Alarm of War

Richter was reluctant to express an opinion. “Christ, sir, this is way above my pay grade. I mean, I’m not a captain, I’m just a Chief who-”

“You are the Captain of Her Majesty’s Ship Galway,” Grant interrupted, “whether you like it or not. I asked for your opinion because I need it.”

“If you want an opinion,” Stein said from the Kent, “mine is that you are out of your bloody mind. All the evidence points to the Dominion having already conquered Cornwall, and you want to go in for a closer look? You said it yourself, the entire area around the planet will be crawling with enemy ships. Dozens of them, hundreds of them. We’ve only got three! And we’re short on people to properly man them. So I ask you again: Have you lost your bloody mind?”

Grant bit back an angry retort. Ask for an opinion, get an opinion, he thought ruefully. “We can’t just go off without knowing if Cornwall has fallen,” he said at last.

“What not?” Stein demanded. “Our only job now is to survive. I say we loop around and go to Darwin. It’s neutral and we can-”

“No, dammit!” Grant said, surprising himself with how strongly he felt. “We are soldiers! Our nation has been attacked. We need to find out what has happened and to try to find the Home Fleet-”

“Don’t you understand? Home Fleet is gone!” Stein cried. “If the Home Fleet were still intact, it would be attacking that fort the bloody Ducks are building. The Dominion took out Home Fleet just like it took out Second Fleet.”

“We don’t know that,” Grant began.

“Uh, sirs, can I make a suggestion here?” Richter asked.

“What?” Grant snapped.

“Well, before I ended up as acting captain, my job was to run the reconnaissance drones.” He spoke slowly and distinctly, in that voice senior chiefs reserved for particularly dim officers. “I’m thinking that we could send a drone straight in towards Cornwall while we go off on a tangent away from the planet. The ship’s computer can stay in laser communication with it and with a little luck we’ll see everything its sensors sees.” He shrugged. “It would only be passive sensors, but they’re still pretty good. If Cornwall is crawling with Dominions, we’ll know it.”

Grant thought about it, then nodded. He looked at Lisa Stein, who sourly nodded back.

Twenty hours later, they had their answer.

Emily Tuttle had a problem, and it wasn’t the Dominion. Moments after the last Dominion supply ship was destroyed, the New Zealand’s medic buzzed her from sick bay.

“Ma’am, I need you down here right now.” The medic was Naama Denker, a native of Refuge and usually unflappable. Now she sounded tense and brittle.

“Naama, we’re a little busy up here-” Emily began, but Naama cut her off.

“Lieutenant, it’s Captain Grey. She’s dying.”

Emily signaled Alex Rudd to take over and slid out of her chair. She half walked, half ran to sick bay, where to her surprise she found Captain Grey sitting up, conscious but pale. Grey had a little trouble focusing on her at first, then the expression of puzzlement was replaced by a scowl.

“Emily Tuttle, what have you done to my ship?” Grey gestured to the other sick bay beds, filled to capacity with wounded. Against one wall were ten dead crewmen in body bags that had not yet been moved to a freezer locker.

“What is our status, Lieutenant?” Grey’s voice was weak, but held undeniable authority. Then her eyes closed and she drifted off. Emily shot a concerned glance to Denker.

“She’s got internal bleeding and I can’t stop it,” Denker whispered urgently. “We need to get her to a surgical suite on the Sea Horse or back to the Atlas as soon as possible.”

Captain Grey’s eyes fluttered open. “What’s our status, Emily?”

Emily told her as succinctly as she could, but even then Grey drifted off twice before she finished. When Emily told her about the forty ships from the Dominion reinforcing the supply vessels, and the storm of missiles, Captain Grey weakly shook her head. “You have a singular talent for attracting mischief.” She took a long shuddering breath, causing Denker to look at her anxiously.

“Emily, did you get the supply ships?”

“Yes. Ma’am, all of them,” Emily replied softly.

“Okay then.” Grey coughed and struggled to catch her breath. Denker adjusted her oxygen flow. “Be careful of-” she breathed heavily, struggling for air — “Wicklow. “ She broke off in a fit of coughing.

Denker stepped in, frantically adjusting air flow and medicines. “Ms. Tuttle, you’ve got to get us to a proper medical facility or we’ll lose her!” she said fiercely. “I’ve got to put her into the medipod to get her stabilized, but the medipod won’t be able to stop the bleeding.”

Emily turned to go, but Captain Grey called her one more time. “Bogey Two?”

“They’re out there, Captain. I don’t know exactly where, but not very far.”

Captain Grey closed her eyes, and then was seized by another fit of racking coughs. “They’ll be trouble, Emily,” she finally gasped. There were spots of bright arterial blood on her lips and chin.

“That’s enough!” snapped Denker. “She’s not strong enough, you’ll kill her!” She pushed Emily aside and began to wheel Captain Grey’s bed toward the medipod tank.

On the bridge, Emily slumped back into her seat, oblivious to Rudd’s questioning look. “Chief Gibson, do we have a fix on the Atlas?”

Chief Gibson waggled his hand. “Only approximate, skipper. Best guess at this point is she’s fifteen to twenty five hours away, below our current plane of movement still heading to the Refuge wormhole.”

Emily initiated a call to the other Coldstream Guards. There were only ten ships left of the original twenty, and all were the worse for wear.

“We accomplished our mission,” she told them. And got thoroughly buggered as a result, but she didn’t say that. “We’ve all got wounded and repairs we need to attend to. I propose that we swing out of the plane of advance of the Dominion ships and make our way back to the Atlas. I invite your comments.”

Captain Rowe from the Bristol nodded wearily. “Sweet Gods, yes! Half my crew are wounded or dead. My magazines are almost empty and my laser batteries are shot to hell. I want to get home before my ship starts to fall apart at the seams.” Other captains echoed his sentiments.

Emily nodded. “Okay then, let’s go home. Wide spread, passive sensors, and whisper laser communications only. God knows what’s between us and the Atlas.”

By the time communications were finally established between Admiral Mello’s First Attack Fleet and Admiral Kaeser in the Second Attack Fleet, Admiral Mello was seething with impatience.

“Admiral, where the devil have you been?” he snarled. “The enemy is escaping and we have been waiting for your arrival so that we can attack them!”

Admiral Kaeser was taken aback by Mello’s vehemence. “Admiral Mello, my orders were to rendezvous with you at Cornwall. You were not here when we arrived and we have been waiting for word from you.”

“While you have been waiting, Admiral, we have been pursuing the enemy. The Victorians are towing one of their space stations to Refuge. If you had not delayed, Admiral, we would be chasing them with our combined forces instead of just one Attack Fleet.”

Admiral Kaeser was not a politician; he had risen through the ranks based on merit. He believed that merit was to be rewarded and the lack of merit was to be punished, that orders were to be followed, missions accomplished without complaint or excuse, and that finger pointing was for fools. He bridled at Admiral Mello’s implications.

“Admiral Mello, I protest! The Second Attack Fleet arrived at Cornwall precisely on time. You were not there, nor had you left a communications buoy to offer guidance or instructions.”

Mello flushed with anger. “I would have thought common sense alone would have made you locate my force with dispatch, Admiral, rather than sit idly at Cornwall when the real battle had moved on.”

“But-”

“But nothing!” Mello pounded his fist on the console. “I have no time for this, Admiral. You are relieved. You are to confine yourself to your quarters, pending your court martial. Command of the