Alarm of War, Book II: The Other Side of Fear (39 page)

Rafael spent another minute organizing his force, then switched his comm to the Controller’s room, known for reasons entirely lost to him as the “Hot Box.”

“This is Captain Eitan, who are my beach ball controllers?”

“This is Sergeant Stafford, Lieutenant; I’m riding herd on the controllers.  I’ve given you Specialists Balek and Cocchi, each controlling two BB’s.  What would you like?”

Rafael considered for a moment.  He needed to reach Engineering, but Maria Sanchez and Otto Wisnioswski were wandering around here somewhere as well.  “First, I need direct comm to Balek and Cocchi; if things get hot I won’t have time to go through you.”

“Done,” said Sergeant Stafford and two new communication icons appeared on Eitan’s visor.

“Send Cocchi’s BB’s toward the stern looking for the two Victorian prisoners.  Send Balek’s BB’s toward Engineering by the most direct route they can find.  Map all enemy units.”  Rafael took a moment to slave the Marvin to one of the beach balls.  “Tell Balek that there will be a Marvin trailing about one hundred feet behind one of his BB’s.”  Rafael had been trained in the use of the Marvins as heavy support weapons, but he liked to put them out front just a little behind a beach ball.  When they encountered problems he could then spill his men along either flank and either force the enemy back or eliminate them.  It had worked great in training; now he’d get to see if it worked in real life.

“Send out the beach balls,” he ordered Balek and Cocchi.  He shifted his comm to the Company net.  “All units, double check your IFF transponders!  I will activate the Marvin in one minute!”  He dutifully checked his own and got a good green test light.  It would be rather embarrassing if the Company commander got killed because he forgot to turn on his own IFF.

In the Controllers’ room, Specialist Mariella Cocchi activated her two beach balls and whispered over the comm circuit, “Lassie!  Lassie, go find Timmy!  Find Timmy!  Good girl!”

Sergeant Stafford gave her a dark look, but before he could say anything, Hiram interjected:  “You’re to be commended, Specialist, not many people know the Old Earth Search and Rescue protocols.”

Cocchi flashed him a smile of thanks.  Stafford glowered and went back to work.

The four beach balls bounced once high in the air, then raced down the corridor towards Engineering. When the BB’s reached the first fork in the corridor, Balek kept her two going straight while Cocchi took hers to the left.  Then each Controller put their BB’s on autonomous function and sat back and watched the displays.

A few seconds later the Marvin lumbered down the corridor, keeping pace with the beach ball it was slaved to.  Behind the Marvin went Eitan’s hundred-man force.

Meanwhile, from the
Haifa
, Colonel Tamari led his two hundred men and the two Marvins towards the bow of the ship and the enemy bridge.

* * * *

              Cookie and Wisnioswski never reached Engineering.  As they rounded one corner, they bumped into a squad of Dominion Security Forces.  The Security Forces hesitated for a split second, but Cookie, blaster already leveled, pulled the trigger twice, then hastily backed around the corner out of the line of fire.  A grenade bounced and rolled to the corner; not knowing what else to do, she shot it with the blaster and sent it skittering back down the passageway, where it exploded and took out another of the Dominion troops.

              “Back!  Back!” she screamed at Wisnioswski and the two of them ran back to the next junction in the corridor.  Cookie fired three more blaster shots at the bend of the corridor they had just retreated from.  There was a second Dominion grenade, but they were out of its kill zone.  Cookie glanced anxiously down the other end of the corridor just in time to see five men in the uniform of Victorian Marines appear. Two of the Marines immediately opened fire on them, forcing Cookie and Wisnioswski to dart into the side passageway.

              “Friends!  Friends!” Wisnioswski bellowed in anger and fear.  “’All together, never alone,’ you fucking morons!  We’re friends!”  More shots came from the Marines, to be answered with shots from the Dominion Security Forces.

              “We’re havin’ fun now,” Cookie muttered, then dragged Wisnioswski down the corridor to a steep staircase that went up a level. At the top of the stairs she shot a quick look left and right, didn’t see anything, then darted across the corridor to a small passageway.  Behind her Wisnioswski stumbled and fell flat, unable to break his fall with his injured arms.  As Cookie ran back to help him she saw two Dominion Security Force soldiers reach the top of the stairs, but further along the corridor behind them she saw the lumbering, lethal shape of a Marvin.

              The Dominions raised their blasters to their shoulders.  Cookie dove to the floor, then covered her head as the air above her seemed to crackle and snap.  A gust of heat blew past her and when she looked up she saw the lower half of the two Duck soldiers collapse back down the stairs, seemingly in slow motion. There were no upper halves. The Marvin lurched into motion again, coming towards her, but as it reached the top of the stairs a grenade arched through the air and exploded on top of it.  The Marvin staggered to a stop, then its eight legs seemed to lose strength and it collapsed to the deck.

              Cookie waited for the second grenade, but none came.  Cursing under her breath, she grabbed Wisnioswski by the arm and went through the first door she could find. 

And stopped.

              The Dominion prison ship Tartarus was twenty-six decks high.  Cookie stood on a catwalk six decks from the bottom.  Below her were five decks of prison cells and soaring above her, lost in the dim light, were twenty more decks of prison cells.  The decks continued forward and back out of sight as they curved gently with the curve of the hull.  This was the main prison population on the ship.  Part of her tried to count the cells, but quickly gave up.  There were hundreds, maybe thousands.

              A few feet away, a man stood in his cell looking at her with wonderment.

              “Who are you?” he croaked.  He had a beard and was emaciated.  One eye was gone, the eye socket a scared crater weeping yellow pus.  Cookie could smell him even ten feet away.

              “The Victorians have boarded,” she said, side-stepping his question.  “Who are you?”

              “The Vickies?  Here?”  The man seemed to stagger.  Then a look of horror passed over his face.  “No, no.  You must warn them, if the DID think the ship will be lost, they’ll blow it up.  They have scuttling charges.  You must leave!  Quickly!”  He was panting with the effort of speaking.

              “Who are you?” Cookie asked again.

              “I am Friedrich Altmann.”  He stared at her through his one eye.  “I was the captain of this ship.”  He stared at her for a long moment.  “My God, are you really here?”

* * * *

              On the bridge of the
Tartarus
, Colonel Konig sat by the control console and watched the monitors closely.  It was a hard to tell, but his men seemed to be holding their own better than he might have hoped.  Could they hold long enough for rescue?  He decided that if the Vickies reached either the Engineering Deck or the Bridge, he would detonate the scuttling charges. 

              He settled down to wait.

* * * *

              Cookie stared at Captain Altmann. 
Bugger me!
she thought frantically.  “Wisnioswski, on me,” she ordered and then bolted through the door back into the corridor. To the left she could hear the firefight still raging between the Victorian Marines and the Dominion Security Forces.  She turned right, ran until she came to an intersection, and turned right again, with Wisnioswski pounding along heavily behind her.  Now she and Wisnioswski were parallel to the corridor where the Marines were, but headed in their direction.  Moving as quickly as she could, not bothering to stay quiet, she led Wisnioswski through three more intersections without seeing anyone. 
Two more,
she thought.

              That’s when their luck ran out.  As she approached the next intersection, four men suddenly stepped out, flechette rifles to the ready.  Cookie’s heart sank as she realized they were dressed in the black of the Dominion Security Forces.  Cookie and Wisnioswski stopped. Wisnioswski stepped half in front of her.

              “Man are we glad to see you,” Wisnioswski said.  “There is a squad of Vickie marines back there and-“

              “Nice try,” one of the Security Forces said and all four of them fired.  Something punched Cookie hard on the thigh, then Wisnioswski slammed into her, knocking her to the ground and falling on her.  One of the Security Forces stepped forward, ready to deliver the final shot.

              “
Hello
there,” said a sultry woman’s voice.  The four men spun around to see a round metal ball with several blinking lights.  It slowly rolled forward a few feet and stopped.  It chirped.

              “I am a self-propelled, multi-band sensor reconnaissance unit of seductively spheroid shape and uncanny wit,” it breathed.

* * * *

              In the Hot Box, Mariella Cocchi suddenly sat straight.  “Commander Brill, you need to see this!”

              Hiram and Sergeant Stafford rushed to her station and stood looking over her shoulder.  On the large display monitor, they could see Cookie and Wisnioswski running down the corridor.  Cocchi stabbed the comm button and transmitted to all of the Refuge Special Reconnaissance Forces:  “I have a visual on Sergeant Sanchez and Private Wisnioswski.  Require assistance at these coordinates,” and she sent the location to their heads-up displays. Then she slaved her second BB to the first and sent the emergency signal.  Three hundred yards away, the second beach ball turned and raced down the passageway, seeking its companion.

              Hiram thought his heart would stop.  Cookie was so close.  Now all they had to-

              Then four men stepped out of the side corridor, their backs to Cocchi’s beach ball.  There was a brief, muffled exchange, then the men fired. Cookie and Wisnioswski went down hard, blood splattering the walls and deck.

              “Gods of Our Mothers!” Hiram sobbed, then Sergeant Maimon pulled him away.  “Let her do her job!” he whispered harshly.

              Specialist Cocchi thought frantically, then pushed the comm switch that would link her through the beach ball’s external speakers.  She leaned closer to the mike and said in a throaty voice, “Hello there…”

* * * *

              “I am a self-propelled, multi-band sensor reconnaissance unit of seductively spheroid shape and uncanny wit,” the sphere said.  The four Dominions gawked at it. 

“It is my task to return these two prisoners to their cells, so I must ask that you step away from them now.”  It rolled slowly forward another few feet.  “If you interfere, I will be required by Dominion Military Regulation 437-74 to report you to your superiors for insubordination.”  It rolled forward again until it was only fifteen feet away.  With a snarl, one of the Dominions raised his rifle.

“Not nice,” the beach ball chided. 

Then it blew up.  

Shrapnel tore through the four of them, knocking them off their feet and rendering them senseless.  The beach ball held only half an ounce of explosive, enough to reliably self-destruct, but not enough to guarantee that it would kill anyone near it.  Still, one of the four Dominions caught a piece of shrapnel in the throat and was desperately holding his hands to his neck to keep from bleeding out.  The other three were stunned and wounded with varying degrees of severity.  They lay groaning on the deck.

Cookie tried to sit up, but Wisnioswski lay unconscious across her stomach.  She could see the Dominions struggling back towards full consciousness, groaning and weakly moving their limbs.  “Otto, get off me!” she screamed at him, but he was out cold, two deep flechette wounds in his chest and blood bubbling in a pink froth from his mouth.

“Fuck!” she snarled, squirming underneath him and pushing at him.  One of the Dominions slowly sat up.  She tried desperately to reach the blaster just out of reach, and then remembered the flechette pistol in her belt.  She yanked it out, aimed it unsteadily at the Dominion and fired.

And missed.

“What’s happening?” Hiram shouted.  “What’s happening?”

“I don’t know!” Specialist Cocchi said.  The second beach ball was still thirty seconds away from reaching Cookie’s location.  Cocchi was blind.  “Thirty seconds more!” she cried.

“Bugger me!” Cookie snarled and grasped the pistol in both hands.  The Dominion soldier was fumbling on the ground next to him, trying to pick up his rifle with clumsy fingers.  Cookie set the pattern to a wide spread and aimed it just as the Dominion finally grasped the rifle and lifted it.  She fired. 

Once.  Twice.  Thrice. 

The first shot somehow missed entirely.  The second caught him in the shoulder and neck.  Blood fountained and he spun around, facing her directly.  The third took him in the chest and knocked him flat.

Cookie sagged in relief. Then she heard an odd, metallic sound and looked up to see a second beach ball rolling rapidly down the passageway to her.  It came to a skidding stop near her, quickly taking in the array of fallen bodies.