Alarm of War

Invincible and Isle of Man, I am appointing Captain Grey in the cruiser New Zealand to be commander of the Coldstream Guards and Captain Hamid of the cruiser Norfolk to take command of the Black Watch. Admiral Eder of the battleship Lionheart will remain in command of the Queen’s Own Guard. The Queen’s Own will stay with Atlas. Black Watch is my reserve, but is likely to be used to block the Dominion force we’ve labeled as ‘Bogey Two.’

“The task of the Coldstream Guards is to buy us time! Captain Grey, your battle group will do whatever it can to confuse, delay and weaken Bogey One, which will reach us several hours before Bogey Two.”

Captain Grey studied the plot. “What resources do I have?”

““You have your entire battle group and anything you need from Atlas’s stores. I am also giving you one of the colliers for resupply. I want you ready to depart in ninety minutes.”

“What about Prometheus?” Captain Hamid asked. “We can’t just leave it for the Dominion.”

“Good question. Captain Grey, add that to your task list. By now it has been evacuated. I want you to destroy Prometheus.”

Grey nodded. Thanks to Lieutenant Tuttle’s recent tactical exercises, she had some ideas on how that best might be done.

After the conference, Julie Grey absently spun her chair back and forth, a habit she had picked up in second grade to help her think. She had nineteen ships: five cruisers, ten destroyers and four frigates, plus the collier. Normally a Battle Group had four squadrons, but this was not going to be normal combat, this was going to be an elaborate game of fox and hounds. And more, none of her other cruiser captains had survived the attack on the Palace. Each had been an aide to some admiral. All dead now.

She had the vague outlines of an idea of what she wanted to do, but wanted to think out loud with someone. She stabbed the intercom. “Rudd!”

“Captain?”

“Alex, who are the two sneakiest, dirtiest, most obnoxious people you’ve fought against in the training modules?” she asked briskly.

“Home Fleet or just the Coldstream Guards?”

“Just the Guards, Alex.”

“Including that miserable, wretched Grey woman, or other than her?”

Grey smiled. Trust Rudd to find some humor and get in a dig.

“Excluding her, and you are getting on very thin ice, Mister,” she said, but she couldn’t stop the hint of laughter from betraying her.

Rudd paused, thinking. “Well, Tuttle for one. She’s got balls, imagination and a nice touch of ruthlessness. For the second, Andrew Lord. He doesn’t think as many moves ahead as Tuttle, but he’s got a good sense of what the enemy is going to do and has a real knack for spoiling attacks.”

Grey nodded to herself. “Get them both and come in here now, Alex.”

Ten minutes later, the four of them sat in the Captain’s day room. Grey outlined her orders, then: “In a few hours, we are going to be in a shooting war. It’s up to us to distract Bogey One and keep them as far away from Atlas as we can. And to stay alive while we do it. I need ideas.”

“Captain, do we have any minelayers?” Lord asked, thinking they could try to saturate the trade route Bogey One was traveling on.

Grey shook her head. “The Admiral is keeping all the minelayers with Atlas and the rest of the Fleet. I’ve commandeered three freighters and they are being stuffed full of laser mines, but that’s all. Also — “ she shot a glance at Emily — “I have ordered that the Prometheus space station be mined. The Dominion will have a little surprise waiting when they try to board it.”

“What about decoy drones?”

“We have dozens of them, hundreds, actually.” Grey smiled wryly. “It doesn’t add to our throw weight, but it might fool the Ducks into thinking we’re bigger and badder than we really are.”

Emily struggled to control her excitement and her fear, her thoughts darting like larks before a storm. Treat this as just another training exercise, she told herself, conscious that her hands were sweating. What weakness does the enemy have? How do we exploit it? Answer the questions one by one. She closed her eyes, forcing her mind to settle. Bogey One had come through the Cape Breton wormhole, but it was made up of Dominion ships. So that meant that the Dominion ships had probably taken the old trade route through the Sultenic Empire, then on to Sybil Head and Cape Breton. Five months of flying time, maybe six if they stayed away from the main routes. They’d have to carry all their supplies and munitions with them. All their supplies…

She opened her eyes, suddenly aware that the room had gone quiet and everyone was staring at her.

Rudd made a ‘come on’ gesture. “Come back to the world of the living, Emily. What have you got?”

She told them.

The smiles died away. Captain Grey looked at Rudd, who nodded grimly. “It could work,” he said cautiously. “But to make it work we’re going to have to position ourselves behind Bogey One.” He grimaced. “The Dominion Fleet will be between us and the rest of Home Fleet. If we fail, we’ll be cut off from any hope of support.”

“Then we mustn’t fail,” Captain Grey said.

Chapter 51

H.M.S. Yorkshire, in Gilead Space,

Approaching the Victorian Wormhole

Grant Skiffington was collecting survivors, and doing his best to kill all the rest.

“We’ll be in close missile range in ten minutes, Captain,” the Sensors Officer announced. “Still no sign they’ve seen us.”

Grant Skiffington shook his head. They had started to call him “Captain” right after they lost Commander Peled, but it still jarred him to hear it. He smiled wryly. His father would have told him to shut up and enjoy the promotion.

“Thank you, Livy,” he told the rating at Sensors. The original Sensors Officer — Grant couldn’t remember his name — had been killed in the first attack by the Tilleke commandos.

This was the third Victorian ship they approached from dead astern, where a ship’s sensors are weakest. The Yorkshire was under full stealth. Their target, the destroyer H.M.S. Galway, had its navigation lights blinking and was cruising slowly toward the wormhole that would take it from Gilead to Victoria. But had the Galway been captured by the Tilleke? Or, like the Yorkshire, was it still in Victorian hands and playing possum in the hope of sneaking back to Victoria undetected?

Finding out was pretty damn tricky.

If they cruised up behind a ship and announced themselves as Victorians, and it turned out the ship was controlled by the Tillekes, Yorkshire had to be able to take them out very, very quickly or risk a close-encounter shooting match. On the other hand, they couldn’t just kill the ship without at least trying to discover if it was still controlled by friendlies.

The first three ships had not responded with the right answer to their hail, so Yorkshire and Kent had destroyed them. Only one had been able to get off any missiles, but Skiffington couldn’t count on always being so lucky.

He was still haunted by the fear that the ships had not responded just because of confusion, not because they were Tilleke, and that he had personally massacred thousands of Victorian sailors.

“Mr. Kauder, make sure everyone is at battle stations and open a link to the Kent. Whisker laser, if you please, Mr. Kauder. I want no radio transmissions.”