Alarm of War (32 page)

Emily kept looking at the display. The Dominion scout was already close enough to pick up electronic and power plant signatures from the
New Zealand

and the accompanying drones, but it was still pressing forward. She frowned. The pilot must be aware of the risk, so if he was coming closer, there was something he needed more than electronic signatures.

“It’s coming in for a visual confirmation, Captain,” she said.

Grey nodded. “I would, if I were them.”

On the screen they watched as three laser beams lanced out from two of the Victorian ships hiding on the flank. For a moment nothing happened, then the Dominion scout pitched upwards into a skidding turn and accelerated madly away, leaving a growing cloud of chaff in its wake.

“Damn!” Captain Grey muttered. “Find the recon drone and kill it!”

The New Zealand opened up with its anti-missile batteries, but the display showed the drone weaving and jinking violently, always moving closer.

“Telemetry!” the Sensors Officer shouted. “We have telemetry from the Dominion drone. It’s broadcasting a message back to Bogey One.”

They had waited too long; the drone had just sent pictures back to the Dominion fleet. Now they knew Atlas was being towed north to Refuge, not south. Grey looked glum. “Okay, time for Plan B.”

T
he Dominion ships approached Prometheus gingerly, half expecting missiles to rain down on them from hidden Vickie war ships. As they got closer, they could clearly see smoke pouring out of several holes in Prometheus’s hull.

“They must be mad,” one of the bridge crew gasped. “That thing must be worth 100 billion credits.”

“Not mad,” Captain Scinto replied. “Just very desperate.” Scinto commanded one of the new Argus-class missile cruisers, built at the secret ship yard the Dominion had used to quietly enlarge their fleet. The ship yard was not even named for fear that the name might inadvertently attract the scrutiny of Vickie intelligence services. The only name ever used was that of a nearby small asteroid belt the Dominion patiently mined for its scant traces of Ziridium.

Scinto frowned as he studied the space station. God alone knew how much damage there was already. He thumbed the com: “Troop Transport 4, are you ready?”

“Troop Transport 4 is ready. The men are in shuttles. We can have a thousand men on board the space station in thirty minutes. Once they secure the hanger, we can move the rest within an hour.”

“Troop Transport 4, you may commence now. Tell your men that they must get those fires under control as soon as possible.” He connected to the other nine vessels in his task force. “I want you close in to the space station. Keep a sharp lookout for Vickies. Your scanners should be in active mode. If they were desperate enough to set fire to it, they’re desperate enough to send a force back to finish the job. Set your anti-missile defense to automatic.”

Within moments the shuttles had emerged from the Transport and were soon clustered around one of Prometheus’s many docking bays.

Captain Scinto listened to the reports of the Marines fighting the fires. The fire in Docking Bay 3 had been beaten back almost immediately. The firefighting system there had been turned off, but not disabled, so all the Marines had to do was snake a power line from one of the shuttles and power it up. The fire was out in a few moments. Other areas were raging out of control, however, and even when they opened some corridors to space, there was enough air in the space station to keep the fires going for many minutes.

The second wave of shuttles landed in Docking Bay 3 and the new Marines hastened to help their comrades. When the fires in the perimeter were under control, the Dominion soldiers began to push into the space station’s interior. Meeting no resistance, they exchanged cautious looks of relief.

As the first Dominion Marine passed into the second ring of corridors, he stepped underneath a concealed motion detector. The motion detector duly noted the movement and sent a signal to a computer hidden inside a storage closet deep within the labyrinth of the space station’s hallways.

The computer activated a ten minute timer.

Outside the space station, Scinto’s task force kept a close guard. Something kept appearing at the edge of their sensors, but none of them could get a decent lock, though that did not prevent them from shooting off dozens of missiles just to keep the Vickies off balance. Scinto believed in an active defense.

Scinto was thinking about how many ships he would have to leave behind to guard the Prometheus station when the timer aboard the space station reached ten minutes. The computer hidden in the storage closet duly took note, then sent a signal to the forty-five antimatter pods that had been secreted around the exterior of the space station’s hull.

A second later each of the pods expelled its antimatter directly onto the hull. For a fleeting moment, Space Station Prometheus looked like a miniature star in super nova. It turned a brilliant white and expanded in all directions, greedily enveloping the ten Dominion war ships guarding it. On the night surface of Cornwall a small child cried in delight and pointed to the sky. “Look, Mommy, fireworks!”

On board the D.U.C.
Vengeance,
the Communications Officer frowned in puzzlement. He’d been monitoring the salvage effort at the Prometheus Space Station when the communications had been abruptly cut off. He glanced nervously at Admiral Mello, who was talking intently with Commander Pattin. He most certainly did not want to be the bearer of bad tidings to the Admiral. He nudged the Sensors Officer, whispering: “Mitch, what have you got from Prometheus?”

Mitch adjusted his controls, and then went pale. “Oh my God!” he choked out.

A few feet away, Admiral Mello and Commander Pattin looked up, both frowning.

• • • • •

On Board the H.M.S.
Lionheart,
Admiral Douthat grimly studied the holo display. The Dominion hadn’t been fooled by the decoy; now they were chasing the First Fleet and the priceless Atlas station, to say nothing of Queen Anne.

“Any word from Captain Grey?” she asked without looking away from the holo display.

“Nothing yet, Admiral. They’re positioned on the far side of the Dominion Fleet, pretty easy for the Ducks to jam their transmissions.”

“Anything on Prometheus?”

The Communications Officer shook his head. “The carrier wave went off line after that energy spike. It was almost certainly the antimatter pods blowing up, but we’ve no way of knowing how much damage it did to any Dominion ships.”

Douthat grunted. The first set of reconnaissance drones they’d sent out earlier had either been destroyed or run out of fuel by now. Should she risk sending a frigate? No, she had too few ships to risk one unless she had to. Gods of Our Mothers, if only they could accelerate faster! It was like trying to swim with a ball and chain around your legs.

“Captain Eder, would you be so good as to send out more recon drones?” she ordered. “And get me the captain of the mine layers; time to leave the Ducks some presents.”

She studied the small speck of light in the far corner of the holo display, the one that represented the wormhole to Refuge. Five days away at current speeds. Five long days.

She sighed. For this to work, the Dominion had to start shooting their missiles, using up what was in their on-board magazines. Time to start…

“D
amn it, where are they?” Captain Grey muttered. They were now quietly following the Dominion fleet as it pursued the Home Fleet and Space Station Atlas. Each ship of the Coldstream Guards was running as stealthily as possible, but their passive sensors were probing desperately, trying to locate the Dominion supply ships that were the life blood of the Dominion force.

The problem was they could be anywhere. They could just run immediately behind the attack fleet, or above it, below it or on either side. And they would be trying to run quietly, not wanting to attract the rude attention of a Victorian force bent on mischief. Grey’s single Battle Group couldn’t cover everywhere at once, certainly not while using only passive sensors.

No, unless they got really lucky and tripped over the Dominion supply ships, they would have to sit and wait until some frigate or destroyer came running back to refill their magazines.

• • • • •

“Admiral Mello, sensors picking up a line of ships closing into missile range. Dead ahead. They must have been powered down, Sir, because they just popped up out of nowhere.”

“Size?”

“I count fifteen at least. They are blasting ECM, so exact count is uncertain.”

“Type?”

“We only had a glimpse before the ECM kicked in, but I read three battleships, at least four cruisers and a mix of destroyers and frigates. It looks like they’re making a stand, Sir,” the Sensors Officer added helpfully.

“Then you are a fool and we are fortunate that I am in command, not you,” Mello replied acidly. “We know the Vickies lost two of their three battleships, so there is no way they can have three battleships waiting for us. Also, it is unlikely that they would make a stand with only fifteen ships against our larger task force. No, what you see in front of you is a line of drones masquerading as war ships, with perhaps a couple of warships mixed in to give the charade additional credibility. They might have some missile pods, but once they have exhausted their missiles, they will be worthless junk.

“So,” he said, raising his voice for the entire bridge crew to hear, “we will continue and roll over them. We must not give them time! Time is the enemy! Commander Pattin, bring the frigates and destroyers on line. All ships to activate their anti-missile defenses.”

And the Dominion Fleet rushed forward to meet the first line of the Victorian defense.

“Bugger me blue, there’s a lot of them!” the Tactical Officer on H.M.S.
Melbourne
whispered. The destroyer was hovering four hundred miles behind the line of missile pods, watching through the reconnaissance drones spaced between the pods. Not far away was the H.M.S.
Dundee,
another destroyer from the Black Watch Battle Group. Their job was to wait for the Dominion ships to close in, then flush the missile pods…and run like hell. “Don’t worry about hitting anything,” Captain Hamid had told them. “Just make them shoot back and waste missiles.”

“Do you have range yet?” the captain of the
Melbourne
asked impatiently. The Tactical Officer tried to concentrate on his instruments. He was having trouble concentrating; there were so
many
Dominion ships coming at them.

“Ten seconds!” His voice squeaked. “Five…two, one. In range. They’re now in range. Now.” He couldn’t stop babbling.

His captain looked at him, a smirk pulling at his mouth. “Okay, George, we got it. Fire your missiles, then push the recon drones forward so we can see what’s happening.”

The Tac Officer pushed a button. Four hundred miles in front of them the twenty missile pods each fired sixteen short range missiles in sprint mode. Each pod had been assigned two targets. A moment later the recon drones flared to life and sped after them, active sensors reaching out to find the enemy.

“And activate the antimatter mines,” the captain ordered. Then, satisfied that was done, he ordered: “Let’s get out of here. Tell the
Dundee
we are pulling back.”

• • • • •

The Dominion had learned the hard way that the Victorians had superior missile systems. Their response had been to build ships dedicated to nothing but antimissile defense. They called them “Hedgehogs.” Each Hedgehog was capable of simultaneously tracking and destroying twenty incoming missiles, and as each was destroyed, the Hedgehog automatically queued up another one. It held a magazine of five hundred short range “buckshot” missiles, had sixty high speed Gatling guns that shot one thousand rounds of spent Ziridium per minute, and forty one-inch lasers.

Mello had ten Hedgehogs in his Attack Force, and all of them were now in the front line to protect his frigates and destroyers.

Of the three hundred and twenty missiles fired by the Victorian missile pods, twenty three reached their targets.

“Look for ships moving away!” Mello thundered. “There should be control ships out there trying to escape.”

“Two ships,” the Sensors Officer confirmed. “Turning and accelerating rapidly.”

“All line ships to fire. I want them dead,” Mello said.

And a minute later, they were. Every Dominion destroyer and frigate in the front line flushed its missiles at them in an orgy of revenge. The fleeing Victorians were overwhelmed.

“
That
is the way you meet the enemy,” Mello said in satisfaction. Behind him, Commander Pattin grimaced. The exchange had been even: as the fleet surged onward, it left behind two broken hulks and had another damaged destroyer struggling to keep up.

Several minutes later they hit the antimatter mines, took damage to another ship, and continued in pursuit of the Victorians.

• • • • •

Aboard the H.M.S.
Lionheart,
Admiral Douthat watched the holo display intently. She cursed silently as the
Dundee
and
Melbourne
icons flashed Code Omega, then watched the DUC force close to where the anti-matter mines were. The explosion of the mines distorted the senor display. It took a minute or so for the display to clear.

“Mickey,” she asked the Sensors Officer. “When they hit the mines, did they turn?”

“Yes, Admiral. They turned up, shot out the rest of the mines, then dropped down and resumed course.”

Douthat nodded. “Merlin! Take a note. When confronted with mines, the Dominion fleet turned
up.
Monitor similar incidents and watch for a pattern.”

C
aptain Julie Grey’s Battle Group coasted ghostlike behind the Dominions, desperately trying to locate the Dominion supply ships. People spoke in whispers and subconsciously tried not to make noise. They knew no one could possibly hear them, but they couldn’t help themselves; they’re survival depended on them not being detected.