That wasn't what happened.
Napoleon supposedly said, when one of his generals was up for a marshal's baton, after listening to a reel of the man's victories, "The hell with his qualifications! Is he lucky?"
And whatever van Doorman's other attributes were, being lucky was not among them.
The battle began perfectly. The task force was able to position itself close to Badung without discovery.
A Tahn convoy did appear—five fat and happy transports escorted by six destroyers, a cruiser, and assorted light patrolcraft.
Halldor ordered the attack.
And things went wrong.
Halldor's own destroyer was hit by something—a mine, space junk, never determined—in the weapons space and holed. He remoted command to a second destroyer while his own ship limped toward the cover of the Swampscott. The other three destroyers continued the attack.
Sten winced, staring at the main screen on the Gamble. He didn't need to look at the battle computer to see what had happened and what was—or in this case was not—going to happen.
The three destroyers launched their shipkillers at extreme range. The reasons were many—with the exception of Sten's people, none of the 23rd Fleet's weaponeers had seen much combat. In peacetime they would perhaps be permitted to live-fire one missile per year, and despite manufacturer's claims, simulators do not properly simulate.
Another reason might have been the rumors about the Tahn's own antiship missiles. Supposedly they had heavier warheads, superior guidance, and speed greater than that of most commissioned warships. None of those stories were true, although the Tahn shipkillers were very, very fast. The Tahn ships were lethal simply because their men and women had been thoroughly trained for years before the war started.
A third reason was the rapidly spreading rumor that there was something very wrong with the Imperial missiles. They did not go where directed, they did not compute as programmed, and they did not explode when or where they should. That rumor was absolutely true.
The three Imperial destroyers therefore swept only halfway through the Tahn convoy before reversing their action. Seconds later another destroyer was hit and destroyed. The after-action report claimed that the destroyer had been hit by an antiship missile launched by the cruiser. Sten, however, from a position of vantage, had seen the flare of a short-range missile from one of the transports. Evidently the Imperial cruiser's ECM crew wasn't paying attention or wasn't fast enough to acquire the target.
Two down.
The remaining two destroyers went to full power, retreating. As they fled toward the barely comforting umbrella that the Swampscott would provide, they launched three missiles each—untargeted as far as the computers on Sten's tacships could determine.
Later, they claimed hits. According to their reports, one Tahn destroyer was obliterated, the cruiser took a major hit, two transports were destroyed, and another Tahn destroyer was lightly hit. Five hits for six launches.
Unfortunately, all claims were wrong.
None of the Imperial officers or sailors reporting hits were lying—they saw missile explosions on their screens, near or fairly near the blips of Tahn ships, and assumed the best. That has always been the case in battle—people see what they want to believe.
There was only one hit.
Possibly Halldor had failed to relay the orders to put a size screen on the missiles, although he claimed otherwise. Or possibly the missile itself lost the program.
But that single missile hit perfectly, directly amidships on the Kelly.
Lieutenant Lamine Sekka, warrior of 200 generations, died with all his crew before his spear had been more than bloodied, along with two officers and nine sailors.
A quarter of Sten's command was gone in that one blinding flash.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
The return to Cavite was a glum limp. Not only had the task force gone zero-zero, Sten knew, but his crews were still in shock. Tacship service was not unlike the Mantis teams—normally they took very light casualties, being specialists in getting out of the way of the heavy artillery. But inevitably the numbers caught up, and when they did, very few friends would make it to the wake.
The task force limped home because, moments after the surviving ships rendezvoused with the Swampscott and the withdrawal started, Swampy had blown out one of her aged drivetubes. The tacships and the destroyers ended up escorting the cruiser back to Cavite.
To their surprise, Cavite was a boil of spacecraft. Huge ships—transports, assault landing craft, combat fleets—filled the skies and packed the fleet's landing grounds. Two battleships hung on the outer reaches of the atmosphere.
For a moment Sten thought that the Tahn had pulled an end run and landed on Cavite while the Imperial forces were stalking the convoy. And then his computer growled at him and began IDing the ships.
There was a full Imperial fleet plus landing and support ships for an entire Guards division.
Sten and Alex exchanged glances. They didn't say anything—Foss and his ears were on the command deck. But the thought was mutual—perhaps they weren't all doomed. Maybe this war was not going as badly as they thought. With these reinforcements, they might be able at least to hold the Tahn.
The icing on the cake was finding out that the unit was the First Guards, perhaps the best of the Imperial elite, headed by General Mahoney, Sten and Alex's old boss in Mantis.
They landed and ordered Sutton and the ground crews to get the three boats fueled, supplied, and armed for immediate takeoff. Kilgour made a slight change. Ground crews always felt as much a part of their assigned craft as any combat crew person. And Alex knew that the support teams of the Kelly would not only be mourning but endlessly wondering if something they had done quickly or maybe not exactly could have contributed to the ship's destruction. The Kelly's ground crews were taken off duty and given six hours liberty.
Liberty in shattered Cavite City wasn't much. Large portions of the city, still occupied by Tahn settlers, were off limits and most chancy to enter with anything other than an armored gravsled. Half of the stores owned by Imperial immigrants were shuttered or burnt out, and their proprietors had fled.
Passage price on any of the merchant ships that were daring enough to make the passage to Cavite and skillful enough to evade the Tahn patrols was simply set—How much do you own in liquid assets? Only the quite rich need apply for a corner space in a stinking cargo hold.
Sten filed his immediate after-action report. Then he and Kilgour freshened up, put on their least tired sets of coveralls, and started looking for Guards headquarters.
They found General Mahoney in a cacophony of underlings. Division headquarters was set up in a collection of armored carriers half a kilometer from the landing field. Sten wondered why Mahoney wasn't working out of his command assault ship.
Mahoney spotted them standing outside his personal carrier. Four gestures in sign language: Stand by. Ten minutes. I'm in the drakh.
It took twenty minutes before the last officer had his orders and was scurrying away. And then Mahoney brought them up to speed.
There may have been icing, but there wasn't any cake, the general informed them rather grimly.
"Quite a fleet," he said, indicating a monitor screen.
"Admire it real fast, gentlemen. Because it's only going to be around for another fourteen hours or so. I don't know what they nomenclature this kind of operation in Staff College, but I'd call it Dump and Depart."