Alarm of War (49 page)

Emily still had no idea what to do, other than just popping out of the minefield and firing every weapon available when they had a clear shot at the enemy battleship.

“Captain Tuttle, Captain Specht is on the line; she wants to talk to you.” Betty’s hand hovered over the console, ready to put them on the screen.

Emily exchanged a look with Alex Rudd. “Betty, is she on needle laser or the standard comm channel.”

Betty’s jaw worked. “Standard comm channel, Captain.”

Emily frowned. She had ordered everyone to stealthy running, which meant meant no communications unless it was really important and then only by needle laser.

Chief Gibson leaned over and whispered. “Lieutenant, Captain Rowe specifically put you in charge of this mission.
You
are in command. You don’t have to apologize for that to Captain Specht or take any crap from her.” She looked at him, feeling more gratitude than she could express. He nodded once and went back to his console.

“Put her on,” she told Betty. Captain Specht’s face appeared on the screen.

“Captain Tuttle, I am waiting for your battle plan,” Specht said impatiently.

“Captain Specht, we are in stealth mode, which means no radio communications,” Emily said coldly. “If you must contact me, contact me by needle laser per your orders. The battle plan will be forthcoming.
New Zealand
out”

Emily cut the communication and sat back in the command chair. She folded her arms, and then crossed her legs. Then she unfolded her arms and uncrossed her legs.

She had no idea what to do.

On the Dominion ship
Vengeance,
a sensors operator lifted his head from his instruments. “Sighting! We’ve just caught three seconds of an encrypted radio transmission from the forward edge of the minefield, on a bearing that puts them between four and six hundred miles above our plane of advance at thirty degrees off Virtual North. Not seeing any ships in the clutter, but there is somebody there.”

“Good, good.” Admiral Mello rubbed his hands together. “Mark that point and watch it. Captain Pattin, ready two anti-matter missiles for that position. Do not fire until I tell you.” Mello grinned wolfishly. He loved this. The Vickies were there and he knew it, and they didn’t know that he knew. As soon as they showed themselves, he would blanket the area with anti-matter munitions, then punch a hole to the Atlas and it would be his.

“How much longer until the anti-matter weapons are fully loaded?” he asked again.

“Twelve minutes,” Captain Pattin answered.

Soon. Very soon.

The H.M.S.
Everest
reached the Atlas and docked. When Captain Fuller stepped into the docking bay, she was astonished to find Queen Anne Radcliff Mendoza Churchill waiting for her, alone except for Sir Henry and four of her armsmen, each of whom carried a weapon open in his hand.

“You must be Johanna Fuller,” Queen Anne greeted her warmly. “I have heard much of you and the
Everest.
”

Fuller blinked. With her stood five of her crew, mostly senior chiefs who could be counted on in a pinch, all armed. The Queen’s bodyguards were watching them intently.

“Your Majesty,” she began, “I’ve been ordered-”

Queen Anne nodded. “Yes, yes, of course you have.” She smiled and extended a hand. “Come, Captain, walk with me.” Her eyes sparkled. “But tell your men to restrain themselves from doing anything, um,
provocative.
My armsmen are very protective of me and we wouldn’t want any unpleasantness, would we?”

They ambled across the ship bay and into the crews’ lounge. All the while Queen Anne smiled warmly and Sir Henry glowered and scowled. Two more armsmen joined them, taking up a rear position behind her five chiefs. The chiefs looked increasingly unhappy and took great care to keep their hands away from their weapons.

“Captain Rowe, bless him, sent you to take me to Refuge,” the Queen said matter-of-factly. “But I have a more important task for you, Johanna. May I call you Johanna?”

Johanna Fuller felt like she had fallen into the rabbit hole, her earlier determination to march in and grab the Queen draining away.

“Of course, Your Majesty.”

“Johanna, my advisors tell me that the Dominion have enough force to reach the Atlas within a few hours, maybe as little as two. We have several hundred tug boats that have been towing us, rather slowly I’m afraid, toward the Refuge wormhole. While you have been off fighting, about a hundred of the tugs have dropped their tow lines – I know they’re not really
lines
, Johanna, but that’s how I think of them – and have picked up missile launcher pods. These pods, I am told, are designed to work through a war ship’s combat AI. The tugs don’t have that type of AI, but the
Everest
does.” The Queen stopped and turned to her.

“So, Johanna, instead of spiriting me away to Refuge and taking a terrible risk that we will lose the Atlas, I want you to lead the tugs back and attack the Dominion ships.”

“For the love of God, Your Majesty!,” Sir Henry said urgently. “You must leave! Get on the
Everest
and go to Refuge while you still can!”

Queen Anne smiled wanly and touched his hand. “Sir Henry, without the Atlas, all I would be in Refuge is a historical footnote, languishing without a people to lead or any means of projecting power. Atlas is our industrial base, the womb of our next fleet. While we have Atlas, Victoria has hope. We will stay together, Atlas and I.” She turned back to Fuller.

“So, Captain Johanna Fuller, will you lead them back?”

At the very edge of the mine field, slightly below the plane of advance of the Dominion cruisers, Captain Rowe closed his eyes and silently said a prayer for the safety of his ship and crew. Then he quietly spoke into the comm. “Advance. On my signal, fire missiles and lasers and fall back into the minefield.”

Two cruisers and seven destroyers crept forward and poked their noses out of the minefield. Merlin had already selected targets: the five Dominion cruisers on the enemy’s right flank.

“Fire!”

Each ship flushed its missile batteries in a single orgy of fire, then fired every available laser. Then, as one, they turned and raced back into the minefield, seeking whatever protection they could find there. Had they been at full readiness, they would have fired a total of one hundred and ten missiles and twenty five lasers, but all they could manage was seventy two missiles and fifteen lasers. All the lasers were concentrated on one enemy cruiser, leaving eighteen missiles for each of the remaining four cruisers. At normal ranges, this would never have been enough, but the enemy cruisers were less than four hundred miles behind the minefield and the missiles sprinted over that distance in seconds.

Rowe watched through the eyes of a loitering drone. The cruiser struck by lasers shied off, its sensors blinded and its propulsion system faltering, air streaming from several breaches of its hull. Another cruiser triggered its Dark Matter Brake and quickly fell behind. The three others seemed to fair better and immediately began to counter-fire with missiles and lasers in abundance, seeking out the Victorians, who in turn bobbed and weaved in a desperate attempt to get back into the minefield.

“Clear to the left!” Captain Rowe ordered his attack force. “They’ll saturate this area with anti-matter bombs in a moment. Clear to the left!”

The nine ships wheeled away and accelerated, shooting decoys behind them to throw off the Ducks’ tracking. As they fled, each ship pushed its engines to maximum military power, but combat and damage had taken their toll and within minutes the ships began to separate. Soon the
Swansea
and
Repulse
were far behind.

Captain Rowe studied his hologram. He was leading his attack force several degrees to the left of where they had first attacked. Now he ordered the ships to slow and turn back toward the edge of the minefield. “Is everyone reloaded?” he asked Merlin.

“
Australia
, complete.
Bristol
will be complete in ninety seconds;
Auckland, Sydney
and
New Castle
are loaded;
Coral Bay, Perth
and
Darwin
will be complete in three minutes; no report from
Swansea
and
Repulse
,” Merlin reported.

Rowe frowned. “Merlin, report location of
Swansea
and
Repulse
.”

“Insufficient data. There is no C2C contact and without active sensors neither ship can be located within the minefield,” the AI reported matter-of-factly.

Rowe shook his head. Dammit! Down two ships already. He thumbed the comm to speak to his other captains. “Okay,
Swansea
and
Repulse
are out of contact. I don’t know if they are out of action or just lagging behind without radio communications, but we can’t wait. We’re going to pop out of the minefield again and target more of the Dominion cruisers. Keep a tight formation, and once you’ve fired, get back into the minefield as quickly as you can. This may be our last shot at this, so make it good. Each ship acknowledge orders!”

The remaining ships acknowledged and headed one more for the edge of the minefield.

Admiral Mello scowled at the battle display. There were two Vicky forces out there, one stalking the
Vengeance
, the other actively attacking his cruisers. Two cruisers had been badly damaged and were out of action. The after-effects of the anti-matter weapons and the general clutter of the minefield made it impossible to get a clear picture of where they were.

No matter, he would find them.

“Computer, plot a line left and right of the original attack by the Victorian cruisers and show furthest possible location of enemy ships within that area.”

The battle display flickered and an orange tint appeared over the area where the Vickies could be hiding. Mello studied it, then nodded.

“Captain Pattin, are the anti-matter weapons fully loaded on all ships?”

“Yes, Admiral,” she replied.

Mello tapped his fingers on the armrest. “Send a message to all ships. At the first sign of enemy activity...” He spelled out his orders.

Two thousand miles behind the H.M.S.
Bristol
, the H.M.S.
Swansea
and
Repulse
crept along at thirty percent power, all either of them could manange.

“Bugger me,” the captain of the
Repulse
muttered. His holo display looked like a ball of fuzz in fog. “Where the hell did they go?” He turned to his Communications Officer. “Willy, are we in touch with anybody?”

“Yes, sir, the
Swansea
. We’ve lost her a couple of times, but we keep finding her again.”

Captain O’Toole stifled a groan. He and the captain of the
Swansea
had cordially hated each other since their days at the Academy. Just bad chemistry. Once he had even asked her to dance at the Academy Ball and she had told him, loudly, that she wouldn’t dance with him if it were the last dance in the world and he was the only man there. To make it worse, they couldn’t seem to get away from each other. They went through Command School training together, were on the same battleship together as Ensigns, had gone to frigates together and then were both promoted to destroyers in the Home Fleet.

He sighed. No help for it. “
Swansea
, this is
Repulse
.”

“
Swansea
here, Bert. What do you want?” Captain Joan Cummings didn’t sound happy to hear from him.

“Joan, our passive sensors are totally shot and I don’t want to go active unless I absolutely have to. Do you have any idea where the
Bristol
is?”

“We’re pretty much flying blind here,” the
Swansea’s
captain replied. “We can barely see you with our passive sensors and you’re close enough to spit on.”

Dammit. Bert O’Toole ran through his options, which didn’t take long. He could run or he could fight.

“Joan, you reloaded yet?”

“Fifty percent capacity, but that’s as good as it’s going to get. Two of our auto loaders are buggered. What shape are you in?”

O’Toole grimaced.
Repulse
had a full loadout of missiles but only two operational lasers. Worse, the missile magazines had been damaged, so they couldn’t move any more missiles into the auto loaders. And Engineering was warning that the propulsion system was overheating and if they didn’t shut it down completely in the next thirty minutes, they would all be taking a Long Walk. “Yeah, well, we’re pretty much buggered over here, too.”

There was a long pause. “So whatta think, Bertie?” She knew he hated that name. “Shall we run for Atlas or take another shot at these bastards?”

O’Toole snorted. “I don’t suppose we could just demand they surrender?”

Cummings laughed ruefully. “Well, maybe later. Rowe must be planning to attack again, and our fine feathered friends will be shooting off another round of anti-matter fireworks pretty soon. If we’re going to pop ‘em, we better do it fast. Are you up to this or not?” she demanded.

O’Toole sighed. For a fleeting moment he pictured his wife and two daughters, then forced the images out of his mind. Play the hand you’re dealt, Bert.

“Okay, Joan, looks like I get to dance with you after all.”

“Sweet suffering Mothers, haven’t you gotten over that yet? All right, one dance. Let’s make it one to remember, Bertie. I’m setting AI to Max,” Cummings said.

“Setting AI to Max,” O’Toole agreed. “Combat seperation, fire whenever you can.”

“Last one back to Atlas buys the beer,” she said. “
Swansea
out.”

O’Toole grinned and cut his connection. He turned to his bridge crew, who were staring at him with wide-eyed apprehension. “Okay, boys and girls, we’re going to dance!” He raised his voice. “Prepare decoys! Merlin, go to Max!”

“Who shall I attack?” growled Max.

“Advance and fire!” Captain Rowe ordered. The two cruisers and five remaining destroyers pushed past the edge of the minefield.

“Enemy sighted!” shouted the Dominion Sensors Officer. Admiral Mello whirled to the battle display. Two red dots were emerging slowly from the Victorian minefield, slightly to the left of where they had last been spotted.