Alarm of War (25 page)

Hiram shrugged.

Emily sat back and let her mind run. “Gods of Our Mothers, Hiram, are you telling me that the Dominion are
faking
these breakdowns so that we will think they are bumbling idiots?”

Hiram shrugged.

“Stop doing that!” she said crossly. “You goddamn know something you aren’t telling me.”

“Sorry, Em.” He smiled. “Remember the tug boat captain, Peter Murphy? I spoke to him about the types of repairs the Dominion ships have needed. Mostly they’ve been single items that are delicate, like universal coils, mixing valves and injector heads.”

Emily didn’t know a lot about space ship engines, but she knew enough. “Each of those is hard to diagnose, but easy to repair once it has been identified as the problem.”

Hiram nodded. “You could swap out a good universal coil for a defective one, then creep into a Victorian ship yard for repairs. It might take the ship yard several days to figure out what the problem is. And during that time, a fully armed Dominion warship is sitting within easy shooting range of our ship yards.”

“But…but,” Emily spluttered, unwilling to accept what he was saying was right, but aghast that it might be. “But once they’re repaired, they’re leaving, going back to Tilleke space.”

“Yeah, sure. But in the meantime we have gotten completely blasé about having Dominion war ships anchored near our space stations.”

“You told Admiral Teehan about this?” she asked.

“Of course. He reminded me that the Dominion are our allies in the fight against the Tilleke.”

“You realize, don’t you, that for this entire thing to work for the Dominion, it means that the Dominion has to be working hand-in-hand with the Tillies? That’s a little hard to swallow.”

Hiram grimaced. “Of course I do! That’s the part I can’t accept myself, but…” his voice trailed off.

Suddenly Emily remembered the last week of Camp Gettysburg, when Hiram tickled to the fact that another training exercise was about to be sprung on them.

“You’re scaring the hell out of me, Hiram,” she told him grimly.

“I know, but think about it. If you were the Dominion and wanted to attack Victoria, how would
you
go about it?” he asked.

T
hey walked slowly through the formal Palace garden, an incongruous pair. She was slender, almost elfin, with flowing raven hair and piercing green eyes. He was bald as a stone and looked to have been hewn from a block of wood. He trudged stolidly alongside her, hands behind his back, acutely conscious of the three guardsmen who trailed quietly in their wake.

“I fear I make your guards nervous, Your Grace,” he said dryly.

“It is their job to be nervous, Ambassador. They were born to it.”

He sighed. “I am not an ambassador, Your Grace.”

“True,” she conceded, “but it is more pleasing to call you ‘Ambassador’ than to call you a spy.”

“Perhaps it would please Her Grace to talk to our Ambassador rather than someone without any official standing.”

She ignored this. They continued walking.

“I am aware of your…arrangement with the Queen, Ambassador Jong.”

Jong shook his head. “I am a great admirer of the Queen, Your Grace, but I have no spec-”

She laughed without humor. “Ambassador Jong, please do not diminish the high regard I have for you by insulting my intelligence. One of the reasons why my mother has been able to deal so adroitly with our own bumbling, incompetent Foreign Office is because you have been feeding her critical information about the other Sectors, the Sultenic Empire, Arcadia, but in particular the Dominion of Unified Citizenry.”

Jong tried bluster. “Really, Your Grace, how could I possibly meet with the Queen of Victoria? Your security apparatus would not countenance-”

“Poor Sir Henry,” Princess Anne replied. “He will not be very happy if he learns what mother has been doing, will he?” Her voice hardened. “My mother is a monarch, Jong. She understands the use of power…and how to keep it. She knows that if she is to retain power,
no
one is ever to know everything she knows and does. Even Sir Henry is not exempt from that mandate.”

Jong said nothing. He marveled at her, so much like her mother. What she lacked in her mother’s experience, she made up for with sheer force of will.

She stopped and turned to him. “The Queen is ill, Ambassador Jong. Very ill. She is no longer ruling, no longer watching over the Foreign Office.” She combed her fingers through her hair, a gesture that endeared him and disturbed him at the same time. “I need to do that, but I can’t rely on reports from the Foreign Office alone. I think you understand that. I need you to help me as you’ve helped my mother.”

“And Sir Henry?” Jong asked, all pretense gone. “Sir Henry is not enamored with The Light. He will be reluctant to let you see me.”

“You managed to secretly see my mother all this time,” said the Princess. “You will do no less for me.”

T
he courier drones emerged into Victorian space like a flock of sparrows, then broke into a dozen groups, each weaving for a moment to take star sightings and locate itself. First one, then ten, then a hundred and more all turned toward Cornwall and accelerated, each carrying the dying message of the
Bawdy Bertha
.

Just out of sensor range to the “south,” Admiral Kaeser’s Second Attack Fleet flew onward. It was still a full day’s flight from Cornwall.

On the far side of Victorian space, Admiral Mello’s First Attack Fleet, using transponders that identified them as a convoy of grain carriers from Cape Breton, passed Victorian Space Buoy #5 and plowed their way toward the Victorian home world.

Victoria slept.

O
n Cornwall, the Royal barge waited for the command to lift off with Princess Anne and Sir Henry, in route to Atlas Station.

“This is a bad time to leave Mother,” the Princess complained. “She’s not herself, she needs me. I shouldn’t be going off on a junket.”

“We’ll be back in three or four days,” Sir Henry lied soothingly. Princess Anne had a temper and he didn’t need that just now. “With the Second Fleet off to war, it is important that we have a Royal presence on the space stations to boost morale. Since Her Highness is indisposed, that means you.”

Anne’s eyes flashed. “The Queen is not ‘indisposed,’ Sir Henry, and you know it. She’s depressed, clinically depressed, and she needs care.”

“The Queen is getting the best care available, Princess. We need you here.”

The Princess looked at him, her eyes hard. “What I need, Sir Henry, is to keep an eye on those fools at the Foreign Office. That used to be Mother’s job, and she has not been doing it for the last year. They are so focused on the Tilleke that they have quite forgotten the Dominion of Unified Citizenry! Am I the only one who is bothered that the Dominions – the Dominions! – are suddenly our friends?”

Sir Henry sighed. “Really, Princess, would it not be best to leave that in the hands of the professionals at the Foreign Office-”

“Professional sycophants!” the Princess said scornfully. “All the real professional foreign officers were forced to retire and my Uncle replaced them with his cronies. They tell the Duke exactly what he wants to hear, and what
he
wants to hear is that Victoria is loved and respected by all because we are strong, beneficent and wise!”

Sir Henry winced inwardly. Queen Beatrice had made very few mistakes in her long reign, but appointing her younger brother to be head of the Foreign Office was one of them. “My Lady, this is not the time to dissect the Duke of Kent’s virtues. We need you at Atlas to-”

Princess Anne made a most un-princessly noise. “Don’t ‘My Lady’ me, Sir Henry, you’ve known me since I was in diapers and I know
you
too well to be charmed by pretty words and flattery.” She held up one finger. “First, Uncle Harold is a weak, arrogant, self-centered
stupid
man who thinks the Foreign Office is a plaything for his own personal amusement. I can forgive him for being self-centered, but I cannot tolerate him being a fool. What Mother was thinking of when she gave him the Foreign Office is beyond me.”

She held up a second finger. “Second, you keep telling me that we are going to Atlas, but in fact you’re taking me to the Home Fleet, are you not?” She looked at him coolly.

Sir Henry gazed coolly back at her. “And where did you hear that, Princess?”

“I may be young, Sir Henry, but I do have resources.”

But still young enough that you have not yet learned that you never disclose your assets if you don’t have to,
he thought. Still, the little Princess obviously had a very well placed informant. That would bear thinking about.

He looked at his watch. “Princess, we have to go. I wouldn’t ask you if it were not of the utmost importance.”

Princess Anne looked at him unblinkingly for a long moment, then she gave the slightest nod. “Very well, Sir Henry, but soon, perhaps very soon, I may have questions for you that you
will
answer. Do you understand?”

Sir Henry hid a rueful smile. He bowed. “You are your mother’s daughter, Princess.”

Anne stood. “I am, indeed, Sir Henry. Best not to forget it.”

T
he flock of drones flew on toward their destination, the Fleet base on the Atlas Space Station. Twenty of them had survived the rigors of the worm hole into Victorian space only to for fail for one reason or another. Their systems shut down and they went ballistic, to coast to eternity and beyond.

The surviving drones picked up the signal from Space Buoy #27, corrected course slightly and sped on. Soon now, very soon, they would detect the radio beacon from Space Station Atlas and fulfill the single duty they had been created for.

“It was all so confusing.” — Tale of a soldier’s first battle.

I
t was the third day of combat simulations and Emily was growing tired of it. No, not tired, bored. Captain Grey and Lieutenant Rudd were at Atlas for meetings, so the “Op Force” was headed by the Tactical Officer, Senior Lieutenant Michael Bishop. His problem was that he had no imagination…and when he didn’t win, he changed the rules.

The first day he had made a straight frontal attack, so Emily had pulled back her center and left her flanking forces in stealth mode. When she attacked him from the flanks, Bishop suspended the battle and scolded her for “dispersing her forces too thinly.”

In the next simulation, she used a number of decoys. Bishop launched a frontal attack and obliterated them. Emily noticed that he used a very large number of missiles in his attack. She created another line of decoys. Again he obliterated them with an avalanche of missiles. This time Emily sent a raid around to Bishop’s rear and destroyed his supply collier. Now he could not replenish his missile stores. She made a third line of decoys and Bishop launched a third massive attack. When Bishop approached the fourth line, he did not fire, finally realizing that she was using her decoys to exhaust his dwindling missile supply. But this time they weren’t decoys. When he was on top of her, Emily’s destroyers opened up with everything they had. Bishop once again suspended the battle and scolded her for allowing his cruisers to get so close to her destroyers, saying that in a real battle he would have had two colliers and a fresh supply of missiles.

And so it went. She set traps and he blundered into them, then stopped the battle and in a condescending voice explained to her how she had screwed up. Even the ever-stoic Marine guard by the door had rolled his eyes in disbelief.

This time was no different. Emily had feinted attacks at both of his flanks, causing him to disperse his forces more and more. He finally anchored his left flank with his single, precious battleship, and while she drew off its consorts with a display of force from his right flank, she mobbed the battleship with the ten destroyers she had sitting in stealth mode. One hundred missiles arched towards the enemy battleship, moving closer and closer. No ship defenses came to intercept and her mouth quirked in a half-smile, half-snarl. She had caught him flatfooted.

Then the holo display blinked and the missiles froze in mid-flight.

Emily gritted her teeth.

As she knew he would, Michael Bishop came through the hatchway from the auxiliary CIC, his face dark and frowning. “Tuttle! How many times have I told you that doctrine prohibits you from dividing your forces?”

“Sir,” Emily replied matter of factly. “My understanding is that doctrine is there for our guidance, not to be followed slavishly under all circumstances.

“It’s for your guidance when you are an admiral with years of experience under your belt,” he said, “which
you
most certainly are not. You are a green lieutenant with notions of grandeur well above your station. You put your entire force at risk for a cheap stunt, Lieutenant Tuttle. I am forced to mark this as a defeat and your record will be so noted.”

Emily had had enough.

“Then, I formally protest,” she said, struggling to keep her tone civil. “I want the entire record of this battle attached to your report and I will appeal to the Captain.” She took a breath. “I would
also
like to see what would happen to your battleship if you allowed this simulation to continue because, with all respect, sir, I think I had you skunked.”

Bishop’s face went mottled red, but before he could reply, Chief Gibson called from the Sensors’ Station: “Hey, there are drones coming in! Lots of them!”

Everyone in the CIC did a mental “Huh?”

“But the simulation is suspended. My battleship never got hit,” Bishop said in confusion.

Gibson was a twenty year veteran who had seen countless incompetent officers; Bishop was just the latest. “They are not in the simulation, Lieutenant Bishop,” he said slowly. “These are
real
drones. From the looks of it, they came from the Gilead Sector.” The room fell quiet. Tilleke was on the other side of the Gilead Sector, and the Second Fleet was in Tilleke.