Alarm of War

Chapter 69

On the Dominion Battleship Vengeance

They materialized in a blizzard.

In the wrong place.

They were in a large room with a long line of tables and chairs, and at the far end, an area full of industrial cooking equipment. Two men dressed in white uniforms stared at them open-mouthed.

Dammit!

“What?” someone started to say.

“Grab those two!” Cookie said, biting back her frustration. They were in the cafeteria! Not the engineering deck, but the bloody cafeteria. Romano had screwed up royally. Cookie sighed. No help for it now. The second wave would come in fifteen minutes, so she had to move her troops out. She hopped onto one of the tables.

“Get off your asses and grab those two guys!” The two cooks were quickly taken into custody. When they reached Cookie, she squatted down on the table top and placed the rifle muzzle against the head of the taller one. His eyes kept shifting and rolling and she figured he would be easier to break.

“Where is the Bridge?” she asked in halting Dominion.

The terrified cook stammered directions. The cafeteria was at the midpoint in the ship. The Bridge was most of the way to the stern, just forward of the Engineering section.

“Hold up, Sargent Ortiz,” said Master Sergeant Zamir, who stood beside her. He eyed the cook. “Which way to the bridge?” His Dominion was halting, but clear enough. He pointed to the front of the cafeteria. “That way, or-” he pointed in the opposite direction. “That way?”

The cook exchanged a quick, shaded glance with his fellow chef, and if Cookie hadn’t been watching closely, she would have missed the subtle tightening of his jaw and the way his eyes half closed.

“That way,” he mumbled, gesturing to the back of the cafeteria. Cookie exchanged a knowing look with Zamir. The cook was lying through his teeth. Cookie stood up.

“Listen up! Change in plans! We landed in the cafeteria, not the Engineering deck. We are moving out for the Bridge!” She glanced at Sergeant Zamir, who nodded. “Take ‘em, Sergeant Ortiz,” he told her. “I’ll take the next wave and go to Engineering.”

Cookie looked at the Marines waiting for her orders. They all stared back at her, mostly young, mostly nervous, all excited and twitching with the need to do something. And it struck her then that except for the surviving handful of Marines from the Yorkshire, none of these soldiers had ever been in a real fight, had never actually shot at an enemy. And here they were, dumped onto an enemy ship full of hostiles with no easy way to get home.

For a moment, she was literally breathless with the overwhelming need to protect them from harm.

“You are Royal Fleet Marines!” she told them, enunciating each word carefully. “We are not gettin’ off this damn ship unless we kick ass and take names!” She pointed to the bridge. “Up there is a Dominion admiral fixin’ to kill our queen! The only thing that’s goin’ stop him is all of you!” A collective growl went up from them, not the roar of a crowd at a rally, but the growl of one hundred and twenty trained killers who would die before they let any goddam tin pot Duck admiral kill their queen.

She smiled at them, almost laughing with the sheer pleasure of it all, hoping that in time Hiram could forgive her.

“Follow me,” she said simply. And they did.

Always together. Never alone.

On the Yorkshire, Lori Romano heard the shout that the second group of Marines was strapped in and ready to be transported to the Dominion battleship. She nodded, and then pressed the button to energize the Tilleke transporter device.

Nothing happened.

Frowning, she pressed it again. Still nothing. Conscious of the first wave of panic, she scanned the instrument panel and only then realized that the power level was reading zero.

“Oh, shit!” she cursed. No more Marines would be transported to the Dominion battleship.

When the Emerald Isle had been destroyed, the New Zealand’s sensors picked up the beacons of several dozen life pods. Emily had left them, knowing that the Ducks would monitor the beacons, hoping to catch somebody trying to rescue the survivors.

The survivors would have to wait.

She’d taken the New Zealand deeper into the minefield, leaving behind decoys and reconnaissance drones, then turned and moved quickly parallel to its front.

“Whisker laser signal from Yorkshire, Captain,” Betty said. Emily opened the channel. “Grant, did they make it over?”

Grant Skiffington shook his head. “I don’t know. They disappeared from our boat bay, but who knows if they landed on the Duck battleship. The second bunch never even left. The AI boffin running the show says there is some sort of power failure and she’s trying to fix it, but no luck so far.”

“No message from them? From Cookie?”

He shrugged. “No radio. They can’t take metal through the transporter.”

Emily blinked. Cookie had told her that, of course. Over one hundred Marines had just gone onto an enemy battleship with no way to call for support and no way to get back. “So they’re on their own, then,” she murmured.

“Pretty much,” he agreed. He took a breath. “Do you have a plan, Em?”

She nodded. “Yeah, hide and seek, followed by flashlight tag. Our recon drones show they have started to blast through the minefield again. We need to distract them. I’ll give you the details in a few minutes. Stay close. Make sure the Kent and Galway stay with us.”

“Status?” Admiral Mello demanded. Captain Pattin shuffled some notes in her hand. Her face was sweat- stained and her hair, normally caught tightly in a severe bun, had worked its way loose and hung in rebellious disarray in front of her face. She pushed it aside irritably. “We killed several Vicky ships, including one confirmed kill on a cruiser, the Emerald Isle. Sensors detected several of the Vicky “Omega” drones that are only launched when a ship has been significantly damaged or destroyed. No life pods from the ships we hit with anti-matter weapons, but quite a few from the Emerald Isle. We’re leaving a drone there to watch in case the Vickies attempt a rescue.”

Mello snorted contemptuously. No one in their right mind would expose themselves in the middle of a battle to pick up life pods.

“There are still some Vicky ships in the vicinity,” Pattin continued. “Could be as few as three or as many as seven. We don’t know what class of ships, but we have detected several readings that turned out to be decoys.”

“Logistics?”

“Fuel is getting low, but it’s not yet urgent. We have a pretty good supply of standard missiles and, of course, laser weapons. None of the cruisers have any anti-matter missiles left, but Vengeance still has five.” She pursed her lips. “Enough to destroy or cripple the Atlas, but not enough to blast through the rest of the minefield and then destroy the Atlas.”

Admiral Mello shrugged. No matter. They’d blast through using standard missiles and lasers if they had to, as long as they reached the Atlas before Vicky reinforcements arrived.

“Notify the cruisers,” he ordered. “Resume working on the minefield. One cruiser to stay on guard in case this little band of Vickies decides to come back. And call up the Fortitude; we’ll see if her new captain has more guts than the old one.”

Emily sat on her right hand to stop it from shaking, and pretended that she did not see Chief Gibson’s worried glance.

Last time her tiny little task force had tried to sneak from the edge of the minefield, they had been spotted immediately and had been pummeled by Dominion laser fire before they could withdraw. New