Alarm of War

Two minutes and five dead later, they moved another corridor closer to the Bridge. Off to their left and behind them, they could hear the steady tattoo of gun fire and the intermittent crackle of a heavy energy weapon. Cookie smiled ruefully. Using a heavy energy weapon inside the ship? We must have really pissed them off.

“Keep moving!” she told her soldiers. A private skidded around the corner, saw her and flopped down beside her, breathing heavily. “Sergeant, Master Sergeant Zamir told me to tell you that the second wave did not transport aboard.”

“What!” Cookie said, biting back a scream of frustration.

The runner nodded. “Master Sergeant thinks something must have gone wrong, but no more troops came through.”

Cookie’s mood swung between panic, anger and disbelief. “Where is the Master Sergeant?”

“Well, that’s the second part,” the private said. “The Ducks have some soldiers in powered armor. They’re somewhere behind us but moving up. Master Sergeant says we can’t stop them with the pop guns we have, so you have to take the bridge real quick. He says he’ll try to buy you some time, but that you need to, uh, well, he said you need to move your ass.”

Unbelievable, thought Cookie. She stood up. Somewhere in front of her was the Dominion Bridge.

On the Space Station Atlas, Hiram Brill’s assistant, Nina, approached him hesitantly. “Commander, this just came in from Sensors.”

Hiram was trying desperately to move more missile mines from the front of the Atlas to its rear, where the Dominion force was threatening them. “Can you handle it, Nina?” he asked distractedly, not taking his eyes off the hologram.

“Commander,” she began, and then stopped. He looked up in alarm; uncertainty was not one of Nina’s traits. “Hiram,” she said softly. “We’ve had four Code Omega drones. The Galway, Kent, New Zealand and Yorkshire. They’re all gone. I’m sorry.” She turned and left.

Hiram sat numbly in the chair, staring at nothing. In all of his life he had had only one real friend, and in all of his life he only loved one woman. Now they were both dead? He couldn’t understand it. Wouldn’t understand it.

“Nina!” he shouted. From across the room she looked up, startled and worried. “Send the data from the Omega drones to my console,” he told her. Dammit, they weren’t dead until he saw it with his own eyes.

On the battle bridge of the Vengeance, Captain Pattin leaned over to Admiral Mello. “I’m getting reports of enemy soldiers onboard. There is shooting around the mess desk and in some of the corridors.”

Mello looked at her, eyebrows raised. “How?”

Pattin shrugged. “They must have gotten close enough to land a shuttle on our hull and cut through. I don’t think there can be very many of them. I’ve alerted DSD and they’re hunting them down.”

Mello turned back to his battle display. A few men with guns were an annoyance, but not a threat. The Security Directorate thugs would hunt them down. The lucky ones would be killed; those not so fortunate would be captured. The Dominion Security Directorate had a certain, ah, reputation when it came to prisoners. Well, not his problem, was it?

He pointed to the display of the Dominion warships grinding their way through the Victorian minefield. “Won’t be long now.”

Two thousand miles behind the Vengeance, on the Dominion battleship Fortitude, there was a knock at Admiral Kaeser’s door. He took that as a good sign: if Captain Bauer were treating him as a prisoner, he would have just opened the door and come in. Knocking was a touch of civility, a sign of respect. It meant there was hope.

Admiral Kaeser opened the door personally, rather than simply barking “Come!” as was the general practice. “Come in, Captain,” he told Bauer, then ushered him to a chair. Bauer sat down, looking nervous and distracted, more nervous than he would have been just because he was visiting his admiral under house arrest.

“Perhaps you should tell me, Fritz,” Kaeser said.

“It’s Admiral Mello, sir,” Bauer said in a rush. “He’s lost another cruiser to a Vicky raid. His attack force is down to the Vengeance and four cruisers. I think he’s got enough force to break through the rest of the minefield, but if the Vicky ships return from the worm hole, Admiral Mello’s force will be overwhelmed.”

Kaeser nodded. Mello was bull-headed and unrelentingly aggressive, and a firm believer that every war culminated in a “decisive battle.” If Mello thought this was the decisive battle with the Victorians, he would risk everything for it. Kaeser sighed. How was it that fools like this always seemed to reach positions of power?

“What is our status, Captain?” he asked.

Bauer took a deep breath. “The Fortitude has been ordered forward to join the Vengeance. We are about to enter the passage they’ve blasted through the minefield.”

“Reinforcements? Are any more ships coming from our force around the Vicky home world?”

“Six cruisers, Admiral, but they are two to three hours behind us.”

“Just so,” Kaeser sighed. He ran his hand through his hair, feverishly calculating the number of hulls available and the throw weights they represented. God damn Mello to hell for eternity and a day for squandering his forces to break through the minefield! Mello spent his entire career treating every problem like a nail and himself the hammer. And now this.

Whine or lead, Admiral, Kaeser chided himself. Which will it be?

“What are you going to do, Fritz?” he asked softly.

“I don’t know!” Bauer blurted. “I–I think Admiral Mello is going to get us all killed, but if we don’t try, the space station Atlas will escape. But if we are all destroyed and it does escape, then who will be left to protect Timor and the rest of the Dominion? And if I do the wrong thing, DSD will arrest my family…” He stopped, breathing hard, his face fluid with mixed emotions of doubt, fear and shame. “I don’t know what to do, sir. I honestly don’t.”

Kaeser stood and buttoned up his uniform tunic. “Fritz,” he said kindly. “I think it would be best if you and I went back to the bridge together.”

Relief showed on Bauer’s face. “What are you going to do, sir?”

Kaeser smiled ruefully. “I don’t know yet, Fritz, but when the time is right, I’ll do it.”

The H.M.S. New Zealand reached the inner edge of the minefield. Space Station Atlas was a mere sixty minutes away at a high speed run, visible now on passive sensors. In fact, it was as stealthy as a bonfire in a dark room.

Worse, there was still no sign of Admiral Douthat and the rest of the Home Fleet.

“Send a courier drone to the Atlas, Alex,” Emily said. “Let them know we’re here and we are preparing to attack the Dominion ships as they come through the minefield. Tell them if they have any ships available, we urgently need reinforcements.”

The Kent and the Yorkshire called in that they were on station. Emily had Merlin project the point where the Dominions were most likely to break through the minefield, then ordered the other ships to use their tractor beams to move nearby missile mines to that area. For the fifth time, she obsessively reviewed their weapons inventory and came to the same conclusion: they might get lucky and take out one more Duck cruiser, but that was it. The rest of the cruisers and that gargantuan Dominion battleship were going to break through and reach the Atlas. Her battered ships just didn’t have the firepower to stop them.

An idea struck her then, but it was so dark and repulsive she didn’t want to consider it. She certainly didn’t want to say it out loud in front of her Bridge crew.

“Minefield breach imminent!” Merlin announced.

“All ships, go to battle stations!” Emily ordered, working to keep her voice calm. “Merlin will identify the