Alarm of War, Book II: The Other Side of Fear (45 page)

              On the
Lionheart,
Captain Eder couldn’t believe what he was seeing.  He had expected the sensors to reveal a small stealth scout ship, not a cruiser.  Instead of a mouse they were fighting with a lion.  He cursed himself for placing
Lionheart
at the head of the column, now farthest away from the Tilleke marauder.  “Pilot, bring us around!  Open comm to the
Wellington
!” He snapped.

              Instantly the picture of Captain Hillson appeared on the screen.  “Captain, attack that ship!” Eder said forcibly.

              “I
can’t
!” Hillson shouted in frustration.  “The
Oxford
is literally plastered on my bow.”

              “Well, break free, dammit!” Eder snarled.  He turned to his hapless Pilot.  “Get us around faster!”

              Meanwhile the
Edinburgh
finally reloaded its missile tubes.  What it did not have was a target.  “Missiles are up!” The Weapons Officer called out.  “Laser battery Number One will be ready in two minutes; Number Two shortly after that.”

              “Sensors, do you have a target?” Captain Sweeney asked impatiently.

              “Nothing, sir,” the Sensors Officer said unhappily.  “The laser hits we took buggered the bow sensors for now.  We’ll have to reset and recalibrate most of them.”

              Captain Sweeney had a choice to make – either send out recon drones to search for the enemy cruiser or just fire his weapons blindly into the center of the chaff cloud.  Sweeney had always admired men of action, men who could make a decision when a decision needed to be made, men who boldly took the initiative.

              “Fire all weapons into the center of the chaff cloud!” he ordered.  “Reload!”

Instantly ten missiles leapt from their tubes and blasted into the chaff cloud, their proximity fuses ready to explode the warheads as soon as they sensed the Tilleke warship.

But the Tilleke cruiser wasn’t there.  After firing his weapons, the Tilleke captain had gone to stealth mode and reduced power to keep his emissions to a bare minimum.  Now he was creeping obliquely away from the chaff cloud and his sensors recorded the Vicky missiles exploding behind him.   If the Vickies began to close in on him again, he would drop stealth and kick in maximum military power to accelerate away as rapidly as possible.  But until then, he was content to creep away unseen.  What he didn’t know was that the
Edinburgh’s
first volley had sheared off one of his laser turrets and started a small fire.  The fire, fed by a little bit of air escaping from the hull, left a thin trail of heat and combustion products, like small footprints in the sand.

As the
Lionheart
wheeled about and raced to the rear of the formation, Captain Eder badgered his Sensors Officer.  “Where is it? Does anybody have a lock on it?”

No one did.

Emily’s ship, the carrier
Rabat,
had been immediately in front of the
Oxford, Edinburg
and
Wellington
when everything had unceremoniously gone buggered.  She had no idea what was happening or where that Tilleke cruiser had come from, but she saw the Code Omega from
Oxford
and decided the best place for her grogin to be was in space and ready to fight.

“Battle stations!” she ordered.  “Launch all grogin! Launch all grogin!”  She gestured to Alex Rudd, who  had come running when he heard the alarm.  “Alex, send all of your gunboats down the west side of the column to the rear.  Tell them to use active sensors and find the Tilleke ship.  Keep their IFF beacons on or else they are going to get shot at by our own ships.”  Rudd turned to his console and Emily called the carriers
Haifa
and
Meknes.

“Launch any grogin who can fly,” she ordered.  “We’ve got a Tilleke cruiser back there somewhere.  Send your grogin back along the east side of the column.  The
Rabat
squadrons will take the west side.  Hiram, the IFF’s are to stay on to reduce the risk of friendly fire.  All sensors to be shared with
Rabat
and
Lionheart.
”

“Most of the grogin on my ship are down for repair,” the
Meknes
captain reminded her.

“Send what you can and tell them to join the
Haifa
squadrons,” she assured him.  She cut the transmission and went back to the battle holo display.  As she watched a swarm of blue rectangles appeared and began to move to the rear of the column.  She also saw the large solid blue square that was the
Lionheart
racing to the rear.  She thumbed the comm again.  “
Lionheart
, be advised that approximately ninety gunboats are moving along the east and west flanks of the column toward the enemy ship.  All IFFs are on.”

“
Lionheart
acknowledges.”

And the, abruptly, there was very little for Emily to do.  She had sent her men and women into harm’s way again, and now it was up to them.

Captain Sweeney skirted the edge of the chaff cloud rather than dive into it.  His bow sensors were still down and he was shooting off recon drones set to actively scan.  After several minutes one of the recon drones on the western edge of the chaff cloud registered a faint heat trail.

“Might have something here, Captain,” warned the Sensors Officer.  He posted it to the holo display.

“Report it to
Lionheart
,” he snapped.  “Pilot, full acceleration.  Weapons at ready!”  Time to pay the bastards back for the
Oxford.
 

But in the heat of the moment, the Sensors Officer did not forward the readings to
Lionheart.

“Sensor readings getting stronger,” the Sensors Officer called.  Then, “Oh, Gods, there it is. There it is!”

The Tilleke cruiser came out of stealth no more than five hundred miles in front of them.

The captain of the Tilleke warship watched with concern and resignation as the area flooded with Victorian recon drones, all actively pinging.  Then the enemy destroyer suddenly changed course and accelerated towards him.

“Has the primary energy weapon recharged yet?” he asked, knowing the answer.

“Not yet, Honored One.  Six more minutes,” the Freeman Weapons Officer answered.  The Emperor’s Sword was a fearsome weapon, but it took almost eight minutes to recharge. He had heard that the Emperor’s ship designers were designing a new ship specifically to house the plasma beam and that it would have a much shorter recharge cycle.  He held no hope of ever seeing it in action.  The Freeman was an old hand; he knew how much trouble they were in.

The captain scowled.  There was no time.  “Target the destroyer with the secondary weapon.”

“As you command.”

The beam that lashed out at the
Edinburgh
was different than the destructive plasma beam that had killed the
Oxford.
  It was thinner, a pale green instead of the lightning white of the plasma beam.  It struck the
Edinburgh
square on the bow.  Instantly, all the power of the ship died.  The computers stopped, life support fell silent, and lights went out all over the ship.  Not even the emergency batteries came on.  Later they would learn that the antimatter engines continued to operate, but the electricity generated from the ship’s turbines simply ceased to flow.

Edinburgh
continued on its ballistic course: blind, deaf and rudderless.  Meanwhile the Tilleke cruiser dropped back into stealth and changed course, still hoping to slip out of the tightening sensor net.  But it was not to be.

“Multiple contacts, Honored One,” the Tilleke sensors operator reported.   The holo display showed a band of red lights in front of the cruiser and on either side.  Coming up fast behind it to the right was the larger symbol of a Victorian battleship, hell-bent on destruction.  On the other side was the symbol for a Victorian cruiser.  The Tilleke sensors operator could not know that the collision with the
Oxford
had badly damaged the
Wellington’s
forward sensors and it was almost flying blind, groping about for some sign of the Tilleke ship.

“Which direction?” the Tilleke captain asked.

The sensors operator gestured helplessly.  “Everywhere,” he said simply.

“Very well,” the captain replied, his mind already grappling with the next issue.  There were secrets on his ship, weapons and stealth systems that were superior to anything the Victorians or Dominions had.  They must not fall into enemy hands.  He straightened.  He knew his duty.  He swiveled his chair to the computer console and rapidly typed in the secret code.  An interrogatory flashed on the screen.  He spoke into the microphone, enunciating carefully.  “For the everlasting glory of the Emperor, this I command.”  The computer screen flashed again.  The captain leaned back in his chair and exhaled a long breath. 

His duty was done.

From the Combat Center on the
Rabat,
Emily watched the sensor displays and the position of her grogin on the holo display.  She watched as
Lionheart
sped down the west side of the column, its sensors actively sweeping all before it.  She saw the recon drones spreading out to form a large globe around the chaff cloud, scanning in all directions.  Then she straightened as the
Edinburgh
suddenly changed course and darted to the southwest.  They must have seen something, but when she glanced at the sensor data for an update, there was nothing.

Then the Tilleke cruiser appeared on sensors for five crucial seconds, allowing every active sensor source in the Task Force to get a lock.  The Tilleke ship then disappeared again, but Mildred began tracking it, plotting possible courses and taking into account different speeds.  Three growing concentric circles appeared.  The inner one was red and was labeled “75%”, the next was blue and “50%” and the last was black and “10%”. Then Emily noticed that the
Edinburgh
was in trouble.  Sensors showed she was not emitting anything and there was no IFF beacon.  She was moving in a straight line on the same course she had been on when the Tilleke ship briefly appeared.  What had happened?  Was Edinburgh on a Long Walk?

Hurriedly, she thumbed the comm.  “Alex, can you send two of your birds to see what’s going on with
Edinburgh
?  We’re showing her as intact but completely without power.”

Rudd didn’t reply, but the holo showed a pair of gunboats suddenly make a beeline for the stricken ship.  Emily nodded and turned her attention back to the main display.  The sensors were tracking a small heat source as it moved first southwest, then due west and finally straight up.  The
Lionheart
was turning and accelerating again, while the gunboats from
Rabat
were speeding in towards it from all directions.

They moved in closer and closer, hemming in the Tilleke from all sides, but now the target neither accelerated nor changed direction.  In a minute the gunboats would have a lock on it and would fire their ten-inch lasers, then close in and fire their missiles.

Emily frowned.  Why wasn’t the Tilleke captain maneuvering?  He must see all of the grogin vectoring in on him.  Then her comm sounded and Alex Rudd’s face appeared.  “Commander,” he said anxiously, “I think it’s an ambush, like the Duck ship at Siegestor that blew itself up.”

Emily blinked, then she thumbed the comm that would allow her to talk to all of the grogin gunboats at once.  “All grogin, fall back!  Fall back immediately.  The enemy ship is going to self-destruct!”

And as she said it, it did.

The cruiser vanished in a now familiar ball of incandescent white light that expanded in all directions to devour anything it could touch.  The white globe grew and grew for fifteen seconds, white pulsing on white as the antimatter fuel devoured itself, then it turned an angry, cancerous red.  When it finally dimmed the Tilleke ship and twelve of the grogin gunboats were gone.  No life pods, no Omega Code drones.  Gone.

Then one of the gunboat pilots muttered, “We got that bastard!”

To which another pilot replied, “Asshole.”

Twenty minutes later the
Edinburgh
returned under its own power
,
escorted by two of the
Rabat
gunboats.  Captain Sweeney had no explanation for what happened.  “The Tilleke beam hit us and our power just went out.  Poof!  We went ballistic and eventually the two gunboats caught up to us, but without power we couldn’t even radio them.  We just kept drifting along, then after about fifteen minutes our power came back.  Just came up.”  He shook his head.  “Don’t know why.  But I tell you one thing; while the power was gone the Tilleke could have taken us out with a pop gun.”

Then Captain Sweeney looked around, frowning.  “Say, how many people did you save off the
Oxford?”