Кристофер Банч - Fleet of the Damned

It took Mahoney four days to prepare his major offensive.

A battle can have many objectives—to gain territory, to mask a second attack, etc. Mahoney's attack was designed to kill Tahn soldiers.

He explained his battle plan very carefully to Admiral van Doorman. Once van Doorman understood the plan, he was ecstatic. He was sure that the battle would shatter the Tahn and force them to withdraw from Cavite—or at least to retreat into defensive quarters.

Ian Mahoney wondered how van Doorman had managed to spend so many years in the service and still believe there was a pony in there somewhere.

The most that could happen was that the Tahn juggernaut might be thrown back and stalled for a while. Mahoney saw no other strategy than the one he had begun with—to try to keep fighting until Cavite could be reinforced. This was a possibility that he viewed as increasingly unlikely. But in the meantime, he could make victory increasingly expensive for Lady Atago and the Tahn.

And so, expecting nothing, the Empire attacked.

The Tahn, of course, had air supremacy around the perimeter. Their constantly patrolling tacships made sure that any men or vehicles moving near the lines stood an odds-on chance of being hit.

Farther back, closer to Cavite Base, Mahoney still had enough functioning AA launchers to keep off all but major Tahn air strikes. Under cover of darkness, he moved half of his available launchers forward and positioned them just inside the perimeter sector near Strongpoint Sh'aarl't.

Van Doorman had very few warships left besides the carefully hidden Swampscott . But one of them was the destroyer commanded by Halldor, the Husha .

The Tahn normally kept their tacships grounded during darkness, maintaining air superiority with destroyers equipped with warning sensors some kilometers beyond the lines. A night sortie by Imperial ships would bring an instant response, but the Tahn ground-support craft would not be worn out by constant patrolling.

At sunrise, the Tahn tacships lifted from their forward bases toward the lines.

At sunrise plus fifteen minutes, the Husha bellowed out of its underground hanger and, at full Yukawa drive, swept toward and then across the perimeter. Weapons yammering, the Husha shattered the flotilla of Tahn ships patrolling that sector. By the time the Tahn had cruisers and destroyers over that part of the perimeter, the Husha was already grounded and safe.

Lady Atago and Admiral Deska asked why an Imperial ship would have made the sweep. The answer was obvious—van Doorman proposed an attack.

They reinforced their aerial elements and sent them forward over the lines.

The Tahn ships were easy targets as the Empire's AA tracks threw off their camouflage and launched.

More Tahn ships, including one cruiser, were killed. The Tahn infantry was put on full alert.

And the Imperial Forces made their assault.

Atago was surprised—the first wave wasn't made up of Guard forces. Instead, ragtag soldiers of the naval provisional battalions went forward.

For the Tahn landing forces, they were easy targets.

The naval battalions held briefly, then reeled back, back beyond their original positions.

This was the weak point that Atago had been waiting for. This was a chance to drive a spearhead through the Empire's lines and possibly take Cavite Base itself.

The time was close to nightfall.

Atago ordered her forces to consolidate their salient. At dawn, they would attack once more.

Four hours later, both EliInt and Siglnt told Atago that Mahoney was reinforcing the defensive positions with armor. What few assault tracks were undamaged appeared, indeed, to be moving toward the perimeter.

Very good, Lady Atago thought. Her own heavy equipment outnumbered the Imperial tracks by ten to one. Now was the chance to completely smash the Imperial Forces on Cavite. She stripped her own units bare, sending armor forward, organized by hastily established combat commands.

The plan, she knew, would be that at dawn she would attack. General Mahoney would counterattack with his tanks. And her own mailed fist would rumble forward.

There were three hours until dawn.

Lady Atago slept the sleep of a heroine.

General Ian Mahoney, on the other hand, slurped caff and snarled.

From his side of the lines, things were very different. The attack by the Husha had been very deliberate, intended to destroy not only Tahn tacships but their reinforcements. That assault had indeed been made by naval battalions, but battalions commanded by officers from the First Guards, who had carefully choreographed the events. Attack… and then fall back beyond the lines.

The Tahn counterattack reached positions predetermined by Mahoney, positions that were actually indefensible.

The backup armor that Mahoney had moved forward was mostly gravsleds equipped with noise simulators. They broadcast using call signs of the Guards armor and on Guards armor wavelengths.

Only sixteen Guard assault tracks were on the front lines. At dawn, they went forward—and were obliterated.

It was a disaster. But none of the Tahn investigated those smoking hulks and found out that they were remote-controlled. Not a single Guardsman died in those tracks.

Atago sent her armor in to attack through the salient.

The com grid hummed, and outside the Imperial perimeter, hydraulics hissed into motion and gun turrets ripped through turf, their cannon seeking and then locking onto their targets.

Strongpoint Sh'aarl't was alive.

Alive and killing.

No one inside the fort was entirely sure that the chaincannon, even though they looked functional, wouldn't blow up when the first round went down the tubes. Sten had ordered the crews out of the turrets and the flash doors sealed before he gave the firing command.

The three cannon roared, sounding like, as Tapia somewhat indelicately put it, "dragons with diarrhea." With a rate of fire of 2,000 rounds per minute, the sound was a wall of solid explosions.

The chaincannon had been intended for defense against high-speed aerial attackers. So although the computer may have been primitive by Foss's standards, its ability to acquire the low-speed targets that were the Tahn tanks was infallible.

The shells were supposed to be incendiary, but only about a third of them went off. It didn't matter—the solid sheet of metal simply can-openered the armor.

Sten heard a squeal of "It works! It works!"—probably from Tapia—as he ordered the gun crews back into the turrets.

Strongpoint Sh'aarl't worked very well indeed.

The first wave of tanks was already rumbling through what had been the Imperial outer perimeter when Mahoney ordered the fort to open up. Meanwhile, three-man Guards teams armed with hunter/killer missiles came out of their spider holes and slaughtered the Tahn tracks within minutes.

Sten had more than enough targets in the three kilometers between the fort and the perimeter.

Lady Atago was holding the bulk of her armor back to reinforce the spearhead. Since the Tahn knew they had air superiority and were out of line-of-sight of the perimeter, they had the tanks stacked up along the approach routes bow to stern.

Sten, or rather, Foss—or rather the fort's computer—let the chaincannon follow those jammed rubbled roads. The computer tabbed sixty tanks hit and destroyed, and then a series of sympathetic explosions sent fireballs boiling down the streets. The computer, a little sulkily, told Foss that it had lost count.

A red light gleamed—the quad projectile turret, Alex in charge, was in action. The Tahn infantry had recovered from the shock of being hit from the rear and were attacking toward the hill. As long as the antipersonnel chaingun kept firing, it would keep the grunts well out of effective range. Nothing hand-held could punch through the fort's armor—or so the archaic specifications promised.