"An' there's a reason?" Alex asked. "Or is the wee navy afeard a' gettin' their tunics messed?"
"Clot yes, there's a reason," Mahoney said. "And if I didn't have a staff conference in... twenty minutes, I'd pull up a bottle and give you all the gory details. But I'll give you an overall.
"First of all, the Empire's up against it. Bad. I assume you two thugs have accessed van Doorman's 'Eyes-only' sitreps from Prime?"
They had—Sten through a computer tap and Alex by making friends with a semilovely cipher clerk on the Swampscott. The reports were uniformly disastrous.
"The real status is even worse," Mahoney said. "This big chubby fleet that's all around us? Maybe it'd give you a start if somebody said it's the only still-intact strike force for a quarter of this galaxy?"
Sten blinked.
Mahoney smiled grimly. "The Tahn, and all their new allies who're scrambling aboard, haven't missed much. Two things you might find interesting—so far we haven't been able to mount one single offensive. Not against Tahn systems, not even to recover any of the systems we've lost. The fleet gave my transports cover—and as soon as we're off-loaded, they're going to load up every dependent and any Imperial settler whose got brains enough to evacuate. Then everything except a few of the assault ships and patrol boats haul ass for safety."
Sten grimaced.
"There aren't a whole clottin' lot of other options," Mahoney said. "The Empire can't take the chance of losing this fleet."
"It's none of my business, sir. But why're you here? Seems to me," Sten said, "like all that's going to happen is the First Guards'll go down the sewer pipe with the rest of us."
"Your CO's a cheery sort," Mahoney commented.
"Aye, sir. He's thinkit tha's a sewer pipe to go doon."
"Okay. This—like the rest of the drakh I've said—is classified. We're supposed to hold Cavite. Sooner or later what goes around'll come around. And the Empire will need a springboard to strike back from."
"What brainburn came up with that ?"
"Your ex-boss," Mahoney said.
Sten backwatered—even though this was most informal, he didn't think it quite bright to be insulting the Eternal Emperor. "Sorry, sir. But I still don't think it's going to work."
Even though there was no one else in the carrier, Mahoney lowered his voice. "I don't either, Commander. I think the Emperor still thinks that he's got time to play with. Because sooner or later, we're going to win. He's putting his chips on sooner."
"Personal question, sir. What's your opinion?"
"I think that you and I and the Guards and van Doorman's fleet are going to end up providing some top-quality martyrs for Imperial recruiting," Mahoney said frankly. "Oh, well," he finished. "I guess things aren't going to get much worse."
Mahoney was wrong.
Three hours later, even before the fleet had finished offloading Mahoney's supplies, two Tahn destroyers hit Cavite Base. Missiles killed one of them, and the second was battered into retreat by one of the battlewagons.
But the fleet admiral had absolute orders. If the Tahn made any attack, he was to abort and withdraw at once, regardless of mission status on Cavite.
Ports hissed shut, and the Imperial fleet whined into the air and vanished into AM2 drive, leaving the skies of Cavite as bare as they had been before—leaving more than 7,000 Imperial civilians abandoned.
Two days after that, Tahn bombs thundered down on Cavite. The invasion bombardment had begun.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
The first attack was successful. Too successful.
Forty nonnuclear bombs had been skip-launched by Tahn ships, darting into the upper reaches of Cavite's ionosphere and then away. All of them had similar targets—Imperial communication and/or computer centers. Thirty-one of them hit on target, or close enough to cause significant damage. Six more sent the com centers offline for at least an hour. Two were destroyed by a very alert Guards surface-to-air missile team, and the last was blown out of the sky by a patrol boat.
Of course the bombs had to have been guided. Mahoney and his superskilled Guard technicians had less than three hours to make their analysis.
Could the bombs have been remote-flown by operators in the Tahn ships? Highly unlikely, because not only were the fixed centers of the 23rd Fleet hit—including two strikes on the critical Siglnt center—but three of Mahoney's semimobile sites were hit as well. It would be almost impossible for any human operator to have reflexes fast enough to spot the antenna array and significantly divert a downward-plunging bomb quickly enough to make a hit.
Also, none of Mahoney's ECM experts had picked up any transmission on any band aimed at the bombs.
Van Doorman, whose electronics ability stopped just short of understanding how electrical current in a cable can alternate and still work, had his own theory: The Tahn had developed a secret weapon.
Unsurprisingly, all estimates from fleet technicians echoed his theory. They knew on which side their circuit boards were buttered.
Mahoney listened to the admiral's theory politely, made noncommital noises, and got off the com. He already had his own ideas—and teams—in motion.
Any military is a juggernaut in more ways than the amount of force it can exert. It also tends to stick with any plan that has worked once or twice until it is proved that the enemy is on to it. That translates to friendly casualties, sometimes appallingly high, and sometimes even then the lesson is not learned.
For instance, during one of Earth's periodic wars, Earth Date a.d. 1914-1918, the military situation stalemated itself into trench warfare, with both sides fighting from fixed positions dug into the earth. The commander on one side, a certain Haig, ordered his troops to attack frontally and in parade-ground lines. Sixty thousand men were killed on his side in the first day alone.
After that, anyone not entirely gormless would have either relieved himself for terminal stupidity or else found a different set of tactics. But with only a few exceptions, that same battle plan was used until the war ground to an exhausted halt—each time with a casualty rate almost as catastrophic.
The Tahn were guilty of this mental laziness as well. Their system of using an agent in place to laser-guide either a bomb or a missile had worked extraordinarily well previously on a hundred or more worlds. There was no need to come up with a different method for the initial bombardment of Cavite that would precede the invasion. Especially when there were Tahn agents in place and many trained and eager members of the various Tahn revolutionary organizations available, despite the losses taken after the failure of Empire Day.
Habit was certainly part of Lady Atago and Admiral Deska's decision to use aimed bombs. A second factor may have been their quite justified contempt for the Imperial forces. But there was a vast difference between the sloths and recruits of the 23rd Fleet and the hard men of the First Guards. The Empire might not have fought a major war for many years—but the First Guards were very experienced as the Empire's fire brigade. Most of the men of the Guard were careerists, and almost half of them had more than twenty years of combat experience, off and on.
Among their specialties were city fighting and security sweeps. There were more than fifty bomb controllers in place around Cavite City, hidden in attics or unused buildings or operating from long-set-up mole holes in offices or apartments.
Two battalions of Guards were deployed. They worked in five-person teams, five-finger machines. The first man knocked or rang on the door, standing to its side. Two more crouched, weapons ready to either side. The last two were back and to either side to provide covering fire or to keep anyone from sniping out a window. Any resistance, or refusal to answer, and the door came down. Any supposition that General Mahoney had a tendency to disregard civil liberties when it was expedient was most correct. Besides, any investigating commission would be set up only if they held Cavite, and only after the war was won.