"I'm sorting, sir. Here! A roboscout got a straight five-second plot
before they downed it!"
"Intelligence!" Tulan snapped. "Get the co-ordinates and bring me
photos!"
There were already pictures of the area where the salvo must have
originated, and one of them showed a cave-like opening in a crater
wall. "That's it!" Tulan jabbed a pencil at it. "You could hide a dozen
ships in there. Let's get a strike organized!"
* * * * *
The strike group included four Heavies besides the flagship, with twelve
Mediums and twenty Lights. They slanted down in a jerky evasive course
while pictures flashed on screens to be compared with the actual
terrain.
Ground fire, chemically propelled missiles, erupted ahead of them and
the small craft went to work intercepting it. They were down to a
hundred miles, then fifty, streaking along the jagged surface so close
they seemed to scrape it. This was point-blank range; as the computers
raced with the chaos of fire and counter-fire, human senses could only
register a few impressions--the bruising jerks, the shudder of
concussions, white streaks of rocket-trails, gushers of dirt from the
surface, winking flashes of mid-air interception.
Then the Heavies were on target. The flagship jumped as the massive
salvo leaped away--not chemical missiles, but huge space torpedoes
propelled by Pulsor units like the ships' drives, directing their own
flocks of smaller defensive missiles by an intricate network of
controls. The small stuff, augmented by fire from the lighter ships,
formed momentarily a visible tube down which the big stuff streaked
untouched.
The whole crater seemed to burst upward, reaching out angry fingers of
shattered rock as they ripped by, rocking and bucking with the blasts.
Tulan's viewer swivelled aft to hold the scene. Secondary blasts went
off like strings of giant firecrackers. Great black-and-orange
fungi-like clouds swirled upward, dissipating fast in the thin
atmosphere. Then Tulan spotted what he was looking for: three small
ships flashing over the area, to get damage-assessment pictures. There
was still a lot of ground-fire from farther out, and it caught one of
the three, which wobbled crazily then disappeared in a flash which
blanked out the viewscreen.
"Intelligence!" Tulan shouted. "Casualties?"
Intelligence was listening to his earphones and punching buttons. "Two
Lights lost, sir. Slight damage to seven more and to one Medium."
"All right. Get a telecopy of those pictures as soon as you can; we
certainly hit something. Maybe a Heavy or two." He relaxed, aching, and
reflected that he was getting a little mature for actual combat.
The pull-back went on, drawing only the local ground-fire now that the
enemy had been taught his lesson. Groups of ships lifted almost
constantly. The final position was an oval forty by sixty miles, held
almost entirely from the sky. The last evacuees straggled in like weary
ants, and when the radio reported no more of them the last fifty ships
lifted together and ran the gauntlet with slight losses.
Tulan pulled the Force away for rest and repair. Group Two was idling at
extreme radar range, making a convincing blip, and he designed some
false messages to be beamed toward it with the expectation of
interception. The impression he wanted to give was that Group Two was
the Force that had been bombarding Coar, coming in now to join him.
Actually, the latter fleet was farther away, hidden in the sun and, he
hoped, unsuspected.
* * * * *
Things were going according to plan except for one puzzling item: there
was no message from Sennech's small garrison on Teyr. All he could get
from the planet was a steady radar scan, which might mean that Sennech's
colony had been conquered by Coar's.
He'd been hoping to get certain supplies from Teyr, and now he took a
strong detachment in close to the planet to find out what was wrong. The
threat finally raised an answer. "This is the Chief of Council. What is
it that you want?"
"Chief of Council? What are you talking about? I want the Garrison
Commander."
"I suppose you're Admiral Tulan. There's been a change here, Tulan; Teyr
is now an independent planet. Your garrison, with Coar's, comprise our
defense forces."