Loralynn Kennakris 3: Asylum (23 page)

At the extreme left edge of Rear Admiral Wallace’s left-flank force, another group of spectators had been following the assault on the monitor, first with guarded hope, then with bewilderment and growing anger, and finally, as the full extent of the rout unfolded, furious disbelief, bordering on incomprehension. These were the crews of Destroyer Squadron 6, and to a man or woman they longed to prove to the Doms the truth of the old saying
payback is a bitch
—none more so than their commanding officer, Captain Ishmael Coward.

Skip Coward was anything but. (As the last person who’d mocked his given name—and spent a month regrowing most of his teeth, in consequence—could attest). Still, his friends thought he sometimes took his efforts to demonstrate this to extremes. He was not doing so now, despite his own feelings and those of his people, because he was under orders—very strict orders—to behave himself, even if it meant just sitting there in seething frustration, which it did.

DESRON 6, comprised of the destroyers
Argo, Sphinx, Circe
and
Hippolyte
, the frigates
Ixion
and
Ajax
, and his own ship, the light cruiser
Fury
(a posting sometimes questioned on the grounds Coward did not need any more encouragement), was assigned to act in support of the heavy cruisers
Shannon
and
Vanguard
, which meant cuddling up and adding their not inconsiderable capability to the cruisers’ area-defense umbrella and, especially, their point-defense nets. Huddled under his wing was also the quartet of minesweepers, whose job it was to ward off surprises from the reef that were old, automated, and decidedly unpleasant.

Anchoring the left extremity of PrenTalien’s whole position was no small responsibility, but it also meant doing nothing except staying vigilant, because across the way, the Halith admiral in charge of that flank, having withstood one attack from Jesse Wallace, was showing no inclination to do other than hold tight to the reef protecting his position. As much as Coward admitted that was entirely prudent of him from the Doms’ point of view, he resented it bitterly—especially now.

So when his exec, Commander Norman Yoshioka, hailed him from CIC with a questioning look on his handsome and usually impassive face—he was known for being as laconic as his CO was intense—Coward replied rather more gruffly than he should have. Knowing he’d overstepped, he tried to smile but mostly succeeded in just showing teeth. “You have something for me, Norm?”

“Indeed, sir.” Yoshioka was used to his CO and took no notice of the bite. “Can you spare a tick?”

“I’ll be right down.”

Walking into the dimly lit compartment full of glowing screens a minute later, his exec made only the barest pretense of greeting and twitched his thumb at a crewman behind him: a master’s mate with the singular name of Pequot Jones, an ace deep-radar operator and his sensor section lead. “Jones here has something I think you should see.”

Coward nodded and called him over. “What have you got, Jonesy?”

Jones approached, knuckling his forehead, and pointed at the omnisynth. “If you’ll allow me, sir.” Coward stepped up and motioned Jones to a place beside him. Jones fiddled with the console, linking up several layers of sensor data, merging them, applying some filters and then magnifying a sector of the reef between them and the left extremity of Admiral Shima’s position.

“Sir, you know how we get these aperiodic inhomogeneities from the movement of those gas giants, especially the innermost one?” Whether he did or not, Jones pressed on. “Well, there’s also a modulating effect from the orbits of its two largest moons, sort of a third-order perturbation, if you follow me, but while first and second-order effects have a time scale of—well—on the order of a month or so, especially the second order and when the companion is in peristellian with the primary,
these
effects—the moons I mean—have a time constant of maybe forty-eight hours or so.”

Jones glanced at his CO, who gave just the barest nod at the pause in the deluge. “So—um—anyway, sir, these third-order effects don’t make them—the inhomogeneities, y’see—come and go and they don’t move them much either. Not strong enough for that, you understand—and the time constant being so short—”

“You’re losing me here, Jonesy.”

“Oh.” Jones had his finger poised to make his next point. Concentrating visibly, he skipped to the end. “Sorry, sir. What they do is change the
shape
.”

“The shape?” And now Coward noticed Yoshioka smiling—a rare expression for him.

“Yessir.” Jones fiddled with the display again. “Look here, sir. This inhomogeneity here.” He highlighted the zoomed-in section of the reef and rotated it. “It’s a
tunnel
, sir.”

Coward’s eyes moved in rapid succession from the plot to Jones to Yoshioka’s smile and back. “A
tunnel
. A tunnel
through
the reef.”

“Well, it’s not like it’s empty of course, just less dense—”

“Jonesy!”

“Sir!” Jones snapped up straight, almost treading on Commander Yoshioka.

“How much less dense?”

“About an order of magnitude, sir. Roughly.”

Coward locked eyes with Yoshioka. “We can get through it.” Yoshioka nodded, almost grinning. He looked back at Jones. “What are the chances the Doms know about this?”

Jones frowned and waved in the direction of his data. “If they aren’t looking, sir . . . well, you can see how it’s not like a rift, surrounded like that. You have to take all these aspect scans and layer them with the passive data from the alpha-line emissions and apply a couple of Swirling filters—”

“Jonesy, is that a
no
?”

“Ah—yessir. I mean, it is a
no
—that is, I’d say damn unlikely. Uh—sorry, sir.”

Coward smiled. “Relax, Jonesy. Fine work here. Carry on.”

As Jones saluted and left, his step noticeably buoyant, Coward motioned Yoshioka over. “Work me up a plot getting us and the cruisers through this hole. Get the minesweepers working—it’s time they earned their keep. Ping
Vanguard
and shoot a maser burst to Admiral Wallace—this, we gotta call in.”

*     *     *

Rear Admiral Wallace was exiting his quarters on the battleship LSS
Cannae
, on his way back to CIC, when a lieutenant sprinting around a corner almost collided with him. As Wallace steadied the young woman, he asked, “What all the rush, Silva?”

Lieutenant-JG Erin Silva held out a flimsy to him. “Maser burst message from DESRON 6, sir. Captain Coward. Captain Wallace,
Vanguard
, endorsed it, sir.”

Wallace reached for the flimsy, wondering what Coward could possibly have to say that could only be trusted a maser flash and would need Colleen Wallace—the captain was no relation—to sign off on. The still breathless lieutenant told him even as he read it. “He says he’s found a hole in the reef, sir! He wants to know if we can support him with—”

“Very good. Thank you, Lieutenant. ” Wallace held up his hand against her enthusiasm as he read:

HAVE FOUND PRACTICABLE PASSAGE THROUGH REEF, EXTREME LEFT FLANK. CAN TAKE DESRON 6 W/
SHANNON
AND
VANGUARD
THROUGH TO ENGAGE HALITH FLEET FROM INSIDE POSITION IF YOU CAN SUPPORT WITH DD screen AND BCGS.

IF YOU APPROVE, WILL SUBMIT OP-PLAN IN 15 MINUTES.

I. COWARD, CAPT
FURY
——C. WALLACE, CAPT
VANGUARD
—END / END

Wallace looked up, crushing the flimsy in his hand, now almost as animated as the lieutenant who was about the same age as his granddaughter. “Respond with:
Hell yes
! At once. Immediately—and you may quote me exactly. Copy Admiral PrenTalien and get me
Sambre
and
Falklands
”—his two fastest and most powerful battlecruisers—“and the CO of DESRON 5. You may run, Lieutenant.”

She did.

Not quite fifteen minutes later, Wallace had Coward’s plan on his display:

WILL ENGAGE IN THREE GROUPS:
ARGO
AND
AJAX
WILL TAKE HIGH SPOT—
DEFIANT
AND
IXION
LOW SPOT.
FURY
WILL LEAD W/
VANGUARD
FOLLOWED BY
SHANNON
. DESRON 6 WILL ENGAGE WITH TORPS AT 4000 MM, THEN
FURY
WILL CLEAR HIGH TO ALLOW
VANGUARD
AND
SHANNON
TO CLOSE AND ENGAGE WITH missiles and GUNS.

DESRON 6 WILL HOLD HI-LO SPOT AND ENGAGE W/ MISSILES. WILL ENGAGE W/ GUNS ONLY IF OPPORTUNITY presents.

IF YOU APPROVE, WILL MOVE AS SOON CAN COORDINATE W/ BCGS YOUR SIDE. NAV PLOTS ATTACHED

I. COWARD, CAPT
FURY—
—END / END

Wallace sent back:

APPROVED.
SAMBRE
AND
FALKLANDS
MOVING immediately TO YOUR SUPPORT W/ DESRON 5. WILL DETACH DESRON 8 IF POSSIBLE.

He finished with:

GO!—GO NOW!

L. WALLACE, rADM
—
—END / END

Minerva Lewis stood in the middle of
Bellerophon’s
crowded hanger deck amidst chaos. They had been busy recovering the assault’s survivors, and when she arrived from CIC, she’d found a mixed lot of marines milling about to no evident purpose while angry, sweating deck crews labored to re-spot their own shuttles so they could wrestle the damaged ones into bays where they could be worked on. Coming on top of the losses they just sustained, the obvious disorganization enraged her further.

Kerr had departed to the Ready Ops room, forward, ostensibly to try to make some sense of the debacle and plan their next move, but mostly to get out from under and try to salvage what wits he had left. Min, the executive officer now that Major Bradshaw was fighting for his life in
Bellerophon’s
sickbay (no one had taken Kerr relieving her seriously—not even Kerr, once he’d been able to think again), had been hectoring and coaxing the new people into some semblance of order (most of them young, many bewildered and even stupefied by what had just happened to them), getting them to take up the slack and help where they could, or if they couldn’t, to get out of the way.

She’d just consigned a platoon’s worth of the worst cases to Troy Anders to walk down to the mess and get some hot chow into them—afterward she’d assign them something trivial to keep their minds off the last hour until exhaustion could dull the raw edge—when her xel shrieked above the tumult. Snapping the screen open brought up a perfunctory message, ordering her to report to the Ready Ops room at the double. Somewhat to her surprise, the order referenced a request from Harry Bolton, Captain of the Fleet, not Kerr.

Figuring that, at this point, she could stand next to Kerr for five minutes without throttling him, she acknowledged the order and shot a ping to Anders, passing the baton to him for the time being. Then, with a powerful rolling stride, she breezed out of the press toward the main ladder junction and the spaces forward.

*     *     *

As she entered Ready Ops, Minerva Lewis at once caught the expectant, anxious air among Kerr and his staff, who were grouped around the central console, about which there was dense cloud of open windows, displaying a plethora of status reports. Everyone was on tenterhooks, and her suspicions as to why were confirmed a moment later when the signal lieutenant sounded a call over the address system that brought them all to attention before the big main view screen.

The screen flashed to life as the video link connected, revealing a vignetted image of
Ardennes
’ flag bridge. Admiral PrenTalien, who’d been speaking to someone off screen, turned towards the pickup. His attention immediately fixed on the lieutenant colonel.

Kerr, seeing the admiral staring down at him in a truly majestic rage, went pale. Since the assault, he’d regained a degree of composure but now, he was barely able to manage a salute as he struggled to meet PrenTalien’s eye.

“Colonel! What the hell’s going on there?” the admiral flayed him with a voice of brass.

Kerr paled further, mashing his xel in one hand. “Most sorry, sir. But I cannot send my people into such attack without adequate suppressing fire.”

PrenTalien’s gaze swept the space. “Officers, you will leave me with Lieutenant Colonel Kerr.”

Then he singled out the tall woman, only an inch or so shorter than himself, with her helmet under her arm and a face that at other times would be open, handsome and friendly, but now looked back at him with a determined cold ferocity, her light gray eyes narrowed in some way that intensified their effect.

“Captain Lewis”—recognizing her from years of unarmed combat competitions—“Remain please.”

Wordlessly, the room’s other occupants filed out through an atmosphere that crackled. The door of the compartment closed.

Less than five minutes later it opened again. Kerr emerged, face bloodless and making a great effort to put one foot in front of the other. Minerva Lewis followed him out, but did not spare a glance for the tottering figure as she turned the other way and strode swiftly toward the hanger deck.

The marine sentry standing watch outside the compartment, a grizzled private of many years standing, whistled softly when the two were out of earshot, and a small crowd of his mates, who had been loitering in the vicinity on one pretext of other, sidled over. The door to the Ready Ops room was no thicker than any ordinary unsecured compartment, and it would have taken better than an armored hatch to keep the admiral’s stentorian voice in.

“Damn me all over, if I ain’t heard some things in my day,” the private said, winking at his eagerly listening audience. “I’ve heard the Old Man take off some poor bugger’s skin a strip at a time before now—and not just once neither. But that ain’t nothin’ to what I heard in there. No, y’all don’t understand me”—shaking his gray head—“He didn’t swear at ‘im. Hell, he didn’t even take his name in vain. He just yanked out that little prick’s immortal soul, wiped his ass on it, and threw it away. That’s what he did, by gawd. And just threw it away.”

*     *     *

Reentering the hanger deck, Minerva Lewis called out in voice that, for all that it had only the power of her lungs behind it, stopped all the activity cold. “Alright people! Full kit in fifteen minutes! Tallmadge, Drake—heavy weapons detail. Barnett, Henderson—demolition. Pack heavy. Get moving!”

Her elevation to Marine Commandant had been flashed to all the officers and NCOs, and despite the speed of her trip from Ready Ops to the hanger deck, the news of Kerr’s vivisection at the Admiral’s hands had managed to outpace her. So the marines went for their equipment with renewed vigor, and chaos resolved itself into something, if not exactly orderly, at least directed and purposeful

Observing this with satisfaction, Lewis addressed her officers. “Anders, Kristoff! We’ve got two hours to put that monitor out of action. Complete your TAC upload and see me back here in five. Clear this deck and get those shuttles hot!”

Captain Kristoff, CO of Delta company (who’d been shipped over from
Daedalus
to make room for the wounded) turned away, but Troy Anders, now commander of Alpha Company in her place, came over and leaned his head close to hers. “Y’know I ain’t shy, Captain. But you saw what happened, and we ain’t even got the weather goin’ for us this time. How the hell are we gonna do this without any more suppressing fire but what this here barge can lay down? We’ll be nothing but skeets out there. That monitor can put fire on anything with an RCS bigger than a ration pack!”

Min, who (whatever her outward appearance) had been struggling with the same thought, paused in paging through the latest TAC data. She had been seeking an opening in the monitor’s defenses or, failing that, contemplating a truly desperate measure involving highly accelerated assault birds, but now her clouded expression cleared, transforming her handsome face into something not far from beauty.

“That’s why I like you, Anders—you’re a fucking genius.”

Captain Kellyn McKenzie was deep in animated conversation with her TAO when Min strode onto the bridge. Kell lifted her head, a scowl deforming her alluring features and said, “We’re gonna give you every goddamned thing we got, Lewis—but short of ramming, I can’t promise you more than ten minutes before we have to start tossing soup cans at ‘em.”

Unexpectedly, Min laughed and
Bellerophon’s
captain gave her TAO a private look. Even for her best friend, Kell thought this was coming it a little high.

“Thanks, Captain—I’ll get to that, but right now I need tight-beam links to
Actaeon
,
Fidelia
,
Daedalus
,
Avenger
and
Medea
.”

“Okay, but they won’t come back in, except maybe
Avenger
—
Fidelia’s
lost her legs,
Daedalus
is loaded with wounded;
Medea
and
Actaeon
are too badly chewed up.”

“No worries,” Min said, still smiling. “I don’t want them—I want their junk. Yours too.”

With the tight-beams links established, the other ship captains listened expectantly as Min outlined her plan. She wanted them to take all the scrap and useless objects they could get their hands on: shot casings, ammo boxes, supply crates, water carboys, cargo lockers—“and yes,” she added, “ration packs, beer bottles, coffee cups and soup cans”—bundle it up and use tractor beams to boost it all at the monitor. The assault shuttles would coast in behind the wall of clutter, unpowered, drive signatures as low as could be and no emissions at all until the last moment.

“And corner reflectors,” Lewis added, referring the open three-sided half-cubes that were used as targets. “As many as you have.”

“What do we do with those?” Medea’s captain asked. “They’ll know right off they’re targets.”

“Punch holes in them to break up the signature and then stick ‘em on the front of every missile case and torpedo crate you have. Then they ought have an RCS close enough to an assault bird to buy us a little more of time.”

The captains nodded, the plan coming together in their minds, but McKenzie shook her head. “Tractor beams are fine for us, but they”—she gestured at the other ships—“won’t be able to adjust the acceleration enough to merge all this junk at the proper range. We may just end up pelting the monitor with a lot of debris in random clumps.”

Min saw that Kell had a point, but before she could say anything,
Avenger’s
captain broke in. “Suppose I play garbage man, collect what we have and come in on a hot hyperbolic. I can lay it all down in a screen while you people ghost in behind it.”

Min looked at her friend, who nodded. “That could work.”

“Very good, “ She said, smiling dangerously. “How long?”

The captains compared notes. “Fifty minutes—an hour at the outside.”

“That’ll do. If this works, the beer’s on me.”

Kell broke the link and turned to Min. “I’m holding you to that, y’know.” Min still wore that dangerous smile. “And you realize, of course, that pitching assault birds out with tractors like that is gonna make ‘em tumble like hell.”

“Of course—making us look like the rest of the garbage.”

“Okay.” Kell rolled her eyes. “I just hope your people haven’t eaten too much.”

*     *     *

On the flag bridge of
Ardennes
, Joss PrenTalien opened a tight-beam link to Admiral Wallace, his left-flank commander, on his flagship, LSS
Cannae
.

“Jesse, we’re going to bat against the monitor again,” PrenTalien told him, his gruff voice belying the jocose wording. “I want you to touch up Adenauer there on the left some more—make it look like a pinning maneuver to cover a retreat. I’m gonna twitch Kim back as if she’s moving to secure the exit zones—see if the Bannermans are game for a chase.” If the Bannermans shifted forward at all, Kim Belvoir could get a good grip on them, giving Lewis all the more time. “Conserve at least thirty percent of your torps though, and be ready to break back to me if the marines put this one in the bank.”

“Very well, Joss. We’ll keep them busy for you.”

“Thanks, Jesse. Flag out.”

“Best of fortune, Joss.
Cannae
out.”

*     *     *

Minerva Lewis hailed the CO, Bravo company, on
Fidelia
. The officer who answered, 1st
Lieutenant Robyn Gomez, looked stiff, pale, and absurdly young. “Where’s Captain Talbot, Gomez?”

“Copped it, ma’am.”

“Captain Hartzheim too?” Greg Hartzheim had been a good friend.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Are you the senior officer present, Gomez?”

“Yes. Ma’am.” Lieutenant Gomez hastily wet her lips. “Lieutenants Galovic and Martinez are here, ma’am. Lieutenant Galovic has Charlie company.”

Min knew Chloe Galovic—a fine young officer. Benedict Martinez she’d hadn’t had much chance to form an opinion of yet. “How many assault birds do you have left?”

“Nine, ma’am.” With the seven Delta brought back, that meant a total of sixteen had survived. Out of twenty-six.
Damn
.

“Okay, Gomez. Get those birds hot for me—pilot and gunner only—and we’ll come get ‘em. I’ll link up details on the way.”

“Pilot and gunner only, ma’am?” Gomez had a lovely, apple-cheeked face and it looked hurt. Min had read in Gomez’ file that her older brother, Sebastian Gomez of Nedaeman SOFOR 1, had been killed on Lacaille before war, leading an attempt to capture Nestor Mankho—in fact, that incident was considered the
casus belli
. So no doubt Gomez had stronger personal motivations than most. But the op she had in mind didn’t have room for a whole raft of shaken young troops—Bravo company had never been in action before and Charlie only once.

“That’s the plan, Lieutenant. No reflection on your people.”

“With all due respect, Captain, we’d like in.” Gomez darted her eyes at someone off-screen. “We didn’t even clear our weapons, ma’am—and there are still a hundred seventy-two of us fit for duty.”

Good Christ, that’s forty-six percent casualties
, Min thought.
No wonder the kid’s pale
.

“More ain’t necessarily better, Lieutenant. Sometimes it’s just more.” The pretty face fell even as its owner tried to hide it.
Damn it!
As much as she didn’t like it, the kid had a point: sending home a unit that had been so badly mauled with its tail between its legs—especially a green unit—without even a chance to fire a shot in return was close to wrecking it.

“But look here. Pick your best platoon from each company and saddle ‘em up. All the heavy weapons you can carry. You take Bravo, of course, and Galovic will take Charlie and leave Martinez to mind the store. Tell him from me, I’ll make it up to him later.”

Gomez brightened amazingly. “You got it, Captain!”

Youth
, thought Min, recalling when she’d felt just the same. She had lived to get over and hoped Gomez would too.

“Get ‘em ready to move out in fifteen, Lieutenant. I’ll catch you on the fly. Lewis out.”

Lieutenant Gomez acknowledged with a jaunty salute and Min cut the link. She keyed up
Bellerophon’s
captain. “Kell, we got some passengers to pick up from
Fidelia
.”