Alarm of War

But the Vickies had been clever. While the outer skin of the minefield had proximity mines, deeper in there were globe mines, sprinting mines, ripple mines and missile mines. The entire minefield was being carried along by a myriad of tractor beams, so it kept its position around the Atlas space station as Atlas desperately plodded its way to Refuge. The tactics the mine sweepers successfully used against proximity mines in the first layer of the mine field would not work so well against other types of mines.

The mine sweepers stoically crept forward.

They reached the first line of missile mines, missile platforms surrounded by a shell of sensors probing out a thousand miles in every direction. In ten minutes the remaining mine sweepers were destroyed, either by missiles or by stumbling into mines as they desperately tried to evade them.

Then Mello ordered in the frigates.

They went in cautiously, firing missiles and lasers and making the hole begun by the mine sweepers deeper and larger, boring through the Victorian defensive shell like a drill press. They moved slowly, but there were thirty of them and by the time the last fell to Victorian missiles and mines and lasers, they were almost a quarter of the way through to the space station.

Then he ordered in the destroyers.

Captain Pattin had watched in astonishment as Admiral Mello ordered in the mine sweepers and frigates, but when he ordered in the destroyers, she could no longer restrain herself.

“Admiral!” she whispered urgently. “You are killing your own ships! It is no good breaking through the mine field if we have no ships left to exploit it! And — ” she hesitated, afraid to say what she thought, but afraid not to — “if you order the ships’ crews to their certain death, some will refuse to obey. They might even turn their guns on the Vengeance.”

He looked at her, surprised at her naivete. He barked a laugh. “They will not disobey,” he assured her. “Each captain knows that the Intelligence Directoate has their families under constant surveillance. If they fail to obey, their families will pay for their treason.”

“Admiral,” she said urgently. “I beg you to reconsider. If we squander our forces here we are defeated. We must keep the Fleet intact, we must have enough ships to defend the homeland.”

Mello looked at her coldly. “I expected more of you, Jodi. This is the decisive battle. If we kill the Atlas, the Victorians will have no way to rebuild their navy, no way to restart their trading economy, no way to generate wealth. Don’t you understand? Without the Atlas, their new child queen will be nothing more than a homeless refugee and Victoria will be nothing more than a historical footnote. All their planets, all their people, all their wormholes will belong to us, and the Dominion of Unified Citizenry will the dominate the universe for a millennia to come!”

He gestured to the holo display, which showed the first squadron of destroyers entering the minefield. “Against that, the sacrifice of a few ships is nothing. Nothing! If I have to spend every ship in this fleet to destroy the Atlas, it will be worth it. We can build more ships, but if we kill the Atlas, we kill all of Victoria, now and forever!” He leaned close to her. “Do-you-understand?” he shouted into her face.

In his stateroom on the Dominion battleship Fortitude, Admiral Kaeser stared in horror. He had followed the battle through his hologram repeater, which his XO had either forgotten or been too polite to turn off. On the screen the destroyers slowly deepened the breach into the Vicky minefield, but at a terrible price. The rift was more than halfway through the minefield, but of the twenty destroyers that had gone in, only twelve remained. As he watched, another two flickered and disappeared, leaving only a red cross on the holo display to mark their destruction. A long, thick line of red crosses trailed behind, marking all of the other Dominion ships that had died trying to break through the minefield.

Sickened and furious, Admiral Kaeser strode rapidly to his stateroom door and punched the button to open the door.

Nothing happened.

He pounded the door with his fist. “Guard! Guard! Open this door!”

The door hissed open and a scared looking soldier stood there, hand on the butt of his pistol.

“Tell Captain Bauer I must speak to him immediately,” Kaeser ordered.

“But I have orders to-” the guard stammered.

“Do it!” Kaeser barked, but then, more softly, “Hurry, before we all run out of time. Hurry now, for everything you love and cherish, hurry.”

Chapter 67

Atlas Space Station

The alarm horns hooted incessantly, making it difficult to think. All throughout Atlas blast doors were dropping into place and sealing airtight. Hiram Brill stared at the holo display, trying hard to overcome his shock and the blaring alarms.

“Will somebody turn that damn thing off?” he shouted. Nobody heard him. He shook his head in frustration, then picked up a pen and threw it at his assistant, Nina, catching her in the head. She turned and glared at him. He pointed to the alarm horn and made a slashing motion across his throat. She nodded and bent over her computer and a moment later the horns made a last, low moaning sound and blessedly went silent. Hiram returned his attention to the holo display and the information coming in from the sensors spread throughout the minefield.

At first they thought the attack from the rear was simply another probing attack. The Ducks had probed continuously, looking for a flaw in the minefield pattern that might let them slip through. But then the sensors had revealed the number of Duck ships involved and Hiram realized that they had been caught flat footed. The Dominion force blocking the worm hole entrance to Refuge was a feint; the real attack was coming from behind as the Dominions used brute force to bull their way through the minefield. He shook his head. For the Ducks, it was a huge gamble, but it looked like it was working.

The utter ruthlessness of the attack shocked him. The ten Duck mine sweepers had carved a deep channel into the mine field before being destroyed. As he watched, the enemy frigates were cutting into it even deeper, but taking a terrific beating. A cold hand seemed to grab his heart. The Duck admiral, he realized, had just ordered forty ships to their deaths in order to break through to the Atlas, and the sensors revealed that several squadrons of enemy destroyers were lining up to take their turn.

“Nina, send a courier drone out to Admiral Douthat and tell her we are being attacked in force by the Ducks. Estimate at least eighty ships in the attack, maybe more. They are about a quarter way through the minefield. Then call Peter Murphy of the tugboat guild and tell him to haul mines from the front of the Atlas to the rear. Tell him not to thin out any one spot too much, but we need more fire power in our rear.”

He watched for a while longer, counting ships, noting the deepening breach into the minefield. On the holo display, the first squadron of Dominion destroyers moved forward into the breach. “Gandalf?” he called.

“ Commander Brill?”

“Analyze rate of penetration of the minefield by Dominion forces and assume that they will use all available ships to complete the penetration. Estimate how long before they achieve a total breach.”

“Dominion forces could complete penetration sometime between ninety five minutes and three hours and twenty minutes,” Gandalf replied in its usual soothing voice.

Hiram nodded to himself, all the while wanting to scream and run and hide. Admiral Douthat was hours away. The entire Queen’s Own and Black Watch were with her. The Queen was still on Atlas, more vulnerable every minute. The only option he had left was to somehow beef up the minefield and throw in the Coldstream Guards, who were outnumbered ten to one.

He walked back to his chair and sat down heavily, then made the call he did not want to make.

• • • • •

The Coldstream Guard waited nervously. They knew something was going on behind them in the rear of the minefield, but they didn’t know what. When Hiram Brill’s call came into the Bristol, Captain Rowe almost groaned. He knew where this was going. As Brill began to explain, Rowe decided it would be easier if all of the ships’ captains heard the message, so he conferenced them in.