Кристофер Банч - Fleet of the Damned

For the moment, there didn't seem to be anything for him to do. The crew was at general quarters—modified. Half of them were permitted to sleep or eat. The food was mainly sandwiches and caff brought to the stations. Those who chose to sleep curled up beside their positions.

Sten turned the bridge over to Foss—the ship was on a preset plot—while he and Kilgour made the rounds.

The engine room was hot and greasy and smelled. The late van Doorman probably would have fainted seeing his carefully polished metalwork smeared, the gleaming white walls scarred and spattered. But spit-shining was something else there wasn't time for. Just keeping the Swampscott's engines running was herculean.

Sten looked around the engine spaces. Tapia and the engineer had everything running as smoothly as possible. He started toward a companionway.

"Commander," Tapia said, rather awkwardly. "Can I ask you something?"

"GA."

"Uhh…"

Kilgour took the hint and went up the steps to the deck above. Sten waited.

"You remember—back at the fort—when I said I wanted a transfer? I was being funny then. Now I'm serious. When we park this clotting rust bucket, I want reassignment."

Sten wondered—was Tapia starting to crack?

"Ensign," he said. "If we get this time bomb back, all of us'll get reassigned. Hard to run a tacdiv when you don't have ships. My turn. Why?"

"I just checked Imperial regs."

"And?"

"And they said you get your ass in a crack if you go to bed with your commanding officer."

"Oh," Sten managed.

Tapia grinned, kissed him, and disappeared down a corridor.

Sten thoughtfully went up the ladder and joined Alex.

"Teh," Alex clucked. "Hold still, lad."

He swabbed Sten's chin with an arm of his coverall. "Th' lads dinnae need't' ken th' old man's been flirtin't wi' th' help."

"Mr. Kilgour. You're being insubordinate."

"Hush, youngster. Or Ah'll buss y' myself."

The com overhead snarled into life.

"Captain to the bridge. Captain to the bridge. We have contact!"

Sten and Alex ran for their battle stations.

Contact was not the correct description.

The skipper of the picket ship had seconds to goggle at the screen, and then the Tahn were on him.

Two destroyers launched at the picket ship without altering course.

The ship's captain snapped the com open.

" Swampscott… Swampscott … this is the Dean . Two Tahn—"

And the missiles obliterated the picket ship.

The Tahn fleet knew they were closing on the liners. They spread out into attack formation and moved in.

Commander Rey Halldor may have been a clot, but he knew how and, more importantly, when to die. Without waiting for orders, he sent the Husha and its sister ship arcing up and back, toward the oncoming Tahn.

The Tahn were in a crescent formation, screening destroyers in front and to the sides. Just behind were seven heavy cruisers and then the two battleships, the Forez and the Kiso .

Halldor's second destroyer died at once.

But the Husha , incredibly, broke through the Tahn screen.

Halldor ordered all missiles to be launched and the racks to be set on automatic load launch. The Husha spat rockets from every tube, rockets that were set on fire-and-forget mode.

The Husha spun wildly as it took its first hit near the stern. A Tahn shipkilling missile targeted the Husha and homed. It struck the Husha amidships, blowing it apart. Probably Halldor and his men were already quite dead before they got their revenge.

Two Tahn destroyers took hits in areas vital enough to send them leaking out of battle. And then three of Halldor's missiles found a heavy cruiser.

For an instant it looked as if the Tahn ship's outer skin was transparent, then it turned flame-red as the cruiser was racked by explosions. And then there was absolutely nothing where the ship had been.

The 23rd Fleet still had teeth in its final moments of life.

Sten thought he could still see the blips where his destroyers had been on the screen, even though the ships had died seconds earlier.

Probably an afterimage, he thought.

Sten had wondered what gave people the guts to throw themselves at death, to give the suicidal orders instead of running. And he also wondered, if that situation ever came up, whether he would have enough cojones to do it himself.

But he never formally made the Big Decision. There were too many other orders to blurt out.

"Navigation. Interception orbit."

"Aye, sir. Computed."

"Mark! Engines."

"Engine room, sir."

"Full emergency power. Now! Mr. Foss. Everyone into suits."

"Yessir."

"Weapons… clot that. Give me all hands."

Foss turned the com onto the shipwide circuit.

"This is the captain. We're going in. All weapons stations, prepare to revert to individual control."

Foss had Sten's suit in front of him. Sten forced his legs in and dragged the shoulders and headpiece on.

"We are now attacking," he said, choosing his words carefully, "a Tahn battlefleet. There are at least two battleships with the fleet. We are going to kill them." He should have found something noble to end his 'cast with, but his mind refused to come up with an "England Expects," and he snapped the com link off. "Foss. I want the CO of the destroyers."

A screen brightened, showing the bridge of one of the Imperial ships.

"Captain," Sten began without preamble, "the convoy's yours. We're going to try to slow down the bad guys."

"Sir, I request—"

"Negative. You have your orders. Stay with the liners. Swampscott , out. Foss! Damage control."

"This is damage control, Skipper," came the drawl. "What do you need?" Sten found a moment to regret not knowing that officer—anybody who could sound that relaxed would be valuable.

"Dump the air."

"It's gone."

The suits would make the men more awkward, but the vacuum would lessen the damage from a potential hit.

"Weapons! Are we in range?"

"A wee bit longer, Commander."

And the Swampscott went into its first—and final—battle.

Possibly the Tahn had become cocky. Or, more likely, they found it impossible to take seriously the bloated hulk that was charging at them.

The Swampscott may have been a disaster of space architecture and a ship long overdue for the boneyard—but it was very heavily armed. It had a Bell laser system forward, Goblin launchers fore and aft, secondary laser stations scattered around the ship, and chainguns running the length of those horrible-looking hull bulges. The ship's main armament consisted of long-obsolete Vydal antiship missiles. There were two of them, mounted amidships, between the pagodas that were the command centers.

Kilgour watched the three blips representing Tahn destroyers arc toward him and thumb-activated the Bell assault laser in the ship's nose. The laser was as obsolete as the ship it was mounted on, being not only robot-guided but equipped with verbal responses.

"Enemy ship in range," the toneless synthesized voice said. Kilgour touched the engage key.

The laser blast ravened the length of the Tahn destroyer, and the weapons system decided that the target was no longer in existence. Without consulting Kilgour, it switched to a second destroyer and opened up.

"Target destroyed… second target under attack," the voice said, almost as an afterthought.

The laser ripped most of that second destroyer's power room into fragments.

"Second target injured… am correcting aim."

Kilgour slammed the override and new target keys. The destroyer was out of battle, and that was enough.

Possibly miffed at being told what to do by a human, the laser switched to stutter mode and lacerated the length of the third destroyer before reporting.