Alarm of War, Book II: The Other Side of Fear (29 page)

Chapter 32

On Board the
Laughing Owl

Captain Sadia Zahiri was hungry.

It wasn’t the empty stomach feeling you have when you’re working hard and realize you skipped lunch.  It wasn’t the jittery, sweaty feeling you have when you’ve used up all of your body’s immediate stores and your blood sugar is low.  It wasn’t even the aching, distracted, irritable feeling you get when you’ve missed two or three meals and really, really need something to eat.

Zahiri had already suffered those stages of hunger. 

Now she was in the listless, demoralized, tired-beyond-exhaustion stage and she had to exert every bit of her rapidly depleting will power to make herself care what happened next.  They had run out of food five days earlier.  Zahiri’s last meal had been a stale heel of rye bread, a bite of an emergency ration biscuit that she shared with the others, and five peanuts, all washed down with room-temperature water. 

Zahiri had put all of the non-essential crew to bed under sedation, each hooked up to an IV drip to keep them hydrated, but she still had her Pilot, assistant engineer, Sensors Officer, Drone Operator and Communications Officer with her.  They were all famished.  Not just famished, they were starving.  If they didn’t get some food soon they would be unable to perform their duties, and soon after that they would die.

“Anything on sensors, Fatima?”  Zahiri enunciated her words carefully.

Fatima Binissa peered at her screens for a few moments, then shook her head.  She didn’t say anything, just sat numbly in her seat.  Next to her, Avi Lani sat in his chair, sound asleep.  He was young and strong, but he seemed to be taking the lack of food the hardest. 
Maybe his metabolism is higher and needs the sustenance
, Zahiri thought idly.  It didn’t matter, let him sleep.  The
Laughing Owl
was almost completely shut down, with just enough power on to run life support and keep the passive sensors functioning.  Not much work for an engineer.

“Captain, drink this.”

She looked up to see Forrest Janson holding a mug of hot chocolate.  They were out of food, but still had tea, coffee and hot chocolate.  Zahiri’s mouth flooded with saliva at the delicious smell.  “Keep this up, Forrest, and I’m promoting you to ‘Chief Pilot.’”  She gestured to Fatima Binissa.  “Give her some, too, Forrest, and stand by her until she drinks some of it.”

Janson walked to Binissa’s station and crouched down beside her.  “Hey, Fatima, how’s it going?  I’ve got some nice cocoa here.  Take a couple of sips, perk you up.”  Binissa stared listlessly at him for a long time, but didn’t move.  He took her hand and wrapped it around the mug.  “Comeon, Fatima, take a sip.”  He raised it to her lips and she mechanically sipped at it, then sipped again.  She licked her lips, took the mug in both hands like a little girl and drank more.

Zahiri turned to Dennie Hod, her informal second in command and, next to her, the oldest crew member.  “Anything on the comm, Dennie?” she asked.

“Lots of chatter from the Ducks,” Hod told her.  “They’ve called off the search for us, but have remained at a heightened level of readiness.”  Of everyone, Hod seemed to be handling the lack of food the best.  Short, thick and balding, he was remarkably stoic.  Even when disaster loomed, he calmly took things one hour at a time.

“Any sense that they know we are here?”  ‘Here’ being attached to the bottom of the shipyard.

“Not a clue,” he said.  “If they knew, we would have heard by now.”

“And out little surprise?” asked Zahiri.

“All systems showing green.  All we have to do is activate it.”

“Good,” she nodded.  “Good.”  She looked around.  Janson had gone back to his station, she noticed, and had promptly fallen asleep.  Fatima Binissa seemed more alert than she had been, but she still couldn’t depend on her to do anything complicated. 
Hell,
Zahiri thought wryly,
none of us can do anything complicated right now.
  The only one who still had a little spring in her step was Dafna Simon, the surviving drone pilot.  Dafna looked like a waif to start with, with a slender build, large brown eyes and hair longer than regulations strictly allowed.  One her best day she looked like a stiff wind would carry her away, but she was still animated and smiling, which was more than Zahiri could say.

“Dafna, anything from the recon drones?”  Stupid question, really.  Ten recon drones were out in an arc roughly fifty thousand miles from the asteroid belt.  They were stationary, power plants dialed down and barely generating any heat, with their passive sensors straining to pick up anything that looked like a Victorian vessel.  They were programmed to ignore Dominion vessels, but if they detected a Victorian ship, then – and only then – they would go active.  If a recon drone had reported in, Dafna would have already told her.

Dafna Simon smiled and shook her head.  “Not yet, Ma’am, but I think it will be soon now.  I’ll let you know as soon as I hear something.”

Captain Zahiri tried to smile back, but wasn’t sure she pulled it off.  She put down her empty cocoa mug.  What if the Fleet never came? What if the Fleet had been defeated and she just didn’t know it?  In a few short days her crew would be too weak to operate the ship.  Then what?  Do they knock on the door of Siegestor and surrender?  Ask for a cup of sugar and maybe a hot meal?  Would they be imprisoned for life?  Executed?  Tortured?  She looked at Fatima and Dafna, both beautiful young women.  What would become of them? 

Overcome by doubt and the gnawing, relentless hunger, Captain Sadia Zahiri covered her eyes with her hand and tried not to weep.  It took her a moment to realize that someone was sitting beside her, with an arm around her shoulders.

“Easy, Sadia, easy now,” whispered Dennie Hod.  “It’s okay.  You’re doing everything you can.  Now just give it over to the Gods of Our Mothers and what will be will be.”

Sadia Zahiri didn’t look up.  If the others were staring at her she did not want to know.  She felt small and vulnerable, the child lost on the playground who suddenly realizes that her mother is nowhere to be seen and she is alone. 

Only she wasn’t alone.  She covered Dennie’s hand with her own.  “There’s a chance this won’t work, Dennie,” she confessed softly.

Dennie Hod chuckled.  “Gods of Our Mothers, you just figuring that out now? We’re sitting on the bottom of the Duck’s secret shipyard while they’re turning over every rock to find us.  Sounds like pretty crappy odds to me, but you got us this far, so I figure you’re still a step ahead of them.”  He patted her hand.  “Besides, we’ve still got hot chocolate, so how bad can it be?”

Three hours later Dafna suddenly sat bolt upright at her station.  “Captain!  You need to see this!”

Chapter 33

The Battle of Siegestor

The reconnaissance drone sniffed the solar winds for a taste of home. 

Drone #6 was positioned forty-five degrees over the asteroid belt’s plane of orbit and fifty thousand miles towards the Dominion home world, Timor. If Drone #6 had been human, it would have been awed by the majestic arc of stars spiraling far overhead and below, billions of suns burning with untold promise against the raven-wing darkness.

The drone constantly collected sensor data, testing for light, heat, radio waves and changes in the electromagnetic emissions that washed over it like a tide.  Every three hours it roused from its slumber to compare the sensor data against its library of Victorian and Refuge ships.  If it found no match, it slipped once more into the restful trance of standby mode and its passive sensors sniffed anew.  Although it had been on station for many days now, it had no sense of urgency or impatience, could not feel nervous or restless and would never know apprehension.  Or joy.

On the tenth day at 1600 Fleet Universal Time it once more activated and compared the last three hours of sensory data to its database.  This time there were four matches to Victorian ships and five matches to Refuge ships.  More than enough.  Having identified a match, Drone #6 came to a full state of readiness and compared the real-time sensory input to its library of known propulsion systems.  A match was confirmed.  It patiently sorted through the data until it identified the target most likely to carry a high ranking Fleet officer.  The target was forty-five thousand miles away with a vector that would take it under the drone’s present position in two hours.  Activating thrusters, Drone #6 adjusted its heading to an intercept course and ignited its secondary propulsion system, saving the primary system in case it had to take evasive action and flee.

An hour later it was close enough.  It fired its tight-beam communications laser.

* * * *

On board the Victorian battleship
Lionheart,
Hiram Brill was trying to come to grips with two immutable truths:  first, the asteroid belt they were approaching was impossibly huge.  Forty miles deep, some fifty miles wide and thousands and thousands of miles long, the Dominions could hide a dozen jumbo-sized shipyards in it and it still might take a year to find any one of them.

His second problem mirrored the first:  he had no idea where the
Laughing Owl
was either.

The plan was to get within thirty thousand miles of the asteroid belt and come to a position of rest relative to it, and then send the eight remaining Owls to scout it out and find the
Laughing Owl
and Siegestor, in no particular order.  Hiram didn’t like it; the odds of a Duck patrol sniffing out one of the Owls were too good. 

“Stop worrying,” Colonel Dov Tamari scolded.  “By the blood of the One God, you are like an old woman, Hiram.  I’ve told you, Captain Zahiri is one of my most experienced captains.  She knows we can’t search the entire asteroid belt, so she’ll leave messages for us.”

Hiram was amused, but tried to look offended.  “That is no way to speak to your superior officer.”

Tamari snorted.  “Well, somebody has to tell you before you have a breakdown.  Besides, you are driving everybody crazy.  The Owls are getting ready to search for the
Laughing Owl
even as we speak, or in your case, fret.  Captain Zahiri knows this is how we do things.  She’ll leave messages.  Trust me on this, Hiram, and help me resist the impulse to strangle you.”

Across the bridge, at the Sensors Officer’s work station, a light began to frantically blink.   A moment later, the voice of the ship’s AI filled the room.

              “Unidentified laser strike!  Unidentified laser strike on Upper Deck Plate 53.”

              The
Lionheart
was already at battle stations, so no alarm or chime sounded, but the bridge lights flashed once.  The Sensors Officer typed furiously at his station, and then scanned the results.  “Looks like a tight-beamed communications laser, Type A34,” he announced with a note of relief.

              Everyone on the bridge exhaled.  Brother Jong looked at Hiram quizzically, eyebrows raised in silent question.  Hiram leaned forward and whispered, “Type A34 comm laser is used in Victorian reconnaissance drones,” he explained.  “This drone is probably from the
Laughing Owl.”

              “Ah,” Brother Jong exclaimed.  “Good news, then?”

              Hiram smiled broadly.  “It could be very good news.”

              Captain Eder glanced at his Communications Officer.  “I’m on it, sir,” the Comm Officer said.  He transferred the data download from Sensors to his Communications work station and typed an encryption key.  Hiram knew that two floors below, in the a cramped room called “the Pit” by its occupants, there were five other Communications staff frantically working to determine which encryption key would work to decode the drone’s message.

              In a moment the Comm Officer put a hand to his headset.  He nodded, then said, “Send it up, Murray.”  He turned to Captain Eder.  “We’ve decrypted the message, sir, where do you want it?”

              “Main screen,” Eder ordered, leaning forward.  “And Mr. Lair, contact all the other captains and Task Force leaders and ask them to assemble soonest in their day rooms.  If this is what I think it is, we’ll be underway in a few minutes.”

              The main comm screen on the battleship
Lionheart
would have done a full-sized movie theater proud.  In a moment the image of a woman – a captain from her shoulder insignia – appeared.  She looked utterly exhausted and…gaunt, like she’d been working hard for far too long without an opportunity for food.

              “This is Captain Sadia Zahiri of the H.M.S.
Laughing Owl.
   If you are who I need you to be, what you’re looking for is here.  Verify your identity by transmitting the date of my birth to the drone.  If you do, the drone will give you a code, then it will return to the asteroid field.  When you reach a distance of 20,000 miles from the asteroid field, broadcast the code you received from the drone.  That will activate a beacon.  What you are looking for is at the beacon.

“Be prepared for action.  The Ducks are running constant patrols along the asteroid field and have several defensive points within it.  If we are very lucky, we’ll still be here when the beacon is triggered, at which point we will try to sneak out of the asteroid field and join you.  Keep an eye out for us.  We ran out of food a while ago, so there is a good chance that our Mildred will be driving by that time.”

Captain Zahiri blinked rapidly several times and took in a deep breath.  “Just in case, there are several personal messages attached to this transmission.  Please see that they get to the appropriate people.  This is
Laughing
Owl at 0930, 2615.08.17 FUT.  Good hunting to you!”  She paused, smiling faintly.  “Watch for us,” she whispered softly.  “End transmission.”

The image froze with Captain Zahiri staring straight at them, her dark eyes now steady and unblinking. 

Captain Eder turned to Colonel Dov Tamari.  Tamari nodded in reply.  “That’s Sadia, alright.”

“Any chance this is a set-up, Colonel?  Could she be sending this under duress?”

Tamari shook his head.  “None, sir.  We have a contingency for that.  If she were under duress, she would have inserted certain code words either into her message or into the message header from the drone.  It’s her.  The message is genuine.” 

“Good,” Eder said simply.  “Commander Brill, Colonel Tamari, I think it is time for you to return to the Carrier
Haifa.
  Brill, we’re using your plan for this unless I notify you otherwise.  Remember, the longer we can keep them from seeing us, the better, so radio silence.  Comm laser for all communications.”  He gave Hiram a hard look.  “And Brill, remember what we’ve got to do after this.  We can afford to lose tugboats if we have to, but we can’t lose a carrier.  Understand?”

Hiram nodded.  He didn’t like it much, it was too cold and calculating, but he had come to the same conclusion himself.  He wondered if Peter Murphy had thought this through as well and decided he probably had.

“Good,” Eder said shortly.  “I’ve already spoken to Tuttle about this.  Once we’ve a fix on Siegestor, it’s your show.
Lionheart
and
Wellington
are here to draw the enemy away from the shipyard and give you a clear shot, but we’ve got to conserve our force as much as possible.  The two destroyers will escort the tugs to give them a little extra protection, but once the tugs finish their job, the destroyers will take up station with the carriers.”

“Yes, sir, I understand,” Hiram said.  And he did.  It was the brutal, ruthless economics of warfare.  Hiram was awed by it and revolted by it in equal measure.  The time might well come, he knew, when he was on the receiving end of that cold economic analysis.  He sent a brief prayer of thanks to the Gods he didn’t believe in that Queen Anne had expressly ordered Captain Eder to rescue Cookie.  No matter what, she wouldn’t be left behind.

“Okay, get going,” Captain Eder ordered. “Keep the shuttle at
Haifa;
we’ll begin as soon as you arrive.”

Hiram saluted.  The Fleet wasn’t big on saluting, but somehow it seemed appropriate.  Eder waived him off.  “I suppose I should give you some big pep talk, Brill, but you know what you’re about.  Don’t muck it up.  I’ve got a granddaughter on the way and I have every intention of being around to spoil her rotten.”

Hiram smiled.  “Well, in
that
case, sir…”  Eder snorted and walked back to the bridge, calling for his aid to find Captain Zahiri’s birth date and be quick about it. 

Hiram turned to Colonel Tamari.  “Dov, do you want to take the shuttle or shall we use one of the Krait transporters?”  Under Hiram’s direction, one had been installed on every ship.  He wasn’t sure why he had done it, it just seemed like a good idea.  “We could be there in two minutes instead of a long shuttle ride.”

A look of abject horror crossed Tamari’s face. “Scramble my atoms in a blender and project them through space?  No thanks.  Save it for the infantry, Hiram; they’re so bloody daft they probably think having their molecules torn apart and reassembled is fun.”

* * * *

The signal came through thirty minutes later that the shuttle had reached the
Haifa
and all was ready.  Captain Eder fixed a comm laser on the drone and transmitted Captain Zahiri’s birth date.  A moment later the drone sent a fifty-digit coded number, then turned in place and powered its drive to start the journey back to the asteroid belt.

Captain Eder nodded to himself. 
Now it begins.
  He sent the signal to all ships for slow speed, full stealth.  With the Owls well in front, the task force began moving toward the asteroid belt.

Four hours later the
Lionheart
reached the 20,000 mile mark, still undetected.  Eder hated to break radio silence, but gamely broadcast the coded signal, knowing as he did so that he would alert any Dominion patrols in the vicinity.  The task force picked up speed and began a dash toward the looming asteroid belt.

On board the
Haifa,
Hiram Brill sent a comm laser to each of the twelve tugboats.  They altered course thirty degrees to the right and pitched slightly upward, aiming them slowly away from the rest of the task force on a course that would take them to the top of the asteroid belt.  The carrier
Haifa
fell in behind them, along with the two destroyers,
Oxford
and
Edinburg
.  The carriers
Rabat
and
Fes
and the mobile shipyard
Meknes
slowed slightly and began to fall behind the rest of the task force.  The task force began to form a ‘V’ with the
Lionheart
and the
Wellington
on the left arm, the two carriers and the shipyard at the bottom of the ‘V’ and the tugboats, destroyers and
Haifa
on the right arm.

Three hours later the
Horned Owl
stopped two thousand miles short of the asteroid belt. Captain Bengt Thuree took a long look at the passive sensors.  At first it seemed hopeless; the thousands of asteroids twirling by made a complete hash of the sensor data.

“Can you clean this up a bit?” he asked the Sensors Officer.  “Maybe filter out everything moving in the same direction as the asteroids and let’s see if there is anything left?”

“Sure, skipper,” the Sensors Officer said, his face alight with excitement.  He was a fresh graduate of the Academy and an exception to the rule that the crew aboard Owls were older than average. 
I was never that young,
Captain Thuree thought a little sourly. 
Or that full of energy. Getting old, dammit.
 

The sensor display suddenly blinked off, then reset.  The swirling asteroids were gone.  Now the display showed several red triangles moving against the direction of the asteroids and a couple of more moving across the asteroid belt away from the
Horned Owl’s
position.  Then the sensor display reset again.  This time there were two additional red triangles cutting across the asteroid belt, but aimed right toward the oncoming Victorian battleship and cruiser.