Alarm of War v-1

by Kennedy Hudner

  Emily opened her tablet and typed out a message, then attached that message to an email and sent it with a ‘Priority 1 Special Order’ status. That should do it, she thought.

  She felt very pleased with herself.

  On board the Yorkshire, Cookie was in the machine shop, working to make a coupling that would allow them to pressurize the air cylinders the dead Savak had been using.

  “That should do it, Corporal,” the rating said cheerfully, holding up a brass fitting. He screwed it into the end of an air hose, then clipped the other end onto the intake valve of the cylinder. He rolled the cylinder in his hands. “Huh, no sign of a pressure gauge.” He hefted it. “Pretty light. No idea what pressure it’s designed to take?”

  Cookie shook her head. “We tested them all. Some were empty, one still had seven hundred and fifty pounds in it and it had clearly been used.”

  The rating whistled. “Well, stronger than it looks, then.” He stroked his chin. “So, let’s clamp it down so we don’t make a rocket out of it by mistake, and take it up to a thousand pounds and see what happens.” He smiled brightly, looking all the world like a high school kid in a science fair.

  Ten minutes later the cylinder was pumped up and Cookie gingerly snapped it onto the Savak assault rifle. So far so good. She clipped on the magazine of pellets, worked the action and took aim at a wooden target she’d made, which was backed by fifty pound bags of flour and beans. She squeezed the trigger and the gun made that curious ‘popping’ sound that she was all too familiar with. The wooden target shivered. Cookie and the rating looked at each other, then walked to the target and inspected it. The pellet had punched through three inches of wood and had finally lodged in the third layer of flour bags.

  The rating grinned. Cookie smiled back, then handed him the rifle. “Start shooting. Mark how many shots it takes before you can’t put the pellet at least half an inch into the target.” Then her comm buzzed. She flipped it open and found a text message.

  “To Corporal Maria Sanchez

  Priority 1 Order — Upon receipt of this Order, report immediately to Cabin 714B on board Atlas Station for debriefing regarding recent actions. Action Immediate. Anyone wishing to counterman this Order must first report to Tuttle, (Acting) Captain, New Zealand. Upon entering Cabin 714B, you are to open the attached message and comply with the Orders therein.

  Signed: (Acting) Captain Emily Tuttle, (Acting) Commander Coldstream Guards.

  Cookie frowned, glanced at her stained uniform and shrugged. “Action Immediate” left no room for discussion. She took thirty seconds to splash water on her face and check to make sure her uniform was at least buttoned properly, then walked briskly to the main hatchway and across the gangway into the Atlas ship yard bay. Hopping onto one of the passing autocabs, she gave the address and soon found herself at an elevator bank that took her to the seventh level of an apartment block reserved for officers. A minute later she was standing outside of cabin 714B. She pushed the bell, then braced to attention.

  The door opened and Hiram Brill stood there, his tie loosened and a tablet in one hand. “Yes, may I-” He stopped and stared at her.

  Cookie blinked, then blinked again. “Hiram?” His name came out funny. She tried again. “Baby?” Then his arms were around her and they were laughing and hugging and then they were both crying and that made them laugh some more and he pulled her bodily into his room and kissed her and she took his face in her greasy and stained hands and kissed him back.

  “I thought you were-” but he choked with tears and couldn’t say it and she hugged him and kept saying “I’m here, I’m here” over and over and when they next came to anything resembling conscious thought they were in his bedroom and their clothes were strewn about in joyous disarray. And just as things were about to tip over and become unstoppable, Cookie suddenly whooped with laughter. “That goddamned Emily!”

  “What?” Hiram asked breathlessly, still in shock of finding Cookie alive and well and in his bed.

  “She sent me a message that I had to report here for debriefing. Priority 1, ‘Action Immediate.’”

  Hiram looked up from something amazing he was doing to her breasts. “We can talk about Emily later,” he gasped.

  Cookie was more than inclined to agree, but then remembered the attachment. “Hold on,” she whispered hoarsely, her concentration tattered from what his mouth was doing to her breast and his fingers were doing elsewhere. She pulled the comm off the side table and clumsily opened the attachment to her earlier Order, read it, then collapsed again in a gale of laughter.

  “What? What is it?” Hiram demanded.

  “These are my orders once I reach your cabin.” She turned the screen to show him.

  To Corporal Sanchez:

  Upon reaching Cabin 714B, immediately undress and get into bed. Vigorously debrief the interviewing officer.

  Cookie tossed the comm on the floor and wrapped her legs around Hiram’s waist. She looked at the man in her arms, taking in the black fatigue smudges under his eyes, the gentle eyes that she had dreamed about so fervently and never expected to see again. She pulled his face down and kissed him fiercely.

  I’m home, she thought. I will never leave him again.

  But even as she thought it, she knew it wasn’t true.

  Chapter 63

  Approaching the Refuge Wormhole

  The conference room was filled with the remaining senior officers of the Black Watch, the Queen’s Own and the Coldstream Guards. Peter Murphy, the leader of the tug boat captains, and Max Opinsky, the operations manager, sat next to each other looking tired and out of place.

  At the end of the table, Admiral Douthat sat beside Queen Anne. Sir Henry sat on the other side of the Queen. Douthat shot an impatient glance at the wall clock as Hiram Brill entered the room and took a chair just a minute before the meeting was to begin.

  Admiral Douthat scowled, more out of habit than anything else. Queen Anne, who had learned of Emily’s scheming from her guards, smiled at Hiram and arched one eyebrow. His eyes widened and his face flushed. She let him squirm for a moment, then nodded at Admiral Douthat to open the meeting.

  Admiral Douthat’s eyes darted from the Queen to Hiram and back again. She was sure that something just happened, but she had no idea what it could be. She rapped her knuckles on the table.

  “We have approximately five hours before we need to scramble all ships, and a lot of ground to cover. First, we think the Dominion have approximately one hundred and twenty ships still fit to fight. By contrast, we have fifty one war ships, including one battleship, fourteen cruisers, twenty seven destroyers and nine frigates. We also have three arks, which carry a mix of corvettes and gun boats. Most of our ships are damaged to one extent or another, including at least two which can only function in a defensive role. Our ship count includes the recently arrived Coldstream Guard ships, which are all in the ship yard being repaired and refurbished.”

  She paused, letting that information sink in. “The odds are against us, ladies and gentlemen, but they are a lot better now than when we started our retreat toward Refuge. And not to forget, we also have the munitions output of the Atlas, which has been turning out large numbers of missile platforms and mines.”

  Admiral Douthat stood up and began to pace back and forth in front of the conference table. “There are two critical developments you need to be aware of.

  “First, the enemy has split its forces. Of their one hundred twenty ships, they’ve moved some sixty seven ships between us and the entrance to the Refuge worm hole. Captain Tuttle spotted them on passive sensors and estimates that they include fifteen destroyers, thirty cruiser-size ships, twenty smaller ships similar to our frigates, and one large ship with unknown capabilities, but I will make an educated guess that it is the D.U.C. Vengeance, serving as their flag ship. The Vengeance is big, very big, about half again the size of our remaining battleship, the Lionheart. Remember,” she cautioned, “this is only an estimate. We won’t really know
until we have them on our sensors.

  “That leaves some fifty three ships behind us, including their three surviving Hedgehogs and their two carriers, which we now know employ small attack craft. We are not sure of their size or throw weight, but we think that the ships behind us are mostly made up of ships from ‘Bogey Two,’ and we presume that most of them are undamaged.”

  There was muttering around the table as the facts sunk in. Now the Atlas and the surviving Home Fleet were caught in a classic hammer and anvil position. The best way to get out of it was to turn either up or down from their plane of advance and run like hell, but they couldn’t turn and they couldn’t run. The enemy knew exactly where they were going. The only option was to fight their way through to the worm hole against two to one odds.

  “You said two things we need to be aware of,” one of the captains voiced.

  Douthat pursed her lips and nodded. “Yes. The second thing is that the worm hole is moving.”

  The murmur of disquiet grew louder. Peter Murphy leapt to his feet, red faced and furious. “Admiral! You should have told me as soon as you learned. I need to start turning Atlas or we’ll lose the worm hole!”

  Douthat made a ‘take it easy’ gesture with her hands. “Normally, you’d be right, Mr. Murphy, but we first learned of the movement not from our sensors, but from a communication from an unknown ship. It came via whisper laser, addressed to the Queen and to Commander Brill.”

  Hiram sat bolt upright in his chair. What? He looked at Admiral Douthat, only to find that she was looking straight back at him.

  “The message tells us that the worm hole has started to move west on our plane of advance. It will move west for seven hours, but then it will reverse course and move back east past its original position and stop at a specified set of coordinates exactly at — ” she consulted her tablet — “seventeen hours and twenty minutes from now. When it stops it will actually be closer to us than it is now, shortening our time to reach it.”

  For a moment there was stunned silence, then the room dissolved into an uproar. “How can we trust the message?” demanded Captain Wicklow.

  “We can’t,” snapped Sir Henry, speaking for the first time. “We cannot verify the source, so we cannot verify the accuracy of what they told us.”

  “This could be a trap,” Wicklow continued. “The Dominion may want us to believe the worm hole will reverse course so we’ll plot our course accordingly, when all along it will be moving west, further and further out of reach.”

  Douthat motioned for silence, then gestured to Peter Murphy. “Mr. Murphy, if we turn west with the worm hole, and it does reverse course, can we turn back and still catch it?”

  Murphy shot a morose glance at Opinsky, who shook his head. “Don’t see how, Admiral,” Opinsky said. “Hard to turn the Atlas, real hard. If your data is right, the worm hole will move west about twenty degrees off our plane of advance, so we’d need to turn twenty degrees left to try to hit it. To do that we’d need to start turning now, right now, and even then it would be close. But you’re sayin’ that it is gonna turn back east again, to our right and end up fifteen degrees off our current plane of advance. Well, Ma’am, we can go left and maybe make it, or go right and probably make it, but we can’t start left and then change our minds with any hope of hitting the worm hole if it really ends up going to our right. If you follow me,” he concluded glumly.

  “So we have to decide,” Admiral Douthat said flatly. “Our sensors are reporting that the worm hole has in fact begun to move left. We can either turn with it, or we can trust this message and turn away from it, lining up Atlas to enter it when — and if — the wormhole reverses course.”

  “This message is a Dominion ruse, an attempt to misdirect us,” Wicklow said heatedly. “Any fool can see that.”

  “How do we know that?” asked Captain Eder of the Lionheart.

  “We don’t know it is not,” Sir Henry replied. “And because we don’t know, we cannot trust it. We must go left.”

  The argument raged for another few minutes, going nowhere. Hiram sat quietly, trying to puzzle it out. Then, when there was a brief lull, he asked: “Admiral Douthat, you said that the message was addressed to Queen Anne and to me, is that correct?

  Douthat nodded curtly.

  “Exactly what does the message say?”

  Douthat pushed a button and the message appeared on a screen:

  To Queen Anne of Victoria and to Lt. Hiram Brill, Fleet Intelligence:

  We send you greeting in your time of trouble, and a warning. The Refuge worm hole has begun to move west relative to your plane of advance. It will move west on a horizontal axis for seven standard hours, then reverse course and move east past its point of origin. It will move east for ten hours from the time it changes direction, stopping at relative coordinates X-2930; Y-1446; and Z-0473 your perspective. Turn east now.

  Hiram Brill, your aunt sends you chocolate cake.

  Hiram laughed out loud. “Turn east, Admiral. The message is good.” He explained about Jong, the monk from The Light, and his odd question about Hiram liking his aunt’s chocolate cake.

  “This is nonsense!” Wicklow spluttered. “This could be a Dominion trick, or even if it isn’t, why should we trust The Light? How could they possibly know what the worm hole will do?”

  Queen Anne raised her hand and Wicklow fell silent. “Admiral, I have reason to trust this message as well. I believe I know who sent it. I don’t pretend to know why they believe the worm hole will reverse course, but I think we may rely on it.”

  “Your Majesty,” Sir Henry protested, but she cut him off.

  “I understand your position, Sir Henry, but a decision must be made, and I have made it.” She stood. “Admiral Douthat, direct the tugs to turn Atlas to the east and plan your battle tactics accordingly.” She smiled warmly at everyone in the room. “I have the utmost faith in your ability to get us all safely to Refuge. May the Gods of Our Mothers bless you all and keep you from harm.”

  Admiral John Mello stood at the helm of the D.U.C. Vengeance and stared at his hologram display. His blocking force was in place; now they awaited the inevitable Victorian response to it.

  “Do you think they’ll go for it, sir?” Captain Pattin asked quietly.

  “Without a doubt.” Mello smiled coldly. Sometimes you defeat your enemy through their arrogance, sometimes through their fear. And sometimes, simply through their predictability.

  It didn’t really matter, as long as you won and they died.

  After the others had cleared the conference room, Queen Anne sat with the remaining captains of the Coldstream Guards. The others sat away from Captain Wicklow, no one wanting to appear as if they were taking his side by sitting too close. Captain Wicklow in turn looked at them with unveiled disdain. Queen Anne studied them in turn, observing their body language, hoping that the Guards could maintain enough unity to be combat effective for this last, vital push.

  “In a very short time,” she said evenly, “Admiral Douthat will send the Queen’s Own and Black Watch ahead to attack the Dominion blocking force. If that attack is successful, the main body of the Dominion fleet will either be defeated or at least out of position to stop our passage through the Refuge worm hole. The Coldstream Guards will remain with Atlas to serve as the reserve and to protect it from any attack from the rear, although Admiral Douthat assures me that such an attack would likely get bogged down in the minefield.”

  “There are two issues Admiral Douthat asked me to deal with,” the Queen continued. “First, who shall command the Coldstream Guards, and second, what to do about the pending arrest warrant for Lieutenant Tuttle.”

  “It is perfectly clear, Your Majesty,” Captain Wicklow said earnestly. “Following the unfortunate death of Captain Grey, I am the senior officer of the Guards and should, as a matter of rank, tradition and expertise, assume command. As for Lieutenant Tuttle, she should be taken into custody immediately for treason in the face of the enemy for turning her
guns on a ship of Your Majesty’s navy. Her actions were criminal and she must now face the consequences.” He looked coldly at Emily. “And, I might add, Your Majesty should immediately open an investigation into the mysterious circumstances of Captain Grey’s death. From all reports she died under most irregular circumstances. Most irregular.”

  “If by most irregular, Joe, you mean she died while her ship was attacking enemy instead of running for home, I couldn’t agree with you more,” Captain Rowe said pointedly. There was a rumble of agreement from the other captains, all of whom had stayed and fought despite the odds.

  Captain Wicklow nodded calmly, seemingly oblivious to the insult he had just received. “You fought against overwhelming odds and won, Captain Rowe, no one will deny that. But that doesn’t change the basic fact: You should never have fought that engagement. By doing so you placed a third of the Queen’s remaining Fleet in extreme jeopardy, with little chance of success. The fact that you survived doesn’t change the fact that you were wrong to do so.” He glanced at Tuttle. “As for this junior officer, she will hang, of that I assure you.” He smiled at her.

  Queen Anne pursed her lips. “No, she won’t, Captain Wicklow.”

  Wicklow frowned. “Your Majesty?”

  “Captain Wicklow, you will continue to captain the Gloucester, but I am assigning the Gloucester to the Queen’s Own. You will now report to Admiral Eder. Captain Rowe of the Bristol will assume command of the Coldstream Guards and I will leave it to him to decide who should captain the New Zealand. My decision on these assignments is final.”

  Wicklow flushed a deep, angry red. ““Perhaps, do to Your Majesty’s inexperience in these matters, you do not realize that the time-honored traditions of the Fleet are that the senior officer automatically assumes command of-”

  “Do not lecture me on military protocol, Captain,” Queen Anne said tartly, “least I be forced to lecture you on the blatant inappropriateness of a line officer who takes it upon himself to issue arrest warrants and seize evidence in contravention of the established procedures of the Office of the Judge Advocate and the Military Police.”