Кристофер Банч - Fleet of the Damned

"All turrets. You're on local control. Find your own targets."

Finally Tapia had some power. She sat in the command capsule on the gunlayer's sight. It looked not unlike a padded bicycle sans wheels, with a hood atop its handlebars. The handlebars, backed by the turret's own computer, were slaved to the cannon.

Four tanks blew apart before the attacking column was able to reverse out of sight behind a building. Out of sight—but not safe. Tapia shouted for the cannon's rate-of-fire control to maximum and chattered a long burst along the ruin's base. The building toppled, crushing the tanks.

Tapia experimented. If she kept firing her gun at maximum rate, the fort would run dry—a gauge showed that the ammo lockers for the gun were already down to eighty percent capacity. She learned how to conserve. Set the cannon's rate of fire to minimum (about 750 rpm) and tap the firing key. Exit one tank.

This was interesting, Tapia thought. She spotted six armored fighting vehicles crossing into the open, spun her sights, but was too late as another turret blew them into scrap metal. Tapia swore and looked around the battlefield again.

The fort was surrounded by the hulks of burning tanks. Smoke plumed up into a solid column around the strong-point. Tapia switched her sights from optical to infrared and found something interesting.

A track—and it ain't shooting at me. Very interesting. The track was in fact a command track housing the Tahn armored brigade commander. Since the CT had required an elaborate communications setup yet its designers hardly wanted the track to be readily identifiable as the brains behind an attack, the main gun had been replaced by a dummy. Tapia chortled, aimed carefully, and…

And the fort shook and her ears clanged in spite of the protective muffs all of the sailors wore.

In the command center, Sten hit a red control, and all of the turrets popped down, leaving nothing but a featureless hilltop for the now-positioned Tahn artillery to shoot at. The environmental system had finished venting the fort and had stored air in backup tanks. If Atago deployed a nuke or chemicals, Sten was ready to switch the fort into its own environment.

Sten doubted that would happen—Lady Atago needed this real estate to attack through. And only in the war livies did soldiers choose to fight in the balky, uncomfortable, and dangerous fighting suits if there was any other option.

"All combat stations. Report."

"Turret A. All green."

"Turret C. We're fine. Noiser'n hell, Skipper." That was Tapia, of course.

"Turret D. They're knocking up some dust. No damage."

"No puh-roblems from the shotgun squad, boss," Kilgour reported from the antipersonnel turret.

Sten was starting to be a little impressed with whoever had built this fort, regardless of their obviously moronic inspiration.

A screen lit. It was Mahoney. With the fort in the open, he had reverted to a standard com link with Sten.

"Report!" Mahoney, in midoperation, was all efficiency.

"Strongpoint Sh'aarl't," Sten said, equally formally, "at full combat readiness. Expended weaponry filed…now! No casualties reported. Awaiting orders."

Mahoney cracked a smile. "Adequate, Commander. Stand by. They'll be hitting you full-strength next."

"Understood. Sh'aarl't. Out."

The Tahn assault tracks were pulled back out of range of the fort's cannon. Atago tried air strikes.

Sten, not expecting any real results, switched the fire and control computer for aerial targets. Now on fully automatic, the guns elevated, whined, and spat fire.

Tahn tacships were sharded out of the skies. This should not be happening, Sten told himself. I am manning an archaic weapons system. Hasn't technology progressed?

Foss had the explanation. Archaic, was it? The guns were tracking, and the projectiles' proximity fuses were detonating on, long-abandoned frequencies. None of the Tahn ships had ECM sets broadcasting on those frequencies.

Sten was starting to feel a certain fondness for his ancient gray elephant.

"Shall we abandon the attack, Lady?"

Atago ran yet another prog on the computer. "Negative."

Deska tried not to show surprise. "The attrition rate from that one fort is unacceptable."

"This is true. However, consider this. That fort is quite effective. The Imperial Forces are weak. Therefore, if that fort can be destroyed, we should be able to punch completely through their lines. And all that is necessary is to change our tactics. Which I have already done. The first stage shall commence within moments."

It was fortunate for the Tahn that Lady Atago had tried to prepare for any eventuality when she structured her battle plans. She hit Strongpoint Sh'aarl't with monitors.

Monitors should not have been part of the Tahn fleet for the Cavite operation, since there would be no conceivable use for the single-purpose behemoths.

Monitors were large, bulky warships. They were heavily armored and carried light secondary antimissile armament. Their only weapon was a single monstrous launch tube located along the ship's centerline, much as the Kali launch tubes on the Bulkeley-class tacships were located, but enormously larger. The missile—projectile—fired by the monitors was, in fact, somewhat larger than a tacship.

A monitor was a miniature spacecraft powered by AM2 engines. It was guided by a single operator into its target, and was intended for offplanet warfare, to be used against fortified moonlets or planetoids only.

Tahn intelligence had told Atago that no such space forts existed in the Fringe Worlds. Atago decided, however, to add two to her fleet, just in case. Now those two monitors were deployed against Sten's fort.

One monitor hovered, nose down, just outside Cavite's atmosphere, and fire belched from its nose. The missile flashed downward.

The reason that monitors weren't used against close-range targets became obvious. At full AM2 drive, it is almost impossible for the operator to acquire his target and home the missile in. Automatic homing was also, of course, too slow. The vast standoff distances of space warfare were vital for success, especially since the cost of each missile was just about that of a manned tacship.

Atago was not concerned with any of that—if Cavite's fall was delayed much longer, Atago's own fall would be guaranteed.

Still accelerating, the first missile missed the fort by only 500 meters—its operator was very skilled. The shock wave flattened what ruins were still standing near Strongpoint Sh'aarl't for almost a kilometer.

Sten was getting out of his command chair when the missile landed. He found himself sprawled flat against a wall two meters away, in blackness. A generator hummed, and secondary lighting went on. Sten was seeing double. Dust motes hung in the air.

He stumbled back to the board. "All stations. Report!"

And, amazingly, they did.

The impact, of course, had been even more severe up in the turrets. Tapia was bleeding from the nose and ears. But her cannon was still battle-worthy, as were Turrets A and D. The video to Kilgour's antipersonnel turret was out, but there was still an audio link to the center.

By the time Sten had his status, Foss had analyzed what had hit them.

"Very nice," Sten said. Ears still ringing, he and everyone else in the fort were talking very loudly. "What happens if they hit us direct?"

"No prog available," Foss said.

"Very nice indeed. Can you give us any warning?"

"Not when they launch. But they'll be bringing those two monitors on and off station to fire. It'll take 'em some time to reload. As soon as they get on-station, I'll hit the buzzer.

"Speaking of which," Foss said, looking at a screen, "that other clot's getting ready to try his luck."

Sten had time to order all turret crews down into the ready rooms before the second missile hit. This one missed by almost a full kilometer, and the shock was no worse than, Sten estimated, getting punched by Alex.