The destroyer he had ordered sent out had transmitted a message, in that breakable code, that appeared to come from the vanguard of a heavy Imperial strike force. This mythical strike force ordered Mason to abandon his position off Jochi—the besieged forces on the planet would have to fend for themselves for a while—and serve as a forward screen for this strike force.
The transmission continued, saying that Mason would be fully briefed at a later date, but that this strike force had been specially detached to punish the dissident Suzdal and Bogazi—cleverly making no mention of any human dissidents—by attacking the ET capital worlds, returning tit for tat.
Sten was too elaborate in his deception—he forgot to allow for the fact that this was exactly what any of the races or cultures in the Altaics would have done if they were in the same situation as the Empire.
Three E-hours later, the Suzdal and Bogazi heavies broke orbit and struck, at full speed, for their own systems.
Sten, trying to keep the elaborate geometry of astrogation in his mind, thought they would probably set a course in x direction for their home worlds. A course that would be more direct than the one Mason was supposedly on, and certainly one that was predicted never to coincide with the y direction or directions the huge Imperial strike force would most logically track.
Uh-huh. All this exotica from someone who had needed coaching in basic one-ship astrogation back in Flight School. It would not work—at least not for very long. Sten hoped it worked long enough for the next step, and for Mason to duck around the Suzdal/Bogazi fleet and get back to where he would be needed.
Regardless, at least one layer of the sandwich had been stripped away.
Four hours later, scout elements of the Altaic Confederation's army entered the outskirts of Rurik.
Sten had told Sarsfield his hopes, not his orders. He did not want the First Guards to feel they were being commanded to pull some kind of impossible Bastogne or Thermopylae.
Stop them. Try to get them to dig in. Make them think we're counterattacking.
Sarsfield, like Sten, had counted noses. Neither of them thought this third ruse would work. It's very hard, after all, to bluff someone who's got three aces and the joker showing and both elbows keeping his hole card from being turned over, when you've got four different suits and one slice of bologna.
The enemy scouts proceeded unmolested.
However, their nerves were tested. Here they found an abandoned barricade. There vehicles were overturned. Up there, some kind of antenna spun. Cryptic codes had been sprayed on the pavement.
The scouts proceeded, more and more cautiously.
They saw no signs of Imperial soldiers.
It was unlikely they would-the Guards' forward recon elements were specialists in not being seen.
The Confederation's progress was reported.
Frick & Fracks were behind the lines, waiting for the first heavy armor and gravsleds to creep into the city. No one likes to risk his expensive track or even more expensive gravlighter in the rat trap of city fighting. But the Altaic soldiers had no choice.
They were in the trap.
Sarsfield ordered the artillery to open up. His own cannon and surface-to-surface launchers opened up on predetermined targets, targets that were now obscured by enemy vehicles.
The tacships were launched from the mother ships, which were grounded near the huge park back of the embassy, where Sten had ordered the transports grounded.
Drakh-hot pilot Hannelore La Ciotat popped her tacship up, saw the track platoon's cannon begin to swivel, blasted a volley of rockets from the rack jury-rigged on her ship's belly, ran two cases through her forward chain gun, and disappeared.
La Ciotat was swearing almost continuously. Clot. She might as well have joined the clotting infantry. She gunned her tacship down a street, well below the building roofs, looking for another target.
The platoon was destroyed-and the momentum of the attack temporarily broken.
But they kept coming.
The Jochi armor-infantry Combat Command moved swiftly and efficiently toward the city center. It was a highly trained force on familiar ground. The tracks would hit anything the infantry couldn't, and the grunts kept antitank gunners from killing their big friends.
"Battery A... fire!" and the four Imperial gravsleds appeared to explode. Each explosion was, in fact, forty-eight rockets salvoed from the racks mounted on the gravsleds' rear. The unarmored sleds lifted at full speed and headed for another location.
The rockets were just that-propellant, guidance vanes, and warhead. Their accuracy was plus-minus fifty meters at four hundred meters. Appallingly bad. But when 192 rockets, each with fifty kilos of explosive in its warhead, simultaneously impact on an area one hundred meters on a side, and that area is occupied by a crack armor-infantry unit, the results can be impressive.
The Jochi infantry died to a man.
A few of the tracks had been hit and crippled. But most of them were still combat-capable.
Then the two-man antitrack teams rose out of their hiding places in the rubble, fire-and-forget missiles streaking fire.
But the Confederation kept coming.
The skies were black, and there were high, building storm clouds in the distance.
Kilgour wiped sweat from his forehead. "Th' weather'll break, noo, an' we'll lose th' wee tacships."
Cind grimaced. The ships had all-weather capability. But no one had ever meant that to mean a spacecraft could fly in the heart of a city, fight an enemy on the ground, which meant with mostly visual target acquisitions, and not spend a lot of time revamping the local architecture.
Or, if the architecture was as solid as on Rurik, crashing.
Seconds later the storm broke, huge raindrops shattering down. Kilgour swore, ducking for shelter that wasn't there, and then his language went doubly purple as hailstones spattered him.
Clottin' wonderful, he thought. Tis nae enow we hae th' hands ae all men agin us here, nae t' mention a few ETs, but th' weathergods hae us on the list ae well.
Warrant Officer La Ciotat stood beside her tacship, oblivious to the rain spattering in through the Victory's open hangar doors. The ship was grounded just behind the embassy, and the other tacship carrier, the Bennington, nearby.
"Sir. I'm willing to try it," she argued. "We'll just use the Kali sensors out the front of the launch tube, and I'll go on instruments and get targets from the missile."
"Negative," her flight commander ordered. "We're grounded. We'll be pulling drive offworld next.
"Or if not, we're really going to be making kamikaze runs, instead of just getting close like you want. That's an order."
"I have reports," Sarsfield said, tonelessly, "that my artillerymen are firing sabot charges over open sights. They're getting close, Sten."
"Tell them to blow their guns and move to the transports."
"Yessir."
"What's the loading status?"
Sarsfield consulted with an aide.
"I have all battalions loaded, except the one boarding now, and the First Battalion in its defensive position back of the square. Plus the arty batteries that are hauling for the ships right now.
"I guess," Sarsfield said, "the First will have to fight the rear guard action. Clot. At least," he said sadly, "they volunteered for it." As had every other battalion of the First Guards, Sten knew.
"All embassy personnel are loaded," Sten said. "As ordered, you are to lift all Imperial ships when First Battalion has the attacking units engaged and counterattacks. The Victory will hold on the ground until the last possible moment for pickup for any Guards elements that can disengage after you lift. I'm shutting down this station now."