Loralynn Kennakris 3: Asylum (24 page)

“How many?”

“Only two platoons, but all their birds.”

“Gonna get crowded around here.”

“Yep, packed in like kippers—six to a rack. I’m hoping maybe they’ll think we’re rendering aid and comfort and have called it day.”

“That’d be nice. I wouldn’t make book on it though.”

*     *     *

“Sir, it appears PrenTalien is retreating.” Captain Alexander relayed this news to his fleet commander aboard
Marshall Nedelin
.

Retreating? Adenauer drew a finger along the strong angle of his jaw as he digested the statement. Certainly PrenTalien was shifting his right flank back, positioning it to cover the Outbound jump sectors, and Shima was being sharply engaged. It might well be the beginning of a pivot to withdraw . . . His eyes flicked the chrono. Was Tomashevich on schedule? He’d been engaged for two hours. It would be best to give him at least another hour before letting PrenTalien go. Was that feasible?

Returning to the main plot, he noted Voorhees had already advanced his fleet and detached a shadowing force—on his own initiative. That was acceptable under the circumstances. If this retreat developed itself, he would turn the Bannerman loose to purchase what delay he could, though Voorhees might find his ardor more expensive than he expected. Adenauer was perfectly content with that outcome.

“Thank you, Captain. Kindly convey to—”

“Pardon, sir!” His aide’s voice, abrupt and strident, rang with disbelief. “Flash emergency from Admiral Shima. He says ships are coming
out
of the reef!”

Out
of the reef? How was such a thing possible?

“In what force?”

“Unclear, sir. The admiral urgently requests you will send immediate support.”

Damn
Shima for sending an incomplete report. His sensors could not resolve anything that close to the reef. What had PrenTalien conjured over there? It would waste precious minutes to request clarification. He made a quick decision.

“Message to
Jena
. My compliments to Admiral Tallis: he will detach his division and move to the aid of Admiral Shima. How he does that is his affair—I leave it to his best judgment.” Ivan Tallis was a steady fellow; he could be counted on not to overreact.

“Very good, sir.”

“Signal the Bannermans. They are to stop immediately and extend themselves no farther than their current position. You may repeat that.”

His aide-de-camp glanced up from submitting the messages to the comms officer to code and dispatch. “I shall do that, sir.”

*     *     *

Skip Coward led DESRON 6 out of reef, the heavy cruisers
Shannon
and
Vanguard
following, with DESRON 5 coming along behind.

“Signal to squadron: all torps to be targeted on
Orlan
, then break to stations.” The big battleship was not just the second most powerful ship in Adenauer’s fleet, she was the critical node of the area-defense net for this whole flank. Destroying or crippling her would leave the other ships almost on their own, with little more than their point-defense systems. “Save your missiles for the supporting units. I’m going to break their formation ahead of
Vardar
. Mr. Porter”—to his TAO—“we’ll hold our torpedoes for whatever comes up, but you may salute
Orlan
with the guns as we pass by. Sixteen guns for a vice admiral, I think it is?”

*     *     *

As
Bellerophon
closed with
Fidelia
, and
Avenger
was completing her tour as junk collector, Captain Lewis waited for the last of her officers to board so she could brief them on her plan of attack. The op plan had already been distributed, but it was her unbreakable habit never to go into action without first meeting with her officers, all together and face to face. Nothing told you what was going on in someone’s mind like seeing their face before an op, and that was never more important than for a touchy lark like this.

A hail appeared on her xel and she tapped it up. It was Lieutenant Gomez, doing her best to look deadly serious. “Lieutenants Gomez and Galovic reporting aboard, ma’am.”

“Welcome to the party, Lieutenant. Meet us in the aft portside staging bay.”

Now that Minerva Lewis had her team assembled face to face, their faces were about what she expected. Lieutenants Robyn Gomez and Chloe Galovic were excited and nervous and doing a decent job of not showing it. Alongside the two young lieutenants, Anders was wearing his pre-op smirk and Kristoff was looking reserved and stiff. Tallmadge was his usual calm self. Barnett and Drake looked hopeful, and Matt Henderson, another lieutenant and her demolition team leader, appeared eager to start ‘blowing shit up’. Her color sergeant, Gabriel Ulloa, rock solid in action and built like it, rounded out the group.

Having learned what she wanted, Min invited her officers into a circle (a regimental tradition) and knelt to project the plan of a Halith monitor on the deck, with the key areas and junctions marked. Then she began to set out the heart of her plan, giving life and breath to the document she’d distributed.

Her operational philosophy was based on one simple precept:
Never give the enemy what they expect
. They’d lost the element of surprise—now they’d have to find a way to get it back. The fellow commanding the monitor over there had shown every sign of being conventionally minded: he knew what they’d just tried and how it had failed; he’d expect them to try something completely different. And she was planning something completely different, which meant convincing him she wasn’t.

Everything depended on misdirection and, once they got inside, small fireteams operating with perfect coordination. She was taking just her own Alpha company plus the heavy weapons platoon from Delta company and Gomez’s people. It was true that this meant that the monitor’s crew would likely outnumber her force—two hundred forty marines in all—by about ten to one, but she had no intention of coming to grips with whole crew, or even large part of it. The butchered assault had left them richer in shuttles than people, and this would allow her to play a shell game with the monitor’s defenders.

That, along with the garbage caper, would help get them there alive, but she expected another benefit. Confusing the Doms as to the real point of attack would oblige them not to concentrate their defenders: they’d need to be able to move people rapidly once the attack was underway. That should limit their use of anti-boarding plasma. Plasma was mainly a delaying tactic, anyway—given time and equipment, you could beat it. However, the defenders would use that time to deploy where they were needed.

Min intended to use it as the key to her misdirection scheme. If they had plasma rigged selectively, she could use her extra shuttles to stage random ‘assaults’ that would trigger it, pulling the defenders off on a false alarm. A few of those might convince the Dom commander that Gomez’s people—whom she would mass in front of the hanger in the traditional style—were the real threat after all, and react accordingly.

Even if he didn’t, keeping the defenders off-balance should buy her teams an opening, by way of a lighting dash through small hatches. Then they’d have to take the critical junctions—on a monitor that meant the central junction on the main deck and the main junctions of the two spline passages running fore and aft along the port and starboard sides—to divide and isolate the monitor’s crew so she could move against the real objective: the weapons control spaces. There were three, all located forward: one for the main turret, and one each for the port and starboard turrets. To take the monitor out of the fight, she had to destroy the control spaces for the main turret and at least one side; that would allow PrenTalien to come up along the monitor’s ‘weak side’ and finish the job.

At last, she
did
mean to take the hanger deck—but from the
inside
. Taking out the weapons control spaces would shut down the missiles and the main batteries, but not the light guns, so she wanted to preserve as many of the monitor’s small craft as possible. When it came time to make a quick getaway, the IFF on the monitor’s own craft would prevent its guns from locking, which would greatly increase their chances of getting clear. That was the kids’ assignment, once Anders and Tallmadge let them in.

If it all sounded a little desperate, recited here in the space where she’d lost that low-gee racquetball game to Kell three and a half weeks ago, it might be said to have the advantage of risking only half their remaining force. Not that everyone saw it that way, though. Captain Kristoff in particular did not like it—any aspect of it. It didn’t help that he was Kerr’s man. She knew he resented PrenTalien relieving Kerr and shared the young colonel’s view of their prospects. But Kristoff also objected to being left out and he probably didn’t like that his heavy weapons platoon leader, Lieutenant Randall Barnett, who
was
going, was known to be closer to her than to Kristoff himself. None of that bothered Min unduly, as long as Kristoff had the good sense to keep his mouth shut for the time being.

He did, and Min swiftly completed the briefing. Straightening, she detailed their assignments.

“Barnett, you’re with Anders. Gomez, give your pick of sections to Lieutenant Tallmadge—the heavier the better. Drake, Henderson, you’re with me, except your second team, Matt—they go with Anders.” That Color Sergeant Ulloa and his section would accompany her went without saying.

Her gaze swept across the now mostly solemn group. “Any questions?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Gomez unexpectedly spoke up. “If I may, what’s a
Nelson’s Patent Bridge
?” She was referring to the facetious-sounding title Min had given her op-plan:
Nelson's Patent Bridge for Boarding Enemy Monitors
.

Min showed a smile and recited: “During the Battle of Cape St. Vincent—Valentine’s Day of the year 1797 by the old reckoning—Commodore Horatio Nelson of the Royal Navy in HMS
Captain
, a third rate of seventy-four guns, was engaged with the Spanish eighty-gun
San Nicolas
and some other ships. When
Captain’s
foretopmast went over leaving her unmanageable, Nelson ordered his ship to fire a last broadside into the Spanish ships and then put her helm over, hooking her port side to the starboard quarter of
San Nicolás
.

“Leaping across and climbing through a quarter-galley window, Nelson led his men in storming
San Nicolás
and forcing her surrender. He then took his party across the deck of
San Nicolas
onto the deck of
San Jakob
, a Spanish First rate of one hundred and twelve guns that had come to aid
San Nicolas
, and captured her as well. The maneuver gained the Royal Navy a famous victory and was known thereafter as
Nelson's Patent Bridge for Boarding Enemy First Rates
.”

Lieutenant Gomez blinked and looked impressively blank. “Thank you, ma’am.” Then she compressed her full lips. “But—what’s a quarter-galley, ma’am?”

“The captain’s personal head.”

Gomez blinked some more, big-eyed, and Min saw a few of her other officers hiding their smiles. Attempting to control her own, she said, “Now if there are no more—”

“Captain?” Anders broke in. “We ain’t really going in through the heads again, are we? I just had my kit cleaned.”

“No, Mr. Anders—just you.” Open laughter now and the tension in the group evaporated.

“Okay, people,” Lewis said when the laughter died down. “Enough history for one day. Let’s amp it up and go make some of our own.”

Anders came over as the marines loaded up by sections, a wry expression on his face. “So Captain, not only are we mounting the Great Junk Offensive, but we’re gonna take over a monitor with just our company and a few dozen of these kids who just got rototilled?”

Min fixed him with a droll look of her own. “Remember the Bard, Troy. ‘If we are marked to die, we are enough to do our country loss. And if to live, the fewer men, the greater share of honor.’”

Sterling incomprehension. “Whatever you say, Captain.”

Her grin spread wider. “That’s why I can’t stand you, Anders—you got no fuckin’ education.”

*     *     *

Captain Coward checked his bridge screens as
Fury
broke high to assume her station, clearing the way for
Shannon
and
Vanguard
to engage. The whole ship was singing with tension, from the white sweating face of the junior signals officer on his left, to the grim delighted chuckling of his TAO in CIC as he reviewed their remaining inventory of death and destruction, and directed those munitions to their targets; to the low whistling of the damage-control officer, fumbling through an old sitcom parody tune called
Sausages & Tea
. But it was all perfectly orderly, his people going about their jobs with smooth precision, no wasteful hurry and no hesitation—and when his G-helmsman murmured, “Good lord, how she fights,” Coward directed his attention to the main display forward.

There was
Orlan
, at the center of perfect storm of firepower:
Shannon
was alongside, 8-inch railguns hammering her with inconceivable savagery while
Vanguard
, standing further off, launched salvo after salvo of missiles that were increasingly striking home as
Orlan’s
defense net faltered. The ships of DESRON 5 were darting about the giant, firing everything they had, closing with wild recklessness.

The huge ship fought back with desperate fury, returning almost shot for shot, missile for missile. The frigate
Ixion
was already out of the fight—she had gotten too close when launching her torpedoes and was reeling away, shattered by the
Orlan’s
16-inch guns. The destroyers
Ethalion
and
Alecto
were dying before their eyes—
Alecto
, that old, proud, little ship making a last suicidal charge.
Argo
was limping but still game and
Shannon
was taking a brutal pounding and must soon shear off.

But here were the fast, sleek, powerful shapes of
Sambre
and
Falklands
ranging along the far side, pouring out salvos of missiles and 12-inch railgun fire—an irresistible torrent of hypervelocity metal—and
Orlan
, taken between two fires, could not even interpose her invulnerable keel—