Alarm of War

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-matter 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.