Alarm of War, Book II: The Other Side of Fear (22 page)

Chapter 21

On Space Station Atlas

Emily knocked on Hiram’s door, then, without thinking, pushed her way inside.  What she saw made her stop short:  The table was covered with papers and drawings and tablets propped up with books.  Hiram Brill was sitting with Specialist Lori Romano.  Across the table were Rafael Eitan and his father, Yael. 

The four of them gaped at her in surprise.

Emily stood there for a long moment, trying to understand why these disparate people were together at all, and why they were in Hiram’s apartment instead of a Fleet conference room or Hiram’s office at Fleet Intelligence.  Romano made sense, in a way, for she was the head technical boffin for the team studying the Tilleke teleportation ships.  But Rafael?  Rafael was a Captain in the
Refuge
SRF; he wasn’t even in the Victorian Fleet.  And Yael?  Yael wasn’t in the military at all; he was a professor at the University of Haifa, who did some consulting with the Government on the side.

What would the Queen’s top Intelligence adviser and the technical expert on the Tilleke Kraits want to do with a Refuge political scientist and a Refuge Army commander?  If Hiram had intended to teleport troops to attack someone, he had access to Fleet Marines.  She paused.   No, that wasn’t really correct, was it?  Everyone expected the Dominions to start using the Tilleke transporters any day now, and that meant the Victorian warships needed Marines on board to protect them.  There really weren’t all that many Marines and they were needed to protect Atlas and the Victorian warships, so there might not be enough if Hiram was going to attack a large target.  But the only target Emily knew about was the secret Dominion shipyard, Siegestor, and they weren’t going to try to capture that, they were going to destroy it.  So that meant that Hiram had another target and he needed additional soldiers to attack it and seize it and he needed Refuge troops to do it.

Another target.  An important target.  Emily shut her eyes.  But why meet in Hiram’s cramped little apartment, unless this was not an official mission, unless…

Hiram walked over and stood in front of her.

“You found her,” Emily whispered; it was half question, half benediction.  “You found Cookie.”

Hiram nodded.  “She’s alive.  We’re going to get her.”

“Oh sweet Gods, I never thought-“  and to her own astonishment, she covered her face with her hands and wept like a child.  The others watched, taken aback and unsure what to do, but Yael stood up and put his arms around her.

“There, there,” he said comfortingly as she buried her face in his gaunt, boney shoulder.  “It’s okay, it’s okay.  Take your time.  It’s okay.”

It took her several minutes to get under control.  The others waited while Emily splashed water on her face from the kitchen sink and rejoined them, sheepishly smiling her apologies.   Yael handed her a cup of tea and patted her on the shoulder.  “Never be embarrassed by a display of love for someone,” he said gently.  “It is the closest we ever come to God.”  He smiled a little ruefully.  “It took me a long time to learn that.”

Emily touched his hand.  “It’s nice to see you again, Yael, though I never thought it would be quite like this.”  She looked at Rafael and smiled and nodded, not trusting herself to say anything more.

Hiram cleared his throat.  “We have a report that Cookie and one of her men are prisoners aboard a Dominion prison ship, the
Tartarus.
  What’s more, we believe the
Tartarus
is headed for Siegestor,” Hiram explained.  “I intend to grab her off the prison ship when we go in to attack the Dominion shipyard.”  He gestured to Specialist Romano.  “Lori has been working with the transporter devices we captured from the Tilleke.”

Romano nodded.  “We’re not sure we really understand the physics, but we’ve successfully duplicated the machines and they work.  The original design was pretty crappy, so we’ve tinkered with it a bit to make it more reliable.  I think we can avoid the power outages that stranded Sergeant Sanchez on the Dominion battleship.” She flushed red at the memory. “We’ve reduced the number of individual units being transported from forty to thirty to alleviate the energy spike when the-“

Emily held up a hand to stop her.  “I’ll take your word for it, Romano.  What does it all mean?”

Romano gulped and nodded.  “Well, it means that instead of just having the original three working units we got from the Tilleke, now we have twenty-two, each capable of sending thirty soldiers up to fifteen thousand miles and recombining them alive and conscious when they get there.  The recycle time is about five minutes before we can send through another group using the same machine.  We’ve configured two destroyers and a cruiser so that they each carry four machines, so we could teleport as many as three hundred and sixty troops onto the target at one time.”

Emily rubbed her nose, thinking.  “Can you send anything metallic or explosive through yet?

“No, Ma’am, not yet.  But I got to tell you, Commander, the more I look at it, the more I just don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t be able to send through metal and bombs.  I haven’t figured it out yet, but I will.”

“Okay, Romano, keep at it.”  Then, to Hiram:  “You need Rafael and his troopers because you don’t have enough Marines, right?”  Hiram nodded.  Emily turned to Rafael.  “Do you understand this, Raf?  Your men won’t be able to carry their normal weapons with them.  They are going to be reduced to pixie dust, beamed across space into an enemy ship, reassembled into something that hopefully resembles the original and then, if everything goes right, they’ll be fighting the bad guys with air guns and swords.  Do you understand what you’re getting into here?”  Hiram was looking at her oddly, glancing back and forth between her and Rafael.

“Yes, yes, Emily, I know all this.  Your Admiral Douthat has supplied us with information about these wonderful machines.”  Rafael smiled reassuringly.  “I have had my men practicing with your – how do you say? –
pebble
guns.”

“Pellet guns,” Emily corrected.

“Yes, yes,” Rafael beamed, “the
pellet
guns.  And of course, the swords.”  He winced and shook his head sorrowfully.  “We need more practice with the swords.”

“And you,” she said, looking at Yael.  “How do you fit into this?”

Yael shrugged and raised his hands in the air.  “In my work, I know many of the top government officials on a first-name basis, including Prime Minister Tal.  While it is true that Refuge pays its debts, not everyone is as enthusiastic as we might like.  When Victoria makes a request for five hundred or more of the Special Reconnaissance Force to be used in an attack on a Dominion prison ship, some in the Army will object.  My role is to help smooth things over.”

Hiram looked at her curiously.  “Emily, none of this explains why you’re here.  Why did you come to see me?”

“Admiral Razon, Commandant of the Refuge Coast Guard,” she began, then paused as Yael groaned out loud.

“What?” she demanded.

Yael waved a hand in the air.  “Please, go ahead, finish.”

“Admiral Razon has denied us the use of his Reserve force of pilots with our new heavy gunboats.  He says they are not competent and will besmirch the honor of Refuge,” she explained.  “I need help getting around him and I hoped you might have ideas.”

Yael shook his head.  “Razon is a traditionalist.  He won’t understand your idea for a new group of heavy gunboats and will be suspicious of it.  On top of that, he’s…well, he’s an imbecile, but he’s an imbecile with a lot of supporters.”  He glanced at Emily.  “You shouldn’t have gone to him, Emily.  You should have done your homework first.  Now it will be harder to get this changed.

“Can you speak to the Queen?” Emily asked Hiram.  “All our plans with the gunboats depend on the Reserve.  There’s just nobody else we can train on such short notice.”

Yael winced.  “Don’t do that, at least not yet.  Let me talk to the Prime Minister first.  I know him; I might be able to talk him through this without any further escalation.”  He paused for a moment, lost in thought, then refocused.  “There might be an approach that will appeal to the Prime Minister that Admiral Razon will not be able to block.  I need to think about it further.”  He stood up and everyone else rose and said their goodbyes.

“Walk you to the lifts?” Emily asked Rafael.

“With you I shall feel safer if we run into any grogin here on Atlas,” Rafael said with a  perfectly straight face.  “Even if you cannot shoot the side of a house.”

“Barn,” Emily corrected, smiling.  “The expression is: ‘You can’t hit the broad side of a barn.’”

Rafael made a
tsking
sound. “I know this expression,” he replied disdainfully.  “I have seen you in action, Emily Tuttle.  You cannot hit the side of a house, either.”

Emily put her arm through his as they walked along the corridor.  “How are your mothers?  And Nouar?”

Rafael laughed.  “Nouar talks about you all the time.  She wants to know when you will visit again.  I’ve tried to explain that you have duties here and it might be a while before you can make it back, but she is a very insistent girl.”

“I picture her as an Admiral some day,” Emily said, only half joking.

As they reached the lift, Rafael paused.  “Emily, I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, but what went wrong when you sent Marines over to the Dominion battleship?”

“It was the
Vengeance,
the biggest damn battleship I’ve ever seen,” Emily said, not a little bitterly.  “We had one of those Tilleke teleporter devices and sent over almost one hundred Marines, but the bloody thing broke before we could send any reinforcements.  The Marines were trapped and got slaughtered.”

Rafael considered this.  “And now your technical wizard, this Romano person, she thinks she has fixed the problem, yes?”

“Romano’s pretty good; if she thinks it’s fixed, it’s probably fixed,” Emily replied.

Rafael nodded slowly.  “I do not want my men to be – how do you say? – cannon food.”

“Cannon fodder,” Emily said.

“Yes, fodder.  Refuge does pay its debts, Emily, regardless of what some like Admiral Razon may do, but I will not sacrifice my troops if there is no chance.”

The chime sounded to indicate the arrival of the lift.   “When this is over, my family would like you to come visit us again in Ouididi,” he told her.

Emily thought of the task in front of them, going through a wormhole deep into Dominion space and attacking a well-defended shipyard, then somehow getting back to Refuge again.  And all with untested crews and a new type of assault craft.

“It’s a date,” she promised.

Chapter 22

Prime Minister’s Office, Refuge

“Thank you for seeing us, Prime Minister.”  Two men and one woman sat across the table from the Prime Minister.  The speaker was Eliana Zohar, Minister of the Refuge Defense Force, with control over the Army and Fleet.  On her left sat Tarek Allali, the Production Minister, whose job it was to not only build everything the Refuge armed forces needed, but to figure out how to pay for it.  He had perpetual dark smudges under his eyes and his hair was chronically tousled, as if he had spent the night tossing and turning.  On the other side of Zohar sat Yael Eitan, who was known in government circles as a fixer, a man who could persuade people it was in their best interest to do what the Government wanted them to do.

              Now Yael was here, the Prime Minister thought wryly, to convince the Government that it was in
its
best interest to do something.  But what?

Beside the Prime Minister sat Aamir Fareed Khan, the Refuge Foreign Minister, tall and urbane, smiling, watching everything and everyone, but in particular Yael.  Yael smiled blandly back at him and nodded a greeting.

             Prime Minister Tal's government was a messy coalition compromise.  Tal was part of the Liberal Party, but since no one had received a clear majority, he had had to bring in two other parties to form the government.  The Defense minister was also part of the Liberal Party, but the Foreign Minister was a long-time Conservative with dreams of becoming Prime Minister himself some day.  The Production Minister, in turn, was part of the religious party called the Party of the Prophet.  The problem, as any psychologist could have predicted, was that three is an unstable number when it comes to human relations, and that held especially true in politics.

            It also meant that deciding anything of consequence required another damn meeting, with all three parties perpetually jockeying around for advantage.  The Prime Minister smiled inwardly.  He would grow tired of it, if he didn't enjoy it so very much.

            So now his fellow Liberal Party Minister had brought him to yet another meeting to discuss...what?

            "We have two issues, Prime Minister," said Defense Minister Zohar.  "One is budgetary; the other is proper use of our RDF resources.  The fact is that the RDF is out of money, or soon will be.  When we created this budget, we of course had no idea that we would become embroiled in a war between our long-time ally, Victoria, and the Dominion.  We have spent vast sums in the last two months and need to find some money quickly or will have to suspend critical operations."

"How much do you need?" asked Prime Minister Tal.

           
The Defense Minister stated a number and the Prime Minister stifled a gasp.  The blood drained from his face.  He knew it was going to be bad, but that bad?

             The Defense Minister saw the look on his face and nodded grimly.  "Yes, Prime Minister, a staggering sum."  She folded her hands on the table.  "Refuge will, of course, pay its debts to Victoria, but my job-"  She looked around the table.  "
Our
job is to make sure that we do not destroy Refuge while we honor that debt.  I think there are two things we can do immediately that will give us some slight relief and might help us move the war out of the Refuge Sector and back into Victoria."  She didn't quite say,
Where it belongs...
, but everyone in the room understood.

             "In the first place," she continued, "we can cut costs.  This is only a small stop-gap measure, to be sure, but there may be an unexpected side benefit that will help move the war back to Victoria."

             "I trust you will share it with me, Eliana," the Prime Minister said dryly.

             "Of course, Prime Minister," Zohar said.  "It has to do with the Coast Guard.  As you know, many people apply to be pilots in the Coast Guard, but few are accepted.  Of those rejected, most simply return to civilian life and are of no budgetary consequence, but it turns out that we have more than six hundred Coast Guard officers and non-commissioned officers who were rejected for gunboat duty, but nevertheless stayed in the Coast Guard.  They are called ‘Rejects’ by the Coast Guard admiralty and have essentially been beached.  They have no duties and no one in the Coast Guard wants them or will use them.  Despite this, these Rejects continue to be under the authority of Admiral Razon and draw half-pay, benefits and, in time, pensions."

             "I am familiar with the status of the gunboat Rejects," Prime Minister Tal said tartly, who was once Pilot Candidate Tal and failed to pass the pilot exam.  The memory of being declared a Reject still rankled thirty years later.

            "Of course, Prime Minister," said Defense Minister Zohar, who was perfectly aware that Tal was once rejected as a gunboat pilot.  She pushed the knife in a little deeper.  "The Rejects are a heavy burden on the RDF, Prime Minister.  They cost more than $51 Million Credits a year and collect half-pay pensions when they finally retire, for which the RDF gets nothing in return.  The Coast Guard won't use them and attempts to palm them off on other branches of the RDF have failed.  No one wants them."

           Prime Minister Tal looked at her sharply.  Defense Minister Zohar gazed at him without guile or pretext, but gazed at him intently nonetheless. 
Why was she doing this? 
She kept staring at him, waiting for him to…to realize what the hell was going on?

Finally, the amount of money she was talking about sank in.  The Prime Minister mentally shook himself.  The Defense Minister's budget was more than $250
Billion
Credits.  $51 Million was barely a rounding error.  Why didn't she just do whatever it was she wanted his approval for?  What in the name of the One God was going on?

            Then he looked around the room.  There was the Foreign Minister of the Traditionalist Party, and there was the Production Minister of the Party of the Prophet.  Admiral Razon, the Commandant of the Coast Guard, was a vocal member of the Party of the Prophet and was not a supporter of Tal's efforts to help the Victorians.  And lastly there was Yael Eitan, of no party affiliation anyone knew of.  What
was
he doing here?

            Time for a cautious probe.  "Well, the Liberal Party doesn't want to be known as the party that cut off benefits to part of the military.   So long as Admiral Razon is willing to carry the financial burden, I see no reason to do anything hasty here," he said firmly.

             "Thank you, Prime Minister," Zohar said, almost sighing with relief.  "I share your sentiments, but I felt compelled to bring it before you."  She smiled brightly.

             Aamir Fareed Khan glanced back and forth between Prime Minister Tal and the Production Minister.  There was little love lost between the Traditionalists and the Party of the Prophet.  The Party of the Prophet wanted a state religion and a requirement that all government employees, in particular its Ministers and Cabinet, be members of it.  Traditionalists wanted a clear separation of Temple and State.  And because the Coast Guard Commandant was such an out-spoken supporter of the Party of the Prophet, the Coast Guard was viewed as aligned with it. 

               "I think we may be looking at this the wrong way," the Prime Minister said smoothly.  "Instead of looking at this as a budget matter, we should be looking at it as an opportunity to find full employment for the Rejects."  He shifted his gaze to Yael Eitan.  "Mr. Eitan, would you have any suggestions?"

               Yael nodded slowly.  "Yes, Mr. Prime Minister.  I know that the Victorians are looking to employ former military people from the RDF and the Coast Guard in particular, but whether they would be interested in hiring any of the Rejects..."  He shrugged eloquently.  "I think the smarter course might be to simply tell Admiral Razon that he must bear the financial burden of these people.  It will cut into his development and production budget, of course, but the Rejects are clearly an issue for the Coast Guard, not anyone else in the RDF."

                Tarek Allali, the Production Minister, scowled at Yael.  "That is preposterous!  These people are a ball and chain around the neck of the Coast Guard.  They are a drain on the entire RDF budget.  They should be dismissed from the RDF.  If the Victorians are foolish enough to hire them, so be it.  I say "Good riddance!'"

                Foreign Minister Khan looked at him in frank surprise.  "You are saying that you are willing for the entire group of the Rejects to be dismissed from the Coast Guard?"

                "Yes, of course," the Production Minister said firmly.  "And the sooner the better!"

                "Should we discuss this first with Admiral Razon?" Prime Minister Tal asked hesitantly.

                "No need for that, I assure you," Khan replied.  "We, after all, are the chief Ministers involved.  I am sure Admiral Razon will be delighted when we tell him we are saving him $50 Million Credits per year in his budget."

                Prime Minister Tal looked about the room.  "All right, then.  I will sign an order today discharging the Rejects from duty in the RDF.  As of tomorrow morning they will all be civilians."

                "A fine day!" said the Foreign Minister.  "Just goes to show that the three parties in the coalition can work together when we put our minds to it."

                "Just so," agreed the Production Minister.

                "And I have one more thing I can do to help the Victorians get this war out of Refuge and back into Victoria," the Defense Minister announced proudly.  "Queen Anne herself has said that Victoria will take over the salary and benefits of any troops we assign to guard their ships and the Atlas space station, thus freeing up the Victorian Marines for active duties assaulting the Dominion of Unified Citizenry.  I have today assigned five hundred of our Reconnaissance Forces to the Victorians for garrison duty, thus taking them out of the RDF budget for the remainder of this fiscal year...”

                 Foreign Minister Khan's eyebrows lifted skeptically for a moment, but then he shrugged.  The Production Minister glanced about the room, testing the winds, and then he nodded.  Prime Minister Tal beamed.  "Well then, we've made some progress," he said warmly.

                 The meeting broke up, with the Production Minister leaving first.  Foreign Minister Khan turned to Tal and Zohar.

                 "I'm not entirely sure what that was all about," he said sternly, "but you owe me one."  He turned and left.

                 Prime Minister Tal looked at Zohar and Yael Eitan.  "Got what you need?" he asked tartly.

                 They nodded.

                 He raised a finger and pointed it at them.  "Next time, a little warning first.  I do not like surprises, understand?"

                 Zohar and Yael exchanged glances.  "Yes, Prime Minister," they said in unison.

                 Tal glowered at Yael.  "Tell the Victorians to treat the Rejects well, Yael.  Most of them will fight to the death for a chance to redeem their honor.  As to the Reconnaissance Forces, I take it they are not going to be used just as guards, but in a more active role?"

                 "Yes, Prime Minister," Yael murmured.

                 Tal studied him quizzically.  "Yael, how is it you came to be mixed up in this?"

                 A shadow fell over Yael's face.  "My son is an officer in the Reconnaissance Forces."

                 Prime Minister Tal let out a long sigh.  "May the One God bless him and keep him, and may He curse old men who stay behind while their sons and daughters go off to war."

                 "Amen," said Yael Eitan, and wondered bleakly how he would explain all of this to Rafael's mothers.