—'mental injury,' end quote?"
"In this fleet ae th' damn't, lost, crazy, an' brainburnt, Lieutenant, who'd be th' judge?"
"All right. One more try. There's no way that two swabbies can take out an entire arms depot. That only happens in the livies."
Sten and Alex looked, at each other. A clotting arms depot? Hell, there were several system governments that had found Sudden Change thrust upon them courtesy of a couple of Mantis operatives.
"I assume that you've got a plot more than just going in cuttin' and thrusting?" Sten asked.
"Ah dinnae hae a plot a' yet," Alex admitted. "But som'at'll come to mind."
"Dinnae fash, Mr. Kilgour. A thought has occurred to me."
"Thinkit, noo. We're in th' crapper for sure."
"On your way out, would you ask Foss to haul his butt in here?"
Sh'aarl't looked at them analytically. She was not stupid. "Very interesting," she observed. "Either both of you have gone bonkers—or somebody's lying to me."
"Pardon?"
"I remember somebody told me once that when somebody gets scooped up by the Imperial sneakies, their service record gets phonied up. Any comments?"
"Great story, Sh'aarl't. We'll have to talk about it sometime. Well, Mr. Kilgour? Time's a-wastin'."
The implementation of Sten's plan would be low-tech, but the method of attack was exceedingly technical. Or possibly antitechnical.
Sten would not have known what a petard was if one had been set off in his air lock—but he, along with Hamlet, hoped that it would indeed be great sport to hoist the Tahn by their own.
The possible solution lay in the sophistication of current fire-control and antiaircraft systems.
The days of brave, keen-sighted gunners crouched behind their weaponry and opening up on overhead aircraft were long gone. A missile launch site or laser blast would be remoted to a central, fixed operation fire-control center. This center—Sten theorized it would be located in the valley's center—would have a current sitrep on aerial traffic, fed in by radar, the orbital satellite, and other air- or ground-based sensors.
If the controlled airspace was intruded on, the fire-control system would evaluate the threat, bring the antiaircraft complex to alert if necessary, allocate targets to the various weapons, and open fire.
The individual weapons might or might not have the capability of local control in the event of the center's destruction. But the maximum crew the individual guns would have could be a gunner or two, certainly a couple of service techs, and possibly a few guards for ground security.
Since the weapons would be remotely aimed and fired, positioning them required a bit more work than just exact geographic siting. It was also necessary to program each gun with a no-fire zone, so that regardless of what an attacking aircraft might be doing, it would be impossible for any gun to fire, for instance, across the valley if another weapon was in its line of fire. Also, since the guns overlooked a highly explosive ammo dump, under no circumstances would it be possible for any weapon to fire down into the valley.
Sten proposed to alter those circumstances.
Blueboxing a local fire-control system was, Foss said, as easy as going to sleep listening to one of Kilgour's stories. The problem would be hooking it up.
Fortunately, not all of the Tahn ships shot down on Cavite on Empire Day had been completely destroyed. Sten and Foss grubbed through the wreckage, carefully examining all possible connections the Tahn used. They also examined the abandoned weaponry—Sten assumed it would have come from Tahn sources—on Romney.