Alarm of War

at them, Captain. If they are transporting aboard, I’ve got another idea.”

The Tilleke krait hovered like a shadow ten miles from the Yorkshire. It was in full stealth mode, with fewer emissions than the ambient space around it. With a nano-technology matte finish that absorbed light, baffles that dispersed its heat signature and running without either radio noise or active sensors, it could only be detected if someone happened to look right at it. The First Sister Pilot studied her sensors. The enemy vessel loomed before them. If all was well, there was another Krait just to its stern. She checked the computer display. Ten seconds more, then eighty of the Emperor’s Imperial Guard would beam aboard and another enemy ship would be theirs.

The timer chimed. She turned to her brothers. “Remember your duty! Glory to the Emperor!” She activated the transporter. Snow began to fall.

“Energy spike!” the Sensors Officer on the Yorkshire yelled. “No, two spikes. One ten miles to port and one three miles behind us. There was nothing there a minute ago, now something big just flared up!”

“Mark those locations,” Gur ordered. He switched to ship broadcast mode. “This is the Captain. Intruder alert! Stay in your assigned posts! Stay alert! Captain, out.” They had been able to arm only one in every five crewmen, and they hadn’t had time to properly group together their new “militia,” as Benny Peled had sardonically labeled them. Too thin on the ground, he fretted.

Beside him, Grant hunched over the video display, which showed a perfectly empty Engineering Deck. Other video feeds showed the docking bay, the first, second and third cargo bays and the ship’s auditorium — anyplace with enough room to transport a couple of dozen armed soldiers who didn’t want to materialize in the middle of a bulkhead. He hunched his shoulders. Cookie was down there, waiting in a corridor just outside the Engineering Deck with fifteen of the Yorkshire’s precious Marines, all of them swathed in ballistic armor and helmets, Bullpups and blasters fully charged.

Come on, he thought irritably, where the hell are you?

Then the video feed from Engineering suddenly sparkled as a swirl of something white — snow? — popped into existence. The snow blew and gusted in a circle, dropping visibility to just a few feet, and then there were ten armed men standing in what had been an empty room. Grant stole a look at the computer. From nothing to full materialization in nine seconds. “Bugger me,” he whispered, awe-struck. “They really can do it. They really can do it.” We need to get one of those little ships of theirs, he thought.

He had been so focused on Engineering that he only now realized the Savak had transported to the auditorium and the second cargo bay as well.

“Chief, vent the Engineering Deck, auditorium and Cargo Hold Two.”

He turned to Captain Gur. “Captain, I would advise that you now turn on your navigation lights and set them to blink mode.” He smiled grimly. “Welcome to the Tilleke navy, Captain.”

Gur gave a shark’s grin, all white teeth and menace. The video screens showed the Savak beating frantically at hatchways, and then slowly collapsing as their air was vented to space. One fell to his knees, shooting his rifle impotently again and again into the bulkhead until he pitched over and lay still. Gur nodded in satisfaction. “How many, Skiffington?”

“A total of thirty in these rooms, sir,” Grant replied. “Computer shows a total of fifty more scattered in smaller groups through fifteen other spaces. But they’re all locked down tight.” His face darkened. “Some of your crew were caught in there, Captain. I’m sorry.”

“We knew there was going to be a butcher’s bill, Lieutenant.” Gur looked at Sergeant Zamir. “Sergeant, take care of the rest. If they are in a space with a live member of our crew, I want you to do whatever you can to save the crew member. If not, you are authorized to vent the space before you enter.” He held up two fingers. “I only want two prisoners, Sergeant Zamir.”

Three hours later, it was done. Gur, Peled, Grant and Sergeant Zamir slouched in chairs in the Captain’s day room. Zamir was blood spattered and grey faced.

“We lost eight Marines and thirty six crew, but we got all of the bastards, sir,” he said wearily. “Two prisoners, like you asked for, but you’ll have to keep them shackled or sedated. They don’t surrender, sir. They keep trying to kill you until you kill them. We only got these two because they were knocked out by grenade concussion.”

Commander Peled said: “We’ve heard from the Kent. They mouse-trapped their Savak like we did, but caught more of them in the first few minutes, so it went pretty well. Rutland didn’t have it so easy. The Savak materialized on the bridge and Captain Sheffer lost most of her bridge crew before they got it under control. Her XO is dead.”

Gur nodded. “So we’ve got three ships we can trust. Sensors report that the Tilleke force has withdrawn towards Arcadia. The London and half a dozen others are still sitting out there, but for how long is anybody’s guess. This deep in Tilleke space, figure we are three full days from home.”

“All we have between us and home is half the Dominion fleet, sir, Commander Peled noted dryly. “Plus, they’ve got the London.”

Gur smiled indifferently. “How many crew to properly run a battleship, Benny? Two thousand? Get rid of the cooks and other non-essentials, you still got nine hundred, a thousand? How many men do you think the Tilleke could put on the London? Skiffington and his sidekick think they put on a hundred or more soldiers, but how many who actually know how to run the ship?”

Peled shrugged. “The AI can run the ship, sir.”

“Yeah, okay,” Gur conceded, “the AI can fly the ship from point A to point B, but the AI won’t fight the ship without the proper voice recognition codes, and those died with the Captain and the XO.” He nodded to himself, thinking it through. “I think they are going to be slow to react, Benny, and there is a very, very fine line between slow and dead.”

On board The Emperor’s Pride, Prince RaShahid nodded in satisfaction. The Victorian fleet had been destroyed as an effective combat force. Close to eighty ships had been destroyed, another twenty captured and twenty had scattered into deep space. The krait, in particular, had been astonishingly effective. The Emperor would be pleased.

This battle was over. The captured ships would be sent to the Dominion forces, as promised. The Emperor was, after all, a man of his word. But it was time for the Tilleke fleet to tend to long overdue business. He gave the necessary orders and the Tilleke ships turned to head towards the worm hole into Arcadia, with its vast resources of Ziridium.

Grant finally found Cookie in the shuttle bay, where they had dragged the bodies of the Savak commandos. The corpses were lined up in long, even lines, as if the orderliness of the process could somehow mask the evident signs of violent death. The corpses were battered, blood-smeared and in some cases, dismembered from grenade blasts. To one side there was a pile of weapons and small cylindrical tanks that Grant had not noticed before.

The Marines — the survivors — were standing around in small knots, gesturing and laughing raucously through the day’s exploits, riding the semi-hysterical high of someone who had just cheated death, but didn’t understand how. More than a few bottles of brandy were being passed around. Sergeant Zamir was nowhere in sight, having wisely decided to let his troops unwind without impediment.

Cookie, brandy bottle in hand, came up and took him by the arm. “C’mere, Grant, I’ve got someone I want you to meet.” She dragged him over to a line of bodies. “This is Bob,” she said, pointing to the first body. “Bob is having himself a bad day, a real b-a-a-a-d day. I killed Bob eight times today, didn’t I, Bob?” She took a hit from the bottle. “Yes, I did. Six times on the London, then that fucker in the escape pod.” A frown knotted her brow. “No, that’s not right; you killed Bob in the escape pod.” Another swig. “Then two more times here on the Yorkshire.” She leaned over the corpse. “Bad day, huh, Bob?”

Grant belatedly realized that all of the “Bobs” looked alike. He looked closer. Not identical, but close enough to be brothers. Each had black hair, heavy dark eye brows and a surprisingly small nose in a large, round face. Each was powerfully built, with barrel chests and broad, muscular shoulders. There were differences, of course, but the family resemblance was unmistakable.