Alarm of War (16 page)

They all turned and looked, and even Krissy fell silent. The entire wall was made of clear plastiglass. It was the largest window Emily had seen on the space station, and the view was breathtaking. The bar was perched on the twentieth level of the space station and they looked out across the curvature of Atlas itself to the planet Cornwall far below. The planet’s landscape almost filled the window.

“Oh my God,” said Emily. “That’s beautiful!”

Hiram laughed delightedly. “I told you it would be worth the walk.”

Cookie shook her head in wonderment. “Okay, lover, what
is
this place?”

“It’s a home away from home,” said a voice from behind them. They turned and saw a stout, fleshy man with pale skin and hair the color of cooked beets. “It is the place we come to after a day of noble deeds and rare adventures, the only place in the entire station where we know we’ll find men and” – he bowed to Emily and Cookie – “fair lassies of fine breeding and culture to share a drink and talk of the finer things.”

It finally dawned on her. Emily burst out laughing. “This is the tugger’s bar!”

The stout man beamed. “And isn’t that what I just said?” He held out a hand. “I am Peter Murphy, captain of the
Son of Dublin,
the finest tug boat in all of Victoria
.
Pleased to meet you.” He led them to a semi-circle of easy chairs by the window, men and women nodding respectfully to him as they passed. Drinks came and were handed out. Emily found herself with a large glass of brown liquid that smelled of yeast, malt and molasses. She sipped it cautiously. It was thick and syrupy.

Alan, her date for the night, nodded at Captain Murphy. “I’ve heard of this place. You’re with the Tug Masters Guild, right? You guys own four or five floors in this section of the space station.”

Murphy nodded, pleased. “Well, we don’t own it of course; we lease it from the Atlas Corporation like everyone else on the station. We’ve got this room here, offices on the floor below, than a large hanger and repair facility on the next three decks. These tugs are tough, but they take a lot of abuse, and the tractor coils have to be replaced fairly often.”

Alan had somehow sat down next to Krissy. She said something to him in a low voice that Emily couldn’t catch and he laughed and nodded.

Cookie punched Hiram’s arm. “How did you find this place? It’s the best kept secret in the station.”

“You know me, I like to poke around.”

Murphy gestured at Hiram with a glass of ale. “Your young man accosted me in the hanger deck one day, saying he had a few questions. Wanted to know all about the tug boats and such. So I brought him up here to chat.”

“Classic Hiram,” Emily said, remembering Hiram making lists in training camp. “There is no skill set not worth recording.”

“My very own geek,” Cookie said. She put her head on his shoulder, her mouth twitching in laughter. “And you brought us here to share.”

“Tug boats,” said Krissy, rolling her eyes. “How fascinating.”

“Yes, they are,” replied Murphy, ignoring her sarcasm. “Without the tugs, the entire Victorian economy would shut down.” He took a long swallow of ale that left a line of froth on his upper lip. “How many freighters do you think come to Atlas and Prometheus every day, including the orbiting custom warehouses?”

Cookie shook her head and shrugged. “Never thought about it. Two hundred? Three hundred?”

Emily pondered. Victoria was the central crossroads for trade. Seven worm holes entered into Victorian space, and ships from nine inhabited sectors used them. Ziridium from Arcadia, medicines and chemicals from Tilleke, ores from the Dominion, electronics from the Sultenic Empire, food stuffs from Sybil Head, and on and on. All those ships…

“A thousand a day?” she guessed.

Murphy smiled broadly. “Two thousand a day, every day. And each one has to be docked somewhere, and usually that means they need a tug. Some of the big ones take two or three tugs. We’ve got more than five hundred tugs in the Guild and we could use more, believe me.”

“What about the military ships?” Emily asked. “They must use their own tugs when they dock their ships.”

“Oh, aye, they do,” Murphy agreed. “But they don’t have as many as they should, you see. When they get one of the big boys in, one of the battleships or heavy cruisers, they call us to give ‘em a hand. Battleships cost a pretty penny; don’t want one of them to get loose while it’s docking and rattle around the dry dock, now do you?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Emily caught Krissy whispering something to Alan. Alan squeezed her hand.

“Your tractor beam can pull a battleship?” Grant asked.

“Each of those tugs has got the same tractor beam that you find in a Dover class battleship,” he said, obvious pride in his voice. “We put four of them on a battleship and we can guide her in smooth as a-” He paused, glancing sheepishly at the three women. “Very smooth. That’s all a tug is, when you come right to it: a big engine and a huge tractor beam.”

Krissy suddenly stood. “I’m not feeling good. I’ve gotta go.”

Grant looked surprised, then annoyed. “Krissy, for Christ’s sake-” he began, but Alan suddenly stood up. “I’ve got to go myself. I’ll walk her back.” He turned to Emily. “Sorry, I’ve got an early day tomorrow.” He took Krissy’s hand and led her out. For a long moment everyone left behind was silent. Murphy, not knowing the relationships, merely looked puzzled. Hiram and Cookie exchanged a worried glance. Emily watched Alan lead the blonde Krissy out the door, torn between outrage and relief. She turned to Grant.

“I hate to break it to you, but I think we’ve been ditched.” Then she broke into laughter. “What?” Grant demanded crossly.

“It’s…it’s Alan,” Emily spluttered. “I never even learned his last name.”

After more stories and drinks, Captain Murphy drifted away and the four of them were left alone. “Well,” said Cookie, raising her glass, “to Camp Gettysburg.”

They toasted, then Cookie glanced at Emily. “So I heard about you graduation exercise. What did they call it, Alamo Fort?”

“Supply Station Alamo,” Emily corrected, surprised and a little dismayed that anyone out of Home Fleet had heard about it.

“I heard you whupped your instructor,” Cookie said, eyes gleaming. “C’mon, girl, tell us how you did it!”

So Emily explained it all: the feint, the chaff cloud, the lure, the nasty surprise waiting inside the chaff field, and how she mined the supply station. When she was through, Hiram smiled and nodded, Cookie howled with laughter, and Grant stared at her with an expression she couldn’t begin to read.

“How did you think all that up?” Cookie gasped.

“Simple,” Emily replied, looking at Hiram and Grant in turn. “Once I knew what the problem was, I asked myself what
Grant
what want to do, and how
Hiram
would go about doing it.”

The two men looked startled, then nonplused. Cookie roared.

They looked up to see Peter Murphy standing over them, his face grim. “We’ve just heard: The Tilleke Empire launched an attack on a convoy of Arcadian freighters,” he told them. “They destroyed the DUC escorts. The Arcadian Prime Minister has asked for assistance from Victoria. All officers and crew of Second Fleet are being recalled immediately.”

The four of them stood as one. Hiram looked stricken. Cookie looked determined, and Emily could see her wrapping herself in Fleet Marine macho. In a few minutes Cookie would be all steel and clipped sentences, focused on what was to come. Hiram needed those few minutes to say goodbye.

“C’mon,” she murmured to Grant. “Let’s let them talk. I’ll walk with you to the shuttle deck.”

They walked in silence for several minutes, each caught up in his own thoughts.

“I’ve been appointed as my father’s adjutant,” Grant suddenly said.

Emily had already heard. A number of other junior officers were scornful…and envious. She admitted to a little of both. “It will be good experience for you – see how it works from the inside.”

“I wanted to be assigned to the scout frigates, but my father wouldn’t let me. Said it was a waste of time. He told me most junior officers spent as much as four years trying to get enough experience to be appointed as an admiral’s adjutant, but because I am his son, he could make it happen now.” He suddenly stopped, turning to her. “In frigates I could have made my own name. Now…I’m just Admiral Skiffington’s son. Other men will fight; I’m going to fetch coffee.”

Emily was disgusted. The Fleet was going to war and he was going to be sitting in the command room where all of the major decisions would be made. It was a historian’s dream! And he was whining about it! “Listen to yourself, for pity’s sake!” she snapped. “The Fleet is going to war and you’re bitching because you have to view the entire thing through the eyes of the commanding admiral? Half the officers in the Fleet would give their eyeteeth for that assignment.”

Grant flushed a deep red. “But I’ll be sitting on some battleship while other ships are in the thick of the fighting-”

“Gods of Our Mothers, Grant, don’t you get it? This is the
Navy
! People aren’t sent into harm’s way alone; we all go
together
!”

“No, I don’t want to be the Admiral’s gofer; I want to lead men into battle!”

“Well, great, I hope you do a better job at it in real battle than you did at Gettysburg.” She was angry now, knew her words were too strong, too cutting, but couldn’t help herself. “As I recall you used to get a lot of us killed when you were in command.”

Grant went pale. “And as
I
recall,” he said stiffly, “the only person who got anybody killed was you.”

Emily stopped dead, the words like a slap in the face. And he was right, wasn’t he? The only
real
deaths occurred when she tried to send men across the river.

Grant held up his arms in a placating gesture. “Sorry, that was a cheap shot. Sorry.”

They reached the shuttle deck a minute later, the silence between them brittle. “Go, Grant. Do your job.”

Grant didn’t reply. He nodded stiffly, one short nod, then turned on his heel and boarded the departing shuttle. And to her utter astonishment, Emily felt a sharp stab of regret that she wasn’t going to war as well.

T
he Dominion freighter
Blue Swan
slowly maneuvered through the anchorages surrounding Atlas Station. Its captain radioed the Atlas Station Port Authority for permission to anchor just off the Primary Maintenance Bay, explaining that the
Blue Swan
had an anti-matter injector that had frozen and would require a dock repair.

Permission was granted. The
Blue Swan
slid to a stop twenty miles from the entrance to the Primary Maintenance Bay. A tug fixed it to an anchor buoy.

A few miles away, just visible to the naked eye, was the HMS
Lionheart
, one of the three battleships in the Home Fleet.

“T
he scouts are back through the worm hole, Admiral. No sign of hostile ships.”

Admiral Oliver Skiffington, Commander of the Second Fleet, nodded once, then pushed the com button to be connected with every one of the one hundred and twenty ships under his command.

“Men and women of the Second Fleet. In a moment we will enter Tilleke space. Our scouts report there are no enemy ships on the other side of the worm hole, so this part of the mission will be unopposed. But stand ready. The enemy is out there, and when we find them, we will join them in battle.

“You are members of the greatest single fleet ever created in human history. We will meet the enemy and destroy them! Victory for Victoria!”

Skiffington closed the com and nodded to Commander Kerrs, the captain of the battleship,
H.M.S. London.
“Take us through, Captain. All ships to follow in train.”

It would take two hours or more to bring the fleet through and shake out into formation, but entering Tilleke space without opposition was a gift. The Emperor had made a mistake, perhaps a serious one. He had missed his first chance to do some damage, to try to weaken them. Not that it would matter in the end. He allowed himself a small smile. On the holo display the fleet was so large it looked like blue snow. He was commanding the largest task force in the entire history of mankind! One hundred and twenty war ships, with six battleships, thirty formidable missile cruisers, and destroyers and frigates by the dozen.

The Hammer of God,
he thought.
And I wield it.

The last ships came through the worm hole and shook out into formation with four battle groups on line and two in reserve. Then, on Admiral Skiffington’s signal, they moved forward, making a course for Qurna, the Tilleke home world.

And then, for the next ten hours…nothing. Just empty space. Deck crews rotated off, their seats taken by fresh replacements. The Admiral and Commander both stayed on the bridge, living on coffee and nerves. Grant Skiffington sat in a chair just behind his father, ready to do anything asked of him, but there was nothing to do. He rubbed his eyes and vainly tried to stifle a yawn. The holograph display showed the fleet, a wide arc of blue dots, with a sprinkling of blue in front representing the reconnaissance frigates. Nothing else.

“Anything yet from the frigate screen?” the Admiral asked Commander Kerrs. “Nothing yet, Admiral,” Kerrs replied, studying his holo display.

Admiral Skiffington frowned. There were only two ways for Emperor Chalabi to play this. He could either meet the Victorian fleet well away from the Tilleke home world of Qurna, or could wait until the fleet reached Qurna so that the Tilleke fleet would have the benefit of Qurna’s planetary defenses.

“So, what is the Emperor up to?” he mused out loud.

“Staying close to Qurna’s defenses, I’d wager,” replied Kerrs. “There he can take advantage of minefields, stationary platform defenses and drone weapons.”

Grant Skiffington uneasily recalled Hiram Brill’s comments about the Tilleke gift for doing the unexpected. “Sir, I’ve been told that the Emperor does nothing straightforward. Feints and double feints, trying to confuse his enemy until he does something that leaves him vulnerable.”