Кристофер Банч - Fleet of the Damned

"Thank you, sir. How is Brijit doing?"

"She is still healthy. Still working with her new… friend." His next words were nearly inaudible. "Another thing I shall never understand."

Sten, with nothing to say, saluted the old man's back and got out.

The four ships that were now the 23rd Fleet had gone underground along with the troops and the civilians. The two destroyers were hidden about two kilometers apart in a widened subway tunnel. The picket ship was camouflaged in a ruined hangar. But the ponderous Swampscott had been more difficult to hide.

Sten wondered if the engineer who had come up with the Swampscott's eventual hiding place was still alive. He would like to have bought the man a beer or six—if there was still any beer in Cavite City.

Two of the massive bomb craters from the Tahn attack on Empire Day had been widened, deepened, concrete-floored, and connected. Under cover of night, electronic masking, and a probe by a Guards battalion, the Swampscott was moved into those craters. The hole was then roofed with lightweight beams, and a skin was sprayed over them. Plas was then poured and configured to exactly resemble the craters. None of the Tahn surveillance satellites or overflights by their spy ships spotted the change.

Sten figured that he would probably have carte blanche when he reported to the Swampscott . He was right. His immediate superiors, van Doorman's appointees, surmised that Sten was the new man and, true benders and scrapers, believed that his every thought was a general order.

Sten carefully scattered the survivors of his own command through every department of the Swampscott . If the drakh came down—and Sten agreed with van Doorman that it would—at least there would be one or two reliable beings he could depend on in every section.

He moved the combat information center, which was also the secondary command location and his duty station, from its location in the second, rearmost "pagoda." He buried it deep in the guts of the ship, finding a certain amount of satisfaction in taking over what had previously been the Swampscott 's officers' dining room.

He also suggested—which became an order—to van Doorman's executive officer that perhaps the ship might be stripped for combat. Somehow, the Swampscott still had its beautiful wooden paneling, ruminant-hide upholstery, and fine and flammable dining gear in officers' country.

The loudest objections, of course, came not from the officers but from their flunkies. Sten gleefully reassigned the waiters, bartenders, and batmen from their lead-swinging positions to the undermanned gun sites.

This was a great deal of fun for Sten—until he remembered that sooner or later this hulk would have to go into combat. He estimated that the Swampscott would last for four seconds in battle against a Tahn cruiser. Half that, if they were unfortunate enough to face the Forez or Kiso .

But he had to take his satisfactions where he could get them.

Sten had, at General Mahoney's request, detached Kilgour and put him as coordinator of civilian movement.

When—and if—the liners showed up, they would have only moments on the ground to load the refugees. And both Mahoney and van Doorman agreed that in this area, there was no room for either ego or proper precedent.

Therefore, Kilgour was ordered into civilian clothes and officially given the rank of deputy mayor of Cavite City. Whoever had held that post previously had either died or disappeared, as had the mayor himself.

Kilgour wondered why he had so much support—certain officers and noncoms of the First Guards had been put under his command. Neither he nor anyone else in the Guards—beyond Mahoney's own chief of staff and the heads of his G-sections—knew that Mahoney was systematically stripping his best out of the division to be sent to safety as cadres for the new unit.

And no one except Ian Mahoney knew that their command general was about to violate orders from the Emperor and stay behind on Cavite to die with the remnants of his division.

At first Kilgour thought it would be a hoot to have vastly higher-ranked officers under his command. The hoot was there, but a very minor part of his job.

Alex Kilgour got very little sleep as the civilians were winkled out of their shelters, broken down into hundred-person loading elements, and assigned cargo orders. Each of them was permitted what he, she, or it wore. No more—including toilet articles.

Kilgour stood in one of the assembly areas. There were two scared children hanging onto either leg and a very adorable baby in his arms—a baby, Kilgour realized, that was piddling on his carefully looted expensive tweeds. And he was trying to listen to, regulate, and order from several conversations.

"… my Deirdre hasn't shown up, and I'm very…"

"… Mr. Kilgour, we need to discuss which city records should be removed with…"

"… I wan' my mommie…"

"…your behavior is simply incomprehensible, and I want to know the name of your superior, immediately…"

"… since y' be't th' boss, is there anything me an' some of my mates can do to help with…"

"… since you're our representative, I would like to protest the heartless way that those soldiers…"

"… when we reach safety, my lawyers will be most interested in the fact that…"

"Where's Mommie?"

Kilgour rather desperately wanted to be somewhere safe, like on the front lines facing a Tahn human wave assault.

The blurt transmission came through—the rescue force was twelve hours away from Cavite.

Sten was in the engine room of the Swampscott , trying to figure out why the ship's second drive unit was not delivering full power.

He was crouched under one of the drive tubes, listening to the monotonous swearing of the second engineer—who was not a van Doorman appointee and who was competent—trying to meter unmetered feed lines when he realized that he had been due at a command conference five minutes before.

He slithered out and ran for a port. There would be no time to change out of his grease-soaked coveralls.

Outside, on the concrete, he looked around for the gravsled that was supposedly assigned just to him. The driver had taken a break and was grabbing a quick meal. It took Sten another ten minutes to hunt the woman down.

Sten was very late by the time the sled lifted and hissed down a communications trench toward Mahoney's TOC. Very late—but still alive.

The Tahn missile was a blind launch.

The Tahn knew, of course, that the Imperial Forces inside Cavite City had gone underground. But they had little hard intelligence on exactly where the vital centers were.

Since they had a plethora and a half of available weaponry, they fired into the perimeter at random. The Imperial stronghold was narrow enough so that almost anything would do some damage.

Assembled under the ruined emporium were the top-ranking Imperial officers. Mahoney knew the dangers of having most command elements in one place—but it was necessary for him to give a final face-to-face briefing.

The Tahn missile was sent in, nap of the earth, across the front lines. It was not detected by any of the Guards' countermissile batteries. Two kilometers inside the lines, following its programming, it lifted and looked for a target.

There wasn't much. The missile might have gone random, reverting to its basic instructions, and smashed in somewhere close to the perimeter's center if its receivers hadn't picked up a broadcast fragment.

The broadcast came from one of Mahoney's brigade officers, who had sent a "Received-Acknowledged" signal on his belt transponder before entering the TOC.