Alarm of War (38 page)

In reply, Cookie led her to the edge of the catwalk. She waved her hand to the deck. “See these?”

There, nestled side by side on the deck, were three black cylindrical tubes, each about three hundred feet long and twenty feet in diameter. They were matt black and made of something that so effectively absorbed light that Romano had to squint to keep them in focus.

“Know what they are?”

Romano nodded. “The ships the commandos used, the Savak.”

“Yep, that’s right. Supposed to be top secret and all that happy horseshit, but I suppose you know damn near everything Gandalf knows. And you know how the Savak got on board the
Yorkshire?”

Romano pursed her lips. “W-e-l-l-l-l, they didn’t cut a hole in the hull, and they didn’t come through an air lock, so it’s got to be something our big brains back on Cornwall say is impossible.”

Cookie blinked, a bit taken back at how easily Romano figured out that the Savak had transported onto the ship. “We found these ships after each of the Savak attacks. We tractored them in here and opened ‘em up. One of them was booby trapped and killed three crewmen, but we got into the others okay. One was empty; each of the other two had a dead woman aboard, ‘Pilots,’ from what little we understand of their ranks.”

“Tell me what the problem is, Corporal, please. This other stuff just makes me want to crawl into a corner,” Romano said, no trace of humor in her voice.

“Okay, Artificial Intelligence Interface Systems Specialist Linda Romano, here is the problem: If we’re right, each of the Savak ships has a device that allows these bastards to transport themselves from this crappy little ship to its target without killing them in the process. The problem is that we’re not sure which set of controls relates to the transporter. Nothing is labeled. We can’t figure out how to make it work. And, truth be told, we’re scared shitless we’re going to push a button and there will be a big ‘boom!’ followed by intense unpleasantness and death.

“So, Romano,” Cookie continued. “Can you figure out how to make the transponders work?”

Romano eyed her impassively, but Cookie could almost hear the gears turning. “Can I look inside, please?”

“Sure.” Cookie led her to a small hatchway near one end of the cylindrical ship. Once inside they could see two longs rows of bucket seats facing each other. Above the seats was a curious mesh of wire and what looked like flood lights. At the end near the hatchway there was a waist-high partition, then five more chairs in a single row, facing a console with banks of dials, knobs, switches and computer screens.

Romano stared at the consoles for a long time, then gracefully stepped over the petition and sat in one of the chairs. For a minute or two she just sat there, looking, then she reached out and brushed her finger tips along the surface above and below several of the controls. Romano turned back to Cookie. “When do you need this?”

“Yesterday would be good,” Cookie replied.

Romano snorted. “Only a ship’s Captain can command completion of a task before it has begun, Corporal, and you’re not a Captain.” She gazed at the console. “I’ll need a hand here, maybe Nancy and Jimmy.”

Cookie nodded. “I can get whoever you need.”

Romano didn’t reply, and after a moment Cookie left her, gazing intently at the console and humming quietly to herself.

A
dmiral Mello stood in front of the holo display with Commander Pattin, watching as the Victorian Home Fleet swept in. “They’re concentrating on the hedgehogs,” Commander Pattin said. Two were already dead. As they watched, another died under a hundred lasers. Mello only had fifteen ships to support them because he had sent the others back to the rear to save the supply ships. Without the rest of the warships to protect the hedgehogs, the Victorians could come in close and use their lasers to advantage. Whenever Mello sent a wing forward to support them, it came under withering missile fire.

“Sensors report that some of the Vicky ships are towing missile platforms. That explains why their missile attacks are so heavy. But it means they can’t keep this up much longer,” Pattin said.

On the holo display another hedgehog died.

Mello scowled. “They won’t have to keep this up much longer. If they kill another couple of the hedgehogs, they’ll be able to fire all their missile platforms and we don’t have the weight to stop them. We need to pull back.”

“The hedgehogs are slow. If we pull back fast enough to save the rest of the First Attack fleet, we’ll lose them,” Pattin protested.

Mello wanted to scream. They were so close. “Orders to the carriers,” he said briskly. “Launch all fighters and attack the Vickies.” The carriers were his secret weapon, and he had intended to save them for the moment of maximum impact.
But needs must
, he thought bitterly.
Needs fucking must.

On the H.M.S.
Lionheart,
the Sensors Officer stiffened in alarm. Suddenly his screen showed a hundred fast moving objects coming straight at them. Too slow to be missiles, but accelerating harder than any war ship he had ever seen. “Captain!” he called. “Something is coming, but I don’t know what it is. A hundred small vessels, smaller than gunboats. They came from those two big ships just behind the Dominion line.”

Captain Eder squinted at the holo display. Whatever they were, they were very small and closing rapidly. He scowled. He did not particularly care for surprises. In his experience, surprises meant something unpleasant. A thought nagged at him, something from one of the history courses he took at the Academy.

The fighters launched from five hundred miles. One hundred missiles targeted the cruisers
Brisbane
and
Tasmania
, which had been in the van of the Victorian attack. Anti-missile defenses lashed out in a desperate effort to protect the two ships, but the cruisers were too far in front. The missiles struck.

“Gods of Our Mothers have mercy!” Eder groaned. The
Tasmania
was a shattered hulk; the
Brisbane
turned sluggishly away from the threat, vomiting air and bodies. “Those are fighters! The Dominions have carriers with a fighter wing!”

The fighters bore in, flashing past the wounded
Brisbane
and closing in on the next line of Vicky war ships.

Now Eder remembered the history class. Old Earth battles with ships that sailed on massive oceans and small, fast planes that went out to hunt them. The planes had been hideously vulnerable, but gruesomely effective.

“All ships,” he bellowed. “Auto-fire all ship anti-missile defenses. And saturate your area with zone defenses.” As he watched two more ships flashed their Code Omega signals, a destroyer and a frigate. But to even things out another hedgehog – the fifth — blew up and yet another staggered out of its line, trailing air and debris.

• • • • •

Admiral Mello watched the holo display. He didn’t like what he saw. Five hedgehogs dead and two more badly shot up. The carrier fighters claimed four Vicky ships now, but the fighters themselves had taken a beating. One hundred fighters had gone out, barely forty had come back. If the Vickies continued their attack much longer, it could spell disaster. He turned to Commander Pattin. “Call back the forty ships we sent to support the supply ships. Tell them to abort their mission and return immediately.”

“And the supply ships?”

“We’ll have to use Admiral Kaeser’s supply ships,” he said.
And just where the hell was Admiral Kaeser?

• • • • •

Aboard the D.U.C.
Fortitude,
Admiral Kaeser did a slow orbit around the Victorian home planet, Cornwall. Around him were the other sixty four ships of the D.U.C. Second Attack Fleet. His orders were clear: he was to wait at Cornwall until he joined up with Admiral Mello, and then together they would seize the space stations Atlas and Prometheus and destroy the Victorian Home fleet.

But Prometheus was reduced to ashes, Atlas was gone, the Home Fleet absent, and Admiral Mello and the First Attack Fleet were nowhere to be seen.

“No courier drones?” he asked again for the tenth time. Both Sensors and Communications shook their heads. Kaeser shook his head. “Just so,” he sighed.

Where the devil was Admiral Mello?

• • • • •

Emily watched in morbid fascination as the holo display shifted with their turn. At the top of the display she could see the Dominion escort attacking what they believed were Victorian war ships coming from the north. Any moment now they would get close enough to realize they were just drones and would turn back to protect the supply ships. In the northwest, now partially obscured by chaff, were the Dominion reinforcements. But if the war ships were obscured, the avalanche of missiles coming towards the Coldstream Guard was not. They had killed some, but there were still three hundred and fifty homing in on just twelve ships. On the holo display they looked like a tidal wave.

And try as she might, she couldn’t think of a way to stop them. Their anti-missile stores

were almost depleted, they were out of zone explosives and even getting low on decoys.

And now they were running out of time.

“Approaching point to launch attack against the supply ships,” Merlin informed her.

“How long before the Dominion missiles reach us, Merlin?”

“Seven minutes, four seconds.”

“Status of anti-missile stores?” she asked.

“Of the ten operational ships under command, four have no anti-missile capability beyond short range Bofor and laser fire. The remaining four have thirty anti-missile rockets among them.”

Across the bridge, Alex Rudd looked at her and shook his head. Emily felt a bubble of anger and desperation. She hadn’t come all this way just to lose her ship and the rest of the Coldstream Guard. There must be
something.

But she couldn’t think of it.

“I’m open to suggestions,” she told Rudd and the bridge crew.

“Lieutenant!” Chief Gibson called.

“Sixty seconds to launch,” Merlin said.

“What is it, Chief?” Emily replied.

“The Dominion ships that are chasing us – they’re turning away!” He shook his head in wonderment. “They’re leaving! Looks like they’re going back to Bogey One. So are the six escort ships that were guarding the colliers. They’re all bugging out, and really pouring on the acceleration.”

Emily smiled tiredly. Admiral Douthat must have counter-attacked. Not that it mattered. The Dominion’s missiles would finish the job, whether the Dominion war ships were there or not.

“Um…Ma’am?” It was Seaman Partridge. Emily searched for his first name, couldn’t find it.

“Mr. Partridge?”

“Forty five seconds to launch,” Merlin said.

“Well, Ma’am, we’re close to the supply ships. Really close. Why don’t we hide next to them? I mean, they must be scared of the missiles, too. They’ll have their ‘friend-or-foe’ transponders on, won’t they? I mean they don’t want to get hit by their own missiles. So if we got right up close to them, maybe shoot some chaff around, then the missiles couldn’t tell us from them and they’ll shut down. Wouldn’t they?”

“Thirty seconds.”

Emily was flabbergasted. It seemed preposterous. Hide next to the supply ships? Could this really work? She looked questioningly at Rudd. He smiled. “Oh, I like it,” he said. “I really like it.”

“Twenty seconds to attack,” Merlin reminded her.

Time to make the decision. “Merlin, abort attack.”

A pause. “Attack mission on supply ships aborted. Is there anything you would like me to do, Lieutenant Tuttle?” Merlin asked mildly.

“Relinquish flight control to ships’ captains,” Emily ordered. They were going to have to thread a needle with these war ships, and she wanted human pilots for that. “Mr. Bahawalanzai –” Rahim Bahawalanzai was recognized as the best pilot on the
New Zealand
- - “you have the Pilot’s seat. I’ll pick the Dominion supply ship we want to cozy up to, but the details of how we do it are going to be up to you.”

“And if you screw it up, Rahim,” Rudd chimed in, “the
New Zealand
is going to end up as a spot of soot on the hull of one of those big mother supply ships.”

“I will endeavor to avoid such an ignominious fate, Sir,” Bahawalanzai dead panned.

Emily turned to Communications. “Betty, open a channel to the other ships.” Betty worked her control panel, then nodded. “
New Zealand
to all Coldstream Guards. We’re going to try something a little unusual,” she explained.

Five minutes later, the last of the Coldstream Guard ships slid next to the Dominion supply ships and slowed to match speeds. The supply vessels were accelerating as fast as they could, no doubt red-lining their inertia compensators, but in the end they were still supply ships and the Victorian war ships had little trouble catching up to them. The four Dominion ships were separated by ten miles or so; but even with that spacing, it was a delicate task for the Victorians to insert themselves between them, followed by the white-knuckles job of painstakingly maneuvering the war ships until they were no more than one hundred yards from the nearest Dominion supply ship. In peace time, a stunt like this would mean a certain court martial for the captain who ordered it; now it looked like their best chance.