“Are you ready, Lieutenant?” Skiffington asked.
“We’ve been ready for the last two hours,” she said irritably. “If you get any closer their engine exhaust is going to scorch your sensor nodes. Let’s get this done.”
Skiffington watched her closely. His medic had warned him that he could expect up to fifteen percent of his crew to show some signs of nervous exhaustion and stress disorders. After the last attack two of his deck crew had been medicated to keep them functioning and two more had been relieved of all duties. He needed Stein to be in top form for what they were about to do.
“You know the drill,” he said cheerfully. “As soon as you hear my radio transmission, I need you to take Kent out fifty miles off our beam. If the Galway fires on us, or if I fire, you are to fire all laser batteries that bear and follow it with missiles.”
“Gods of Our Mothers! We’ve already done this three times!” Stein snapped. “I know my job and my crew knows theirs. Let’s get this done.”
She was right. “Okay, Lieutenant, the fourth time’s the charm. I will commence in ten seconds. Skiffington out.”
He nodded to Kauder. “Hail the Galway.”
When Kauder signaled, Grant Skiffington spoke: “Calling the H.M.S. Galway! We have you locked in. You have ten seconds to answer this question or we’ll shoot you: Pretend you are a frigate captain. You spot game. What do you do and what was the name of the professor who told you? Ten seconds!”
Skiffington raised his hand, ready to give the order to fire lasers and missiles, and watched the clock. Five seconds…six…seven…
The radio squawked. “Go dark! Go dark and call home!” a voice screamed.
“Who was the professor?” Grant prodded.
“I have no fucking idea,” the voice replied angrily. “I’m a rating, I never went to the Academy, but Captain Reich used to tell us about his days on frigates and he said that was his first lesson. If you’re a scout frigate and you spot the enemy, you’re supposed to go into full stealth and send a courier drone to the nearest Fleet base first thing. He said it was the one thing that every Fleet cadet was taught the first week at the Academy.”
Skiffington grinned. That was why he picked this question. Tall, thin Rear Admiral Yavis taught the introductory class on Fleet History and Customs to incoming cadets. He admonished his class to remember that their role depended on the ship they were captaining. “A frigate is a scout,” he told them. “Your number one job is to report the presence of the enemy. When you spot enemy vessels, the first thing you do is go dark and call home. If you are a destroyer, your job is to support the cruisers. If you’re a cruiser, your job is to attack and destroy. And if you are ever so blessed in your career as to hold the lofty post of a battleship captain, your job is to lord it over everybody else.” Admiral Yavis’s class was the one memory every Fleet captain was sure to share.
Skiffington grinned to himself. “One more question: What’s the best bar on Atlas?”
There was a pause, then a chuckle. “If you’re an officer, you’d probably go to Max’s on the viewing deck, but the food’s lousy and overpriced…and the women have way too many scruples. If you’re a rating and you want a beer, you go to Steve’s Bar on Deck 12. If you want a beer and a girl, then you go to the Spiral Horn on Deck 30.”
Skiffington laughed. “Welcome to our little band of brothers, Galway. I’m Lieutenant Skiffington of the Yorkshire. We’ve got the Kent with us.”
The sigh of relief was audible. “I’m Chief Andy Richter, Lieutenant. I’m really glad to meet you.”
“Send your ship status to our Merlin and then fall in behind us, Chief Richter. Full stealth, and from here on no radio transmissions at all.”
“Lieutenant, one thing,” Richter said. “We have been picking up three ships at the outer limit of our sensors, heading towards the wormhole.”
Three more ships he would have to contend with. If they were enemy ships, he would have to take them all out, and he had only three damaged ships and their worn our crews to do it with.
Grant Skiffington looked around at his deck crew, taking in their covert glances and questioning looks. They were all wondering how the hell he was going to pull this off. Well, so was he. He grinned broadly.
He couldn’t have been happier.
Chapter 52
Dominion Attack Fleet (Bogey One)
Approaching Cornwall
Admiral Mello’s Attack Fleet entered Cornwall behind a torrent of missiles. Dropping any pretense of being a simple freighter convoy, he went to active sensors, identified several fixed Victorian defenses amidst the clutter of warehouses, satellites, manufacturing stations and miscellaneous junk and unleashed a barrage of a thousand missiles to overwhelm the Victorian defenders.
No one shot back.
No lasers lanced out to score his ships. No missiles homed in on them. No Vickie warships emerged from hiding.
It was the worst possible response.
Mello cursed loudly and eloquently. “Sensors! Get a fix on the space stations, Atlas and Prometheus. I want to know where they are and how many Vickie warships are defending them. Communications, find Admiral Kaeser. I need to know where he is and his ETA for Cornwall.”
His crew leapt to obey. Mello drummed his fingers impatiently while the computer sifted through the sensor reports and analyzed data.
A moment later — “Cannot raise Admiral Kaeser, sir.” Followed by a startled exclamation, “Sir, I can’t find Atlas Station!”
Mello gritted his teeth, struggling to curb his temper. “What do you have, Sensors?”
“Captain, we are not picking up any warships, only civilian freighters, and they are all departing the system at high speed.”
“And Atlas? On the other side of the planet, perhaps?”
“No, sir. We’ve got probes out. I see Prometheus, and another one that is not emitting any signals at all, sensors show it’s still under construction.” The Sensors Officer looked at him, ashen faced. “Atlas isn’t there, sir.”
Mello nodded. The Vickies had balls, damn them. They had seen him coming and had taken the brass ring and run. How the hell did they move the biggest space station in the League of Human Worlds?
“Send out the scouts. Find it.” He beckoned Commander Pattin. “Jodi, they’ll probably create a false trail, try to decoy us away from the real Atlas. But they can’t have much of a head start, so-”
“Admiral!” It was the Communications Officer, his face bright with excitement. “I picked up some radio chatter from a freighter. They said two Victorian battleships had been destroyed in a surprise attack.”
Mello felt a surge of satisfaction. It had worked after all. Now the Vickies had only one battleship left. “Jodi, search for the battleship; it won’t be far from Atlas.”
Two hours passed before one of the scouts called in. “Many ships moving slowly south toward the Sultenic wormhole. They seem to be in a circle around a large object, but I can’t get a good fix on it.”
“Shall I order the Fleet to turn south?” Pattin asked.
Mello held up a hand. “Wait,” he ordered.
Fifteen minutes passed, then twenty. The radio crackled. “Scout Leader, Third Wing reporting. I have a large mass of ships moving north in general direction of Refuge wormhole. I repeat, north toward Refuge. Many ships!”
Admiral Mello leaned forward. “Do you have any sign of a Victorian battleship?”
A moment of static. Then, “My sensors can’t sort it out. I’m showing lots of tug boats, destroyers, cruisers — I can’t pick out a battleship, but it could easily be lost in this mess.”
The Sensor’s Officer chimed in again, adding to the confusion. “I’ve got strong thermal blooms off of Space Station Prometheus. Looks like she’s on fire.”
Mello shook his head. The Vickies were somehow towing Atlas Station with them, either north or south, he wasn’t sure yet, and had apparently set fire to Prometheus Station. Turning to his aide, he snapped out order
s.
“First, tell the scouts to get a visual sighting on the objects being towed. One of them is the Atlas space station and we need to know which one it is. Then send ten ships to secure Prometheus. Send one of the troop carriers with them. Put out those fires and hold the station. Then alert the Attack Force, as soon as we get a fix on Atlas, we will make a high speed run to intercept it.”
To the south of Bogey One, Captain Grey’s Coldstream Guards coasted in stealth mode five hundred miles on either side of the small grain warehouse being towed by the New Zealand. The other “ships” clustered around the warehouse were drones masquerading as war ships, each emitting engine pulses and other emissions designed to fool enemy sensors into thinking they were the real thing.
“Anything on the sentry drones?” Captain Grey asked, her voice strained. Grey couldn’t use active sensors from any of her Battle Group for fear of giving away their position, so she had left several sentry drones loitering in orbit around Cornwall or within visual range of Prometheus.
“Bogey One seems to be just sitting there, Ma’am,” reported the Sensors Officer. “Several small vessels have left at high speed — scouts, most likely — but they’ve gone outside the range of the recon drones. One was headed in our direction, so we’re looking for him on passive.”
Grey shook her head and shot a glance at Rudd and Tuttle, both huddled by the Tactical Combat sensor display. “I had hoped they’d split their forces, but they’re hanging back until they’ve figured out where the real Atlas is.”
Rudd laughed. “Those bastards,” he said cheerfully. “Don’t you hate it when the enemy acts as prudently as you do?”
Grey snorted, but said nothing. Emily frowned. “Will they spot us?”
“I should think so,” Grey answered. She shrugged. “It was a long shot, I just was hoping we might catch them in a mistake.”
“Small vessel on our passive sensors. Should be the scout, Captain.” The Sensors Officer leaned into his display, peering intently. “Energy blossom, looks like he’s launched a bird.”
“Well, no one said this would be easy. Still, let’s play it out. Shoot chaff and send in the frigates to kill the scout. Change the display on one of the drones to make it look like Lionheart. Let’s see if we can keep ‘em guessing for a few minutes longer.”
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.”
Chapter 53
At the Prometheus Space Station
The 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.”
Alarm of War v-1 Page 24
