Alarm of War, Book II: The Other Side of Fear (16 page)

Well, Kaeser mused, no one said this was going to be easy.

* * * *

              “We dangled the weak minefield on their right and the enemy reinforced in order to exploit it,” Douthat explained, pointing at the battle holo.  “The Ducks will suspect a trap, so they’ll come in hard.  We send up reinforcements, but keep them at the edge of missile range.”  She glanced back at the half dozen ensigns.  “Why?”

              The ensigns stared at her, then at the holo.  Applewhite and Bellman exchanged a glance and Applewhite made a small gesture, telling Bellman to go ahead.  She looked at Douthat.

              “It’s what we said earlier, Ma’am: you want them to think they are winning, not that you are luring them in.”

              Douthat nodded.  “Simple psychology.  They are more apt to
value
something if they have to work hard to obtain it.  If we just fall back, they suspect a trap, they’d be fools not to.  If they have to fight their way in and we pull back, then it is easier to believe that we are retreating, not luring them into a kill zone.  This gambit is as old as warfare, but it never plays out the same way twice.”

              “So, have we fooled them?” one of the ensigns blurted.

              “Damned if I know,” Douthat said.  “We’ll find out soon.”

* * * *

Admiral Kaeser studied the reports flowing in from the surviving destroyers.   “Have the cruisers and destroyers rearmed?” he asked.  An aide to Captain Bauer checked his tablet.  “Admiral, fifteen cruisers ready for deployment.  The destroyers will be on line in ten minutes.”

Kaeser frowned slightly.  The destroyers were always slow in rearming; he would have to speak to the Depot commander when this was over.

“Order the cruisers in,” he commanded.  “As soon as they have linked up, order the line to advance.  And tell the destroyers to hurry it up and join the cruisers as soon as possible.”

Two minutes later the cruisers emerged from the wormhole and aligned themselves behind and slightly above the destroyers. The hedgehogs stayed even with the front line of destroyers, above and below the destroyers’ line of fire.  As one, the entire line advanced.

Another wave of Victorian missiles sped inwards, but this wave was even more ragged and uncoordinated than the last. 
Their fire control is breaking down
, Kaeser realized. 
Our missiles took out one of their control ships and they haven’t reintegrated their network yet.
  There was an opening here, however slight, and he meant to exploit it.

“Orders to the attack force:  fire all missile pods at suspected enemy ships.  Ignore the minefields and go for their command and control!  Immediate action!”

The order went by courier drone since normal radio transmissions would not pierce the wormhole, but two minutes later one hundred and twenty missile pods ripple fired a total of 600 missiles at the Victorian ships.  Admiral Kaeser waited in quiet agony for the updated sensor reports.  When the update came, more than half of the symbols representing unknown Victorian ships were gone and the rest were falling back in an uneven, rag-tag fashion.

The Victorians were running!

But Admiral Kaeser was nothing if not prudent. Unlike the late departed Admiral Mello, he knew he had limitations and tried to compensate for them. He knew he saw only part of the picture; he knew the enemy would try to fool him.  He wheeled on Captain Bauer and his young aide.  “Look at the holo display.  Look carefully and tell me what you see.”

Bauer replayed the last fifteen minutes of display at high speed, watching the battle as it played out.  The aide replayed yet another segment, carefully blowing up the display as he focused on the minefields.

“Well?” Kaeser demanded.  He pointed at the aide.  “You first.”  He did not want the junior officer intimidated by what Captain Bauer might say.

“I think the Victorian minefield used up all of its missiles in that second wave they fired moments ago.  The minefield is no longer a threat.  And here,” he motioned to a group of symbols showing the unknown Vicky ships in retreat.  “We got lucky, I think, and hit some of their command and control ships.  Whatever happened, their performance immediately degraded.”   He advanced the replay, showing the last wave of Dominion missiles descending on the Vicky ships.  “And here we smashed them.  The survivors are clearly retreating.” He straightened.  “We’ve hurt them badly.  They are disorganized and running.  We should pursue to prevent them from regrouping!”

Kaeser turned to Captain Bauer, who nodded.  “I agree, sir.  We should continue the attack.  We have a toehold, sir, and we should move forward.”

“Just so,” Kaeser said in agreement. But as he studied the holograph a moment longer, his eyes were drawn to the numerous questions marks indicating Vicky ships of unknown type.  He recalled the words of a civilian psychology professor lecturing a room full of Rear Admirals and Vice Admirals on the ability of smart people to ignore evidence that contradicted what they
wanted
to see.  The professor had been in her late sixties, short and stout, and had a ‘no nonsense’ air about her that demanded their respect.

“All of you here have strong personalities and healthy egos,” she told them bluntly. “That’s fine; the Dominion Navy has little room for senior officers who don’t have confidence in themselves.  But in war you are going to be called upon to make judgments with very little time and incomplete evidence, and you must learn to tell the difference between your
assumptions
on the one hand and actual
evidence
on the other.  You will have a few precious seconds to read a complicated hologram.  When you look at that battle hologram you are going to make a determination of what you are seeing and then you will have to order your forces to take some action.  Attack, hold or retreat.  And here is where some of you will screw up.” 

There was an angry stir in her audience. 

She nodded.  “You don’t like that, do you?  Too bad!  I’ve tested military officers for twenty years on their ability to correctly read data in battle conditions.  The harsh fact is that most of you do not do it very well.  At least some of the time, you will screw up.  Some of you will lose ships, send men and women to fruitless deaths, and maybe lose the battle as well.”  She looked at them sternly.

“You must always remember, gentlemen, that just because you
want
the enemy to be weak, or slow, or incompetent, does not make it so.  The universe doesn’t care what you want.”  She stared at them from her lectern.  “I can see that I am not convincing some of you, so let me emphasize that last point:  The universe doesn’t give a fig what you want.  If the sensor data can be read more than one way, your job as senior officers is to
not
let your inflated egos insist on reading the data the way that is most favorable to you.  It is called contingency thinking, gentlemen, and those who don’t do it become famous for their occasional spectacular victories and their more frequent spectacular defeats.”

Just so, Kaeser thought.  He would take the sensor data at face value.  Maybe all those question marks were Victorian decoys, but maybe they weren’t. 

“Order in the battleship
Vengeance
and the remaining destroyers.  They are to be the reserve as the other ships move forward.”  A battleship and fifteen destroyers was a very heavy reserve, but if this was a trap, he wanted a reserve strong enough to smash it.  And as he thought about it some more, he also realized that the two minute time delay for current information was two minutes too long.  In fact it was worse than that.  It took two minutes for a drone to come back from Refuge space with the latest data, then he had to review it and send orders back via another drone.  Call it five minutes in total for him to react with new orders.  Battles were lost in five minutes. 

“Captain Bauer,” he ordered. “We will follow the
Vengeance
and the destroyers through the wormhole into Refuge. I want all active sensors compiled through our main battle holograph.  Once through the wormhole, hold a position just inside Refuge space.”

The destroyers and the
Vengeance,
the largest battleship in the Dominion fleet, entered Refuge space without incident, followed moments later by the
Fortitude.
  Twenty minutes later, the advancing line of hedgehogs, destroyers and cruisers had come abreast of the two ruined Refuge forts and were entering the forward edge of the minefield. 

“And now I think we have them!” Douthat muttered to herself, intently watching the battle display as the symbols for the Duck warships crept forward.  “Just a little further, just a little further.”

Now, Kaeser mused to himself.  If this is a trap, that is where the Vickies would spring it.

And as he thought it, they did.

“Movement by the Refuge fort!” shouted one of the aides.  Kaeser shifted his gaze.  The two ruined Refuge forts sat astride the Dominion forces.  Small dots of red color seemed to blossom from each of them, like dandelion seeds on a windy day.

“Zoom in!”

The holograph blinked, then appeared again with the area around one of the forts magnified twenty times.  Now Kaeser could clearly see ten different ships emerging from the fort itself, each trailing a long line of smaller objects, as if on a string.  As he watched, each of the ten vessels cut the tractor beams holding the missile pods and accelerated frantically away from the Dominion warships, already pursued by missiles from his destroyers.

“I thought we confirmed that the forts were dead!” he demanded angrily.

Captain Bauer nodded.  “We did, sir.  They are dead.  There is no sign of any energy signature from either fort.”

Well, then, a fine kettle of fish this was.  Kaeser studied the holograph carefully and then understood what he was seeing.  The forts were dead, but ten tugboats had hidden in each of the ruins and had just towed out dozens of missile pods. 

All of his ships were sitting in a killing zone.  Well, not the reserve, he realized with some relief.  The Vickies hadn’t counted on him holding back such a large reserve.

* * * *

Two thousand miles away, Admiral Douthat cursed under her breath.  Only some of the Dominions were in the kill zone, and none were actually in the minefield where most of the missile pods waited in stealth mode.  “The tugs deployed too soon!” she snarled, instantly forgetting the six ensigns.  “I ordered them to let all of the Dominions go well into the minefield before coming out of hiding!”

Captain Eder stepped beside her for a better look at the battle hologram.  After a moment of study, he said, “We can still use this, Admiral.  They can get back to the wormhole, but they’ve got to run through the Refuge gunboats to do it.”

“Do it!” Douthat ordered, then turned her attention back to the hologram, which showed the Dominions already turning away from the trap she had waiting in the minefield.  “Dammit!” she muttered.  So close.  So bloody close.

* * * *

The trap was sprung. Kaeser zoomed the holo display out so he could see the entire battle area. He was taking missile fire from left and right; there was a hopefully empty minefield in front of him and those annoying jammers above and below him.  He had a decision to make: he could attack straight through the minefield or he could retreat.  Attacking was the bolder move, the move his civilian masters would like, the move that would give him everlasting glory…or get all of his remaining ships destroyed.

He did not need glory, but he needed his ships intact.  It was time to cut his losses and get back to the wormhole.

“All hedgehogs to the right flank and prepare for incoming fire from the ruined forts,” Admiral Kaeser ordered crisply.    “All ships wheel to the right and advance.  Anti-missile systems on automatic and slaved to AI.  Execute now!”

The Dominion forces wheeled briskly to the right and charged the Refuge fort on that flank.  The Vickies would shoot at them from the missile pods in the left fort, Kaeser knew, but those missiles would have much further to travel and this way he could deal with one threat at a time.

The hedgehogs swung sharply to the right, covering the new front of the Dominion line of advance.  Once in position, they fired jammers, decoys and chaff to confuse the Vicky targeting systems.

Now the minefield was on the Dominion left flank and one of the Refuge forts was directly ahead of them.  The Dominion warships ripple fired their missiles at the Victorian missile platforms just as the Victorian missile pods let loose with a barrage of two hundred missiles aimed at Admiral Kaeser’s force.   Kaeser gritted his teeth as he realized that the Dominions had just emptied their missile tubes at a now useless target.  The missiles passed each other in flight, but as the Victorian missiles approached the Dominion ships the hedgehogs sprang into action.  One inch lasers saturated the approach, followed by anti-missile missiles, then high-velocity pellets and more lasers.

Then the missile pods hidden near the other Refuge fort fired.  Hundreds of missiles sped towards the rear of the Dominion force.  But there was a tactic for this as well.  “All forward ships, scatter up and down!  Execute now!” Kaeser barked.