Alarm of War, Book II: The Other Side of Fear (28 page)

Chapter 30

On Board the Refuge Carrier
Rabat

Emily Tuttle stepped aboard the Refuge Carrier
Rabat
not as its captain, but as the Commander of the Heavy Gunboat Wing.  The
Rabat’s
captain, Rahim Zar, greeted her at the entrance with an honor guard of six sailors dressed in white, standing rigidly at attention.  Emily would have been impressed with the formality of the moment, were it not for the goofy looking, floppy fanged grogon doll she carried under her arm.  Captain Zar glanced at it curiously, but diplomatically said nothing.

“Welcome aboard, Commander,” Captain Zar said, sizing her up.  Emily sized him up in return.  He was a bit older than she was, perhaps in his mid-forties.  Although much of his crew had been replaced when the carrier had been seconded to the Victorian Fleet, he had remained with the
Rabat
as its captain.  It was important that she be able to work closely with this man.  Emily would have authority over the three carriers in that they carried the Heavy Gunboat Wing, but within those limitations, Captain Zar would run the
Rabat.
  She had the ultimate authority, but he was on loan from the Refuge Defense Force and had to be treated with respect.

“Thank you, Captain, I’m glad to be here,” she replied, shaking his hand.

“I will show you to your cabin, Commander, unless there is something you would prefer to do first,” he offered.  “Your luggage has already been taken up.”

“The cabin would be fine, but to tell you the truth I am famished and could really use a trip to your galley.”

“That is easily arranged.”  His eyebrows raised in question.  “And does your companion have any particular dietary restrictions that the chef should be aware of?” he asked, nodding towards Fierce Grogon.

Emily smiled.  He had a sense of humor, which boded well.  “Well, yes, actually, it prefers its meat rather on the rare side.  Alive and running is best.”

Zar nodded somberly.  “I will inform the chef.  Perhaps a goat?”

The walk to the galley was long – Emily was impressed at how large even a small carrier was – and it gave them a chance to talk.  “All of your heavy gunboats are aboard, Commander,” Zar told her.  “My deck crew is servicing them now.  By tonight they will be fully armed and fueled and the first forty will be in launch pods.”

Emily nodded.  “That’s excellent.  I need to arrange with you and the other carrier captains some time for the gunboats to practice launches.  We’ve done a lot of drills and war gaming, but until this moment we have not had an actual carrier to play with.  All my pilots need to learn how to quickly and safely launch from a carrier.”

“Your pilots are new, then?”

“We are all new, Captain.  The Heavy Gunboat Wing did not exist three months ago, but we do now and we need to bring ourselves up to speed as quickly as possible.  Launching from carriers is the only thing we have not been able to practice.  So, tell me about the launch pods.  I envision some long tube-like structure that will be used to hurtle the gunboats from the carrier at high speed.”

“Nothing so dramatic, I assure you,” he laughed.  “The pods are simply pressurized rooms set in the hull immediately adjacent to the carrier landing deck and maintenance area.  Once one of your birds is fueled and armed, we push it into the launch pod and close the door behind it. It faces out, towards the hull; actually it is facing another set of doors.  When you are ready to launch, we kill the gravity in the pod, the air is pumped out and the outer doors open. This is very quick, one to two seconds.  Once the outer doors open, the pilot simply uses his thrusters to leave the pod and
voila!
  Within a moment he is clear of the ship and he activates the main propulsion.  In less than five seconds, the gunboat is accelerating away to its mission.  We shut the outer doors and push the next bird into the launch pod.”

“How many launch pods are there?”

“Forty, twenty per side.  We’ve found that if we try to pack in more than that the risk of a mid-air collision during launch climbs dramatically.  Also, this way if we take damage on one side of the ship, we can still launch on the other side.  In a pinch, of course, we can also launch directly off the landing deck, but we can’t launch as many simultaneously, so it causes a bottle neck.”

“Turnaround time to get the next set of gunboats ready to launch?”

He shrugged.  “Usually no more than two or three minutes, sometimes a little longer if they have a traffic jam on the maintenance deck, but the crew chiefs are good at what they do, so it doesn’t happen often.  Also, once a bird is in the launch pod, we launch it right away.  That way we don’t have to wait until all of the pods are full to launch.  So the first launch of forty boats is virtually simultaneous, but the second launch is first-come, first-serve.  It looks rather ragged when you watch it, but it gets the second round launched more efficiently and quicker.”

Emily eyed him.  “You’ve been doing this a long time, then, Captain?”

He smiled wryly.  “Well, before we were beached by Admiral Razon, we used to drill constantly.  Not so much since then, of course, but it is like riding a bicycle, no?  Don’t worry, we’ll bring your boys and girls up to speed.”

They reached the galley and ate a quick lunch.  As they headed for her quarters, Emily was reminded of something.   “By the way, Captain Zar, do you have a computer graphics person on board?”

“Sure, what do you need?”

“I have an idea for some insignia patches I’d like to try.”  She smiled.

The next morning after her first round of meetings, the young Petty Officer from the graphics department left her a proposed ship insignia and a sample patch to be worn by the heavy gunboat crews.  The patch showed three snarling grogin heads in a ‘V’ pattern.  The eyes were blood red and the fangs were ferocious. 

“You know their eyes are actually black, don’t you?” she asked.

“Yes, Ma’am,” the Petty Officer replied confidently, “but the red eyes just make them look
mean.
”  Emily had to agree.  She turned to the drawing of the insignia that would be painted on the gunboats.  She drew in her breath.

“What’s your name?” she asked the sailor.

“Petty Officer Third Class Abagail Fleming, Ma’am,” the young sailor replied.

“Well, Abagail, you are a genius.  This is exactly what I wanted,” Emily said happily.  Fleming smiled broadly.

The drawing showed the large female Alpha looking over her shoulder straight at the viewer, her rear leg lifted high to urinate.  The grogon’s face was split in a sardonic, mocking smile and both the expression and the lifted leg conveyed the unambiguous message, “Piss on you!”

The insignias were painted on the heavy gunboats that afternoon.  From that point onward, each boat was identified by the call sign “Grogon,” followed by its number.

Chapter 31

With the Task Force to Raid Siegestor

The first wormhole took the Task Force to the old Solar System, home of mankind, now quarantined and forbidden due to its many virulent plagues.  The Task Force only had to travel an hour to find the entrance of the next wormhole, right where Brother Jong said it would be, and when it emerged two minutes later it was in the Sultenic Empire, near an ancient dust cloud.  Again, Brother Jong directed them to the next entrance, almost a day’s travel away.

“It took us decades to find this entrance,” Brother Jong explained.  “It is well off the elliptical plane.  We thought it was out here somewhere, but had all but given up when we stumbled across it.  Fortunately, like most of the one-way wormholes, it doesn’t move around much.”

They traveled as stealthily as a battleship, cruiser, two destroyers, four carriers and twelve tugboats could travel, which wasn’t very stealthy at all.  For security they stayed well away from any of the normal trade routes and had eight of the super-stealthy Visby-Class corvettes – all named after one sort of owl or another – spread out in front of them to give warning of any tramp freighters that might stray across their path. Once the
Horned Owl
picked up a sniff of a mining facility on the edge of its passive sensors and Captain Eder ordered the entire Task Force to cut power and coast until they were out of the facility’s sensor range.  Two hours passed in tense monotony, then they restarted their engines and proceeded along their course.

The third wormhole took them to Gilead, the empty sector with no planets, but with wormhole entrances to The Light, Darwin, Victoria and the Tilleke Empire.  A busy sector, with freighters from every sector passing through it, and for the Task Force, the constant threat of blundering into either Dominion or Tilleke ships.  They emerged again well off the normal trade routes, partially hidden by an asteroid belt.  They turned and crept further away from any prying eyes, then put on more speed and moved through another day’s travel to reach the last wormhole, the one that would take them into Dominion space itself.

With the Owls out as pickets, Captain Eder called a meeting of his captains and commanders.  The main comm screen showed eighteen anxious faces.

“All right,” Captain Eder said briskly.  “In an hour we are going through the last one-way wormhole into Dominion space.  We don’t know if the Ducks are waiting for us or not.  You all know the problem we face – we can’t send a ship through to look around and then come back through to report to us, so we’re going in blind.  Once we start through, we are committed.  If they are waiting for us, we’ll have to fight our way clear and regroup.  If nobody is there, we start searching for the Duck’s big shipyard.

“We go in like we’ve practiced: Two of the stealth recon ships,
Wood
Owl and
Barn
Owl, go in first.  If there is anything there, it is the job of the Owls to quickly draw the enemy away from the wormhole entrance.”  Everyone understood this.  Since the Owls had no weapons, the only thing they could do was hide or run.  Eder wanted them to use their superior acceleration to run and hoped that any Dominion covering force would follow.  “Next,” Eder continued, “the destroyers
Oxford
and
Edinburgh
, followed by the cruiser
Wellington.
  
Lionheart
comes through after that, followed immediately by the carriers.  As soon as the carriers clear the wormhole passage they launch all of the heavy gunboats.  If anything is waiting, we’ve got to hit them hard.  Last come the tugs and the mobile yard, the
Meknes.
  Remember, we will be in Dominion space, so no active sensors.  If nobody is waiting for us we don’t want to tip our hand by making noise.”  He looked at the other faces on his comm screen.   “Questions?”

There were none; everyone had already reviewed the plan for this wormhole and hammered out any concerns they had.  Everyone understood that if the Dominions had somehow gotten wind of this raid and were waiting for them in strength, they were cooked.

“We have been waiting for the chance to regain the tactical and strategic initiative,” Eder reminded them.  “Well, this is our chance to kick the Ducks in the balls and make them withdraw from Victoria to their home sector, but first we have to take out this shipyard.  I will send the signal to commence  through the C2C.”  He looked at each of them in turn, nodding his head.  “You are professionals, the best Victoria and Refuge has to offer.  We can do this.  We
are
going to do this.   Dismissed.”

As the comm screen went dark, Captain Eder turned to Hiram Brill.  “Are you ready, Brill?  Once we find Siegestor, you will have tactical command of the Task Force.”

Hiram Brill looked at him through eyes rimmed with fatigue.  “I’ve been ready for a long time, Captain.”

Eder studied him.  Brill did not seem as hollow and brittle as he had in Refuge, but he still gave Eder pause.  This was the most important assault of the war thus far. Taking out Siegestor would deprive the Ducks of any hope of reinforcements for months, perhaps years to come.  And that task was in the hands of a short, skinny man who looked more like a clerk than a soldier.  Eder sighed.  He knew not to judge a soldier by his physical appearance, but he couldn’t help but think that Brill looked as if he should be selling train tickets to obscure locations rather than leading Victoria’s most desperate assault.

“And the tugs?  Are they ready?” Eder asked.  He knew the answer, but he wanted the reassurance.

Hiram smiled faintly.  “Peter Murphy assures me they are.  They’ve practiced both on simulators and in actual conditions, and he reminded me very diplomatically that his tugboat captains have been moving rocks for years.”  Actually, what Murphy had said was, “Don’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs.  We’re tugboat drivers, Hiram.  We’ve been moving rocks hither and yon since you were in diapers and before Queen Anne was born, so get your head out of your ass and let us do our job.”

An aide stuck his head in the door.  “Captain, the countdown starts in two minutes.”

Eder nodded.  “Okay, Commander Brill, let’s go to work.”

* * * *

“Send the first two corvettes,” Captain Eder ordered.

Wood Owl
and
Barn Owl
slipped into the wormhole and vanished.

“Mildred, set the timer for ten minutes,” Eder ordered, then looked around at the rating standing in the corner of the bridge.  “Melvin, I could really use a coffee about now.”  Melvin nodded and walked into the little galley off the bridge, emerging in moments with a tray with five steaming mugs on it.  He served Eder first, as befitting his rank, then offered some to the two pilots, the Sensors Officer, Weapons Officer, and Systems Operator, by which time he had run out and went back for more.

Captain Eder stirred in three sugars, took a sip and sat back with a contented sigh that Hiram knew was ninety percent showmanship and ten percent bullshit.  The two Owls would emerge in Dominion space exactly two minutes after they entered the wormhole.  No one knew why, but every trip through a wormhole, regardless of your entry speed, was two minutes long.

And what would they face when they got there?  If the Dominions were picketing the wormhole exit, the Owls were supposed to go to full acceleration and try to lure them as far away as they could, unless of course the Owls were destroyed outright.  In any case, the two destroyers, the
Oxford
and
Edinburgh,
would go through in ten minutes, the cruiser
Wellington
would follow exactly one minute behind, and the battleship
Lionheart
would follow one minute after that.  Then the carriers would go through and immediately launch all of their heavy gunboats.  Behind them would come the mobile shipyard, the
Meknes
, and two colliers.

And if the Dominion fleet was waiting for them, Hiram knew, they were all royally buggered.  Maybe someone would escape the ambush, maybe, but in any event the entire attack plan would be a shambles.

But there was no choice – when you go through a one-way wormhole, what you find on arrival is always a surprise.  Hiram swallowed his fear and nervousness and glanced at the clock. It moved with agonizing slowness.   Then Brother Jong crouched down beside him, whispering so as to not distract any of the bridge crew.

“These are the times when a man with faith is so much better off than you hopelessly lost agnostics who believe in nothing more than logic,” Brother Jong said serenely.  “You must sit here and try not to panic at the possibilities we face on the other side of the wormhole, whereas I can simply put myself in God’s hands and trust in His love for me.”

Despite himself, Hiram felt some of the tension dissipate.  Arguing with Brother Jong had become a favorite pastime.  “So you think it is easier for a man of God to go into battle than a man who does not believe?”

“But of course,” Brother Jong replied.  “And if you were not such a lost soul gone astray from God’s love and redemption, you would understand this.  You, as a doubt-ridden heathen, know that if the Dominion fleet is waiting for us on the other side, you are finished for all eternity, dead and beyond any hope of everlasting salvation.  Whereas I, having been raised in The Light, 
I
know that if we cross through and the Dominion are waiting there with overwhelming force, then all of us here…”  His voice trailed off.

“Yes?” Hiram prompted.

“Then all of us here are truly fucked,” Brother Jong said blandly.

Hiram snorted and choked back a laugh.  Brother Jong winked at him and walked back to his seat.

The clock chimed ten minutes.  “Send through the destroyers,” Eder ordered, but even as he spoke they vanished into the wormhole.  “One minute until the
Wellington
goes through,” Eder said.  “All remaining ships should be at battle stations.  He thumbed a button to connect him to Emily Tuttle onboard the carrier
Rabat.
  “Commander Tuttle, your gunboats should be ready to launch.”

“The
Fes, Haifa
and
Rabat
report all launch pods are ready.  We can launch forty grogin per carrier immediately upon emerging from the wormhole, and another seventy within ten minutes. 
Meknes
is standing by for refueling and rearming,” Emily reported.

Eder allowed himself a small smile.  “Grogin?  Are we launching wild beasts at the Dominion?”

“Yes, indeed, Captain,” Emily replied, “and very nasty beasts they are, too.  I pity the Ducks.”   Hiram would bet a month’s pay that she had her transmission broadcasted to all of the gunboat crews.

Eder’s smile broadened, then he nodded to the Communications Officer.  “Send through the
Wellington.”

And then it was
Lionheart’s
turn.  The great battleship accelerated directly into the mouth of the wormhole and for two minutes the ship and all its crew ceased to exist in Einsteinian space.

* * * *

When the
Lionheart
emerged in Dominion space two minutes later, there were no enemy forces, just the two destroyers and the
Wellington.
  A tight-beamed communications laser from the
Wellington
reached them a moment later.

“Nothing here within reach of our passive sensors,”
Wellington’s
captain informed them cheerfully.  “I’ve got the two Owls out about ten thousand miles sniffing around.”

Hiram breathed a deep sigh of relief.  The first hurdle was over: they were in Dominion space and the Dominions did not know it.

Within minutes the rest of the task force came through, with the two colliers,
Big Apple
and
Special
Delivery
maneuvering into position in the middle of the warships and the remaining six Owls fanning out to scan the perimeter with their sensitive passive sensors.  The
Horned Owl
took a scan of the star map and located their position relative to the last reported position of the
Laughing Owl,
then sent a bearing to the
Lionheart
.

“All ships, download the attached bearing,” Captain Eder transmitted via the comm laser.  Set the Plane of Advancement on that course with Tactical North immediately ahead.  Owls to be the vanguard, standard global formation.”  That would put the Owls, with their wonderful sensors, in a loose global formation around the rest of the Task Force.  With luck, they would spot anything before it could spot them.  “Set stealth conditions on all ships and match
Lionheart’s
speed.  Communications by laser only. 
Lionheart
out.”

With that, the Task Force shook itself into formation and began its search for Siegestor.