There were various reports as to what noble pronunciations on the order of "I have returned" or " Lafayette nous arrivons" Mahoney made as his boots crashed down. They were all tissues of lies.
His first observation: "I forgot how much this clottin' armpit world smells like an open—incoming!"
And Mahoney chewed gravel as the missile smashed down bare meters away.
The First Guards had been singled out for the "honor" of being the first to land on Cavite by Mahoney. Years before, the division had been wiped out holding Cavite in the opening of the Tahn War. Only a handful of noncoms, officers, and technicians had been evacked during the retreat at the Eternal Emperor's personal orders. They had been used as a cadre to reform the unit with fresh blood and then sent back into combat.
Mahoney thought they deserved the "privilege" of revenge. He might have been a little battle-happy in his thinking. There were no more than a dozen guardsmen who had been on Cavite—the grinding down of the Tahn had ground the division, as well. In addition, they still had not finished training the replacements after the Naha.
The "honor" that all the combat-experienced troops would have liked was a return to Prime, a nice parade, and the next half century spent garrisoning some R&R world. Two beats after the first Wheep-Crack past his or her ear, even the most gung-ho replacement agreed with that idea.
But the Guards pushed on, day by bloody day, across the planet and into Cavite City. The battle was a reversal of their bitter defeat—now they had complete air and space superiority and an unlimited amount of weaponry and ammunition.
Not that the Tahn defenders surrendered. K'akomit'r, in their language, meant both "I give up" and "I do not exist."
Most of them chose just that—fighting to the last round, then suiciding with a grenade or charging armor with an improvised spear. Mahoney saw one stubby Tahn private, surrounded, tap-arm a grenade on the ground and then tuck it under his combat helmet. By that time he and the other battered guardsmen around him thought the subsequent explosion the best joke of the day.
Less than an hour later, one of Mahoney's aides, one who had landed on the battleship, found the fleet marshal and handed him a message.
EYES ONLY, from the Eternal Emperor. The message was in an old Mantis code that Mahoney could decipher blindfolded and in a typhoon. It read:
QUIT PLAYING GAMES AND GET BACK TO WORK.
Mahoney growled, stripped his combat vest of grenades and magazines, threw them to a nearby guardsman, and headed back to maps, computers, and projections.
Lady Atago fulfilled her vow.
Every Tahn fleet that was combatworthy was grouped and launched at the Fringe Worlds. She ruthlessly stripped reserve and home defense squadrons of all warships and sent them into battle.
The slogans were chanted, and the livies were ominous with takeoff after takeoff.
The Empire's defeat was certain.
It was very uncertain to a nameless Tahn supply officer who sat in the cramped cubicle of his obsolete battle cruiser. Finally he shut off the com that was still broadcasting inspirational messages from the council and stared at his screens.
He keyed to the bottom line of all of them.
CREW: 50% of mandated personnel. 11% rated "Trained." 4% "Station-trained."
SUPPLIES: 71% required for mission accomplishment including return to base.
ARMAMENT: 11% bunker capacity chainguns; 34% tube capacity missiles.
SYSTEMS: 61% functional.
As he watched, the "sixty-one percent" hesitated, then changed to "fifty-eight percent" as, somewhere in the guts of the ship, another weapons system succumbed to cumulative wear.
The livies that showed the Tahn going off into the final battle were supposedly broadcast live. Atago, no fool, was not about to allow that.
Accidents, after all, could happen. And accidents were most demoralizing even to the thoroughly conditioned Tahn populace—which was why the livies showing the takeoff of those three brand new superbattleships that had chilled Sten were never seen.
One of them—the replacement for Atago's obsolescent and battered Forez—was not scheduled for the assault.
But the other two were.
One, the Panipat, lifted up to twenty meters away from its massive docking cradle before losing two Yukawa drive units and almost crashing. Only skillful pilotage brought it back down, seemingly undamaged. Immediate system analysis showed, however, that not only were the two drive units out, but all other units would be failure-prone. Also, the AM2 drive would produce no more than fifty percent capacity.
There were no explanations—except that all three ships had been slammed together, even more hastily built than were the usual Tahn warships. Plus, in a time when all strategic materials were in critical shortage, compromises had been made.
The new Forez-class ships might have looked awesome. But there was not a lot of them there.
The third ship, the Gogra, lifted successfully. Out-atmosphere from Heath, the ship's commander ordered the ship and its four escorting cruisers into AM2 drive.
Someone blundered.
The Gogra and one cruiser managed to collide. Collisions, in the macrodistances of space, never happened.
This one did.
There were no survivors from either ship, so no explanations as to exactly what had gone wrong were ever available.
Just beyond detection range of the Fringe Worlds, the Tahn fleets three-pronged for the assault, becoming the first, second, and third attack forces. The formations, timing, and deployment would have produced, from any prewar Tahn admiral, relief of at least half of the ships' captains and probably a tenth reminded of their "honor" and given one projectile round.
But there were not very many prewar Tahn admirals, let alone ship captains, left. Their bodies were desiccated in space, filmed across the bulkheads of shattered ships, or were simply a no-longer-visible contribution to entropy.
But war was the fine art of making do with what one had.
Plus the Tahn knew that destiny was on their side.
Destiny, of course, was generally on the same side as God.
And so the Tahn fleets attacked the big battalions.
The Tahn second attack force never made it to the Fringe Worlds.
Admiral Mason, commanding six destroyer squadrons from the bridge of a brand-new cruiser, was waiting. His ships were lying doggo, barely within detector range of each other, as the Tahn came in. The first DD making contact linked up, and Mason sent all in ships in carefully and endlessly rehearsed attack formations.
They broke the Tahn on the first sweep, then went independent. Mason's skippers might have been drilled to the point of brainburn, but secretly each of them was proud to serve under a killer like
Mason—even if he was a complete clot, he still put them "in harm's way."
The Tahn battleship that was flagship for the second force center was killed by at least three launches from three separate ships, and all command of the ragtag fleets was gone.
At that point Mason grudgingly reported to his superior—and nine full Imperial fleets came in to finish the job. One Tahn cruiser, eleven destroyers, and a handful of auxiliaries, all damaged, survived to break off and limp back to Heath.
Admiral Mason had to admit that his ships had performed adequately.
A full sector away, Fleet Admiral Ferrari fought his battle almost perfectly.
He had had more than enough time, since Intelligence had alerted him that the Tahn fleets had launched, to prepare himself