Alarm of War, Book II: The Other Side of Fear (46 page)

Everyone looked at one another, then the Sensors Officer cursed loudly and ordered up a replay from the last hour.

              One  hundred thousand miles away, the
Oxford
had commenced its Long Walk.

The Tilleke plasma beam had shorn off its entire bow.  Vomiting air, with its bow torn open back to the Number Two and Three laser turrets, the
Oxford’s
antimatter cells went into automatic shutdown.  Battery powered safety lights came on, but the forward third of the ship was an airless tomb.  With the artificial gravity gone, the bodies of the ship’s crew caught in the melee floated weightlessly down darkened corridors.  A bare handful in the bow had managed to climb into the emergency vac suits.  One by one they pulled themselves to the nearest bulkhead door, where they waited for help that never came.

Mildred remained functional, powered by a brick of ziridium nestled deep in her core.  But the rest of the ship rapidly began to fail.  In Life Support, the main CO2 scrubbers went off line.  The monitoring equipment tasked with maintaining sufficient air pressure had been knocked out by one of the many explosions, so although there was 45,000 pounds of compressed air available to alleviate the crisis, the tanks were never vented into the ship.  The ship’s air pressure, bedeviled by a hundred rents in the hull, plunged.  Despite their training, in the violence of the assault, with the confusion and smoke, the screams of injured and dying sailors and the roar of escaping air, most of the crew did not find their vac suits in time.

Not that it would have made any difference.  The
Oxford
and all aboard her were doomed.  Six minutes after the plasma beam cut off the bow of the ship, Mildred calculated the ship would die in moments and tried to launch the Code Omega drones, but the firing tubes had been destroyed.  Unable to connect to the various mechanical and electronic controls throughout the ship, it was as if Mildred’s arms and legs had been amputated.

But she was not done yet.  Years earlier the Artificial Intelligence had been designed by a deeply religious woman who had foreseen with grim certainty that there would be deaths like this.  Not a quick death, however unwelcome and shocking, but a slow death fraught with terror and pain and wretched solitude.  The designer knew there was nothing she could do to prevent these tragedies, but she prayed that at least she could give comfort to the dying.

So, as the
Oxford
spun away with the remnants of its crew, as the air bled out and the temperature plummeted, and as the bitter chill of hopelessness began to settle into those still alive, Mildred performed her final task. 

She sang.

In a rich, lilting contralto, Mildred sang.  And all through the ship the crew, no matter how frantic, no matter how terrified, no matter how resigned, stopped and listened.  Some quietly wept, some actually smiled, but they all listened.

Mildred sang. 

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found…

It was the last thing ever heard by the remaining two hundred and sixteen men and women still alive on board the
Oxford.
 

Chapter 44

With the
Lionheart
Task Force in the Gilead Sector

              The various captains sat at the conference room table, subdued and quiet.  Brother Jong sat with them.  They could have participated in the meeting by video like they usually did, but there seemed to be an unspoken need to be together.  Captain Sweeney had brought two bottles of dark, smoky Scotch and ceremoniously went around the table putting a finger’s worth in each glass.  When he was done he looked to Captain Eder.

              Eder raised his glass.  “Absent companions,” he said solemnly.  Everyone echoed his sentiments and raised their glass.  Emily sipped hers carefully; she had learned the hard way that she had little capacity for liquor.  She noticed that Brother Jong raised his to his lips, but did not actually drink.

              “In five hours we will pass through the wormhole into Victorian space,” Captain Eder said softly, swirling the Scotch in the bottom of his glass.  “We still have to see if the Ducks have withdrawn from the Refuge wormhole.  If they have, we can rejoin with Admiral Douthat and the rest of the Fleet.  If not, we’ll see how we can be most effective.”  It wasn’t much of a plan and they all knew it, but it was all they had for the moment.

              “What about that Tilleke cruiser?” Captain Zar asked.

              Eder glanced at Hiram Brill.  Hiram nodded.  “We know four things,” he said, “maybe five.”  He spoke absently, as if he was describing a meal he had eaten the week before.  Sitting across the table, Emily realized his real attention was on Cookie, still aboard the carrier
Rabat
under the care of Dr. Wilkinson.  Wilkinson, Emily decided, was either a witch or an angel, with an unerring ability to appear by a person in their moment of greatest need.

              “First,” Hiram continued, “we know the cruiser was based closely on the chassis of a Duck cruiser, so the Ducks may have either built the hull and sold it to the Tilleke or at least given them plans for it.  Second, we know they have a weapon we have never seen before.  We certainly don’t have it and we don’t think the Ducks have it.”

              “Was that what they used on the
Oxford?”
Captain Sweeney asked.

              Hiram nodded.  “It is very powerful, but it seems to take a long time to recharge, given that they only used it once during the entire engagement.”

              “Thank the Gods for small favors,” one of the captains muttered.

              “The energy beam appears to be a stream of very hot ionized gas, but when we looked at the sensors in slow motion, we saw it was actually five separate bolts of gas. It’s nothing like the plasma rifle we use, and it looks like the Ducks figured out the heat transfer issues that would allow them to build a really big plasma weapon. It literally melts whatever it hits, almost instantaneously.   Also, plasma beams would have an extremely high degree of electrical conductivity, so once a plasma beam has struck an object, a high electrical charge can be channeled to the target through the beam.”  He ticked off his finger.  “So you get damage from extreme heat, mostly in the form of slag.  You get shatter damage as the hull cannot absorb all of the heat in a short time and the metal literally shatters apart, and you get electrical damage to the ships systems and to the crew as the electrical charge put through the beam electrocutes anything it touches.”  He nodded emphatically.  “It is a very nasty piece of work and I was surprised to see it on a platform as small as a cruiser, although that may explain why it took so long for them to recharge it.”

              “What else?”  It was Bengt Thuree of the
Horned Owl.

              “Well, we know that the Tilleke are in the Dominion sector monitoring the battle between us and the Ducks, and we can surmise that they are not actively helping the Ducks.”  Hiram paused, looking at his notes.  “And there’s one more thing,” he said, his tone grim.

              “Let me guess,” said Sadia Zahiri of the
Laughing Owl,
“the Tilleke have come up with a
really
good stealth system.”

              Captain Eder took over.  “That’s what it looks like.  We know it got within six or seven thousand miles of us and we didn’t have a clue.  And it wasn’t a small ship,” he acknowledged ruefully.  “So from now on we have to be on our toes, with a shell of recon drones around us at all times. And occasional active scanning.”

              “It will make us less stealthy,” warned Zahiri.

              “Can’t be helped,” Eder said curtly.

              “What game are the Tilleke playing?” mused Captain Thuree.

              Everyone looked at each other.  Finally Hiram spoke:  “I don’t know, but we aren’t going to like it.”  He paused, considering.  “And if I’m right, neither will the Dominion.”

              Four hours later the Task Force slipped through the wormhole into Victorian space.  They found a half-completed fort and signs that the Dominion had abruptly abandoned the position.  They turned away from Cornwall and towards the Victorian/Refuge wormhole.

              They had no idea they had just doomed twenty-five million people to death.

* * * *

              On the Dominion battleship
Fortitude
, Admiral Kaeser contemplated his life as a soldier.  He had joined the Fleet at age seventeen, just a wide-eyed kid from a small farming community in the rolling plains of Timor’s Southern Hemisphere. The young boy from the plains had flourished and grown.  The Fleet had fed him, educated him, taught him skills, taught him responsibility and eventually given him command.                All it demanded in return was discipline and obedience. 

And he had been happy to give it, happy to obey the orders of the masters who often did not wear the uniform of the Fleet, but rather the civilian dress of politicians. But he was cursed with intelligence.  As he grew older, he watched. He listened.  He witnessed corruption, ineptitude, selfishness, and the pettiest of politics.  In time he realized that his beloved Fleet was not just the shield of the Dominion, it was also the terrible sword of the politicians who managed to grasp power from other grasping politicians until they in turn were toppled by politicians even more grasping than they.

And still he served.  In his darkest hours, when all of his achievements tasted like ashes, he told himself that he was above petty politics, that what mattered was that he served for the benefit of the billions of people that made up the Dominion of Unified Citizenry. 

But now the Dominion had started a war, and he was being ordered to slaughter three
billion
people because that war was going badly.

He wondered how it had all come to this.

And he wondered what he was going to do about it.

              “Our orders are clear,” Fritz Bauer said bleakly.  They were sharing a drink in Admiral Kaeser’s private quarters.  Kaeser’s drink sat untouched in front of him.  Bauer clutched his in his hand.  “We are to sterilize the planet Cornwall and destroy the Victorian people.”  He looked grey and drawn.  His tunic collar was loose and nervous sweat stained his underarms.

              “Do you know how many people there are on Cornwall?” Kaeser asked mildly.  Bauer just looked at him without answering.

              “Three billion, more or less,” Kaeser told him.  “Another three billion on Christchurch.  What do you think the Victorians will do to us, to the Dominion of Unified Citizenry, if we drop antimatter bombs on Cornwall?”

              “If we do it right, there won’t be anybody to do anything.  We will be victorious.”  Bauer’s voice was that of a desperate man faced with a dilemma he could not solve on his own.  And yet, Kaeser remembered, it was Bauer who came to him when he was under arrest and Bauer who made it possible for Kaeser to return to power. 
Don’t underestimate him just because he is terrified,
Kaeser cautioned himself.

              “We’ll never be able to kill all of the Victorians, Fritz,” he said softly.  “You know that.  Even if we turned the entire planet of Cornwall to smoldering ash, their main Fleet has already escaped.  They are not defeated, Fritz, not by a long shot.  We’ve lost Siegestor.  Siegestor!  Until we can significantly update the Might of the People Ship Works, we can’t replace our losses.  And remember, Fritz, somehow the Vickies found a back door into Dominion space.  Now we have a two-front war on our hands.”

              Bauer said nothing, just turned the glass of liquor in his hand.  Looking at him, Kaeser suddenly understood.  “Your family is safe, Fritz.  I told you I would take care of them and I did.  They are in Darwin, hidden and out of sight.  The DID won’t be able to find them.”

              Bauer took a long, shuddering sigh.  “They are all I have left, sir.  If I don’t survive this war, I don’t want them hunted down and killed because of something I did.”

              Kaeser grunted.  “My concern is not that we’ll be killed for not nuking Cornwall, but that the Victorians would hunt us to the ends of the galaxy if we do.  And other sectors would help them, including The Light.  Those damn fanatics scare the hell out of me. I don’t know how they do it, but they know everything that happens.  They must have spies everywhere.”

              Now Bauer stared at him.  “Is that what you’re worried about, that we might get caught?” he asked with surprising harshness.

              Kaeser shook his head.  “No.”  He held up his hands.  “I have commanded a warship.  I have fought the enemy and killed him when I could, soldier to soldier.  But this…  I don’t want to die with the blood of three billion people on my hands, Fritz.  I don’t want my crew to have to live with it, either.”

              “It is the order of the Citizen Director,” Bauer said, but he was not arguing the point, he was testing his Admiral.

              Kaeser nodded once more.  “Yes, it is.  And that leaves me with a decision to make, and I need to know if you will follow my orders.  Not because you have to, Fritz, but because you
want
to.” 

Bauer clenched his jaw and balled his fists, then visibly forced himself to relax.  “What are your orders, Admiral?” 

Kaeser smiled ruefully.  “I really don’t know how this will end, Fritz.”

“I know that, sir.”

Kaeser stood, straightening his tunic.  “Then let’s begin.”

The Dominion battleship
Fortitude
reached Cornwall a day after departing the Refuge wormhole.  Admiral Kaeser had sent the entire rest of the Assault Force on the fastest route back to Dominion space and then to Timor.  Only the
Fortitude
turned for the planet Cornwall.  When they arrived they found a single Dominion Intelligence Directorate cruiser in orbit.  The AI informed him the captain was Captain Kurt Adler.

"What do you know about Adler?" Kaeser asked Captain Bauer.

"One of the up and coming DID officers," Bauer said.  "Strict disciplinarian, dedicated to the Citizen Director.  He follows orders with zeal and believes that the enemies of the Dominion deserve to be punished.  He also fancies himself quite the military strategist, although his performance at the War College was only so-so."

"Self-confident?" Kaeser queried.

"Absolutely, and he does not take kindly to any subordinate who questions an order.  Nor, for that matter, does he care much for criticism from any of his peers."  Bauer chuckled.  "We have had our share of run-ins, Kurt and I."

By now the
Fortitude
was coming up behind Captain Adler's ship, the
Justice.
  As they watched, the
Justice
fired off a volley of ten missiles, aimed at the planet surface of Cornwall. 

Kaeser groaned.  "Dammit!  He must have received orders directly from the Citizen Director."

The Sensors Officer looked up from his console.  "All ten missiles struck the planet, Admiral."

"Where?" Kaeser asked.

"Major metropolitan areas.  Five were nuclear devices in the 500 megaton range; five were antimatter warheads."  There were too many variables to determine in advance how many megatons of dynamite an antimatter explosion would yield, but they all knew that an antimatter explosion in the atmosphere, at or near ground level, would be horrendous beyond imagination.

Admiral Kaeser leaned close to Captain Bauer.  "Fritz, I want you take the weapons station," he said softly.  Bauer looked at him and Kaeser nodded.

"Open a comm to
Justice,"
he ordered.  In a moment the comm screen flickered and Captain Adler was looking at him. 
Why is it that all DID officers look like they are perpetually sneering?
Kaeser wondered.

"Captain Adler," Kaeser said harshly, "I demand to know why you are firing on the planet in violation of the Citizen Director's orders."

Adler's sneer diminished, but only a little.  "What are you talking about?  I received order from the Citizen Director to
fire
on Cornwall."

"When did you receive that order, Captain Adler?"