Alarm of War, Book II: The Other Side of Fear (25 page)

It lasted twenty minutes, but it seemed like an eternity.

Then: “Enemy is changing position!” the Systems Officer shouted.  “One of the cruisers is sliding toward the destroyer nearest it to give them some support.  And on the right, the destroyer protecting the southern quadrant is inching back, probably trying to get inside the other cruiser’s anti-missile umbrella.”

“Zoom in the holo!” Emily ordered and leaned closer to look at it.  At first she didn’t see it, but then she could see the cruiser protecting the shipyard’s left flank creeping closer to the beleaguered destroyer toward the stern, trying to give it some support.  At the same time, the destroyer protecting the right front of the shipyard, under heavy fire from three gunboat squadrons, was inching toward the relative safety of the cruiser near the right stern quadrant of the shipyard. 

Their separate actions inadvertently created a gap, exposing the southern tip of the shipyard.  Emily grinned savagely.  It wasn’t a big gap, but it would do very nicely.  Very nicely indeed.  

“All commands!  New orders!  All gunboats to immediately divert to the southern edge of the shipyard and fire everything you’ve got, then break off until lasers have recharged.  Repeat, fire everything you’ve got on the southern part of the shipyard, then break off!  Execute now!”

One hundred and forty one gunboats abruptly broke off contact with the enemy ship nearest them and accelerated madly south, angling in on the shipyard.  Caught off guard, the defenders hesitated, then desperately tried to sort through the jammers, decoys and chaff to get a new lock on the gunboats, but it was too late.  Within seconds the gunboats sped to the southern edge of the massive shipyard, dumping chaff in their wake.

And there were no enemy ships there to engage them. 

The gunboats gleefully fired their lasers first to allow the quickest possible recharge, then launched their missiles as they sped over the shipyard and broke off in three different directions to reduce their own target profile. 

The hull of the gigantic shipyard began to shatter first in discrete holes, and then rupture outright under the lasers.  Dozens of holes were torn open, air belching out in a stream of vapor and bodies.  (Emily blinked at the image and suppressed a shiver.  Specialist 4 Satore, she thought, was showing his ghoulish side.)  Moments later the missiles struck.  Close to one hundred missiles hit home and the southern quarter of the shipyard disintegrated into a boiling, frothing, flaming mass of destruction.  Through the speakers, Emily could hear cheers from the gunboat crews.

But the exercise wasn’t over yet and she made them follow through.  One of the defending destroyers was killed and the other Dominion defenders withdrew behind a firestorm of anti-missile fire.  The gunboats dispersed to make themselves smaller targets, but several were lost anyway.  Then the surviving gunboats, triumphant and utterly exhausted, staggered back to their carriers and made their simulated landings. Two more gunboats botched their landings and ‘crashed.’  The AI judged both crews dead. In a real battle, Emily knew, the ground crews would be rearming the surviving gunboats and fresh pilots – or the utterly tired pilots – would be taking the little boats out again, but not in this exercise.

She turned to Grant Skiffington and the other commanders.  “It’s late and it has been a long day.  Make sure your crews get to celebrate tonight, they’ve earned it.  Tomorrow you and I will debrief.  I want your final recommendations for any changes in assignment.  We’ll only get in a few more exercises and we need to lock in all assignments now.  After that, I want you to do a detailed debrief with your squadrons.   Use the commander’s view and the cockpit view, whatever you need.  Today we proved we can win against large conventional forces, but now we have to hone that skill and take it up to the next level.” 

Then Emily smiled that bright, intense smile that caught people by surprise.  “It sure was fun to kick some butt for a change, wasn’t it?  Let’s keep doing it.”

* * * *

Two thousand miles away, in the Admiral’s Day Room on the H.M.S.
Lionheart,
Admiral
Alyce Douthat watched the replay of the entire exercise for the third time.  When it finished, she turned off the holo and turned to her visitors.  “Well, what do you think?”  She nodded at Captain Eder.  “What do you think, Jim, could you have defended against Tuttle’s tactics and saved the shipyard?”

Eder stroked his chin. “I don’t know,” he said thoughtfully.  “Her attack was nothing like the carrier-based attack by the Ducks against us on the way to Refuge.  They came straight in at us, bunched up, and we took them out with zone weapons.  This-” he shrugged elaborately –“this was like getting caught in a rainstorm.  She was all around them and as soon as a gap appeared in their defense, she exploited it pretty damn ruthlessly.”

“What would you do now to defend against that sort of attack?” Douthat pressed.

Eder looked down the table at Queen Anne, Sir Henry and Fleet Surgeon Wilkinson.  On a chair in the corner behind Queen Anne, sat Hiram Brill, making notes on a tablet.  “Well,” said Eder, “if we are talking about stationary targets like a shipyard, I would deploy a dense minefield and forts.  The gunboats are nimble, but they’d have a tough time getting through a properly layered defense.”

“And in a battle of movement, gunboats against destroyers, cruisers and battleships?” Douthat prodded.

Eder thought for a moment – the Victorian Fleet liked its captains to think before they acted – then nodded.  “I would seriously beef up our ships’ short to medium range defenses, and I would take some of the lighter ships – destroyers and frigates – and make them dedicated anti-gunboat platforms.  Defensive only.  Essentially turn them into hedgehogs on steroids.  Use those to defend the cruisers and the battleships and of course the carriers, then let the big guys carry the primary offensive burden.”

“But we don’t have the time to build all those ships, nor the resources, do we?” Queen Anne asked softly.

Admiral Douthat grimaced.  “No, but if we spring this trap properly, the Dominions won’t have time, either.  I agree with Captain Eder that there is a good tactical response that will make the gunboats less effective, but I think we can do a lot of damage before the Ducks can implement it.”

“But they
have
hedgehogs,” Sir Henry countered sharply.

“But not enough, Sir Henry.  Not enough.”  Douthat studied them.   “There is one piece of intelligence you should know:  We’ve been sending recon drones through the Refuge/Victoria wormhole.  One of the few that made it back to report shows the Duck reinforcements are starting to trickle in.  Sensor scans by the drones picked up six new ships.  During that time we, of course, have been building gunboats, but if we had stuck to building destroyers and cruisers, the most we could have built would have been two destroyers or one cruiser.”

For a moment the room was grimly silent as everyone digested that news, then Queen Anne put the palms of her hands on the table.  “Okay, then.  Admiral Douthat, what is your proposal?”

Admiral Douthat told them.  And when she was finished, they all stared at her for a long minute.  The Queen looked thoughtful, Sir Henry thunderous.

“This is nonsense!” he growled.  “You are rolling the dice on an untried force moving halfway around known Human Space, fighting at least two battles before the one that really counts.  And the timing and coordination!  Gods of Our Mothers!”  He threw up his hands.  “How do you propose to coordinate this between two task forces that won’t be able to communicate with each other?  It preposterous!”

Alyce Douthat nodded.  “You’ve raised valid points, Sir Henry.  First, yes the gunboats are untried, but I have to tell you that I have been astonished at the progress they’ve made so far.  And you just saw the last exercise.  Whatever problems Tuttle was having before, she seems to have got them licked.  As to the coordination, it will be difficult, but I think we have an approach to it that may solve that problem.”

Sir Henry looked unconvinced.  “This Tuttle woman, wasn’t she the one who almost had a crack-up after we got here?  Are you sure she can handle the stress of all this?  You have to admit, Admiral, a lot of this is going to be figured out on the fly.”

Admiral Douthat nodded again.  “I think Fleet Surgeon Wilkinson can speak best to this.  Martha?”

Rear Admiral Wilkinson stood up.  She was a tall woman and she liked to use her height to her advantage whenever she could.  Besides, her derriere was asleep from sitting so long.  “Sir Henry, I have been monitoring Commander Tuttle and every other ship captain since we arrived at Refuge.  As you know, on my recommendation Admiral Douthat relieved a number of ship captains from active duties because I judged them to be no longer fit.  Commander Tuttle was
not
one of those captains.  I have reviewed her status as recently as ten days ago and she is fit for duty.  In fact, she seems to be thriving.”  She sat down.

“I might add,” Douthat said, “that I gave Commander Tuttle the task of building the gunboat task force because I felt she was one of the very few officers creative enough to figure out how to do it.  I confess that I’m not sure
I
would have been able to do it, and certainly not within the time restraints I placed on her.”

Sir Henry glowered at them for a long moment, then abruptly turned all the way around in his chair to face Hiram Brill.  “What about you, Commander Brill?  As I recall, you know Tuttle well.  Is she up to this?”

If Brill was taken aback by either the question or its ferociousness, he gave no sign.  “Absolutely.  I’ve known her since training camp.  She is very tough, Sir Henry, very tough.  I remind you she was ready to
ram
the Dominion battleship
Vengeance
in order to save the Atlas and Queen Anne.  She is a very capable tactician and can be utterly ruthless if the situation calls for it.  I cannot promise you that she will succeed with Admiral Douthat’s plan, but I will tell you I cannot think of any other officer I would put in charge.  And I’ll tell you something else, something you won’t find just by looking at a brain scan or reading her record.  If you give Commander Tuttle a task that absolutely
must
be accomplished, she won’t stop until she has finished it.  Emily Tuttle is, simply, a warrior.  She won’t stop unless they kill her.”

Sir Henry looked unconvinced, but before he could say anything more, Queen Anne spoke up.  “I think all of this is beside the point.  Am I right, Admiral?”

“Yes, Your Majesty, you are.”

Queen Anne sighed, and for a moment looked much older than her twenty years.  “If I understand the situation, the fact is that we cannot simply stay here and defend ourselves in Refuge, is that correct?”

“Majesty, we have a temporary stalemate, but the Dominions have access to far more resources than we do and can build many more capital ships than we can.  We need to go on the offensive soon, very soon, or the balance of power will tip to the Dominion and they will have enough ships to break through the wormhole and defeat us.”

Queen Anne gestured to the holo on which the gunboat exercise had been played.  “And this is your best plan?” she asked simply.

“Yes, Majesty.  I don’t have any viable alternatives.”

“Majesty!” Sir Henry protested.  “We can fortify the wormhole!  We need time to-“

Queen Anne smiled at her advisor.  The smile was both affectionate and melancholy. 

“Sir Henry, you tutored me well over the years, and one of your lessons was this:  Sometimes Fate forces us to be bold.”  The Queen stood and looked to Admiral Douthat.  “So be it.  The future of Victoria is once again in your able hands, Admiral.” She turned and left.

Martha Wilkinson leaned over and whispered,  “Want that second glass of wine now, dearie?”

Chapter 27

On Board the
Laughing Owl,

Near the Dominion Shipyard, Siegestor

“Captain!  You need to see this,” the
Laughing Owl’s
Drone Chief called.  Sadia Zahiri quickly stepped behind his chair and looked at the holo display.  There, in blinking blue, were the locations of four reconnaissance drones, in rough formation around a large red circle that was the Dominion shipyard.  Irregular shapes, hundreds of them, marked the asteroids, and as she watched they were constantly moving, sometimes blocking her view of the recon drones and even the enemy shipyard.  It took her a moment to sort out all the clutter, then she focused on the twenty or so red triangles representing the Dominion combat patrols.  Some were designated as destroyers, some cruisers, and some of unknown type.

“They must have gotten whiff of one of the drones, skipper,” Drone Chief Behrman said apologetically.  He highlighted five of the Dominion ships.  “See here?  These ships suddenly turned from their normal patrol routes and are hightailing it to the edge of the asteroid field.”

“Towards us, in other words,” Zahiri said.

“Yes, Ma’am,” Behrman agreed glumly.

“But they can’t know where we are, not exactly.”

“No, Ma’am, but if they caught a glimpse of one of the drones, they know we are here and now they’ll come to beat the bushes.”

Zahiri rocked back on her heels, thinking furiously.  Time to leave?  Just turn and run for it?  She had enough acceleration so that the Dominions would never catch her.  She’d prefer to have more data on Siegestor, but not if it meant-

“New sensor reading!” Fatima Binissa shouted from her station.  “Three destroyers coming in from north, west and south!  Range, fifteen thousand miles for Bogie One, eighteen for Bogie Two and the same for Bogie Three.  Coming in slowly.  T-band search sensors; they’re pinging to beat the band, Captain.  Several smaller objects as well; classify as recon drones, none actively pinging, though for the life of me I can’t understand why.”  Binissa looked up, her face pale.  “They definitely know we’re here, skipper.”

Captain Zahiri’s eyes narrowed.  This was a fine kettle of fish.  A moment ago she was getting ready to leave, now she was trapped.  Five enemy ships were coming at them from the east, out of the asteroid field, and now three destroyers were cutting off her escape in the other directions.  She peered closer at the holo display.  Hmmm, there didn’t appear to be anything above or below them.  It was very tempting to go up or down and put some distance between the
Laughing Owl
and that gaggle of ships out there.

Very tempting.

She sucked in air as an ugly thought flashed into her mind.  Were the Ducks
that
clever?  Was she being herded into a kill sack?

“Full stealth!  Bennie, I want a decoy drone ready on my command.  Fatima, use the whisker laser to switch all of our stationary sensor platforms to ‘constant update,’ but confirm they are all on whisker laser settings.  I don’t want any stray signals giving us away.   

“Pilot!  I want you to nudge us slowly,
slowly
towards the asteroid field.  Stay at all times within stealth power restrictions, understand?  We need to get into the asteroid field and let it hide us, but if the Ducks get a fix on us, I’m going to call for full power.  If I do that, Forrest, then point us at the first empty spot you can see and go like hell.”

Pilot Forrest Janson the youngest member on board the
Laughing Owl,
nodded once, never taking his eyes off his control panel as he checked his settings.  Zahiri had not been sure of him at first, never confident that she really had his attention because he never looked at her when she spoke.  This concerned her and annoyed her in equal measure, but she gradually realized that he really did listen to everything she said, and was always thinking of the next thing he had to do.  And what’s more, she eventually recognized that he had great situational awareness, an absolute prerequisite for a pilot.  While he was flying, he was constantly flicking from large scale to small scale on the holo display, whilst listening in on the reports from Sensors and the Drone Chief. 

And, he was nerveless.  His physiological reaction to immense situational stress was almost non-existent.  He didn’t sweat.  He didn’t fumble.  He didn’t shout or give any other external signs of distress.  Zahiri sometimes wondered if he really understood the gravity of what was going on, but slowly accepted the notion that he was one of the lucky few who was born with ice water for blood and thanked the Gods that he was assigned to her ship.

“Humor me, Forrest, tell me you really understand what I need you to do,” she said, letting her own nervousness get the better of her.

Janson lifted his head briefly, looked at her, said, “Yes, Captain, I understand,” and turned back to his station.  Zahiri sighed and shook her head.  Fatima Binissa flashed a smile at her, sharing the humor of the moment, such as it was.

Then Zahiri stepped beside Dennie Hod, the Communications Officer and her second in command.  She lowered her voice.  “Dennie, update the Omega drones.  Make sure they’ve all got the coordinates of the Duck shipyard.”  The Omega drones would launch automatically if the ship was destroyed.  They would steer a course for Victorian space and would look for any Victorian ship or facility, then start broadcasting the fate of the
Laughing Owl
and whatever message had been downloaded into it.  Captain Sadia Zahiri wasn’t giving up, but nor was she a fool.  This was going to be very close.

“Everyone strap in!” she ordered.  If they went to full acceleration, anyone caught out of their acceleration couch would be knocked to the floor and almost certainly injured.  Then she strapped herself in, thinking about her next moves.  She smiled wryly.  This was going to be very interesting.

On the holo display, the five Dominion ships inside the asteroid field continued to pick their way slowly to the edge, with an emphasis on ‘slowly.’ That was fine by her.  The three destroyers, Bogies One, Two and Three, continued to come towards the
Laughing Owl,
but slightly off-center, making her realize that while they thought she was here, they didn’t yet know
exactly
where she was.  They were going to close their search pattern about two thousand miles away her, to her “south” as she crept quietly toward the relative safety of the asteroid field.

“Forrest, how much longer to the asteroid field?” she asked.

Fatima Binissa snorted in amusement.  “Are we there yet, Daddy?” she whispered loudly, causing a ripple of laughter through the cabin.

“Ninety-five minutes at present course and speed, Captain,” Janson replied casually.  The
Laughing Owl
was almost a hole in the space around it, giving off as few energy emissions as possible as it moved with glacial slowness towards the welcoming noise and clutter of the asteroid field.  Once inside they could move more freely, and the deeper into the field they went the more their movements would be lost in the clutter.

“Fatima, project where the Duck ships will be in ninety minutes.”   Binissa punched keys on tablet and an image projected onto the holo, showing the eight Dominion ships would create a box formation, with the
Laughing Owl
just inside its northeastern corner.  There, stealth or no, the Dominions would have her on their active sensors and it would be over.  The
Laughing Owl’s
end would be short, brutal and very, very final.

Zahiri scowled.  If she moved north, it would increase the time it took them to reach the asteroid field.  Or, if she couldn’t change their course, perhaps she could change the search pattern of the Ducks.  But before she could say anything, Fatima Binissa called out in alarm.

“New contacts!  Bogie Four is coming in from above us, angling slightly toward the west. Fifteen thousand miles.  It had been quiet but just fired off active sensors.  Bogie Five is coming up below us, also using active sensors.  Bogie Five is on the southern edge of the box and angling northward. Nineteen thousand miles.  Bogies Four and Five are both moving slowly.”

Zahiri nodded, her earlier suspicions confirmed.  If she had gone up or down she would have blundered right into them.  “Mildred!” she called to the ship’s AI.  “Project on the holo display the estimated effective area covered by the Dominion ships’ sensors.”

“Of course, dear,” the computer replied.  In a moment most of the holo was tinged with pink.  The
Laughing Owl
sat in the middle of the clear area, but the pink zone was slowly contracting around it.

“Mildred, project estimated time of detection assuming no course changes by any ship,” Zahiri ordered.

“Fifty-two minutes,” Mildred replied calmly.

              “Okay, then,” she said crisply.  “Here’s what we are going to do.  “Drone Chief, I want a decoy launched but not ignited.  I want it to ignite in -“ she peered at the holo display – “thirty minutes.  Configure it to look exactly like
Laughing Owl
and send it on a curve south and down at full acceleration.  Give it forty-five seconds of flight, then cut the power and let it go stealthy.  Let’s take the Ducks on a goose chase.  Have four more decoys ready to fire on command, all configured to look like
Laughing Owl.
” 
And hope to God we never need them.

              The minutes dragged by. The image of the Laughing Owl slowly moved to the right hand side of the screen, closer and closer to welcoming embrace of the asteroid field, while at the same time the pink-stained detection area remorselessly closed in. Pilot Janson continuously enlarged the image on the holo, turning it in three dimensions to see where he still had room to maneuver.  Then, at long last, the thirty minute mark was reached.  Captain Zahiri zoomed out to show a larger part of the search pattern used by the Dominions.  And there, displayed like a flaming arrow against a nighttime sky, was their decoy, madly accelerating south and downward, leaving behind a long trail of energy emissions a blind man could see.

              Captain Sadia Zahiri held her breath and leaned toward the holo display, watching intently.  Would they take the bait?

              Ten seconds later she had her answer.

              “They’re launching something!” Binissa cried, her voice rising as she spoke.  “Looks like missiles!  I have five, no, ten missiles!

“Aimed at us?” Zahiri asked sharply.

Binissa shook her head.  “No, no, aimed into the middle of their search pattern.  They are separated, on an arc.  I can’t tell-“

But Zahiri knew what it was. The Ducks, damn them all to hell, smelled a trick and were firing missiles into the search area in an effort to either kill her or make her run.  But she could take advantage of that…maybe.

“Brace for impact!  Everyone brace!  Pilot, at the first explosion, speed up and get us-“

“I’m on it,” Janson replied matter-of-factly.

Then the first of the antimatter warheads exploded, followed in quick succession by nine more.  Space
roiled. 
The resulting energy wave blasted the
Laughing Owl
like a hurricane, tumbling it end-over-end.  All of the sensor readings instantly turned to white snow and anything not tied down – books, tablets, coffee mugs, a number of family photographs and one hapless engineer who had decided it was more important for him to be standing in front of his instruments than it was to strap in –ricocheted  off bulkheads and decks.  Zahiri felt her head smash against the back of the acceleration chair once, twice and then everything grew far away and quiet.

Ben-Ami Behrman watched incredulously as a computer tablet leapt off the console, flew across the room and bludgeoned him in the face.  Just before he lost consciousness, his last thought was,
What are of the odds of that?

Fatima Binissa was strapped in tight, except for her left arm.  When the ship spun like a top her arm flew out and cracked hard against the console support.  Her left wrist splintered in a bursting crescendo of agony.

Dennie Hod, the Communications Officer, hadn’t tightened the straps as tightly as he’d thought.  He felt his entire body lift off the acceleration couch, then smash down again, then lift and smash, lift and smash.  When it was over, he knew something inside him was broken and he fervently hoped he would live long enough to find out what it was.

Pilot Forrest Janson tried to relax as he was thrown left and right, up and down against his restraints.  On the holo display, he could see the symbol of the
Laughing Owl
blinking rapidly in orange, which meant some critical damage had been sustained.

Tell me about it,
he thought, and then nodded to himself.  This was just like the training exercises he’d undergone dozens of times in flight school.  The instructors liked nothing better than to take a new pilot recruit, strap him in the simulator, then try very, very hard to ruin his day.  Their favorite ploy was to put the ship into a tumbling, cork-screwing spin, usually heading for a planet, or a nearby star, or sometimes into a Victorian space station.  Most pilot recruits were so busy throwing up they never realized that they had crashed.  “Recruit, you forgot your job!” the instructors would scream at him, still strapped in and covered with slime.  “Recruit, what is your job?  What is your
job
?”