Alarm of War, Book II: The Other Side of Fear (19 page)

Chapter 18

On Space Station Atlas,

In Refuge Space

The computer re-creation of the last raid by the Dominions finished and the lights came up.  Admiral Douthat looked sourly down the conference table.

            "That, ladies and gentlemen, is called a cluster fuck.  When the tugs came out of hiding early, despite my specific orders to the contrary, we lost the kill zone we had worked so hard to create."  She glowered at them.  "There were three hundred stealth missile mines in the minefield, waiting for the Ducks to enter.  If the tug captains
and
the military advisor I had sent to each tugboat had stuck to the schedule, the Ducks would have been in the minefield and the tugs would have brought the missile pods into action
behind
them.  Their losses would have been substantially higher and our losses would have been correspondingly lower."    She paced back and forth, her short, portly figure making her look rather like a militant mushroom.

              “And then the ships that attacked through the minefield gallantly pursued the retreating Ducks right to the wormhole.  I give them credit for that.  But what do they do?  They
failed
to use their sensors or recon drones to make sure the area in front of them was empty, so when the first group of Ducks sprinted through the wormhole, the Victorian ships simply started to turn around and were caught flat-footed by the ambush the Ducks had waiting for them!”  She stopped her pacing and turned a black look on the assembled officers. 

“We are making rookie mistakes, people!  Stupid, short-sighted, arrogant rookie mistakes.  Each one of you here went through the Fleet Academy.  Each one of you spent hours studying military history and battles large and small.  Do you remember the Battle of Hastings?  The Battle of Chaeronea? Do you remember the Mongols? Or Cape Breton’s defeat of the Sultentic Empire? When you chase after a retreating army you need to keep your eyes open, dammit!  Gods of Our Mothers, the Dominion caught us asleep and took our home world!  They chased us across the entire Sector to Refuge and came within minutes of killing us all.  Is there anyone here who doesn’t think the Ducks are as smart and crafty and resourceful as we are?”

          She suddenly slammed the table with the flat of her hand, making everyone in the room flinch.  "We are a fighting force!  We are the Home Fleet!  We depend on discipline and professionalism!  The minute we lose discipline we are nothing more than rabble!  The minute we forget our education and training, we might as well shoot ourselves and spare the enemy the chore.

           "We should have crippled the Ducks in this battle, but instead we lost nine ships, nine ships and their entire crews, none of which we can afford!  This is what happens when you don't follow orders!  This is what happens when you let your fear get the best of you.  This is what happens when you ignore your training and don’t use common sense."

           The ship captains sitting along the conference table and their senior aides sitting along the wall all stirred uneasily.  Most of them had not even been able to get into the fight before the Dominions cut their losses and dashed to safety through the wormhole.  To their shame, the ones who had gotten into the fight had been chewed up badly when the Duck battleship and a bunch of Duck destroyers suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

          But they were also uneasy because, in her anger, Admiral Douthat had not found any kind words for the civilian tugboat captains whom she had used to set the ambush.  That was not the Fleet way of things, for a sailor who died in battle was always honored, even if he had not performed well.  It was understood that none of them would always perform well.  That was the nature of war; no one was immune from mistakes or fear.  And the tugboat crews were
civilians
, not soldiers at all.   So the captains glanced uneasily at one another, and Admiral Douthat, catching their glances, knew what they were thinking and glowered anew.

           "Listen to me, people, and listen well!  Your old ways of thinking are meaningless now.  Some of you are sitting there thinking we should honor the men and women on the tugboats, honor them for their effort and their bravery and their sacrifice. And some of you think we should honor the Fleet ships that ran into the ambush at the wormhole.  But this is
not
a training exercise, dammit.  This is
not
war as we have trained for it.  This is a war of
extinction!
  Your actions in battle will be,
must
be measured by the ultimate question:  Did you help us avoid extinction at the hands of the enemy, or did you make extinction more likely?"

          She stared at them, sweeping her eyes around the room to look each captain and aide in the face.  "That is the only criteria we can use to measure your performance.  You either defeat the enemy or the enemy kills us,
all
of us."  She sat down, consciously forcing herself to remain calm.  A minute passed, then another.  Douthat nodded slowly.

          "Okay, then, here is where we are.  We have twenty-four warships, which includes the new destroyer that came out of the Atlas shipyard last week.  Quite a few of our ships suffered damage during the last battle and are being repaired.  Those repairs will tie up the Atlas yards for the next two weeks and delay the production of new ships.

          "As far as we can determine from sensors, we destroyed sixteen Duck ships, including at least five cruisers.  Put another way, we are losing the war of attrition.  The Dominion can afford to lose these ships, we cannot.

          "Next, production.  We built one destroyer, but it is already apparent that our production estimates were too optimistic.  The problem is that the asteroid field we are mining has very little of some of the special metals we need for ship production.  We don't know yet how much this will set us back, but early signs are as much as fifty percent."

          Groans were heard around the table and Douthat held up a hand to silence them.  "Complaining won't help.  If you have ideas for speeding up production, talk directly to Mr. Opinsky.  Lastly, I have directed Commander Tuttle to design and implement a heavy gunboat program.  This will involve a new design and new tactical doctrines.”

          One of the captains raised his hand and Douthat nodded at him to speak.  "Admiral, why are we doing this?  The Refuge gunboats have taken horrendous losses."

          Douthat nodded in acknowledgement.  "That's true, but we've made this decision based on some rather stark facts.  First, although the Refuge gunboats are valuable, their current rate of loss is unsustainable.  At the current level of loss, they'll all be gone in a month.  But at the same time, we can't build our own warships – destroyers, cruisers and battleships – fast enough to replace our own losses either.  Add to this the fact that the Dominions appear to have much more manufacturing capacity than we do.  If we don't find another way to project force, the Ducks will overwhelm us within six months, maybe less.  As far as the heavy gunboats are concerned, we hope that the new design, with heavier weapons and better armor, will make this heavy gunboat force less vulnerable and will pack a bigger punch."  Douthat looked grimly down the table.

          "That brings me to the last point," she said.  "We need to fight smarter.  We cannot afford to lose any more ships.  From here on, we will change our doctrine to rely much more on missile mines, ECM and heavy laser emplacements.  I don't want any of you to try to get in close for the perfect shot.  Use as many missile pods as you can, use massed laser fire, but do it from a distance.  We will be emplacing more minefields, so if you have to fall back, fall back behind a minefield and let the missile mines work for you.  We need to buy time, ladies and gentlemen, and not lose more ships while we do it.  I want all of you to think about what tactics we should employ to achieve that end and to send me your recommendations by 2200 this evening."  She stood and everyone in the room stood to attention.  "You are dismissed."

          As the captains and aides filed out in a murmur of discussion and head-shaking, Douthat noticed that Hiram Brill remained behind.  She scowled inwardly.  Brill had come up with a number of harebrained schemes in the past, but what really rubbed her the wrong way is that one or two of them had been spectacularly successful, like towing the Atlas space station to Refuge to escape the Dominion attack.

          "You want to see me, Commander?"  And that was another thing:  Brill looked barely old enough to grow a mustache and he was already a commander, thanks to the direct action – meddling, really – of Queen Anne.  Something else Douthat would have to fix when the opportunity presented itself. 

          "Yes, Admiral," Hiram replied.  "I have an idea for a raid into Dominion territory that I would like to speak to you about.  It is a large raid and will require resources from both Refuge and Victorian forces."       

          Admiral Douthat frowned.  "Raid into Dominion space?  You mean into Dominion-held space, don't you?  Into Victorian space?”

          "No, Admiral, I mean a raid into Dominion space itself."

          Douthat scowled, annoyed.  "Brill, weren't you listening during the meeting?  We are at a stalemate here.  I can't force an action through the wormhole without losing ships, and I can't afford to lose any ships, it's as simple as that."  She turned to leave.

          "Admiral, I have a lead on the Dominion shipyard, the secret one.  I'm hoping to have confirmation within a few days.  If we can knock that out..."

          "You're not listening, Brill," the Admiral flared, then stopped abruptly.  She looked at him for a long time, then pursed her lips and nodded slightly.  "Since I almost threw you out of an airlock once for the wrong reasons, maybe I owe you one, Brill.  Tell me what you’ve got, but make it fast."

          Hiram explained.  When he finished, Admiral Douthat barked a short laugh.  "Brill, you are either pretty damn clever or a ballsy lunatic, possibly both.  Okay, let's go have a little meeting."

          Hiram looked confused.  "A meeting, Admiral?"

          Douthat chuckled nastily.  "This is the real world, Brill.  Nothing happens without a meeting first.  Get used to it."

* * * * *

          In the end, the meeting could not be held until the following morning.  When they met, it was in the Queen's conference chamber, with Sir Henry, Admiral Douthat, Captain Eder, Queen Anne, Opinsky, Captain Lior (retired) formerly of the Refuge Gunboat Squadron, Peter Murphy of the Tugboat Guild, Prime Minister Yisrael Tal of Refuge and his Production Minister, Tarek Allali, Colonel Dov Tamari of the Fleet Marines, Emily Tuttle, head of the new Victorian Heavy Gunboat Wing, which still had neither ships nor pilots, and Specialist 4 Lori Romano, who looked as if she wanted to hide under the table.  The Queen's armsmen stood watchfully in three different corners.

          Except for Hiram Brill and Admiral Douthat, no one knew why they were there.

          Admiral Douthat had not slept the night before, reading through plans and suggestions from her captains on how to best defend against further Dominion attacks.  She was tired and irritable and clutched her mug of coffee with a single minded desperation.

          "Good morning, everyone," Douthat said simply.  "I asked you all here to listen to a proposal for a raid against the Dominions."  She nodded at Hiram.  "Commander, the floor is yours."

           Hiram stood, feeling the nervousness threaten to overwhelm him as it always did whenever he had to speak to a group.  Emily Tuttle, who knew all about this, smiled and surreptitiously made a funny face and Hiram had to choke off a laugh.  He nodded to the Queen.  "Thank you for taking the time to attend, Your Majesty, Captain Eder and of course, Admiral Douthat."

          "It was a long night, Brill," the Admiral said curtly, "and I'm feeling cranky.  Get on with it."

          "I have been tracking reports from the Long Range Reconnaissance Force," Hiram continued, fighting off another twinge of nervousness.  "One of their spy ships in the Dominion Sector has been tracking a ship that is going deep into Dominion space to a space station facility called 'Siegestor.'  What makes Siegestor significant is that Victorian Intelligence has no record of it.  Neither its name nor its identification number appear anywhere in our database and that tells us that the Dominion has gone to some lengths to keep it secret.  We are still waiting for a final report from the H.M.S.
Laughing Owl,
one of Colonel Tamari's ships, but there is some reason to believe that Siegestor is the shipyard where the Dominions built the fleet that attacked us.  If this is correct, then it is crucial that we destroy it as soon as possible to prevent the Dominion from building even more ships."

          Captain Eder shook his head skeptically.  "Commander, you've lost me.  As of right now, we may not have the ships to force our way through the wormhole into Victoria and you are suggesting that we launch a raid not only through the Refuge/Victoria wormhole, but through the Victoria/Dominion wormhole as well and then deep into Dominion space to take out a facility that
might
be a secret shipyard?  Do you even know where this Siegestor facility is?"