Alarm of War v-1

by Kennedy Hudner

  “Mildred, can you patch me through so that I can talk to the Tilleke on the bridge?”

  “Yes, Lieutenant Skiffington, and I can translate your words into Tilleke. I am capable of reproducing six hundred and thirteen different languages and have the capability to learn a new language with-”

  “Stop.” He gazed at the display, studying the Tilleke ranking officer on the bridge of the London. Did she know? “Put me though, Mildred.”

  A slight burst of static, then Grant suddenly could hear everything on the bridge of the London. “-anti-missile defense should fire in just a moment,” one of the Savak was saying.

  “I am Lieutenant Grant Skiffington,” he said, hearing the simultaneous translation by Mildred. “I am the commanding officer of Her Majesty’s Ship London.” On the screen, First Sister Pilot’s head jerked up in shock.

  “In a few moments, you are going to die,” Grant said pleasantly. “I just want you to know that I am the man who killed you.”

  First Sister Pilot’s eyes darted to the ceiling speaker, then to the holo display where the Victorian missiles relentlessly bore in. Her shoulders sagged.

  The missiles bore in.

  First Sister Pilot sat back in her chair and crossed her legs. She said something to the others in a low voice that Grant couldn’t hear. The women cast stricken looks at the holo, then stood behind the First Sister Pilot, crowding together with bowed heads, touching each other for comfort. Some were crying. Grant felt not a shred of pity.

  “You killed my father,” he told her. “I hope you burn in hell.”

  First Sister Pilot stared back defiantly. “Fool! I live through my Sisters.”

  “Cut transmission, Mildred,” Grant ordered, not quite sure who had gotten the best of that exchange.

  The holo display collapsed.

  “Twenty seconds,” said the Weapons Officer.

  “Goodbye, Mildred.”

  “Goodbye, Lieutenant. I hope you have a pleasant day.”

  Twenty seconds later the missiles reached the London unimpeded.

  Commander Peled walked shakily to where Grant sat on the floor. There were splashes of blood on his face and he was holding one arm. There were splashes of blood on his face and uniform, but he seemed uninjured, if thoroughly shaken. “They hit us pretty hard, Skiffington,” he said. “You and I are the only officers left.” He looked around the shambles of the bridge, the deck covered with wreckage, bodies and blood. “I think it’s time to clean up this bloody mess and go home.”

  Grant shook his head. “One more thing to do, sir. We can’t go back empty handed.”

  Then the air turned cold and more snow began to fall across the blood stained deck.

  Chapter 32

  On Board the Collier H.M.S. Bawdy Bertha

  In Tilleke Space, Approaching the Wormhole to Gilead

  “They’re still gaining on us, Captain!” The Sensors Officer’s voice cracked with tension.

  Captain Michael Zizka yawned and scratched his ample stomach. His bridge crew was strained almost to the breaking point; even his XO was showing the signs. Well, he could hardly blame them. They were kids, the oldest of them barely twenty five, and what they had seen had shocked them to their core. But he needed them to keep it together for a little longer, just a little longer.

  He consciously yawned again, aware of the eyes on him, then stretched and frowned irritably at the holo display. Unconsciously he fingered the cigar he kept in his breast pocket, the one he’d been saving ever since the Fleet doctor forced him to stop smoking years earlier.

  “Goddammit, Helen,” he said mildly. “You know how to give a proper status report. I want information I can use, not prattle! Of course the bastards are gaining on us! They’ve been gaining on us for ten hours, now haven’t they? So what I want to know, Helen my dearest, is when the fucking traitorous sons of bitches are going to have us in missile range. And when we can expect to reach the wormhole entrance to Gilead? That’s what I need to know, Helen darling. Now can you please help a broken down old freighter captain and give me that information? Can you now?”

  The bridge crew exchanged glances; the helmsman covered her mouth to hide a smile. Helen Fletcher, his brand new Sensors Officer, barely twenty one years old, took a deep breath.

  “Merlin estimates the first two Dominion ships will have us in missile range within thirty two minutes. At current speed, we will reach the Gilead wormhole entrance in thirty four minutes.”

  Two bloody minutes short! he thought savagely. He put on his brightest smile. “There now, a fine report, Helen! Short and to the point.” She managed a weak smile back at him. He glanced at his Executive Officer, Francis Pyne, but he wasn’t smiling. His jaw was set, his eyes were too bright.

  He knew. He knew what Zizka had known from the first hour of their flight out of Tilleke space: The Bawdy Bertha was fat and slow and running for her life.

  But she was losing the race.

  Despite red-lining their engines and stressing the inertia compensator, the Dominion destroyers were going to catch them. The only question was when.

  Resupply and Maintenance Vessel #313 — his beloved Bawdy Bertha, named after his third wife — was one of four colliers assigned to the Second Fleet. She had taken up station fifty thousand miles behind the Second Fleet’s line of advance. They had expected they would wait there out of harm’s way, then move forward to replenish the Fleet’s missile stocks and perishables like chaff and decoys, and perform minor repairs as needed. There was never any question that the Second Fleet would win the battle. Of course it would win.

  But ten hours earlier the first Code Omega drones had come to them, blaring their message of disaster and ruin. They downloaded what they could, then watched grimly as the report showed ship after ship blown apart or tumbling aimlessly through space. Second Fleet had started out with 120 war ships; at least 70 had been destroyed outright, and many more were lying dead in space, not moving. Others were missing, either running for their lives, or on their own Long Walk to hell.

  Captain Zizka had wasted no time. He turned and ran, ran for the wormhole to Gilead at maximum military speed. He had no missile launchers and only four two-inch laser turrets, next to useless in a stand-up brawl. He didn’t doubt that the Dominion or Tilleke would chase him, and if they chased him they would catch him. But Bertha was the only ship in a position to warn Victoria that more than half of her entire Navy had been destroyed.

  And to do that, they had to reach Gilead. If Bertha was destroyed, its Code Omega drones would launch automatically and fly toward Victoria. But the drones were notoriously fragile. They could make it through the gravity tides of one wormhole, but would not survive a second. For its drones to reach Victoria, Bertha had to be in Gilead space, so the drones would have to transit only one wormhole to reach Victoria.

  And to reach Gilead space, Zizka had to delay his pursuers for two minutes. He didn’t have missiles to shoot at them, but he had a cargo hold full of spare parts, fifteen anti-matter bottles, decoys and mountains of chaff, so he was going to do what any self-respecting freighter captain would do: he was going to throw things at them.

  “Chaff!” he ordered. Chaff rockets spit out the back of the ship, blossoming into a large oval of millions of strips of sensor-reflective tape. On the hologram, it looked like an ink squirt from a very large octopus, which is where the idea had originally come from, he supposed.

  “Eject the first three anti-matter bottles!”

  “They are out and armed, Captain,” Pyne reported.

  Zizka glanced again at the holo display. “Set detonation for twenty five minutes.” This was their best guess for when the DUC ships would come through the chaff cloud. If they didn’t change speed. If they didn’t go above or below the plane of advance. If, if, if…

  Twenty five minutes ten seconds later, the three Dominion destroyers cleared the chaff cloud and pushed onward in pursuit of the Bawdy Bertha, then frantically scattered sideways and up as the anti-ma
tter bottles blew up right in front of them.

  Zizka chuckled. “Take that, you little pricks. Now you know this old girl has teeth.” He smiled wolfishly to his bridge crew. “Okay, people! Shoot some more chaff and drop another anti-matter bottle. And let’s shoot off three decoys, each at ten degrees off our present course. I want them flinching every time they see chaff and scratching their heads when they see the decoys.”

  They did two more repetitions of the chaff cloud, followed by anti-matter bottles and decoys. The DUC destroyers were pursuing more cautiously now, placing themselves further apart and going above and below the plane of pursuit to avoid the mines. Zizka motioned to the Sensors Officer. “Lieutenant Fletcher?”

  “Three minutes to the wormhole, Captain, and the Dominion ships won’t have us in missile range for two minutes and fifty five seconds.”

  Zizka beamed. “Thank you, Helen.” He spoke to the rest of the bridge crew. “Okay, people, we’ve got the lead time we need to reach the wormhole. Continuous chaff and decoys from here on in. Let’s not give their missiles anything to lock onto.”

  The three Dominion destroyers fired two volleys of missiles at Bertha just as it reached the wormhole entrance. The space between Bertha and the enemy ships was so thick with chaff, decoys, ECM and exploding anti-matter bottles that none of the missiles even came close. A moment later the Bertha entered the wormhole and all of its sensors showed nothing but static. The bridge crew cheered wildly.

  Zizka motioned to his XO, who leaned close to keep the conversation private.

  “Francis, make sure all of the drones are ready. All of them, mind you. Even the ones in the storage. As soon as we come out of the wormhole into Gilead, fire them.”

  “I’ll be ready, Captain.”

  “Don’t wait for my order, Francis. Just shoot them! We must get them off, no matter what.”

  “I’ve already loaded them on the racks, Captain. We’ll launch one hundred in the first volley, then one hundred more every four seconds after that.”

  “They’ll be waiting for us, Francis, damn them. Don’t wait for my order, just launch!”

  “Ten seconds to emergence,” Merlin announced.

  The bridge crew were still celebrating their escape. Zizka didn’t interrupt. He took the cigar out of his pocket, then realized ruefully he didn’t have any way to light it. No matter. He stuck it in mouth.

  “Stand tall!” Captain Zizka called out to his crew. “You’ve earned it.” Helen Fletcher looked at him, relief giving way to a timorous smile. He nodded, thinking, ‘Forgive me.’

  When the Bawdy Bertha emerged from the wormhole, two Dominion missile cruisers hovered before them. The slow, fat freighter managed to launch five hundred message drones before the avalanche of missiles finished her.

  The drones swarmed like fireflies around the Dominion cruisers. At first their flight seemed lazy, almost languorous, but then their chemical afterburners kicked in and they accelerated at a rate no space ship could match. Almost two hundred died in the fusillade of anti-missile fire, but the rest surged past unscathed, accelerated and headed across Gilead to the wormhole that would take them to Victoria…and home.

  Chapter 33

  D.U.C. Blue Heron

  Victorian Space, near Space Station Atlas

  The Dominion freighter Blue Heron anchored near one of the custom stations not far from the space station Atlas. They would have to wait a day or two for the custom inspection of their cargo, then they would offload it for shipment to the planet’s surface.

  The Captain requested permission for his crew and passengers to take a shuttle to Atlas so they could stretch their legs and explore the shops and bars. He explained he had more than two hundred men aboard, replacement workers for a mining base in Gilead. Atlas Port Authority made a note and logged in the authorization. It was all very routine.

  Chapter 34

  In Victorian Space

  Atlas Space Station

  “Gods of Our Mothers, I thought my cabin was small,” Emily remarked. “This is positively Spartan.”

  Hiram Brill shrugged, intent on pouring them both coffees. “There are four hundred thousand people on Atlas. Space is at a premium and I am but a lowly Lieutenant.” His cabin was a studio unit, a small living room/kitchen/bedroom space with a wash room off to the side. It was very neat and orderly, but cramped with bookshelves and holo displays. On one shelf there was a picture of Cookie, holding a glass of wine and smiling directly into the camera. Her lips were parted, her hair was slightly mussed and she was in a black dress with thin shoulder straps; one had fallen, accentuating her naked shoulder and graceful neck. Her face was a combination of warm adoration and raw, vibrant sexuality. It was the face of a woman who had just made love…or was just about to.

  Gods of Our Mothers! Emily thought, remembering Cookie as she looked carrying a Bull Pup sonic rifle and wearing mud-caked fatigues. Who would have guessed?

  “Kid cleans up good, doesn’t she?” she said dryly.

  Hiram glanced at the picture and smiled wistfully. “Yeah, she certainly does.”

  “Heard from her?”

  Hiram shook his head. “Not since she left to board the London.” He gave Emily her mug of coffee. “Feels funny to be sitting here sipping coffee while she’s off at war.”

  Emily nodded agreement. “It shouldn’t take long, though. Second Fleet is packing a lot of fire power. I can’t imagine the Tilleke wanting to get into a toe-to-toe fight with them.”

  Hiram frowned. “I’ve been doing a lot of reading on the Tilleke. Far as I can tell, they never go toe-to-toe. They prefer playing the angles, coming at you when you don’t expect it. Feints, misdirection and confusion, until their opponent is off balance and vulnerable.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Emily retorted, “but Second Fleet has one hundred and twenty war ships, for God’s sake. The Emperor can bob and weave all he wants, but sooner or later he’s got to have the missile throw weight or it’s all over.”

  Hiram snorted. “You know better than that, Emily. You’re the bloody historian, surely you know of instances when an enemy has outsmarted a larger, stronger opponent.”

  “Well…” Emily considered, sipping her coffee. “Well, okay, I guess there are lots of examples of armies using deception, but you’re talking about deception on a strategic level, not simply at a tactical level.”

  Hiram waived his coffee mug in a ‘keep coming’ gesture.

  Emily pursed her lips, recalling some of her military history courses. “Oddly enough, for the best examples you have to go back to Old Earth. Since mankind left Earth in the plague years, then discovered wormholes, there has been very little warfare. There just has been so much room to grow in, enough resources to keep most people happy, and on top of that the cost of building a fleet of war ships capable of projecting force across wormhole sectors is humongous.”

  “I know all that,” Hiram complained mildly. “Give me a good example.”

  “I know,” she said after a moment. “Old Earth, twentieth century, the Yom Kippur War. There were three warring nations in an area called the ‘Mid-East.’ Israel, Egypt and Syria. Three small countries at a time when there were two superpowers that dominated most of the politics on the planet.”

  Hiram frowned. “Israel? Wait a minute, isn’t that one of the countries that eventually settled the Refuge sector?”

  Emily nodded. “You’re not as dumb as you look. Yeah, Israel and another tiny country, Morocco. On Earth they were not really hostile, exactly, but hardly friends either. Different religious beliefs, so there was chronic mistrust, but no open military strife between them. Anyway, in the Third Plague, they separately departed Earth in Colony Ships and then both of them ran into problems. If I remember correctly, the engines failed on the Israeli ship and the Moroccans rescued them, but the Moroccans had plague on their ship and the Israelis rescued them in return. After they got through that, they decided to stay together and finally ended up at Refuge.”

  H
iram gestured. “You were talking about strategic deception.”

  Emily gave him a stern look. “So, there were two wars between the three countries, about eight years apart. This is in the twentieth century, Old Calendar. In the first war, Egypt and Syria built up their armies along the Israeli border, but before they could launch their attack, the Israelis launched a spoiler attack, mostly using their air force. Fighters and bombers that actually flew in the atmosphere rather than in space. They caught the Egyptian and Syrian air forces on the ground and wiped them out in the first day. That gave the Israelis air superiority, which they used to crush the Egyptian and Syrian tank forces. This was an area with a lot of open desert, so not too many places to hide from attacking airplanes.”

  “This doesn’t sound like a lot of strategic surprise to me,” Hiram said.

  “Be patient, I’m getting there. A real drink would probably help, by the way.” Hiram dutifully poured her something amber into a glass and gave it to her.

  “So two things happened as the result of this early war. The Israelis adopted the image of the Arab soldier as a buffoon, and pretty much believed that the Egyptians and Syrians could never defeat them in a heads-on battle.”

  “Create the stereotype that your opponent is a bad soldier, and it colors everything you learn from then on,” Hiram said.

  “Exactly. What the psychologists call ‘priming.’ You assume that something is a hard fact and from that point onward you interpret all new data in relationship to that ‘fact.’ But the other thing is even more important: the Egyptians and Syrians knew the Israelis believed this, and they took advantage of it. They planned a great deception, what one of the old superpowers used to call a maskirovka. What Egypt did was gradually build up its army, while at the same time leaking information that although they wanted to attack Israel, they couldn’t until one of the superpowers — the Soviets — gave Egypt a certain type of long range missile and enough bombers to threaten Israel’s major cities. Meanwhile, the Syrians said that they wanted to attack Israel, too, but couldn’t unless Egypt would join them.” Emily grinned. “The best part is that the Soviets agreed to play along. They leaked some information that they wouldn’t give the Egyptians long range missiles or bombers because they didn’t think the Egyptians were good enough to handle them. The Soviets played to Israel’s belief that the Egyptian army couldn’t fight its way out of a paper bag.”