The always hard-luck Eighth Guards were chosen for the "honor" of the assault. After two weeks of prior bombardment, the Imperial Navy advised that all Tahn resistance was battered bloody. The assault transports went in. The first wave was shattered in-atmosphere. The second made it to the ground—and then the Tahn opened fire.
Imperial strategists and psychologists had blundered. Because the Tahn used a rigid military and social structure, it was assumed that once the command elements were destroyed or out of contact, the soldiers themselves would stop fighting, commit suicide, or at the worst fight ineffectually.
The ignored statistic, known to the Empire before the war began, was that the Tahn used far fewer officers and noncoms per serving soldier than did any of the regular Imperial units. And so the Tahn regrouped, by squads, by fire teams, by pickup combat elements, and fought back.
Conquering the Pelze systems was supposed to have taken two E-months and required only the Eighth Guards to accomplish. Final victory took two E-years before the last Tahn element was killed. Six divisions were used in the process, and it became SOP for a new division to spend time on one of the Pelze worlds getting final live-fire training before being committed to a frontal assault.
The Eighth Guards was shattered. Two commanding generals were relieved, and the unit took eighty-three percent casualties before being pulled from combat. Its colors were cased, the guardsmen were reassigned to other units, and the unit was rebuilt from scratch.
That was disaster enough. What made it worse was that the assaults on Pelze were made before St. Clair discovered that the secret shipyards were in the Erebus System—half an empire away from Pelze.
Seventy-five thousand Imperial deaths. One and a quarter million Tahn corpses. In a completely meaningless battle.
Six battlefleets hit Erebus under the flag of Fleet Marshal Ian Mahoney.
So-called panacea targets—hit here and the war's gonna come to an end the day before yesterday—were normally a joke, useful only when a space force was arguing for larger appropriations that would probably bankrupt every other service if made.
Also, those glamour targets usually got hit once and once only. If the factory was trashed, they would not have to worry about it ever, ever, ever producing nasty widgets anymore.
The fact was always ignored that after a war, when the bean counters went in to figure out how effective the bombs had been, they learned that said factory probably was not trashed that badly and that concerted effort brought it back online within a few months.
Erebus looked to be such a panacea target.
Mahoney, coming from a more realistic background than most of the skyjocks serving under him, approached things differently.
The Erebus System was a bastard target, defended by every onworld weapon and heavily armed spacecraft the Tahn could afford to divert from mainline combat. And the pilots and missile crews fought to the death.
Mahoney made sure it was a real death.
His first strike took thirty percent casualties. There were splintered destroyers and tacships broken on the ground of Fundy, the Erebus System's main world, and more hulks spewing debris out in space.
He sent his ships in again the next day.
Twenty-eight percent casualties.
There were ship crews who broke and refused the attack order. Mahoney calmly ordered their courts-martial and relieved any skipper who hesitated at his orders.
Then he threw his guts up in his cabin, washed his face, and sent more men and women to their deaths.
After six days of hammering, the Tahn had nothing left to fight back with.
Mahoney sent in his battleships, monitors, and cruisers.
Three battlewagons and two of the ponderous cruisers went down—but the Erebus shipworks appeared to be permanently out of business.
Mahoney ordered the strike repeated the next day.
He had to relieve a fleet admiral for objecting.
But the attack ships went in again. And still a third time.
The worlds of Erebus looked to be suitable parking lots.
But just to make sure, against all conventions of war, Mahoney had the worlds dusted.
The factories of Erebus might go back to work—but every worker assigned to them would glow in the dark.
The First Guards, Mahoney's old command—now led by Major General Galkin—spearheaded the landing on Naha.
By that point they knew how to fight the Tahn:
Don't shoot at the civilians—they've got their own set of problems. Get them to the rear. Don't believe that anything isn't booby-trapped, from the ceremonial flag to the ugly plas casting of Lord Fehrle that'd make a great souvenir.
A Tahn can be anywhere. In a crater beside the road. Tied into a tree. Sited in a weapons position in the base of a statue. Waiting for days inside a burnt-out track, waiting for the chance to kill any Imperial within range, whether fighting man or woman, clerk, or civilian. And very competent at his or her trade of slaughter.
Eventually, Naha fell, in spite of the fact that the final days of the resistance were personally commanded by Lady Atago. The casualty rate was twice what had been expected, and the battle lasted three times longer than expected—expected that was, by staff people. The line grunts thought themselves damn lucky and damn good to have gotten off that lightly.
Naha gave the Empire the long-needed major base inside the Tahn worlds.
Now the real hammering would begin.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Even an experienced Tahn watcher might have drawn some wrong conclusions if he had observed the meeting between Lord Fehrle and the leaders of the two major factions on the High Council, Wichman and Pastour. If a hidden camera had captured them sitting at ease in Fehrle's darkened study, the Tahn watcher would have been most interested in who was not present. Meaning Lady Atago, Fehrle's heir apparent. The expert would make the instant assumption that new alliances were being struck and that Atago was on the way out, obviously because Fehrle perceived her new hero status as a threat.
The expert would have been wrong on both counts. Yes, it was true that Fehrle had thought of her when he had issued the invitation to Wichman and Pastour. It was because of her "white knight" image that he pointedly ignored her.
He did not want what he was about to propose to tarnish her image in any way. If he fell, he wanted her to be able to pick up his sword wearing armor that was mirror-bright. Fehrle was about to suggest a plan that assumed and depended upon the corruption and disloyalty of his own people. Atago would be enraged at his even suggesting that such a thing existed. It was a fact that Atago's simple soldier's mind could not accept.
Wichman would argue, it was true, but he could eventually be convinced. With the help of Pastour, the realist, Fehrle would have no difficulty at all.
Lord Fehrle served his guests with his own hands, helping them with their choice of delicacies on the tray and building them drinks. And as they ate and drank, he talked, setting the background: There were traitors everywhere, spies at every level, and fools who leaked vital information to enemy agents. To make his point, he vastly overstated the situation.
As expected, Wichman was shocked and immediately called for a heroic medicine-style purge to remove the poisons of disloyalty. What he had not expected was Pastour's reaction. The man sat in silence, his face growing bleaker with every word. Had Fehrle misguessed? Instead of support, would Pastour take on the role of an Atago and back Wichman's call for a bloodletting? If so, Fehrle would have to do some fast reanalysis of the situation or his plan would never get off the ground.