Alarm of War

direction. For a moment, the twelve Coldstream Guards ships sat naked before the missile onslaught.

Emily frantically signaled Alyce to open a call to the Togo. “Togo, cut your engines now or we will fire on you!”

Captain Hantman’s face appeared on the com screen. “Fire on us and take a risk that you’ll knock out our friend-or-foe beacon?” she asked in mock astonishment. “I don’t think you’ll take that chance, New Zealand.”

Emily cut off the com, slapping her armrest in frustration. She’d been suckered and then caught flatfooted.

“Pilot, steer to the Togo! Quickly! Tuck in as close as you can,” Emily ordered. “All ships, hug any supply ship you can reach.” But the supply ships had gone to full military power and were pulling away.

“Thirty seconds,” Merlin said calmly. Further proof computers were stupid, Emily thought viciously.

“Full power, Pilot!” The New Zealand seemed to leap forward as Bahawalanzai kicked in all four of the anti-matter engines. The Togo fired its anti-missile weapons at them, but the New Zealand’s armor shook them off and they closed in rapidly. Bahawalanzai killed the engines and deftly nudged the DMB brake. The pitted hull of the Togo once again filled their view screen. The holo display showed ships scattered about, some close to one of the supply ships…some not.

“You are a genius at the helm, Mr. Bahawalanzai,” Emily said fervently.

“Yes, Ma’am,” Bahawalanzai replied matter of factly.

“Five seconds to impact,” Merlin intoned.

“Gods of our Mothers,” Betty McCann sobbed. “Protect your children now in their hour of need.”

The missiles reached them.

Emily had the fleeting impression of shadows flickering on the view screen, then more shadows, then… nothing. The bridge crew looked at each other in wary disbelief. On the holo display the tide of missiles surged past them…and kept going.

“They missed us,” Chief Freidman said, an astonished grin spreading across his face. “By Christ and all the Saints, they missed us!”

But they hadn’t missed everyone. Two flashing Code Omega symbols blinked on the holo display. The cruiser Southampton and the frigate Kilimanjaro were both gone. More than a thousand men and women. Emily glanced urgently at Chief Gibson, who shook his head. “No sign of life boats,” he told her.

A deep wave of coldness washed through her then. She was neither sad nor angry, but her heart ached and part of her wanted to weep with frustration. I brought these people into harm’s way, she thought. My people. And they died under my orders, because I wasn’t clever enough. Hundreds, thousands of men and women who depended on me to keep them alive. And I wasn’t clever enough.

And the cold seeped through her, through her limbs and into her stomach. And finally, blessedly, it reached her anguished heart and gave her respite.

“Lieutenant Tuttle?” Betty McCann said softly. “It’s-it’s the Togo. Captain Hantman wants to talk to you. She says she is prepared to surrender.”

Emily turned and stared at her. McCann fell silent. Emily turned to Alex Rudd and Chief Gibson. They both stared back, then nodded.

Emily opened a channel to the surviving Coldstream Guards. “All ships, fire at will until the supply ships have been destroyed.”

Chapter 58

On the Space Station Atlas,

En route to Refuge

“I’ve got thirty five war ships left,” Admiral Douthat reported. “And almost all of them have damage of some sort or another. The Brisbane is shot to pieces; in normal times she would be sent to the dock for scrap, but she can still fly and still has a couple of operating lasers and missile tubes, so she stays in the game. And we’ve still got the arks, Javelin, Battle Ax, and Kite Runner, with forty five heavy gunboats. I’m saving them for when I absolutely need them,” she said grimly. “The intensity of the fire means that the gunboats won’t last long once they’re committed. We’ll be lucky to get one good attack run out of them.”

“And the enemy?” asked Queen Anne. It was the end of the third day since they had fled from Cornwall. They sat in the Queen’s quarters in one of the hotels that had been taken over by the Queen and the Fleet. Admiral Douthat and Captain Eder were bleary with fatigue, their uniforms rumpled and dirty. Hiram Brill sat in one corner with his tablet, trying to both keep up with the flow of data and information from their patrol ships and reconnaissance drones and remain inconspicuous at the same time. Peter Murphy was there, dressed in a grease- stained jumpsuit that looked out of place among the Fleet uniforms. And sitting next to the Queen was Sir Henry, looking dour and preoccupied. Sir Henry, normally formal and dapper, had not shaved that morning, which Hiram found deeply unsettling.

Admiral Douthat gestured wearily for Hiram to answer. Douthat was running on nerves and coffee; her exhaustion hung on her like a ratty old coat.

“Of the ten Hedgehog anti-missile platforms that we know of, Admiral Douthat’s counter-attack killed seven and may have damaged some of the remaining three,” Hiram explained. “We also destroyed or badly damaged five other Dominion ships, three destroyers, a frigate and one of their cruisers. We don’t have an exact count, but we think that the particular task force that has been chasing us — Bogey One — may be down to as few as fifty war ships out of their original eighty five. Of course, they still outnumber us, and there is still the Bogey Two force that appears to be stopped near Cornwall. We think Bogey Two has some sixty five ships. Call it one hundred and twenty ships to our thirty five.”

Sir Henry flinched, but the Queen seemed unperturbed. “But there’s more, isn’t there? You’re looking very tired, Admiral, but not panicked.”

Douthat smiled wryly, or tried to. It came out more like a ghastly baring of teeth. “They have more ships, but they have to come to us. We have hundreds of missile pods, an enormous number of laser mines and many antimatter mines. We have laid out the minefield in a sphere around us and we are towing it with us as we move toward Refuge. Getting to us won’t be easy, Your Majesty. And now that they’ve lost most of their Hedgehogs, they’re more vulnerable to our missile fire, much more vulnerable.”

“I assume,” Anne said dryly, “that it will not be that easy.”

Douthat snorted. “That is an understatement, Your Majesty. They outnumber us, they are more maneuverable than we are, and they know where we are going. Taking out those Hedgehogs gives us a chance, but this is still going to be very ugly.”

“And the Coldstream Guard?”

Admiral Douthat sighed. “We’ve had no contact in ten hours. We’re pretty sure they killed Bogey One’s supply train, and that would explain in part why Bogey One has broken off action. There were two more Code Omega drones, from the Southampton and the Kilimanjaro, but nothing since then. Either the rest of the Coldstream Guards have been driven deeper into space, or they are swinging wide around the Dominion forces to return to the Atlas and have gone stealthy to try to avoid contact.” She shrugged. She did not have to state the third alternative, that the rest of the Coldstream Guard had been destroyed to the last ship.

“And Second Fleet?”

Douthat shook her head. “Nothing, nothing at all. Based on the report from the Bawdy Bertha, it looks like the entire Second Fleet, and all of the Third Fleet with it, has been lost. Until we reach Refuge, Your Majesty, we are on our own.”