Alarm of War, Book II: The Other Side of Fear (40 page)

“Controller!  We have an emergency,” Cookie said, using her best sergeant’s voice.  “Connect me to the officer in charge of the assault task force.”

On the other end, Specialist Cocchi turned to Hiram Brill.  “Commander, Sergeant Sanchez insists on speaking to you.”

Hiram felt a wave of emotion, fought it back and leaned forward to speak into the mike on Cocchi’s console.  “Cookie, it’s Hiram.”

Cookie closed her eyes for a moment.  How many hours, days and weeks had she sat in her cell trying to imagine what it would be like to hear Hiram’s voice again?  She never imagined it would be like this.  With an effort, she opened her eyes and focused on the task at hand.  “Commander,” she said finally.  “There are two thousand prisoners on board.  One of them was formerly a captain of this ship.  He says the Ducks have scuttling charges and will set them off if they think they are going to lose the ship.”

Hiram rocked back on his heels.  “Cookie, did he tell you where the switch for the bomb is?”

“On the bridge,” Cookie replied.  “He said it could only be activated from the bridge.”

“Hold one!”  He snapped down his visor and selected the comm to all officers.  “This is Commander Brill.  The Ducks have a scuttle charge that can be triggered from the bridge.  Order everyone to fall back!  Stop the attack immediately and fall back to the shuttle bay!”  He switched back to Cookie.

“Where are you?  Are you safe?”

Cookie wanted to laugh.  Safe?  She didn’t think she would ever feel ‘safe’ again.  “Wisnioswski is hurt bad; we need a corpsman.”

Hiram glanced at Mariella Cocchi, who nodded and began to speak urgently into her mike.  “They’ll be there soon, Cookie.  Hold on.”

Hiram switched off, dropped his visor and called Colonel Tamari, Captain Eitan and Captain Yaffe of the
Haifa.
  He quickly explained the situation.  “Pull everyone back to the shuttle bay,” he ordered. “Captain Yaffe, you need to take out the prison ship’s entire bridge.  Once it is clear that the entire bridge is neutralized, we’ll resume the attack.  Everyone clear?”

Everyone was.  “Good,” said Hiram.  “Captain Yaffe, time is of the essence.  Execute as soon as you are able.  Gods protect you all.”

Hiram disconnected from the command net, disabled his speakers and removed his helmet.  He stepped out of the Hot Box and found a quiet corner in the shuttle bay.  Alone and unseen, he put his hands over his face and wept.

Cookie cut the communications channel.  One of the other Dominion soldiers groaned and tried to sit up.  “Don’t you dare!” Cookie hissed at him. She waved the flechette pistol at him.  “Don’t you fucking dare!”  The man slumped back to the deck.

Private Wisnioswski still lay across her.  His breath came in labored rasps and with each breath more blood trickled from his mouth.  Feet pounded behind her and she looked up to see five marines and a corpsman running up the passageway toward her.  Wisnioswski was gently pulled off of her and laid on his back.        

 “Two flechette wounds,” she said.  “They hit his lung; he’s breathing blood.”

The Marines eased her down to the deck.  “You’re hit, too,” one of them told her, taking in the nasty wound on her leg.

“No shit; figure that out all by yourself?” she grunted at him.  Now that the adrenalin was subsiding, the pain in her leg was excruciating.  “Secure those prisoners, Private, at least one of them is still alive.”

His eyes widened and he wheeled about, rifle up.  One of the Dominion soldiers blinked slowly at him; the others lay still.  He quickly secured the conscious one and checked pulses on the others.  “Three dead,” he told her.  “What the bloody hell happened here?” 

Cookie hissed in pain as the corpsman probed her wounded leg.  “They caught us as we were trying to make it to you guys, but then one of the BB’s came up and blew itself up in the midst of them.” 

“No shit?” the Marine said, impressed with the Controller weenie despite himself. 

“Bugger me, that hurts!” Cookie said to the corpsman. 

“Almost done,” he assured her.  He pressed a med spray against her leg and injected her with something.  In the background she could hear one of the Marines talking to someone.  “Oh, yeah,” he chuckled, “she’s okay.  Already givin’ orders.”  Cookie felt herself starting to drift away, had a sudden image of an anchorless row boat drifting on a lake on a summer’s day.  White fluffy clouds.  Soft breeze… 

“Keep him alive!” she suddenly cried.  The corpsman looked at her, startled.  She gestured weakly to Wisnioswski.  “Keep him alive; he’s come too far to die now.  Keep him alive!”

“Don’t worry,” the corpsman assured her, “he’ll be in a med tank in ten minutes.” 

“Better hurry,” Cookie giggled as the pain meds lifted her to a soft, warm place.  “The Ducks are going to blow up the ship.”

* * * *

              On the bridge, Colonel Konig of the DID watched in relief as the Victorian assault teams began to pull back, defeated by his Security Forces.  He took a deep breath and looked at the console, where the button to detonate the scuttling charges waited.  God did favor the Dominion, Konig thought.  As He should.

* * * *

              On the combat bridge of the
Haifa,
Captain Avi Yaffe stood beside his Weapons Officer, Lieutenant Marjorie Stopa.  The Sensors Officer crowded in beside them, pointing eagerly to a spot on the oversized display.   “Right there, sir, see?  That’s the enemy bridge.  You can see twelve people sitting in a grouping that suggests different consoles.  In fact, it looks a lot like this bridge would on a sensor display.”

              “Are you ready, Marjorie,” Yaffe asked softly.

              “Hell yes, sir,” Stopa said, amused.  “From this range I could throw a rock and hit it.”

              Yaffe straightened.  “Okay, Marjorie, do it.”

              Stopa took one last look at her holo display, then stabbed the firing button.  She had already programmed the sequence of the shots.  Three of the primary 10-inch lasers were fully charged and in standby mode.  They fired simultaneously, each striking the hull of the
Tartarus
about fifteen feet apart, forming a neat triangle.  The temperature of the hull went from 150 F below zero to 2500 F in 1/100,000 of a second, causing the hull plate to shatter apart with explosive force.

              One tenth of a second after the first lasers fired, the second bank of three 10-inch lasers fired, their beams smashing through the unarmored interior bulkheads of the prison ship and through the bridge itself.  The lasers struck the hull on the other side of the ship, somewhat dissipated, but still heated it rapidly enough to cause structural cracks and blow a small hole.

              The four 5-inch lasers fired into the same space, but they really weren’t needed.  Lieutenant Stopa was just a belt and suspenders kind of woman.

              On the bridge of the
Tartarus
, there was no warning.  The nearest Vicky warship was three hundred miles away.   Distracted by the infantry battle taking place on board the ship, Colonel Konig had ceased to pay attention to the threat the warship posed.

              The first 10-inch lasers blew a hole into the bridge compartment, which immediately vented into space.  The console holding the bomb switch took a direct hit and simply vaporized.  Colonel Konig was just beginning to realize that
something
was happening when the second barrage of 10-inch lasers tore through the compartment.  One struck him a grazing blow and everything north of his chin vanished.  He never felt the hundreds of shards of metal that ripped his body apart a moment later, nor the sudden lurch and acceleration as his chair tore off the deck and hurdled into space when the compartment explosively depressurized.

              With threat of the scuttling charges gone, Colonel Tamari and Captain Eitan took their men back into the prison ship.  Engineering was secured first, then the remaining Dominion Security Forces surrendered. 

Marjorie Stopa nodded to herself, then grinned impishly at Captain Yaffe.  “Well, Captain, I guess I never thought I’d use a 10-inch laser like a sniper rifle.”

Yaffe sat down heavily in his command chair, trying not to show how relieved he was.  He breathed heavily.  “That’s why we joined the Fleet, Lieutenant, we learn something new every day.”

Chapter 38

On the Battleship
Lionheart

              On the
Lionheart
, the mood was celebratory.  The shipyard was destroyed, the Victorian captives rescued and they’d found an intelligence trove in the other prisoners aboard the prison ship.  The ship captains and mission commanders sat around the conference table, flush with victory.  Captain Sadia Zahiri was there as representative for the various Owl captains. Colonel Tamari was there for the Marines.  Rafael Eitan was there for the Refuge Special Forces. Only Hiram Brill was missing, excused by Captain Eder so that he could visit Cookie who was in the sick bay on the
Rabat.

Captain Eder let them enjoy it for a few minutes, then cleared his throat.  The room fell silent.  He looked at them individually, each one, then spoke.  “Let’s all start by acknowledging that we were very, very lucky,” he said grimly.  “The Ducks had enough forces to stop us if they had been coordinated, but they panicked and came at us in penny packets.  Even with that, they hurt us.  We lost the
Fes,
two tugboats and more than seventy gunboats either destroyed or so badly damaged that they are no longer combat ready.  On top of that, someone managed to kill one of our two colliers, the
Big Apple.
  We don’t know what happened, just that near the end of the battle she went Code Omega.  Her loss means that we have far fewer munitions than we planned for at this stage.”

He paused.  Their smiles were gone now.  “That’s the bad news.  The good news is that we took out the Duck shipyard.  The Dominion High Command doesn’t know it yet, but they can no longer replace their losses beyond what they can produce at the Might of the People Ship Works, which as we all know is not much.  Also-“ he smiled, “we successfully rescued Sergeant Maria Sanchez and Private Otto Wisnioswski.  The doctors tell me that they were both treated very harshly in captivity. Sanchez says the Ducks were going to kill them both within a few hours, so we were just in time.  A special mention on this to Specialist Cocchi, who apparently saved the prisoners by using the self-destruct mechanism on her beach ball like a stun grenade to disable some Duck soldiers who were about to kill them.”

“Two Royal Marines saved by a Controller weenie,” laughed one of the captains.  “Will wonders never cease?”  Chuckles ran around the table, but no one took their eyes off of Captain Eder.

“Some of you already know,” Eder continued, “that we have one more mission to accomplish.  We are to follow some of the new wormholes until we reach Victorian space, then attack the Dominions holding the Refuge/Victorian wormhole from their rear.  Once we launch our attack, Admiral Douthat will attack through the wormhole from Refuge.”

He paused and the other captains and commanders looked at each other, except for Emily and Hiram, who had both known about the extra mission.  One or two of the captains looked concerned.

“The problem is that I no longer believe we have the force necessary to launch such an attack.  Last I heard the Ducks had upwards of fifty ships at the wormhole.  I think they probably have enough force to both hold the wormhole against an attack from Admiral Douthat’s forces in Refuge
and
beat off any attack we might muster.  The notion had been that we would launch a surprise attack with sufficient force to seriously degrade the Dominion forces at the wormhole.  Admiral Douthat would then bring the rest of our Victorian forces, augmented by the Refuge Coast Guard, through the wormhole and break the Dominions before they could reorganize.”  He paused once more, looking solemn.  “With our current losses and the lack of full supply for our munitions expenditure, I do not think this is still feasible.”

The men and women at the table exchanged glances.  Was Eder giving up?  Would they settle for the shipyard and go home?

‘Given this, I am putting the matter on the table for discussion,” he resumed.  “I want your input on what you think the next step should be and why you think it both advances our strategic objective and is feasible.  No bullshit posturing.  We have to decide what we are doing in the next hour or so and commit to it, or else fold our tents and return at best possible speed to Refuge.”

Captain Bruce Hillson of the cruiser
Wellington
was the first to speak.  “I say continue with the attack,” he said forcefully.  “We’ll have to maintain our distance so they can’t overwhelm us, but we should stick as closely to the original plan as possible.  We just took out their biggest shipyard and we did it in their own backyard.  We need to keep the initiative.”

Oxford
Captain Michael Strong shook his head in disagreement.  “Initiative is a funny thing – you’ve got it only so long as you are winning.  If we lose one battle, the initiative suddenly shifts back to the Ducks.  I think we need to find some way to damage the Ducks, but only if we can do it in a way that conserves our Assault Group.”  He looked around the table.  “We cannot afford to lose any of our larger ships.”

“Michael, I respectfully disagree,” said Captain Sadia Zahiri.  “You would have us take no risks.  This is war; we have to take risks!  The side that is not willing to take risks loses!  We just knocked those Duck bastards on their heels.  If we press forward, we’ll force them to react to us.  We’ll make them move when they don’t want to.  We’ll disrupt their plans, cause them to shift forces from one place to another and most of all, we’ll shake their confidence.  I say we press forward and figure out a way to do as much damage as we can.  If we lose some ships, so be it.”

The debate raged on. There was a sharp divide between those who thought that attacking the Dominion forces at the Refuge/Victoria wormhole was an invitation to catastrophe and those who thought that the Assault Force should just maraud around Dominion space raising hell, and then run for home.  A very small minority thought they should quit while they were ahead and go back to Refuge now.

Through it all, Emily said nothing.  She glanced about, looking for Hiram, but of course he was with Cookie.  No help there.  She closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose.  What was the most important thing to be accomplished?  That was easy: Get the Duck assault fleet away from Cornwall and preferably out of Victorian space.  She chewed on this for a moment, parsing it down to fundamentals.

The immediate goal was to get the Ducks away from Cornwall.  Did it matter
how
they got the Duck ships away from the planet?  She mentally shrugged.  No, not really.  It would be nice to blow their ships into small atoms, but what they
really
needed was to move the Ducks away.  How to get them to move?  Well, there were only two ways to do that:  attack them or lure them away.  Attacking them head on was fraught with problems; she agreed with Captain Eder on that point.  Even if the Victorian fleet won, it would be a bruising, knock-down battle and they were sure to take heavy losses.

So, how else could they get the Ducks to abandon Cornwall and Victorian space?  She opened her eyes and looked at Captain Eder, who was already watching her.

“Yes, Commander Tuttle?” he asked, just the faintest hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth.

“I think the answer is obvious,” she said matter-of-factly.  Captain Hillson looked impatient.  He started to say something but Eder held up a hand to quiet him.  “And?” Eder asked Emily.

She smiled.  “We must attack Timor, the Dominion home planet.”