He slammed the alarm and opened a mike.
"All personnel." His voice was quite calm. "There are Tahn troops inside the fort. All personnel, secure entry to your areas. Alex?"
"Sir?" Even on the com there was a bit of a brogue.
"Can you see how these clots got in?"
There was a pause. "Tha's naught on the screens, sir. Ah'll bet tha'll hae come in frae' a turret."
That left two possibilities: Either of the two inoperable turrets—one, the second antipersonnel quad projectile turret; two, the second Turret B—could be breached. But the computer showed both secure.
"Turret C," Sten ordered. "Local control. Target—Tahn infantry approaching the fort. Fire at will."
He switched to another channel.
"Turrets A and D. Send five troops down to secure your ready rooms. There are no friendlies moving. Kilgour. If you've got anybody loose, get them to the command center."
"On th' way. Wait."
Alex should have stayed at the antipersonnel turret. But it took only one person to fire the quad projectile weapon. He left that one and, with six others, went looking for blood.
Sixteen sailors manning Turret A went out of their turret, headed toward the Tahn. The two forces met in a corridor. The battle was very quick—and very lethal. The AM2 rounds from the willyguns mostly missed. But hitting the concrete walls of the corridor, they exploded, sending concrete shrapnel shotgunning into the Tahn.
Captain Santol lost two squads before he could get a crew-served weapon firing. And then the sixteen sailors went down in a swelter of gore as projectiles whined and ricocheted.
Santol waved a squad forward, over the bodies and up into the turret. The rest of the sailors assigned to Turret A died there.
A second maneuver element of the Tahn tore into the element from Turret D. The sailors fought bravely—but weren't a match for the experienced Tahn soldiers.
Sten swore as he watched on a screen.
The Tahn were between his command center and the still-fighting Turret C. Sten had Foss and three computer clerks for an assault element. This would be stupidity, not nobility. But again—he had no options.
The Tahn assault company was spread out through the fort's corridors. They were good, Sten had to admit. Their tactic was to spray fire around a corner, send one man diving across the corridor for security, put two men in place as guards, and move on. And still another Tahn company was filing in through the damaged personnel turret.
Then the counterattack hit.
This was not Kilgour's pathetic strike force of seven, which was still moving down the long tube that led to the fort's center. This attack came from underneath—from the storage spaces.
There were five humans, including the two Tahn brothers. They were led by the spindar, Mr. Willie Sutton. They were pushing in front of them a small gravpallet. On it there were fifteen or so tall metal cylinders. Emergency oxygen tanks.
The counterattack came out of an unnoticed hatchway, halfway down a corridor. At the far end was Captain Santol and his command group.
Sutton was bellowing like a berserk siren as he rumbled forward.
"Shoot them! Shoot them down," Santol shouted, and projectiles crashed down the corridor.
The six Imperial sailors were cut down in the blast. The gravpallet drifted on another ten meters before it slowed to a stop.
Santol ran toward the bodies, a reaction team behind him. There would be more Imperials coming out of that hatch.
He slid around the gravsled... and Sutton reared up in front of him. Scales were ripped away, and ichor oozed from his wounds and mouth. The spindar loomed to his full height over the Tahn officer.
Santol's pistol was coming up, but late, too late, as claws sprang out of Sutton's forearm and bludgeoned forward, ripping away most of the Tahn's face. Santol screamed and went down.
His soldiers were firing. Sutton staggered back, against the wall, then forward again. From somewhere, he pulled a miniwillygun, brought it up, and fired—not at the Tahn but behind them, at the gravpallet. The round tore a cylinder open. Oxygen hissed, and then a ricocheting round sparked.
The corridor exploded, catching the Tahn in a miniature firestorm created by the exploding oxygen. Half of Santol's company died along with their commander. The disoriented survivors fell back toward the entrance.
Kilgour was waiting at a cross-tube. Again, the Tahn were not expecting an ambush. They fell back still farther.
It was the best chance Sten would have.
He found the nearest wall com. "All stations. All stations. This is Sten. Evac to entry. I say again. Evac to entry."
He and his four people linked up with Alex's crew and the one troop that had been left in the AP turret, and set up a rear guard.
It was not necessary. The CO of the second Tahn assault company had ordered most of the soldiers out of the fort. They would regroup and counterattack.
By the time they did, Tapia's entire crew had made it to the fort's exit.
They went back down the underground passage leading to the flattened maintenance shed, splashing through the deep muck. The shed was gone, but the hatch still operated.
Sten stood by it, taking a head count as his surviving sailors wearily climbed out. There were thirty-two left.
He formed them up and started across the flattened wastes toward the Imperial perimeter. Half a kilometer away, Sten took a small transmitter from his belt, snapped off the two safety locks, and pressed a switch.
Three minutes later, det charges would go, and Strong-point Sh'aarl't—or Sutton, or Tige, or whoever—was going to be a large crater in the ground.
The Tahn could have the privilege of naming it.
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
Two hours before dawn, Tanz Sullamora's shielded gravsled was cleared to land in the ruins of Arundel Castle.
There were only two man-made objects above ground. One was a transportable shielded landing dome, very common on radioactive mining planets but most incongruous in the heart of the Empire. The second was a very tall flagpole. At its peak hung two flags—the gleaming standard of the Empire and, below it, the Emperor's house banner, gold with the letters "AM2" superimposed over the negative element's atomic structure.
All Imperial broadcasts showed the ruins and the flag as their opening and closing shots. The symbol may have been obvious—but it signified. The Emperor, like the Empire itself, may have been hard-hit, but he was still standing fast and fighting.
Rad-suited guardsmen led Sullamora, also in antiradiation gear, from his ship through decon showers and into one of the drop shafts leading down toward the Imperial command center below the palace ruins.
At the shaft base, Sullamora clambered out of his suit, was decontaminated once more, and was ushered into the center. Two Gurkhas escorted the merchant prince down long paneled corridors that, even at this hour, were filled with scurrying officers and techs. Sullamora caught tantalizing glimpses, through portals that slid open and shut, of prog boards, huge computer screens, and war rooms.
He did not know that his route led through what the Emperor called a dog and pony show. The work was real, and the staff beings were busy—but everything he saw was nonvital standard procedures such as recruiting, training status, finance, and so forth.
The Emperor's own suite had also been carefully decorated to leave visitors with certain impressions.
There were many anterooms, capable of holding any delegation or delegate isolated until the Emperor was ready to meet. The walls were gray, and the furniture was two shades above Spartan. Wallscreens showed mysterious, unexplained maps and projections that would be replaced periodically with equally unknown charts and graphs. The Emperor's quirky sense of humor had decided that some of them were battle plans from wars fought thousands of years previously. Thus far, no one had found him out.