Then honor, my Jeany, must plead my excuse;
Since honor commands me, how can I refuse?
—Allan Ramsay
"Hold it," said Johnnie, poised in the lead with a power saw in his hands. The clear patch of beach was the obvious point from which to launch the boats—
But there was a reason for the mud to be clear.
The image intensifier in his visor caught the ripple an instant before the anemone broke surface. Johnnie lunged, his finger on the saw's trigger, trusting that no one on the ships could hear the high-pitched whine over the night-sounds of the jungle and the vessels' own mechanical systems.
The cutting-bar sparked on the anemone's sting-clad arms before squelching through the support tube. Bits splashed Johnnie and an arc twenty feet out in the harbor.
The tube, now harmless, sucked back under the water. The head and fragments of severed arms writhed on the mud—still dangerous to a bare hand but unable to crawl high enough to strike above boot level.
"Is it safe now?" demanded a tech, understandably nervous with both hands gripping the boat.
"It's safe," snapped Uncle Dan, "unless you wait long enough for something to move into the area that the worm—"
It was an anemone, not a worm, Johnnie thought—
"—kept clear for you!"
The techs set the first collapsible boat into the harbor strand and hooked up its pump and generator. Sergeant Britten marshalled the squad of men who waded gingerly to the edge of the shore and knelt, knives out and peering through visors to spot any serious threat moving toward them through the water.
Johnnie, holding his saw, stepped onto the end of the line opposite Britten. The water was too good a heat conductor for thermal imaging to be of much use, but color-highlighted ripple patterns would/might be enough warning.
The boat made a slurping sound, then clicked as the segments locked into place. The inner material became a colloid and expanded 300-fold when it contacted water. The colloid provided the core and stiffening for the boat, while microns-thick panels of vitril hardened the surfaces to create a practical vessel.
One of the nervous men on guard gasped and stamped his feet. What he'd thought was an attacker was only the sucking mud. "Wish we were bloody aboard!" he grunted.
"I wish we were back in Wenceslas Dome for the victory celebration," said Britten. The sergeant had a concussion grenade in either hand for an emergency. No one else was permitted to use explosives at this stage of the operation. "But we ain't."
"Boat's ready," murmured the tech.
There was a general sloshing movement as most of the men in the water and a few of those watching the jungle behind started to slide the boat deeper into the harbor. The man beside Johnnie tried to clamber over the gunwales. Johnnie grabbed him by the shoulder and held him till the moment of panic had passed.
Men from the rear guard boarded, according to the plan. Uncle Dan was the last aboard.
"Sorry, sir," muttered the sailor.
The first boat moved a few feet out from the shore with a muted burble from its underwater thruster. More techs dropped the second boat into the place of the first and got quickly to work. The last of the little vessels had been abandoned when it became obvious that there wouldn't be enough survivors to require all three.
"We're not exactly headed for a tea party, you know," Johnnie said to the man beside him as they both looked for trouble. Years of human occupation and entrance nets must have thinned out—maybe eliminated—really large forms from the harbor.
"Sir, I know ships," the sailor replied. "But I been shit-scared ever since I stepped outa the submarine."
Eliminated. Dream on.
The saw whirred like a nervous cat. Johnnie's finger had tightened more than he'd intended.
"Boat's ready," said a tech as he twisted over the side. He lifted his feet high against the chance of something making a late grab at him.
Half the waiting men lurched into the boat while the others slid the hull toward deeper water. The technique worked well enough, but it was completely spontaneous.
This time the man who'd jumped early waited, shivering with fear or anticipation, until Johnnie clapped him on the back and said, "Go! Go on!"
Light winked on the deck of the Holy Trinity. Someone had opened a hatch and spilled some of the interior illumination.
Coming or going? Someone headed in to his bunk, or out onto the rail from which he'd be able to raise the alarm . . . ?
"Sir?" grunted Sergeant Britten. "Sir. C'mon!"
Johnnie had been walking outward at the bow of the boat. He was waist-deep in the water. He tried to lift himself over the gunwale. Britten caught him beneath the armpit and pulled hard. "Throw that damned—"
Johnnie dropped the saw, no longer necessary.
"—saw away!" the sergeant growled.
Johnnie flopped into the boat. It was already full beyond its designed capacity.
There was a flurry from the water as something struck the tool and rose with it, thrashing violently. Johnnie looked back over his hips, but the creature and its frustrating prey had sunk again.
"Quiet back there!" snapped the earphones in the voice of Uncle Dan, who must have thought the fish was part of the second boat's boarding process.
The collapsible boats started across the harbor. Johnnie was in the bow of the second. He could barely see the other vessel, twenty feet ahead of him. When Sergeant Britten completed raising the heat/light/radar-absorbent camouflage net, the second boat became equally hard to spot, even to someone expecting it.
The camouflage nets blinded the boats' crews as completely as they did outside observers. The coxswains steered by the images projected in their visors—constructs from the helmets' data banks and inertial navigation equipment.
The boats slid across the water at less than a walking pace. The wake of the leader rocked the following vessel less than the slight harbor chop. The dreadnought that was their target grew slowly in Johnnie's visor, but knowing that he saw an image rather than the actual guns and hull somehow robbed the vision of its reality.
Although: the Holy Trinity was real, and the hologram projected into the helmet visor was as much the object as sky glow reflected from the gray armor onto Johnnie's retinas would have been.
The dreadnought lay at an angle to the boats; they were approaching its port side. "Force Prime," Johnnie warned, "the skimmer port on the starboard bow—the right side of the bow—" How did you say 'port port' without being confusing? "—is open. I'm not sure the one on this side is."
The first boat slowed. The careful computer simulation in Johnnie's helmet showed the wake travelling on ahead as the boat dropped to a crawl. Johnnie rocked as his coxswain cut power to keep station.
"Lead Prime, this is Force Prime," said Uncle Dan's voice. "Take over the lead. Bring us in, John."
"Coxswain," Johnnie said, "take us around the bow. The port we're looking for's about a hundred fifty feet back."
The thruster wound up, a hum through the hull instead of a sound. Men swung to and fro again, their heavy packs emphasizing the gentle acceleration.
"Coxwain," Johnnie snapped, "we're not in a hurry."
But they were, all of them were; in a hurry to make something happen themselves. All they could do now was wait for a burst of automatic gunfire to gut their boats and a few men, leaving the remainder to splash for a while as they provided food and entertainment for the harbor life.
The simulated bows of the Holy Trinity loomed above them. The boat was beneath the bow flare, invisible to anyone on the dreadnought's deck. Sergeant Britten ripped back the netting—not before time, because they were headed for the chain of the bow anchor.
The coxswain saw the obstacle without need for the warning and curses from the men in the bow, but it had been a near thing. The software controlling the simulation needed a little tinkering. . . .
The skimmer port was a black rectangle against slate gray. Water gurgled doubtfully through it. The coxswain throttled back still further.
"Easy . . . ," breathed Sergeant Britten, as much to himself as to the coxswain.
Johnnie stood up in the bow. He wasn't afraid. He didn't have leisure to be afraid.
"Here, sir," Britten murmured.
The grip of a sub-machine gun touched Johnnie's right hand from behind.
He'd been about to attack a superdreadnought with nothing but a .30-caliber pistol.
"Right," said Johnnie. He quickly snapped the weapon's sling into his epaulet, then paused. The collapsible boat was slightly broader than the opening. Johnnie braced his arms onto the armor while his feet thrust back, preventing the little vessel from crunching into the huge one. Then he jumped aboard the Holy Trinity.
There was no guard in the skimmer magazine. All twelve of the water-stained pumpkinseeds hung from their davits, swaying gently. Johnnie caught the line Britten threw him and made it fast to the rail so that the boat would hold its station. The remainder of the assault force followed him, splashing awkwardly on the water-covered rollers and cursing. Sergeant Britten was the last man—
As expected.
The boat gurgled as the sergeant stepped out of it; he'd pulled the scuttling strip, opening a six-by-thirty-inch hole in the bottom. They didn't want the boats floating in the harbor and perhaps arousing suspicion, but it was still disquieting to see the transport which had brought them this far slipping beneath the black water.
Britten reached for the line. Johnnie had already cut it with the diamond saw which formed the back edge of his fighting knife. A metal edge wouldn't have worked its way through the monocrystalline cord until dawn broke. . . .
The second boat slid to the mouth of the opening. Commander Cooke tossed Johnnie another line and clanged aboard himself. His men followed him.
"Have you opened the hatch yet?" Uncle Dan demanded.
"Ah, no, I—" Johnnie said.
"Out of the way," his uncle ordered brusquely.
Dan pushed past Johnnie and clambered over the railing to where the first boatload already waited. He pulled a suction cup on a line of thin flex from his helmet and stuck it onto the wall. "Team leaders report," his mushy voice ordered.
"One."
"Two!"
"Three present!" There was a bang as the leader of section three slipped on the rollers as he hastened to board.
"Four."
Ordinary helmet communications were only useful at line of sight for this operation, since the massive armor walls of the Holy Trinity blocked spread-frequency radio as effectively as they did incoming shells. The leaders of the various sections—bridge, bow, stern, and engine room—reported via radio since they were all in the same room, but in action they would use the same system Uncle Dan had just tested.
The transmitter in the suction cup fed the signal through the fabric of the ship itself. It could be received directly through the helmets, but replies would have to be made with the men's similar units.
A squish and a gurgle marked the scuttling of the second boat. Johnnie cut the line. Sergeant Britten reached over the railing and helped the young ensign up to the front of the assault force.
Johnnie charged his sub-machine gun. There were similar clacks throughout the compartment as all the men readied their weapons to fire.
"Remember," said Uncle Dan calmly, "if we don't have to fire a shot, then we've done a perfect job. But if there's trouble, finish it fast. We don't have any margin for error."
He touched a button. The hatch whined and slowly cranked its way outward.