Alarm of War (31 page)

She opened her eyes, suddenly aware that the room had gone quiet and everyone was staring at her.

Rudd made a ‘come on’ gesture. “Come back to the world of the living, Emily. What have you got?”

She told them.

The smiles died away. Captain Grey looked at Rudd, who nodded grimly. “It could work,” he said cautiously. “But to make it work we’re going to have to position ourselves
behind
Bogey One.” He grimaced. “The Dominion Fleet will be between us and the rest of Home Fleet. If we fail, we’ll be cut off from any hope of support.”

“Then we mustn’t fail,” Captain Grey said.

G
rant Skiffington was collecting survivors, and doing his best to kill all the rest.

“We’ll be in close missile range in ten minutes, Captain,” the Sensors Officer announced. “Still no sign they’ve seen us.”

Grant Skiffington shook his head. They had started to call him “Captain” right after they lost Commander Peled, but it still jarred him to hear it. He smiled wryly. His father would have told him to shut up and enjoy the promotion.

“Thank you, Livy,” he told the rating at Sensors. The original Sensors Officer – Grant couldn’t remember his name – had been killed in the first attack by the Tilleke commandos.

This was the third Victorian ship they approached from dead astern, where a ship’s sensors are weakest. The
Yorkshire
was under full stealth. Their target, the destroyer H.M.S.
Galway,
had its navigation lights blinking and was cruising slowly toward the wormhole that would take it from Gilead to Victoria. But had the
Galway
been captured by the Tilleke? Or, like the
Yorkshire,
was it still in Victorian hands and playing possum in the hope of sneaking back to Victoria undetected?

Finding out was pretty damn tricky.

If they cruised up behind a ship and announced themselves as Victorians, and it turned out the ship was controlled by the Tillekes,
Yorkshire
had to be able to take them out very,
very
quickly or risk a close-encounter shooting match. On the other hand, they couldn’t just kill the ship without at least
trying
to discover if it was still controlled by friendlies.

The first three ships had not responded with the right answer to their hail, so
Yorkshire
and
Kent
had destroyed them. Only one had been able to get off any missiles, but Skiffington couldn’t count on always being so lucky.

He was still haunted by the fear that the ships had not responded just because of confusion, not because they were Tilleke, and that he had personally massacred thousands of Victorian sailors.

“Mr. Kauder, make sure everyone is at battle stations and open a link to the
Kent.
Whisker laser, if you please, Mr. Kauder. I want no radio transmissions.”

“Yes, sir.” The display screen changed from a map of all known ships to the face of Junior Lieutenant Lisa Stein. Stein was not the senior officer on the Kent, but was the only one still walking. One arm was in a sling and her wound was obviously uncomfortable, which did nothing to improve her mood. The
Kent
was a Cruiser (E), which meant she carried twelve heavy lasers, but only fifteen missile tubes instead of the usually twenty. The
Kent
needed the extra space for an additional power plant to charge the lasers. Four of the lasers were mounted in turrets, two on top of the
Kent
and two below. They could swivel 360 degrees, but required a crew of four to operate each turret. With half her crew dead, Stein had had to abandon one turret up and down in order to be able to man the rest. On top of that, four of her missile tubes were damaged and couldn’t be used.

“Are you ready, Lieutenant?” Skiffington asked.

“We’ve been ready for the last two hours,” she said irritably. “If you get any closer their engine exhaust is going to scorch your sensor nodes. Let’s get this done.”

Skiffington watched her closely. His medic had warned him that he could expect up to fifteen percent of his crew to show some signs of nervous exhaustion and stress disorders. After the last attack two of his deck crew had been medicated to keep them functioning and two more had been relieved of all duties. He needed Stein to be in top form for what they were about to do.

“You know the drill,” he said cheerfully. “As soon as you hear my radio transmission, I need you to take
Kent
out fifty miles off our beam. If the
Galway
fires on us, or if I fire, you are to fire all laser batteries that bear and follow it with missiles.”

“Gods of Our Mothers! We’ve already done this three times!” Stein snapped. “I know my job and my crew knows theirs. Let’s get this
done.
”

She was right. “Okay, Lieutenant, the fourth time’s the charm. I will commence in ten seconds. Skiffington out.”

He nodded to Kauder. “Hail the
Galway.”

When Kauder signaled, Grant Skiffington spoke: “Calling the H.M.S.
Galway!
We have you locked in. You have ten seconds to answer this question or we’ll shoot you: Pretend you are a frigate captain. You spot game. What do you do and what was the name of the professor who told you? Ten seconds!”

Skiffington raised his hand, ready to give the order to fire lasers and missiles, and watched the clock. Five seconds…six…seven…

The radio squawked. “Go dark! Go dark and call home!” a voice screamed.

“Who was the professor?” Grant prodded.

“I have no fucking idea,” the voice replied angrily. “I’m a rating, I never went to the Academy, but Captain Reich used to tell us about his days on frigates and he said that was his first lesson. If you’re a scout frigate and you spot the enemy, you’re supposed to go into full stealth and send a courier drone to the nearest Fleet base first thing. He said it was the one thing that every Fleet cadet was taught the first week at the Academy.”

Skiffington grinned.
That
was why he picked this question. Tall, thin Rear Admiral Yavis taught the introductory class on Fleet History and Customs to incoming cadets. He admonished his class to remember that their role depended on the ship they were captaining. “A frigate is a scout,” he told them. “Your number one job is to report the presence of the enemy. When you spot enemy vessels, the first thing you do is go dark and call home. If you are a destroyer, your job is to support the cruisers. If you’re a cruiser, your job is to attack and destroy. And if you are ever so blessed in your career as to hold the lofty post of a battleship captain, your job is to lord it over everybody else.” Admiral Yavis’s class was the one memory every Fleet captain was sure to share.

Skiffington grinned to himself. “One more question: What’s the best bar on Atlas?”

There was a pause, then a chuckle. “If you’re an officer, you’d probably go to Max’s on the viewing deck, but the food’s lousy and overpriced…and the women have way too many scruples. If you’re a rating and you want a beer, you go to Steve’s Bar on Deck 12. If you want a beer
and
a girl, then you go to the Spiral Horn on Deck 30.”

Skiffington laughed. “Welcome to our little band of brothers,
Galway.
I’m Lieutenant Skiffington of the
Yorkshire.
We’ve got the
Kent
with us.”

The sigh of relief was audible. “I’m Chief Andy Richter, Lieutenant. I’m really glad to meet you.”

“Send your ship status to our Merlin and then fall in behind us, Chief Richter. Full stealth, and from here on no radio transmissions at all.”

“Lieutenant, one thing,” Richter said. “We have been picking up three ships at the outer limit of our sensors, heading towards the wormhole.”

Three more ships he would have to contend with. If they were enemy ships, he would have to take them all out, and he had only three damaged ships and their worn our crews to do it with.

Grant Skiffington looked around at his deck crew, taking in their covert glances and questioning looks. They were all wondering how the hell he was going to pull this off. Well, so was he. He grinned broadly.

He couldn’t have been happier.

A
dmiral Mello’s Attack Fleet entered Cornwall behind a torrent of missiles. Dropping any pretense of being a simple freighter convoy, he went to active sensors, identified several fixed Victorian defenses amidst the clutter of warehouses, satellites, manufacturing stations and miscellaneous junk and unleashed a barrage of a thousand missiles to overwhelm the Victorian defenders.

No one shot back.

No lasers lanced out to score his ships. No missiles homed in on them. No Vickie warships emerged from hiding.

It was the worst possible response.

Mello cursed loudly and eloquently. “Sensors! Get a fix on the space stations, Atlas and Prometheus. I want to know where they are and how many Vickie warships are defending them. Communications, find Admiral Kaeser. I need to know where he is and his ETA for Cornwall.”

His crew leapt to obey. Mello drummed his fingers impatiently while the computer sifted through the sensor reports and analyzed data.

A moment later – “Cannot raise Admiral Kaeser, sir.” Followed by a startled exclamation, “Sir, I can’t find Atlas Station!”

Mello gritted his teeth, struggling to curb his temper. “What
do
you have, Sensors?”

“Captain, we are not picking up any warships, only civilian freighters, and they are all departing the system at high speed.”

“
And Atlas? On the other side of the planet, perhaps?”

“No, sir. We’ve got probes out. I see Prometheus, and another one that is not emitting any signals at all, sensors show it’s still under construction.” The Sensors Officer looked at him, ashen faced. “Atlas isn’t there, sir.”

Mello nodded. The Vickies had balls, damn them. They had seen him coming and had taken the brass ring and run. How the
hell
did they move the biggest space station in the League of Human Worlds?

“Send out the scouts. Find it.” He beckoned Commander Pattin. “Jodi, they’ll probably create a false trail, try to decoy us away from the real Atlas. But they can’t have much of a head start, so-”

“Admiral!” It was the Communications Officer, his face bright with excitement. “I picked up some radio chatter from a freighter. They said two Victorian battleships had been destroyed in a surprise attack.”

Mello felt a surge of satisfaction. It had worked after all. Now the Vickies had only one battleship left. “Jodi, search for the battleship; it won’t be far from Atlas.”

Two hours passed before one of the scouts called in. “Many ships moving slowly south toward the Sultenic wormhole. They seem to be in a circle around a large object, but I can’t get a good fix on it.”

“Shall I order the Fleet to turn south?” Pattin asked.

Mello held up a hand. “Wait,” he ordered.

Fifteen minutes passed, then twenty. The radio crackled. “Scout Leader, Third Wing reporting. I have a large mass of ships moving north in general direction of Refuge wormhole. I repeat,
north
toward Refuge. Many ships!”

Admiral Mello leaned forward. “Do you have any sign of a Victorian battleship?”

A moment of static. Then, “My sensors can’t sort it out. I’m showing lots of tug boats, destroyers, cruisers – I can’t pick out a battleship, but it could easily be lost in this mess.”

The Sensor’s Officer chimed in again, adding to the confusion. “I’ve got strong thermal blooms off of Space Station Prometheus. Looks like she’s on fire.”

Mello shook his head. The Vickies were somehow towing Atlas Station with them, either north or south, he wasn’t sure yet, and had apparently set fire to Prometheus Station. Turning to his aide, he snapped out orders.

“First, tell the scouts to get a visual sighting on the objects being towed. One of them is the Atlas space station and we need to know which one it is. Then send ten ships to secure Prometheus. Send one of the troop carriers with them. Put out those fires and hold the station. Then alert the Attack Force, as soon as we get a fix on Atlas, we will make a high speed run to intercept it.”

• • • • •

To the south of Bogey One, Captain Grey’s Coldstream Guards coasted in stealth mode five hundred miles on either side of the small grain warehouse being towed by the
New Zealand
. The other “ships” clustered around the warehouse were drones masquerading as war ships, each emitting engine pulses and other emissions designed to fool enemy sensors into thinking they were the real thing.

“Anything on the sentry drones?” Captain Grey asked, her voice strained. Grey couldn’t use active sensors from any of her Battle Group for fear of giving away their position, so she had left several sentry drones loitering in orbit around Cornwall or within visual range of Prometheus.

“Bogey One seems to be just sitting there, Ma’am,” reported the Sensors Officer. “Several small vessels have left at high speed – scouts, most likely – but they’ve gone outside the range of the recon drones. One was headed in our direction, so we’re looking for him on passive.”

Grey shook her head and shot a glance at Rudd and Tuttle, both huddled by the Tactical Combat sensor display. “I had hoped they’d split their forces, but they’re hanging back until they’ve figured out where the real Atlas is.”

Rudd laughed. “Those bastards,” he said cheerfully. “Don’t you hate it when the enemy acts as prudently as you do?”

Grey snorted, but said nothing. Emily frowned. “Will they spot us?”

“I should think so,” Grey answered. She shrugged. “It was a long shot, I just was hoping we might catch them in a mistake.”

“Small vessel on our passive sensors. Should be the scout, Captain.” The Sensors Officer leaned into his display, peering intently. “Energy blossom, looks like he’s launched a bird.”

“Well, no one said this would be easy. Still, let’s play it out. Shoot chaff and send in the frigates to kill the scout. Change the display on one of the drones to make it look like
Lionheart.
Let’s see if we can keep ‘em guessing for a few minutes longer.”