Alarm of War, Book II

The Other Side of Fear

By

Kennedy Hudner

Copyright © 2014 Kennedy Hudner

All Rights Reserved

Cover design by Kip Rich of Color Lake, Inc.

Maps by Deneika Janski

To Jennifer:

For thirty-eight years filled with laughter, exploration, children, patience and love. Thank you for your support, even if you did drive a hard bargain about which characters had to be kept alive.

And to think it all began a long time ago with a ‘hello’ on the sidewalk.  Such a tiny, wondrous thing to change our lives.

And in loving memory of Flossie Hudner and Harold Hudner, two shining examples of grace, caring and kindness.  This world is poorer without them.

Acknowledgements

I have a lot of people to thank for helping me with this book.  First, as always, for their patient encouragement, valuable critiques and occasional pointed reviews, my wife, Jennifer and my two sons, Joshua and Daniel.  But the pleasant surprise for me this time around was the friendly nagging from my readers, who politely pestered me to learn when this book would be ready.  I cheerfully co-opted some of them, asking them to read unfinished copies of the manuscript for Book II, which several did with good humor and grace and very helpful comments.  My special thanks to Mike Strong, Forrest Janson and Bengt Thuree for their comments and encouragement.

Numerous others have offered encouragement and given me helpful suggestions, including Beth and Bruce Hillson, Joan and Mike Mastromonaco, Michele and Craig Fontaine, Beth Hillson (the other one), and two old college roommates, Scott Kaeser and John Mello.

And a particularly heartfelt thank you to Don Kray, who willingly took on the task of proofing the entire manuscript before he learned what a terrible typist I am.

If there is anyone I’ve forgotten, my apologies, but for the many people who wrote kind reviews, encouraging emails and even called to introduce themselves, you have my sincere appreciation.

Writing the second book of a trilogy is daunting.  I’ve read too many “middle books” that do little to either grow the characters or move the plot forward in an interesting and engaging way.  I didn’t want to do that to my readers – or characters, for that matter – and it made creating the plot and developing the characters painstaking and, sometimes, intimidating.

I think I got it right but, as always, you will be the final judge.

Kennedy Hudner

November 3, 2014

This is a science fiction book, set far in the future.  All of the characters are fictional and come from the fevered imagination of my mind.  Any resemblance to any real person, living or dead, is not intended and is entirely coincidental.  If you think you see yourself in this book, take the nearest spaceship to Fleet Headquarters on the planet Cornwall in the Victorian Sector and consult a therapist.

Cast of Characters

Refuge – home world, Haifa

Tarek Allali – Production Minister

Aicha Eitan – second mother of Rafael Eitan

Amin Eitan -               father of Rafael Eitan

Danny Eitan – father of Rafael Eitan

Hakima Eitan – third mother of Rafael Eitan

Leila Eitan – birth mother of Rafael Eitan

Nouar Eitan - sister of Rafael Eitan

Rafael Eitan – Captain, Refuge Special Reconnaissance Force

Yael Eitan -   father of Rafael Eitan

Aamir Fareed Khan – Foreign Minister

David Lior - Captain (retired) Refuge Gunboat Squadron

Sergeant Maimon – Refuge Special Reconnaissance Force

Admiral Haim Razon – Commandant of the Refuge Coast Guard

Yisrael Tal – Prime Minister

Avi Yaffe – Wing Commander, stationed on carrier Haifa

Rahim Zar, captain of the Refuge carrier, Rabat

Eliana Zohar – Minister, Refuge Defense Force and liaison to Victorian Fleet

Victoria – home world, Cornwall

Queen Anne - daughter of Queen Beatrice (deceased)

Balek - Specialist, Beach Ball Controller

Ben-Ami Behrman - the Laughing Owl’s Drone Chief

Fatima Binissa – Sensors Officer, Laughing Owl

Hiram Brill – Commander, Victorian Fleet

Mariella Cocchi – Specialist, Beach Ball Controller

Alyce Douthat - Admiral, Commander of Victorian Home Fleet

James Eder – Captain, Battleship Lionheart,  Victorian Home Fleet

Master Chief George Gibson - Sensors Officer, Rabat

Dennie Hod –  Communications Officer, Laughing Owl

Forrest Janson - pilot, Laughing Owl

Avi Lani – Assistant Engineer, Laughing Owl

Max Opinsky – Civilian Chief of Operations, Atlas Space Station

Tobias Partridge – Seaman, communications specialist, Rabat

Ayala Perl – Captain, Fish Owl

Lori Romano - Ensign (Artificial Intelligence Systems)

Alexander Rudd – Lt. Commander, Victorian Fleet

Maria “Cookie” Sanchez -  Sergeant, Victorian Royal Marines and prisoner of Dominion

Karen Selby – Captain, Barn Owl

Bill Satore – Fleet Specialist 4 who builds training systems Dafna Simon - Assistant Drone Chief, Laughing Owl

Dafna Simon -  Drone Pilot, Laughing Owl

Grant Skiffington - Lt. Commander, Victorian Fleet

Dov Tamari -  Colonel, Fleet Marines in Long Range Reconnaissance

Bengt Thuree – Captain, Horned Owl

Sir Henry Truscott  - advisor for the Royal Family

Emily Tuttle -  Commander, Victorian Fleet

Livy Wexler - Sensor’s Officer for the Haifa

Martha Wilkinson, M.D.  – Rear Admiral and Fleet Senior Surgeon

Otto Wisnioswski - Private, Fleet Marines and prisoner of the Dominion

Sadia Zahiri – Captain, Laughing Owl – long range reconnaissance vessel

Non-humans

Merlin, Max, Mildred and Gandalf – Artificial Intelligence systems used by Victoria

Dominion of Unified Citizenry:  home world - Timor

Fritz Bauer, Captain, battleship Fortitude

Astrid Drechsher – Captain, frigate Draugr

Michael Hudis - Chief Advisor to Citizen Director

Scott Kaeser – Admiral and  commander of Second Task Force attacking Victoria.  Ship is the Dominion Battleship Fortitude

Anthony Nasto - Citizen Director

Reynart Wagner – Admiral, Commander of Timor’s planetary defense forces

Tilleke: home world – Qom

Emperor Chalabi

Prince RaShahid – son of Emperor Chalabi

Map of Human Space

Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.

– George Addair

Prologue

On the Dominion Prison Ship Tartarus

She killed the first man who came to rape her.

He was a big man, heavily muscled with a tattoo of a large serpent twining around his chest.  He thought he would simply push her to the floor of the cell and take her as he pleased, and seemed faintly amused when she stood to fight him.  He liked a little struggle, it added spice.  And truth be told, he liked them a little bloody when he took them.  A feral grin stretched across his face.

It never occurred to him that Cookie might be as dangerous as he was.

She waited on balanced feet, breathing slowly.  He was such a big bastard that she knew she would only get one chance, but she also knew that he would give it to her.

Grinning, he stepped forward, arms still by his sides, contemptuous of her threat.  Gods of Our Mothers, your daughter thanks you, she prayed, and when he reached for her, instead of pulling back as he expected, she stepped forward and struck snake fast, spearing her fingers deep into his eye sockets, twisting as she drove them knuckle-deep.  He shrieked in agony, but when he raised his hands to his face, she spun him into the wall, grasped his head in her arms and twisted and then kicked out his legs.

Gravity did the rest.

And as quick as that, it was done.

She stepped back, sucking in a deep breath.  “Havin’ fun now!” she shouted defiantly, knowing they had a vid watching her.  Soon she heard the sound of feet pounding down the corridor, coming to her cell.   She resigned herself to what was to come.  If she was very, very lucky, they would kill her.

Chapter 1

In the Refuge Sector

The meeting was held on the patio of the Palais Amanjena, on the shoulder of the Atlas Mountains.  The view was astonishing.  To the south they could see Tinjdad and beyond it, arid desert.  To the north and west, the snow-capped Atlas range rose to the heavens, while to the east lay Kiryat Arba, the farming town that eventually became the Refuge capital, with its four rivers and plentiful water, surrounded by a wide expanse of irrigated farmland.  It was, the manager said proudly, the most commanding view in the entire region.

Not that any of them noticed.

“The good news is that we have almost thirty combat effective ships, plus a handful more that can be repaired.”  Admiral Douthat repressed a grimace.  Her definition of “combat effective” had taken a drastic change since the war began. Now any ship with more than four working missiles tubes, a couple of lasers and the crew to man them counted as combat effective. They had arrived at Refuge one month earlier, fleeing an overwhelming surprise attack by the Dominions.  The Dominions had captured the Victorian home planet, Cornwall and had killed Queen Beatrice.   Only good luck had saved Princess (now Queen) Anne, who had been visiting the space station Atlas.  The Home Fleet had commandeered every tugboat in Victorian space to pull the Atlas through the wormhole to safety in Refuge, but that safety was tenuous at best.

In the last month, the Dominion had hurled three attacks through the wormhole.  Home Fleet, beefed up by the Refuge gunboats and forts, had beaten them back, but at a cost.  One of the Refuge forts had been destroyed and the other had been badly damaged.  Scores of the powerful but fragile gunboats had been lost, and although the Victorians had not lost any more ships, they were all damaged to one extent or another.

“The bad news,” Douthat continued, “is that the Dominions have us effectively bottled up.  We cannot break through the wormhole to Victoria without sustaining unacceptable losses.”  Which wasn’t saying much, she knew.  At this point the loss of even a handful of ships was unacceptable.  “They cannot get in either, at least not without horrendous losses.  So, for the moment, stalemate.”

“And Atlas?” Captain Eder of the battleship Lionheart asked.

“Atlas came through without a scratch,” Douthat replied.  “Even now it is repairing our damaged ships.”

“Thank the Gods for that,” someone muttered.

Queen Anne looked down the table, wondering if she looked as tired as everyone else.   At twenty, she was the youngest person in the room, but the responsibilities she had assumed after her mother’s death lay heavy and the tired and drawn faces around her mirrored her inner exhaustion.  Not that she had any intention of letting them know that.

“So when can we break out and retake Cornwall?”

A silence fell over the table.  Admiral Douthat and Captain Eder exchanged uneasy glances.  Opinsky, the facilities manager of Atlas, shifted in his seat.   Prime Minister Tal and the Refuge Production Minister, Tarek Allali, pursed their lips and avoided looking at the Queen.

“Well?” the Queen demanded.  “The Dominion are out there, ladies and gentlemen. We can’t defeat them from Refuge.”

The silence awkwardly continued.  Queen Anne sighed.   “I cannot make reasoned decisions if my advisors are afraid of giving me unpleasant news,” she said.  She looked at each of them in turn.  At length, she turned to face Admiral Douthat.  “Admiral, I have designated you as First Sea Lord.  Was I incorrect in that promotion?”

“Majesty,” Admiral Douthat said.  “The problem is that even with Atlas’s production capacity, we will not be able to produce enough warships to break through the wormhole back into Victorian space if the Dominion reinforces the wormhole entrance.  We need to either find additional shipyard capacity from Refuge or-“

“Or find an ally in addition to Refuge,” Sir Henry interrupted, “another nation that already has a navy and will be willing to dedicate it to our support in the coming battles.”

“There is a chance that we can break through, Your Majesty,” said Captain Eder, captain of the Victorian Fleet’s only remaining battleship.

“An unacceptable risk!” Douthat said, glaring at Captain Eder.  “If we lose too many ships fighting our way into Victoria, we are finished.  The Dominions would hound us back into Refuge and finish us once and for all.”  She threw up her hands in frustration.  “We aren’t strong enough.  We need time to build up our forces.”

The Queen glanced at Opinsky, the Facilities Manager.  “Mr. Opinsky, can you quantify the production issues for me?”

Opinsky, who looked slovenly at the best of times, hadn’t shaved in several days.  He rubbed his whiskers with one hand.  “Well, Majesty, it’s like this.  Atlas’s got three shipyards large enough to build warships, but only one of ‘em is large enough to build a battleship.  Assuming we got enough materials – and we don’t, least not yet – we can build a destroyer every three or four weeks, depending on the electronics we put in it.  That’s per yard, mind you, so theoretically, we could build three destroyers every month.

“But the shipyards aren’t all at the same level of technology.  As we added them on, each one was bigger and more sophisticated, so while the first yard can’t build a cruiser at all, only destroyers, the second yard can build destroyers or cruisers, but not battleships.  So we can build a cruiser every eight weeks, and during that time we can probably build two destroyers with the remaining yard.”

“And battleships?” the Queen asked.

Opinsky shook his head.  “We can only build battleships in the newest yard, one every three months if we’re lucky.  More like one every four months, depending on resources, which includes not only raw materials, but finished parts, electronics and trained personnel to do the actual building.”

“You haven’t mentioned frigates,” Queen Anne noted.

More glances were exchanged.  “The fact that none of the frigates survived the first battles suggests to me that we should not waste our time and resources building any more of them,”  Sir Henry said flatly.

“I’m afraid Sir Henry is correct, majesty,” Admiral Douthat chimed in.  “Frigates simply cannot survive in battles this intense.  But we must not forget the Refuge gunboats.  Refuge is building four gunboats a week.  As the old Earth generals were fond of saying, quantity has a quality all of its own.  Under the right tactical conditions, the gunboats can be very effective.”  The gunboats were small and fired two missiles each, but they did not have the fuel capacity for a long distance strike and were hideously vulnerable to enemy fire.  So yes, they could be effective, but everyone at the table knew their losses had been terrible.

“And crews to man all these ships?” asked Sir Henry.  “Is there a pool of trained personnel?”

“We will find the crews,” Prime Minister Tal assured him.  Queen Anne noticed the sharp glance he received from Foreign Minister Khan, but let it pass for the moment. The troubles she already had were sufficient unto the day, she thought ruefully.

“We need to attack now, before the Ducks build up their defenses at the wormhole,” Captain Eder repeated.

“And I’ve already told you that won’t work,” Douthat said, giving Eder another black look.  “We can’t risk everything on one throw of the dice!”

“We have to,” Eder retorted,  “or we’ll be trapped here.”

“We need to secure another ally,” Sir Henry said, repeating his theme.  “We need to open up a second front.”

“Enough!”  Queen Anne held up a hand to stop them.  The table fell into a sullen silence.

“Four weeks ago,” the Queen reminded them, “we were running for our lives with the entire Dominion navy nipping at our heels.”  She swept her gaze around the table, forcing by sheer will each participant to look at her and listen.  “Today we are trying to decide how best to go about defeating them.  I would rather have today’s problems than those of yesterday.”  She stood up.  Two of her personal armsmen fell in beside her.  “These are my orders.  First, all of you are to immediately go to bed and sleep for at least eight hours.  You are barely on your feet and it impedes your thinking.  Second, we will reconvene tomorrow at this time.  I want two plans of action and an analysis of the pros and cons of each.”  She smiled at them.  “I bid you good night, ladies and gentlemen.”

Hiram Brill was waiting for her in the hallway outside the meeting room.  He fell in beside her as she walked briskly to the suite set aside for her by the resort owner, a tiny, dapper little man of Moroccan descent who assured her that it was an honor to have the great-granddaughter of the famous King Adolf staying at his humble resort.  Brill walked in silence.  Since the loss of his girlfriend, captured on the Dominion battleship Vengeance, Brill had been quiet and solemn.  Queen Anne had worried that he was slipping into depression.   But then she learned that every day Brill personally went through all of the reconnaissance drone reports from the Victorian sector and she realized that he was hunting for any information concerning Cookie – a ridiculous name for a grown woman, she thought, and a Fleet Marine to boot.  Brill wasn't depressed, she decided, just very, very intent, as if all of the humor and brightness had been scoured out of him by events.   Well, whatever Brill’s emotional state was, as long as his preoccupation didn't interfere with his duties to her, she wished him well.

"You listened in?" she asked, knowing that he had.  She had ordered him to.

"Yes," he replied.

"Captain Eder wants to attack immediately.  Admiral Douthat says any attack is doomed unless we significantly build up our Fleet strength, and Sir Henry says we need allies.  God alone knows how long that will take."  She glanced at him.  "Does that about sum it up?"

"Yes."

Princess Anne forcefully blew out air and pushed her hair back in exasperation.  "Commander, I would rather appreciate one of your moments of 'great clarity' right about now."

They were almost at the Queen's suite.  Hiram stopped abruptly and wheeled on the Queen.  The two armsmen stopped as well, tensing involuntarily but doing nothing.  They were still getting used to Brill's eccentricities and manfully refrained themselves from slamming him up against the wall and sticking a gun under his chin.  It had happened before.  The Queen had gotten rather stern over that incident.

Hiram held up three fingers.  "First," he said, waggling one finger, "you need to understand that each of them is correct, but they have the timing wrong.

“Second" – he waggled two fingers –"to accomplish anything, we need to find the location of the shipyard where the Dominion built their secret fleet. It is the key to everything.  Once we destroy it, the Dominions will be strategically crippled, unable to replace their losses.  But – and this is a very big ‘but’ – the big problem is how to find it.  I know it exists – it has to exist - but the Dominions have it tucked away somewhere far, far off the normal shipping routes.  I think there is a way to find it, but to do it we are going to need The Light."  He waggled a third finger.  “And that is the third item.  Whatever other allies we find, we need to ally with The Light.  They have the best intelligence network and we need it.”

"The Light?" Queen Anne asked, arching one eyebrow.

Hiram nodded.  "Yes, Your Majesty, and I would greatly appreciate it if you did not play games with me when I am trying to help you."

Anne glanced at the two armsmen.  Neither John nor Betty looked at her, but kept their attention focused on the hallway, scanning for threats.  They were uncomfortable having their Queen on the planet and would have been much happier back on Atlas.

"Come," she told Hiram, and went into her suite.  A tea service was already laid out and the Queen poured a cup and handed it to Hiram.  He sniffed appreciatively.  Refuge grew its own tea in huge plantations on the slopes of the Atlas Mountains.  The tea reminded him of Darjeeling tea from Old Earth.

"Any word on Maria?"  she asked.  She never called her ‘Cookie.’

"You're changing the subject, Majesty, which you do whenever you want to avoid answering questions about your relationship to The Light."  He sipped his tea.  "I haven’t figured it out entirely yet, but The Light are key players in this little drama of ours.  The Light tried to warn us about the Dominion and the Tilleke, but Admiral Teehan didn't think it was credible.  Later on, The Light warned us that the wormhole to Refuge would move, and gave us very precise information on exactly when and how far it would move, which is rather remarkable when you think about it."  He looked at her searchingly over the rim of his tea cup.

"I think that you have a relationship with The Light, something that Admiral Teehan did not know about."  He paused, considering.  "Something that maybe even Sir Henry does not know about.  Something high level..."  His voice trailed off and his face went momentarily slack.  Anne had seen this before and waited patiently.  Abruptly, his face reanimated.

"The only thing that makes sense is if The Light had been in regular contact with Queen Beatrice and now that you are Queen of Victoria, with you.  But why?"  He stopped, puzzled.

Anne shook her head.  "You have a most distressing habit of wandering into things that are best kept private, Commander," she said.  She paused, uncertain of whether to go on, but then plunged ahead:  "It's Brother Jong.  Before I left Cornwall to go to the Atlas, I met with Jong.  Mother was too ill to take best advantage of his information any longer, so I asked him to provide me with the information he would have given to her."

"And Sir Henry doesn't know," Hiram said.  A statement, not a question.

Anne shook her head.  "No, and you shall not tell him, either.  Sir Henry does not understand The Light, nor trust them."  Hiram looked at her evenly.  She felt a little flash of guilt, but suppressed it.  "Commander, my mother taught me two very basic survival skills:  that a queen needs as many sources of information as she can get, and that no one should know everything she is up to.   I don't apologize for that; it is simply how a ruler must live."

Hiram nodded slowly.  "Majesty, you know you have my loyalty.  You saved me from being tossed out an airlock.  But I can't help you if I don't have all the information at your disposal.  My value to you is in my 'moments of great clarity.'  That only works if I have information to work with."   He studied her for a moment.  “If I had to guess, I would say that The Light has spies in the Dominion sector, and that over the years Jong has been keeping Queen Beatrice - and now you - informed about them."

Queen Anne snorted.  "Not just Dominion, Mr. Brill, but all of the other sectors as well, even Tilleke.  Jong's spy network is astonishing."

Hiram raised an eyebrow at this.  Victoria had spies in many of the sectors, including the Dominion, but they had never successfully penetrated the Tilleke Empire.  If The Light had gotten into Tilleke, their network was astonishing.  "Okay, but why share their information with Victoria?  Victoria is no great friend of The Light."  Hiram asked.

“Because The Light understood – long before we did – that the Dominion and Tilleke are expansionist.”  She paused, rolling the word on her tongue.  “Such a sterile word, ‘expansionist.’  No, the Tilleke and Dominion are intent on conquering.  They both wanted something and they intended to take it by force. The Light was hedging its bets, trying to keep one strong ally in its pocket in case it ever needed it.”

Hiram tried to digest this.  “Why didn’t they come to us sooner with their warning about the Dominion?”

The Queen shrugged.  “They didn’t know for sure?  Or they have their own internal politics?  It doesn’t matter, as long as we can get them to solidly commit to us now.”  “She smiled.  “That will be my job, Mr. Brill, not yours.  You have enough on your plate.”

“Majesty, it is really important for us to find that Dominion shipyard.  We need to find out if The Light knows where it is.  If they don’t, we are going to have to sneak scout ships into the Dominion sector and start searching.  It will take a long time to find it.”

“Tomorrow night at eight o’clock I have another meeting with Admiral Douthat and the members of the Senior Staff.  Plan on attending, Mr. Brill,” she said.  She smiled her predatory smile.  “I don’t want to be bottled up here for a day longer than necessary.  The sooner the Dominion is reacting to what we do, the better.”

As he left the Queen’s quarters, the two armsmen exchanged a glance, and then John said, “Mr. Brill, the Queen listens to you.  Anything you can do to persuade her to go back to Atlas would be appreciated.”

Hiram blinked in surprise.  This is was the first time any of the Queen’s armsmen had spoken to him, at least without a gun against his head.  “What’s the matter, John?”

John frowned.  “This is a resort, not a military base.  It’s wide open.  There is no safe room, no protected escape routes, no way to properly seal off this wing.  We’ve got only ten bodyguards plus a bunch of Marines.  If someone attacked us here with any force, well,” he shrugged.  “She’d be a lot safer on Atlas, with the Lionheart close by, and I’d sleep a lot better.”

“Did you talk to Sir Henry?” Hiram asked.

John nodded.  “Sure.  He said he would talk to her, but that she did not want to insult Refuge after they’d gone out of their way to welcome her.”

“You may have noticed that our queen is a little stubborn,” Hiram said dryly.  “But I’ll try.”

* * * *

Martha Wilkinson thumbed the call button.  “Come!” a voice called and she entered the room.

Admiral Douthat looked up in annoyance.  There were dark circles under her eyes and she looked like death warmed over.  “I’m trying to get some sleep here, dammit!” she said peevishly.   “I am under orders from the Queen herself to get some sleep!  Why won’t people leave me alone?”

“Oh, stop being such a cry baby,” Wilkinson said, sitting down uninvited.  “Gods of Our Mothers, you’re worse now than when we were at the Academy, and you were bloody insufferable then.”

Douthat glared at her.  Full admirals had wilted under that glare.

“And don’t give that look, Alyce.  You should know by now that it won’t work on me,” Wilkinson chided her.  “Besides, it gives you wrinkles and God knows the two of us have more than enough already.”  She looked around the cabin.  “Isn’t there anything to drink?  It has been a bloody long day and I need a gin.”

“I really do need to get some sleep,” Douthat told her with exasperation.

Wilkinson patted her hand.  “I know you do.  It was me who suggested to the Queen that all of her senior staff are bloody knackered.  But before you go into your meeting tomorrow, you need to have my report on your ship captains.  Won’t take but a minute.”   She smiled warmly, her rounded cheeks giving her a grandmotherly appearance, although Douthat knew damn well that Martha Wilkinson was neither a grandmother nor grandmotherly.

Douthat suppressed a sigh.  Martha Wilkinson was her oldest friend and the senior physician in the Fleet, or what was left of it.  She had been on Atlas when the Dominion attack came, and so had joined in their escape to Refuge.  Martha had warned her that the Fleet would suffer from a high number of cases of post-traumatic stress disorder – old fashioned combat fatigue – and that no one, regardless of rank, was immune.  “Like it or not, this has been a peace time navy,” she’d told Douthat, “with virtually no experience in the stresses of combat.  Suddenly, within the space of a few hours, every member of the Home Fleet went from peace and safety to being invaded by an enemy that’s bigger and stronger than we are.  The fighting has been fierce and we escaped by the skin of our teeth. And we left everything behind.  Our world, our homes, our families, our Queen and, last but not least, our sense of Victorian invincibility.  What you need to understand, Alyce, as Admiral and First Sea Lord, is that the psychological trauma has been huge.  It’s shattering.  Some of your people simply won’t cope, and you’ll see the fallout at all levels of rank, from the newest recruit to some of your oldest captains.”

So, Douthat had asked her to run diagnostic neuro scans on her thirty-four ship captains.  She needed to know how many of them were coping with the strain, and how many were not.

“Give me the short version, Marti.  I’m too tired to wade through your report right now.”

Wilkinson opened a file on her tablet.  “Of your thirty-four current ship captains, you need to urgently replace five and keep a really close eye on three others.”

Douthat could not hide her shock.  “Eight of them!  Gods of Our Mothers, eight?”  Douthat closed her eyes.  Where would she find eight replacements?  She shook her head in despair.  Without enough captains-

“Alyce, stop that!” Wilkinson scolded.  “I can see what’s going on in that doom-and-gloom mind of yours.  You always jump to the worst conclusions.  Haven’t you learned anything since second year physics at the Academy?”

When they were roommates together at the Academy, Douthat had been in a panic that she’d flunked the physics final.  Physics was a required course in the Engineering track and flunking it would result in dismissal.  She’d wept and ranted over how stupid she was and how her life was ruined, and had even packed her bags to leave then and there rather than face the humiliation when the grades were posted.  Martha Wilkinson had reasoned with her and comforted her and, when all else failed, spiked her drink with a strong sedative that put her to sleep.  When Douthat woke up ten hours later, the grades had been posted.

She got a “C+.”   She’d glared at Wilkinson, unpacked her bags and schooled herself, with intermittent success, not to let her fears get the best of her in the future.

“I told you five needed to be replaced, not all eight,” Wilkinson reminded her tartly.  “I’ve already initiated a search through the Home Fleet’s service records.  There are plenty of good people to choose from.”

Douthat let out a deep breath.   “Okay, but we’re hanging by a thread here.  We can build more ships, but until we can take back Cornwall and Christchurch, we’ll be short on crews to man them.  And that particularly goes for officers.”

Wilkinson nodded.  “There is one other person you need to tend to.  She isn’t suffering from PTSD, though for the life of me I don’t understand why, but she is deeply bothered by something that happened.”

“Emily Tuttle?” Douthat asked.

Wilkinson eyed her sharply, then nodded.  “The neuro scan suggests she is on the edge of a serious depression.  I looked up her record and even talked to her XO – who, by the way, is senior in rank to her and should have been the captain.  The XO, Rudd, sings her praises and says she’s brilliant.  That got me more interested, so I had Gandalf assemble a report on Tuttle’s actions and engagements during the battle.

“Alyce, whoever this girl is, she’s seen more intense action than any two of your other captains combined.  She was with Captain Grey’s task force that almost got wiped out cutting off the Dominion’s supply train, and she was with Captain Rowe’s Coldstream Guards when they did get wiped out holding off the Dominion attack to our rear.”

Wilkinson shook her head.  “According to the reports, she was down to three heavily damaged ships, trying to hold off an oversized Duck battleship with an escort of five cruisers.  If I am to believe the ship’s log, she was just about ready to ram the damn thing in order to stop it.”

“She survived,” Douthat said.  “A lot of others didn’t.”

“Oh, don’t be obtuse, Alyce, you’re too intelligent,” Wilkinson said irritably.  “And for pity’s sake don’t retreat into macho posturing.  How many times do I have to tell you that macho posturing is a poor substitute for thinking?  You’re a woman and you should know better.  Of course Tuttle survived, but she survived after she sent her best friend – some Fleet Marine ground pounder – on a suicide mission to disable the oversized Dominion battleship.   Or to put it more bluntly, Tuttle survived, we all survived, because Tuttle sacrificed a personal friend.  And now it’s eating her alive.”

“Are you telling me to relieve her?” Douthat asked.

Wilkinson shook her head.  “Absolutely not.  Unless I miss my guess, she’ll be one of your best captains.  There’s no need to relieve her, but if you don’t give her a little time to heal, she could break.  If that happens, you’ll be out a perfectly good captain.  You need to give her some leave and send her off somewhere for a few days.  Not on the space station, somewhere here on Haifa where she’s not reminded every day of the war.  Send her to the beach or to the mountains, somewhere she can get her head clear.   Let her have some fun, be silly, get drunk.  No responsibilities for ten days.  And if she’s got a boyfriend, or a girlfriend, send them along, too.  Never underestimate the restorative powers of good vacation sex.”

Douthat nodded, but she had her own ideas about what type of vacation might be good for Emily Tuttle.

The steward came then, carrying a bottle of cold white wine for Admiral Douthat and bottles of chilled gin and tonic for Admiral Wilkinson.  Wilkinson looked askance at the tonic.  “Are you trying to ruin good gin?” she demanded.  The steward muttered apologies, collected the tonic and bowed out of the door.  The two women spent a moment pouring their drinks, and taking their first sips.

“Gods of Our Mothers,” Wilkinson sighed in pleasure, “I’ve waited all day for this.”

“We’re not out of the woods yet, Marti,” Douthat said softly.  “They’ve got us cornered and bottled up.  Their navy is bigger than ours and they hold our home world hostage.  Even if we win this, it’s going to be bloody awful.”

Wilkinson shook her head.   “More fools them.  They think they’ll win because they’ve got numerical supremacy, but they didn’t do their homework on you before they started this stupid war.  If they had, they would have learned that in addition to being a worry wart, you have another trait: Once you are in a fight, Alyce Douthat, you never, ever give up.”

Wilkinson clicked her glass to Douthat’s.  “To Billy MacLeod,” she said solemnly, “may he rot in hell, and to the Law of Unintended Consequences.”

Douthat snorted wryly and drank her wine.  Billy MacLeod had been an Academy senior when Alyce and Martha were both in their second year.  MacLeod had ignored the short, chubby Douthat, but had been instantly attracted to the lithesome, red-headed Wilkinson.  The feeling was not reciprocated, but Martha’s coolness only made MacLeod more aggressive.  In another man it might have been charming, but MacLeod was a bully at heart and charming wasn’t his strong suit.  First he pursued her, then he badgered her and, finally, he stalked her.  It came to a head the weekend before MacLeod was to graduate.  Martha and Alyce had gone bar hopping.  In one of the bars they had gotten separated in the crowd.  At first Douthat wasn’t worried, but after a few minutes she began to look for Wilkinson in earnest.

She found her in a utility room in the back of the building.  MacLeod and two of his cronies had Martha on the floor.  They had already ripped off her tunic and bra and were pulling off her pants.  MacLeod was slapping her and telling her that she really wanted this.  Martha was weeping and cursing and as terrified as she had ever been in her life.

Douthat charged in. (Much later she admitted that it would have been smarter to call for help first, but that hadn’t occurred to her in the heat of the moment.)  She kicked one of the men in the face, shoved another one and launched herself at MacLeod.  The element of surprise gave her a moment’s advantage, but three-to-one odds abruptly overcame it. One of the two cronies grabbed her from behind and MacLeod punched her several times in the face.  They tossed her into the corner and went back to Wilkinson, now naked and bleeding.  MacLeod undid his pants, thrust her legs apart and knelt down.

He ignored Douthat; she was down, no longer a threat.

Down, but not out.  She spat out a tooth and struggled to her feet.  There was a bottle of bleach on the shelf.  She opened it, then threw it into MacLeod’s face.  He threw back his head and shrieked in agony as the bleach scorched his eyes.  Then she grabbed a broom handle and swung it viciously at the nearer of the other two men, missing by a good foot.  Martha told her later that she was screeching like a banshee, but Douthat was oblivious to everything except the overwhelming, primordial need to hurt them.  Kill them, if she could.

Sheer rage doesn’t always even out poor odds either, however, and after a moment’s stunned hesitation, the two men were on her, beating her to the ground and kicking her.  She bit one on the leg and was rewarded with a kick to the head.  She squirmed sideways and kicked one of them in the knee, which gave a very satisfying ‘crunch’ sound.

The third man was just about to kick her again when the door burst open and four more Academy cadets poured in, took in the situation and subdued MacLeod and his friends by beating them senseless.

Douthat spent a week in the med pod.  On top of a concussion, her jaw was broken and she was missing two teeth. Her knuckles were cracked and swollen.  One eye had healed well, but the other was still swollen shut.  Her nose, never pretty to begin with, was pushed flat against her face and would require surgery.

When she arrived back at the Academy she was met by the Academy Provost.  “I thought you might be interested to know that MacLeod and his two thugs are in jail and will be for a few years,” he told her.  Douthat grunted something in reply, unable to speak very well with her jaw wired shut.

The Provost studied her for a moment, his look not unkindly.  “I’ve taken the liberty of changing your Fleet Track from Engineering to Command School, Douthat,” he told her.   “You were an idiot to take on three of them like that, but I saw what you did to them before they knocked you down.  At Command School we can teach people how not to be idiots, but it’s hard to find a good fighter.”

At the dorm, Martha Wilkinson met her arm-in-arm with one of the four cadets who had come to their rescue.  His name was Albert Hanaway and she married him two years later.  They were married for twenty six years and had four daughters before he died from heart problems, in his own home, surrounded by his family.

And so the acts of a violent bully and rapist led Wilkinson to meet her future husband and started Alyce Douthat down the path that eventually led to her becoming Admiral of the Home Fleet at the time of Victoria’s gravest hour.

“To the Law of Unintended Consequences,” Douthat echoed softly, raising her glass.

Wilkinson stood up.  “Time for me to go.  Pay attention to that report, Alyce, don’t sit on it.  And make sure that Tuttle girl gets some time off.”

Douthat grimaced.  “I’m never going to get any sleep tonight.”

Wilkinson smiled sweetly.  “Oh, I think you will.  I spiked your wine.”  And laughing, she left.

Chapter 2

H.M.S. Laughing Owl

On Station above Timor in Dominion Sector

The H.M.S. Laughing Owl rode in synchronous orbit 25,000 miles above the main military spaceport of Timor.  Behind the ship ran a 200-mile towed sensor array, laden with passive sensors that vacuumed up visual, radio and other electromagnetic data from the space port and the entire area around it.

The Laughing Owl was one of twenty Visby-Class corvettes, named after the Swedish stealth warships built on Old Earth and considered by many to be the most successful stealth craft of its time. But while the Fleet officially called them ‘Visby-Class corvettes,’ everyone who flew in them affectionately called them ‘Owls.’ Half the size of a destroyer, its hull and decks were made entirely of sensor-baffling composites; it had three Royce antimatter engines large enough to power a cruiser and an inertial compensator more powerful than anything else in the Fleet. It could accelerate like a bat out of hell.

The rest of the vessel was crammed with the most cutting-edge passive sensors Victorian technology could devise.  It was not armored and carried no weapons, but had a large supply of reconnaissance drones and courier drones.  The Visby-Class corvettes were designed for one thing and one thing only: spying without getting caught, and at that they excelled.  The corvettes were typically assigned missions that lasted up to six months, though it was not unheard of for a ship to be out for nine months or longer because it either found something that required longer surveillance or it had to skulk about at a wormhole for weeks, waiting for a time it could transit without being detected.  It had a crew of eleven who lived in cabins carefully placed as far apart from each other as possible to give the crew some measure of privacy, and allowed for some discrete nocturnal visits from cabin to cabin that the psychologists said were an absolute necessity on a long mission.  All of the crews were carefully selected to be a balanced mix of males and females, all roughly the same age.  In addition to being skilled at their various jobs, the crew members were carefully screened for three critical personality traits: the ability to be in close quarters with other people for months at a time; a sense of humor; and patience. A spy ship might loiter for weeks or months in search of one piece of critical data, all the while at risk of imminent discovery. Spy ships fought a different type of war, one that required maturity and the ability to cope with prolonged stress. Not surprisingly, the average age of a spy corvette crew was almost ten years older than on a regular warship.

“Any more word from Fleet?” Sadia Zahiri asked her Communications Officer.

“Nothing, Captain,” Dennie Hod replied crisply.  He looked up, almost shyly.  “Do you think they made it through to Refuge, Captain?”  It had been seven weeks since the last message.

Sadia kept her voice cheerful.  “Oh, I wouldn’t worry too much about that, Dennie.  They had the entire Home Fleet to protect them and a running head start.  They made it, alright, but getting word out of Refuge and through two wormholes to let us know, well, that’s going to take a ship, not just a courier drone.”  The courier drones could reliably go through the gravity tides of one wormhole, but rarely survived two.

This brought her to her next big decision.  She had ten spy ships under her command in the Dominion Sector.  The Laughing Owl was sitting on the Herzberg Space Port, adjacent to Timor’s largest military base, while the other nine Owls formed a large net around Timor, able to monitor any space traffic in or out of the planet.  The problem was there hadn’t been any for weeks.  The last significant movement had been a fleet of roughly eighty ships that set out for the Victorian wormhole seven weeks earlier.  Then had come a wave of freighters from Victoria, blaring news of the Dominion’s invasion.

The news had left them thunderstruck.  Victoria had been defeated in a surprise attack by Dominion and Tilleke forces!  Queen Anne was leading the survivors to Refuge – Anne?  What happened to Queen Beatrice?

Since then, nothing.

Now Sadia had to decide whether to send one of her Owls on a long and dangerous mission to Refuge to establish contact with the rest of the Fleet.  But she didn’t really have any choice – they were almost out of food.  The Owls had been stocked for seven months and they were in the sixth month of their mission.  She had cut rations once and would cut them again, but the fact was in eight weeks, nine at the outside, they were going to run out.

As she thought about it more, she decided that she would send two Owls to Refuge, not one.  She could take most of their remaining food and distribute it among the Owls that would stay behind, giving each of them an additional four days on reduced rations.  Maybe.  After that it would get ugly.

“Captain!  Got a ship coming out of Herzberg.”  It was Fatima Binissa, one of the three Sensors Officers.

“Beacon?”

“Yes, Ma’am.  Says it’s the Dominion Ship Tartarus.  She’s big, maybe a million tons.  Just moseying along, pulling thirty gravities.”

Sadia frowned.  Tartarus?  Where had she heard that name before?  “Merlin!”

“Captain?”

“Dominion vessel Tartarus.  Give specifics.”

“The Dominion vessel Tartarus was commissioned in P.D. 930 at the Might of the People Ship Works as a jumbo freighter, but was never used for that purpose.  On order of the Dominion Intelligence Directorate, the vessel was converted into a prison ship and has been used since that time to house political prisoners considered too sensitive to keep on the Dominion planet Timor.  The Tartarus has a maximum acceleration of-“

“Stop!” Sadia ordered. Political prisoners? Huh.  She rubbed her cheek slowly.  What other types of prisoners might be on board?  Would she be heading for Cornwall to pick up high ranking officials who had been captured?

“Escorts?”

“None that I see, Captain,” Binissa replied.  “But they must feel pretty safe this deep in Dominion space, so it’s hard to draw any conclusion from that.”

Fair point, Sadia mused.  “Okay, Fatima, will she go through Orbital Control?”

Binissa nodded.  “She should reach Timor Orbital Control in forty minutes, announce her destination and be given clearance.”

“Dennie, set it up.  I want audio and video of any communications between Tartarus and the OC.”

Dennie Hod brought up a control screen and began to type in commands.  “Shouldn’t be a problem, Captain.”  They had already positioned a stealth reconnaissance drone two thousand miles beyond the Orbital Control space station.  As directed by Hod, it turned its sensitive passive array to lock onto the Tartarus.

Forty-three minutes later they had it.

“Orbital Control, this is Tartarus, DID 3941-545, requesting clearance for Destination Code Alpha 3-100-X.”

“Control to DID 3941-545, you are cleared for Siegestor.  Good voyage.”

“Merlin!  Search for ‘Destination Code Alpha 3-100-X’ and search for ‘Siegestor.’”

Sadia sat back, expecting Merlin’s usual immediate reply.  Five seconds passed, then ten.  Her eyebrows rose.  Finally the AI responded.  “Captain, there is nothing in any Victorian data bank to which I have access regarding either ‘Destination Code Alpha 3-100-X’ or ‘Siegestor.’  However, my database is one hundred and seventy nine days out of date.  I would recommend that-“

“Stop!”  So, where the hell was Siegestor?  And why was a DID prison ship going there?

“Ah, Captain?” Binissa said, and the touch of urgency in her voice made Sadia look at her sharply.  “The Tartarus isn’t turning towards the Victorian wormhole; she’s turning away, towards deep space.”

Sadia checked the holo.  If the plane of advance was a line extending directly from Timor to the Victorian wormhole, with the wormhole as ‘North,’ the Tartarus was headed due ‘South.’  “Merlin, what is south of Timor within sixty days at normal military cruising speed?”

“Captain, there are two asteroid fields, the first approximately twenty days travel from this point, the second approximately fifty days travel from this point.  Neither one has been mapped or charted.  There are no known mining facilities or other man-made structures.  However, my database is one hundred and seventy nine days out of date.  During that time it-“

“Stop.”  Sadia wondered idly if the computer would ever shut up if she didn’t command it to.

So why send political prisoners to empty space?  Frowning, she turned back to her Sensors Officer.  “Fatima, let’s put an ELF on the ship.”  Binissa raised an eyebrow, but bent to comply.  Sadia understood the woman’s caution, but it was an acceptable risk.  Tartarus was still in its home sector; it would not be expecting – or hopefully monitoring for – any probes or unusual occurrences.  And the ELF frequency range simply wasn’t used very much except by scientific survey ships, and the Tartarus certainly wasn’t one of those. The risk of discovery was minimal.

Soon the narrowly focused, extremely low frequency pulse reached out to the Tartarus, unheard and unseen by everyone on board.  Sadia kept her eyes locked on the holo display, now magnified so that the prison ship almost filled it.  She didn’t really expect anything, but it never hurt to be sure.  She waited for five heartbeats, then ten, then twenty.  Nothing.  She began to relax.  Well, no surprise-

Bing…Bing…

Sadia and Fatima Binissa both lurched forward, peering urgently at the holo.  Two red dots appeared in the mid-section of the Tartarus, glowed for several seconds, and then faded into nothingness.  Sadia felt the blood drain from her face.  Binissa looked stunned.

There were two Victorian prisoners on the Dominion prison ship.

Bugger me! Sadia thought.  “Merlin!  Analyze data from the ELF probe and identify the Victorian personnel onboard the Dominion ship Tartarus!”

“LRR beacons identify them as Sergeant Maria Sanchez, Fleet Marine attached to the H.M.S. Yorkshire on special assignment and Private Otto Wisnioswski, Fleet Marine, attached to the H.M.S. Yorkshire on special assignment.  Sanchez is twenty four years old, a native of-“

“Stop.”   What were those poor bastards doing on a Dominion prison ship, and where the hell were they going? And more importantly, what could she do about it?

Chapter 3

On Timor, the Dominion Home World

Anthony Nasto studied them calmly, his look one of mild puzzlement.  To see the Citizen Director calmly and quietly waiting for answer to his questions was enough to make Michael Hudis break into a cold sweat.

Anthony Nasto was a man of great passions; calmness was foreign to him.

Anthony Nasto did not tolerate failure or forgive mistakes.  When things went wrong, when plans derailed, Anthony Nasto punished the wrongdoers in a manner that rendered them incapable of making mistakes again.  He believed this inspired people to do their very best the first time.

Michael Hudis wondered bleakly if he would get out of the room alive.

“Explain to me, if you will,” Nasto asked conversationally, “how it happened that you went into battle with over one hundred and seventy ships, vastly outnumbering the Vickies, and now our fleet is destroyed and the Vicky bitch queen and her space station are inside of Refuge?”

Hudis, always the survivor, remained silent, but glanced meaningfully at Admiral Kaeser.  Kaeser stared at him coldly for a moment, then nodded once, a short nod that both acknowledged that the burden was on him, and at the same time dismissed Hudis as irrelevant.

“Citizen Director, let me start by saying that I understand my life is forfeit,” the Admiral replied.   Even Citizen Director Nasto blinked at the simple truth of that.

“Admiral Mello was in charge of the larger of the two task forces.  When I arrived at Cornwall – on time, as my log will show, Admiral Mello’s task force was not there.  One of the Victorian space stations had been destroyed, but the other was missing.  It simply was not present.  There was no frigate waiting with instructions, nor a space buoy left by Admiral Mello.  In accordance with the Battle Plan, I waited for him to show up or get word to me.  This is not only in the Battle Plan for this operation, but is standard procedure.”

The Citizen Director nodded slowly.  “All very well, Admiral Kaeser, but tell me how it came about that you lost so many of my ships?”

“With respect, sir, I did not.  When Admiral Mello finally contacted me, he placed me under arrest and assumed command of my task force.  He then attacked the Victorian column and when he encountered their minefield, used his ships to detonate the mines in order to clear a path.”

Nasto stared at him incredulously for a long moment.  “He what?”

“Citizen Director, Admiral Mello believed in the concept of the ‘Decisive Battle,’ that if you could force a battle involving most of the enemy’s forces in one place, you could then decisively defeat them and win not only the battle, but the war as well.  It is an old notion, but one that has been applied to good effect many times throughout history.  He spoke of this often.  From his actions, I assume that he thought this was the ‘Decisive Battle’ he hoped for. Apparently Admiral Mello thought that if he could break through the minefield while the main Victorian defense force was far away clearing a path to the wormhole, he could then capture or destroy the Atlas space station. There was only a light covering force protecting it.  Without the Atlas space station, the Victorians would be utterly defeated. He did penetrate the minefield, but at the cost of a significant number of his ships.  Even then he might have been able to pull it off.”  He paused.

Anthony Nasto frowned.  “Don’t stop now, Admiral Kaeser.  I am quivering with anticipation.”

Hudis felt his knees grow weak.  Humor?  From Anthony Nasto?  Did Admiral Kaeser understand the danger he was in?

Kaeser saw Hudis flinch at Nasto’s heavy handed humor.  You are a spineless worm, he thought coldly, and promised himself that one day he would take care of him.  The Dominion of Unified Citizenry would be a better place without Michael Hudis in it.  On the other hand, he acknowledged wryly, he himself probably wouldn’t be alive at the end of the day.

“The problem, Citizen Director, was that before the Vengeance could launch its attack, it was boarded by a contingent of Victorian Fleet Marines.  They seized the ship and killed Admiral Mello.”

Nasto stared at him, unblinking.   He had seen the tape of the Victorian Marine thrusting a spear clean through Mello’s body.  “And what did you do, Admiral?”  His voice was soft.

And here it was.  Admiral Kaeser took a breath.  Live or die on this answer.

“I did my duty, Citizen Director,” he replied evenly.  “Admiral Mello had given us an opportunity, however foolhardy the cost.  I sent a boarding party to retake the Vengeance while I led the cruisers on hand to make an assault on the Atlas.  By the time we could pursue it, however, it had reached the wormhole to Refuge.  I shot several antimatter missiles into the wormhole in hopes of a hit, but missed.”

Nasto pursed his lips, his eyes drifting away in thought.  “And now we are in stalemate,” he said.  Not a question.

“For the moment, perhaps,” Kaeser acknowledged, “but our shipyard at Siegestor is already tooled for warships and Atlas has been producing nothing but transport freighters for the last ten years.  It will take them time to retool, time to find adequate resources in an asteroid field, and time to train new crews.  During that time we will be producing enough warships for us to break through the wormhole defenses and destroy Atlas once and for all.  Without Atlas, Victoria is dead.”

Nasto glanced questioningly at Hudis.  “And are there any alternative measures being contemplated?”

“Yes, Citizen Director.  As you know, the wormhole moves, sometimes abruptly.  This allows us to slip in some small ships unseen.  We have managed to land forty men onto Haifa.  We believe that the new Victorian Queen, Anne, is staying on the planet.  With a little luck we can locate her and launch an attack.  She does not have a living successor and her death would throw the Victorians into disorder.”

Nasto nodded.  “Very well, gentlemen.  Although a great opportunity was lost, you seem to be recovering as well as can be expected under the circumstances.”  He gazed at each of them in turn.  “Let there not be a repeat of any of these mistakes in the future.”  He stood in dismissal.

Admiral Kaeser cleared his throat.  “Citizen Director, if I may?”

Nasto raised an eyebrow in question.

“When the Victorian Marines boarded the Vengeance, it appears they used a device from the Tilleke Empire,” Kaeser said.  “Some sort of molecular transportation device.”

Nasto sat back down.  “And do we know how they came to have such a device?”

“There were only two Victorian survivors of the attack on the Vengeance, a Marine sergeant and a private.  Under questioning they told us everything they know about the devices, but unfortunately they knew very little.  The devices had been captured by ships of the Victorian First Fleet.  Neither of the prisoners had any idea of how they worked.  There are three copies of the device in Victorian hands, so we can assume the Victorians will be studying them quite urgently.”  Admiral Kaeser shrugged.  “We have to assume that the Victorians will soon know how to make them.”

“Do they know anything about the Siegestor shipyard?” Nasto asked.

“The prisoners did not, sir, but that is hardly surprising.  If the Victorians know about it, it is unlikely that they would disclose such a thing to a private and a non-commissioned officer.”

Nasto stroked his chin.  The thought that the Vickies had Tilleke technology that the Tilleke had not shared with the Dominion was disquieting, but not surprising.  The Emperor Chalabi was secretive, paranoid and completely untrustworthy.  He smiled inwardly –no doubt the Tilleke were using the Dominions as much as the Dominions were using them. Another thought struck him: Had the Vickies really captured the transportation technology, or had the Tilleke given it to them to help them in their war with the Dominion?  That would bear thinking about.

“Admiral, did either of the prisoners survive the DID’s questioning?” he asked.

Kaeser nodded.  “Both of them, Citizen Director.  I gave explicit instructions that they were to be questioned with chemicals, as opposed to the, ah, more direct methods that the DID is fond of.”

“And where are they now?”  No matter how hard he tried, he had not been able to crush all of the subversive groups that challenged his rule.  It would not do for the Vicky prisoners to fall into the wrong hands.

Michael Hudis answered: “When I learned of the situation, I had them transferred to the Tartarus, Citizen Director, and ordered it to go to Siegestor.  I thought it best that the prisoners be kept somewhere discrete.”

Nasto suppressed a wince.  The Tartarus was a prison ship run by the Dominion Intelligence Directorate and its reputation lived up to its mythological name: the deepest, darkest part of the underworld.  He had personally ordered many of his political rivals to the Tartarus and their deaths had been neither quick nor painless.

Hudis saw Nasto’s reaction and understood it.  “I gave strict instructions that they both be kept alive, sir.”

Nasto nodded slowly.  “Okay then, at present levels of production, how long before you launch a decisive attack into Refuge?”

“Four months, sir,” Admiral Kaeser answered briskly.  “Between the ships we have on hand and the ships that will come off the productions lines from Siegestor in four months, we should have a sufficient advantage to punch through their wormhole defenses and take out the Atlas space station.  The one caveat to this is that if the Victorians try to break out of Refuge to retake their planet, we might lose enough ships in pushing them back to delay our time table.”

Nasto nodded and turned toward Michael Hudis.  “In that case, Michael, I want to send you on an errand.”

Hudis nodded warily.   “Of course, sir.”

“In four months Admiral Kaeser will be ready to launch an all-out assault.  In the meantime, I want you to go to Refuge under diplomatic immunity.  You know what to do.”

Hudis smiled.  He understood treachery.  “Of course, Citizen Director.”

Chapter 4

Atlas Mountains, Refuge

Emily stepped off the shuttle.  The pilot, who looked young enough to have just graduated from grade school, gave her a jaunty thumbs up and lifted the bird in a vertical takeoff, hovered briefly at one hundred feet, then accelerated away in a roar of noise and wind.  The kid was so obviously trying to impress the visiting Vicky officer that it made her smile.  And she was impressed; the way the pilot flew her approach, Emily had been sure they were going to crash.

She looked around.  She was on the edge of a large village.  To the east were rolling plains, all under cultivation, but to the west the Atlas Mountains rose majestically, the lower slopes covered with thick forests and the upper slopes covered in snow.  She was dressed in hiking clothes, with warm boots as instructed, and carried only one knapsack.

But why the hell was she here?  Admiral Douthat had been rather cagey about that.  She’d called Emily before breakfast to tell her she was being dispatched for ten days.  “You’re officially on leave, Tuttle,” the Admiral had said.  “Dress for hiking in the mountains and pack a camera.  But while you’re there, I want you to learn as much as you can about this society.  We owe Refuge our lives, but the fact of it is that we really don’t know them.  Learn what you can and see me when you get back and we’ll talk about your ship assignment.”

Emily suspected that the Fleet Surgeon, Dr. Wilkinson, was behind this somehow and she wasn’t at all sure how she felt about that.  Then she saw a man leading three horses through the village.  He shouted something she didn’t quite hear and waived, smiling broadly at her.  This, presumably, was her guide.  She waited patiently as he drew near, puzzled that as he got closer he seemed more and more familiar.  Finally he stood before her, grinning and showing white teeth.  He was tall, with swarthy skin weathered from the sun and wind.  He sported a thick black beard, neatly trimmed and he placed his right hand over his heart and bowed slightly.

“All honor to you, Emily Tuttle,” he said, with the lilting accent of Refuge.  He laughed.  “You don’t remember me, do you?”  And hearing his voice, the puzzle finally fell into place.

“Rafael!” she laughed, and somewhat to her own surprise, gave him an impulsive hug.  “I didn’t recognize you with your beard!”  Rafael Eitan laughed as well, holding her back at arms’ length and studying her.

“It is good to see you, Emily.”  He cocked his head, looking at her.  “You have changed since I saw you last at Killarney Bridge, Emily.  You are just as beautiful, but sadder, I think.  You have seen much of this war, yes?”

Emily shook her head, taken aback by the rush of emotion that gripped her.  She had met Rafael during the last of the war games at Camp Gettysburg.  She had been in charge of the company assigned to take a critical bridge crossing so that Rafael’s company could transport some vital cargo to a road junction named, unimaginatively, ‘Four Corners.’   They’d bypassed the heavily defended bridge and forded across the river.  They’d won the war game, but Emily had learned her first lesson in the dark side of leadership when two of her troops had drowned in an accident while crossing the river.

And now, after a war that was barely three months old and had already taken over a million lives, she felt like her soul was so stained with blood and guilt that she would never be the same.

“Rafael, what is going on?  This morning I was told to take a ten day leave and to meet my ‘guide’ here.”  She stepped forward and peered at him closely.  “You are not a mountain guide, Rafael Eitan, you’re a soldier.  So why are you here?”

Rafael laughed.  “Well, today I am a mountain guide, Emily.  My boss called me this morning as well and told me I was assigned to guide you to the Temple of Ait Driss, high up in the mountains.  I am from this region and know it well, so today I am not a designer of space fortresses, but a simple mountain guide.  Will that serve, Emily?”

She frowned in thought.  The Temple of Ait Driss had been built as a shrine several decades after the first settlers had landed on Refuge, but she couldn’t remember why or what its significance was.  Something about a group of colonists who had been slaughtered by…  She shook her head in frustration.  Then one of the horses snorted and she stared at it.

“Rafael, horses?” she asked in puzzlement.

“Oh, yes, Emily,” he said warmly.  “The road ends at this village.  There are no roads up into the mountains, only trails.  So, we will ride until it is too rough, then we will lead the horses and walk.  It will be fun, you will see!”

Emily laughed.  “I haven’t been on a horse since I was fourteen, but I was mad for them as a girl.  Once my dad died and we moved to the city, I never got a chance to ride again.”  She stepped closer to the brown mare with the white blaze on her forehead.  The horse smelled of earth and oiled leather, with a faint touch of good old fashioned horse manure thrown in.  The mare snorted and nudged Emily with her nose.

“What’s her name?”

“Well, she has a long Berber name, Tislit n Azwu, which means ‘Bride of the Wind,” and a Hebrew name, Kalat Haruach, which means the same thing.  But I call her ‘Rosie.’”

“That’s a lot for one horse,” Emily said dryly.

Rafael gave her a leg up onto the horse, strapped her knapsack onto the pack horse and expertly mounted his gelding.  “We have a full day’s ride to the Ouididi village where we’ll stay the night.  Tomorrow, we’ll head up higher into the mountains and should reach Ait Driss by mid-day on the third day.”

Emily squirmed around in the saddle trying to get comfortable – it had been a long time - but Rosie trotted on unconcerned.  A few villagers stopped and waived, but it was still early and soon they were out of the village, crossing a small field and entering a path that would take them through the tree line and up into the mountains.

It was only as they entered the trees that Emily saw the unmistakable outline of a pulser pistol under Rafael’s jacket.  Why would a designer of space forts carry a pulser pistol?  She trotted her horse up alongside of his.

“Raf, I know that I’m supposed to be on leave, relaxing and having a good time, and I know that we’re going to have a quiet, beautiful ride up the mountain to the Temple.  So why, I wonder, are you packing a pulser pistol under your jacket?”

Rafael looked at her in surprise.  “But Emily, you must know of the grogin, yes?”

“Who are the grogin?” she asked, searching her memory for any mention of some hostile indigenous tribe that lived in the Atlas Mountains.

Rafael laughed again.  He laughed a lot; it was a nice laugh.  “Not ‘who,’ Emily, but ‘what.’  The grogin are predators.  They hunt in large packs, like your wolves on Christchurch, but maybe more like the hyenas on Old Earth.  They are very ferocious, the grogin, but they live higher in the mountains, above the Ouididi village, so I am thinking we will not see any before we reach the village.”

“So why the pulser pistol?”

“Because with grogin, you can never be sure,” he laughed.  “It is like they taught us at the Academy, yes?  A good soldier must always honor the threat.  But do not worry, when we move higher on the mountain, I will see to it that we both have rifles and we will carry a portable electric shield that we will use at night.  It is very safe, you’ll see.”

Emily could feel her eyes popping wide in her head and her expression must have given her away, for Rafael laughed again and put a comforting hand on her shoulder.  “These are just precautions, yes?  I lived in these mountains all my life before the Academy and never had a serious problem with the grogin.”  He paused, reflecting.  “Well, maybe once or twice.”

“Gods of Our Mothers!” Emily said, but she was smiling.  “This doesn’t sound like a relaxing vacation; it sounds like one of those lunatic survival programs on the vids.”

He laughed again and touched her shoulder once more.  “No, no, Emily, you will see.  And in the meantime, you are in the most beautiful mountains in the Human Universe!”

And for no particular reason, Emily laughed with him, and decided that she liked it when he touched her.  That thought made her laugh again and shake her head at her foolishness.  Rosie’s ears twitched in reply and the sun caressed her face.  She was suddenly conscious of clouds sailing through the sky.

Then, because her damn mind never knew when to stop, another thought came unbidden:  Rafael’s hands were hard and had ridges of callous.  The only other people she knew with hands like that were coal miners from Christchurch.

And Fleet Marines.

She looked after him thoughtfully.

* * * *

Queen Anne was on the cruiser H.M.S. Wellington, awaiting an unwelcome visitor.  She idly tapped her fingers on her arm rest, thinking out the moves ahead.  Negotiations were a lot like Chaos Chess; you could plan your moves, but had to be ready for the unexpected disaster.  Unknowingly, she hummed a nursery rhyme.

Hiram Brill felt out of his depths.  He understood gathering intelligence and he understood tactics and strategy, but he had no experience with diplomacy.  “I don’t understand, what do they expect to gain from this?” he asked Sir Henry.

Sir Henry, the veteran of many disputes and countless negotiations, looked at him calmly.  “Time, Mr. Brill.  Distraction and time.”

Queen Anne pursed her lips.  “They are coming to take our temperature, Commander.  They want to see if we are nervous, uncertain, given to empty blustering, or, if they are very lucky, we are already defeated and desperate to get the best terms we can.”

“Majesty, what if they only want to distract you so that they can prepare another attack through the wormhole?”  Hiram ventured.

Queen Anne exchanged a look with Sir Henry.  They both smiled and looked almost fondly at Hiram.  Hiram looked from one to the other and sighed.  “Okay, that was incredibly stupid, of course they want to stall us while they prepare another attack.  But if you know that, why even bother to see the Dominion envoy at all?”

Sir Henry answered.  “Mr. Brill, for the moment the armed struggle is at stalemate.  That means that the contest is now about the will to fight of each nation.  We want to undermine their will to fight, as they want to undermine ours.  If your enemy can make you believe that you are defeated, that it is hopeless to continue to fight, then you are defeated.”  Sir Henry looked at him evenly.  “Do you understand?”

Hiram nodded, just a trifle uncertainly.

“While there are many ways to attack your enemy’s will to fight, in the end you are basically doing two things.”  Sir Henry held out his left hand.  “You are trying to create doubt or, conversely–“ he held out his right hand – “you are trying to create complacency.”

“Or both at the same time,” Queen Anne added, “because one can heighten the impact of the other.”

Hiram shook his head.  It seemed almost…silly.

Sir Henry read his thoughts.  “Never underestimate the value of doubt, Mr. Brill.  Doubt breeds uncertainty.  Uncertainty breeds indecision and anxiety and they in turn make for mistaken judgments.  Doubt can be worth an extra battleship or two, and since we are somewhat lacking in battleships, we will use the tools we have at hand.

“And complacency is even more valuable. Complacency is often based on bias, and bias is nothing more than the assumption of superiority without the benefit of any critical analysis. If we can confirm their biases, convince them that we are weak, then they might just attack when they should not, or fail to take some prudent defensive position that we can exploit.”  Sir Henry smiled wryly.  “And once we exploit their complacency, then of course the Dominion will succumb to doubt and uncertainty.  It’s all to the good, you see.”  He smiled, showing long teeth yellowed with age.

The Dominion envoy was due to arrive by courier ship in another fifteen minutes or so.  Sir Henry had insisted that the meeting be held on the Wellington rather than either the battleship Lionheart or the Atlas.  It was important that the Dominion envoy not see how strong the Victorian fleet was.  The Wellington had been pretty beaten up during the last two Dominion assaults.  It was scorched, dented and one small Dominion missile had even penetrated the hull and exploded, wrecking the crew quarters and one of the service bays.  The Lionheart had simply moved to the other side of the asteroid belt and gone into stealth mode.  Space station Atlas, meanwhile, was being towed deep into the asteroid belt and would be placed there, matching speeds with the asteroids around it.  ‘Hiding the fine china in the trash heap,’ was how Opinsky referred to it.  Captain Murphy’s tugs had spent days clearing a path into the asteroid belt, then more days towing the asteroids back into position to close the path behind Atlas.  It was now virtually invisible to sensors.

As long as Atlas was not smashed to pieces by one of the dozens of thousand ton asteroids swirling around it, the Queen mused ruefully, everything would be great.

Hiram looked at the older man skeptically.  “Why would their envoy trust anything you say?”

“We’ll make sure he doesn’t,” Queen Anne answered.

“And that’s how we will get him,” Sir Henry said with satisfaction.

* * * *

They were walking now to give the horses a rest.  The trees to either side were one hundred feet tall with small waxed leaves that fluttered in the slightest breeze, giving the impression of ocean waves moving majestically through the tree canopy above them. Emily stopped for a minute and just watched.  She could see the wind waves undulating through the trees from far down the mountain.  It was strangely soothing.

“What do you call these trees, Raf?” she asked as the trees swayed and fluttered above them.

Rafael stopped and looked up into the tree canopy.  “The locals in these mountains call them shatah mallah, which roughly translates as ‘Dances with God.’  However, based upon my higher education and years of experience, I would classify these particular trees as ‘tall,’ perhaps even belonging to the specie of ‘very tall,’” he said solemnly.   “And green as well.”

Emily reached over and patted Rosie’s neck.  “You know, old girl, I think this is going to be a very long week,” she said in a loud whisper.

And a mile or so later: “What was it like growing up in the mountains?” she asked.

He glanced at her.  “You really want to know?”

She nodded.  And the fact was, she really did.  It was not a question she was asking because Admiral Douthat needed information, she was genuinely curious.  And she enjoyed talking with Rafael.

He walked for another minute or two in silence before he replied.   There was no jesting this time, no laughter.  “It was wonderful and terrible, full of breathtaking beauty I didn’t really appreciate until I came back from the Academy.  I was a child here, yes?  I left and came back as a man, seeing this place for the first time with a man’s eyes.  And I saw the beauty, but with it I saw the constant danger.”

* * * *

Queen Anne eyed Michael Hudis with the same intense loathing she would a rabid dog, but her face was carefully neutral. Her mother had taught her that at a young age. The lesson had been harsh.  Twelve-year-old Anne had sat with her mother at Court when an elderly woman came to plead for her son’s life.  He had killed a man, but the elderly mother begged for a reprieve because he was her only source of support in her advanced years.  Anne’s heart had gone out to the old woman and she looked beseechingly at Queen Beatrice.  Beatrice had seen the old woman’s shrewd appraisal of Anne’s sympathy and the way she subtly focused her plea on Anne rather than on the Queen, herself.  Beatrice had interrupted the session and without a word strode to her private office.  Once inside, Queen Beatrice shut the door, turned to Anne and coolly slapped her across the face.

“One day you will be Queen,” her mother had told her.  “Your subjects will come from all over Victoria to seek your favor.  But they will not come out of loyalty, friendship or selflessness.”  She slapped Anne again.  “They will come because they want something from you.  Do you understand, Anne?”

Anne’s face stung and flamed under the slaps, but she held her ground, glaring furiously at her mother.   Queen Beatrice stared back at her.  “Anne, you will have to deal with subjects, with your advisors, with people who support you or people whose support you need.  All of them will want something from you.  And all of them will watch you.  They will watch you like you were a snake that might bite them or a lover who might embrace them.  But they will watch you like you have never been watched before, hoping for a sign of sympathy, of fear, of indecision.  And whatever emotion they see in your face, they will use to their own benefit.

“So this is your lesson, Anne Radcliff Mendoza Churchill, and learn it well:  A ruler never shows emotion unless she chooses to, and then only for a good reason.  To reveal emotion in public without a purpose reflects either immaturity or a singular lack of self-discipline, either of which is more dangerous to you than a knife or a gun or a bomb.”

Queen Beatrice had sighed then, looking at her furious daughter.  “You are angry with me.  Your cheeks are red, your pupils are closed down to little spots, and your mouth is sullen.  All these are signs an enemy can read.  So now, close your eyes and empty your face of emotion. Take your emotion and lock it away so that your face reveals nothing to your friends or your foes, because both will try to use you if you let them.”

Anne had fled the room, angry tears burning down her cheeks.  But the lessons continued unrelentingly.  Finally, when Anne was fifteen, Queen Beatrice slapped her yet again without warning.  Anne broke into a radiant smile and said in a calm, even voice, “Good morning Mother, it is a fine day, is it not?”  And her mother, Queen of Victoria, looked at her shrewdly, and then nodded in approval.

The old lessons were much in her mind as she watched the Dominion envoy walk towards her.  They’d emptied a conference room and put in thicker carpet, wall hangings with scenes from Victoria’s history, and at the end of the room an oversized chair on a raised dais.  There were no other chairs in the room, so the envoy from the Dominion of Unified Citizenry would stand.

“Welcome to the Wellington, Ambassador,” she said.  She spoke only to Hudis.  The others with him were minions and on this day she would waste neither time nor courtesy on them.

Hudis bowed slightly from the waist.  “Thank you for agreeing to see me, Majesty, though I regret that I have given you the misimpression of being an ambassador.  My role is…”

“I know your role,” Queen Anne said coolly.  “You are not an ambassador and you are certainly no diplomat.  What you are, Mr. Hudis, is the Citizen Director’s personal henchman.  Your role is to be your master’s thug.  In another time and place, you would break kneecaps for a living, but fate has decreed that our paths must cross here, Mr. Hudis, so I call you ‘Ambassador’ to allow me the pretext that I am dealing with an honorable nation.  I beg you to indulge me in this minor self-delusion.”

Hudis stared at her coldly.  She stared back.

“I trust we can dispense with the diplomatic niceties today, Mr. Hudis, since you invaded Victoria without provocation, used nuclear weapons on a planetary target in violation of the Darwin Accords and killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, to say nothing of Queen Beatrice.”  Pink dots had appeared on her cheeks and she glared at him.  She visibly struggled to control herself.

“I am sure you have a message from your master, Mr. Hudis,” she continued after a moment.  “What is it?”

Hudis smiled inwardly.  This was excellent.  She was angry.  Very angry.  But of course she was young and did not know better.  And where there is anger, there is often fear as well, and sometimes in the heat of the moment people blurted out things they should not. He thought for a moment on how he could use this, then spoke.  “Your Majesty, I am here to try to put a stop to the bloodshed between our worlds.  The People of the Dominion of Unified Citizenry regret the level of hardship that has fallen upon you-“

“Sanctimony does not become you,” Anne said through gritted teeth.  “I would ask you one more time to get to the point or this meeting is finished.”

Hudis bowed his head.  “Of course, Majesty.  Citizen Director Nasto has authorized me to tell you that the Dominion of Unified Citizenry will cease active hostilities against you if you scuttle your warships, release the Atlas space station to the Dominion and pledge to remain within the Refuge System.  No harm will come to you or your citizens, on the Citizen Director’s honor.”   Let her chew on that, he thought with satisfaction.

Queen Anne stared at him for a long moment.  Part of her was incredulous at the audacity of  his proposal, part of her was bemused.

“It is perhaps a good thing that you are not a diplomat, Mr. Hudis, for you do not have the skills for it,” she said at last.  From the side of the room, Hiram was trying to watch everyone at once, his eyes darting from the Queen to Sir Henry to Hudis and back again.  Hudis, he saw, took not the slightest offense at her words or her tone.  Hudis didn’t care, Hiram realized.  He was not here to reach a truce.

“Let me be blunt, Your Majesty,” Hudis replied.  “You have lost.  Victoria has lost.  We – the Dominion – now occupy Cornwall.  We control access to Christchurch and will occupy it in due course.  You are cornered here in Refuge.  Your fleet is badly damaged.  Even with the Atlas space station you cannot build a new fleet in time to prevent us from entering Refuge and destroying you.”

Anne stared at him, eyes bulging, breath coming in short gasps.   She raised a hand to her mouth, and then lowered it trembling to her lap.  When she spoke her voice shook. “You may have destroyed our battleships, Mr. Hudis, but I fear you greatly overestimate your own forces and underestimate ours.  Even now Atlas is producing a battleship a week.  And our remaining Fleet ships will soon be repaired, including this one.  You may have caught us unawares once, sir, but even with that advantage you were not able to destroy us.”

Hudis inwardly smirked.  She had overplayed her hand.  Her claim that Atlas could build a battleship every week was preposterous.  Was she trying to hide something?  Could Atlas have been damaged during the fighting?  And the tidbit about the Fleet ships being repaired?  Perhaps the Victorians were hurt even worse than had been reported. Had all of the Vicky battleships been destroyed? Perhaps, just perhaps, the Dominion forces should attack now rather than wait four months until Siegestor had produced another Battle Fleet.

“Your Majesty,” he said evenly.  “We have a large fleet and the ability to produce more ships than you can.  If you resist, we will simply invade Refuge and all these good people who have given you shelter will die, all because of your willfulness.”

Queen Anne squirmed for a moment in her chair, glancing at Sir Henry as if for support.  “Do not think you are invulnerable, Mr. Hudis.   We are familiar with your Might of the People Ship Works.  It is a very old design, isn’t it? Not very well armored, if I recall.  If we destroy it, I think the Dominion would not be able to build another for years and years.  Do not threaten us, Mr. Hudis.”  She paused, fingers twisting together nervously in her lap.  “You offer us a truce, but demand that we disarm. We would be helpless. What guarantee do we have that you would keep your word?”

Hudis was elated.  She wanted guarantees!  Queen Anne was willing to consider even disarming her fleet.  My God, she really is a foolish child!  And then her other statement sunk in.  He grinned inwardly; the Victorians knew nothing about the Dominion’s second shipyard at Siegestor.  That revelation alone made this entire meeting worthwhile.

“Your Majesty, what sort of guarantees would you wish?” he asked skeptically.

Anne looked again at Sir Henry.  Sir Henry said, “At a minimum we would want a peacekeeping force from Darwin in the Refuge Sector to ensure the peace.  We also want guarantees that civilians on Cornwall will not be harmed or abused in any way.”

Hudis made a show of considering this.  “Your Majesty, this is of course far above my authority to grant or deny.  I can tell you that while the Citizen Director has no interest in harming any civilians on Cornwall, he would not take kindly to the idea of a Darwin peacekeeping force patrolling within the sovereign space of the Dominion.”

“It is not Dominion sovereign space, sir,” Anne hissed.  “It is Victorian!”

Hudis stared at her impassively.  “No, Majesty, it was Victorian, but now it is a part of the Dominion of Unified Citizenry.  This is a fact, Majesty, and it will not change in your lifetime.”  He bowed again, this time only slightly.  “I will take your requests to the Citizen Director and report back to you in due course, Majesty.  In the meantime, if you value the well-being of your former subjects on Cornwall and Christchurch, I strongly recommend that you refrain from any hostile actions while the parameters of a final truce are being resolved.”  With that, he turned and strode from the chamber.  As he reached the door, Queen Anne shot to her feet.

“Guarantees!” she shouted in a shrill voice.  “Do you hear me, Hudis?  I must have guarantees that my people will be kept safe!”

Hudis left without acknowledging her.  In the corridor no one saw the smile tugging at his lips.

Once Hudis was out of sight, Queen Anne sat down in her chair and casually crossed her legs.  Her hands were on the arm rests, one finger tapping out a slow, thoughtful rhythm.  Her face was expressionless.  Hiram glanced from the Queen to Sir Henry and back again.

“Well,” said Sir Henry, nodding to himself.  “I think that went rather well.”

“Yes,” Anne agreed evenly.  “I think it did.”

* * * *

When he arrived back at his room, Hiram found someone waiting in the corridor.  He was dressed in the deep royal blue of Fleet Marines and wore the insignia of a Colonel.  He was short, barrel-chested and had the weathered face of someone who has spent most of his life outdoors.

“May I help you?” Hiram asked, more than a little curious.

The man studied him frankly.  “You Hiram Brill?” he asked pointedly.

Hiram nodded.

“I’m Dov Tamari.  I’ve got news of Sergeant Maria Sanchez.”

For a moment Hiram just stared at him, fear and hope battling for control.  His face must have given him away.  “No, no, she’s alive,” Tamari spoke quickly.  He looked abashed.  “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.  Look, can we go inside, I really don’t want to get into this out here.”

Inside, Hiram numbly poured himself a small Scotch, and then offered some to Major Tamari, who shook his head.  “I don’t drink alcohol, but if you’ve got some tea?”  Hiram filled a mug with hot water and put out a tea bag, then looked up at Tamari.  “Tell me.”

“I am a Colonel in the Fleet Marines,” Tamari said.  “Are you familiar with the Long Range Reconnaissance forces?”

Hiram thought for a moment.  The LRR were used by the Fleet to penetrate deep into the sectors of other worlds and snoop, taking pictures and vids or intercepting communications.  They mostly used modified corvettes with small crews that relied on stealth instead of arms.   They often had oversized inertia compensators that permitted very rapid acceleration. They concentrated on ports, shipyards, military bases, and communication networks and liked to get close to any new class of enemy warship, sending back pictures of its exterior to give the Fleet some hints about its armaments and performance.  It required nerves of steel to sneak into restricted areas, monitor transmissions and take videos and then sneak out again.  It called for a cool head, comfort with a high level of risk and the ability to work independently without support for long periods of time.  More than one corvette had been forced to play hide and seek with hostile forces for weeks or even months.

The fatality rate was sobering.

Hiram nodded.  “I’ve heard of you.  What’s this got to do with Cookie?”

Colonel Tamari shook his head.  “Commander, when the Dominion kicked the door in, we had about thirty corvettes out on assignment, including a bunch in the Dominion sector, most of them near Timor.  We lost touch with all of them for a while, but some of them are reporting in via courier drone, while some others have actually come all the way to Refuge to rejoin the Fleet.”

Hiram was getting impatient.  “I don’t mean to press you, Colonel, but what does this have to do with Cookie?”

Colonel Tamari fixed him with a look that made it clear he was not used to being rushed.  “We had a dozen LRR corvettes in the Dominion sector.  They often work together as a team.  About four days ago the corvette Laughing Owl was monitoring ship departures from a military base on Timor, the home world of the Dominion.  It picked up a ship called the Tartarus, which we know to be a prison ship for very sensitive political prisoners.  By itself that would not be very important, but it intercepted a transmission from the Tartarus to the military picket stating it was in route to “Siegestor.”  The captain of the Laughing Owl couldn’t find any reference in the database to “Siegestor,” which made her very curious.  Then two more things happened.  First, the Tartarus turned away from Timor and away from the route that would lead to the wormhole to Victoria.  Instead it turned into deep space.  To the best of our knowledge, there isn’t much of anything out there, so the captain of the Laughing Owl decided to tag along.”

Now Hiram could feel his pulse quicken.

“The second thing is that the captain of the Laughing Owl decided to risk a very low sensor pulse on a special frequency.  I don’t know if you are aware of this, but some of our Marine personnel have small responder device implanted in them.  It’s useful during search and rescue missions to be able to locate a Marine, even if he’s lost his combat helmet.  For LRR personnel, it is sometimes helpful to quickly determine who is a friendly and who is not if a team is working planetside.”

Hiram closed his eyes and unconsciously held his breath.

“Maria Sanchez is on the Tartarus, Commander.  The responder device is powered by a nerve connection with the person it is embedded in, so we can tell if the person is alive or dead.  As of four days ago she was alive.  We can’t tell anything more than that, but she was alive.”

Hiram opened his eyes and slowly let out his breath.  “And?”

Tamari shrugged.  “The Laughing Owl is still following them.  They’re not in any hurry, but they are definitely moving deeper and deeper into space that is, as far as we know, empty except for some asteroid clusters.”

Something was bothering him.  “I thought the transporters would not transport metal.  How did the responder chip make it?”

Tamari shook his head.  “I didn’t say ‘chip,’ Commander, I said ‘device.’  The responder is organic.  We designed it so that it would not appear on any body scans the enemy might make.”

Hiram turned to his computer and typed in “Siegestor” with a general search.  Nothing came back on any of the military or intelligence databases, but the general civilian database returned an article about a city gate in Munich, one of the cities on Old Earth.  In 1852 (Old Calendar) the King of a country named Germany built a “Victory Gate” in Munich in honor of the Bavarian army.

“Victory Gate?” Hiram murmured.  Why would they name something Victory Gate? The gateway to the Dominion’s victory over Victoria?  He wanted it to be the secret Dominion shipyard, but shook his head. Mustn’t jump to conclusions.  Nowhere near enough information.

“Colonel, who is now the ranking officer for the Long Range Reconnaissance force?”

Tamari looked wary.  “Well, the command staff were all on Cornwall.  The only reason why I wasn’t there was a family emergency here on Refuge, so I guess I am.”

“Colonel Tamari, you now report to me,” Hiram told him. “Sit down; we have a lot to discuss.”

* * * *

As they climbed higher, the vistas to the east were breathtaking.  They stopped for lunch in an alpine meadow, hobbled the horses and let them graze on the knee high grass and unpacked some cold chicken and fruit and a bottle of water.  Rafael spread a blanket over the grass and they sat on it, hunger making the food delicious, and watched flocks of birds beginning their winter migrations south to the equator.

“When my ancestors first moved here, there were only thorny bushes in this part of the mountains,” Rafael told her as they ate.  “They planted pines and other evergreens from Old Earth and they’ve spread out into forests.  Over the years they added oaks and elm, ash and birch.  They tried maples, but for some reason they didn’t take.  There are native trees of course, but you see them mostly in the lowlands, usually by rivers and streams.  They’ve even imported some of the tall redwoods from Darwin. Beautiful trees, incredibly tall and majestic. They’re hardy enough, but they spread slowly; we’ll see some further up the mountain above Ouididi.”

“You still have family here?” Emily asked.

He nodded, smiling.  “Oh, yes.  My three mothers are still in Ouididi, along with my three fathers – by custom we call them uncles – and some of my sisters and brothers.  Some of my brothers have gone into the Marines.  A couple of my sisters have joined marriage families in other villages, although two started a new marriage home in Ouididi.”

For a moment Emily though she had misheard him.  “Raf, did you say your three mothers?”

Raf looked confused.  “Of course, Emily, this is where I was born.  This is where my mothers live, and my uncles.”

It was Emily’s turn to be confused.  There was something on the fringes of her memory, something from a sociology course she’d taken in college.  Communal families in other worlds or something like that.  “Raf, do you mean that you lived with your mother and father in some sort of commune with other families?”

Raf laughed.  “You Vickies!  No, Emily, when my ancestors first landed on Refuge and moved up into the mountains, life was very hard.  We lost a lot of people in the first few years.  Husbands were killed by grogin, wives died from the stilla virus, children died in the winter.  There were a lot of broken families, widows, widowers, orphans.  Somewhere along the way a married couple took in a husbandless woman and she joined them as a wife, to help them and be helped by them.  Another couple took in a man who had lost his wife and he became their husband.”

Emily tried to digest his.  “But—but, you mean the new wife or husband was integrated sexually into the household as a full husband or wife, not just taken in as a guest?”

Rafael nodded, his eyes light with amusement.  “My ancestors were fighting for their survival, Emily.  The notion of ‘family’ evolved to ensure that they would survive even if one or two family members were lost.”

“But you said you have three mothers!  How does that work?”

He laughed at her confusion.  “Oh, Emily, I wish you could see your face right now.  What started with small families of three adults evolved.  Two women with one husband brought in another man to join them.  The women considered themselves wives to both men as the men considered themselves husbands to both women.  When the really bad times came, about thirty years after we settled here, family size grew out of need and the desire for greater security.”  He smiled.  “And we would say it grew out of love.”

“But if two wives had a single husband and then brought in another husband, why wouldn’t they split off into two couples?”

Rafael shrugged.  “Because they didn’t want to.  Because the women loved both men and the men loved both women.  Because it made sense for them to live in a larger family unit, with more hands to do chores and take care of the children.”

Emily took a deep breath.  “But how would a woman know who the father of her children was?”

Rafael smiled gently.  “Emily, she does know.  The father of her children are her husbands.  All of them.  And each man is ‘uncle’ to the children.”

Emily struggled for a moment with the subject-verb agreement, then gave it up.  It must have shown on her face, for Rafael continued, “Each man in the family views all of the children as his.  Each mother views all of the men as the father of her birth children and views herself as mother to all of the children.  And the children grow up with many loving parents instead of just two.”

“And you grew up in a family like this?” Emily asked cautiously.

Rafael nodded.  “I was very happy, Emily.  I had my Uncle Amin to teach me how to hunt in the mountains, my Uncle Yael to teach me languages, my birth mother Leila to teach me how to cook and mend clothes, my mother Aicha to teach me how to read and about art, my Uncle Danny to tell me about other worlds and what life as a Marine was like, my mother-“

“Stop!” Emily laughed, holding up her hands.  “Okay, I get the idea!”   she shook her head.  “I just have to digest this a bit.”

“So I shouldn’t tell you now about ‘Flower Rooms’ when girls turn fifteen?” he teased.

Emily clapped her hands over her ears.  “I was a history major, not a budding anthropologist!” she said pleadingly.  “If you overload me, I am going to curl up in a ball and suck my thumb.”

“Peace, Emily!  Peace!  My mother Leila will be very unhappy with me if I don’t deliver you intact and smiling.”

A thought stuck her.  “Am I going to meet all of your mothers and fathers?”  The thought was a little daunting.

Rafael laughed out loud.  “Oh, yes, Emily, all of them.  And my brothers and sisters, the ones who live in Ouididi anyway.   There will be a big meal in your honor, yes?”

Emily blinked.  “But Rafael, I’m not your girlfriend or your fiancée.  I’m just a tourist here.”

Rafael shook his head.  “No, no, Emily, you don’t understand.  You are from Victoria.  Anyone from Victoria would be an honored guest, but on top of that you are a soldier who has fought against the Dominion.”

“But the Dominion isn’t your enemy,” Emily protested.

Now Rafael was deadly serious.  “The Dominion is Victoria’s enemy, and the enemy of Victoria is the enemy of Refuge.  Refuge pays its debts.”

Chapter 5

On Space Station Atlas, in Refuge Sector

Hiram Brill sat at his desk for a long time, sipping endless cups of Darjeeling tea.  He thought about the lesson in diplomacy and psychology he’d learned from Queen Anne and Sir Henry, about Emily Tuttle on leave on Haifa, about Grant Skiffington trying desperately to keep his unexpected captaincy of the Yorkshire.

He thought of Cookie on the Dominion prison ship.

And Brother Jong of The Light, and his ability to travel without detection.

And a place called Siegestor that was not on any map.

When he was ready, he carefully put down his tea mug and placed a call.

“Yes?”  A woman’s voice, fuzzy with sleep.

“Specialist Romano?” he asked.  “Lori Romano?”

“Yeah.”  There was the sound of a yawn.  “What time is it?”

“You’re the one who has been working on the Tilleke teleportation ships,” he said.  Not a question.

“Who is this?” Romano asked, suddenly more alert and more guarded.

“I apologize for calling you this late,” Hiram said softly.  “I am Commander Brill, Queen Anne’s adjutant and Intelligence Officer.”  He could hear a rustle of bed sheets as Romano suddenly sat upright in her cabin.  “I want you to meet me at 0700 in my office.  I’ll have some breakfast for us both.  I have a little job for you.”

“But, sir, I-“

“No buts, Romano.  My office, 0700.  Go back to bed and get some rest.”  He hung up, replacing the phone gently in its cradle.  He made another cup of tea and called up a holo display of the Dominion Sector, paying particular attention to the wormhole entrance from Victoria into the Dominion.

He sat there a long time.

Chapter 6

In the village of Ouididi, Atlas Mountains, Refuge

They arrived at Ouididi just as the sun set.  The first thing Emily noticed was the twenty foot electric fence that surrounded the village, but then her attention was drawn to the houses, which were a riot of red and green and blue and white.  Children ran through the narrow streets, announcing their arrival with shouts and laughter.  Curious adults emerged on the street or stood on balconies and waved their greetings.  Everyone seemed to know Rafael.  Some of the women looked at Rafael and then Emily and called their bantering congratulations.  Emily’s universal translator caught it all.

“So, Rafael, you finally bring home a bride, eh?”  Or, “God is great!  Even Rafael has finally fallen!  And such a beauty!”  And, “You must be bringing a new bride for your brother, Rafael, she’s obviously too good for the likes of you!”

Rafael shouted back friendly insults and retorts, meanwhile taking care not to trample any of the children running alongside his horse.  One small dark haired girl with luminous brown eyes ran up.  “You’re back!  You’re back!”  Rafael reached down, got hold of her jacket collar and swung her up to sit in front of him on the saddle.  “What have we here, eh?  Is this a baby grogon that snuck into the village?”

She looked over her shoulder, baring her teeth in a mock snarl.  “I am much more ferocious than any grogon you’ll meet, Rafael Eitan, but not half as fierce as the Mothers.  They are going to tear you apart!  You don’t come home for months, and then when you do you tell them you are staying for only one night!”  She wagged a finger at him.  “By the time they finish with you, brother, you will be in the stew pot for our supper!”

Rafael laughed, but Emily thought it might be a little forced.  Then the little girl leaned out so that she could see Emily.  “I am Rafael’s sister, Nouar.   I welcome you to our village.”

Emily leaned over and shook her hand.  “I am Emily Tuttle.  I met your brother during training at Camp Gettysburg.”

Nouar’s eyes widened.  “Oh, you are that Emily!  My family will be honored to meet you.  Rafael told us all about you in his letters home.”  Emily raised an eyebrow.  That was…interesting.

“Captain Tuttle is the captain of a Victorian warship,” Rafael told his sister seriously.  “She fought the Dominion after they invaded Victoria and made it possible for Queen Anne to safely reach Refuge.”

Nouar looked at her with new interest, but before she could say anything further, Rafael brought his horse to a stop.  “We’re here,” he said.  “Let’s put the horses away and get something to drink.”

Rafael’s six parents were mostly in their fifties, with the youngest, Hakima, in her mid-forties. His birth mother, Leila, was a petite, small-boned woman with a light complexion and tawny colored hair running to grey that fell past her shoulders.  She looked nothing like her tall, broad-shouldered, swarthy son and Emily amused herself for a few moments trying to guess which of the three men at the table was Rafael’s birth father, before conceding it could have been any of them.

There were ten children at the house, the youngest being Nouar and the oldest Fatum, who was married and had two children of her own.  She was a year or so older than Rafael – and Emily, too, for that matter – and she studied Emily with frank curiosity, her eyes shifting from Emily to Rafael and back again.  Dinner was served at two long tables that stood in the center of a large dining room.  The tables were made from wide planks of the local wood; there were benches for the children and chairs for the adults.  There was hot food and tea, thick loaves of a dark bead that tasted of molasses and a dark red local wine that at first Emily found too bitter and sour, but by the end of the second glass thought wonderful.  And Gods help me if I have a third glass, she thought, I’ll just fall asleep here at the table.

The three fathers – Amin, Danny and Yael – were mostly quiet, but the mothers fussed over Emily as if she were a long lost daughter.  At the other table, the younger children mostly talked among themselves, occasionally glancing at Rafael and laughing over something.  Conversation ranged from the early signs of winter, hunting, recent grogin sightings – a large pack was in the area and the villagers went beyond the electric fence only if armed – to the war with the Dominion.

“What bothers me is the rumor you heard that the Tilleke were involved with the Dominion,” Yael told Emily, his spectacles flashing in the light.  “Bad enough to be caught unawares by the Dominion, but the Tilleke are truly a nasty lot, too clever by half and Emperor Chalabi has to be the most ruthless man in Human Space.”

“And Godless,” murmured Leila and the others nodded in agreement.

“How do you manage to stay so well informed here in Ouididi?” Emily asked with genuine curiosity.

“Oh, we have radio and television just like the cities,” Yael assured her.  “You couldn’t have seen it when you arrived, but we have a large antenna half a mile along the ridgeline, so we have good broadband reception and follow things pretty closely on the Nets.”

“Khali Yael is being modest,” Rafael said, across the table from her.  “He spends six months of the year in Haifa; he’s a professor of political science at the University, so we are a better informed family than most in Ouididi.”

One of the other fathers, Danny, chimed in.  “Yael is also our token liberal, though how we ever let a liberal into the family still escapes me.”

“I thought it was my overwhelming sex appeal,” Yael deadpanned, and then tried to look hurt when all of the other adults hooted with laughter.  He glanced at Emily and winked.

“We needed to balance off having a blood thirsty Fleet Marine and a backwoodsman in the house,” Hakima suggested dryly.

Danny laughed.  “He does do that, he does.”  He turned to Emily.  “All honor to you for escaping the Dominion the way you did.  ‘Tis rare to escape a trap like that.”  He laughed and slapped the table.  “Oh, and I’d loved to have seen the looks on their faces when they realized you’d taken the space station Atlas with you.”  He laughed again and the gesture was so familiar that Emily knew without a doubt that he was Rafael’s natural father.  “It was a fine thing you did, a fine thing indeed.”

“And in the midst of this, you are here to visit the Temple Ait Driss?” asked Hakima.  She was a tall, shrewd looking woman with the strong nose and high cheekbones of many of the mountain folk.  And as Hakima glanced at her, Emily realized the question had many layers.   She grasped then that while Hakima may not be Rafael’s birth mother, she most certainly was his mother and every bit as protective of him as any mother could be.  Aicha and Leila, busy chatting with Rafael, did not hear the question, but Yael did and he looked askance at his wife.

“Emily is our guest, Hakima,” he said softly but firmly, “let’s not press her unduly even before we’ve had dessert.”  Rafael suddenly realized that the conversation had taken a turn and listened more closely.  Hakima gazed steadily at Emily.

“It took us a week to reach Refuge,” Emily said after a long pause.  “We were fighting every day, sometimes all day.  My battle group, the Coldstream Guards, was assigned the job of finding the Dominion supply train and destroying it.  We found it, but were ambushed and took many losses.”

“Emily,” Rafael interrupted, “you don’t have to explain any of this.  We-“

Emily held up a hand to stop him.  “It’s alright, Raf.  It is odd that they sent me here, but I think I know why.”  She turned back and addressed Hakima directly, conscious that in the background the children’s table had fallen silent and they were all listening as well.

“My captain and the other officers were killed, so I ended up in command of the ship.  We destroyed the Dominion supply ships and fought our way back to the Atlas, but then had to hold off a strong attack by the Dominions as we approached the Refuge wormhole.  By the end there were only three ships left of the original twenty. We were the rearguard; if the Dominions got past us they’d have a clear shot at the Atlas.  There was a Dominion battleship-“  She faltered, then continued, her voice bleak.  “To stop it I had to send my best friend on a suicide mission.  I knew what I was doing.  I gave the order.  It worked and the Atlas escaped, but she was captured and I don’t think I will ever see her again.”  She shook her head.  “Every morning I wake up and think that because of my orders she is sitting in a cell somewhere…”

“You honor her with your grief,” Leila said, giving Hakima a warning glance.

Hakima nodded.  “You do her honor, as is right, but that does not explain why you are here instead of with your Fleet preparing for battle.”

“Hakima, enough!” Leila snapped.

“I am here because the Fleet Surgeon thinks I need a vacation or I will have a breakdown,” Emily said matter-of-factly.  “And she’s right.  We lost a lot of captains in the escape, a lot of ships and many thousands of sailors.  Twice I was one of only a few survivors.

“At the end, I had resigned myself to death. It just seemed…inevitable.  I sent away all of the crew I didn’t need to fight the ship, then I was going to ram the Dominion battleship because I was out of missiles.  That’s when I sent my friend on the mission, knowing she could not survive.”

At the children’s table, the teens stared at her open-mouthed.  Around her the adults stood in a tableau of disparate reactions: Hakima gazed at her steadily, Leila wiped tears from her eyes, Yael clenched his jaw, Amin, the woodsman, seemed to study her with new interest and Danny, the old soldier, nodded in sympathetic understanding.

“I know the Fleet needs me,” Emily continued, struggling to keep her voice calm despite the emotion threatening to overcome her. “But it’s hard.  I try to put it behind me. I think the Fleet Surgeon is hoping that a change of scenery will help me to shake off the dust and stop brooding, and Gods know the scenery here is unlike anything I’ve ever seen.”  There, I’ve said it, Emily thought, a little stunned that she actually had said it to a group of complete strangers.

Leila looked stricken, but Hakima nodded, then sighed.  “Refuge will pay its debt,” she said, “but this is going to be a terrible war.”  She looked then at Rafael.  “And you, my son, must promise that you will be careful.  I couldn’t bear it if something happened to you.”  Her gaze swept over Leila and Aicha.  “None of us could.”

“I think you should fall in love with Rafael,” Nouar announced loudly from the children’s table.  “That would help you stop brooding!”

“Such wisdom!” Aicha said sternly.  “We are blessed to have such wisdom from one so young!”  She stood up, drawing to her full five feet height.  “You children, clear up the dinner plates and wash them.  And you, our little match maker, it is your turn to wipe the tables and sweep the floor.  Off you go!”

The children went grumbling to their chores, but Nouar tried for the last word:  “It is time Rafael got married,” she announced stoutly.  “Emily is perfect.  She’s a war hero, not some stupid city girl like those others he’s dated.”

“I actually wanted to be a historian,” Emily told her, “not a soldier.”

Nouar’s face lit up.  “See?  What did I tell you?  She’s even got brains, unlike those silly doxies Rafael usually favors.”

Emily blinked, then turned to Hakima and asked in a low whisper, “I keep thinking she’s a child.  How old is she?”

Hakima snorted ruefully.  “Twelve going on thirty, and may the One God be merciful to the men who marry her!”

Emily gave Nouar a considering look and turned back to Hakima.  “She is your birth daughter?”

Hakima rolled her eyes in affectionate exasperation.  “Oh, yes, she’s mine.  The One does have a sense of humor, you know.”

Emily laughed.  “I am a guest here and mean no offense, but I would guess that you were a handful as a teenager.”

“You would guess correctly,” Hakima admitted, a little sheepishly.  “My mothers always told me that someday I would have a daughter just like me and finally learn how much trouble I was.”  She gestured helplessly at Nouar.  “And so it has come to pass.”  She sobered then, turning back to Emily.  “I apologize for my questions.  Rafael is much loved, but he has brought home some truly inappropriate women, Nouar is right about that.  I wanted to make sure-“

Emily held up her hands.  “No, please, I understand.  But honestly, I am here just as a tourist.  Until this morning, I had no idea that Rafael would be my guide.  I think they asked him because we knew each other at Camp Gettysburg.”

Leila joined them then and touched Emily’s arm.  “Come, have some more tea and dessert, then I will show you your room.  You’ve had a long day and tomorrow will be even longer.”  She slipped her arm through Emily’s and led her back to the table.  “We are very proud of our Rafael and honored that they chose him to escort you to the Temple.  You know the history of Ait Driss?”

“Only a little,” Emily admitted.  “I know it was the site of a massacre, but I don’t know the details.”

Leila nodded.  “Rafael will tell you more on the way, but it is a sacred place to us.  Not sacred because of anything religious that happened there, no, but because what happened there was such a tragedy, a great loss of life.  It was a turning point for the people who lived in the mountains, they had to change the way they lived together in order to survive.”

Emily thought about this for a moment, then it struck her.  “Was this when the larger marital units began?” she asked.

Leila smiled.  “’Larger marital units,’” she repeated, bemused.  “Such a dry, clinical phrase for something so profound.  For hundreds of years Moroccan and Israeli cultures had the traditional husband and wife marriages.  One man, one woman, bonded together.  Then after the massacre at Ait Driss, with winter coming and the grogin packs running thick in the forest, there were so many shattered families that the people here in the mountains had to change.  Change or die.”  Leila shrugged.  “No one knows exactly how it started, but it worked and eventually became accepted as a norm.  It certainly hasn’t replaced the traditional man-woman marriage, still lots of those around, but particularly here in the mountains, it is pretty common.”

Emily glanced about to make sure none of the children were close, then leaned forward and spoke softly.  “But what if you just don’t like one of the husbands?  What do you do?  How do you not have sex with him, and if you do sleep with him, how do you stand it?”

Leila smiled and touched her arm.  “I won’t say it’s not a problem, because it does happen.  But most of all it means that all the wives and husbands are really, really careful when they pick a new spouse.  It’s a big decision, and sometimes the new spouse will come and live with you for a few months, kind of on probation. Jealousy and greed are the things that ruin it usually.”  She shrugged. “It doesn’t always work out and sometimes the new spouse has to leave.  It’s hard, Emily.  Hard enough to match personalities and to be sexually compatible with one person, with more it just gets harder.”  Her eyes twinkled.  “But when it works, it works very well.”

Emily gazed across the room.  “But Yael and Danny and Amin all seem so different.”

Leila laughed.  She leaned forward and whispered,  “That’s called spice.”  Emily looked uncertain.  “I guess if you’re born to it, it doesn’t seem so strange-“

“Born to it?  Gods of Our Mothers, child, didn’t Rafael tell you?  I’m from Victoria, same as you.  I came here when I was nineteen, looking for a job and maybe a little adventure.  When I learned about these mountain marriages, I couldn’t believe my ears!  Then when I met Amin and Aicha and they asked me to join them, well, it was quite a shock, quite a shock.  But-“  she grinned mischievously and for a moment Emily glimpsed the bold, impetuous girl Leila had been at nineteen – “I must say it was pretty exciting.  And no, you don’t have the same relationship with all of the men, but you most certainly do have a relationship with each one, and each one is different.”  Leila’s eyes drifted upward and she smiled.  “When I need comfort and safety, I go to Amin.  When I need a rousing good time, Danny, and when I need to really talk about something, Yael.  It’s more complicated than that, of course it is, but whatever your need at the time, or your mood, there is always someone to turn to.  Not for everyone, no, but my goodness, it can be fine when you’ve got the right people.”  Her face softened in memory.   “And they have the most beautiful wedding ceremony.”  Her fingers touched the token hanging on a leather thong about her neck.

Emily’s curiosity, never far below the surface, welled up.  “Leila, I noticed that all six of you wear something around your neck on leather thongs.  What is it?” she asked.

Leila lifted the thong from beneath her blouse and held it out.  Emily leaned forward to see it better.  The leather thong was old and worn perfectly smooth.  At the bottom hung a small stone carved in the shape of a shatah mallah, the tree known as ‘Dances with God.’  “It is the token of the Eitan family, chosen originally by Amin and Aicha when they first moved here and married.”

Emily remembered gazing in awe at the shatah mallah as the mountain winds blow through them.  She brushed her fingers over the necklace.  “It is very pretty.”

“I haven’t taken it off in thirty years,” Leila told her.  “As part of my wedding ceremony, Amin and Aicha tied it around my neck.  Each of them tied a knot.  Aicha tied the first knot and told me: ‘This is for love, for it is love that brought us together this day.’  Then Amin tied his knot and said: ‘This is for perseverance, so that the love may endure even when life brings us trials and hard times.  We tie these knots with joy and commitment.  These knots bind us unto you and you unto us. No one may separate us until each knot is untied.’”

“Gods of Our Mothers,” Emily whispered.

Leila nodded.  “As we bring in a new spouse, we add another knot to their thong and to each of ours.  Each makes us stronger, even during the times I am so exasperated with them I could spit!”  She laughed.  “Got to give it to these mountain folk, they know how to make a family!”

Emily thought on that awhile, trying to get her mind around everything she had heard.  She could, almost, understand the idea that three men and three women could love one another enough to share a marriage and each other, but one thing still eluded her.  “But doesn’t it bother you that you don’t know who the father of your children is?” she asked finally.

Leila snorted and shook her head impatiently.  “Of course I know.  Oh, I know the men say that, but every woman here knows.  We don’t plan it, though sometimes a woman might make sure she sleeps with a particular husband at the right time, but what really matters is that every one of those men treats all of the children as his. That’s the ironclad rule, the one we absolutely insist on. The children in this marriage family do not lack for love, Emily, they most certainly do not.”

A little overwhelmed, Emily allowed herself to be taken back to the dining room for tea, which was made with a pad of butter and a pinch of salt, then infused with steamed milk.  She sipped it tentatively, finally deciding it was probably an acquired taste in a culture where both fat and salt were hard to come by.  Meanwhile she listened as Rafael’s mothers and fathers argued the merits of a new school proposal for the province, while the children played a complicated strategy game that seemed to involve collecting hidden treasures from the forests and hiding from marauding grogin.  Hours later, Hakima and little Nouar took her to her room for the night, where she lay down,  wondered for the briefest of moments if the morrow could possibly be any stranger than today and then crashed into sleep.

* * * *

In the morning the mothers greeted her warmly and fed her a hot breakfast while the fathers helped Rafael pack the horses.  Yael gave Rafael a hug, shook Emily’s hand and went inside.  Danny and Amin led Rafael and Emily to a barn that Emily quickly realized also served as the family armory.  One wall had three dozen rifles of various makes: slug throwers, sonic rifles, flechette rifles, pulsers and even a plasma rifle.  Some had scopes mounted, some did not.  Ammunition and spare energy packs lined storage shelves.

Amin walked to a stand that held a large map of the area from the village all the way to Ait Driss at the top of the mountain. A short, stout man with heavily weathered features, he was the family’s outdoorsman and knew the woods and the mountains as well as anyone in Ouididi.  He pointed with thick, stubby fingers that had never graced a piano.  “We’ve had three sightings between here and the Temple,” he explained mater of factly.  “Big pack, maybe a super-pack that has absorbed two or three smaller packs.  Seventy, maybe eighty grogin, led by a female alpha.”  Amin looked at Rafael.  “If they find you, don’t try to run.  Horses will tire out before they do.”

Rafael nodded.  Grogin had oversized cardio-vascular systems, with one large heart in the main chest cavity and a second, smaller heart that served to re-oxygenate the blood near the grogon’s haunches.  Their lungs were like furnace bellows.  They could run for hours as fast as a horse could gallop.

Amin looked hard at Rafael, then at Emily.  “Listen now,” he said to Rafael, but Emily understood he was really talking to her.  “You run into this pack, you get your back up against something so they can only come at you from the front, then you get the electric fence up as fast as you can.  Then you hit the panic button” – he held up a transceiver with a large red button on its face – “and we’ll come for you as soon as we can.  The energy pack on the fence will last for twelve hours.  If you can climb a tree, make sure you go at least thirty feet up.  Big grogin can jump twenty feet easy.”

“Gods of Our Mothers!” said Emily.  “You guys sure do know how to show a girl a good time.”  The men chuckled, but Rafael looked at her seriously.

“Emily, the chances are we won’t even see the grogin.  They hunt over a territory hundreds of miles long and it might be months before we see them here again.  But if you want, I’m happy to just take you back to the valley.  This is your vacation, your time to rest and relax.  I can take you down and you can be back in Tinjdad in a day.”

Emily considered it.  Tinjdad had art museums, books stores, movie theatres and miles of beaches; she could have a wonderful few days there.  But Admiral Douthat had specifically wanted her to see the Temple of Ait Driss, and Emily couldn’t help but wonder why.  And, she admitted to herself, there was Rafael.  Spending a little more time with Raf in the mountains had a certain appeal, more than spending time alone in Tinjdad.  She wondered with some bemusement if that was part of Douthat’s plan as well.  Or perhaps the good Dr. Wilkinson.

“Go back to Tinjdad and give up a chance to ride Rosie in the Atlas Mountains?  Not on your life.”  Amin looked at her and nodded once.  Danny smiled.  Rafael looked at her hard, studying her, then nodded as well.

“Okay, then,” said Danny briskly.  He had served with the Fleet Marines and was now the village armorer.  “Time to pick a weapon for each of you.”  He turned to Rafael.  “You want the usual or have they given you an even better toy to play with since I saw you last?”

“The usual, I think,” Rafael replied.  Danny handed him a heavy caliber pistol and extra ammunition clips, a flechette rifle and the heavy plasma rifle with the twenty pound energy pack.  Danny turned to Emily.  “And you, young lady?”

The sonic rifle was a Bull Pup model, similar to the one she had trained on at Camp Gettysburg.  She took it down off the rack and examined it closely for damage, ejected the energy pack and examined the contact points carefully, then snapped it back into place.  Keeping the safety on, she activated the energy pack and saw it was fully charged.  She turned it off and slung it over her shoulder.  “This should do fine.  I’m not a great shot, but with this I can set the firing zone to a large cone and stand a pretty good chance of hitting whatever I aim for.”

Danny nodded, but insisted that she also carry a pistol.  She picked a flechette pistol because it had almost no recoil.  They were ready to go.  With the pistol on her belt and the rifle in a sheath by her right leg, Emily felt like a storybook hero setting off into the wilderness.  Unbidden, she had a sudden vision of Cookie laughing at her, and could almost hear her say, “Havin’ fun now, girl!”

Emily leaned back in the saddle, lifted her head to the white clouds kissing the mountain tops, and sent a prayer for Cookie’s safety.

Chapter 7

On the Dominion Ship Tartarus

When they came, there were five of them.

At first Cookie fought them, but they stunned her with neuro-batons and chained her spread eagle to the bed.  She tried to bite them and they beat her, then stuffed a filthy rag in her mouth.  She cursed them through the gag and they laughed.

Then they took turns raping her.  And beating her.  When they were done they left her, bleeding and bruised and torn and weeping with helplessness and rage and shame.

The next day, they came back and did it again.

And the next.  And the next.

At the end of the second month, Cookie allowed herself to go mad.

She went away.

Deep.  Like diving into sea-green water and watching storm waves roil the surface far, far above.  All sensation was muffled.  The animal thrusts, the slaps, the curses and the beatings.  She saw it and heard it as if at a great distance.  Twice removed.  Insulated from fear and feeling.  Cocooned in the amniotic fluid of her detachment.

Eventually they grew tired of raping an unresponsive victim.  And, for a time, there was nothing.  No noise.  No pain.  No unrelenting violation.  Peace.  Peace approaching the final blessed embrace of death.  She dreamed of Hiram and the curly haired daughter they would never have. She floated on lassitude, feeling the life gently ebb from her body.

Then one day there was the sensation of a warm cloth gently cleaning her cuts and bruises.  A soft humming.  The cloth smelled of soap; the hands were gentle.  She tried to ignore it, but it pulled at her.  Slowly, unwillingly, Cookie rose to the surface of bleak consciousness.  She opened her eyes to a harsh light in an antiseptic room.  A young man in a white smock was washing the grime and filth from her face. There was an IV drip in her arm.  She smelled of blood, semen and urine.  Her body was a field of pain, all being harvested at once.

With a terrible effort, she spoke for the first time in ten weeks.

“Let…me…die.”

“Ah, you’re coming back, are you?”  he asked cheerfully.  “You had me worried for a while there, but I think you’ve turned the corner.”  He smiled reassuringly.  Her eyes flickered to his name tag: Karl.

“Yes, I am Dr. Karl.  I am the junior physician on this ship.  You probably don’t remember, but we had to perform surgery to stop the bleeding.  They, ah, well, you were bleeding a lot and Dr. Farber had to patch you up.  So you are here in the infirmary until we discharge you back to Detention.”   He smiled brightly.

Cookie could have withstood more beating and brutality, but his kindness completely undid her.  Tears sprang into her eyes and before she could collect herself she was sobbing and weeping, covering her face with her hands.  Karl sat on the edge of her bed and put an arm around her shoulder.  “Now, now,” he soothed.  “Nothing to worry about.  The worst is over, you’re safe here.”  She hugged him desperately, holding him close to her and after a long moment she felt him stir.

Then he reached up and stroked her breast.

“I can protect you.” He told her softly, “you’ll just have to be nice to me, that’s all.”  At first she recoiled, but then a surprisingly cold, calculating corner of her mind assessed what he wanted and what advantage it might give her.  If she went back to the tender mercies of the five guards, she would not survive very much longer, but if she used this young doctor for protection, she might be able to buy some time.  She forced herself to relax and leaned into him. His breath quickened.  She buried her face in his shoulder and let him hold her and thought, “I’ve got you, you bastard!”

Chapter 8

In the Atlas Mountains, Refuge

By midday the forest had thinned slightly and the sun beat down on them.  Even though the ambient temperature was cool, Emily still felt the heat.  When the wind blew, she could see the leaves of the shatah mallah trees roll in their enormous waves.  From their height, she could see across the broad valley to another range of the Atlas Mountains, their jagged peaks covered with snow and ice, and she thought again of what a beautiful and hard land this was.

“Are these grogin really that fierce?” she asked Rafael when they had stopped to rest the horses.

“Oh, yes, fierce and pretty smart, and big, too.  A male grogon might go one hundred and thirty pounds, but the females can weigh in at two hundred.  But what makes them really dangerous is that they hunt in such large groups.”

Emily frowned.  “What do they hunt?  Elephants?”

Rafael laughed.   “No elephants on Refuge, sorry.  Grogin will eat just about anything, but what they really like are sambar.”  He frowned in concentration.  “Sambar are sort of like Old Earth moose, but larger.  They go maybe fourteen hundred pounds, ten feet long and stand seven feet at the shoulders.  Males have two horns, almost like bulls, while the females have one sharp horn growing right from their forehead.  They’re big and they have nasty dispositions.  A herd of sambar will stand and fight grogin if it’s a small pack.  If they see a sole grogon, they’ll actually try to chase it down and kill it, but usually they just run away.  They’re beautiful to watch, incredibly fast and they can jump like you wouldn’t believe.”

“But grogin are the top of the predatory chain?”

Rafael shrugged.  “We have large, bear-like creatures that we call, surprisingly, ‘bears.’”  Emily rolled her eyes and he grinned.  “But the top predator is the sivot.  Looks like a large tiger, all white fur and weighs five to six hundred pounds.  All teeth and claws, but they are pretty solitary.  A large enough grogin pack might take on a sivot, but never two at the same time.  A sivot can outrun a grogin pack, but they’ve been known to lure the grogin into tight places, then turn and kill them one at a time.  Very lethal beast, our sivot, but we won’t see one.  Heck, I’ve only seen them three or four times and at that through binoculars.”

“I know you sometimes hunt grogin for food. Do you hunt sivot?” Emily asked, intrigued.

Rafael laughed out loud, making his horse’s ears twitch.  “Hunt sivot?  All honor to the one who tries.  Oh, sometimes we get some idiot from the city who wants to bag a sivot, but most of the time they go up and don’t come back.  These mountains do not treat fools kindly, Em.  And even if the guy actually found a sivot, I’d put my money on the sivot every time.”

Further on, Emily said, “Raf, I think it’s time you told me about Ait Driss.”  Rafael looked at her, then nodded and reined in his horse.  “Be dark in an hour, this is a good spot to make camp for the night.”

They tethered the horses, brushed them down and fed them, then erected the small tent they would use that night.  Rafael unpacked the portable electric fence and carefully set out the six pylons in a horseshoe pattern that brought either end up to the base of a large rock.  He adjusted the conductor cones, then activated the energy pack and the air filled with a low humming sound.  Emily watched avidly, but nothing else happened.

“That’s it?”  She was vaguely disappointed.  Rafael smiled.  “I can tell you didn’t grow up on a farm.”  He picked up a twig and tossed it into the barrier.  As it went through it sparked loudly, making the horses twitch.

“There’s almost enough voltage here to kill a horse.  It’s got enough kick to absolutely ruin the day of your average grogon.”  He turned off the power.  “We’ll save the energy charge for when we go to bed.  Grogin hunt night or day, so we don’t want to run it down if we don’t need it.”  He smiled reassuringly, but Emily noticed that even as he lit the camp stove and set the water to boil, his rifle was always within reach.

Supper was a fried pastry ball filled with vegetables and slices of beef that had been marinated in a spicy sauce, washed down with more of the butter-and-salt tea.

“The people who settled this planet came in two different colony ships,” Rafael began.  “One from Israel and the other from Morocco.  Like most of the colony ships at the time, they were leaving Earth to get away from the plagues.  They didn’t intend to come together, but the Israeli ship had engine problems and couldn’t fix it.  They drifted in space for months before the Moroccan ship heard their distress beacon and stopped to assist.  While the Israelis were glad of the help, it was a tense visit.  Israel and Morocco, while not actual enemies, belonged to two rival religions and there was a lot of animosity.”  Rafael tossed more sticks on the fire.  “The Moroccans had the spare parts the ship needed and the repair was completed, but then some of the Moroccan colonists fell ill.  The first to die were the Moroccan doctors.”

“It was the plague,” Emily said. “The Cairo Plague.”  She had read the story as a girl.

“The plague,” Rafael confirmed.  “At first the Israeli ship Captain wanted to leave to protect his passengers, but the leader of the colonists persuaded him to stay and Israeli doctors went aboard to treat the plague victims.  When things finally settled down, the two ships decided to stay together in case of more problems and they finally made it to this world, which they named ‘Refuge’ because that is what they hoped it would be.

“The first years were hard.  The colonists started farms in the lowlands near the river, built several small towns and began to branch out, exploring the planet.  One group of five hundred – mixed Moroccan and Israeli – moved into the mountains, which they named the Atlas Mountains after a mountain range on Earth.  Uncle Danny says the mountains were in Israel, but Uncle Yael says Morocco.  Knowing Uncle Yael, he’s probably right.  Anyway, the colonists climbed this mountain and found the valley where Ouididi is now.  The soil was good enough for corn and grains to grow and they had embryonic livestock with them, which they grew in artificial wombs.  In a year or so they had a small village going, sort of an alpine garden.

“They also discovered the grogin, or maybe the grogin discovered them.  At first the grogin packs were small.  The villagers lost some livestock, but it was more a nuisance than anything else. Anyway, sometime in their first summer, a large group of villagers went on an adventure.  Some sixty adults and seventy or eighty children climbed to the peak of the mountain, where they discovered a large windswept promontory.  They set up camp, intending to spend the night and hike back down the following day.  That’s when a doom of grogin found them.”

“A ‘doom’ of grogin?” Emily asked.  “What’s a ‘doom’?”

Rafael smiled.  “Gruesome, yes?  But it’s just a name, like an ‘obstinacy’ of buffalo, a ‘flock’ of birds, a ‘colony’ of bats or an ‘unkindness’ of ravens.  But the name fits.  We call any large group of grogin a ‘doom,’ because that is what it is.”

“But surely the villagers were armed,” Emily said.

“Yes, but not well enough,” he replied.  “The doom was more than one hundred grogin.  They may have been following the trail of a sambar herd, but they stumbled onto the villagers while they were eating supper.  No one had posted guards; they just didn’t think there was any danger.”

Thinking of the Dominion surprise attack on Victoria, Emily grunted.  “Lot of that going around.”

“The grogin swept in and attacked before the villagers understood what was happening,” Rafael continued.  “A lot died in the first couple of minutes before the rest managed to get their guns and form a perimeter.  The grogin attacked all through the night.  Their howls brought more and more grogin, nobody knows how many. There were heaps of dead grogin everywhere, but they just kept attacking.  Towards dawn the villagers began to run out of ammunition.  They finally took as many of the children as they could and jammed them into a small cave.  They left the kids with food and water and sealed the entrance as best they could with boulders.  Then the surviving adults set themselves in front of the cave and fought until the ammunition was gone.”  He paused, scratching in the dirt with a stick.

“Gods of Our Mothers,” Emily said.  “All of them?  No survivors?”

“All of the adults died,” he said gravely.  “Sixty three adults out of a village of a little more than five hundred.  And close to thirty children.  But when the villagers climbed up to find them, forty three children were still alive in the cave.  The village hung on somehow, and a few years later they built the temple to memorialize the massacre and the sacrifice of the adults who saved the children.  Over the centuries that we’ve been here, the Temple of Ait Driss has become sacred and today the name Ait Driss stands for any great act of perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds.”

And it started a social experiment with marriage and family that has lasted as long as the Temple, Emily thought, but kept it to herself.

It was just before noon the next day when everything went wrong.  Rafael was in the lead, Emily a little behind riding Rosie.  Emily didn’t hear anything, but Rosie suddenly put her ears back and skittered nervously to the side.  Up ahead, Rafael reined in and stood up in the stirrups, shielding his eyes to get a better view.  Emily loosened the sonic rifle in its scabbard, straining to see through the trees.

“See anything?” she called softly.

“Not yet,” Rafael said, which didn’t reassure her at all.  Rafael took out his flechette rifle and held it across the saddle.  That didn’t reassure her much, either.  She withdrew the sonic rifle from the scabbard, thumbed on the energy pack and checked the cone setting.  She patted Rosie’s neck and moved up alongside of Rafael.

“You’re not going to ruin my vacation, are you?” she asked.

“Hope not.”  He stared intently into the forest.  “We’ll find out soon.”

Emily stared as well, but still couldn’t see anything.  “Well then, I’ve changed my mind,” she said.  “You can take me to Tinjdad instead of to the Temple.  A good hotel with a bar and a pool would be just fine about now.”

Rafael snorted in amusement, but didn’t stop scanning the forest.

The first sambar leapt out of the trees a hundred yards in front of them, its single horn flashing whitely in the sunlight.  It reared back when it spotted them, flanks heaving as it gasped for air, then lowered its head and charged forward.  Moments later two more sambar – males this time – bolted through the underbrush, running hard, followed by a fourth a few seconds later.  Their hoofs beat a solid drumbeat as they came closer.  Rosie’s eyes flared in alarm and she snorted and pulled at the reins, hoofs pawing at the ground.

“Move right!” Rafael shouted, spurring his mount off the path. Emily hurriedly followed.  The sambar veered slightly away from them and flashed past.  Emily could see the terror in the bulging eyes of one of the younger males as it thundered by, then they were gone, leaving behind a deceptively tranquil silence.

“What was-” Emily started to ask, but then she heard it – a low rumble of grunting and an eerie, undulating wailing that swirled through the air and grew steadily louder.  Bugger me! She thought savagely.

“Not good,” Rafael said grimly.  “Not good at all.”  He wheeled his horse around.  “About two hundred yards down the trail, we passed a large rock outcropping.  We’ll use that as our anchor.  Move!”

They dashed recklessly back down the trail, heedless of roots that might trip the horses and the countless branches that whipped their faces, skidding to a stop when they reached the outcrop.  About forty feet wide, it rose about fifteen feet to a narrow shelf, then another thirty feet to the top.  Rafael leapt off his mount and ran to the pack horse, slashing at the straps with his knife rather than take the time to untie them.  The pylons for the power fence tumbled to the ground and he snatched them up, throwing one to Emily.  “Set it up as close to the face of the rock as you can get it!” he ordered, quickly extending one of the other pylons to its ten foot height.  Emily did as she was told, telescoping out the plastic rods to their full length and locking them, then extending the wide base so the pylon would stand erect.  There were three wide, dish-shaped cones fastened to the side of the pylon and she positioned them to point at the next set of pylons Rafael was erecting.

The grunting and wailing noise grew in volume and pitch as it moved closer.  “Secure the horses!” Rafael told her as he extended the third pylon.  Emily snatched the reins for Rosie and the gelding and pulled them as close to the rock as she could, then tied them to the trunk of a small tree.  Rosie’s eyes were rolling in her head and she was snorting and rearing, but there was nothing to do for it now.  Emily wheeled on the pack horse, reaching for the reins, but the animal suddenly shied away from her grasp and bolted down the path the sambar had taken.

Rafael looked horrified.  “It’s still got the plasma rifle and the spare energy packs for the fence!”  Emily started to chase after it, but then the first grogon came barreling through the undergrowth and stopped about one hundred feet in front of them.

It was an ugly beast, more like an Old Earth hyena than a wolf, with high muscular shoulders, long, powerful legs, a wide chest that tapered to narrow haunches and black fur streaked with lines of scarlet along its flanks.  But the most arresting thing was its face.  A bulging, knobby forehead fell to a long, pointed snout that was presently showing a lot of teeth as the grogon snarled at them.  Its eyes were black, all black with no change in color from the eyeball to the pupil.  The first grogon was soon joined by four more and they stood shoulder to shoulder, eyeing the two humans warily, but inching forward nonetheless.

Rafael was still struggling to get the pylons assembled.  “Don’t let them get any closer!” he warned, snapping together the last pylon and anchoring it near the wall.  He frantically backtracked, moving from pylon to pylon and adjusting the cones.  Behind them, Emily could hear the horses’ frantic whinnies and in front of them two more grogin joined the first four.  As one they moved forward.

“Emily!” Rafael shouted.

Emily raised the sonic rifle, centered it on the middle two grogin and fired.  There was a loud WHAPPA! snap and three of the grogin tumbled backwards as if hit with a mighty hand.  Two groggily regained their feet, but the third stayed down.  Emily tightened the cone settings.  She’d have to aim more carefully, but the impact would be that much more lethal for those she shot.  Five more quick shots and another two grogin were down.  The three survivors backed away grudgingly, calling out to their pack in the eerie, undulating wail that was their trademark.

Then from the undergrowth burst ten, then twenty, then thirty grogin, a tsunami of black fur and snarling teeth.  They paused for a moment to take in the scene, then sprang to the attack.

One of the annoying limitations of sonic rifles is that due to the need to recharge they cannot be set on automatic.  Wishing fervently that she was in a space ship instead of high on some damn mountain, Emily went to one knee and shot as rapidly as she could pull the trigger.

WHAPPA! WHAPPA! WHAPPWHAPPWHAPPWHAPP  But every fourth shot or so the trigger clicked without effect as the energy cell struggled to recharge.  Grogin slammed through the air, somersaulted, cartwheeled and in one gruesome instance, exploded from the shock of the blasts.  And in her mind’s eye, Emily saw not grogin, but Dominion warships, and she fired and fired some more, aware that this attack had been thrust upon her.  She hadn’t planned it and it wasn’t the result of orders that she had made.  It just was the way things had turned out.  She felt a tremendous, soaring relief that all she had to do was fend for herself and survive.   She had no crew she was responsible for.

She fired again and dirt kicked up a yard or more in front of the grogin.  She adjusted her aim and fired again.

WHAP!

A tree branch three feet above the grogin burst into splinters.

“Try aiming at them,” Rafael shouted.  “It works so much better!”

She gritted her teeth and fired again and again and this time more grogin fell.

But the rest kept coming.

“Any time, Raf!” She had to scream to be heard over the roar of the animals.  WHAPPA!  WHAPPWHAPP  WHAPPA!  Four more of the beasts went down in a tumble of black fur and spraying blood.  From the corner of her vision, Emily saw Rafael stab at the power button.  The air in front of her crackled, then the first grogon reached the perimeter and leapt, teeth bared, frantic to tear its prey apart.

There was a violent spark and a flash of light.  The grogon seemed suspended in the force field for a long moment, then collapsed dead at the bottom of the pylon, its fur smoking.  The rest of the attackers scattered backwards.  Emily raised her rifle again, but the grogin darted into the undergrowth and disappeared.  Moments later a long, undulating wail filled the air as the survivors called to their pack for help.  And a heartbeat after that the air filled with a chorus of wails and grunts as the other grogin of the pack replied.

Rafael came and sat down beside her.  He opened his jacket and took out the radio beacon with the large red button, which he pressed firmly with his thumb.  Emily looked at the charge on her sonic rifle:  ten percent left.  She had three more energy packs, but then realized with a sinking feeling that two of them were in a bag on the pack horse.

She looked at Rafael.  He smiled crookedly.  “Okay, maybe we should go to
Tinjdad instead.  Not that this isn’t fun, mind you.”  On the other side of the fence a dozen grogin lay in crumpled heaps, some in pieces. In the woods they could see dozens of grogin peering at them from the bushes and darting around them in a large semi-circle.  Emily had the unnerving sense that the grogin were intelligent, that this was more than just hunting instincts bred into their genes.

“What do you want first?” Rafael asked.  “Good news or bad news?”

“Bad,” she replied.  It always helped her to know the worst.  She had no idea why.

“Bad news is that the plasma rifle and all of the extra energy packs for the fence are on that goddamned pack horse.  Good news is that the power cell on the fence should last another eight hours, and maybe a little longer if we turn it off when we think it’s safe.”

One large grogon emerged from the woods and stared at them.  It was easily half again as large as any of the others and Emily guessed it was the alpha female Danny had mentioned.  Its eyes were black pools and she could swear it was looking directly at them, sizing them up.  Slowly, she raised the sonic rifle.

“Don’t bother,” Rafael said.  “The force field will screw up the shot.  Sonic, flechette, slugs, just about anything but the plasma rifle, the force field throws off the trajectory of the shot.  But we can always do this,” he said, and reached over and turned off the power.

But as soon as the force field dropped, the grogon turned and disappeared into the trees.  Then, just a moment later, several grogin charged at them from different directions, mouths open, teeth bared.  Emily cursed and snapped off two shots, missing both times, then the power came on and the screen flared for a moment and the air crackled.  The grogin turned and vanished into the trees.

“You really are a terrible shot,” Rafael said mildly.  “It’s a good thing you Fleet types have computers to help aim your missiles.”

“Gods of Our Mothers, tell me the grogin are not intelligent!” she gritted.  “They know about the force field and they even know we can’t shoot through it!”

Rafael went through his pockets and finally found his radio.  He tried to raise one of his uncles, but the interference from the force field fence filled the air with static.  With a resigned sigh he turned it off to save the battery and slipped it back into his pocket.

“Emily, are you okay?” he asked quietly.

“Sweet Gods, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I am okay,” she said, shaking her head in mild astonishment.  “I mean, I know we’re in a world of hurt and all that, but at least if I screw up I won’t be responsible for the loss of Victoria.  It’s just you and me and a couple of hundred grogin.”

Rafael laughed ruefully.  “One way of looking at it.”

For the next hour there was a lull.  Grogin trotted through the clearing, stopping to stare at them for a minute or two, and then trotting back into the forest.  The wailing would start and stop, but the answering wails grew steadily closer and louder.  Emily took the time to try to calm the horses, but their eyes rolled white in their heads and they frantically pulled at the rope tying them to a small tree.  Fearful that they might actually free themselves, Emily removed the saddle bags with their remaining supplies and laid them on the ground.  She offered a biscuit to Rafael, who accepted it absently, never taking his eyes off the grogin.

It was then that the grogin tried a new tactic.  Two of the beasts walked warily up to the force field, sniffing at the ground, trying to determine exactly where the perimeter was.  Then they both turned their backs to the fence and, using their strong back legs, began to kick dirt, twigs and leaves against the force field.  The field crackled and flashed as debris hit it and was vaporized.

“Aw, crap!” Emily muttered.  Rafael looked at her in confusion.

“What?  They aren’t going to break the field with a few twigs and some dirt.”

“Don’t you see?”  Emily demanded, fear making her impatient.  “The force field uses more energy when something hits it, large or small.  If they keep this up they’ll drain the energy pack; we won’t get eight hours out of it.”

Rafael looked at the grogin with horrified respect.  More grogin came and stood just on the other side of the force field, growling at them, ready to dart in and attack if they turned off the fence.  Others joined in kicking debris into the force field so that it crackled and popped almost its entire length.

“How long until Danny and Amin get here?” Emily asked, unable to take her eyes off the sparkling, hissing fence.

“A full day, maybe more,” Rafael replied.

Emily checked the readout on the energy pack.  “We’ve got five hours at best.”  She stood up and turned away from the snarling beasts to the rock wall.  About fifteen feet up there was a shelf.  She couldn’t tell how wide it was, but there were some bushes growing on it, so probably wide enough to stand on.  She walked along the wall, looking for hand holds, anything they could use to climb up to the shelf.  There wasn’t much.  There were, however, some small saplings.

“Do you have an axe?” she called to Rafael.  In reply, he pulled out a hand axe from one of the saddle bags and tossed it to her.  “Any rope?” she asked.  He emptied one of the bags and found a coil of climbing rope and a coil of thin parachute cord.  “Will this do?” he asked.  Emily took the parachute cord.

An hour later she had built a fourteen foot ladder and leaned it up against the wall.  Seeing this, the grogin began to frantically push forward, brushing the force field and being thrown back, then pushing forward again. Rafael checked the power readings once more and grimaced, shaking his head.

“Let’s go up,” Emily suggested.  Rafael held the ladder while Emily cautiously climbed it to the shelf.  The ladder wobbled and twisted.  Once on the shelf, Rafael tossed her guns and equipment.  The grogin were howling and wailing, pushing into the force field so that it sparked and flashed continuously.

“Rafael!  What do we do with the horses?” Emily called.  “We can’t leave them tied up, they’ll be defenseless.”

He nodded and cut the ropes tethering the horses, which began to run back and forth, frantically looking for a way past the grogin. “Good luck, fellas,” he murmured. Then Emily held the ladder and he climbed it gingerly, the ladder sagging alarmingly to one side.  Once up on the shelf, he pulled up the ladder and stowed it.

“Let’s see what we’ve got up here,” he said and walked the length of the shelf.

“Your father said the grogin can jump twenty feet,” Emily reminded him.  “They’ll be able to reach this shelf easy.”

Rafael nodded absently, studying the rock.   The shelf was about four feet deep at its deepest, tapering off at either end to just a few inches wide.  The wall above them rose another thirty feet.  Rafael knew a bit about climbing, but it looked awfully smooth to him.

“Can you climb this?” he asked Emily.  Emily glanced at the wall, studying it, then turned in a slow circle, taking in everything near them.

“Don’t think I could,” she said slowly, “but maybe we don’t have to.”  She walked along the shelf several yards and pointed to a tree that grew about ten feet away.  It was one of the “Dances with God” trees, not yet full grown but easily forty feet high. More importantly, it still had branches growing this low to the ground.  Working quickly, they extended the ladder until it rested precariously on one of the shatah mallah’s lower branches.  Suddenly the two saplings Emily had used to build the ladder looked very thin and fragile.  Rafael took the climbing rope and wove it into a rough harness, which he put on her and tied tight.   He tied the other end to himself.

“Listen!” he said roughly.  “You have to crawl across the ladder to the tree, but you have to do it fast.  The grogin can jump high enough to knock you off the ladder and if that happens, you’re dead.  I’ll cover you, but move fast!”   Emily nodded, feeling her stomach tighten. She used a piece of rope to make a sling for her sonic rifle and slung it over her back.

Ready to go. But then an impulsive burble of laughter rose in her throat.

She turned, took his face in her hands, batted her eyes ostentatiously and said huskily:  “I will always remember this vacation.”  Then, before he could even register astonishment, she turned, still laughing, got down on her hands and knees and started across.

She made it past two rungs, then three, then the entire ladder wobbled precariously, swaying to and fro.  Emily hesitated, holding tightly to the sides.

“Don’t stop!” Rafael urged.  “Keep going!  I’ll hold it!”

Below, two dozen grogin craned their heads upwards to watch her, and then ran growling and wailing to a spot beneath the ladder, circling hungrily under her.

Then, with a final ‘Snap!’ the force field died and the grogin there leapt forward.  They ignored the terrified horses and swarmed to the base of the rock.  Several of them scrabbled at the rock face, futilely trying to gain purchase.  Then one of the females ran in a tight circle and leapt in one fluid motion to the lip of the shelf.  It threw its head back and howled, a long, blood-curdling howl that set off a frenzy of barking and wailing from the dozens of grogin below.

Then Rafael shot it with the flechette rifle, reducing its head to a bloody pulp and spraying bone, fur and blood everywhere.  The grogon’s corpse tumbled back over the stone ledge and fell, limp and bloody, to the ground.

Emily inched forward, almost lying down on the ladder to keep herself from being tossed off as it swayed violently.  Below her she could see the first grogon tense to leap up at her.  Bugger me! she thought, knowing there was no way to reach either her rifle or pistol in time.  Then its foreleg disappeared in a burst of pink as Rafael shot it and the grogon fell writhing and wailing to the dirt.

“May the One God bless you, but can’t you move any fucking faster, Emily?” Rafael shouted, turning to fire at the two grogin who had jumped up to the shelf and were moving toward him.

Emily took a breath and scrambled forward.  Two feet, then two more.  A grogon suddenly appeared in the air next to her, snapping furiously, spittle spraying her face before gravity snatched it down.  “Gods of Our Mothers, shoot the buggers!” she screamed angrily.  The grogon landed, sidestepped and set itself to jump again, then its haunches pulped to red jam under the force of Rafael’s flechettes and it spun in a circle under the blow.

Three other grogin leapt just as Emily grabbed the branch and pulled herself into the shelter of the tree.  Rafael caught one in mid-air with a body shot, but the other two crashed into the ladder, which dislodged and fell clattering to the ground.  Emily ignored it, grappling for her pistol.  She snapped off three quick shots and decapitated the grogon three feet behind Rafael.  It fell in a boneless heap, momentarily blocking the two grogin behind it.  She fired twice more, then twice again and the second grogon fell.  The third leapt back down to the ground.

There was a momentary pause as the beasts milled about in confusion and blood lust and Rafael stared horrified at the two dead grogin, just inches from where he stood on the shelf.  Two more grogin leapt up to the shelf, then a third and a fourth.

Emily scrambled higher in the tree, careful not to snarl the rope that connected her to Raf.  When she was about ten feet higher, the rope was almost fully extended.  She pulled a loop tight around a broken branch, braced herself and leaned back, loosening her flechette pistol in its holster.

The grogin on the shelf attacked, fangs exposed, bounding along the shelf toward Rafael.

“Jump!”  she screamed.  “Jump!”

The grogin leapt.

Rafael jumped.

The grogin sailed through the air where he had been an instant before, then fell fifteen feet to the ground below.  Rafael flew in an arc at the bottom of the rope, swinging wildly, careening off the trunk of the tree with an audible ‘thump’ and losing his rifle in the process.  One or two grogin tried to leap up at him, but he was moving too fast and their jaws closed uselessly on thin air.  When he swung for a moment, Emily fired her pistol into the mass of the baying, wailing beasts, forcing them to scatter.

Adrenalin inspired, Rafael scrambled up the rope in record time and lurched onto the tree limb next to Emily.  She handed him a canteen of water, which he first poured on his face, then drank.

“That jump was really, um, graceful,” she teased.  “And the poise with which you smashed into the tree; it was artistic, Raf, simply artistic.”

A grogon leapt high in an effort to reach them, scrabbling to hold onto a lower branch with its paws while it snapped menacingly at them.  Emily eyed it impassively.  Rafael took another sip from the canteen.  The animal lost its purchase and tumbled down.

“Gods of Our Mothers, this is the most interesting first date I have ever been on,” she deadpanned.  She leaned forward, peering below.  “I think the horses got away,” she marveled.  Another grogon jumped up at them but fell short.  Emily leaned back against the tree trunk and closed her eyes.  The leaves smelled faintly of mint.  Funny, she hadn’t noticed it before.

“What unit are you in, Raf?”

He looked at her.  “What?”

“You most certainly do not design space forts,” she said matter-of-factly.  “You’ve got callouses on your hands that nobody gets working at a desk job.  I know, I work at a desk.”  She eyed him speculatively. “And you’re very comfortable with weapons and making decisions under fire, not what I’d expect from a glorified architect.  So, what unit are you with?”

Raf eyed her for a long moment, then sighed and shook his head.  “I always remembered you as a smart one.”  He looked away, then looked back.  “I’m a company commander in the Special Reconnaissance Force,” he said.

Emily had heard of the SRF.  She was impressed, but decided not to show it.  “So you’re a snake eater,” she said.  He looked puzzled.  “Sorry, old reference,” she chuckled.  Below, the grogin milled about, looking up at them.  She looked at her watch.

“What would your buddies say if they heard you’d been treed by a bunch of grogin?” she asked innocently.

He grimaced.  “Be a little embarrassing,” he admitted.

She looked at her watch again and stood up on the tree limb. On the forest floor the grogin stirred restlessly.  From the distance a faint sound penetrated, then gradually grew louder until it was the unmistakable sound of a military assault craft, a chemically driven vertical takeoff/landing craft the size of a shuttle, but heavily armed for air to ground strikes.  Rafael scrambled to his feet.  “That’s an assault bird!”

Emily reached into her vest and pulled out a small, pen-shaped object.  A small blue light was flashing on and off, on and off.  Emily thumbed another switch and the blue light turned to red and flashed more rapidly, then she wedged it into the fork of a small tree branch.  Rafael recognized immediately; it was a Search and Rescue beacon and it would guide the Victorian assault craft right to them.

“They’ve been searching for us!” he said, astonished and little chagrined.   “How did you know?”

“I always carry a SAR beacon in the woods,” she said, a smile tugging at her lips.  “Once the grogin found us, I signaled the New Zealand.  They would have passed it on to the Victorian military detachment in Tinjdad.”

The assault craft circled overhead.  The pilot, visible through the dome, gave them a thumbs up and pointed below to where he intended to land.  Below, the wailing stopped abruptly and the grogin trotted off into the forest and disappeared, all except for the Alpha female, who stood for a long moment, staring at them.  Emily patted the stock of her sonic rifle.  The Alpha lifted a leg and urinated eloquently on the ground, then wheeled about and vanished.

Emily snorted, half ruefully, half in admiration.  There was no doubt what the Alpha had just said:  Well, Sister, round one to you, but you don’t think this is over, do you?

A frown passed over Rafael’s face.  “What did you mean, a ‘first date’?  This wasn’t a date.”

Emily smiled.  It was a lovely smile.  “I’d bet that your mothers and sister will say you’re wrong.”

Chapter 9

On Space Station Atlas, in Refuge Sector

After a long meeting with Lori Romano, Hiram Brill made a list of things that had to happen, carefully scrutinizing the order in which they had to occur to make everything work.  In another column he listed the resources he would need.  After a long time rewriting and rearranging his lists, he realized he was still missing two pieces of information.  He tapped his fingers against the keyboard, mentally working his way through possible solutions.  Finally, he made three phone calls.  The first was to Colonel Dov Tamari.

“Yes?” Tamari answered, giving neither his name nor rank.

“It’s Commander Brill, Colonel.  Do you still have assets in the Refuge System?”

“Yes, sir.  There are currently eight ships in system, although some of them are being repaired.”

“Do you have two that can take on an immediate mission?  They won’t have to leave the System, just launch some courier drones.”

Tamari paused for a moment, no doubt wondering why the young Commander didn’t simply requisition one of the regular Fleet ships for this boondoggle.  “I’ve got two corvettes that could leave within the hour.”

“That will suffice, Colonel,” Hiram said, relieved that he didn’t have to take this idea to either Admiral Douthat or the Queen just yet.  “I am sending the message I want the couriers to broadcast and the route I want them to follow.”

The second call was to Max Opinsky, the de facto chief of operations for the space station Atlas.   Hiram asked him one question.

Opinsky was silent for a long moment, then sighed dramatically.  “You don’t do anything by halves, do you?”

“Can it be done?” Hiram pressed.

“Oh, sure, it can be done.  If you hit it, it will be a bloody disaster, but it’s not the easiest thing in the world, you know, you have to get in close to give you decent odds.”

“Will one do it?”

“Gods of Our Mothers, Hiram, how the hell do I know?  No one’s ever done this, best I know.  This may come as a shock to you, but we actually go out of our way to make sure that things like this don’t happen.”

“If you were doing it, how many…?”

Opinsky muttered under his breath.  “If it were me, I’d make sure I had six, the bigger the better.  Figure two are going to miss, they’ll shoot down one, but if you get in nice and close, you’ll hit ‘em with at least three.  I can’t tell you that three will destroy it, but bugger me if it doesn’t ruin their day.”

“I owe you one, Max,” Hiram said warmly.

The third call was to Peter Murphy, the head of the Tugboat Guild and captain of the Son of Dublin, one of the Fleet’s large tugboats.

“Christ Jesus!” Murphy said when he heard who it was.  “Every time you call me I know I am going to land knee deep in the muck!  What harebrained adventure are you dreaming up now?”

Hiram told him.  He was greeted with stunned silence.  “I’ll need enough tugs to capture and maneuver six of them, Peter.  You’ll have to tell me how many tugs we’re going to need.  And add some extras, just in case,” he cautioned.  “We’ll give them as much protection as we can, but it’s going to get rough.”

“But how are you going to get them there?” Murphy wanted to know.  “Tugs are slow and not exactly stealthy.  You can’t just sneak them through the wormhole with half the Dominion Fleet on the other side.”

“I’m working on that, Peter,” Hiram said, then cut the connection.

Ten hours later, two Marine LRR corvettes reached their respective destinations in Refuge space and launched a series of courier drones.  The drones immediately separated and began to fly deeper into space.  They all broadcast the same message on an endless loop:  “I need chocolate cake.  I need chocolate cake.  I need chocolate cake.”

The message was heard by the Sensors Officers on countless Refuge and Victorian ships, who had not a clue what it meant.  It was even heard by a Dominion spy ship, drifting powered down in full stealth mode.  The Captain and his Sensors Officer looked at each other in puzzlement and spent several fruitless hours running it through their computers, to no avail.

The following day, the intended recipient heard the message, snorted in amusement, and then pondered what to do next.  Suddenly somber, he wondered if the time had come for The Light to reveal its most closely guarded secret.

And what would happen if it did.

Chapter 10

With the Dominion of Unified Citizenry Fleet

at the Wormhole to Refuge

“They are ready to break, I tell you.  One more strong push and we’ll have them!”  Michael Hudis glowered at Admiral Kaeser, who glowered back.  “Their queen is no more than a school girl.  She is on the brink of surrendering.  Her battleships are destroyed, her fleet in tatters.  She boasts about making a battleship a week, but it’s all a lie, a bluff.  Don’t you see? She’s clutching at straws, Admiral.  Your attacks have taken her right to the edge of total defeat, you only have to push hard and she’ll be crushed.”

Admiral Kaeser was unmoved.  “In four months we’ll have enough new ships to defeat them.  Four more months.  There is no need to rush into-“

“But they still have Atlas!  What can they build in four months?  Ten destroyers?  Four cruisers?  A battleship?  Why take the chance that the Vickies might nullify our production gains?”  Hudis saw the stubborn resolve in Kaeser’s face and sighed.  He leaned closer.  “Admiral, I met with their girl queen.  She is a child.  She is scared, Admiral, scared and desperate.  She was ready to surrender if we could give her guarantees.  Guarantees!  They are on their knees, Admiral.  Now is not the time for caution, now is the time to strike when they are down!”

Kaeser didn’t like any of this, because even if he accepted Hudis’s recommendation, if the attack failed he would still be blamed.  He knew this game, and he despised it.  Reluctantly, he turned to the view screen where the image of Anthony Nasto watched them impatiently.

“I do not recommend this, Citizen Director,” he said flatly.  “I do not believe that Victoria’s production capacity can match ours during the next four months.  We will have the advantage.”

“Can you guarantee that?” the Citizen Director asked.

“No, but all of our calculations reach the same conclusion.”

Nasto turned to Hudis.  “And this new queen?  You are confident of your assessment?”

Hudis nodded.  “One strong hit and she will shatter like cheap glass.”

“Very well, then,” said Nasto.  “Attack as soon as you are ready, Admiral.”  His image vanished from the screen as he cut the connection.

Hudis grinned.  This would cement his role as the Citizen Director’s most important advisor.  He turned to Kaeser.  “Don’t worry, Admiral, it will work,” he assured him.

Admiral Kaeser gave him a measured look.  Hudis was a fool.  And worse, he did not have the slightest idea what he had just done.

Chapter  11

Atlas Space Station, in Refuge Space

Emily collected her duffle and exited the ferry.  She walked with long strides and, although she was not aware of it, a faint smile on her face.  Her mind was trying to focus on what her new assignment would be, but she kept flitting back to Rafael and his formidable little sister, and his fathers and his mothers, particularly his birth mother, Leila.

With a start, she came back to the present, suddenly aware that someone was walking beside her, matching her stride for stride.

“Welcome back to Atlas,” said Martha Wilkinson cheerfully.  The Fleet Senior Surgeon radiated cheer and well-being.  Emily was instantly suspicious.

“Thank you, Ma’am,” Emily replied. She cocked an eyebrow.  “And did the Admiral just happen to be walking through the shuttle bay when I arrived, or has the Admiral been waiting to see if I came back in a state of catatonic fugue?”

“Really, Commander,” Wilkinson tutted.  “Don’t you know that admirals work in mysterious ways?”

“Of course, Ma’am, that actually would explain a lot,” Emily replied dryly.

Wilkinson’s eyes crinkled in amusement.  “But since I have had the good fortune of bumping into you, tell me, how was your leave?”

“Actually, it was very enjoyable, considering I was chased through the forest by a pack of ferocious grogin and had to climb a tree to avoid being torn to very small pieces and eaten alive.”

Wilkinson laughed and put her arm through Emily’s as they walked through the shuttle bay.  “Really?  Tell me all about it!”

When Emily finally arrived at her cabin, a message was waiting, telling her to meet with Admiral Douthat at 1800, Atlas time. There was a note telling her to review the attachment before going to the meeting.  The attachment was a computer re-creation of the last three skirmishes with the Dominion.  Emily sighed inwardly.  First Wilkinson, now Douthat.  This was about her new assignment and she had a sinking feeling she wasn’t going to like it.  She showered and changed into a fresh uniform, made a cup of tea and sat in an old rocking chair she had found planetside on an earlier trip.  They were going to take her off the New Zealand, that much she was sure of.  There were too few warships and too many senior grade officers to allow her to keep it.  Heck, it was a fluke that she ever commanded the New Zealand at all, but now her time had run out.

With a grimace, she opened the computer simulation of the Dominion skirmishes.

The holo display showed the wormhole entrance, with the two Refuge forts still intact, so this was one of the early clashes.  As she watched, four Dominion destroyers burst through the wormhole entrance and were promptly taken under fire by the forts.  The perspective of the observer was from above the plane of advance, the “God’s View,” so Emily guessed that this simulation was created by Gandalf, based on sensor inputs from dozens of Victorian and Refuge ships.

In the re-creation of the battle, the Dominion ships veered to the “north” and focused their fire on just one of the forts.  More Dominion warships poured through the wormhole behind them, including two of the ferociously effective hedgehogs and two heavy cruisers.  Whoever had made the re-creation had focused primarily on the actions of the Refuge gunboats and Emily saw them appear in the “west” side of the holo.  The holo flashed an arrow pointing to them, with the number ‘250’ to designate how many there were.  They came in fast, in a large, uneven globe formation and swarmed towards the Dominion ships like a giant amoeba.  There was no maneuvering, no attempt at a pincer attack; it was just one large sledgehammer blow.  It reminded Emily of old cavalry charges she had seen in war movies of old Earth.

The gunboats fired their missiles, some seven hundred of them, and followed them in firing lasers, but there was no coordinated effort to focus on specific targets.  The hedgehogs knocked down or jammed most of the missiles, but several of the Dominion ships took damage and one actually cartwheeled into the Refuge space fort, triggering a massive explosion.  Then the remaining Dominion ships turned in a tight circle that took them through the mass of Refuge gunboats and began firing at the gunboats with everything they had, including a full array of anti-missile batteries.

It was like a farmer scything wheat.  A wide swath of the fragile gunboats died as the Dominion warships swept through them.  Having emptied their missile racks, the gunboats had no more missiles to fire, and the long recharge time for their lasers meant only a few dozen of the tiny craft could fire even those.  The Dominion ships made it back to the wormhole and passed through.

The video display paused and words appeared in the holo:

#1 - “Gunboat’s destroyed – 82 of original 250 (32%).  Gunboats damaged – 135 (54%).  Crews lost – 40%.”

Emily winced; those were brutal losses.  She paused long enough to pour more tea, and then started the second holographic simulation.   It began much as the first, with Dominion warships bursting through the wormhole and concentrating their fire on the northerly fort, which by this time was showing extensive damage and had almost no anti-missile capacity.  Once again the Refuge gunboats swarmed in, some two hundred of them in no discernible formation and no tactics other than to rush in and fire everything they had.   This time they were luckier and three Dominion destroyers fell out of formation and began limping back toward the wormhole.  A few gunboats actually broke through the Dominion line of ships to pursue the wounded destroyers, but when they caught up with them they could only fire their front-mounted small laser and the destroyers successfully kept them at bay with anti-missile fire and lasers of their own.

While the gunboats impotently buzzed about, the Dominions pounded the Refuge fort into rubble and turned back for the wormhole.  The Victorian cruisers entered the battle at that point and one of the Dominion cruisers blew up, but even as that was happening, Emily could see dozens of gunboats blossom briefly and disappear as the Dominions kept up a stiff rate of fire against them.  This time the message read:

#2 - “Gunboat’s destroyed – 60 of original 200 (30%).  Gunboats damaged – 110  (55%).  Crews lost – 36%.”

Troubled, Emily skipped the replay of the third battle and went right to the statistics at the end:

#3 - “Gunboat’s destroyed – 91 of original 275 (33%).  Gunboats damaged – 127  (46%).  Crews lost – 39%.”

She thought that was it, but then more words appeared:

“Original fleet of gunboats – 473.

Total gunboats destroyed – 233.

Total damaged – 372.

Remaining usable stock, including newly manufactured – 112.

Current number of trained crews – 60.”

“Gods of Our Mothers,” she muttered under her breath.  She thought for a long moment, trying to figure out who might have the information she wanted, then snorted at her own dim-wittedness.  Who always had information when she needed it?  She activated her comm and punched in the number.  Hiram Brill’s face appeared on the screen in a moment.  He smiled at her.

“Well, look who’s back!” he said warmly.  He looked exhausted, she thought, but at least he was smiling.  “How was your leave?”

“Rather different than I had anticipated, but very good overall.”

He waggled his eyebrows at her comically.  “Well, well,” he teased.  “May I assume there is a handsome young man in the picture, someone who can overlook your more serious character flaws and your propensity to talk about books for hours on end?”

She tilted up her chin.  “Actually,” she said with studied casualness, “there is a young man involved.” Hiram’s eyes opened a little wider, but then she let the other shoe drop.  “Well, actually, it would be more fair to say that there is a young man, his eight brothers and sisters and his three mothers and three fathers.”

“Ah,” said Hiram.  “Nothing like a little family time when you’re on leave.  Did you happen to know any of these people or were you staying in a hotel full of strangers?”

“Do you remember Rafael Eitan from Camp Gettysburg?”

“Sure,” Hiram said instantly.  “He commanded Gold Company on the last field exercise.”

“He was my guide up into the Atlas Mountains,” she told him.  “But that’s not why I called you.”  She explained about her meeting with Admiral Douthat and the computer simulations she had just reviewed.  “I need some background on the Refuge gunboat squadrons.  I know the ships are small and don’t have any armor, but their losses are staggering and I don’t understand why they don’t change tactics.”

Hiram blinked.  “I’m not exactly an expert on Refuge gunboat history or tactics, Em.”

“Of course you’re not, but I’m willing to bet that you’ve got the name of an expert in that little book of yours,” she retorted.

Hiram cocked his head, thinking.  “Hmm, I do happen to know of someone, but he is not currently in the military; he‘s retired and is considered a black sheep in some circles.”

“And why is that?”

“Well, he has published several articles in the Refuge fleet magazine on strategy and tactics challenging traditional gunboat tactics as self-defeating and dangerous.  It was after the first of those articles that he was forced to retire.”

This sounded more and more promising.  “What was his rank when he retired?” she asked.

“Captain.  He was passed over for promotion to Rear Admiral twice.  He always had a reputation for being a maverick, but his service record was pretty good until he published the first of his articles, then his performance ratings plummeted,” Hiram explained. He paused. “Sending his articles to you now.”

“I have to meet with Admiral Douthat at 1800, is there any chance of talking to him before then?”

Hiram laughed.  “Oh, the Gods must like you, Tuttle.  His name is David Lior and he is on Atlas right now, hoping to persuade the Fleet to adopt a new small fighting ship to replace the Refuge gunboat.  He has a set of technical plans all drawn out and even has developed tactical doctrine.”

Now it was Emily’s turn to blink.  “You’re kidding me, right?”

“Come to my cabin, Em.  I’ll give you some lunch and you can meet the notorious Captain Lior.  But I warn you, he’s a bit abrasive and opinionated.”

“I’ll forgive almost anything if he can give me the background I need,” Emily countered.

They signed off and as Emily finished unpacking her door chimed.  When she opened it she was surprised to see Grant Skiffington standing there, scowling.  She hadn’t seen much of Grant since their desperate fighting retreat from Cornwall to Refuge.  She had not actively avoided him, but wondered if he might be avoiding her.

Now he stood in her doorway with thunderclouds in his face.

He held up a message flimsy.  “Douthat wants to see me at 1800,” he said, his voice thick with anger.  “I think she’s going to take away the Yorkshire.

Emily nodded.  “I know, I got one, too.  Did she send you the attachments about the Refuge gunboats?”

“Yes, but I don’t see-“

“Did you view them?”

“Not yet, I was too upset by the thought of-“

“How about if you join me for lunch?” she asked brightly.  “I’ve got someone we should both meet.”

David Lior was a short, rotund man with an angry expression and a wild bushy beard that looked like a bird’s nest.  He sat at Hiram’s dining table and looked at them belligerently.

“Who are you?” he demanded curtly.

“I am Commander Emily Tuttle of the H.M.S. New Zealand and this is Commander Grant Skiffington of the H.M.S. Yorkshire, sir,” Emily said formally.  Lior nodded in recognition.

“You’re the poor bastards who held the back door while the Atlas ran for Refuge,” he said, peering at her.  “You’re all that’s left of the Coldstream Guards.  Heard at the end you were down to throwing rocks and getting ready to ram a Duck battleship.”  He studied her coolly.  “That true, young lady or just more Victorian bullshit?”

“Are you always this charming Captain?” Emily asked.

“No, I am making a special effort because Brill here says you’re somebody important.  Now, answer my question.”

“It’s true,” Emily admitted, marveling at how much it hurt to think about it again.  “I was going to ram the battleship.”

“Why?” Lior asked roughly.  “Not enough imagination to think up better tactics than destroying your ship and killing your entire crew?”

Emily glanced at Hiram, who nodded once.  Part of her wanted to just turn and walk out rather than deal with this obnoxious toad of a man, but then another voice whispered in her mind, This guy is nowhere near as tough as the grogin, and you beat them!

“Well, Mr. Lior, it was like this,” she said matter-of-factly.  “I had three ships left and we were all damaged and had naught but a handful of missiles between us.  We had to buy about thirty minutes for the Atlas to make it through to Refuge safely.  Atlas carried our Queen and all our hopes to somehow turn this terrible calamity around.  So I made a decision that if I had to use the New Zealand herself as a weapon, I would, because that is what I thought it would take to accomplish my mission.”

“And why didn’t you ram the battleship, then?” he asked belligerently.  “Turn chicken?”

“No, I didn’t ram it because another tactic became available and I used that instead.”  Emily’s cheeks were aflame now.  “It cost fewer lives and still left the option of ramming if I needed to.”  She leaned closer to Lior, until she was looking him in the face.  “And now, you dreadful little man, will you get that goddam chip off your shoulder and teach me about gunboats or shall I go find someone else who will?”

Lior looked at her coldly.  “Listen, young lady, I lost my reputation and my career because I dared to tell the Admiralty their precious gunboats are nothing more than suicidal hobby toys, not real warships.  I have been trying to bring reason and rationality to the Coast Guard for fifteen years and it cost me everything I held dear, so don’t give me any crap about having a chip on my shoulder.”

Startled, Emily shot another glance at Hiram, who nodded.  She turned back to Lior.  “Alright, Captain.  But this is what I know:  I just reviewed three battles with the Dominions where the Refuge gunboats were instrumental in driving them back, but with losses that are not sustainable.  And when I say not sustainable, I mean not sustainable in the next few weeks, not months or years.  What I can’t understand is why do the Refuge gunboat squadrons fight the way they do?  No formations, no tactics, no mobile resupply…” her voice trailed off.

“They fight that way because that is what they have been taught,” Lior said angrily, slapping the table for emphasis.  “Their military training has taught them that it is manly and bold to simply charge your enemy with no thought of personal safety or survival.  They have been taught that trying to outwit the enemy is simply another name for stalling, and that developing tactics to better your chances of success is nothing but cowardly diffidence when a true warrior would charge his enemy and smite him!  Anyone who does not meet those criteria for ‘bravery’ is removed from full-time active duty and put in the Reserve.  Being in the Reserve is a badge of shame and dishonor.  Those men and women fly enough to keep their skills up, but they are scorned by the active-duty pilots and crews.”

“Wonderful,” Grant Skiffington said dryly.

Well, that certainly explained the high losses, Emily thought.  “But why the ships?  Why haven’t they redesigned the gunboats to give the crews a better shot at reaching the enemy and killing them?”

Lior snorted.  “Oh, come now, my dear Commander, surely Victoria must have some corruption scandals when it comes to military procurement?  Our gunboats were designed by the Refuge Coast Guard decades ago.  When it came time to award the contracts to make the ships, somehow the contract was awarded on a sole source basis to the son-in-law of the Coast Guard Commandant.   Despite the fact that we only needed a few of them, the son-in-law’s contract called for making a thousand!  The Audit Board finally caught on to what was going on, but by that time the Commandant’s daughter’s weasel of a husband had built hundreds and hundreds of the damned things.   We only needed a few, so we stockpiled the rest.  There has been no redesign or no innovation because we have this huge backlog of old ships sitting in warehouses.  And, in fairness, there has been no pressing need.  All the gunboats have been asked to do is ward off pirates, and that they have done admirably.”

“And the Coast Guard Commandant?” Hiram asked, always curious.

Lior chuckled without humor.  “Oh, the military takes care of its own.  He served six months in prison, but then was released on compassionate leave because he had a pimple on his ass or some such thing.  Today, no doubt, he is bouncing his grand kids on his knee and watching the ocean from the lawn of a very expensive villa.”

Grant looked thoughtful.  “Have you thought at all of what changes you would make to the gunboats to make them better?”

Lior glowered.  “Of course I have!  What do you think I have been doing with myself these past fifteen years?”  He took out a data chip.  “I have made complete drawings of what upgrades are needed to dramatically increase the payload and extend their survivability.  It’s all there.”  He passed the data chip across the table to Skiffington, who slipped it into his tablet and began tapping the screen.

“Can you summarize for me what you have recommended?” Emily asked.

“Of course, but it will do no good.  The Refuge Fleet is wedded to the status quo.  The admiral in charge of the Coast Guard gunboat squadron is Admiral Haim Razon.  He came up through the ranks. He made a great reputation for himself fighting pirates and thinks the gunboats as they are now are fine, with no changes necessary.”

“What did you suggest?” Emily prodded gently.

“The current gunboats have three short-range missiles that are little better than anti-missile missiles.  They are not ship-killers.  I propose replacing them with four medium or long range missiles with a much heavier warhead.  Next, I would replace the three inch laser with a ten inch laser and add enough power to recharge it in thirty seconds rather than the current four minutes.  I’d upgrade the engines, adding a second engine that could be dedicated to recharging the laser when need be, or power the gunboat, giving it much better acceleration.”  The retired captain paused for a moment.

“Do you have any idea how long it would take to manufacture one of these gunboats?” Emily asked, thinking glumly about the limited manufacturing capacity available.

Lior smiled slyly.  “Ah, I was wondering when you would get to that.”  His eyes lit mischievously.  “I think as many as twenty five per week, maybe more once Atlas is reprogrammed to build this new design.”  He smiled at Emily’s look of disbelief.  “Refuge has three ship building yards, but they are old, with old manufacturing methods.  Victoria uses a modified molecular print process for manufacturing, correct?”

Emily nodded.  She didn’t understand much of how it worked, but Atlas’ three ship docks used nano technology to print the parts of the ship and assemble them.  It was considerably faster – and higher quality – than the earlier manufacturing methods where the ship was built as one entire unit.

“Well,” Lior said with satisfaction, “I have designed the new gunboats to be built as an assembly of modular units.  There is a plasticrete core module that holds a crew of three and the electronics.  This module flairs in the back to an engine housing. The engines are separate modules, the laser is a separate module and the missiles are separate.  If one of these gets damaged or just won’t work, you unhook the electrical and plumbing connections and then disconnect the module and replace it with a working unit.  This means if you want to turn a missile boat into a laser boat, you swap out the external missile racks for lasers.  Need a second engine, you add it to the engine housing and slot it in.  You can, within limits, redesign the ship for specific tasks and combat environments.”  He sat back, looking very smug.

Grant looked interested.  “Crew?”

“Three,” Lior answered.  “Pilot, engineer/systems operator, and weapons officer.”

“AI?” Grant queried.

Lior shrugged.  “I originally designed it to accommodate your Version 2 of Harriet, but that has been replaced with Mildred, Version 4.”  He shrugged with affected modesty.  “The gunboats are of course capable of computer linkage, so the AI could fly up to ten ships as one unit.”

Emily leaned forward.  “Internal missile storage?”

The fat little man shook his head regretfully.  “No, all four missiles are on external racks.  Once they’ve been fired, the gunboat has to go back to the mother ship to rearm.  But!” he said forcefully, “once the gunboat is in the mother ship, they should be able to rearm it with four missiles and send it back into battle within ten minutes.”

“Legs?”

Lior shrugged again.  “So many variables, but I can tell you that at cruising speed it should be able to go ten million miles on one engine because we can use the spare engine housing for additional fuel.  On two engines, probably no more than six million miles under constant acceleration.  Of course, you can always power down the engines and fly on momentum, but there would obviously not be any further acceleration until you bring the engines up. But again, the gunboat could loiter for many hours, days even, at low power and then spring into action.”

“Life support?”

Another shrug.  “Eight or nine days at normal settings with a crew of three, but I designed an external life support pack that can give you an extra ten days and then be jettisoned.  That would double the useful life of the craft, but it has to mount in one of the missile bays, so you’d only have three missiles instead of four.”  He tapped the table with his finger.  “Don’t try to make this heavy gunboat something it’s not.  It’s not a destroyer, not even a frigate.  It can’t go out on patrol for weeks and months on end like a capital ship.  It is an attack craft intended to deliver a punch all out of proportion to its size and then return to its carrier base.”

And that would be its major weakness, Emily thought.  Kill the carrier and you effectively kill all the gunboats it supports.

“How do you defend the carrier?” she asked.  “Without the carrier, all of the gunboats are dead.”

Lior nodded.  “Yes, yes.  Kill the carrier and the gunboats are useless.  So, we defend the carriers three ways, eh?   First, stealth.  When the carriers go somewhere, they go with as few electronic emissions as possible.  Space is vast; the Dominion can’t shoot at what they can’t find.

“Second, the carrier should have two or three destroyers as escorts at all times.  If attacked, the destroyers have to give the carrier time to escape.”

“Sort of hard on the destroyers,” Grant Skiffington murmured.

Lior shrugged dismissively.  “War is hard.  If you can’t accept that, become a politician; they live in a fairy land.  You could be very happy there.”  Grant looked at him coldly, but Lior ignored him and continued.  “Three, speed.  Actually, not speed, but acceleration.  The carriers have four of the largest engines we can build and the most advanced inertia compensators.  They can accelerate faster than any other ship in the Coast Guard.  At the first sign of attack, the carriers should run away.  Unless the Dominions have some new ship designs that I am not aware of, they’ll never overtake our carriers.  If the carrier can get out of missile range, it will be safe.”

Emily spent a moment thinking how she would go about ambushing a carrier, but then set the thought aside.  “How many gunboats could a carrier hold?”

“Oh, depends on the size of the carrier, doesn’t it?” he replied condescendingly.  Emily decided then and there that if he gave her that smug grin one more time she was going to smack him.

“The carriers are nothing more than freighters,” Lior continued.  “I’ve divided the design into a holding bay, a repair bay and a rearmament bay.  The rearmament bay is largely a computerized assembly line.  The gunboat pulls alongside of the carrier, is tractored into the bay and put into the line.  Modules are robotically removed and replaced, life support is recharged and the ship exits the far side directly into space to rejoin the fight.  A ship should cycle through the entire process in ten minutes or less.  You can even swap out crews if the first crew needs a rest or is injured.  The carriers can handle up to ten gunboats at a time, so once they get going, you’ll have a completely rearmed gunboat coming off the line every minute or so.”

“So how many gunboats will a carrier hold?” Emily asked again.

“An average carrier could hold up to two hundred and fifty.  A large carrier, twice that.  A pocket carrier could hold maybe seventy five or so.”

Last question, Emily thought:  “How long to build the carriers?”

Lior laughed with satisfaction.  “No time at all!  The Coast Guard Commandant’s lucky son-in-law got a contract to build fifteen carriers! He built them, but then we mothballed them when we realized we did not need them for in-system use.  The carriers will have to be reprogrammed and the rearmament bays upgraded, and we’ll want to take a look at the inertia compensators, of course, but that shouldn’t take more than a month.”

Emily nodded slowly and glanced at Hiram, who raised his eyebrows and nodded.

“I see you’ve got more than one type of gunboat in here,” Grant said, flipping through the designs on his tablet.

“Yes,” Lior confirmed.  “There are three basic types. First, the attack craft; second, the jammers and anti-missile craft; and third, a command craft.  I haven’t worked out yet how many command craft we’ll need for how many attack craft, but I would guess one for every twenty five or so.”

“You know,” Grant said, “we can use Gandalf to model this even before we have the actual gunboats manufactured.  We could build simulators – a lot of them – and play with this until we understand what works and what doesn’t, and use that to create tactical doctrine.  We can do a lot of this even before we have actual ships to fly.”

Emily glanced at her watch.  She had two hours before her meeting with Admiral Douthat, enough time for some food and to think about all of this some more.  Grant and Captain Lior left for the mess hall, still talking about tactical doctrine and Emily turned to Hiram.

“Quite a coincidence, having Captain Lior on board Atlas like this,” she remarked casually.

“Glad it worked out,” Hiram said.

Emily stared at him.  Hiram stared back for a while, then he laughed and shook his head and held up his hands in an ‘I surrender’ gesture.  “Okay,” he said.  “I learned that Admiral Douthat was going to take you off the New Zealand and give you the job of somehow making the gunboats less vulnerable during combat.  I did a little research and came across Captain Lior and thought he was someone you should meet.”

Emily pursed her lips.  The news only confirmed what she had been thinking, but it still stung.  “When did you find out?”

“Last week, when you were still dirt side in the Atlas Mountains.”  He shrugged.  “I thought this might give you a leg up on your assignment.  It is an important assignment, Em.”

“And the New Zealand?” she asked, with a note of despair.

“She’s going to someone more senior,” Hiram told her gently.  “Douthat is doing a general shake-up.  Five captains have been reassigned to non-combat duties.  You and Grant are being reassigned to make room for officers with more time in grade and more, uh, more-“

“More experience?” Emily asked bitterly.  “We haven’t had a fighting war in the history of Victoria until six weeks ago and I commanded the New Zealand through most of it.”

“I’m not saying it’s fair, Em, but I think that we have to make the gunboat squadrons a real, effective fighting force and soon if we’re going to stand a chance.  It is a huge undertaking and Admiral Douthat is giving it to you.”  He stopped then and watched her.

Emily thought for a long moment more about the New Zealand and what she’d gone through on her.  Half the time she couldn’t believe she had survived.  Now it was over.  Then she recalled a scene from the battle simulations, watching the Dominion cruisers cut a deadly swath through the attacking gunboats.  The brave, glorious idiots had continued attacking even though their missile racks were empty and the most they could shoot at the Ducks were underpowered lasers.  What could a force like that do if it was disciplined, had better ships and had a viable tactical doctrine?

It could be very interesting to find out.

“You know, Em, there is still one question that you haven’t asked yet about revamping the gunboat program,” Hiram said.  Emily looked at him.

“And that would be?”

“Whose ox is going to be gored if you take the gunboat concept away from Refuge and make it better?”

Emily blinked.  She hadn’t thought about that at all, but it was an obvious point.  Someone on Refuge was going to complain bitterly about the types of changes she was proposing.  “You have been hanging around political types, haven’t you?” she said with a bit of an edge.

“I am an aide to the Queen,” he replied seriously.  “One thing you learn fast is that it is all politics.”

* * * *

Two hours later, Emily and Grant marched into Admiral Douthat’s office and presented themselves, as ordered.

“Sit down,” Douthat said.  She studied the two of them for a long moment, then sighed and sat back in her chair.  There was fatigue visible in every movement of her body and dark pouches under her eyes.

“I suspect the two of you know why you are here,” she said quietly.

“You want to take away our ships,” Grant said bluntly.

“You need to overhaul the gunboat program,” Emily said at the same time.

Admiral Douthat cracked a small smile.  “You’re both right.  I am taking you off your ships, but the consolation prize is the gunboat program.  You know the statistics,” Douthat continued.  “A month ago Victoria had three Fleets totaling more than two hundred ships, two large manufacturing space stations and access to five worlds and a large population for our various manpower and sundry needs.  Today we have approximately thirty ships, one space station and the support of only one enthusiastic but tiny nation, Refuge.  Our enemies have more ships, more men and ready access to supplies.  We still have the Atlas, of course, but only a little time in which to use her before the Dominion launches an overwhelming attack.”

“Why not build more battleships?” Grant asked.  “More cruisers, more destroyers?”  His tone bordered on disrespect and Douthat eyed him coolly.

“We would, if we could, but we don’t have either the time or the resources.  The minerals we need are in short supply in this asteroid belt and the construction cycle for the larger ships is simply too long.  We think we’ve got four months, five at the most, but the fact is the Ducks could come through the wormhole in force any day.  We’ve got to be as ready as we can when they come.”

“Pre-emptive strike through the wormhole?” Grant pushed.  “Knock them on their ass and slow them down.”

“Could work,” Douthat agreed judiciously, “but if it doesn’t it could leave us weaker than we are now and invite an early attack by the Ducks.  We haven’t entirely ruled out a spoiling attack, but the risk is very great.”

“Gunboats,” Emily said.  “Not the gunboats Refuge has now, they don’t pack enough of a punch and their range is too limited, but heavy gunboats and lots of them.  They’re a pretty simple design, not too hard to build, and they use relatively little in the way of resources.  If we have enough of them, we can deploy them in carriers and-“

“You saw the summaries of how poorly the Refuge gunboats fared against the Dominions?” Admiral Douthat asked.

“Yes, Ma’am, but they don’t have any tactical doctrine to use their strengths; they just charge in in a horde, hoping to get close enough to get off a good shot.  And there is no command and control structure, no one directing them, no one calling the shots.”  Emily stopped herself, suddenly appalled by how much planning they would have to do to use the new gunboats as they should be used.  Douthat eyed her with amused expectation.

Emily took a breath.  “There’s a ton of work to be done to make this work, Ma’am.  How much time do we have? “

“Not much,” the Admiral replied.

“Where do we find crews?  How can I train them?  We have neither ships nor simulators to work with.”

“You have some serious challenges facing you, Tuttle.”

“Gods of Our Mothers!” Emily breathed.

Admiral Douthat smiled a thin smile.  “Welcome back from vacation.”

* * * *

Much later, Alyce Douthat sat in her quarters with Martha Wilkinson, the Admiral sipping a glass of pinot noir and the Chief Medical Officer happily drinking gin.

“I’m relieved that Tuttle took it so well,” Wilkinson said.  “Not entirely surprised, mind you, but relieved nonetheless.  Losing your ship is always a nasty business.”  She contemplated her next sip of gin.  “Still…”

Admiral Douthat frowned and glanced at her friend.  “‘Still’ what?”

Wilkinson shrugged. “Well, you’ve given the task of building a gunboat wing to the youngest Commander in the Fleet, the one with the least experience.  I’m a big fan of Tuttle’s, but you had others you could choose from, including several senior captains and even a rear admiral or two.  So why Tuttle?”

Douthat sipped her wine.  “Martha, I am the senior admiral in the Fleet.  I am the First Sea Lord.  Do you know how much experience I have with carriers and gunboats?”

“Very little, I would imagine,” Wilkinson replied.  “I don’t recall the Fleet ever using carriers.”

“That’s my point,” Douthat said firmly.  “I don’t have any carrier experience, nor do any of my rear admirals or captains.  But more than that, if I gave one of my captains the job of building a carrier fleet from nothing in just four to five months, they’d laugh at me.  And do you know why?” Douthat demanded.

Wilkinson shook her head.  “No, but I can’t tell you how very happy I am that you are about to tell me.”

Douthat ignored her.  “Because it’s impossible!  No one with experience in large projects would think they could create a gunboat wing from thin air in two years, let alone five months.  That is why I choose Tuttle; she’s too young and inexperienced to know the job can’t be done.”

“You are that optimistic?”

Douthat shook her head grimly.  “No, I am that desperate.”

“Gods preserve us!” Wilkinson muttered and took a large swallow of gin.

“It may come to that,” Douthat agreed.

Chapter 12

Atlas Space Station, in Refuge Space

When Hiram arrived at his office the next morning, he had a visitor waiting for him.  Hiram placed the palms of his hands together and bowed.  “There are many paths to The Light” he said in greeting.

“And each man must find his own,” Brother Jong replied.

“Thank you for coming,” Hiram said.  “May I offer you tea?”

Brother Jong nodded and sat down on one of Hiram’s two chairs, glancing about casually.  Hiram’s quarters on Atlas were not as Spartan as Jong suspected he’d find on a warship, but they were austere nonetheless.  A small kitchen table, two chairs, a couch in the living room, one easy chair, several lamps and bookshelves on every wall.  No vid screen, no music center, and only one picture of a strong looking woman with light brown skin and dark brown eyes filled with laughter.

“You shame me, Commander,” Jong said.  “You live more simply than most of our monks.”

Hiram finished whisking the tea so that its surface was covered with a delicate froth, then put the ceramic cup in front of the monk and sat down in the other chair.

“Brother Jong, can you please tell me about Canaan?” Hiram asked.

The unexpectedness of the question caught Jong off-guard.  Canaan was a breath-taking, beautiful world with miles of sculptured gardens that had been crafted and nurtured over centuries.  One of the tenets of The Light was that in order to achieve spiritual harmony, a person had to live in his world without marring it.  It meant that Canaan’s architecture melded buildings into the landscape, with structures built into hills or camouflaged as part of the woodlands.  It was a beautiful, soothing world that always made him feel a little closer to God.  He missed it every day he was away.

“It is the most beautiful world in all of Human Space,” Jong said simply, “surpassing even Darwin.  If there is a place where souls reside, my soul resides in Canaan.”  He closed his eyes and pictured the meadow at the bottom of the hill, looking out over the large lake where his house stood.  He could almost hear his children’s shouts and laughter as they played.

“Then I envy you deeply,” Hiram said, “and feel your loss at being away from it.  May I ask, how long has it been since you have seen Canaan?” He swirled the tea around in his cup, then sipped it.

“Oh, it’s been almost a month, now,” he said, a touch of wistfulness in his voice.  “Someday, Commander, I will show you my world.  It is very fine, very fine indeed.”

Hiram smiled and nodded, sipping his tea.  “Were you able to stay long, what with the war and everything?”

“Never long enough, but in the few days I was there I took care of business and managed to visit my family.”

“And how did you come back to Refuge, Brother Jong?”  Hiram asked softly.  The question was so matter-of-fact, so innocuous that Jong actually opened his mouth to speak before he realized the trap he had fallen into.  Excoriating himself for his lack of mindfulness, he pressed his lips together and stared sourly at Hiram.

“The thing is,” Hiram continued pleasantly, “the wormhole between Refuge and Victoria is locked down tight.  We monitor every inch of the border and track every ship coming in.  We have no record of your ship either entering Refuge, leaving it or reentering it.  Yet you were there, Brother Jong, and now you are here. And you never went through the wormhole.  How can that be?”

Jong’s forehead wrinkled in apparent thought.  “Ah, perhaps we came through when the wormhole had moved,” he suggested.  “I would have to ask my pilot and navigator, of course, but certainly that would explain it.”  He smiled.

Hiram pursed his lips.  “Mmmm.  That would explain it, but I checked; the wormhole was stable and motionless during this entire period.”  He took the tea pot and carefully poured more into Brother Jong’s cup, then his own.

“Brother Jong, the events of recent weeks are changing us, Victoria and The Light.  Our nations have never been close, but nor have we been enemies.  But now, well, the Dominions have kicked over the table; everything is changed.  Victoria will never again hold the position that it did just a few months ago, but neither will The Light.”

“Really, Commander, you sound like Sir Henry,” Jong said, smiling, looking for some way to steer the conversation away from wormholes.

Hiram smiled.  “Forgive me, I do not mean to stray from my area of expertise.  But Brother Jong, twice now you have intervened to help Victoria. I think that you have chosen sides, whether that was really your intent or not. You tried to warn us that the Tilleke were up to something and we failed to heed your warning.  Then you told us that the wormhole to Refuge was going to move and where it would move to.  By doing that, you saved us from almost certain destruction by the Dominion.”  Hiram paused, but Jong said nothing, gazing impassively at him over the rim of the tea cup.

“I was glad to be of service,” Jong said neutrally.

“I think there is more, Brother Jong.  I think that you know how to travel from The Light to Refuge without going through the Refuge/Victoria wormhole.  That should be impossible, and yet you do it, don’t you?”

“I really don’t understand what you are talking about,” Jong said, but his eyes dropped as he said it.

“Now,” Hiram continued as if Jong had not spoken, “I have to ask you to once again side with Victoria.”

Jong silently cursed himself for getting into this situation, but then considered.  There are many ways to The Light, and each man must find his own.  He gently placed the tea cup on the table and sat back.  “The Dominion will launch another attack through the wormhole within five days.  Preparations have already commenced,” the monk said.

Hiram felt a stab of jealousy at the mastery of The Light’s intelligence gathering.  “And we will defeat them,” Hiram said.

“Probably,” Jong agreed, “but not certainly.”

“If we defeat this next attack, then we will have enough time to build the warships we need to rebuild our Fleet,” Hiram observed.

Jong shook his head regretfully.  “This cannot be assumed.  Within a few weeks you will discover that the suitable mineral content of these asteroid belts is lower than you projected.  You have based your production projections on the assumption that the asteroid belts here in Refuge have the same density of the ores you need as do the asteroid belts in Victoria.  I fear that assumption is incorrect.”

“So we won’t be able to build the number of warships we need,” Hiram said flatly.

Jong shrugged.  “It will take you longer.  The Dominions currently have a capacity for ship building that is quite large.  For every cruiser you build, they can build two, maybe even three.  For every battleship you can build, they can build one and a half or two.”

“Which brings us to Siegestor,” Hiram said, watching Brother Jong closely.

Jong said nothing, but despite himself there was an almost imperceptible tightening around his mouth and eyes.  Hiram waited for a moment longer, and then tried a different tact.

“Here’s what I think will happen, Brother Jong, if this war continues the way it is right now:  The Dominion will simply out-build us.  They will have more warships and will grind us down in a war of attrition.”

Jong said nothing, so Hiram continued.  “You and I both know that once the Dominion beat us, the Tilleke will step in and take out the Dominions.  If I’m right, the Emperor has been pitting Victoria and the Dominion against each other.  He doesn’t care much who the winner is, as long as the winner is weakened and vulnerable so that he can step in and sweep them aside before the dust has settled.”

Jong frowned.  “I am not sure what you think The Light can do, Commander Brill.  We have no navy to speak of-“

“You told me once that if the Tilleke ruled Human Space, the Emperor would not tolerate The Light,” Hiram said.  “Do you have children, Brother Jong?  I seem to recall that even those in your religious orders can marry.”

“Yes,” Brother Jong replied in a low voice.  “Two blessed daughters and a son.”

Hiram nodded.  “The Dominions used nuclear weapons on Cornwall just to kill our Queen. They devastated an entire city, millions of people, just to kill one person. If the Dominions were willing to do that, what do you think the Tilleke might do?  Do you think the Emperor would suffer anyone to live on Canaan?”

“We can offer you intelligence reports-“ Jong began, but Hiram interrupted.

“I intend to send a force to destroy Siegestor, Brother Jong, but I can’t send them through the Refuge/Victorian wormhole.  I think you know of a way to do this.”

And it finally comes to this, thought Jong.

Hiram played his last card.  “I think you know of a way to travel from Refuge to a place deep in Dominion space, without having to go through the Refuge/Victoria wormhole,” Hiram said.  “You know how to do that, somehow.  If Victoria is to survive, The Light must help us.  And if you don’t help us, then you’d better pray that your God will help you, because after we’re gone, there will be no one left to stop the Emperor.”

Back aboard his ship, Brother Jong immediately called for Sister Takeko, his navigator.  He needed to return home quickly and she would know the best way to do it.

Chapter 13

At the Refuge/Victoria Wormhole

On the Dominion Battleship Fortitude

Battles are often heralded by the smallest things.  A shout, the sound of a bugle, the beat of a drum, a radio message, sometimes simply the scuffle of running men.

This battle was heralded by the sparkle of forty reconnaissance drones breaking through the wormhole.  They swung in violent turns while their active sensors diagnosed the immediate area, then dove back through the wormhole again.

Ten of them survived the laser fire and missile mines to carry their message back to Admiral Kaeser.

“Sensor data is uploaded, Admiral!” Captain Fritz Bauer said briskly.

“Fire the missiles,” Kaeser said calmly, eyes on the holographic returns created by the reconnaissance drone data. The Combat AI had immediately assigned targets to the missiles, but he wanted to see the picture for himself. There were dozens of Victorian missile platforms, a half-moon shaped minefield and the ruins of the two Refuge forts that had been destroyed in the earlier raids.  Beyond that there were signs of many ships, but the sensor returns were too spotty to give any details.  The damn Vickies could have a dozen battleships out there or nothing but decoys.  Only time would tell.  Time and a damn good fight.

“This is the classic set-piece battle,” he told the young officers in the Command Center.  “The enemy admiral knows where I have to attack and is waiting for me.  In the early moments of this battle, there are no real surprises.  It is like chess; the opening moves are important insofar as they give me a base from which I can make more complex moves in the middle game.”

The dozen or so junior officers had turned and were facing him, listening intently.  Admiral Kaeser felt he had a duty to them.  They were the future of the Dominion of Unified Citizenry.  Some of them would one day be captains and admirals and would lead fleets in battles such as this one, and they had to learn as much as he could teach them.  It was not enough that they see what he did and how the enemy responded, it was important that they understand why he did what he did.

“Somewhere on a ship like this one,” he continued, “on the other side of that wormhole, the enemy admiral is watching just as we are.  Her name is Alyce Douthat.  She’s experienced and tough.  She knows I’m coming and she intends to stop me.”  He smiled wolfishly.  “She won’t.  I’ve got better crews, better ships, and as smart as she thinks she is, I’m smarter.”

The Command Center crew chuckled and nodded, then turned back to their monitors to watch the battle develop.

Three hundred missiles sped through the wormhole, targeted on specific defensive points.  They emerged in Refuge like a swarm of angry bees, each accelerating madly towards its target.  Mixed in among the missiles were dozens of jammers, designed to make it difficult for the Vickies to get a lock on the missiles and destroy them.

Of course, the Vickies in turn had their own jammers, designed to make it difficult for the Dominion missiles to find their targets.  The missiles would have to get close to burn through the jamming, which then made them vulnerable to the Vicky anti-missile batteries.  So the Dominions paid special attention to the anti-missile batteries, targeting each with up to three missiles.  But the Vickies anticipated that and ringed the anti-missile batteries with short-range Bofors and even more jammers and then used decoys to trick the Dominion missiles into wasting their destruction on empty space.

And so it went, back and forth, attack and feint and counter-attack and counter-defense.  The result was a ripple of explosions that started near the exit of the wormhole and spread out in a growing wave, a pyrotechnic tsunami that rolled through space seemingly destroying everything in its path…and itself.

Most of the missiles never made it to their objective, but some did, leaving behind a trail of spalled, twisted metal and death that left holes in the Victorian defenses, waiting to be exploited.

* * * *

Two thousand miles away, Admiral Douthat sat in the Battle Center of the battleship Lionheart.  She and everyone around her watched grimly as the Duck missiles swept in towards the hundreds of missile platforms seeded in front of the wormhole.

“This is the opening move,” she told the young officers.  And they were young.   Most of them had been cadets when the war began, some not more than two years in the Academy.   Academy graduates had been promoted and assigned throughout the Fleet, trying to bring up the overall level of competence.  Many had already been killed in the endless skirmishes with the Ducks.   For these former cadets, she had reinstated the old rank of “Ensign,” unused for more than a century.  They still had so much to learn.  And so Alyce Douthat, First Admiral of the Fleet and Sea Lord of Victoria, took the occasion to make this battle a teaching moment.

“The Ducks have to degrade the missile platforms if they expect to be able to push through the wormhole without taking significant losses,” she explained.  “We, of course, know that and we’ve taken steps to protect the missile platforms.  This is like the opening moves in a chess game, but always remember that in this game lost pieces are not just removed from the board – in this game the pieces die.”

The junior officers looked somber.  One of them asked, “Admiral, why don’t we just send a continuous stream of missiles to explode at the wormhole entrance?  They’d have to come through a gauntlet of explosions.”

Douthat studied the holo display for a moment, and then looked at the junior officers.  “There are two answers to that. Anyone know the first?”

In the corner of the Battle Center, one of the ensigns was furiously tapping on his tablet.  He paused and looked up at her.  Douthat nodded.  “Jason, what do you think?”

Ensign Jason Applewhite furrowed his forehead.  “Well, Ma’am, the problem is we don’t have enough missiles.  I figured that to really be sure we’d destroy any enemy ships coming through, we’d have to have twenty missiles exploding every thirty seconds within a zone two hundred miles deep in front of the wormhole.  That’s forty missiles per minute or 2,400 per hour.  Even including all of the missiles stored on the colliers, and pretending for the moment we would actually have time to load them, we only have about 10,000 standard missiles.”  He looked again at his tablet.  “Uh, that means, uh, we’d run out of missiles in about four hours.”

“And?” Douthat prompted.  Behind her on the battle display, the Victorian and Dominion computers were fighting a frantic war of total annihilation.  The battle display readouts could no longer keep up with how many missiles were in flight and how many platforms had been destroyed.

“Well, Ma’am,” Applewhite said, his face a mask of concentration.  “If the Ducks were smart they’d sacrifice a bunch of decoys just to keep us thinking they were really coming through in force, and then when we ran out of missiles, they really would come through in force.”

“And?” Douthat said again.  Applewhite almost never volunteered answers in these impromptu sessions.  She wanted him to think it all the way through and know that he had gotten it right.

Uncharacteristically, Applewhite grinned.  “Well, by that time when they come through, we’d have to throw rocks at them because we sure as heck wouldn’t have anything else!”

“We would still have lasers, Mr. Applewhite, but your point is well taken,” Douthat replied.  She looked around at the staring faces.  “The original question was a good one, but the short answer is that our resources are finite!  We can’t afford to bombard empty space in the hope of destroying an enemy that might just wait us out and then crush us.”

She swept the room with her gaze.  “Okay, that’s part of the answer, what’s the rest?”

Oddly enough, it was the Communications Officer who answered.  “In the long term, it is not enough just to keep the Ducks from coming into Refuge.  In order to win, we need to defeat them, and that means we have to destroy their ships, a lot of their ships.”

Douthat smiled.  She’d have to tell Alex Rudd about this one.  “Go ahead, Claire.  What else?”

Ensign Claire Bellman thought for a moment.  “To really beat them, we need to get them here in Refuge, then lure them into a kill zone.”

“How would you do that?”

“A controlled retreat,” she said promptly, then paused, working it out.  “Then envelop them on one or both flanks.  Annihilate them.”

“Remind you of a famous battle?” Douthat asked.

Claire nodded slowly.  “The Battle of Cannae, where Hannibal defeated the Romans and destroyed their army.  Of some 86,000 Roman soldiers who fought that day, 70,000 were reportedly killed.”

“And how do you lure the enemy to his death like that?” Douthat asked.

“By making him think he’s winning,” Applewhite offered, his face pale.

“Exactly,” Douthat agreed.  “And while we are trying to do that to the Ducks, they are trying to do it to us.  Don’t ever forget that.”

* * * *

“Send in the next wave,” Admiral Kaeser said.

Thirty Dominion war ships, including fifteen cruisers and as many destroyers, burst through the wormhole into Refuge space, ripple firing all of their missiles and energy beams.  All the while their active sensors probed and updated the picture of the Victorian defenses.  As soon as their missile tubes were empty and their lasers fired, they shot jammers and huge clouds of chaff, then wheeled back through the wormhole, leaving behind chaos and carnage.  So sudden and short was their assault that not one of the ships was lost.

“Sensor data is uploaded,” Bauer said again.  Kaeser looked intently at the updated hologram.  He nodded.  Some progress, not as much as he’d hoped, but some progress nevertheless.  The area immediately in front of the wormhole exit was littered with the dead husks of missile platforms, laser platforms and even some Victorian ships.  But there were dozens more, some identified, many not.  To the left wing the Vicky minefield seemed to be holding, but to the right he thought he could see it thinning out under the onslaught.  To the top and bottom there was a solid wall of jammers, leaving him to guess uneasily what might be lurking behind those jammers.

“Fire the second missile salvo with priority to the center and right.  Follow with reconnaissance drones to get a better identification of the ships behind the center minefield.”

Two hundred more missiles went out, along with forty jammers.  Once through the wormhole they divided into two groups and sped to their assigned targets.

“Incoming!  Missiles incoming!” shouted the Fortitude’s Sensors Officer.

Kaeser mentally shrugged.  Well, of course. Nobody expected the Vickies to just sit there and take it.  But the incoming swarm was a little smaller than he had expected, and a little more spread out than it should have been for maximum effectiveness.  He pursed his lips.

“Sensors!  Is there any indication of Victorian battleships out there?”

The Sensors Officer rapidly scanned the drone data.  “Nothing yet, sir.  Still a lot of unidentified ships, though.”

Well, well, maybe that worm Hudis actually is on to something, Kaeser marveled.  Time to get a toehold.  “Send in the hedgehogs,” he instructed.

Eight minutes later ten hedgehogs slid through the wormhole and formed in a defensive arc just in front of it.  Immediately hundreds of missiles targeted them, but that was exactly what the hedgehogs had been designed for and, networked together by their AI, they swatted down the first wave.  Immediately behind the hedgehogs came seven cruisers towing missile pods.  The cruisers fired a generous array of jammers and decoys and the effective rate of incoming Vicky missiles dropped significantly.

Admiral Kaeser nodded in satisfaction.  Good!  The Dominions now had a toehold inside Refuge space.  A trifle tenuous, perhaps, but a toehold nevertheless.

“Do you see, Fritz?” he asked mildly.  “Both sides have exchanged some pawns, feeling each other out.  But now we are positioned a little forward of where we were, now we can see that the enemy’s minefield is thinner on the right than on the left.  Is it a weakness to be exploited or a trap?”  He grinned, enjoying himself despite the losses he had taken and knew he would suffer in the coming minutes.  “Now we find out, not only by what we see, but by what the enemy does.”

A steady loop of reconnaissance drones circled back and forth through the wormhole, providing the Fortitude with a constantly updated picture of what was happening on the Refuge side of the wormhole.  Kaeser could see the unidentified Vicky and Refuge ships gathering into discernible formations and moving forward, but not yet firing.

“Send in the next group,” he said.

Thirty Dominion destroyers, each towing four missile pods, emerged from the wormhole and quickly took up position between the hedgehogs.  Space in front of the Dominion line seemed to ripple and sensors picked up a small avalanche of in-bound missiles.  The hedgehogs frantically knocked them down with a devastating array of lasers, projectile weapons and zone defense explosions, but still more came.  The destroyers and cruisers, their anti-missile systems linked by AI, fired every defense system available.  The space in front of them frothed with explosions.  Soon the area in front of the Dominions was so filled with debris and explosions that the sensors could not keep up.  Several shaded areas appeared in the hologram, indicating that there was too much activity for the sensors to sort out.  When the sensor picture finally cleared some minutes later, two Dominion destroyers and one hedgehog were dead.  Damage reports from the others flooded in.

Well, Kaeser mused, no one said this was going to be easy.

* * * *

“We dangled the weak minefield on their right and the enemy reinforced in order to exploit it,” Douthat explained, pointing at the battle holo.  “The Ducks will suspect a trap, so they’ll come in hard.  We send up reinforcements, but keep them at the edge of missile range.”  She glanced back at the half dozen ensigns.  “Why?”

The ensigns stared at her, then at the holo.  Applewhite and Bellman exchanged a glance and Applewhite made a small gesture, telling Bellman to go ahead.  She looked at Douthat.

“It’s what we said earlier, Ma’am: you want them to think they are winning, not that you are luring them in.”

Douthat nodded.  “Simple psychology.  They are more apt to value something if they have to work hard to obtain it.  If we just fall back, they suspect a trap, they’d be fools not to.  If they have to fight their way in and we pull back, then it is easier to believe that we are retreating, not luring them into a kill zone.  This gambit is as old as warfare, but it never plays out the same way twice.”

“So, have we fooled them?” one of the ensigns blurted.

“Damned if I know,” Douthat said.  “We’ll find out soon.”

* * * *

Admiral Kaeser studied the reports flowing in from the surviving destroyers.   “Have the cruisers and destroyers rearmed?” he asked.  An aide to Captain Bauer checked his tablet.  “Admiral, fifteen cruisers ready for deployment.  The destroyers will be on line in ten minutes.”

Kaeser frowned slightly.  The destroyers were always slow in rearming; he would have to speak to the Depot commander when this was over.

“Order the cruisers in,” he commanded.  “As soon as they have linked up, order the line to advance.  And tell the destroyers to hurry it up and join the cruisers as soon as possible.”

Two minutes later the cruisers emerged from the wormhole and aligned themselves behind and slightly above the destroyers. The hedgehogs stayed even with the front line of destroyers, above and below the destroyers’ line of fire.  As one, the entire line advanced.

Another wave of Victorian missiles sped inwards, but this wave was even more ragged and uncoordinated than the last.  Their fire control is breaking down, Kaeser realized.  Our missiles took out one of their control ships and they haven’t reintegrated their network yet.  There was an opening here, however slight, and he meant to exploit it.

“Orders to the attack force:  fire all missile pods at suspected enemy ships.  Ignore the minefields and go for their command and control!  Immediate action!”

The order went by courier drone since normal radio transmissions would not pierce the wormhole, but two minutes later one hundred and twenty missile pods ripple fired a total of 600 missiles at the Victorian ships.  Admiral Kaeser waited in quiet agony for the updated sensor reports.  When the update came, more than half of the symbols representing unknown Victorian ships were gone and the rest were falling back in an uneven, rag-tag fashion.

The Victorians were running!

But Admiral Kaeser was nothing if not prudent. Unlike the late departed Admiral Mello, he knew he had limitations and tried to compensate for them. He knew he saw only part of the picture; he knew the enemy would try to fool him.  He wheeled on Captain Bauer and his young aide.  “Look at the holo display.  Look carefully and tell me what you see.”

Bauer replayed the last fifteen minutes of display at high speed, watching the battle as it played out.  The aide replayed yet another segment, carefully blowing up the display as he focused on the minefields.

“Well?” Kaeser demanded.  He pointed at the aide.  “You first.”  He did not want the junior officer intimidated by what Captain Bauer might say.

“I think the Victorian minefield used up all of its missiles in that second wave they fired moments ago.  The minefield is no longer a threat.  And here,” he motioned to a group of symbols showing the unknown Vicky ships in retreat.  “We got lucky, I think, and hit some of their command and control ships.  Whatever happened, their performance immediately degraded.”   He advanced the replay, showing the last wave of Dominion missiles descending on the Vicky ships.  “And here we smashed them.  The survivors are clearly retreating.” He straightened.  “We’ve hurt them badly.  They are disorganized and running.  We should pursue to prevent them from regrouping!”

Kaeser turned to Captain Bauer, who nodded.  “I agree, sir.  We should continue the attack.  We have a toehold, sir, and we should move forward.”

“Just so,” Kaeser said in agreement. But as he studied the holograph a moment longer, his eyes were drawn to the numerous questions marks indicating Vicky ships of unknown type.  He recalled the words of a civilian psychology professor lecturing a room full of Rear Admirals and Vice Admirals on the ability of smart people to ignore evidence that contradicted what they wanted to see.  The professor had been in her late sixties, short and stout, and had a ‘no nonsense’ air about her that demanded their respect.

“All of you here have strong personalities and healthy egos,” she told them bluntly. “That’s fine; the Dominion Navy has little room for senior officers who don’t have confidence in themselves.  But in war you are going to be called upon to make judgments with very little time and incomplete evidence, and you must learn to tell the difference between your assumptions on the one hand and actual evidence on the other.  You will have a few precious seconds to read a complicated hologram.  When you look at that battle hologram you are going to make a determination of what you are seeing and then you will have to order your forces to take some action.  Attack, hold or retreat.  And here is where some of you will screw up.”

There was an angry stir in her audience.

She nodded.  “You don’t like that, do you?  Too bad!  I’ve tested military officers for twenty years on their ability to correctly read data in battle conditions.  The harsh fact is that most of you do not do it very well.  At least some of the time, you will screw up.  Some of you will lose ships, send men and women to fruitless deaths, and maybe lose the battle as well.”  She looked at them sternly.

“You must always remember, gentlemen, that just because you want the enemy to be weak, or slow, or incompetent, does not make it so.  The universe doesn’t care what you want.”  She stared at them from her lectern.  “I can see that I am not convincing some of you, so let me emphasize that last point:  The universe doesn’t give a fig what you want.  If the sensor data can be read more than one way, your job as senior officers is to not let your inflated egos insist on reading the data the way that is most favorable to you.  It is called contingency thinking, gentlemen, and those who don’t do it become famous for their occasional spectacular victories and their more frequent spectacular defeats.”

Just so, Kaeser thought.  He would take the sensor data at face value.  Maybe all those question marks were Victorian decoys, but maybe they weren’t.

“Order in the battleship Vengeance and the remaining destroyers.  They are to be the reserve as the other ships move forward.”  A battleship and fifteen destroyers was a very heavy reserve, but if this was a trap, he wanted a reserve strong enough to smash it.  And as he thought about it some more, he also realized that the two minute time delay for current information was two minutes too long.  In fact it was worse than that.  It took two minutes for a drone to come back from Refuge space with the latest data, then he had to review it and send orders back via another drone.  Call it five minutes in total for him to react with new orders.  Battles were lost in five minutes.

“Captain Bauer,” he ordered. “We will follow the Vengeance and the destroyers through the wormhole into Refuge. I want all active sensors compiled through our main battle holograph.  Once through the wormhole, hold a position just inside Refuge space.”

The destroyers and the Vengeance, the largest battleship in the Dominion fleet, entered Refuge space without incident, followed moments later by the Fortitude.  Twenty minutes later, the advancing line of hedgehogs, destroyers and cruisers had come abreast of the two ruined Refuge forts and were entering the forward edge of the minefield.

“And now I think we have them!” Douthat muttered to herself, intently watching the battle display as the symbols for the Duck warships crept forward.  “Just a little further, just a little further.”

Now, Kaeser mused to himself.  If this is a trap, that is where the Vickies would spring it.

And as he thought it, they did.

“Movement by the Refuge fort!” shouted one of the aides.  Kaeser shifted his gaze.  The two ruined Refuge forts sat astride the Dominion forces.  Small dots of red color seemed to blossom from each of them, like dandelion seeds on a windy day.

“Zoom in!”

The holograph blinked, then appeared again with the area around one of the forts magnified twenty times.  Now Kaeser could clearly see ten different ships emerging from the fort itself, each trailing a long line of smaller objects, as if on a string.  As he watched, each of the ten vessels cut the tractor beams holding the missile pods and accelerated frantically away from the Dominion warships, already pursued by missiles from his destroyers.

“I thought we confirmed that the forts were dead!” he demanded angrily.

Captain Bauer nodded.  “We did, sir.  They are dead.  There is no sign of any energy signature from either fort.”

Well, then, a fine kettle of fish this was.  Kaeser studied the holograph carefully and then understood what he was seeing.  The forts were dead, but ten tugboats had hidden in each of the ruins and had just towed out dozens of missile pods.

All of his ships were sitting in a killing zone.  Well, not the reserve, he realized with some relief.  The Vickies hadn’t counted on him holding back such a large reserve.

* * * *

Two thousand miles away, Admiral Douthat cursed under her breath.  Only some of the Dominions were in the kill zone, and none were actually in the minefield where most of the missile pods waited in stealth mode.  “The tugs deployed too soon!” she snarled, instantly forgetting the six ensigns.  “I ordered them to let all of the Dominions go well into the minefield before coming out of hiding!”

Captain Eder stepped beside her for a better look at the battle hologram.  After a moment of study, he said, “We can still use this, Admiral.  They can get back to the wormhole, but they’ve got to run through the Refuge gunboats to do it.”

“Do it!” Douthat ordered, then turned her attention back to the hologram, which showed the Dominions already turning away from the trap she had waiting in the minefield.  “Dammit!” she muttered.  So close.  So bloody close.

* * * *

The trap was sprung. Kaeser zoomed the holo display out so he could see the entire battle area. He was taking missile fire from left and right; there was a hopefully empty minefield in front of him and those annoying jammers above and below him.  He had a decision to make: he could attack straight through the minefield or he could retreat.  Attacking was the bolder move, the move his civilian masters would like, the move that would give him everlasting glory…or get all of his remaining ships destroyed.

He did not need glory, but he needed his ships intact.  It was time to cut his losses and get back to the wormhole.

“All hedgehogs to the right flank and prepare for incoming fire from the ruined forts,” Admiral Kaeser ordered crisply.    “All ships wheel to the right and advance.  Anti-missile systems on automatic and slaved to AI.  Execute now!”

The Dominion forces wheeled briskly to the right and charged the Refuge fort on that flank.  The Vickies would shoot at them from the missile pods in the left fort, Kaeser knew, but those missiles would have much further to travel and this way he could deal with one threat at a time.

The hedgehogs swung sharply to the right, covering the new front of the Dominion line of advance.  Once in position, they fired jammers, decoys and chaff to confuse the Vicky targeting systems.

Now the minefield was on the Dominion left flank and one of the Refuge forts was directly ahead of them.  The Dominion warships ripple fired their missiles at the Victorian missile platforms just as the Victorian missile pods let loose with a barrage of two hundred missiles aimed at Admiral Kaeser’s force.   Kaeser gritted his teeth as he realized that the Dominions had just emptied their missile tubes at a now useless target.  The missiles passed each other in flight, but as the Victorian missiles approached the Dominion ships the hedgehogs sprang into action.  One inch lasers saturated the approach, followed by anti-missile missiles, then high-velocity pellets and more lasers.

Then the missile pods hidden near the other Refuge fort fired.  Hundreds of missiles sped towards the rear of the Dominion force.  But there was a tactic for this as well.  “All forward ships, scatter up and down!  Execute now!” Kaeser barked.

Instantly, the thirty plus Dominion ships broke out of their line of advance and either climbed “up” or dove “down” out of the horizontal plane, forcing the pursuing missiles to separate in order to chase them.  Decoys darted off from the warships, luring away some of the missiles, while anti-missile defenses came on line and picked off the rest one-by-one.  When the threat had passed, the Dominion warships regrouped inside the protective cordon of the hedgehogs.  Two more Dominion destroyers were missing and sensors showed only debris where they had been.

The attack was a shambles, Kaeser acknowledged, but he could still save his remaining ships.  The Dominion force continued to wheel to the right, so now they were almost on a line to take them back to the wormhole.

Then a new threat emerged.

The Sensors Officer called out:  “Vicky warships are attacking through the minefield!  Estimate twenty-five ships, including at least six cruisers and many destroyers!”

“Get it on the battle plot!” Kaeser snapped.  He zoomed out a bit as the new sensor data was posted.  So, ships coming from the minefield while the Vicky missile platforms on the left and right shot missiles into the kill zone.  He chuckled ruefully.  Bad as it was, the Vickies had actually sprung their trap too early.  They had probably wanted him in the minefield before the tugboats brought out the missile platforms.  Then his escape route to the wormhole would have been closed.  He wondered uneasily what nastiness the Vickies had waiting for him in the minefield and was relieved he didn’t have to find out.

But then the next warning came.

“Gunboats!  Gunboats attacking on the vertical axis from above and below line of advance!”  The Sensors Officer’s voice was strained.  “Our attack force is almost surrounded!”

Two hundred or more of the tiny Refuge gunboats dropped from above or sprang from below.  Admiral Kaeser had encountered the gunboats before.  They were a threat, but they were small, carrying only three missiles and a single laser.  They had no armor and once they fired their missiles, they were toothless.  And there was more: the missiles the gunboats carried were small, with a limited range and a rather undersized warhead. They could kill, all right, but they had to get in very close and it took a lot of gunboats to effectively take on a destroyer, let alone a cruiser.

He didn’t think the gunboats would do very well against his hedgehogs.

“Hedgehogs to redeploy!  Two to the rear, four above and four below.  All ships, chaff and jammers to our rear, but concentrate all fire on the gunboats.  Their missiles are only effective within seven hundred miles, so intercept them beyond that.  Zone defensive fire!  Execute!”

For three long minutes, there was nothing.  The Vicky cruisers and destroyers coming from their stern were trying to burn through the jammers to get a decent lock on the fleeing Dominions, while the gunboats coming from above and below were not yet in missile range.  The Dominion warships, accelerating madly, sprinted for the safety of the wormhole.

And Admiral Kaeser prepared a little ambush of his own.

The gunboats finally got within range, shot one missile each and then pressed closer for their second shot.  The hedgehogs went into a flurry of activity as they met the initial threat and the heavier warships targeted the gunboats themselves, which suffered cruelly from the attention.  The space around the fleeing Dominions roiled with missile tracks, laser shots, explosions from the zone defenses and millions of projectile pellets from the Bofors.  The gunboats reached their firing line for the second round and another hundred and fifty missiles shot out to wreak havoc on the Dominions.  But as they came closer, their vulnerability to defensive fire soared.  First one, then five, then thirty gunboats blossomed into fiery slag as missiles, energy beams and heavy metal pellets slammed into them.

Still they pressed in, now firing their lasers, then desperately firing their last missiles and dropping jammers and decoys as they tried to turn and get out of the kill zone.  Seven Dominion ships, including two of the precious cruisers, staggered out of line and went ballistic, or began a sickening tumble.  Or simply blew up.  Every one of the surviving Dominions took damage, but they pumped more defensive fire into the ranks of the tiny gunboats, blotting them out of existence in furious payback.  The gunboats could only flee, their missile racks empty and their lasers recharging and, in any event, pointed the wrong way. Twenty more fell, then another twenty, and another.  The survivors twisted and turned, dumped chaff and jammers and wept with frustration until they were finally out of range.

Of the two hundred gunboats in the attack, eighty survived.

But the battle was not yet over.  From the rear of the Dominions, the attacking Victorians finally burned through the jamming and found target locks.  Twenty-five heavy lasers lanced out to the fleeing Dominions, followed by two hundred and sixty missiles.  Missile racks rotated to load fresh missiles and capacitors whined with the effort of recharging the lasers.  Four Dominion ships fell to the lasers and the missiles and a dozen more were badly damaged.

The Dominion force sprinted for the wormhole now, red-lining their engines, firing a steady torrent of missiles to distract the pursuing Victorians and leaving a trail of chaff, jammers and decoys in their wake.  By the time the Victorians readied the next missile load, the Dominions’ superior speed had widened the gap and the missiles had difficulty finding their targets through the expanding cloud of confusion and distraction.  A few got through and added to the damage already inflicted on the Dominions, but the majority lost their way and detonated when their safety programs kicked in.

Six minutes later the Dominions plunged into the wormhole and were gone.  The Victorians began braking, the Dark Matter Brakes pinpointing their locations with a huge glow of light.  The Victorians, chagrined at their failure, began to wheel about, assuming the battle was over.

That was when the Dominion reserve force emerged from stealth right in front of them and fired everything they had.  The Vengeance, the largest battleship in human space, fired all sixty of its missiles and its dozen heavy lasers at point blank range.  The fifteen destroyers contributed over a hundred more.  The twenty-five Victorian ships frantically weaved and dodged and their computer controlled anti-missile defenses activated in a frenzied barrage, but two cruisers and seven destroyers were blown to atoms.  No survivors.

The Vengeance and its cohort of destroyers turned and plunged through the wormhole.

On board the Victorian battleship Lionheart, Admiral Douthat watched the computer tally of lost and damaged ships grow and lengthen.

“Crap!” she muttered.  “What a complete balls up.”

On the other side of the wormhole, Admiral Kaeser looked at the list of lost and damaged ships.

“Crap!” he snarled.  It was every bit as bad as he feared.  The Dominion assault force had taken a beating.  Now he would have to wait much longer than four months before he would be ready to attack Refuge space again.

As he finished reviewing his losses, Michael Hudis entered the room, his face pale.  Kaeser stared at him with loathing.  Hudis, adept at political infighting of the highest order, glared back.  “Admiral, your incompetence has caused the Dominion of Unified Citizenry to suffer a terrible defeat,” he said coldly.

Kaeser turned to the ever-present Captain of the Guard, who was always stationed on the bridge whenever the Admiral was there.  “Captain, place Mr. Hudis under arrest and confine him to a cell.  No one is allowed to speak to him without my express order.  Search him to make sure he has no communication devices.”

The Captain took Hudis by the arm.  “Arrest me?” sputtered Hudis, caught off guard by the turn of events.  “Are you mad?  On what charge?”

“On the charge of treason and criminal negligence in carrying out your duties, Mr. Hudis.”  Kaeser gestured to the Captain of the Guard.  “Take him away.  If he keeps making noise, gag him.”

“The Citizen Director will hear of this, Kaeser!” Hudis shouted.  “You just killed yourself, you stupid idiot!”  His voice receded as the Captain of the Guard pushed him into the elevator.

“Just so,” Admiral Kaeser said.  “Just so.”

And Admiral Scott Kaeser, who had never done an impulsive or imprudent thing in his fifty-five years, wondered with quiet amazement at the path he had just stepped onto and where it might lead.

Chapter 14

Onboard the Dominion Prison Ship Tartarus

For Cookie, her day-to-day life was safer, but still intolerable.  Karl brought her from her cell most afternoons after he finished his shift and she cooked for him and cleaned his quarters.  Sometimes he would open a bottle of wine and they would eat and he would tell her about his day, the funny incidents that he had seen, even share with her some war news, which mostly depressed her.  She would do the dishes and they might watch a movie, or he might kiss her and fondle her and then strip her and have sex with her.

Cookie never thought of it as making love.

She demurred once, telling him she didn't want sex.  He didn't say anything, just returned her to her cell and left her there.  For the next three days he left her there with no food or water other than the water she could take from the toilet.  On the fourth day he once again brought her to his quarters and had her make dinner.  After dinner she did the dishes and he took her by the arm and led her to his bedroom, where he took her roughly and in ways that embarrassed and humiliated her.

She said nothing.  He had made his point.  She was his to do with as he pleased, when he pleased, and her own thoughts on the matter were irrelevant.  For Cookie, it took a while to get past the shame of being helpless.    She was no longer raped and beaten, but she was still being raped.  Karl just put a pretty veneer on it, like stabbing you with a knife wrapped in a pink bow.

Cookie bided her time.  She would wait and watch and sooner or later she would have a chance to do something.  She didn't know what that something would be, but had confidence that she would recognize it when it came.

"Gods of Our Mothers," she would pray in her holding cell, "you have given me blessings and sustained me and brought me to this season.  Your daughter thanks you for the precious gift of life and the hope of opportunity."  This sounded better, she thought, than, ‘Give me a chance to kill these fucking bastards.'

Then, in the fourth month of her captivity, two things happened to change everything.

The first was terrible.  She was sitting in her cell when the door opened.  She looked up, expecting to see Karl, but instead it was Schroder, the informal leader of the five men who had beaten and abused her.  He was a short man, going a little soft, with pock-marked cheeks, bulging watery blue eyes that gave him a distinct insect-like appearance, and thinning hair.  In a fair fight he was no match for her, which is why he always carried a neuro-baton.

He carried one now.

Cookie stood slowly and stepped back, placing the small table Karl had given her between her and Schroder.

Schroder looked around the cell as if he was seeing it for the first time.  "Very nice," he said sarcastically.  "All the comforts of home, not that you'll ever see home again."

Cookie said nothing, but tensed as Schroder took a step closer.  "So, now you are Karl's little fuck toy, eh?" he said, then he leaned forward and smiled.  "I know you must miss me and the boys and all the fun we had together, but don't worry, you little Vicky cunt, Karl is already getting bored with you and soon – very soon, I think – you'll be free to play with us again."  His smile broadened.  "And won't that be nice?  All six of us, just having some good, clean fun, eh?"

"Go away, Schroder, you know you're not supposed to be here."  She struggled to keep her voice level.

"Oh, what are you going to do, tell Karl?  Karl is just a doctor, and you are just his whore.  Enjoy fucking him while you can, because soon he's going to cut you lose.  He’s going to throw you back to us.  Then the real fun will begin.  Oh my, yes it will."  He winked at her and left, shutting the door behind him.

Shaking badly, Cookie collapsed on the chair.  That night she did not sleep.

If the first incident was terrible, the second was the stuff of nightmares.

Karl entered her cell.  His face was red and blotched, his eyes cold.  Cookie automatically put a smile on her face and stood, a pang of alarm gripping her.  Something was wrong.

Karl stared at her, breathing hard, not saying a word.

"Karl?" Cookie said softly.  "What is it?"  She took a tentative step forward.

"Your Fleet just defeated a major Dominion thrust into Refuge," he said coldly.  "We lost a lot of ships and crews; it might be months before we can go in again."  He stared at her with loathing, as if she were personally responsible.  "When will you people learn you’ve been beaten?" he shouted suddenly.  "We gutted your Second Fleet; we took your planet, killed your fucking queen and chased you across all of Victorian space.  Now you're bottled up in Refuge with no way out and nowhere to go."  He stopped abruptly, his face a dull, angry red.

Inwardly, Cookie was elated, but she needed Karl a little longer, just a little.  Composing herself, she tried to radiate sympathetic concern.  Stepping forward, she touched his arm.  "Karl-" she began.

He slapped her.  Her head rocked back, nostrils flaring in anger, eyes widening, then narrowing into slits.  He raised his arm to hit her again, but Cookie stepped into him, catching his wrist and twisting him around so that his arm was behind his back and her forearm was around his throat.  "Hit me again, you stupid prick,” she snarled, “and I will put you down like a dog."  She pushed him away hard enough to bounce him off the wall.

She instantly regretted it.

Karl turned toward her with hatred in his eyes.  Her heart sank.  She should have just let him hit her.  Gods of Our Mothers, what had she been thinking?

Wordlessly, Karl stormed from the cell and the door locked shut behind him.

Bugger me!

An hour later the door opened again and Schroder walked in with two of his goons.  Cookie warily retreated to the far side of the little table.  If they came for her she was going to use the table like a club and do as much harm as she could before she went down.  And if she went down, she didn't think she would ever get back up again.

Schroder, the sly little sociopath, read her like a book.  "No, no, my sweet little darling, I'm not here for you,” his soothing tones not matching the look of malicious delight on his face.  “Not yet.  There will be time for that soon enough.  But your Fleet gave us a bloody nose, didn't it?  Everybody's so upset.  Someone has to pay, yes they do."  He smiled a warm, comforting smile that made her stomach churn.  "I've brought you a little present.  Didn't want you to miss all the fun, did I?  That wouldn't be right."

He took out a small box and put it on her bunk.  Emily didn't even glance at it, just kept her eyes on Schroder, but he backed up a step and turned to the door.

"We've got a little surprise in store for your friend," Schroder said with quiet relish.  "I think you'll enjoy it."  And then they left, the door hissing shut behind them.

Cookie stared at the door for a long moment, her heart in her throat.  Finally she inspected the object Schroder left on her bunk.  It was a simple speaker.  The switch was already turned on.  Suddenly she heard the familiar hissing sound of a cell door opening, then Schroder's voice.

“Get on your feet, Wisnioswski.”

In the four months of her captivity, she had only been able to speak to Wisnioswski once, when they were transferring her to a different cell at the same time they were taking him to an interrogation room.  The guards had looked startled and she knew that they had screwed up, that she and Otto were not supposed to have any contact.  Her guards had immediately turned around and pulled her down a side corridor, but not before she called out, “Always together, Otto!”  And Wisnioswski had laughed and shouted “Never alone!” before she had been pulled away.

That brief moment had sustained her for weeks.

There was a shuffling sound over the speaker and Cookie could picture Wisnioswski standing up and facing Schroder and his five thugs.

“Time to pay for your sins, Wisnioswski,” Schroder said soberly, then laughed.  It was not a nice laugh.  There was more shuffling and she could picture the six Dominions fanning out on either side of him.  “Do you admit that you killed Admiral Mello with your own two hands?”

“You’ve got the fucking tape of it, what more do you want?” Wisnioswski said harshly.

“I want you to pay for the terrible thing you did,” Schroder replied.  Cookie had expected anger, but there was no anger.  Schroder sounded…amused?  Then there was the sound of flesh hitting flesh and muffled curses, then the unmistakable sound of a neuro-baton discharging.  Wisnioswski screamed, then screamed again as they zapped him a second time.

“Pin him down!” Schroder ordered, followed by the sounds of thrashing and curses from Wisnioswski.  “Hold his arms!  Hold them tight!”

For a moment there was only silence, then the heavy breathing of Wisnioswski, then a curious electric crackling sound that made Cookie wrinkle her forehead in confusion.  She had heard that sound, she knew she had, but where?

“You hear this, bitch?” Schroder called to her through the speaker.  “This is what we do to the enemies of the Dominion!”  Then the crackling sound increased.  Seized by dread, Cookie leaned forward, trying to understand what was-

Wisnioswski screamed.

It was a long, heart-rending scream that went on and on, filled with unimaginable pain, black despair and the utter hopelessness of a man brutally pushed beyond his physical endurance to the borderline of sanity.  And when she thought it could not continue any longer, that it had to stop, Wisnioswski screamed again, the scream climbing higher and higher into a falsetto shriek that could not possibly come from anything human, let alone a burly Fleet Marine.

Then, mercifully, it stopped.  There was a strangled, heaving sob, the sound of something heavy and meaty smacking onto the floor, followed by the cadence of deliberate footsteps approaching the microphone.

“Soon it will be your turn, you Vicky whore,” Schroder whispered softly.

Cookie tried hard not to whimper.  She knew that scream; she had screamed that way herself.  Then the anger seized her and she ran to the door and pounded on it.  “Schroder, you sadistic, dumb fuck, you’re a dead man!  You hear me, Schroder!  You’re dead!”

Thirty minutes later the door to her cell opened and they dragged Wisnioswski inside and dropped him, leaving without so much as a glance or a word in her direction.  He lay there on the floor, eyes open but not seeing anything, awake but not conscious.  She stared at him in turn, seeing but not comprehending, not wanting to comprehend.   Then he blinked rapidly and pushed himself awkwardly to his knees.  There was something flapping wetly against his chest.

Wisnioswski raised his arms.  “Look what they did to me!” he cried piteously.  “Gods of Our Mothers, look what they did!”

They had cut off both his hands.

Chapter 15

On Board the Dominion Ship Tartarus

For the next three days, they were left alone.  Cookie gave Wisnioswski her bunk and slept on the floor.  She had removed the two bloody hands they had hung around his neck and stuffed them through the food slot to the corridor outside.  She half expected Schroder’s thugs to push the hands back into her cell, but they didn’t.  Maybe they were embarrassed.  Maybe they didn’t care.  Maybe the mutilation had sated them for the moment.

Wisnioswski alternated between fits of weeping and just lying there, eyes open, staring at the ceiling.  Sometimes when he cried, Cookie would hold his head against her breast and rock him back and forth, humming lullabies recalled from her childhood or just saying “sshhhh, sshhhh” over and over again until he fell back into a fitful sleep.  Wisnioswski could no longer feed himself, so she fed him, spoonful by spoonful, and held a water cup up to his lips so he could drink.  On the second day she shaved him with a safety razor, whisking bar soap from the sink into froth in the palm of her hand and smearing it onto his beard.  She made a mess of it, nicking him several times, but he did not seem to notice.

On the third day, Wisnioswski seem to come back into himself a bit.  Cookie turned to see him staring at her.

“Well, hello, Wisnioswski,” she said with as much cheer as she could muster.  “You decided to come back to the land of the living?”

Wisnioswski lowered his eyes.  “I’m sorry, Sergeant,” he whispered through dry lips.  Cookie held a cup of water up to his mouth.

“Once we get out of here,” she told him, “the docs will grow you a new set of hands in no time.”

“We’re not getting out of here,” he whispered hoarsely.  “You know that.”

She started to reply, but stopped.  He was right; she felt it in her soul.  No matter what else happened in the war, she and Wisnioswski were lost.  Lost forever.  They had killed the Dominion’s top admiral; there was no way they were ever going to see home again.

The next day Karl came for her.  The cell door opened and he walked in followed by two of Schroder’s thugs.  Cookie stood, placing herself between Karl and Wisnioswski.  Karl ignored her, speaking directly to the private.

“Private, I am going to examine your arms for signs of infection.  Then I am going to take Cookie out of the cell for a few hours.  If you try anything, if you resist me in any way, we will cut off your feet.  Do you understand?”  Without waiting for a reply, Karl turned to Cookie.  His voice was harsh.

“I am going to take you to my quarters and fuck you.  If you resist in any way, I will cut off the private’s feet.  Do you understand?”

Cookie had known this was coming, had expected it, but as she saw the expression of confusion and anger on Wisnioswski’s face, she couldn’t help feeling dirty, indelibly soiled.  She nodded, looking at the floor.

Wisnioswski looked on with growing horror.  “Sergeant, no!  You don’t have to do-“

“It’s okay, Otto,” she said, still not looking at him.  “I’ll be okay.” Gods of Our Mothers, help me to appear weak and submissive so that I can keep us both alive just a little bit longer, this your daughter asks of you.

Wisnioswski, speechless, just stared at her as Karl took her elbow and led her out.

Karl took her to his quarters.  For a moment he just stood there, staring at her.  She wondered fleetingly if he was going to hand her over to Schroder then and there and promised herself that if he tried, she would make sure he died first.

“I should have killed you for what you did,” Karl said coldly.  “You’re lucky that I have genuine feelings for you.”  He stopped, waiting.

“I’m sorry, Karl,” she said, keeping her eyes downcast.  “I’m very sorry.”

“You’re going to have to make it up to me,” he told her.

“I will,” she promised.  “I’ll do anything I can, anything you want.”

He ordered her to make supper and she worked in his tiny kitchen for the next hour.  When he was through with his food he grabbed her wrist and pulled her into his bedroom and made love to her roughly, his anger sustaining his lust long into the evening.  Several times he slapped her and once he put his hands around her throat.  Each time, she did nothing.  He wanted to dominate her, not kill her, and if she had to play along with that to get what she wanted, she would.

Besides, the moment he crossed the line and actually tried to kill her, she would fucking destroy him.

Finally, the moment came she had been waiting for.  Spent and sated, Karl told her to clean up the dishes and pick up the rooms, then get out.  Gratefully, she got dressed and left him drowsing while she went to the kitchen.  As she was putting away the silverware, she paused, listening to his deep breathing from the next room.  Satisfied, she considered her options.  She was only allowed plastic silverware in her cell, but Karl had cutlery made of metal.  She knew he counted the knives whenever she cooked for him, because he ordered her to place all of the washed knives in a row on the counter.

But the forks…

When she returned to her cell she found Wisnioswski staring at a plate of food they had left on the floor.  Without his hands, he could not eat it.  Shaking her head, she knelt down and fed him, using the plastic spoon they always provided.

Wisnioswski wouldn’t look at her.  She was disheveled, her face was bloody and she stank of cum; it didn’t take a genius to figure out what Karl had done to her.

She knew what he was thinking.

“It isn’t your fault, Otto,” she told him softly, feeding his some of the gruel.

Wisnioswski shook his head.  “I should have done something!” he said, half sobbing.  “I should have-“

“Don’t bury me in Polish bullshit, Private,” she said, not unkindly.  “You couldn’t stop them from hurting me any more than I could stop them from mutilating you.  You know it and I know it.  We’re alive.  It sure ain’t pretty, but we’re alive.”

“Sergeant?  I don’t think I want to be alive,” he whispered, his voice hollow.  He held up his arms to show the two raw stumps where his hands had been.  “I don’t think I can stand this.”  He shook his head violently.  “And I don’t want you to have to…to submit to them in order to protect me.  I’d rather be dead.”

Cookie leaned closer and wrapped her arms around him.  It was just the two of them, surrounded by the enemy far, far from home.  Their fate was sealed; all that was left was pain and humiliation at the hands of their captors.  Cookie shuddered and wondered what would happen if Schroder and his thugs cut off her hands as well.  Would they leave her and Wisnioswski to starve to death, unable to feed themselves?

In that moment, without conscious volition, Cookie crossed the line from trying to stay alive at all costs to dying on her own terms.

“You know what, Otto?” she whispered into his ear.  “I think you and I should kick some ass and teach these fuckers not to mess with Fleet Marines.  What do you say?”

Wisnioswski smiled a terrible death’s head grin, his eyes sunken and black.  “Let’s feed the Beast, Sergeant,” he said, but then his smile wavered and he struggled to control his emotions.

Cookie thought her heart would break.  “Remember, Otto, always together.”  To the very end.  She kissed the top of his head and helped him back into bed.  When he was asleep, she dimmed the lights and undressed in the corner.  She splashed water on her face from the sink, then held out her arms in supplication and raised her head to the heavens.

Gods of Our Mothers, she prayed silently. Your daughter thanks you for your many blessings and for delivering me to this season.  I ask you to give me strength and fortitude for that which lies ahead.  She turned to look at the form sleeping in her bed.  And when the time comes, please make his death as quick and painless as you can, for he has already suffered too much.

Then she rolled her clothes into a ball to use for a pillow and lay on the floor.  One hand stole under the pillow and felt the fork she had taken from Karl’s kitchen.

Just the one fork.  She ran her finger over the sharp prongs.

A girl could do a lot with a fork.

Chapter 16

On Canaan, Home World of The Light

Brother Jong bowed deeply.  Sweat trickled down his back and moistened the palms of his hands.  He had prayed that morning to prepare for this meeting, but apparently not enough.

“Welcome, Brother Jong,” Abbot Cornelia said formally.  To her left and right sat the eight members of the ruling Council of The Light.  Eight abbots from whose decisions on matters of policy and strategy there was no appeal, no higher authority.  Abbot Cornelia was the recognized leader, but as a first among equals rather than as an undisputed ruler.  She was allowed to break any tie, a prerogative she used sparingly.

Jong knew that the Council was split almost evenly between the “Books” and the “Swords.”  The Books believed that The Light should retreat from all politics with the other human sectors and devote themselves to the worship of God and the exploration and study of His Universe.  The Swords looked outward, believing that God had not created The Light to allow His worshipers to die for lack of self-defense.  More importantly, the hard liners of the Swords felt it was their duty to seek out those who would pose an existential threat to The Light and render them harmless.  Or destroy them utterly, if the opportunity arose.  Both sides respected the religious piety of the other, and secretly thought they were fools.

“Abbot Cornelia, I thank you and the members of the Council for seeing me on such short notice.”

“You have a request?”  She knew what it was, of course, they had discussed it through the night.

Jong straightened.  “Members of the Council, I seek permission to reveal the Secret to the government in exile for Victoria, so that they might invade the Dominion of Unified Citizenry.”

None of the eight Council members so much as raised an eyebrow.  Cornelia nodded somberly.  “Brother Jong, the Secret has been at the heart of The Light for six hundred years.  Why should we disclose it now?”

And so it began.

Chapter 17

On the H.M.S. Laughing Owl in Dominion Space

“Tallyho!  Our friend is getting some company,” the Sensors Officer cried.  “I count four destroyers coming out of the asteroid field, plus something that might be a small cruiser.  They are taking up station around the Tartarus.”

“Bring us to a stop, Pilot,” Captain Sadia Zahiri ordered, “slow and easy.  All systems set to maximum stealth.  Fatima, bring up the passive scanners on the battle holo.  Ben-Ami, ready the drones.”  She thought for a moment, then commed the Chief Engineer as well.  “Mr. Dorfman, things might get hot here in a few moments.  Please be ready to go to maximum acceleration on my order.  Make sure the inertial compensators are on-line.”  She also triggered a chime that warned the entire crew to be prepared for high gravity acceleration on ten seconds notice.  Even with the inertial compensators, if you weren’t on an acceleration couch when the ship went to two hundred and fifty gravities, life would be intensely unpleasant.

She turned back to the Sensors Officer.  “Fatima, no S-band targeting sensors? No T-band search sensors? That seems odd.”

Fatima Binissa shrugged.  “Could be a lot of things, Captain.  If you assume they want to keep whatever they’ve got here secret, they might rely on visual sightings. When you blast an area with T-band, the sensor signature goes out a long, long way.  A ship, like us for example, sitting outside the detection envelope, would pick up the T-band signal and know that there was somebody out there, even though the Dominions wouldn’t pick us up on their sensors.  Or they could use stealthy reconnaissance drones just like we do.  The drones detect someone coming in and use a whisker laser to communicate back to the main base.  It’s a bit slower than T-band, but very effective if what you want to do is keep your position secret.”

Zahiri nodded, eyes still on the holo display.  The Laughing Owl was forty thousand miles behind the Tartarus and above its plane of advance.  The image she was getting was sent to her by whisker laser from a ‘tag-along’ reconnaissance drone that was on station three thousand miles above the Tartarus.  It matched speed with the prison ship and maintained its relative position.

“Got some radio chatter, Captain,” Binissa announced.

“Put it up,” Zahiri ordered.

“-yourself.  Repeat, unidentified ship, identify yourself or you will be fired upon.”

“This is DID 3941-545, State Prison Vessel Tartarus, on routine loop to vicinity of Destination Code Alpha 3-100-X.  A copy of our orders is attached to this transmission. We will be here for approximately four weeks while crew R&Rs at Siegestor; afterwards we will depart for Timor. ”

“Tartarus, be advised that you may not enter the asteroid field or go any closer than five hundred miles to Buoy Number 44.  Any closer and you will be fired upon without further warning.  Acknowledge.”

“My, my, aren’t we the friendly ones?” murmured Zahiri.

“Understood, Control, we’ve been here before.  We will be sending crew to Siegestor by shuttle craft, but no more than eight at a time.”

“Acknowledged, Tartarus, but we will send our own shuttles to pick up your crew, no more than eight at a time. Repeat, you may not use your own shuttles and any shuttle leaving your ship without permission will be destroyed.  All crew arriving on the station must immediately register with security.  Anyone found without a proper visitor’s pass will be arrested.  Welcome to Alpha 3-100-X.”

“I must say,” Fatima Binissa snickered, “the Darwin Tourist Board could learn a thing or two from these guys. Warm and friendly, with just a little touch of totalitarian police state hugs and kisses to make you feel at home.”

After a while, the destroyers and cruiser turned away from the Tartarus and picked their way into the asteroid belt, all the while followed unknowingly by two drones piloted by Ben-Ami Behrman, the Laughing Owl’s Drone Chief and his assistant, a petite, bookish woman named Dafna Simon.  The Dominion warships led them on a circuitous route, first deep into the asteroid belt, then in a long curving arc that brought them back near the outer edge of the belt, but a thousand miles away from Buoy Number 44 and the Tartarus.

And there, just five miles inside the asteroid field, was the largest space station Captain Zahiri had ever seen.  This, presumably, was the mysterious Siegestor.  She was dumbfounded by its size. She studied the videos carefully.  It was obviously a shipyard, but it was immense!  The implications of the fact that it was so large and so absolutely secret left her shaken.  It must have taken years for the Ducks to build this, but she had never heard one whisper about it.  And while she did not pretend to know much about shipyards, this one was larger than Atlas, which could not bode well for Victoria in a war of attrition.

No matter what happened, she had to get word back to the Fleet.

Then her stomach growled and her mind flitted to their rapidly diminishing food stores.  Yet another reason why they had to get back to the Fleet soon.  She had three weeks of food left, already rationed.  She would have to cut the rations even more, down to 800 calories per day, but at that level people would be tired and irritable all the time.  Life on a reconnaissance ship was not easy.  Small crews meant long shifts and no time off for weeks on end.  Food was one of the few pleasures.  Their hunger would be a torment and would distract them from even simple tasks.  They would make mistakes.

She sighed.  To make it back to Refuge space at top speed would require most of two weeks, and she had to assume they would lose time at wormholes waiting to make safe transit.

She could allow only two or three days to collect data on this damn shipyard the Dominions had so painstakingly hidden, then she would have to run for Refuge and make her report.  She’d send courier drones of course, but this was too important to risk either interception or the loss of the drone before it reached the Fleet.

“Bennie, let’s get two more recon drones on her and take pictures of everything.”

“We’ll have to get in close or the asteroids near the space station will block the sensors,” he reminded her.

Captain Zahiri considered this.  They needed to get in close, but if one of the drones was spotted the entire advantage of surprise would be lost.  “Don’t get closer than twenty miles and keep the drones snug up against some of the asteroids.  But get all of the passive sensors going and soak up everything you can.”

“And if one of the drones is spotted?”  Behrman asked.

“”If they think they see something, they’ll send a ship to investigate.  If you see someone coming, find a crevice or a cave in the nearest asteroid and drive the drone right into it, then shut it down cold,” Zahiri answered.  And if that happened, of course, then the Laughing Owl would run for it, stealthily if they could, damn fast if they couldn’t.

Her crew set about their tasks, leaving Captain Zahiri, for the moment, with nothing to do.  Her attention was drawn again to the sensor input from the drone they had stalking the Siegestor space station.  She shook her head ruefully; she had always thought of the Dominions as unimaginative and dull, but this…this was breathtaking.  This wasn’t a simple brute force military action; this was an achievement years in the planning and more years in the construction.  And somehow they kept it all secret.  Incredible.  If the reports coming in about the destruction of the Second Fleet were true, this shipyard probably built the fleet that did it.  Then an uneasy thought intruded into her consciousness.

If the Dominions could do this, what else might they have done?

Chapter 18

On Space Station Atlas,

In Refuge Space

The computer re-creation of the last raid by the Dominions finished and the lights came up.  Admiral Douthat looked sourly down the conference table.

"That, ladies and gentlemen, is called a cluster fuck.  When the tugs came out of hiding early, despite my specific orders to the contrary, we lost the kill zone we had worked so hard to create."  She glowered at them.  "There were three hundred stealth missile mines in the minefield, waiting for the Ducks to enter.  If the tug captains and the military advisor I had sent to each tugboat had stuck to the schedule, the Ducks would have been in the minefield and the tugs would have brought the missile pods into action behind them.  Their losses would have been substantially higher and our losses would have been correspondingly lower."    She paced back and forth, her short, portly figure making her look rather like a militant mushroom.

“And then the ships that attacked through the minefield gallantly pursued the retreating Ducks right to the wormhole.  I give them credit for that.  But what do they do?  They failed to use their sensors or recon drones to make sure the area in front of them was empty, so when the first group of Ducks sprinted through the wormhole, the Victorian ships simply started to turn around and were caught flat-footed by the ambush the Ducks had waiting for them!”  She stopped her pacing and turned a black look on the assembled officers.

“We are making rookie mistakes, people!  Stupid, short-sighted, arrogant rookie mistakes.  Each one of you here went through the Fleet Academy.  Each one of you spent hours studying military history and battles large and small.  Do you remember the Battle of Hastings?  The Battle of Chaeronea? Do you remember the Mongols? Or Cape Breton’s defeat of the Sultentic Empire? When you chase after a retreating army you need to keep your eyes open, dammit!  Gods of Our Mothers, the Dominion caught us asleep and took our home world!  They chased us across the entire Sector to Refuge and came within minutes of killing us all.  Is there anyone here who doesn’t think the Ducks are as smart and crafty and resourceful as we are?”

She suddenly slammed the table with the flat of her hand, making everyone in the room flinch.  "We are a fighting force!  We are the Home Fleet!  We depend on discipline and professionalism!  The minute we lose discipline we are nothing more than rabble!  The minute we forget our education and training, we might as well shoot ourselves and spare the enemy the chore.

"We should have crippled the Ducks in this battle, but instead we lost nine ships, nine ships and their entire crews, none of which we can afford!  This is what happens when you don't follow orders!  This is what happens when you let your fear get the best of you.  This is what happens when you ignore your training and don’t use common sense."

The ship captains sitting along the conference table and their senior aides sitting along the wall all stirred uneasily.  Most of them had not even been able to get into the fight before the Dominions cut their losses and dashed to safety through the wormhole.  To their shame, the ones who had gotten into the fight had been chewed up badly when the Duck battleship and a bunch of Duck destroyers suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

But they were also uneasy because, in her anger, Admiral Douthat had not found any kind words for the civilian tugboat captains whom she had used to set the ambush.  That was not the Fleet way of things, for a sailor who died in battle was always honored, even if he had not performed well.  It was understood that none of them would always perform well.  That was the nature of war; no one was immune from mistakes or fear.  And the tugboat crews were civilians, not soldiers at all.   So the captains glanced uneasily at one another, and Admiral Douthat, catching their glances, knew what they were thinking and glowered anew.

"Listen to me, people, and listen well!  Your old ways of thinking are meaningless now.  Some of you are sitting there thinking we should honor the men and women on the tugboats, honor them for their effort and their bravery and their sacrifice. And some of you think we should honor the Fleet ships that ran into the ambush at the wormhole.  But this is not a training exercise, dammit.  This is not war as we have trained for it.  This is a war of extinction!  Your actions in battle will be, must be measured by the ultimate question:  Did you help us avoid extinction at the hands of the enemy, or did you make extinction more likely?"

She stared at them, sweeping her eyes around the room to look each captain and aide in the face.  "That is the only criteria we can use to measure your performance.  You either defeat the enemy or the enemy kills us, all of us."  She sat down, consciously forcing herself to remain calm.  A minute passed, then another.  Douthat nodded slowly.

"Okay, then, here is where we are.  We have twenty-four warships, which includes the new destroyer that came out of the Atlas shipyard last week.  Quite a few of our ships suffered damage during the last battle and are being repaired.  Those repairs will tie up the Atlas yards for the next two weeks and delay the production of new ships.

"As far as we can determine from sensors, we destroyed sixteen Duck ships, including at least five cruisers.  Put another way, we are losing the war of attrition.  The Dominion can afford to lose these ships, we cannot.

"Next, production.  We built one destroyer, but it is already apparent that our production estimates were too optimistic.  The problem is that the asteroid field we are mining has very little of some of the special metals we need for ship production.  We don't know yet how much this will set us back, but early signs are as much as fifty percent."

Groans were heard around the table and Douthat held up a hand to silence them.  "Complaining won't help.  If you have ideas for speeding up production, talk directly to Mr. Opinsky.  Lastly, I have directed Commander Tuttle to design and implement a heavy gunboat program.  This will involve a new design and new tactical doctrines.”

One of the captains raised his hand and Douthat nodded at him to speak.  "Admiral, why are we doing this?  The Refuge gunboats have taken horrendous losses."

Douthat nodded in acknowledgement.  "That's true, but we've made this decision based on some rather stark facts.  First, although the Refuge gunboats are valuable, their current rate of loss is unsustainable.  At the current level of loss, they'll all be gone in a month.  But at the same time, we can't build our own warships – destroyers, cruisers and battleships – fast enough to replace our own losses either.  Add to this the fact that the Dominions appear to have much more manufacturing capacity than we do.  If we don't find another way to project force, the Ducks will overwhelm us within six months, maybe less.  As far as the heavy gunboats are concerned, we hope that the new design, with heavier weapons and better armor, will make this heavy gunboat force less vulnerable and will pack a bigger punch."  Douthat looked grimly down the table.

"That brings me to the last point," she said.  "We need to fight smarter.  We cannot afford to lose any more ships.  From here on, we will change our doctrine to rely much more on missile mines, ECM and heavy laser emplacements.  I don't want any of you to try to get in close for the perfect shot.  Use as many missile pods as you can, use massed laser fire, but do it from a distance.  We will be emplacing more minefields, so if you have to fall back, fall back behind a minefield and let the missile mines work for you.  We need to buy time, ladies and gentlemen, and not lose more ships while we do it.  I want all of you to think about what tactics we should employ to achieve that end and to send me your recommendations by 2200 this evening."  She stood and everyone in the room stood to attention.  "You are dismissed."

As the captains and aides filed out in a murmur of discussion and head-shaking, Douthat noticed that Hiram Brill remained behind.  She scowled inwardly.  Brill had come up with a number of harebrained schemes in the past, but what really rubbed her the wrong way is that one or two of them had been spectacularly successful, like towing the Atlas space station to Refuge to escape the Dominion attack.

"You want to see me, Commander?"  And that was another thing:  Brill looked barely old enough to grow a mustache and he was already a commander, thanks to the direct action – meddling, really – of Queen Anne.  Something else Douthat would have to fix when the opportunity presented itself.

"Yes, Admiral," Hiram replied.  "I have an idea for a raid into Dominion territory that I would like to speak to you about.  It is a large raid and will require resources from both Refuge and Victorian forces."

Admiral Douthat frowned.  "Raid into Dominion space?  You mean into Dominion-held space, don't you?  Into Victorian space?”

"No, Admiral, I mean a raid into Dominion space itself."

Douthat scowled, annoyed.  "Brill, weren't you listening during the meeting?  We are at a stalemate here.  I can't force an action through the wormhole without losing ships, and I can't afford to lose any ships, it's as simple as that."  She turned to leave.

"Admiral, I have a lead on the Dominion shipyard, the secret one.  I'm hoping to have confirmation within a few days.  If we can knock that out..."

"You're not listening, Brill," the Admiral flared, then stopped abruptly.  She looked at him for a long time, then pursed her lips and nodded slightly.  "Since I almost threw you out of an airlock once for the wrong reasons, maybe I owe you one, Brill.  Tell me what you’ve got, but make it fast."

Hiram explained.  When he finished, Admiral Douthat barked a short laugh.  "Brill, you are either pretty damn clever or a ballsy lunatic, possibly both.  Okay, let's go have a little meeting."

Hiram looked confused.  "A meeting, Admiral?"

Douthat chuckled nastily.  "This is the real world, Brill.  Nothing happens without a meeting first.  Get used to it."

* * * * *

In the end, the meeting could not be held until the following morning.  When they met, it was in the Queen's conference chamber, with Sir Henry, Admiral Douthat, Captain Eder, Queen Anne, Opinsky, Captain Lior (retired) formerly of the Refuge Gunboat Squadron, Peter Murphy of the Tugboat Guild, Prime Minister Yisrael Tal of Refuge and his Production Minister, Tarek Allali, Colonel Dov Tamari of the Fleet Marines, Emily Tuttle, head of the new Victorian Heavy Gunboat Wing, which still had neither ships nor pilots, and Specialist 4 Lori Romano, who looked as if she wanted to hide under the table.  The Queen's armsmen stood watchfully in three different corners.

Except for Hiram Brill and Admiral Douthat, no one knew why they were there.

Admiral Douthat had not slept the night before, reading through plans and suggestions from her captains on how to best defend against further Dominion attacks.  She was tired and irritable and clutched her mug of coffee with a single minded desperation.

"Good morning, everyone," Douthat said simply.  "I asked you all here to listen to a proposal for a raid against the Dominions."  She nodded at Hiram.  "Commander, the floor is yours."

Hiram stood, feeling the nervousness threaten to overwhelm him as it always did whenever he had to speak to a group.  Emily Tuttle, who knew all about this, smiled and surreptitiously made a funny face and Hiram had to choke off a laugh.  He nodded to the Queen.  "Thank you for taking the time to attend, Your Majesty, Captain Eder and of course, Admiral Douthat."

"It was a long night, Brill," the Admiral said curtly, "and I'm feeling cranky.  Get on with it."

"I have been tracking reports from the Long Range Reconnaissance Force," Hiram continued, fighting off another twinge of nervousness.  "One of their spy ships in the Dominion Sector has been tracking a ship that is going deep into Dominion space to a space station facility called 'Siegestor.'  What makes Siegestor significant is that Victorian Intelligence has no record of it.  Neither its name nor its identification number appear anywhere in our database and that tells us that the Dominion has gone to some lengths to keep it secret.  We are still waiting for a final report from the H.M.S. Laughing Owl, one of Colonel Tamari's ships, but there is some reason to believe that Siegestor is the shipyard where the Dominions built the fleet that attacked us.  If this is correct, then it is crucial that we destroy it as soon as possible to prevent the Dominion from building even more ships."

Captain Eder shook his head skeptically.  "Commander, you've lost me.  As of right now, we may not have the ships to force our way through the wormhole into Victoria and you are suggesting that we launch a raid not only through the Refuge/Victoria wormhole, but through the Victoria/Dominion wormhole as well and then deep into Dominion space to take out a facility that might be a secret shipyard?  Do you even know where this Siegestor facility is?"

Hiram shook his head.  "No, sir, not yet.  But-"

"I'm afraid your plan sounds a little far-fetched, Commander," Eder interrupted.

Admiral Douthat held up her hand.  "Hold on, Jim, there's more.  Hear him out."

"Your concerns are perfectly valid, Captain Eder," Hiram acknowledged.  "But the plan is a little different than that.  I propose that we bypass the Refuge/Victorian wormhole completely and go directly into Dominion space."

The room fell silent, with Opinsky and Captain Eder exchanging puzzled looks, the Queen's eyebrows slowly rising higher onto her forehead and Emily cocking her head to the side as she thought through the ramifications of what Hiram just said.  Finally Sir Henry cleared his throat.

"Commander Brill, I have worked with you just long enough to know that you are not crazy, but since what you have just suggested would seem impossible, I wonder if you could enlighten us as to just what the devil you mean."

Hiram took a deep breath.  "What I mean, Sir Henry, is that I propose we open a new wormhole from here directly into Dominion space and send our task force through it to destroy Siegestor."

"Oh for pity's sake," Eder said in exasperation. "That's impossible!"

"Actually, no, it's not," Hiram said.  "With your permission, Admiral?" he asked Douthat.

"Go ahead, Brill," she replied.  "Can't have a circus without the clowns."

Hiram walked to the conference room door, opened it and spoke to someone outside.  Two people entered the room.  One was a thickly built man with a monk's shaved head; the other was a tall, regal looking woman dressed in a simple white robe that fell to her feet.  Her simple dress did nothing to hide the fact that she was someone used to authority and command.  Sir Henry stiffened and started to speak, but Queen Anne put a restraining hand on his arm.

"I would like to introduce Abbot Cornelia of The Light and a member of her...diplomatic corps, Brother Jong," Hiram said.  "They can explain how a wormhole might be opened directly into Dominion space."

Sir Henry looked as if he were sucking lemons.  "Your Majesty, The Light has no business here.  We are discussing sensitive matters critical to Victoria.  I don't know what Brill was thinking, but-"

Queen Anne held up a hand and Sir Henry fell silent.  She gave Hiram a look of utter exasperation, then sighed.  "As it happens," she told Sir Henry, "Brother Jong and I are acquainted."  She turned to the Abbot.  "But I have not had the pleasure of meeting Abbot Cornelia."  She stepped forward and offered her hand.  Abbot Cornelia placed her palms together in front of her face and bowed, then extended her hand to take the Queen's.

"I have heard much of you from my nephew," the Abbot said.

"Your nephew?" Queen Anne mused aloud.  "Well, our Mr. Brill is full of surprises, isn't he?"

The corner of Abbot Cornelia's mouth twitched in a ghost of a smile.  "Yes," she said dryly, "that was exactly my reaction when he sent Brother Jong to me with his proposal."

"Things are moving rather quickly," Queen Anne said, "so please forgive my forwardness if I ask if you can actually confirm what Commander Brill has said, that The Light can somehow create a wormhole at will into Dominion space.  Is it true?"

Abbot Cornelia shook her head, her face now grave.  "No, Your Majesty, we have no special powers.  The creation of wormholes is for God and God alone.”

Queen Anne’s face fell.  She sighed and nodded in resignation.

“But not all of God’s splendors are revealed to us at once, Majesty,” the Abbot continued.  “Sometimes we think we know all there is to know about a thing, even a large, complex phenomena such as wormholes, and yet we know almost nothing.  The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to sharpen.”

Queen Anne’s eyes narrowed.  She had been raised in a royal household; she knew the rich vocabulary of obtuse diplomatic speech.  She bowed her head ever so slightly in acknowledgement of the Abbot’s point.  “Please, Abbot Cornelia, enlighten me.”

Cornelia smiled.  “As children we all learn about wormholes.   We know that Victoria stands in the middle of a great web of wormholes that connect it to Cape Breton, Sybil Head, the Sultenic Empire, the Dominion, Darwin, Gilead and, of course, to Refuge.  And we know of the additional wormholes linking the other Human Sectors.  All of us recognize the wormhole map, which has not changed in a millennium.

“But this is the secret The Light has protected for three hundred years:  The wormhole map is wrong.”

For a moment everyone in the room stared at her, no one – except Hiram, who had figured it out earlier – able to believe what they had just heard.  Finally, Sir Henry spluttered for a moment, his usual eloquence lost, then managed, "What nonsense is this?"

“Not nonsense, Sir Henry, just science that you have not yet been exposed to,” Cornelia replied evenly.  “Members of The Light dedicate themselves to God in one of two ways; they become priests or they become scientists.  Our scientists devote themselves to exploring the many wonders God created for us.  One of our scientists spent her entire life studying wormholes, particularly how to detect them.  She was convinced that God made more of them than we know about.  She developed a new method for detecting wormholes and during the course of her survey, she found them.”

“Wait a moment,” Sir Henry snapped.  “Are you seriously telling us that there is another wormhole in Human Space that we don’t know about?”

Cornelia smiled gently, as if encouraging a particularly gifted child.  “Not one, Sir Henry, more than a dozen.”

“Gods of Our Mothers!” someone breathed.

It was left for Queen Anne to ask the critical question.  “Abbot Cornelia, are you telling us that there is a wormhole connection linking Refuge to the Dominion of Unified Citizenry?”

The Abbot shook her head.  “No, Majesty, not one.  Two.”

Chapter 19

On Space Station Atlas,

In the Refuge Sector

Emily was awash in details.

She divided the task of building a gunboat wing into three subject areas: production, recruitment and tactical doctrine.

Production was easiest.  She turned over that task to Max Opinsky, Atlas’s Facilities Manager, and Captain David Lior (Retired).  They would oversee the programming necessary for the construction of the gunboats on Atlas and work with the Refuge manufacturing managers to start building them on the planet.  They would also work on inspecting the carriers and installing the latest electronics, AI and anti-missile weaponry.  After some debate back and forth, the decision was made to install the ‘Mildred’ model Artificial Intelligence into the carriers and the gunboats.  Mildred was slightly older than either Merlin or Gandalf, but was easier to install and was exceptionally stable.  Emily figured they would have enough headaches without having to worry about computer glitches in the core AI system.

Recruitment was going to be a headache.  She gave this task to Grant Skiffington and told him he had to find pilots, systems operators and weapons officers for one hundred gunboats.  And train them.  Skiffington left her office looking overwhelmed, but grimly determined.

The development of tactical doctrine was her own headache, and quite a headache it was.  She spent much of the first week studying carrier tactics, or trying to.  Victoria had never used carriers, so there was nothing helpful to be had there.  She downloaded the sensor display of the Dominion carrier assault on the Lionheart during the escape to Refuge and watched it closely a dozen times, finally concluding that while she was learning what not to do, she was not learning what she should be doing.

With some help from Gandalf, she learned that both the Sultenic Empire and Sybil Head had once had carrier-based attack craft, but neither had ever actually used them in battle.  The only tactical manuals she could find were rather vague.  The tactics discussed seemed to involve little more than launching the attack craft and hurling them at the enemy.  There was nothing about how the attack craft should execute their attack, nor anything on how to protect the carriers themselves.

She pondered this a moment, idly tapping her fingers on the table.  Where could she look?  The problem was that there had been virtually no space warfare since the settling of Victoria, only the occasional small unit clashes that relied on surprise as much as anything else, and virtually none of those battles had included carrier-based craft.

Then she snorted, more than a little embarrassed that she hadn’t thought of it earlier.  Fine historian you are, she thought ruefully.  “Gandalf!  Do you have historical records of military conflicts on Old Earth, with an emphasis on naval and air battles?”

“Why, yes, Commander,” the AI replied promptly. “My archives include fascinating articles on the Hittites defeating the Cypriots in 1210 BC, Old Earth Calendar; the defeat of the Sea Peoples by Ramses III in the battle of the Nile Delta in 1190 BC, Old Earth Calendar; the five year campaign of Alalia, in which the Carthaginians and Etruscans finally defeated the Greeks in 535 BC, Old Earth Calendar; the famous battle of Lade in 494 BC, Old Earth Calendar, in which the Persians-“

“Stop!” Emily yelled.  Gods of Our Mothers, is that how I sound when I drink too much? “Gandalf, I am looking for something a little more recent.”  With some carefully worded direction, she was able to learn that there was a lot more material on aircraft carriers from the wars on Earth, starting with the large-scale war they called ‘World War II.’   There were only three types of carrier-based assault craft, however: dive bombers, torpedo planes and fighters and they all had their particular constraints.  The dive bombers had to attack from a high position above the target while the torpedo planes had to come in just a few feet over the water and slowly fly straight at the target in order to properly line up the torpedo.  Both the bombs and the torpedoes were dumb weapons and could not be guided once released.  And the fighters served no other purpose than protecting the bombers and torpedo planes from enemy fighters.  All in all, primitive to the point of irrelevance.

Carrier tactics in later Earth history – the Cold War era between two of the super powers – had more elaborate tactics for defending the carriers themselves from either missile or submarine attack.  Emily read countless articles on aircraft carrier vulnerability or, as some argued, invulnerability.  She read about outer screens and inner screens, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles, anti-submarine tactics and defenses against swarming fast attack craft.

But the most important lesson Emily could discern from those articles was this: The first line of defense for the carriers lay in not being discovered in the first place.  The first combatant to locate the enemy had an enormous advantage.  Sensor capabilities during the Cold War were fairly rudimentary, she learned, so staying hidden was still possible and much preferable over the option of having to knock down incoming enemy missiles.

“Some things don’t change much,” she muttered to herself.

But by the end of the week, she reached several stark conclusions.  First, the simple fact was that the heavy gunboat was a different assault craft than anything Victoria had ever used.  Second, warfare in space was simply different than naval warfare on an ocean, despite some superficial similarities.  Third, the interaction of three things dictated the tactics used in carrier battles: the sophistication of the available sensors; the characteristics of the aircraft; and the details of the weapons systems.  Superiority in any of those three items could give you a huge advantage, but even then a successful outcome was not guaranteed.

After mulling it over while drinking yet another mug of tea, she decided that it would be up to her and her team to develop basic doctrine for three basic situations: how to use the carriers in conjunction with the Fleet warships; how to use the carriers on their own; and how to best use the actual gunboats in the attack.  Admiral Douthat had given her the bridge crew from the New Zealand. Master Chief Gibson would be helpful in pulling things together, but she suspected that Alex Rudd and Toby Partridge would be the ones to provide the imagination and input she needed.  And yet, neither one of them were carrier experts by any stretch of the imagination.

She called Hiram.  “Who should I talk to about carrier strategic and tactical doctrine?” she asked, explaining the three situations she was trying to cover.

Hiram, as usual, did not seem fazed by getting this type of question out of the blue.

“Well, you mean other than Captain Lior?” he asked in reply.

“Refuge used the gunboats by themselves, which is part of what I want, but I also need to know how to use the carriers in conjunction with regular Fleet warships, like destroyers and cruisers.  Anyone you can think of?”

Hiram shook his head.  “Carrier experts are sort of short on the ground, Em,” he told her.  “I’ll look around, but I think Lior will be your best bet.  Either he might have something or he can send you to someone who does.”

Next she called Lori Romano, the AI boffin who was working to duplicate the Dominion teleportation craft.  “I need some technical help soonest,” she explained.  “I know they’ve got you working on a bunch of things, but I want to know if you have time.”

There was a moment of silence, long enough to make Emily wonder if she’d lost the connection.  “Specialist Romano?”

Romano cleared her throat nervously.  “Sorry, Commander, but I am working on a project that is taking up all of my time.”

Emily wondered if she could steal Romano away.  “Who are you reporting to, Romano?  My project has a high priority and I may try to get you reassigned.”

Another pause.  “Commander, I am, well, I am not at liberty to tell you who I am working for or the nature of the project,” Romano said nervously.

Emily’s eyebrows shot up.  That was interesting, particularly since Admiral Douthat had given the heavy gunboat wing the highest priority.  “Well, Romano, if you can’t tell me who you are working for, perhaps you can tell me who I should speak to in order to find out if I can get access to your mysterious boss?”

Emily could almost hear Romano’s heartbeat increase.  “Um…um...I’m really not sure, Commander, but maybe, I guess…the Queen?”

Emily took a deep breath.  Had to be Hiram Brill and his planned raid on Siegestor.  Had to be.  “Okay, Romano, I need one hundred and twenty training stations created for the new heavy gunboat crews, but someone is going to have to do some fancy computer work to determine the flight characteristics because the damn things don’t actually exist yet.  Who do you recommend to take on this project if you’re too busy?”

“Commander, I’d recommend Bill Satore,” Romano said, relief evident in her voice.  “He’s really good and could get a prototype training module up and running in no time.  But Commander, why don’t you just fly one of the gunboats rather than guess at what they can do?”

Emily sighed.  Sometimes she felt like she was running through molasses.  “Romano, like I said, the problem is we don’t have one yet.  If I had one, then I could fly it, but-“

“Begging your pardon, Commander,” Romano interrupted, “but I’m looking at five of them.”

Emily closed her eyes.  Gods of Our Mothers, give me strength.  “Pray tell, Romano, where are you just now?”

“Shipyard Two, Ma’am, Quadrant Three.”

“Thank you, Romano.”  She cut the connection and called Max Opinsky.  When he came on the line, she asked, “Max, this is Emily.  Is there something you should tell me?”

* * * *

The five freshly manufactured heavy gunboats sat along the wall near the gigantic bay doors.  Opinsky and Lior, beaming like school boys, stood beside her.  The gunboats looked unfinished, but Emily realized that was because there were no weapon modules attached to them.  She looked at the slender, tear-drop craft, no more than eighty feet long, and was reminded of a sheep dog that had just had its winter coat shorn off.  Since the craft would be guided solely by sensors, there was nothing more than a small porthole for people to look out of.  Only one engine had been slotted into its rear quarters, giving it a slightly lopsided appearance.  The cabin area in the front was tiny; three people working together in there would be crowded and cramped.

All in all, she thought, it didn’t look like much.

“Aren’t they magnificent?” Lior shouted, throwing his arms out wide.  “By the One God, they are beautiful!  Just look at them!”

By the end of the third week, they had five test pilots flying the gunboats twelve hours a day and had a pretty good handle on the craft’s flight characteristics.  The good news was that even with one engine, it accelerated crisply and turned on a dime.  With two engines, it accelerated so quickly that the pilot blacked out from the g-forces and Mildred had to bring the ship home.  When the gunboat was loaded with four missiles, there was a slight degradation in handling, but it wasn’t very noticeable.  The bad news was other than the test pilots, they still had no crews at all.

They received live missiles in week four and test fired them at some wrecked freighters and destroyers.  The missiles made very satisfactory holes in the targets.  Then they focused on the laser mounts.  The original plan called for a fixed mount, but that meant that in order to fire on a target, you had to aim the bow of the ship at the target.  “It’s too limiting,” Grant Skiffington insisted to Lior and Opinsky.  “One of the strengths of the new gunboats is their maneuverability.  If you can’t shoot the lasers at an angle, you force the pilot to give up that maneuverability.  You make him predictable.  ‘Predictable’ rhymes with ‘dead.’”

Lior and Opinsky exchanged a glance, then went off and came back three days later with a forward laser mount that could swivel to cover an arc of 180 degrees.  With some computer aided targeting from Mildred, the gunboat could approach at high speed, lock the laser on target, then change direction to avoid the counter-fire and still shoot its ten-inch laser as it swept by.

Grant nodded.  “I like it,” he told the retired Refuge captain and the scruffy Facilities Manager.  “Now put a laser on the back with the same type of mount so we can fire on targets even as we run away.”

* * * *

Specialist 4 Bill Satore came in shyly and introduced himself to Emily.  He saluted formally, but in a way that suggested he was much more a technical specialist than he was a soldier.  He had broad shoulders, startling blue eyes, strong white teeth, wavy blond hair and a very square cleft chin.  From appearances alone he looked like a recruitment poster for an Old Earth fighter pilot, but when he opened his mouth he was pure geek.  Emily, aware there was more than a little bit of geek in her DNA as well, carefully hid her smile.

“Ma’am, Lori Romano told me you needed someone to build a training program for the new gunboats you’re building.  I’m here to help you if I can,” he said.  He was having trouble meeting her eyes and kept looking at the corner of her desk instead.

Emily nodded.  “The heavy gunboats are brand new, Specialist Satore.  We have to train more than one hundred crews and we have very little time to do it in.  We need the actual training stations designed for a crew of three: pilot, Systems specialist and gunner.  And we need software to make it work.  I’m not expecting you to design the training sessions, just the training stations themselves.  You’ll work with Lt. Commander Skiffington, Refuge Captain Lior and Max Opinsky.  They’ll rely on you for the technical design of the simulators and for the software to make them work.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” he said to the top of the desk.  She wondered suddenly what he was like on dates and if the girl had to be the one to initiate the fooling around, then shook her head.  Gods of Our Mothers, where had that come from?

“I can get you all the support you’ll need, Satore, but you’ll be the one responsible for the technical end.”  She studied him, an uneasy feeling of doubt worming through her.  “I need an honest answer, Satore.  Can you do it?”

His mouth twitched, then twitched again.  “Ma’am, am I going to have to fly these gunboats to determine their handling characteristics?”  There was a trace of sweat on his forehead.

Emily shook her head.  “No, Satore, we’ve already done that.  She held up a data cube.  “All you have to do is make the training station act like a real gunboat.”

Satore’s shoulders slumped in relief.  “Oh, thank the Gods, the guys were telling me I’d have to fly the gunboats myself to learn how they handle and I get motion sickness something awful.”

Emily gritted her teeth.  “You don’t have to fly it,” she repeated, “but you have to make the training stations realistic.  The crews have to feel like they’re in the real thing.  Can you do that, Satore?”

Now he looked at her with those blue eyes.  “Oh, sure, Commander.  I’ll make it real enough, alright, but Ma’am, please don’t blame me when those trainee crews lose their lunch.”

“How soon can we see the first one, Satore?”

He scratched his head.  “Well, Commander, do I have a dedicated production bay?”  Emily nodded.  Satore shrugged.  “Figure a week to do the design for the physical training station.  Another three weeks for the software, if I can get some help.  I know Lori – Specialist Romano – has a few people tied up, but I should be able to get enough good programmers to get it done.”  He suddenly grew aware he was looking right at her and hastily dropped his eyes back to the top of the desk, his cheeks flushing.

Emily sighed.  “Get going, Satore.  We need it as fast as you can build it.  Dismissed.”

* * * *

Production continued and accelerated.  By the end of the second week they had fifteen heavy gunboats, by the end of the third week a total of forty.  Atlas freed up some production capacity in the fourth week and in that week alone they churned out thirty birds, for a total of seventy.   Meanwhile the carriers were brought out of mothballs and readied.  The physical structure of each of them was fine, but they all needed updates in software, anti-missile defense and the engines had to be brought up to par.  Lior told her not to worry.

The Victorian Heavy Gunboat Wing was beginning to look real, but there was still one problem.

They still had no crews.

Grant Skiffington had explained it to her.  “We have a problem,” he said flatly.  Emily looked at him expectantly. “Admiral Razon of the Refuge Coast Guard won’t release his gunboat crews to man our ships.  He says they have spent years training them to fly the Refuge gunboats and if we take them, Refuge will be defenseless.”

Emily frowned.  If she had to, she could take this to Admiral Douthat and Queen Anne.  Between them, she was sure they could get the gunboat crews.

“But that’s not the real problem,” Grant continued.  “The real problem is that even if we could get them, we don’t want those Refuge crews.”

Emily cocked her head.  “Explain.”

Grant shrugged.  “The front-line Refuge crews are the same crews that have been getting slaughtered in every battle with the Dominion.  Their idea of a proper assault is just to rush in and shoot their missiles.  No flanking maneuvers, minimum jamming, no concentration on specific targets, just fly in fast and fire your missiles.  Even if they joined us and took over the heavy gunboats, we aren’t going to persuade them to fight any differently, only now when they suffer heavy losses, they’ll be flying our heavy gunboats.”

“You don’t think we can train them?” Emily asked quietly.

Grant shook his head.  “Not in time, no.  We’ll have to undo years of training and culture.  When I tried to tell them how Victorians fight, Em, they weren’t simply not interested, they were scornful.  More than one of them said that if we fight like cowards, we deserve to lose.”

Emily did what she always did when a problem seemed insurmountable; she cut it up into smaller problems and examined them very closely.  So, problem one was that they had no flight crews for the gunboats.  Solution: either train crews from scratch or find existing crews.  She rubbed her nose, her fingers unconsciously tracing the bump from when she had broken it at Camp Gettysburg.  She had no idea how much time it would take to train crews from scratch, but she was pretty sure that she didn’t have it.  Still, it was worth starting a wider recruitment push.  They’d have to develop aptitude tests to weed out people who just didn’t have the spatial ability, but…

She pulled herself back to the problem at hand.  Where the hell were they going to find trained crews?  Victoria had no history of using small fighter craft, so any Victorian source of manpower would have to be trained from scratch.  She pondered for another few moments, and then realized she was getting nowhere.  She called Captain Lior and explained the problem to him.  To her surprise, he chuckled.

“Oh, I can find you crews,” he said with a certain malicious relish, “but whether that fat-assed Razon will give them up is another question.”

“How will you find the crews?” Emily asked.

Lior snorted.  “If you had actually listened to what I told you, young lady, you’d know the answer.”  He hung up.

Two days later he appeared at her door.  He looked smug.  “I’ve got almost six hundred people, all trained on how to use standard Refuge gunboats, but not wedded to the Coast Guard macho culture.”

“Took you long enough,” Emily deadpanned.  “Who are they?”

Captain Lior sat down, preening with self-delight.  “You remember I told you that the applicants who were rejected for active duty in the Coast Guard were put into the Reserve?”  Emily nodded slowly.  He had mentioned that, now that she thought about it.

“Well, the ‘Reserve’ is a misnomer.  They’re rejects, pure and simple.  They got their training but the instructors washed them out because they weren’t aggressive enough.  They wouldn’t make suicidal runs against enemy ships, wouldn’t charge in when all they had left was an ineffectual three inch laser that wouldn’t even scorch the armor plating on a warship.”

“Too sane and rational to be a Refuge gunboat pilot?” Emily suggested.

Lior nodded.  “Exactly.”

“We don’t need just pilots,” she cautioned.  “We need systems operators and gunners as well.”

He shrugged.  “You can train any of them to be gunners.  They all know weapons systems.  Systems engineers might be harder, but a lot of these folks have technical backgrounds; I think you’ll do okay.”

“Okay,” Emily said, nodding slowly.  “What is the next step?”

Lior smiled evilly.  “Now you have to persuade Admiral Half-wit Razon to give you the Reserve.”  He sat back in his chair.  “And I want to be there to see it.”

* * * *

The meeting with Admiral Razon started poorly and went downhill from there.

Emily and Lior flew to Refuge and met him at his office in the Coast Guard headquarters in Haifa.  Admiral Razon kept them waiting for an hour before they were ushered into his office.  He sat behind a large, very clean desk.  Its surface was empty; there were no papers, no books, no clutter, not even a phone.

He did not invite them to sit.

After a moment, he spoke.  “Where is Admiral Douthat?” he asked, frowning.  “If this meeting is as important as you indicated, I would have expected to see Admiral Douthat, not just a junior Commander.”  Then he looked at Captain Lior with obvious distaste and turned back to Emily.  “And why is this man here?”

Uh oh, Emily thought, but took a deep breath and plunged in.  “Admiral, I must ask that you forgive me if I have inadvertently breached any etiquette or caused any offense.  We are new here and I have not yet had the opportunity to learn your customs.  But the reason for the meeting-“

“It is not a question of ‘customs,’ Commander,” Razon interrupted sharply, “but of simple respect and military courtesy, which I would expect any military person to know and appreciate.  And while I can certainly understand and appreciate that Admiral Douthat may be too busy to attend every meeting, no matter how important, I do not understand why you felt it was at all appropriate to bring this man here.”  He pointed a long, bony finger at Lior.  “This man is no longer an active member of the Coast Guard.  He has no standing in the Coast Guard and, based on the personal vendetta he has waged through his scandalous articles about the Coast Guard over the last decade, I find it personally offensive that you would choose to bring him here”  He stopped speaking and glared at her, his face flushed with anger.

Well, this is certainly a good start, Emily thought ruefully.  “Admiral, within a few weeks, months at the outside, we need to man a new class of heavy gunboats in order to successfully launch offensive actions against the Dominions.  We are manufacturing the gunboats as we speak, but we do not have adequate crews for them.  The need is urgent.  I understand that – “  she carefully did not look at Lior – “the Coast Guard Reserve has some six hundred officers that the Coast Guard does not currently use and has no plans to use in the near future.  I am here to respectfully request that you release the Reserve officers to join the Victorian Fleet for the purpose of manning the new heavy gunboats.”

Admiral Razon placed both his hands flat on his spotless desk.  He stared at her expressionlessly for a long moment, then slowly shook his head.  “Out of the question, Commander, completely out of the question.  The Reserve is for rejects, those we deem unfit to serve in the Coast Guard as gunboat pilots.  I would not – cannot – release these people to you.  To do so would be to dishonor the debt we owe to Victoria and bring shame on the people of Refuge.  I can offer you more of the Refuge gunboat squadrons, and I am sure that you will find them capable of dealing with any threat you may encounter.  The gunboat squadrons are all piloted by our best pilots, men and women of proven bravery.  They are a true representation of what Refuge has to offer,” he said gravely.

And they’ll all be dead within three months, Emily thought bleakly.  She thought frantically for something else to say, some other way to persuade him, but nothing came to mind.  Admiral Razon stood, signaling the meeting was at an end.  Emily stood.  The meeting couldn’t have been worse, she thought.

Then, to belie her thoughts, Captain Lior stood up beside her.

“This was enlightening,” he said, smiling.  “I say this with all sincerity, Admiral:  You are an imbecile.”

Then he took Emily by the elbow and escorted her from the office.

Chapter 20

Aboard the Dominion Ship Fortitude

The Communications Officer looked alarmed.  “Admiral, Citizen Director Nasto wishes to speak to you,” he said.

Admiral Kaeser sighed.  He had known this was coming.  Time to face the music.  “I’ll take it in my Day Cabin,” he said and went into the small conference room beside the bridge and shut the door.  His comm screen flickered and the frowning face of Citizen Director Anthony Nasto stared at him.

“Citizen Director,” Kaeser said in greeting.

“Admiral Kaeser,” Nasto said slowly.  “I have it on good authority that you have placed my personal representative under arrest.  Can that be correct?”  He smiled slightly and waited for Kaeser’s reply.

Kaeser nodded.  “It is correct, Citizen Director.  I arrested Mr. Hudis for criminal negligence after the last attack on Refuge.  The enemy was waiting for us in force and had clearly expected us.  I deemed Mr. Hudis’ advice to attack, based on his last meeting with the Victorian Queen, to be so poor that his arrest was warranted.”

“Admiral, your loyalty and fervor speak well of you, but let us be clear about the lines of authority,” Nasto said flatly.  “Hudis is my aide, not yours.  He reports to me and only to me.  He does not fall within your command nor your jurisdiction.  If any punishment is to be meted out, I will do it, not you.  Is that understood, Admiral?”

Kaeser nodded.  “Of course, Citizen Director.”

“I have sent a courier boat to you.  Put Hudis on it and send him back to my headquarters on Timor without delay.”

“Yes, Citizen Director.”

“Lastly, Admiral Kaeser, I want a full report on the last attack into Refuge with a focus on what went wrong and how to avoid such problems in the future.  And I want your recommendations on what steps we should take in the immediate future.”

“Of course, Citizen Director,” Kaeser replied.

“And lastly, Admiral, a word of caution.  People in high command, military or civilian, are often tempted to play at power games.  Resist that temptation, Admiral.  There is only one power in the Dominion of Unified Citizenry and that is me.  I will not tolerate any others, regardless of their position or the circumstances.  Do I make myself clear, Admiral Kaeser?”

“Very clear, Citizen Director.”

Nasto smiled coldly.  “It would be prudent of you not to forget.”  The comm went blank.

Admiral Kaeser sat back in his chair and thought about what had just happened…and what had not happened.  He was not a fool, he knew he had just used up all his luck, all of his nine lives.  But he had seen other men sent to the Tartarus or the firing squad for lesser offenses.  Nasto had reprimanded him, but hadn’t ordered his arrest or his summary execution.  Kaeser thought about that for a long while.

Chapter 21

On Space Station Atlas

Emily knocked on Hiram’s door, then, without thinking, pushed her way inside.  What she saw made her stop short:  The table was covered with papers and drawings and tablets propped up with books.  Hiram Brill was sitting with Specialist Lori Romano.  Across the table were Rafael Eitan and his father, Yael.

The four of them gaped at her in surprise.

Emily stood there for a long moment, trying to understand why these disparate people were together at all, and why they were in Hiram’s apartment instead of a Fleet conference room or Hiram’s office at Fleet Intelligence.  Romano made sense, in a way, for she was the head technical boffin for the team studying the Tilleke teleportation ships.  But Rafael?  Rafael was a Captain in the Refuge SRF; he wasn’t even in the Victorian Fleet.  And Yael?  Yael wasn’t in the military at all; he was a professor at the University of Haifa, who did some consulting with the Government on the side.

What would the Queen’s top Intelligence adviser and the technical expert on the Tilleke Kraits want to do with a Refuge political scientist and a Refuge Army commander?  If Hiram had intended to teleport troops to attack someone, he had access to Fleet Marines.  She paused.   No, that wasn’t really correct, was it?  Everyone expected the Dominions to start using the Tilleke transporters any day now, and that meant the Victorian warships needed Marines on board to protect them.  There really weren’t all that many Marines and they were needed to protect Atlas and the Victorian warships, so there might not be enough if Hiram was going to attack a large target.  But the only target Emily knew about was the secret Dominion shipyard, Siegestor, and they weren’t going to try to capture that, they were going to destroy it.  So that meant that Hiram had another target and he needed additional soldiers to attack it and seize it and he needed Refuge troops to do it.

Another target.  An important target.  Emily shut her eyes.  But why meet in Hiram’s cramped little apartment, unless this was not an official mission, unless…

Hiram walked over and stood in front of her.

“You found her,” Emily whispered; it was half question, half benediction.  “You found Cookie.”

Hiram nodded.  “She’s alive.  We’re going to get her.”

“Oh sweet Gods, I never thought-“  and to her own astonishment, she covered her face with her hands and wept like a child.  The others watched, taken aback and unsure what to do, but Yael stood up and put his arms around her.

“There, there,” he said comfortingly as she buried her face in his gaunt, boney shoulder.  “It’s okay, it’s okay.  Take your time.  It’s okay.”

It took her several minutes to get under control.  The others waited while Emily splashed water on her face from the kitchen sink and rejoined them, sheepishly smiling her apologies.   Yael handed her a cup of tea and patted her on the shoulder.  “Never be embarrassed by a display of love for someone,” he said gently.  “It is the closest we ever come to God.”  He smiled a little ruefully.  “It took me a long time to learn that.”

Emily touched his hand.  “It’s nice to see you again, Yael, though I never thought it would be quite like this.”  She looked at Rafael and smiled and nodded, not trusting herself to say anything more.

Hiram cleared his throat.  “We have a report that Cookie and one of her men are prisoners aboard a Dominion prison ship, the Tartarus.  What’s more, we believe the Tartarus is headed for Siegestor,” Hiram explained.  “I intend to grab her off the prison ship when we go in to attack the Dominion shipyard.”  He gestured to Specialist Romano.  “Lori has been working with the transporter devices we captured from the Tilleke.”

Romano nodded.  “We’re not sure we really understand the physics, but we’ve successfully duplicated the machines and they work.  The original design was pretty crappy, so we’ve tinkered with it a bit to make it more reliable.  I think we can avoid the power outages that stranded Sergeant Sanchez on the Dominion battleship.” She flushed red at the memory. “We’ve reduced the number of individual units being transported from forty to thirty to alleviate the energy spike when the-“

Emily held up a hand to stop her.  “I’ll take your word for it, Romano.  What does it all mean?”

Romano gulped and nodded.  “Well, it means that instead of just having the original three working units we got from the Tilleke, now we have twenty-two, each capable of sending thirty soldiers up to fifteen thousand miles and recombining them alive and conscious when they get there.  The recycle time is about five minutes before we can send through another group using the same machine.  We’ve configured two destroyers and a cruiser so that they each carry four machines, so we could teleport as many as three hundred and sixty troops onto the target at one time.”

Emily rubbed her nose, thinking.  “Can you send anything metallic or explosive through yet?

“No, Ma’am, not yet.  But I got to tell you, Commander, the more I look at it, the more I just don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t be able to send through metal and bombs.  I haven’t figured it out yet, but I will.”

“Okay, Romano, keep at it.”  Then, to Hiram:  “You need Rafael and his troopers because you don’t have enough Marines, right?”  Hiram nodded.  Emily turned to Rafael.  “Do you understand this, Raf?  Your men won’t be able to carry their normal weapons with them.  They are going to be reduced to pixie dust, beamed across space into an enemy ship, reassembled into something that hopefully resembles the original and then, if everything goes right, they’ll be fighting the bad guys with air guns and swords.  Do you understand what you’re getting into here?”  Hiram was looking at her oddly, glancing back and forth between her and Rafael.

“Yes, yes, Emily, I know all this.  Your Admiral Douthat has supplied us with information about these wonderful machines.”  Rafael smiled reassuringly.  “I have had my men practicing with your – how do you say? – pebble guns.”

“Pellet guns,” Emily corrected.

“Yes, yes,” Rafael beamed, “the pellet guns.  And of course, the swords.”  He winced and shook his head sorrowfully.  “We need more practice with the swords.”

“And you,” she said, looking at Yael.  “How do you fit into this?”

Yael shrugged and raised his hands in the air.  “In my work, I know many of the top government officials on a first-name basis, including Prime Minister Tal.  While it is true that Refuge pays its debts, not everyone is as enthusiastic as we might like.  When Victoria makes a request for five hundred or more of the Special Reconnaissance Force to be used in an attack on a Dominion prison ship, some in the Army will object.  My role is to help smooth things over.”

Hiram looked at her curiously.  “Emily, none of this explains why you’re here.  Why did you come to see me?”

“Admiral Razon, Commandant of the Refuge Coast Guard,” she began, then paused as Yael groaned out loud.

“What?” she demanded.

Yael waved a hand in the air.  “Please, go ahead, finish.”

“Admiral Razon has denied us the use of his Reserve force of pilots with our new heavy gunboats.  He says they are not competent and will besmirch the honor of Refuge,” she explained.  “I need help getting around him and I hoped you might have ideas.”

Yael shook his head.  “Razon is a traditionalist.  He won’t understand your idea for a new group of heavy gunboats and will be suspicious of it.  On top of that, he’s…well, he’s an imbecile, but he’s an imbecile with a lot of supporters.”  He glanced at Emily.  “You shouldn’t have gone to him, Emily.  You should have done your homework first.  Now it will be harder to get this changed.

“Can you speak to the Queen?” Emily asked Hiram.  “All our plans with the gunboats depend on the Reserve.  There’s just nobody else we can train on such short notice.”

Yael winced.  “Don’t do that, at least not yet.  Let me talk to the Prime Minister first.  I know him; I might be able to talk him through this without any further escalation.”  He paused for a moment, lost in thought, then refocused.  “There might be an approach that will appeal to the Prime Minister that Admiral Razon will not be able to block.  I need to think about it further.”  He stood up and everyone else rose and said their goodbyes.

“Walk you to the lifts?” Emily asked Rafael.

“With you I shall feel safer if we run into any grogin here on Atlas,” Rafael said with a  perfectly straight face.  “Even if you cannot shoot the side of a house.”

“Barn,” Emily corrected, smiling.  “The expression is: ‘You can’t hit the broad side of a barn.’”

Rafael made a tsking sound. “I know this expression,” he replied disdainfully.  “I have seen you in action, Emily Tuttle.  You cannot hit the side of a house, either.”

Emily put her arm through his as they walked along the corridor.  “How are your mothers?  And Nouar?”

Rafael laughed.  “Nouar talks about you all the time.  She wants to know when you will visit again.  I’ve tried to explain that you have duties here and it might be a while before you can make it back, but she is a very insistent girl.”

“I picture her as an Admiral some day,” Emily said, only half joking.

As they reached the lift, Rafael paused.  “Emily, I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, but what went wrong when you sent Marines over to the Dominion battleship?”

“It was the Vengeance, the biggest damn battleship I’ve ever seen,” Emily said, not a little bitterly.  “We had one of those Tilleke teleporter devices and sent over almost one hundred Marines, but the bloody thing broke before we could send any reinforcements.  The Marines were trapped and got slaughtered.”

Rafael considered this.  “And now your technical wizard, this Romano person, she thinks she has fixed the problem, yes?”

“Romano’s pretty good; if she thinks it’s fixed, it’s probably fixed,” Emily replied.

Rafael nodded slowly.  “I do not want my men to be – how do you say? – cannon food.”

“Cannon fodder,” Emily said.

“Yes, fodder.  Refuge does pay its debts, Emily, regardless of what some like Admiral Razon may do, but I will not sacrifice my troops if there is no chance.”

The chime sounded to indicate the arrival of the lift.   “When this is over, my family would like you to come visit us again in Ouididi,” he told her.

Emily thought of the task in front of them, going through a wormhole deep into Dominion space and attacking a well-defended shipyard, then somehow getting back to Refuge again.  And all with untested crews and a new type of assault craft.

“It’s a date,” she promised.

Chapter 22

Prime Minister’s Office, Refuge

“Thank you for seeing us, Prime Minister.”  Two men and one woman sat across the table from the Prime Minister.  The speaker was Eliana Zohar, Minister of the Refuge Defense Force, with control over the Army and Fleet.  On her left sat Tarek Allali, the Production Minister, whose job it was to not only build everything the Refuge armed forces needed, but to figure out how to pay for it.  He had perpetual dark smudges under his eyes and his hair was chronically tousled, as if he had spent the night tossing and turning.  On the other side of Zohar sat Yael Eitan, who was known in government circles as a fixer, a man who could persuade people it was in their best interest to do what the Government wanted them to do.

Now Yael was here, the Prime Minister thought wryly, to convince the Government that it was in its best interest to do something.  But what?

Beside the Prime Minister sat Aamir Fareed Khan, the Refuge Foreign Minister, tall and urbane, smiling, watching everything and everyone, but in particular Yael.  Yael smiled blandly back at him and nodded a greeting.

Prime Minister Tal's government was a messy coalition compromise.  Tal was part of the Liberal Party, but since no one had received a clear majority, he had had to bring in two other parties to form the government.  The Defense minister was also part of the Liberal Party, but the Foreign Minister was a long-time Conservative with dreams of becoming Prime Minister himself some day.  The Production Minister, in turn, was part of the religious party called the Party of the Prophet.  The problem, as any psychologist could have predicted, was that three is an unstable number when it comes to human relations, and that held especially true in politics.

It also meant that deciding anything of consequence required another damn meeting, with all three parties perpetually jockeying around for advantage.  The Prime Minister smiled inwardly.  He would grow tired of it, if he didn't enjoy it so very much.

So now his fellow Liberal Party Minister had brought him to yet another meeting to discuss...what?

"We have two issues, Prime Minister," said Defense Minister Zohar.  "One is budgetary; the other is proper use of our RDF resources.  The fact is that the RDF is out of money, or soon will be.  When we created this budget, we of course had no idea that we would become embroiled in a war between our long-time ally, Victoria, and the Dominion.  We have spent vast sums in the last two months and need to find some money quickly or will have to suspend critical operations."

"How much do you need?" asked Prime Minister Tal.

The Defense Minister stated a number and the Prime Minister stifled a gasp.  The blood drained from his face.  He knew it was going to be bad, but that bad?

The Defense Minister saw the look on his face and nodded grimly.  "Yes, Prime Minister, a staggering sum."  She folded her hands on the table.  "Refuge will, of course, pay its debts to Victoria, but my job-"  She looked around the table.  "Our job is to make sure that we do not destroy Refuge while we honor that debt.  I think there are two things we can do immediately that will give us some slight relief and might help us move the war out of the Refuge Sector and back into Victoria."  She didn't quite say, Where it belongs..., but everyone in the room understood.

"In the first place," she continued, "we can cut costs.  This is only a small stop-gap measure, to be sure, but there may be an unexpected side benefit that will help move the war back to Victoria."

"I trust you will share it with me, Eliana," the Prime Minister said dryly.

"Of course, Prime Minister," Zohar said.  "It has to do with the Coast Guard.  As you know, many people apply to be pilots in the Coast Guard, but few are accepted.  Of those rejected, most simply return to civilian life and are of no budgetary consequence, but it turns out that we have more than six hundred Coast Guard officers and non-commissioned officers who were rejected for gunboat duty, but nevertheless stayed in the Coast Guard.  They are called ‘Rejects’ by the Coast Guard admiralty and have essentially been beached.  They have no duties and no one in the Coast Guard wants them or will use them.  Despite this, these Rejects continue to be under the authority of Admiral Razon and draw half-pay, benefits and, in time, pensions."

"I am familiar with the status of the gunboat Rejects," Prime Minister Tal said tartly, who was once Pilot Candidate Tal and failed to pass the pilot exam.  The memory of being declared a Reject still rankled thirty years later.

"Of course, Prime Minister," said Defense Minister Zohar, who was perfectly aware that Tal was once rejected as a gunboat pilot.  She pushed the knife in a little deeper.  "The Rejects are a heavy burden on the RDF, Prime Minister.  They cost more than $51 Million Credits a year and collect half-pay pensions when they finally retire, for which the RDF gets nothing in return.  The Coast Guard won't use them and attempts to palm them off on other branches of the RDF have failed.  No one wants them."

Prime Minister Tal looked at her sharply.  Defense Minister Zohar gazed at him without guile or pretext, but gazed at him intently nonetheless.  Why was she doing this?  She kept staring at him, waiting for him to…to realize what the hell was going on?

Finally, the amount of money she was talking about sank in.  The Prime Minister mentally shook himself.  The Defense Minister's budget was more than $250 Billion Credits.  $51 Million was barely a rounding error.  Why didn't she just do whatever it was she wanted his approval for?  What in the name of the One God was going on?

Then he looked around the room.  There was the Foreign Minister of the Traditionalist Party, and there was the Production Minister of the Party of the Prophet.  Admiral Razon, the Commandant of the Coast Guard, was a vocal member of the Party of the Prophet and was not a supporter of Tal's efforts to help the Victorians.  And lastly there was Yael Eitan, of no party affiliation anyone knew of.  What was he doing here?

Time for a cautious probe.  "Well, the Liberal Party doesn't want to be known as the party that cut off benefits to part of the military.   So long as Admiral Razon is willing to carry the financial burden, I see no reason to do anything hasty here," he said firmly.

"Thank you, Prime Minister," Zohar said, almost sighing with relief.  "I share your sentiments, but I felt compelled to bring it before you."  She smiled brightly.

Aamir Fareed Khan glanced back and forth between Prime Minister Tal and the Production Minister.  There was little love lost between the Traditionalists and the Party of the Prophet.  The Party of the Prophet wanted a state religion and a requirement that all government employees, in particular its Ministers and Cabinet, be members of it.  Traditionalists wanted a clear separation of Temple and State.  And because the Coast Guard Commandant was such an out-spoken supporter of the Party of the Prophet, the Coast Guard was viewed as aligned with it.

"I think we may be looking at this the wrong way," the Prime Minister said smoothly.  "Instead of looking at this as a budget matter, we should be looking at it as an opportunity to find full employment for the Rejects."  He shifted his gaze to Yael Eitan.  "Mr. Eitan, would you have any suggestions?"

Yael nodded slowly.  "Yes, Mr. Prime Minister.  I know that the Victorians are looking to employ former military people from the RDF and the Coast Guard in particular, but whether they would be interested in hiring any of the Rejects..."  He shrugged eloquently.  "I think the smarter course might be to simply tell Admiral Razon that he must bear the financial burden of these people.  It will cut into his development and production budget, of course, but the Rejects are clearly an issue for the Coast Guard, not anyone else in the RDF."

Tarek Allali, the Production Minister, scowled at Yael.  "That is preposterous!  These people are a ball and chain around the neck of the Coast Guard.  They are a drain on the entire RDF budget.  They should be dismissed from the RDF.  If the Victorians are foolish enough to hire them, so be it.  I say "Good riddance!'"

Foreign Minister Khan looked at him in frank surprise.  "You are saying that you are willing for the entire group of the Rejects to be dismissed from the Coast Guard?"

"Yes, of course," the Production Minister said firmly.  "And the sooner the better!"

"Should we discuss this first with Admiral Razon?" Prime Minister Tal asked hesitantly.

"No need for that, I assure you," Khan replied.  "We, after all, are the chief Ministers involved.  I am sure Admiral Razon will be delighted when we tell him we are saving him $50 Million Credits per year in his budget."

Prime Minister Tal looked about the room.  "All right, then.  I will sign an order today discharging the Rejects from duty in the RDF.  As of tomorrow morning they will all be civilians."

"A fine day!" said the Foreign Minister.  "Just goes to show that the three parties in the coalition can work together when we put our minds to it."

"Just so," agreed the Production Minister.

"And I have one more thing I can do to help the Victorians get this war out of Refuge and back into Victoria," the Defense Minister announced proudly.  "Queen Anne herself has said that Victoria will take over the salary and benefits of any troops we assign to guard their ships and the Atlas space station, thus freeing up the Victorian Marines for active duties assaulting the Dominion of Unified Citizenry.  I have today assigned five hundred of our Reconnaissance Forces to the Victorians for garrison duty, thus taking them out of the RDF budget for the remainder of this fiscal year...”

Foreign Minister Khan's eyebrows lifted skeptically for a moment, but then he shrugged.  The Production Minister glanced about the room, testing the winds, and then he nodded.  Prime Minister Tal beamed.  "Well then, we've made some progress," he said warmly.

The meeting broke up, with the Production Minister leaving first.  Foreign Minister Khan turned to Tal and Zohar.

"I'm not entirely sure what that was all about," he said sternly, "but you owe me one."  He turned and left.

Prime Minister Tal looked at Zohar and Yael Eitan.  "Got what you need?" he asked tartly.

They nodded.

He raised a finger and pointed it at them.  "Next time, a little warning first.  I do not like surprises, understand?"

Zohar and Yael exchanged glances.  "Yes, Prime Minister," they said in unison.

Tal glowered at Yael.  "Tell the Victorians to treat the Rejects well, Yael.  Most of them will fight to the death for a chance to redeem their honor.  As to the Reconnaissance Forces, I take it they are not going to be used just as guards, but in a more active role?"

"Yes, Prime Minister," Yael murmured.

Tal studied him quizzically.  "Yael, how is it you came to be mixed up in this?"

A shadow fell over Yael's face.  "My son is an officer in the Reconnaissance Forces."

Prime Minister Tal let out a long sigh.  "May the One God bless him and keep him, and may He curse old men who stay behind while their sons and daughters go off to war."

"Amen," said Yael Eitan, and wondered bleakly how he would explain all of this to Rafael's mothers.

Chapter 23

On the Spaceship Atlas

Emily walked briskly to the podium as six hundred and twelve Gunboat Wing recruits surged to their feet and stood at attention.  Emily suddenly realized that she was not very comfortable speaking to large audiences.  She wondered if this was how Hiram felt when he had to speak to large groups.

“At ease, but remain standing for the moment,’ she ordered.  She had instinctively almost added “please,” but decided that would not give the impression of command that, today, she needed.

“There are six hundred and twelve of you here, all from the Refuge Gunboat Reserve.”  She paused and looked over the audience.  Slightly less than half of them were women.  They ranged from their mid-twenties to mid-thirties.  They all were looking at her.  “I am told by high-ranking officers of the Refuge Gunboat Wing that you are losers and rejects, not qualified to pilot a Refuge gunboat.  Each one of you, they say, isn’t aggressive enough.  You don’t have what it takes.”

She paused a heartbeat, saw the wave of anger and, in some cases, bitter resentment, sweeping through the auditorium.  Good, she thought.  She wanted them angry.

“I think they are wrong about you. I think that they’ve done you an injustice. I’ve looked at your records and in many cases I even took the time to look at your simulator trials.  What they see as lack of aggression, I see as maturity; what they see as weakness, I see as professionalism.”  The auditorium was dead quiet now; the eyes of the recruits were all fixed on her.  Some of those eyes were bright with anticipation, some hard, some pleading for something she wasn’t sure of.  Redemption?

“What is clear is that the Refuge pilots are willing to die for their world…and they are dying by the hundreds and thousands.  To my way of thinking, that’s a weakness, not strength.

“On the eve of a great battle, an Old Earth general once told an assembly like this one that he didn’t want his soldiers to die for their country, he wanted them to make sure that the enemy soldiers died for their country instead.  I think you are the soldiers who can do that.”

There were nods now and some smiles.  Emily sipped from a glass of water, took a breath and continued.

“This is a new program and we have precious little time to train you and develop tactics.  But we mean to take the war to the Dominion, and very soon.  If you join us today, soon you will be flying in harm’s way.  This means commitment.  Total, unstinting commitment.  You will train in the simulators for several hours a day, then fly actual heavy gunboats, then debrief, and then go back to the simulators.  It means long days flying six days a week and classroom study on the seventh day.  You will be students and teachers, for when you see something that just doesn’t work, you’ll be expected to tell us about it immediately.  And if you have ideas for something that will work, or how to make something work better, we want to hear from you.

“Thanks to your Refuge training, all of you have piloting skills, but the heavy gunboats are different, more complex and we need more than just pilots.  In the days and weeks ahead, we will determine which of you will become Pilots or Weapons Officers or Systems Officers.  The heavy gunboats can only function with all three officers.  Assignments will be made strictly on your test scores and the initial simulator trials, then you will be trained in depth in your new role.  This means that you will not ‘fail’ even if you are not chosen to be a pilot.  It means that you each have skills we consider vital to the success of the Heavy Gunboat Wing or you would not be here today.”

They were still on their feet, still watching her, and now it was time to make them commit on an emotional level.

“Make no mistake, some of you will die,” Emily told them bluntly.  “The Heavy Gunboat Wing is intended to find the enemy and attack them.  You will fight often.  It will not always go our way.  Because of the level of commitment we are asking of you in the coming months, and because you are soldiers of an allied world, we can only accept volunteers.  If you remain, you will be sworn in as a member of the Victorian Fleet with the rank of Recruit in the Heavy Gunboat Wing.  If, on the other hand, you decide to leave, there will be no questions asked, no more speeches.  There are shuttles waiting in Bay 14 that will take you back to Refuge in time for supper.”

Emily paused again. She could barely trust herself to speak.  If too many left, the Heavy Gunboat Wing would be stillborn.  She would be personally responsible.

“Once or twice in our lifetimes,” she continued, “we get the opportunity to embrace something bigger than ourselves. This is one of those times.  But you must decide, and you must decide now.  I’m sorry you don’t have more time, but that’s the way it is.  Anyone who wishes to return to Refuge is to leave now.  Show your ID to Master Chief Gibson at the back of the auditorium on the way out.”  She looked at the clock on her tablet.  “You have one minute.”  She stepped back away from the podium.   This should be interesting, she thought, painfully conscious that she was holding her breath.

For a moment there was no movement, then one tall woman in the middle of a row elbowed her way to the corridor and walked out the back doors.  Everyone looked at her as she left.  Another man stood.  “I’ve got a family now,” he said apologetically.  “Two kids.  It’s too late for me.”  He walked out. Then two more followed him, then more in groups of two and three.

As they formed a line in the back of the auditorium to show their ID badges, someone called out:  “You’ll never get another chance like this!  Go through that door and you’ll regret it until the day you die.”  One of the recruits in line to leave hesitated, turned back, then shook her head violently and threw up her arms.  “Fuck!” she yelled, half in anger, half in anguish, then turned back again and pushed through the door.  One by one, the rest of those leaving filed past Chief Gibson and then they were gone.

All in all, fifty-nine recruits left.

Five hundred and fifty three remained behind.

Emily slowly let out her breath.  We have enough left to man one hundred and eighty- four ships, Emily thought.  Could have been worse.  She stepped forward to the podium once more.

“Attention!” bellowed Master Chief Gibson.  Five hundred and fifty-three recruits snapped to attention, eyes to the front.  Many were smiling, while some had tears in their eyes.

“To all of you who have remained, you have my personal thanks and the thanks of the Queen and people of Victoria.”  She paused, caught off guard by the rush of emotion that swept through her.  Her eyes filled with unshed tears.  These were her people now, and suddenly the loss of the New Zealand seemed inconsequential. She struggled to speak. “I swear to you this: This will be one of the proudest days of your lives.”  She cleared her throat.  “Now to work.”

And sixteen weeks of frantic, mind-numbing training commenced.

Chapter 24

On Qom, Home Planet of the Tilleke Empire

Prince RaShahid walked through the twenty foot doors into the audience chamber.  He walked past the Savak body guards who lined the approach, careful not to show the slightest hesitation or hint of nervousness.  The Savak could smell fear.  At the end of the approach was the Emperor’s dais.  To the side stood the impaled body of the Arcadian lawyer who had so foolishly offended the Emperor.  He stood now forever dead, a perpetual reminder that in the Court of Emperor Chalabi bad manners came at a cost.

On either side of the throne sat two large beasts.  They sat like dogs, but their heads were mostly human, with long canine teeth.  Father has been playing God again, the Prince thought to himself, but kept his face expressionless.  At the bottom of the throne, he knelt on one knee and bowed his head.

“You may rise, my son,” Emperor Chalabi said.  “Tell me what you have learned of the Dominion and the Victorians.  How does their war proceed?”

“For the moment, they are in stalemate, Father,” said the Prince.  “Both sides have taken tremendous losses, but the Dominion will be moving reinforcements up from their naval yards soon and that could tip the balance.”

The Emperor considered this.  “You say they have taken losses.  What is their status?”

“From the reports we have intercepted, I would say the Victorians have no more than forty warships, while the Dominions have no more than fifty.”

Emperor Chalabi nodded.  He already knew this from his other spies, but it was always worth seeing if the Prince would be truthful.  He knew the day would come when his son’s ambition would overcome his fear.  In the meantime, however, he had other enemies to contend with.

“Good,’ he said.  “It is always good when your enemies kill each other.”

“They are so weak now that we could probably destroy them,” Prince RaShahid said.

The Emperor smiled inwardly.  Who was testing who?  “Perhaps, my son, but there is no reason for haste.  Let them grind each other down in a war of attrition.  Every day they grow weaker and we grow stronger.  When only one of them is left, bloody and reeling, then we will step in and take what we wish.”

Prince RaShahid bowed and withdrew.  The Emperor watched him go, a touch of melancholy in his heart.  He had such hopes for this son.  He would hate to lose him.

Chapter 25

On Atlas Space Station

The conference room was guarded by four heavily armed Marines.  There were no recording devices, no assistants, no one attending who did not have an absolute need to know.  The audience was small: Admiral Douthat, Captain Eder, Queen Anne, Sir Henry, Hiram Brill and Emily Tuttle.

The speaker was Abbot Cornelia, the highest ranking member of The Light.

"This is the wormhole map as you know it," Cornelia said, flashing a picture on the screen.  They all recognized it.  Every child in the Human Universe learned it in first grade.

“Victoria is at the center, with all of its wondrous wormhole entrances to other Sectors,” Abbot Cornelia continued.  “Like a great building with many entrances and exits, it has been your strength and, as you have discovered, your weakness.  Perhaps the most striking thing about this map, however, is that all of the wormholes depicted on it are two-way.  You can leave and enter a Sector using the same wormhole.”

“But that is not the way all wormholes work,” she explained.  “Many wormhole entrances, in fact most of them, are one-way, not two-way.  You can go from Point A to Point B, but not back again using that wormhole.”

Her words were met with a baffled silence.  She smiled.  “These wormhole entrances are hard to find; the scientists of The Light spent hundreds of years locating them.  The real wormhole map looks like this.”  Another map appeared.

This map did not show the traditional map of the Human Universe with a handful of black lines depicting wormholes.  This map showed a riot of lines with arrows on them connecting sectors all over the Human Universe.  There were three times as many wormholes and more than on the old map.

A murmur of astonishment and disbelief rose around the conference table.  The Abbot nodded.  “That’s right, the Human Universe is not like you believe it to be.  There are many more wormholes.”  The Abbot’s eyes traced the path.  “The present task is to get to the Dominion without passing through the Refuge/Victoria wormhole.  To do this, we leave Refuge space and go to the old Solar System, then on to the Sultenic Empire.  From there we go to Gilead, and from there to the Dominion itself.  We will come out near a large asteroid belt, several days from Timor.”

“And how long will the travel from wormhole to wormhole take?” demanded Admiral Douthat.

“Not very long, Admiral.  The wormhole entrances tend to be close together, if you know how to look for them.  From here you could expect your task force to reach the Dominion in two days.  Brother Jong will go with you to provide navigation assistance.”

“There goes Victoria’s shipping monopoly,” Sir Henry muttered darkly.

Hiram Brill cleared his throat.  He was the most junior officer in the room, but no one else seemed to be asking the question he thought was obvious.  Abbot Cornelia looked at him, eyebrows raised.

“Abbot, you’ve told us how we can get into Dominion space, but how do we get out?  Is there a one-way wormhole we can use to retreat after the attack?”

Everyone turned to the Abbot.  She shook her head.  “There are three ways out of Dominion space that we are aware of.  You can fly the old trade route to Sybil Head, or you can go through the wormhole into Victoria, or you can go through a one-way wormhole to Gilead.  Once you are back inside Victorian space, there are several wormholes – all one way – which you can use depending on what you want to do next.”

“And the one-way wormhole to Gilead is located where?” Hiram asked.

“Less than a day’s travel from Timor.”

“So we can sneak in, but when we leave it means going near Timor on the way out,” Captain Eder said, exchanging a glance with Admiral Douthat.  They both knew what that meant. The Ducks would have heavy patrols around Timor. The raiding force would have to be beefed up at the expense of the forces guarding the Victorian/Refuge wormhole.  If the Dominions figured out the wormhole was less well defended, well, that did not bear thinking about.

Admiral Douthat folded her hands and looked at the new wormhole map for a long time.  She thought about the stalemate at the Refuge/Victoria wormhole.  She thought about a secret shipyard in the Dominion Sector.  She thought of the Laughing Owl.   She turned to Hiram Brill.  “Your project is a ‘go,’ Brill.  But I’m going to add on a little extra assignment.”  She grinned evilly.  “I think you’ll like it.  Captain Eder will be in charge, so you’ll have Lionheart and three destroyers and a cruiser in support, plus every damn heavy gunboat we can scrape up in time to go with you.”

She looked at Emily.  “Commander, how soon can your Wing be ready, and in what strength?”

Emily frowned.  It was too soon, just plain too soon.  “Ma’am, we’ve had the training stations for two weeks and have only just begun serious training in the gunboats themselves.  The crews are coming along faster than I’d have thought possible, but we need more time to bring them up to anything close to combat readiness.”

Douthat shook her head.  “I have everything but time, Commander.  You’ve got four weeks, then we go.  We’ll put all of the training stations on a freighter and continue to train on the trip to Dominion, but that’s the best we can do.  Make your people understand and push them hard.”

She stood up on short legs.  “Get back to work, everyone.  Captain Eder, I have an idea I want to try out on you.”

Chapter 26

On the Atlas Space Station

Emily watched the battle holograph intently, unaware of the twitch in her cheek as adrenalin and exhaustion vied with each other for control.  The simulation was in its third day and everyone was running on snatches of sleep and really terrible coffee.  She had 150 gunboats in the air, a total of fifteen squadrons.  Each squadron had nine assault craft and one hedgehog to give them some protection.  For every three squadrons there was one command ship, which carried a crew of four instead of three and was only lightly armed.  From her position, Emily controlled the five commands and the commands in turn controlled their squadrons.

The enemy force was being run by Alex Rudd, Toby Partridge and Chief Gibson.  Rudd was his usual mischievous self, dancing and feinting around the rookie gunboat teams, but Partridge was revealing an absolutely pathological aptitude for deception and cunning.  In one of the previous training simulations he’d planted rings of decoys mixed with jammers.  After cautiously fighting through the first three rings, Emily’s commanders had gained enough confidence to try to simply fly through the fourth ring, only to find out that the “decoys” this time were the real thing, eight cruisers hiding amidst the jammers.

Chaos ensued, followed by carnage.  The gunboats were cut to ribbons.

Chief Gibson, on the other hand, relied on solid fixed defenses.  He placed forts at strategic points to force the gunboat squadrons to either fight their way through to some target point or to abandon their carefully laid plans for something more impromptu and usually less effective.  He was also a fan of large minefields that channeled the gunboats into killing zones, where he would have automated gun emplacements patiently waiting.

Bill Satore, the AI specialist who had designed the training pods, revealed himself as a sadistic genius.  The experience in the pods felt real.  When you ‘flew’ in a training pod, you felt the constant vibration from the engines, felt the pull of acceleration and even the tilt of changing directions. When enemy missiles ‘blew up’ near you, the training pod trembled and lurched, sometimes spinning wildly on its axis until the pilot or Mildred got it under control.  Satore even programmed the HVAC units to cut back when there was action.  As soon as the fighting began, the cabin became hot and stuffy, so the perspiration rolled off you in waves and there never seemed to be enough air.  The damn things even smelled:  hot electrical insulation, sweat, fear and a subtle undertone of rancid puke.

But most annoyingly, if the pod was ‘destroyed’ by enemy fire, the comm screen lit up with a fat little cartoon pig from some ancient Earth children’s show.  The pig cackled madly, then said:  “That’s all, folks!”

The recruits hated that pig.

* * * * *

Emily’s first problem was that her teams were not doing well in the battle simulations.

Emily’s second problem was that neither was she.

Despite the aptitude tests and the early training, she was discovering that a lot of people had been put into the wrong jobs.  Some of the recruits who tested well for navigation and received training for it proved not to be able to find the end of their own nose once they went into a full-blown simulation.   Others who tested well for juggling the systems and handling the missiles and lasers turned out to be slow and ineffective – i.e., they couldn’t hit a damn thing – once in a live exercise.   And worst of all, some of those who looked like natural leaders sat frozen in their chair, unable to make a decision when they had responsibility for either a squadron or a team.

Frustrated, annoyed and a little bewildered, Emily had sought out the Fleet Surgeon, Admiral Wilkinson, who snorted and laughed.  “Well, damn, Tuttle, did you expect it to be easy?  We’re not just the sum of our test scores, particularly when we’re young. Sometimes we are lot more and, sadly, sometimes a lot less. As for finding leaders, well, that will be the toughest.  Fleet’s been trying to figure out how to do that for decades, centuries, and we still get it wrong a lot of the time.  It’s damn hard to test for that quality.  Sometimes the hard-driving, aggressive types get in the field and they can’t lead worth a damn.  Oh, they can fight, but they can’t lead.  You’ve gotta have situation awareness of not only your own tactical situation, but the larger tactical situation and the strategic situation.  Only one in ten can do that.  But sometimes that person just sits and cogitates, can’t make a decision.  You’ve got to look for the whole package.”

“But if I can’t rely on the tests, how do I find them?” Emily asked, trying hard not to wail with frustration.

Wilkinson looked at her with amused sympathy.  “The time honored method is called ‘trial and error.’  But it means that you have to be ruthless.  If someone doesn’t have what you need, you’ve got to pull them out of that spot and put somebody else in, super pronto.  That’s the test of your leadership, Emily.”

Emily’s second problem was, if anything, worse.  She had gone through five real-time training exercises with her recruits and had utterly failed in all of the missions.  It was always the same task, to destroy the enemy shipyard, but she hadn’t come close.  Captain Lior had looked at the tapes, running through them several times.  He stroked his chin and shook his head.

“Well, I can’t say that you’re doing anything wrong.”  He gestured to the holo of one of the exercises where Emily controlled ten squadrons as she attacked a mixed group of destroyers and cruisers.   “You’re keeping nice, tight formations all the way in, maximizing your punch.  Nothing wrong with that.”  He frowned.  On the holo the squadrons of heavy gunboats sped towards the enemy cruisers, only to be decimated by a simultaneous burst of missile and laser fire from the hostile ships.  The attack fell apart as the surviving gunboats scattered in disarray.

“Nothing wrong except you got your ass kicked,” Lior amended sardonically.

Captain Eder and Admiral Douthat both stopped by, but neither had an answer to her problem.  Abbot Cornelia had returned to The Light, but Brother Jong remained behind and began to visit her daily.  He patiently listened to her and gazed thoughtfully at the holo display as Emily’s failed attempts were replayed.  When the replay finished, he stood up.

“With respect, Commander, I am not a soldier, but a monk,” he said, bowing slightly.  “But as a layman at the art of war, I suggest that you are making a fundamental mistake.”  Emily’s eyebrows narrowed and her lips thinned, but she shook mentally herself.

“I am screwing up by the numbers here, Brother Jong.  If you’ve got some good idea on what I can do, fire away.”

“You are an excellent captain, Commander, but when you are in charge of the gunboats, you still are fighting as if you controlled destroyers or cruisers.”  He smiled and waited for her to see his point.

Emily took a deep breath to stifle her temper.  Damn obscure monk.  Then she replayed in her mind her control of the gunboats; the tight, crisp formations, vectoring them in in squadron-sized groups like arrows.  Straight and linear.  Straight and linear.

So damn linear.

“Bugger me,” she sighed.

Jong nodded, trying not to smile at her belated understanding.  “All things are not equal, nor should we try to make them so.  When a bear fights a bear, it makes sense to fight tooth for tooth and claw for claw, for those are the weapons God has given them.  But when you fight cruisers and battleships you are not a bear, Commander, you are a bumble bee.  Have you ever seen how bumble bees attack a bear?”  He bowed again and left.

Emily spent the next hour looking up videos of bees swarming large animals, but then stumbled on footage of a pack of grogin attacking a sambar.  It was gritty, gruesome footage.  Five grogin surrounded the sambar, which had two viciously sharp horns and outweighed any one individual grogon ten to one. But the grogin had speed and numbers.  Each time the sambar charged one of the grogin, two others would tear at its hind legs in a bid to cripple it.  The sambar would whirl about, trying to catch one of its tormentors, but they would skitter out of reach and then yet another grogon would attack from the sambar’s rear. No matter how fast the sambar turned, the grogin slashed and bit and tore until the sambar was bleeding from a dozen wounds. The attack went on for over an hour and one of the grogin was forced out of the fight with a slashed shoulder, but the increasingly tired sambar turned slower and slower and eventually one grogon succeeded in hamstringing it.  The sambar still fought, dragging its injured hind leg uselessly on the ground, but its fate was sealed and ten minutes later one of the grogin ripped open the sambar’s belly while a second tore at the other hind leg.

The sambar went down, eyes rolling in its head.

Emily called Grant Skiffington, Toby Partridge and Alex Rudd.  When they assembled she showed them the video of the grogin and the sambar.

“That’s how we’re going to fight,” she told them.  “No more attacks by squadrons in tight formations, no more grouping the squadrons to increase their punch.  Now we split up into two and three ship groups.  No matter how good the enemy is, they can’t keep track of all of us all the time.  From now on we harass, disorient and badger the enemy until we see a solid opening, then we rip their guts out.”

“But how do we close in?” Rudd asked.

“Jammers and decoys, plus coming at them from 360 degrees, will get us inside their command and response time,” Emily countered, hoping it was true.  “Then we use the lasers until we’ve got a clean shot at something good and pound them with the missiles.”  The lasers could recharge in thirty seconds or so.  With, say, forty to sixty gunboats swarming around the target, there would be a continuous laser fire from 10-inch lasers raining down on the enemy ship.  That alone could ruin their day.

“We’ve been firing most of our missiles at range and then the enemy has been able to knock them down,” Emily continued.  “Let’s use the lasers at range, then jammers and decoys to carry us close while the lasers recharge, then swarm them until we get a shot, then pound them with the missiles when they don’t have time to respond to them.”

Toby Partridge and Skiffington nodded, but Rudd still looked doubtful.  “We’ll take casualties,” he warned.

“We’re taking casualties now,” Emily countered.   “Better to take casualties and accomplish the mission than take them and fail.”

Rudd looked at her levelly.  “Okay,” he said slowly.  “But we are going to need an inventory of gunboats and crews to fly them in order to replace losses.”

“Yes and no,” Emily said.  “We have to game this out, but I think we may find we actually take fewer casualties over the long run.”   She hoped so, anyway.

They spent the rest of the night programming an exercise.  They caught a few hours’ sleep, gulped down a hasty breakfast and then spent eight hours playing the exercise over and over, each time making changes to give the defenders more advantages.  Finally, with only five days before departure, they staged an exercise using all of the recruits.  This would be a gunboats only exercise, starting from the time the gunboats ‘launched’ from the carriers and assaulted the ‘Dominion’ destroyers and cruisers defending the shipyard.

It began with mix-ups and confusion.

So many gunboats launched within such a short time that squadrons and teams became intermingled and pilots mistakenly followed the wrong leaders.  Emily halted the exercise, made everyone watch the replay and showed them what they did wrong.  After half an hour’s discussion on the best way to fix it, she restarted the exercise at the launch point.  This time it was better.  Not perfect, but better.  Some squadrons still got mixed up, but Mildred quickly corrected their mistakes and guided them to the right leaders.

Reconnaissance drones reported three enemy cruisers and six destroyers in an arc between the heavy gunboat task force and the enemy shipyard.  In the past, Emily would have bunched her fifteen squadrons together to maximize the punch of their missile volley, but now she spread them out horizontally and vertically.  Four squadrons – forty gunboats – went high over the plane of attack to come in on top of the enemy, and four went low.   The remaining seven split left and right.  The enemy ships began to maneuver to defend the shipyard from all sides as the gunboats scattered in all directions, greatly thinning out the defensive fire.

“Have your ships separate and fly random patterns, but all your boats are to aim at the same spot on your target,” Emily told the commanders.  “Go for something critical, if you can.  We’re trying to make a hole in the defensive screen that we can exploit and slip inside to get at the shipyard.”

The space around the shipyard filled with jammers, decoys, chaff and the torn and shattered remnants of ships of all kinds.  Three gunboats fell, then four, then two more.  One of the Dominion destroyers lost an engine, but somehow managed to continue defending its sector.  The three Dominion cruisers filled their sectors with hundreds, then thousands, then hundreds of thousands of old fashioned Bofor shells, any one of which would have crippled or killed a gunboat.  But they never scored so much as a single hit.  Emily had no idea why.

It lasted twenty minutes, but it seemed like an eternity.

Then: “Enemy is changing position!” the Systems Officer shouted.  “One of the cruisers is sliding toward the destroyer nearest it to give them some support.  And on the right, the destroyer protecting the southern quadrant is inching back, probably trying to get inside the other cruiser’s anti-missile umbrella.”

“Zoom in the holo!” Emily ordered and leaned closer to look at it.  At first she didn’t see it, but then she could see the cruiser protecting the shipyard’s left flank creeping closer to the beleaguered destroyer toward the stern, trying to give it some support.  At the same time, the destroyer protecting the right front of the shipyard, under heavy fire from three gunboat squadrons, was inching toward the relative safety of the cruiser near the right stern quadrant of the shipyard.

Their separate actions inadvertently created a gap, exposing the southern tip of the shipyard.  Emily grinned savagely.  It wasn’t a big gap, but it would do very nicely.  Very nicely indeed.

“All commands!  New orders!  All gunboats to immediately divert to the southern edge of the shipyard and fire everything you’ve got, then break off until lasers have recharged.  Repeat, fire everything you’ve got on the southern part of the shipyard, then break off!  Execute now!”

One hundred and forty one gunboats abruptly broke off contact with the enemy ship nearest them and accelerated madly south, angling in on the shipyard.  Caught off guard, the defenders hesitated, then desperately tried to sort through the jammers, decoys and chaff to get a new lock on the gunboats, but it was too late.  Within seconds the gunboats sped to the southern edge of the massive shipyard, dumping chaff in their wake.

And there were no enemy ships there to engage them.

The gunboats gleefully fired their lasers first to allow the quickest possible recharge, then launched their missiles as they sped over the shipyard and broke off in three different directions to reduce their own target profile.

The hull of the gigantic shipyard began to shatter first in discrete holes, and then rupture outright under the lasers.  Dozens of holes were torn open, air belching out in a stream of vapor and bodies.  (Emily blinked at the image and suppressed a shiver.  Specialist 4 Satore, she thought, was showing his ghoulish side.)  Moments later the missiles struck.  Close to one hundred missiles hit home and the southern quarter of the shipyard disintegrated into a boiling, frothing, flaming mass of destruction.  Through the speakers, Emily could hear cheers from the gunboat crews.

But the exercise wasn’t over yet and she made them follow through.  One of the defending destroyers was killed and the other Dominion defenders withdrew behind a firestorm of anti-missile fire.  The gunboats dispersed to make themselves smaller targets, but several were lost anyway.  Then the surviving gunboats, triumphant and utterly exhausted, staggered back to their carriers and made their simulated landings. Two more gunboats botched their landings and ‘crashed.’  The AI judged both crews dead. In a real battle, Emily knew, the ground crews would be rearming the surviving gunboats and fresh pilots – or the utterly tired pilots – would be taking the little boats out again, but not in this exercise.

She turned to Grant Skiffington and the other commanders.  “It’s late and it has been a long day.  Make sure your crews get to celebrate tonight, they’ve earned it.  Tomorrow you and I will debrief.  I want your final recommendations for any changes in assignment.  We’ll only get in a few more exercises and we need to lock in all assignments now.  After that, I want you to do a detailed debrief with your squadrons.   Use the commander’s view and the cockpit view, whatever you need.  Today we proved we can win against large conventional forces, but now we have to hone that skill and take it up to the next level.”

Then Emily smiled that bright, intense smile that caught people by surprise.  “It sure was fun to kick some butt for a change, wasn’t it?  Let’s keep doing it.”

* * * *

Two thousand miles away, in the Admiral’s Day Room on the H.M.S. Lionheart, Admiral Alyce Douthat watched the replay of the entire exercise for the third time.  When it finished, she turned off the holo and turned to her visitors.  “Well, what do you think?”  She nodded at Captain Eder.  “What do you think, Jim, could you have defended against Tuttle’s tactics and saved the shipyard?”

Eder stroked his chin. “I don’t know,” he said thoughtfully.  “Her attack was nothing like the carrier-based attack by the Ducks against us on the way to Refuge.  They came straight in at us, bunched up, and we took them out with zone weapons.  This-” he shrugged elaborately –“this was like getting caught in a rainstorm.  She was all around them and as soon as a gap appeared in their defense, she exploited it pretty damn ruthlessly.”

“What would you do now to defend against that sort of attack?” Douthat pressed.

Eder looked down the table at Queen Anne, Sir Henry and Fleet Surgeon Wilkinson.  On a chair in the corner behind Queen Anne, sat Hiram Brill, making notes on a tablet.  “Well,” said Eder, “if we are talking about stationary targets like a shipyard, I would deploy a dense minefield and forts.  The gunboats are nimble, but they’d have a tough time getting through a properly layered defense.”

“And in a battle of movement, gunboats against destroyers, cruisers and battleships?” Douthat prodded.

Eder thought for a moment – the Victorian Fleet liked its captains to think before they acted – then nodded.  “I would seriously beef up our ships’ short to medium range defenses, and I would take some of the lighter ships – destroyers and frigates – and make them dedicated anti-gunboat platforms.  Defensive only.  Essentially turn them into hedgehogs on steroids.  Use those to defend the cruisers and the battleships and of course the carriers, then let the big guys carry the primary offensive burden.”

“But we don’t have the time to build all those ships, nor the resources, do we?” Queen Anne asked softly.

Admiral Douthat grimaced.  “No, but if we spring this trap properly, the Dominions won’t have time, either.  I agree with Captain Eder that there is a good tactical response that will make the gunboats less effective, but I think we can do a lot of damage before the Ducks can implement it.”

“But they have hedgehogs,” Sir Henry countered sharply.

“But not enough, Sir Henry.  Not enough.”  Douthat studied them.   “There is one piece of intelligence you should know:  We’ve been sending recon drones through the Refuge/Victoria wormhole.  One of the few that made it back to report shows the Duck reinforcements are starting to trickle in.  Sensor scans by the drones picked up six new ships.  During that time we, of course, have been building gunboats, but if we had stuck to building destroyers and cruisers, the most we could have built would have been two destroyers or one cruiser.”

For a moment the room was grimly silent as everyone digested that news, then Queen Anne put the palms of her hands on the table.  “Okay, then.  Admiral Douthat, what is your proposal?”

Admiral Douthat told them.  And when she was finished, they all stared at her for a long minute.  The Queen looked thoughtful, Sir Henry thunderous.

“This is nonsense!” he growled.  “You are rolling the dice on an untried force moving halfway around known Human Space, fighting at least two battles before the one that really counts.  And the timing and coordination!  Gods of Our Mothers!”  He threw up his hands.  “How do you propose to coordinate this between two task forces that won’t be able to communicate with each other?  It preposterous!”

Alyce Douthat nodded.  “You’ve raised valid points, Sir Henry.  First, yes the gunboats are untried, but I have to tell you that I have been astonished at the progress they’ve made so far.  And you just saw the last exercise.  Whatever problems Tuttle was having before, she seems to have got them licked.  As to the coordination, it will be difficult, but I think we have an approach to it that may solve that problem.”

Sir Henry looked unconvinced.  “This Tuttle woman, wasn’t she the one who almost had a crack-up after we got here?  Are you sure she can handle the stress of all this?  You have to admit, Admiral, a lot of this is going to be figured out on the fly.”

Admiral Douthat nodded again.  “I think Fleet Surgeon Wilkinson can speak best to this.  Martha?”

Rear Admiral Wilkinson stood up.  She was a tall woman and she liked to use her height to her advantage whenever she could.  Besides, her derriere was asleep from sitting so long.  “Sir Henry, I have been monitoring Commander Tuttle and every other ship captain since we arrived at Refuge.  As you know, on my recommendation Admiral Douthat relieved a number of ship captains from active duties because I judged them to be no longer fit.  Commander Tuttle was not one of those captains.  I have reviewed her status as recently as ten days ago and she is fit for duty.  In fact, she seems to be thriving.”  She sat down.

“I might add,” Douthat said, “that I gave Commander Tuttle the task of building the gunboat task force because I felt she was one of the very few officers creative enough to figure out how to do it.  I confess that I’m not sure I would have been able to do it, and certainly not within the time restraints I placed on her.”

Sir Henry glowered at them for a long moment, then abruptly turned all the way around in his chair to face Hiram Brill.  “What about you, Commander Brill?  As I recall, you know Tuttle well.  Is she up to this?”

If Brill was taken aback by either the question or its ferociousness, he gave no sign.  “Absolutely.  I’ve known her since training camp.  She is very tough, Sir Henry, very tough.  I remind you she was ready to ram the Dominion battleship Vengeance in order to save the Atlas and Queen Anne.  She is a very capable tactician and can be utterly ruthless if the situation calls for it.  I cannot promise you that she will succeed with Admiral Douthat’s plan, but I will tell you I cannot think of any other officer I would put in charge.  And I’ll tell you something else, something you won’t find just by looking at a brain scan or reading her record.  If you give Commander Tuttle a task that absolutely must be accomplished, she won’t stop until she has finished it.  Emily Tuttle is, simply, a warrior.  She won’t stop unless they kill her.”

Sir Henry looked unconvinced, but before he could say anything more, Queen Anne spoke up.  “I think all of this is beside the point.  Am I right, Admiral?”

“Yes, Your Majesty, you are.”

Queen Anne sighed, and for a moment looked much older than her twenty years.  “If I understand the situation, the fact is that we cannot simply stay here and defend ourselves in Refuge, is that correct?”

“Majesty, we have a temporary stalemate, but the Dominions have access to far more resources than we do and can build many more capital ships than we can.  We need to go on the offensive soon, very soon, or the balance of power will tip to the Dominion and they will have enough ships to break through the wormhole and defeat us.”

Queen Anne gestured to the holo on which the gunboat exercise had been played.  “And this is your best plan?” she asked simply.

“Yes, Majesty.  I don’t have any viable alternatives.”

“Majesty!” Sir Henry protested.  “We can fortify the wormhole!  We need time to-“

Queen Anne smiled at her advisor.  The smile was both affectionate and melancholy.

“Sir Henry, you tutored me well over the years, and one of your lessons was this:  Sometimes Fate forces us to be bold.”  The Queen stood and looked to Admiral Douthat.  “So be it.  The future of Victoria is once again in your able hands, Admiral.” She turned and left.

Martha Wilkinson leaned over and whispered,  “Want that second glass of wine now, dearie?”

Chapter 27

On Board the Laughing Owl,

Near the Dominion Shipyard, Siegestor

“Captain!  You need to see this,” the Laughing Owl’s Drone Chief called.  Sadia Zahiri quickly stepped behind his chair and looked at the holo display.  There, in blinking blue, were the locations of four reconnaissance drones, in rough formation around a large red circle that was the Dominion shipyard.  Irregular shapes, hundreds of them, marked the asteroids, and as she watched they were constantly moving, sometimes blocking her view of the recon drones and even the enemy shipyard.  It took her a moment to sort out all the clutter, then she focused on the twenty or so red triangles representing the Dominion combat patrols.  Some were designated as destroyers, some cruisers, and some of unknown type.

“They must have gotten whiff of one of the drones, skipper,” Drone Chief Behrman said apologetically.  He highlighted five of the Dominion ships.  “See here?  These ships suddenly turned from their normal patrol routes and are hightailing it to the edge of the asteroid field.”

“Towards us, in other words,” Zahiri said.

“Yes, Ma’am,” Behrman agreed glumly.

“But they can’t know where we are, not exactly.”

“No, Ma’am, but if they caught a glimpse of one of the drones, they know we are here and now they’ll come to beat the bushes.”

Zahiri rocked back on her heels, thinking furiously.  Time to leave?  Just turn and run for it?  She had enough acceleration so that the Dominions would never catch her.  She’d prefer to have more data on Siegestor, but not if it meant-

“New sensor reading!” Fatima Binissa shouted from her station.  “Three destroyers coming in from north, west and south!  Range, fifteen thousand miles for Bogie One, eighteen for Bogie Two and the same for Bogie Three.  Coming in slowly.  T-band search sensors; they’re pinging to beat the band, Captain.  Several smaller objects as well; classify as recon drones, none actively pinging, though for the life of me I can’t understand why.”  Binissa looked up, her face pale.  “They definitely know we’re here, skipper.”

Captain Zahiri’s eyes narrowed.  This was a fine kettle of fish.  A moment ago she was getting ready to leave, now she was trapped.  Five enemy ships were coming at them from the east, out of the asteroid field, and now three destroyers were cutting off her escape in the other directions.  She peered closer at the holo display.  Hmmm, there didn’t appear to be anything above or below them.  It was very tempting to go up or down and put some distance between the Laughing Owl and that gaggle of ships out there.

Very tempting.

She sucked in air as an ugly thought flashed into her mind.  Were the Ducks that clever?  Was she being herded into a kill sack?

“Full stealth!  Bennie, I want a decoy drone ready on my command.  Fatima, use the whisker laser to switch all of our stationary sensor platforms to ‘constant update,’ but confirm they are all on whisker laser settings.  I don’t want any stray signals giving us away.

“Pilot!  I want you to nudge us slowly, slowly towards the asteroid field.  Stay at all times within stealth power restrictions, understand?  We need to get into the asteroid field and let it hide us, but if the Ducks get a fix on us, I’m going to call for full power.  If I do that, Forrest, then point us at the first empty spot you can see and go like hell.”

Pilot Forrest Janson the youngest member on board the Laughing Owl, nodded once, never taking his eyes off his control panel as he checked his settings.  Zahiri had not been sure of him at first, never confident that she really had his attention because he never looked at her when she spoke.  This concerned her and annoyed her in equal measure, but she gradually realized that he really did listen to everything she said, and was always thinking of the next thing he had to do.  And what’s more, she eventually recognized that he had great situational awareness, an absolute prerequisite for a pilot.  While he was flying, he was constantly flicking from large scale to small scale on the holo display, whilst listening in on the reports from Sensors and the Drone Chief.

And, he was nerveless.  His physiological reaction to immense situational stress was almost non-existent.  He didn’t sweat.  He didn’t fumble.  He didn’t shout or give any other external signs of distress.  Zahiri sometimes wondered if he really understood the gravity of what was going on, but slowly accepted the notion that he was one of the lucky few who was born with ice water for blood and thanked the Gods that he was assigned to her ship.

“Humor me, Forrest, tell me you really understand what I need you to do,” she said, letting her own nervousness get the better of her.

Janson lifted his head briefly, looked at her, said, “Yes, Captain, I understand,” and turned back to his station.  Zahiri sighed and shook her head.  Fatima Binissa flashed a smile at her, sharing the humor of the moment, such as it was.

Then Zahiri stepped beside Dennie Hod, the Communications Officer and her second in command.  She lowered her voice.  “Dennie, update the Omega drones.  Make sure they’ve all got the coordinates of the Duck shipyard.”  The Omega drones would launch automatically if the ship was destroyed.  They would steer a course for Victorian space and would look for any Victorian ship or facility, then start broadcasting the fate of the Laughing Owl and whatever message had been downloaded into it.  Captain Sadia Zahiri wasn’t giving up, but nor was she a fool.  This was going to be very close.

“Everyone strap in!” she ordered.  If they went to full acceleration, anyone caught out of their acceleration couch would be knocked to the floor and almost certainly injured.  Then she strapped herself in, thinking about her next moves.  She smiled wryly.  This was going to be very interesting.

On the holo display, the five Dominion ships inside the asteroid field continued to pick their way slowly to the edge, with an emphasis on ‘slowly.’ That was fine by her.  The three destroyers, Bogies One, Two and Three, continued to come towards the Laughing Owl, but slightly off-center, making her realize that while they thought she was here, they didn’t yet know exactly where she was.  They were going to close their search pattern about two thousand miles away her, to her “south” as she crept quietly toward the relative safety of the asteroid field.

“Forrest, how much longer to the asteroid field?” she asked.

Fatima Binissa snorted in amusement.  “Are we there yet, Daddy?” she whispered loudly, causing a ripple of laughter through the cabin.

“Ninety-five minutes at present course and speed, Captain,” Janson replied casually.  The Laughing Owl was almost a hole in the space around it, giving off as few energy emissions as possible as it moved with glacial slowness towards the welcoming noise and clutter of the asteroid field.  Once inside they could move more freely, and the deeper into the field they went the more their movements would be lost in the clutter.

“Fatima, project where the Duck ships will be in ninety minutes.”   Binissa punched keys on tablet and an image projected onto the holo, showing the eight Dominion ships would create a box formation, with the Laughing Owl just inside its northeastern corner.  There, stealth or no, the Dominions would have her on their active sensors and it would be over.  The Laughing Owl’s end would be short, brutal and very, very final.

Zahiri scowled.  If she moved north, it would increase the time it took them to reach the asteroid field.  Or, if she couldn’t change their course, perhaps she could change the search pattern of the Ducks.  But before she could say anything, Fatima Binissa called out in alarm.

“New contacts!  Bogie Four is coming in from above us, angling slightly toward the west. Fifteen thousand miles.  It had been quiet but just fired off active sensors.  Bogie Five is coming up below us, also using active sensors.  Bogie Five is on the southern edge of the box and angling northward. Nineteen thousand miles.  Bogies Four and Five are both moving slowly.”

Zahiri nodded, her earlier suspicions confirmed.  If she had gone up or down she would have blundered right into them.  “Mildred!” she called to the ship’s AI.  “Project on the holo display the estimated effective area covered by the Dominion ships’ sensors.”

“Of course, dear,” the computer replied.  In a moment most of the holo was tinged with pink.  The Laughing Owl sat in the middle of the clear area, but the pink zone was slowly contracting around it.

“Mildred, project estimated time of detection assuming no course changes by any ship,” Zahiri ordered.

“Fifty-two minutes,” Mildred replied calmly.

“Okay, then,” she said crisply.  “Here’s what we are going to do.  “Drone Chief, I want a decoy launched but not ignited.  I want it to ignite in -“ she peered at the holo display – “thirty minutes.  Configure it to look exactly like Laughing Owl and send it on a curve south and down at full acceleration.  Give it forty-five seconds of flight, then cut the power and let it go stealthy.  Let’s take the Ducks on a goose chase.  Have four more decoys ready to fire on command, all configured to look like Laughing Owl.”  And hope to God we never need them.

The minutes dragged by. The image of the Laughing Owl slowly moved to the right hand side of the screen, closer and closer to welcoming embrace of the asteroid field, while at the same time the pink-stained detection area remorselessly closed in. Pilot Janson continuously enlarged the image on the holo, turning it in three dimensions to see where he still had room to maneuver.  Then, at long last, the thirty minute mark was reached.  Captain Zahiri zoomed out to show a larger part of the search pattern used by the Dominions.  And there, displayed like a flaming arrow against a nighttime sky, was their decoy, madly accelerating south and downward, leaving behind a long trail of energy emissions a blind man could see.

Captain Sadia Zahiri held her breath and leaned toward the holo display, watching intently.  Would they take the bait?

Ten seconds later she had her answer.

“They’re launching something!” Binissa cried, her voice rising as she spoke.  “Looks like missiles!  I have five, no, ten missiles!

“Aimed at us?” Zahiri asked sharply.

Binissa shook her head.  “No, no, aimed into the middle of their search pattern.  They are separated, on an arc.  I can’t tell-“

But Zahiri knew what it was. The Ducks, damn them all to hell, smelled a trick and were firing missiles into the search area in an effort to either kill her or make her run.  But she could take advantage of that…maybe.

“Brace for impact!  Everyone brace!  Pilot, at the first explosion, speed up and get us-“

“I’m on it,” Janson replied matter-of-factly.

Then the first of the antimatter warheads exploded, followed in quick succession by nine more.  Space roiled.  The resulting energy wave blasted the Laughing Owl like a hurricane, tumbling it end-over-end.  All of the sensor readings instantly turned to white snow and anything not tied down – books, tablets, coffee mugs, a number of family photographs and one hapless engineer who had decided it was more important for him to be standing in front of his instruments than it was to strap in –ricocheted  off bulkheads and decks.  Zahiri felt her head smash against the back of the acceleration chair once, twice and then everything grew far away and quiet.

Ben-Ami Behrman watched incredulously as a computer tablet leapt off the console, flew across the room and bludgeoned him in the face.  Just before he lost consciousness, his last thought was, What are of the odds of that?

Fatima Binissa was strapped in tight, except for her left arm.  When the ship spun like a top her arm flew out and cracked hard against the console support.  Her left wrist splintered in a bursting crescendo of agony.

Dennie Hod, the Communications Officer, hadn’t tightened the straps as tightly as he’d thought.  He felt his entire body lift off the acceleration couch, then smash down again, then lift and smash, lift and smash.  When it was over, he knew something inside him was broken and he fervently hoped he would live long enough to find out what it was.

Pilot Forrest Janson tried to relax as he was thrown left and right, up and down against his restraints.  On the holo display, he could see the symbol of the Laughing Owl blinking rapidly in orange, which meant some critical damage had been sustained.

Tell me about it, he thought, and then nodded to himself.  This was just like the training exercises he’d undergone dozens of times in flight school.  The instructors liked nothing better than to take a new pilot recruit, strap him in the simulator, then try very, very hard to ruin his day.  Their favorite ploy was to put the ship into a tumbling, cork-screwing spin, usually heading for a planet, or a nearby star, or sometimes into a Victorian space station.  Most pilot recruits were so busy throwing up they never realized that they had crashed.  “Recruit, you forgot your job!” the instructors would scream at him, still strapped in and covered with slime.  “Recruit, what is your job?  What is your job?”

His job was to stabilize the ship before they went for a Long Walk, or showed up on the Dominion sensors.  He took a deep breath.  First things first.

“Mildred!  State your condition,” he ordered loudly.

“I am functioning within specifications, Pilot Janson,” the AI answered sweetly.  “Thank you for your inquiry. The ship, however, is presently out of control and has suffered damage to a number of systems, including hydroponics, waste removal and recycling-“

“Stop!”  Janson heard a moan and looked to see Fatima Binissa clutching her wrist to her chest in pain.  She would have to wait.

“Mildred, do you have access to piloting controls.”

“Yes, Pilot Janson.”

“Stabilize the ship and use thrusters to maintain a course for this spot.”  He marked a spot just inside the asteroid field.  “Maintain all stealth parameters.”

“It would be my pleasure,” said Mildred.

And then, using microscopically deft adjustments to thrusters, main engines and even the Dark Matter Brake, Mildred brought the tumbling craft into stable flight within a matter of thirty seconds.  Janson nodded.  He could have done it – heck, he had done it dozens of times, but he would have used a lot more of the thrusters to finally settle the ship down.  Mildred could perform the same maneuver faster and with an energy emission footprint a scant fraction of what it otherwise would have been.

Satisfied, Janson turned his attention to the holo display.  Now they were running along the edge of the pink area, signifying the normal detection zone of the Duck sensors.  “Mildred, adjust holo display to show projected sensor detection zone of the Dominion ships taking into account the antimatter explosions.”

“Yes, dear.”  The pink line suddenly pulled back, leaving the Laughing Owl once again in the clear.

“Mildred, adjust detection zone as needed to reflect Duck sensors coming back on-line following the antimatter explosions.”  It wouldn’t be good to get caught napping when the Duck sensors reset.  Then, with a small inward smile of satisfaction, Lieutenant Forrest Janson took over flight controls from the AI and steered his ship toward the relative safety of the asteroid field.  His smile broadened.  He was having fun.

* * * *

Captain Zahiri woke up, sort of.

“Bugger me!” she groaned.  Something large and snarly was inside her head, doing its best to gnaw its way out.  She looked around.

Her first impression:  The control room of the Laughing Owl was a mess.  The deck was covered with tablets, coffee cups, paper, specks of blood and reeking pools of vomit.

Her second impression:  The ship wasn’t moving and had lost all power.

Her third impression was that her second impression made no sense at all.

“Captain?  Are you okay?”

She turned her head and the room spun in a most disquieting manner; her stomach rolled and spots flashed before her eyes.

“Captain?”  The voice was more urgent now, more insistent.  Zahiri fumbled with her seat controls to make the chair sit more upright.  Why the hell wouldn’t the damn room stop moving around?

“Mildred!” the voice commanded.  She dimly recognized the voice.  It sounded like Forrest Janson, her pilot.  Very odd, though, the usually fearless Janson sounded scared.

“Mildred, perform vitals scan of Captain Zahiri and give diagnosis!”

The medical scanners embedded in the command chair came to life, flashing and beeping.  Forty five seconds later, the ship’s AI said:  “Likelihood of concussion: 90%.  Degree of concussion: moderate.  No internal bleeding.  Mild shock.  Pulse is steady but fast.  Cognition level: impaired.”

“Prognosis?” Janson asked?

“Captain Zahiri should fully recover within five days, but requires rest and medication to treat shock.  Some patients in this condition respond well to music thera-“

“Stop!  Mildred, are you capable of providing the necessary medications to Captain Zahiri?”  Janson didn’t want to admit it, but the idea of giving someone an injection made him queasy.

“Yes, as a Mildred series, Version 4, I am authorized to perform as an Advance Practical Registered Nurse under the medical provider licensure laws and regulations of the following countries: Victoria, Refuge, Cape Breton, Darwin-“

“Stop!”  Janson took a deep breath, fantasizing for a deeply satisfying moment of taking his blaster and shooting Mildred until she was a smoking ruin.   “Mildred, administer the appropriate medications to Captain Zahiri.”

“Of course, dear.”

A panel slide open on the side of the Captain’s command chair and a small nozzle extended outward, then bent toward Zahiri.  When it touched her neck, there was the small “hiss” of a spray injection, then the nozzle retracted.  Within five minutes some color returned to Captain Zahiri’s face and within ten minutes she began to feel vaguely human again.

“What’s the condition of the ship?” she asked.

“Two engines are off-line, but Avi is working on them.  Until we get them fixed, though, our acceleration stinks.  Hydroponics and recycling are wrecked.  Rest of the ship is sound, all systems more or less within normal range.  On top of that, when the bombs went off, anything that wasn’t secured went flying.  Ship needs a really good cleaning”

Zahiri grimaced.  Two engines off line meant they couldn’t run away if they got caught.  They could creep with one engine, but they couldn’t sprint.  The hydroponics and recycling would be a problem, but not for a week or so.  It didn’t matter, she didn’t think they would make it a week.

“Status of crew?”

Janson shook his head.  “One dead.  Chief Engineer Branson broke his neck.  He hadn’t strapped in and was thrown against a bulkhead.”

Zahiri sucked in her breath.  That was bad, very bad.  She depended on the Chief Engineer and Avi, the Assistant Engineer, was still pretty green.  “What about the others?”

Janson held out a hand and wiggled it back and forth.  “Mr. Hod is in the med tank with a ruptured spleen.  He should be okay in about eight hours.  Mr. Behrman has a broken nose and a cracked cheekbone and his right eye is swollen closed.  Mildred says no damage to the eye, but he’s pretty messed up and not functioning well.  Mildred is treating him for his headache, but he should probably go into the med tank when it’s free.  Ms. Binissa has a compound fracture of the wrist. She is on an antibiotic IV drip to keep it from getting infected, but she should go into the med tank as soon as Mr. Hod comes out.  Mildred is keeping her sedated because of pain.”

Zahiri’s own headache wasn’t doing too good, either, but she held the pain at bay.  She was missing something.  “What about Dafna?”

“Dafna is fine.  Most of the rest got banged up but are okay.”

“Dafna?” Zahiri called.  “Do you still have contact with your recon drones?  Still getting a data feed?”

Dafna Simon checked her holo display and her three computer screens.  “Good feeds on all four drones.”  Her voice squeaked a little and her freckles stood out against pale skin.

Zahiri studied her for a moment, then nodded slowly.  “Okay, Dafna, do you have another drone you can launch and run in front of us, scouting out to maybe five hundred miles?”

Simon checked the ready status of her drone magazine.  There were four more queued up and ready to go.  “I can give you up to four before we have to load more drones.”

Zahiri nodded again and was rewarded with a sharp, stabbing sensation.  Her headache was down to level just below the pain of child birth. “Mildred!  Give me something more for this pain,” she ordered.  A moment later a spray jet hissed against her neck and a moment after that the pain subsided.  Not all of it, but enough so she could think.

“Avi, how long to get the engines on line?” she asked.

Avi Lani, the Assistant Engineer, shrugged.  “Oh, geez, Captain, I don’t know.  The engines seem fine, but I think the electronics are fried.  I have to do a complete diagnostic to isolate the problem, then once I’ve got that, pull the bad connectors and replace them.”

“How long, Avi?  How long?”

The engineer pursed his lips together. “Anywhere from two to five days.”

“Get started,” Captain Zahiri said.  “We need options, and without those engines, we don’t have very many.”

She turned back to Janson and Simon.  “Dafna, you are going to have to run Fatima’s desk on the sensors until she can come back. I need to know if there is any indication the Ducks know we’re here, or even that they know we’re alive, for that matter.”

Dafna, still pale but determined, spent several minutes working through the sensor logs for the last hour, paying particular attention to when the decoy launched and the antimatter missiles that the Ducks fired in reply.  “Captain, as far as I can see, the Ducks did not have us on active sensors when they launched the antimatter missiles.  If I had to guess, and that’s all this is, I would guess that when our decoy took off, they saturated the area near its launch point with missiles in case it was a decoy and not really the Laughing Owl.  The sensors couldn’t catch it because of the interference from the detonations, but I’d bet that the Ducks also tried to shoot down the decoy.  The sensors are just coming back on line now.  They’ve got three ships doing a search grid through this area.  No sign of the fourth boat; it might have gone after the decoy.”

“Give me your best guess,” Zahiri said.

Dafna looked at her steadily.  “I don’t think they know we are here, Captain.  I think they figure anything in the area of the missile detonations is dead or disabled, and the decoy either got away clean or has been destroyed.  Either way, I think they are looking for debris, not a live ship.”

Zahiri nodded, wincing slightly.  It made sense.  If the Laughing Owl still had three engines, she would be tempted to make a run for it.  If wishes were horses, beggars would ride, she reminded herself.

“Okay, people, let’s find a place to hide, but let’s do it very, very quietly.”

Two long hours later they crept into the asteroid field.  They all breathed a deep sigh of relief, then spent the next hour creeping into it deeper under low power.

But the sense of relief didn’t last long.

“Oh, crap!” Dafna suddenly blurted.  “Trouble, Captain!  Recon drones show half a dozen ships, frigate size and smaller.  Looks like they are scouting each of the asteroids, trying to see if we’re hiding in the shadows.”

Zahiri rubbed the grit from her eyes, trying to keep the exhaustion at bay.  She wished Dennie Hod was out of the med tank so she could bounce ideas off him.  She wished she had three good engines under her instead of just one.  She wished she had left for home a day earlier.  She wished wishes were horses; her crew was hungry and a little horse meat wouldn’t hurt.

“Dafna, keep your eyes on those scouts.  I want to know the minute any of them turn towards us.  In the meantime, keep the ship at full stealth.  Forrest, put up the navigation holo.  I need to know just where the heck we are.”

The holo display changed and expanded.  The Laughing Owl was presented as a blue triangle in the middle of the display.  All around them were large, misshapen forms depicting the asteroids, some as small as the Laughing Owl, some enormous.  The asteroids moved ponderously from right to left.

“First,” she ordered, “turn us ninety degrees left so that we are moving in the same direction as the asteroid belt’s revolution.  We stick out like a sore thumb moving across the field this way.”

“Not as bad as you might think, Captain,” Janson said.  “Some of the asteroids on the outer edge got pushed around when the Duck missiles exploded.  They got kicked out of their regular orbit and are bouncing around, hitting other rocks and pushing them out of their normal pattern as well.  It looks like very large dominoes getting knocked over.”

Zahiri nodded.  That helped a bit.

They crept deeper into the asteroid belt, always trying to keep as many of the ponderously turning asteroids between them and the Dominion scouts as possible.  Some of the crew who were not busy with urgent duties began to clean up, starting with the bridge.  After a time Dennie Hod came out of the med tank, but immediately went to his bunk and would not be ready for duty for a few more hours.  Fatima Binissa took his place in the tank.  Another crewman brought sandwiches and coffee, then handed each of the bridge crew a stimulant tablet.  Captain Zahiri eyed the pill with distaste.  She desperately wanted to go to sleep.  Sighing, she popped it into her mouth and washed it down with warm water.  A few minutes later she felt jittery and on edge, her nerves taut as the stimulant took hold.  It felt like someone rubbing sandpaper on her psyche.

And always, she kept her eyes on the pink shading of the hologram that seemed to be pursuing them as they fled.

Two things happened almost together.

“Captain!”  It was Dafna at the sensor display.  “In just a minute we are going to come to an open area in the asteroid field.  It’s the shipyard, Siegestor.  And Captain, now there are Duck scouts working the field in front of us and coming our way.  I’m only catching glimpses of them, but Mildred estimates less than an hour until we are within the detection zone.”

Bugger me! Zahiri thought savagely.  “Dafna, what’s the position of the Duck scouts working behind us?”

“Still there.  Not overtaking us, but they will if we stop.”

So they couldn’t stop and try to hide while the scouts worked past them.  They had to go up or down.  Down would take them out of the asteroid field within an hour or two, and once out they would be exposed and more vulnerable.  Up would take them either through the asteroid field…or right to the Dominion shipyard.

A thought niggled at her.

Even as she considered it, she was appalled.

Bugger me!  “Dafna,” she said very calmly, “I want a close-up visual of the bottom of the shipyard.  Show me all of it and we’ll narrow it down from there.”

Dafna looked at her questioningly, but her hands danced over the controls as she guided the nearest drone into position and activated its cameras.  What it showed surprised them all.

The bottom of Siegestor looked like a junk yard.  It was dirty and scarred, with deep oil-stained crevices and shadows.  What few lights had been in place were long since broken.  Pieces of debris clung to the hull everywhere, some sticking out at odd angles, others slowly turning in place, staying in the same position relative to the shipyard as it moved through space.  The accumulation of debris and other junk grew worse toward the stern end, with huge pieces of hull plating hanging loosely and waving back and forth as if blowing in the wind.

“What the hell?” Janson muttered.

Avi Lani left his engineering station for a moment to look at the screen at Dafna’s desk.  He frowned in concentration for a moment, then straightened up and laughed.  “Their gravity generator isn’t properly calibrated,” he said, chuckling.  “The damn thing is projecting a gravity field outside of the ship.  When they throw out some piece of scrap or whatnot, some of it is getting snared by this gravity field along the bottom of the hull.  The junk gets pulled into the hull.  The flat pieces will just lie against the hull, but anything else will keep bouncing and wiggling around.  And this-“ he jabbed a finger at the large pieces of hull plating that waved back and forth – “these are pieces of scrap hull plating that can’t lay flat against the hull for some reason and the movement of the ship is enough to make them oscillate back and forth.  Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Zahiri pursed her lips. Time to embrace insanity. “Mildred, I want you to superimpose the hull outline of the Laughing Owl on the picture of the bottom of the shipyard and mark for me all of the places where the Laughing Owl would fit.”  She could sense Simon and Forrest looking at her as if she was crazy, and perhaps they were not far off.

An outline of the Laughing Owl appeared and in five seconds flashed and danced over the bottom of Siegestor, then eight outlines settled into place and flashed slowly.  Zahiri leaned forward and studied them closely.  “Mr. Janson,” she said, pointing.  “That one, I think.  Take us in slowly, flip us over and set us down on the hull right there.”  She sat back and crossed her legs, nausea souring her mouth while she mustered up a look of unconcerned confidence.

The fearless Forrest Janson turned to look at her.  “Ma’am?” he asked weakly.

Zahiri nodded at him.  “It’s okay, Forrest, you were born for this.  Just do it.”

Janson wiped his forehead, then wiped his hands on his shirt and took the controls.  The Laughing Owl slid stealthily towards its new home.

Chapter 28

On Board Space Station Atlas

When he turned the corner to where his quarters were, Hiram Brill was startled to see two of Queen Anne’s body guards standing in front of his door.  They looked at him, expressionless as usual.

“John, Betty,” he said slowly.  “Is she inside?”

Betty nodded, gesturing towards his door with her chin.  “She and the Admiral have been waiting for you.  Captain Eder, too.”

Hiram’s eyebrows slowly rose.  Queens and high admirals did not go to the private quarters of mere Commanders; they summoned the mere Commanders to come to them.

“Can you give me a hint?” he asked the Queen’s guards.  They said nothing.

“Then I best go in and greet my guests,” he said and slipped by them.  When he entered, Queen Anne and Admiral Douthat were sitting at his small kitchen table and Captain Eder of the Lionheart was sitting on the sofa.

Captain Eder waved laconically, Queen Anne smiled warmly and Admiral Douthat scowled darkly.

“Well,” said Hiram, “I confess that I don’t know whether to salute, offer you a drink or ask what’s for dinner.”

Captain Eder chuckled.  Admiral Douthat’s scowl deepened.  “Don’t be a smartass, Brill.”

“No Ma’am,” Hiram said.

“We want to tell you about changes we’ve made to the raid on Siegestor,” Douthat said.  She saw the look on his face and waived a hand.  “Relax, Brill, we are not cancelling it.  Quite the opposite.  You heard the Abbot says that once we go into Dominion space, we’ll have to come out through either the Dominion/Victoria wormhole or a one-way wormhole into Gilead?”

Hiram nodded, his mind still churning.  Would the changes jeopardize his attempt to free Cookie from the Dominion prison ship, Tartarus?

“Well, after you take out the big shipyard, the task force, under the command of Captain Eder, is going to return to Victoria using any wormhole he can.  Once in Victorian space the task force will make best speed for the Victoria/Refuge wormhole, where you will attack the Dominion forces there at the same time we launch an attack through the wormhole from the Refuge side.  We’ll catch the Ducks between us.  Do you understand?”

“Yes, Admiral,” he said, trying not to stammer.  His mind grappled with the logistical and coordination efforts this would require.

“Good, this of course means some slight changes in tactics and the need to assign the task force additional resources.  Some of those resources will be a dozen of the new transporter Kraits we copied from the Tilleke.”

Hiram pursed his lips, nodding to himself.  Douthat eyed him levelly.

“So imagine my surprise,” Douthat continued coldly, “when I discovered that you had already arranged for the two destroyers and the cruiser that have been outfitted with transporters to be assigned to the task force without my knowledge, to say nothing of the five hundred Refuge soldiers to be taken along as well.  And imagine my further surprise when I had a little chat with Colonel Tamari of Long Range Reconnaissance and learned that after you take out the shipyard, you intend to assault the Dominion Ship Tartarus, which just happens to be visiting the Siegestor.”

Hiram felt the blood slowly drain from his face.  So it was all over.  All his planning, his scheming, his best shot at rescuing Cookie, all gone.

“Really, Admiral,” Queen Anne interrupted, “I have already told you that I specifically authorized Commander Brill to plan and execute this mission.”  Hiram stared at her in dumb disbelief.

“We have information,” the Queen continued, “that the Tartarus holds hundreds of political prisoners from the Dominion of Unified Citizenry and may hold prisoners taken from Cornwall itself.  We won’t get another chance like this.  I realize I should have spoken to you much earlier, but the Commander was acting under my instructions.  I might add that he’s done exactly what I asked him to do, and done it very well.”   She smiled at Admiral Douthat.

Admiral Douthat glanced sourly at Brill, then forced her face into neutrality and turned to the Queen.  “Majesty, the purpose of this visit is-“

“The purpose of this visit,” Queen Anne interrupted, an edge in her voice, “is to remind all of us that a government will maintain the loyalty and love of its people only so long as that loyalty is reciprocated.”  She pointed to the picture of Cookie on Hiram’s wall.  “Maria Sanchez and one of her fellow soldiers are on the Tartarus.  I am alive and here today because of their efforts and their sacrifice, and the idea that we would send a raid into Dominion space right where the Tartarus is located and not at least try to secure her freedom is abhorrent.  I am sure that this is as obvious to you, Admiral, as it is to me.”

Admiral Douthat bit back a sharp retort.  One does not make a sharp retort to one’s queen and retain expectations of a long, illustrious career.  “Of course, Your Majesty.  With your permission, I will attend to the necessary orders for the raid.”  She glanced at Hiram.  “You’re going, Commander Brill, but let’s be clear: Captain Eder is in charge of the task force.  He determines if the attack on the Siegestor is feasible and, after, but only after it has been destroyed, whether the rescue operation against the Tartarus will be attempted.  If it is attempted, Colonel Tamari of the Marines Long Range Reconnaissance will be in complete control of that rescue effort.  Do you understand?”

There was only one possible answer.  “Yes, Admiral.”

“Thank you, Admiral,” Queen Anne said.

After Admiral Douthat and Captain Eder left, the Queen looked at Hiram.

“Thank you, Majesty, for covering for me,” Hiram said.

“Do you think so little of me that you thought I would not support your plan to rescue Maria?” Anne asked reproachfully.

Hiram could not think of anything adequate to say.

“You are one of my advisors, Commander.  I cannot have you sneaking around planning operations of this magnitude and consequence without being informed.  Really, I expected better of you.”  She paused and Hiram thought she was stopping, but she was just warming up.  “And really, what were you thinking?  Two destroyers and a cruiser?  Five hundred troops from Refuge.  You even went so far as to involve the Refuge Prime Minister!  Have you lost your senses?  You are not the government, Mr. Brill, I am the government!  You cannot take actions of this magnitude on your own; it risks political and diplomatic disaster and I will not have it!  Is that clear to you, Commander, perfectly clear?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.  Thank you again, Your Majesty,” he said.

Queen Anne stood and Hiram scrambled to his feet.  His apartment or not, one does not sit when the Queen is standing.  At the doorway, she turned back to him.

“Do your job, Mr. Brill.  Keep your focus.  Destroy the Dominion shipyard.  And then bring her back.”  Then she was gone, leaving Hiram standing there in his kitchen, swept with equal parts relief, jubilation, determination and dread.

Chapter 29

On Board the Space Station Atlas

It was Emily’s last night on the Atlas.  The following morning at 0700 she would transfer to the Refuge Carrier Rabat, which would be her command center for the duration of the raid.  She was utterly exhausted, having spent the last weeks planning, training and debriefing with her gunboat crews all hours of the night and day.

There had been a surprising number of reassignments, with pilots being shifted to Systems or Weapons and other crew being moved around.  Emily and her command staff discovered that despite the elaborate testing, people were often better at something other than what the test scores suggested.  In two cases, personality conflicts had led to completely breaking up the gunboats’ crews, and five people had been sent home because they just weren’t making the grade.

The other surprising thing was that the natural leader on each ship was not necessarily the pilot.  Sometimes the person with the best sense of the battle – and the person the others would trust and follow – was the Systems Operator, who could see the shape of the battle from his or her sensor display and guide the pilot through the tactics needed to accomplish the mission.  Initially there was some hesitancy to make someone other than the pilot the gunboat chief; it just went against the ingrained custom and belief of both the Refuge Coast Guard and the Victorian Fleet.  But finally Emily put an end to the debate.

"Forget tradition," she said.  "Tradition got our asses kicked by the Ducks.  Better something that works than go down with our traditions intact."

The good news was that they managed to recruit and train another fifteen crews from Refuge and, unexpectedly, from the Tugboat Guild.   That brought her total fleet of heavy gunboats up to 198.   The task force would have three pocket carriers, which between them could hold all of the gunboats, plus five of the newly built Krait ships copied from the Tilleke.  In addition they would have a fourth carrier, the Meknes, which would act as the repair and refurbishment platform for all of the task force’s ships, including the tugboats.

The work pace had been frantic and the work load crushing, so she had finally given everyone liberty for the last day, but had ended up tying up loose ends herself until just before dinner.  Now she wanted a drink, a hot shower and a bed and she didn’t care much about the order they came in.  Her quarters on Atlas were at the end of a corridor behind a row of retail shops and restaurants and she could smell food cooking..  It was redolent with stir fried vegetables, peanut oil, sesame and something else she couldn’t quite identify and she impulsively changed direction to go.  She emerged from the restaurant ten minutes later with a large carry-out order and two bottles of chilled beer to wash it down.  She had never heard before about a Thai restaurant, but she promised herself she would look up the planet Thai and read all about it.

She opened a bottle of beer and had one long, satisfying drink, then spooned some of the food onto a plate.  Gods of Our Mothers, it smelled divine.  Her mouth watered.  She sat down at the table, the beer in one hand and a fork in the other.  Life is good, she thought with a chuckle.

The door chime sounded.

"Oh, bugger me!" she snarled under her breath, then to the apartment's AI, "Activate comm!"

"Activated," the AI replied.

"Who is it?" Emily growled less than graciously.

"Emily?  It's me, Raf."

Emily blinked.  Rafael, here?  She knew he was assigned to one of the carriers.  He was leading the force of Refuge Long Range Recon troops and would spearhead the attack on the Dominion prison ship holding Cookie.  When she opened the door, the first thing she saw was a grogon at eye level, staring at her with a demented grin that revealed two long, floppy fangs.

Floppy fangs?

"This is from Nouar," he said, laughing and handed her the stuffed animal.  Speechless, Emily took it and held it up to take a closer look.  It was a child's toy, an old and battered toy animal about a foot and half long, with large red eyes, worn and matted fur, a chewed ear and stitches in several places revealing that whoever had loved this stuffed animal had loved it vigorously.

"Nouar and Leila came to visit me a couple of days ago, just before we began to ship up to the Haifa.  Nouar said this is for you and that you would know what to do with it."  He gave her a look of frank appraisal.  "Nouar has had this grogon doll since she was six weeks old and loves it fiercely-" he grinned suddenly, a flash of very white teeth against his tanned face - "like everything else she does.  I have to tell you that I was surprised she was willing to part with it.  She told me to tell you that when you don't need it any more, to send it back to her unless you find someone who needs it more."

Emily hugged the little stuffed grogon to her chest.  Its fur was very soft and it smelled of...soap?  She laughed then, picturing a very young Nouar meticulously shampooing her stuffed animal.  "What's its name?"

"It is not an 'it,' it is a 'she.'  And her name is Fierce Grogon, because, as Nouar explained to us, that is what she is."

"Please thank her for me," Emily said, still hugging Fierce Grogon.

"Oh, you'll get to thank her yourself," Rafael said.  "Once we're back you have a standing invitation to dinner in Ouididi."   Emily thought for a moment about all that would happen, and all that might happen, before she and Rafael and the thousands of others could return to Refuge, and then pushed it aside.  Not tonight.  Not now.

"Have you had dinner?  I just got some Thai food and a couple of beers.  It's delicious."

Rafael brightened.  "Beats the hell out of the ship galley leftovers, but are you sure?  I know it must be crazy, trying to get everything wrapped up for tomorrow."

Emily stepped back and gestured him to enter.  "My work for the day is done.  If I don't relax tonight I'm going to be worthless tomorrow, so come in.  How are your mothers?  And Yael, tell me about Yael."

With Fierce Grogon sitting as guest of honor at the end of the table, they ate the Thai food and drank the beers, then Rafael went out and brought back four more beers and two more dinners from the same restaurant.

"What did you get?" Emily asked.  Rafael shrugged.  "I have no idea.  I told him to give me something good.  He said one is spicy and one is not, but that we will like them both."  So they opened more beer and fell into the food.  The chef had lied: both meals were spicy.  One was simply very spicy, the other was mind-blowingly hot.  Red-faced, eyes watering, they hurriedly drank more beer, then cautiously resumed eating.

"By the One," Rafael gasped, "he told me it would be memorable, but this…"

They talked about his family, about her deceased mother, laughed about some of the incidents at Camp Gettysburg and, inevitably, they talked about the coming raid on the Dominion shipyard, and the rescue attempt against the Dominion prison ship, Tartarus.

"Listen," Rafael told her, "I'm not cleared to know the details of the raid on the shipyard, but I do know we are only sending a battleship, a cruiser and two destroyers, plus of course your Heavy Gunboat Wing.  I have no idea what the defenses will be, but is this task force big enough to take out a heavily defended shipyard?"

Emily nodded.  "Thanks to Hiram, we have a little something up our sleeve, so yes; we think we can take it out.  Won't be easy, but we think it can be done.  And what about the Tartarus?  Can your men seize the ship?"

Rafael smiled rakishly.  "Oh, we'll take it, on my honor, we'll take it.  Just get us on board in one piece and we'll take it, even if we have to use those silly swords."

"Pretty bold words for a man who was treed by nothing more than a few cute little grogin," Emily teased.

Rafael snorted.  "And this from a woman who can't hit the side of a house with a sonic rifle set wide open?"

"Barn, not house."

Rafael flicked his hand dismissively.  "Either, both."

"At least I had sense enough to call in an armed shuttle," she countered.

Rafael tsked.  "And where's the honor in that?  Only a flatlander would think calling in the Fleet was better than defeating the grogin hoards singlehandedly."

"Defeating the grogin hoards?  Is that what you were doing when you bounced off that tree?  Come to think of it, they did almost die laughing!"

"The tree got in the way, was all.  Just a momentary setback."

Emily grinned, shaking her head.  "Do you remember that big Alpha bitch, how when the shuttle came she 'saluted' us with a raised leg and a spray of urine?"

Rafael chuckled.  "Just giving us a little reminder that it is still her mountain."

Smiling, Emily looked around the room, trying hard not to look at Raf.  She was having some rather lurid fantasies and knew it must be the stress of the coming operation, knew it would be a bad idea, but knew she did not want to be alone on this last night before they left for Dominion space.  Unconsciously she rubbed her fingers over the bump on the fleshy inside of her arm where the required contraceptive was.  The Fleet wasn’t so foolish as to think people would refrain from sex, but it didn’t want any unintended pregnancies, either. She closed her eyes, trying to untangle her emotions.  She wanted to do this.  She was afraid to do this.  She needed to do this.  She opened her eyes.  Raf was looking at her intently.

"Raf, we're both shipping out tomorrow," she started, then stopped.

Neither one of them said anything.  The atmosphere in the room suddenly felt thicker, deliciously charged, and fraught with possibility.

Emily leaned across the table.  "In Victoria we have a tradition that the night before a battle, the commander takes a long, hot shower."  She paused, eyeing him steadily.

Rafael's eyebrows rose.  "Tradition is a good thing," he said, nodding cautiously.

"In the tradition someone she cares about washes her back and spends the night with her," Emily continued.

Raf's eyes widened in mock surprise.  "Emily Tuttle!  What would Nouar say if she could hear us now?"

"Nouar would tell you to get on with it!"  She leaned over the table and kissed him.  He tasted of rice beer and fiery curry.  When he picked her up and carried her into the bedroom, she scooped up Fierce Grogon from the kitchen table.

“I’m not sure this is what Nouar had in mind when she gave you Fierce Grogon,” Raf chuckled, gently putting her down on the bed.

“It’s a start,” Emily said, “a beginning.”  She carefully put the stuffed animal on the nightstand.

Raf looked at her seriously.  “Is this a beginning, Emily Tuttle?  Is that what you want it to be?” he asked very softly.

Emily felt the color high in her cheeks.  She leaned forward to unbutton his shirt.  “I don’t know,” she murmured, “but I want to find out.”

All through the night, amidst the cries of passion and moans of pleasure, the whispered endearments, the soft laughter and the easy breathing of deep, forgiving sleep, the stuffed grogon with the chewed ear and floppy fangs kept a watchful vigil over them, holding reality at bay for a few precious hours.

Chapter 30

On Board the Refuge Carrier Rabat

Emily Tuttle stepped aboard the Refuge Carrier Rabat not as its captain, but as the Commander of the Heavy Gunboat Wing.  The Rabat’s captain, Rahim Zar, greeted her at the entrance with an honor guard of six sailors dressed in white, standing rigidly at attention.  Emily would have been impressed with the formality of the moment, were it not for the goofy looking, floppy fanged grogon doll she carried under her arm.  Captain Zar glanced at it curiously, but diplomatically said nothing.

“Welcome aboard, Commander,” Captain Zar said, sizing her up.  Emily sized him up in return.  He was a bit older than she was, perhaps in his mid-forties.  Although much of his crew had been replaced when the carrier had been seconded to the Victorian Fleet, he had remained with the Rabat as its captain.  It was important that she be able to work closely with this man.  Emily would have authority over the three carriers in that they carried the Heavy Gunboat Wing, but within those limitations, Captain Zar would run the Rabat.  She had the ultimate authority, but he was on loan from the Refuge Defense Force and had to be treated with respect.

“Thank you, Captain, I’m glad to be here,” she replied, shaking his hand.

“I will show you to your cabin, Commander, unless there is something you would prefer to do first,” he offered.  “Your luggage has already been taken up.”

“The cabin would be fine, but to tell you the truth I am famished and could really use a trip to your galley.”

“That is easily arranged.”  His eyebrows raised in question.  “And does your companion have any particular dietary restrictions that the chef should be aware of?” he asked, nodding towards Fierce Grogon.

Emily smiled.  He had a sense of humor, which boded well.  “Well, yes, actually, it prefers its meat rather on the rare side.  Alive and running is best.”

Zar nodded somberly.  “I will inform the chef.  Perhaps a goat?”

The walk to the galley was long – Emily was impressed at how large even a small carrier was – and it gave them a chance to talk.  “All of your heavy gunboats are aboard, Commander,” Zar told her.  “My deck crew is servicing them now.  By tonight they will be fully armed and fueled and the first forty will be in launch pods.”

Emily nodded.  “That’s excellent.  I need to arrange with you and the other carrier captains some time for the gunboats to practice launches.  We’ve done a lot of drills and war gaming, but until this moment we have not had an actual carrier to play with.  All my pilots need to learn how to quickly and safely launch from a carrier.”

“Your pilots are new, then?”

“We are all new, Captain.  The Heavy Gunboat Wing did not exist three months ago, but we do now and we need to bring ourselves up to speed as quickly as possible.  Launching from carriers is the only thing we have not been able to practice.  So, tell me about the launch pods.  I envision some long tube-like structure that will be used to hurtle the gunboats from the carrier at high speed.”

“Nothing so dramatic, I assure you,” he laughed.  “The pods are simply pressurized rooms set in the hull immediately adjacent to the carrier landing deck and maintenance area.  Once one of your birds is fueled and armed, we push it into the launch pod and close the door behind it. It faces out, towards the hull; actually it is facing another set of doors.  When you are ready to launch, we kill the gravity in the pod, the air is pumped out and the outer doors open. This is very quick, one to two seconds.  Once the outer doors open, the pilot simply uses his thrusters to leave the pod and voila!  Within a moment he is clear of the ship and he activates the main propulsion.  In less than five seconds, the gunboat is accelerating away to its mission.  We shut the outer doors and push the next bird into the launch pod.”

“How many launch pods are there?”

“Forty, twenty per side.  We’ve found that if we try to pack in more than that the risk of a mid-air collision during launch climbs dramatically.  Also, this way if we take damage on one side of the ship, we can still launch on the other side.  In a pinch, of course, we can also launch directly off the landing deck, but we can’t launch as many simultaneously, so it causes a bottle neck.”

“Turnaround time to get the next set of gunboats ready to launch?”

He shrugged.  “Usually no more than two or three minutes, sometimes a little longer if they have a traffic jam on the maintenance deck, but the crew chiefs are good at what they do, so it doesn’t happen often.  Also, once a bird is in the launch pod, we launch it right away.  That way we don’t have to wait until all of the pods are full to launch.  So the first launch of forty boats is virtually simultaneous, but the second launch is first-come, first-serve.  It looks rather ragged when you watch it, but it gets the second round launched more efficiently and quicker.”

Emily eyed him.  “You’ve been doing this a long time, then, Captain?”

He smiled wryly.  “Well, before we were beached by Admiral Razon, we used to drill constantly.  Not so much since then, of course, but it is like riding a bicycle, no?  Don’t worry, we’ll bring your boys and girls up to speed.”

They reached the galley and ate a quick lunch.  As they headed for her quarters, Emily was reminded of something.   “By the way, Captain Zar, do you have a computer graphics person on board?”

“Sure, what do you need?”

“I have an idea for some insignia patches I’d like to try.”  She smiled.

The next morning after her first round of meetings, the young Petty Officer from the graphics department left her a proposed ship insignia and a sample patch to be worn by the heavy gunboat crews.  The patch showed three snarling grogin heads in a ‘V’ pattern.  The eyes were blood red and the fangs were ferocious.

“You know their eyes are actually black, don’t you?” she asked.

“Yes, Ma’am,” the Petty Officer replied confidently, “but the red eyes just make them look mean.”  Emily had to agree.  She turned to the drawing of the insignia that would be painted on the gunboats.  She drew in her breath.

“What’s your name?” she asked the sailor.

“Petty Officer Third Class Abagail Fleming, Ma’am,” the young sailor replied.

“Well, Abagail, you are a genius.  This is exactly what I wanted,” Emily said happily.  Fleming smiled broadly.

The drawing showed the large female Alpha looking over her shoulder straight at the viewer, her rear leg lifted high to urinate.  The grogon’s face was split in a sardonic, mocking smile and both the expression and the lifted leg conveyed the unambiguous message, “Piss on you!”

The insignias were painted on the heavy gunboats that afternoon.  From that point onward, each boat was identified by the call sign “Grogon,” followed by its number.

Chapter 31

With the Task Force to Raid Siegestor

The first wormhole took the Task Force to the old Solar System, home of mankind, now quarantined and forbidden due to its many virulent plagues.  The Task Force only had to travel an hour to find the entrance of the next wormhole, right where Brother Jong said it would be, and when it emerged two minutes later it was in the Sultenic Empire, near an ancient dust cloud.  Again, Brother Jong directed them to the next entrance, almost a day’s travel away.

“It took us decades to find this entrance,” Brother Jong explained.  “It is well off the elliptical plane.  We thought it was out here somewhere, but had all but given up when we stumbled across it.  Fortunately, like most of the one-way wormholes, it doesn’t move around much.”

They traveled as stealthily as a battleship, cruiser, two destroyers, four carriers and twelve tugboats could travel, which wasn’t very stealthy at all.  For security they stayed well away from any of the normal trade routes and had eight of the super-stealthy Visby-Class corvettes – all named after one sort of owl or another – spread out in front of them to give warning of any tramp freighters that might stray across their path. Once the Horned Owl picked up a sniff of a mining facility on the edge of its passive sensors and Captain Eder ordered the entire Task Force to cut power and coast until they were out of the facility’s sensor range.  Two hours passed in tense monotony, then they restarted their engines and proceeded along their course.

The third wormhole took them to Gilead, the empty sector with no planets, but with wormhole entrances to The Light, Darwin, Victoria and the Tilleke Empire.  A busy sector, with freighters from every sector passing through it, and for the Task Force, the constant threat of blundering into either Dominion or Tilleke ships.  They emerged again well off the normal trade routes, partially hidden by an asteroid belt.  They turned and crept further away from any prying eyes, then put on more speed and moved through another day’s travel to reach the last wormhole, the one that would take them into Dominion space itself.

With the Owls out as pickets, Captain Eder called a meeting of his captains and commanders.  The main comm screen showed eighteen anxious faces.

“All right,” Captain Eder said briskly.  “In an hour we are going through the last one-way wormhole into Dominion space.  We don’t know if the Ducks are waiting for us or not.  You all know the problem we face – we can’t send a ship through to look around and then come back through to report to us, so we’re going in blind.  Once we start through, we are committed.  If they are waiting for us, we’ll have to fight our way clear and regroup.  If nobody is there, we start searching for the Duck’s big shipyard.

“We go in like we’ve practiced: Two of the stealth recon ships, Wood Owl and Barn Owl, go in first.  If there is anything there, it is the job of the Owls to quickly draw the enemy away from the wormhole entrance.”  Everyone understood this.  Since the Owls had no weapons, the only thing they could do was hide or run.  Eder wanted them to use their superior acceleration to run and hoped that any Dominion covering force would follow.  “Next,” Eder continued, “the destroyers Oxford and Edinburgh, followed by the cruiser Wellington.    Lionheart comes through after that, followed immediately by the carriers.  As soon as the carriers clear the wormhole passage they launch all of the heavy gunboats.  If anything is waiting, we’ve got to hit them hard.  Last come the tugs and the mobile yard, the Meknes.  Remember, we will be in Dominion space, so no active sensors.  If nobody is waiting for us we don’t want to tip our hand by making noise.”  He looked at the other faces on his comm screen.   “Questions?”

There were none; everyone had already reviewed the plan for this wormhole and hammered out any concerns they had.  Everyone understood that if the Dominions had somehow gotten wind of this raid and were waiting for them in strength, they were cooked.

“We have been waiting for the chance to regain the tactical and strategic initiative,” Eder reminded them.  “Well, this is our chance to kick the Ducks in the balls and make them withdraw from Victoria to their home sector, but first we have to take out this shipyard.  I will send the signal to commence  through the C2C.”  He looked at each of them in turn, nodding his head.  “You are professionals, the best Victoria and Refuge has to offer.  We can do this.  We are going to do this.   Dismissed.”

As the comm screen went dark, Captain Eder turned to Hiram Brill.  “Are you ready, Brill?  Once we find Siegestor, you will have tactical command of the Task Force.”

Hiram Brill looked at him through eyes rimmed with fatigue.  “I’ve been ready for a long time, Captain.”

Eder studied him.  Brill did not seem as hollow and brittle as he had in Refuge, but he still gave Eder pause.  This was the most important assault of the war thus far. Taking out Siegestor would deprive the Ducks of any hope of reinforcements for months, perhaps years to come.  And that task was in the hands of a short, skinny man who looked more like a clerk than a soldier.  Eder sighed.  He knew not to judge a soldier by his physical appearance, but he couldn’t help but think that Brill looked as if he should be selling train tickets to obscure locations rather than leading Victoria’s most desperate assault.

“And the tugs?  Are they ready?” Eder asked.  He knew the answer, but he wanted the reassurance.

Hiram smiled faintly.  “Peter Murphy assures me they are.  They’ve practiced both on simulators and in actual conditions, and he reminded me very diplomatically that his tugboat captains have been moving rocks for years.”  Actually, what Murphy had said was, “Don’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs.  We’re tugboat drivers, Hiram.  We’ve been moving rocks hither and yon since you were in diapers and before Queen Anne was born, so get your head out of your ass and let us do our job.”

An aide stuck his head in the door.  “Captain, the countdown starts in two minutes.”

Eder nodded.  “Okay, Commander Brill, let’s go to work.”

* * * *

“Send the first two corvettes,” Captain Eder ordered.

Wood Owl and Barn Owl slipped into the wormhole and vanished.

“Mildred, set the timer for ten minutes,” Eder ordered, then looked around at the rating standing in the corner of the bridge.  “Melvin, I could really use a coffee about now.”  Melvin nodded and walked into the little galley off the bridge, emerging in moments with a tray with five steaming mugs on it.  He served Eder first, as befitting his rank, then offered some to the two pilots, the Sensors Officer, Weapons Officer, and Systems Operator, by which time he had run out and went back for more.

Captain Eder stirred in three sugars, took a sip and sat back with a contented sigh that Hiram knew was ninety percent showmanship and ten percent bullshit.  The two Owls would emerge in Dominion space exactly two minutes after they entered the wormhole.  No one knew why, but every trip through a wormhole, regardless of your entry speed, was two minutes long.

And what would they face when they got there?  If the Dominions were picketing the wormhole exit, the Owls were supposed to go to full acceleration and try to lure them as far away as they could, unless of course the Owls were destroyed outright.  In any case, the two destroyers, the Oxford and Edinburgh, would go through in ten minutes, the cruiser Wellington would follow exactly one minute behind, and the battleship Lionheart would follow one minute after that.  Then the carriers would go through and immediately launch all of their heavy gunboats.  Behind them would come the mobile shipyard, the Meknes, and two colliers.

And if the Dominion fleet was waiting for them, Hiram knew, they were all royally buggered.  Maybe someone would escape the ambush, maybe, but in any event the entire attack plan would be a shambles.

But there was no choice – when you go through a one-way wormhole, what you find on arrival is always a surprise.  Hiram swallowed his fear and nervousness and glanced at the clock. It moved with agonizing slowness.   Then Brother Jong crouched down beside him, whispering so as to not distract any of the bridge crew.

“These are the times when a man with faith is so much better off than you hopelessly lost agnostics who believe in nothing more than logic,” Brother Jong said serenely.  “You must sit here and try not to panic at the possibilities we face on the other side of the wormhole, whereas I can simply put myself in God’s hands and trust in His love for me.”

Despite himself, Hiram felt some of the tension dissipate.  Arguing with Brother Jong had become a favorite pastime.  “So you think it is easier for a man of God to go into battle than a man who does not believe?”

“But of course,” Brother Jong replied.  “And if you were not such a lost soul gone astray from God’s love and redemption, you would understand this.  You, as a doubt-ridden heathen, know that if the Dominion fleet is waiting for us on the other side, you are finished for all eternity, dead and beyond any hope of everlasting salvation.  Whereas I, having been raised in The Light,  I know that if we cross through and the Dominion are waiting there with overwhelming force, then all of us here…”  His voice trailed off.

“Yes?” Hiram prompted.

“Then all of us here are truly fucked,” Brother Jong said blandly.

Hiram snorted and choked back a laugh.  Brother Jong winked at him and walked back to his seat.

The clock chimed ten minutes.  “Send through the destroyers,” Eder ordered, but even as he spoke they vanished into the wormhole.  “One minute until the Wellington goes through,” Eder said.  “All remaining ships should be at battle stations.  He thumbed a button to connect him to Emily Tuttle onboard the carrier Rabat.  “Commander Tuttle, your gunboats should be ready to launch.”

“The Fes, Haifa and Rabat report all launch pods are ready.  We can launch forty grogin per carrier immediately upon emerging from the wormhole, and another seventy within ten minutes.  Meknes is standing by for refueling and rearming,” Emily reported.

Eder allowed himself a small smile.  “Grogin?  Are we launching wild beasts at the Dominion?”

“Yes, indeed, Captain,” Emily replied, “and very nasty beasts they are, too.  I pity the Ducks.”   Hiram would bet a month’s pay that she had her transmission broadcasted to all of the gunboat crews.

Eder’s smile broadened, then he nodded to the Communications Officer.  “Send through the Wellington.”

And then it was Lionheart’s turn.  The great battleship accelerated directly into the mouth of the wormhole and for two minutes the ship and all its crew ceased to exist in Einsteinian space.

* * * *

When the Lionheart emerged in Dominion space two minutes later, there were no enemy forces, just the two destroyers and the Wellington.  A tight-beamed communications laser from the Wellington reached them a moment later.

“Nothing here within reach of our passive sensors,” Wellington’s captain informed them cheerfully.  “I’ve got the two Owls out about ten thousand miles sniffing around.”

Hiram breathed a deep sigh of relief.  The first hurdle was over: they were in Dominion space and the Dominions did not know it.

Within minutes the rest of the task force came through, with the two colliers, Big Apple and Special Delivery maneuvering into position in the middle of the warships and the remaining six Owls fanning out to scan the perimeter with their sensitive passive sensors.  The Horned Owl took a scan of the star map and located their position relative to the last reported position of the Laughing Owl, then sent a bearing to the Lionheart.

“All ships, download the attached bearing,” Captain Eder transmitted via the comm laser.  Set the Plane of Advancement on that course with Tactical North immediately ahead.  Owls to be the vanguard, standard global formation.”  That would put the Owls, with their wonderful sensors, in a loose global formation around the rest of the Task Force.  With luck, they would spot anything before it could spot them.  “Set stealth conditions on all ships and match Lionheart’s speed.  Communications by laser only.  Lionheart out.”

With that, the Task Force shook itself into formation and began its search for Siegestor.

Chapter 32

On Board the Laughing Owl

Captain Sadia Zahiri was hungry.

It wasn’t the empty stomach feeling you have when you’re working hard and realize you skipped lunch.  It wasn’t the jittery, sweaty feeling you have when you’ve used up all of your body’s immediate stores and your blood sugar is low.  It wasn’t even the aching, distracted, irritable feeling you get when you’ve missed two or three meals and really, really need something to eat.

Zahiri had already suffered those stages of hunger.

Now she was in the listless, demoralized, tired-beyond-exhaustion stage and she had to exert every bit of her rapidly depleting will power to make herself care what happened next.  They had run out of food five days earlier.  Zahiri’s last meal had been a stale heel of rye bread, a bite of an emergency ration biscuit that she shared with the others, and five peanuts, all washed down with room-temperature water.

Zahiri had put all of the non-essential crew to bed under sedation, each hooked up to an IV drip to keep them hydrated, but she still had her Pilot, assistant engineer, Sensors Officer, Drone Operator and Communications Officer with her.  They were all famished.  Not just famished, they were starving.  If they didn’t get some food soon they would be unable to perform their duties, and soon after that they would die.

“Anything on sensors, Fatima?”  Zahiri enunciated her words carefully.

Fatima Binissa peered at her screens for a few moments, then shook her head.  She didn’t say anything, just sat numbly in her seat.  Next to her, Avi Lani sat in his chair, sound asleep.  He was young and strong, but he seemed to be taking the lack of food the hardest.  Maybe his metabolism is higher and needs the sustenance, Zahiri thought idly.  It didn’t matter, let him sleep.  The Laughing Owl was almost completely shut down, with just enough power on to run life support and keep the passive sensors functioning.  Not much work for an engineer.

“Captain, drink this.”

She looked up to see Forrest Janson holding a mug of hot chocolate.  They were out of food, but still had tea, coffee and hot chocolate.  Zahiri’s mouth flooded with saliva at the delicious smell.  “Keep this up, Forrest, and I’m promoting you to ‘Chief Pilot.’”  She gestured to Fatima Binissa.  “Give her some, too, Forrest, and stand by her until she drinks some of it.”

Janson walked to Binissa’s station and crouched down beside her.  “Hey, Fatima, how’s it going?  I’ve got some nice cocoa here.  Take a couple of sips, perk you up.”  Binissa stared listlessly at him for a long time, but didn’t move.  He took her hand and wrapped it around the mug.  “Comeon, Fatima, take a sip.”  He raised it to her lips and she mechanically sipped at it, then sipped again.  She licked her lips, took the mug in both hands like a little girl and drank more.

Zahiri turned to Dennie Hod, her informal second in command and, next to her, the oldest crew member.  “Anything on the comm, Dennie?” she asked.

“Lots of chatter from the Ducks,” Hod told her.  “They’ve called off the search for us, but have remained at a heightened level of readiness.”  Of everyone, Hod seemed to be handling the lack of food the best.  Short, thick and balding, he was remarkably stoic.  Even when disaster loomed, he calmly took things one hour at a time.

“Any sense that they know we are here?”  ‘Here’ being attached to the bottom of the shipyard.

“Not a clue,” he said.  “If they knew, we would have heard by now.”

“And out little surprise?” asked Zahiri.

“All systems showing green.  All we have to do is activate it.”

“Good,” she nodded.  “Good.”  She looked around.  Janson had gone back to his station, she noticed, and had promptly fallen asleep.  Fatima Binissa seemed more alert than she had been, but she still couldn’t depend on her to do anything complicated.  Hell, Zahiri thought wryly, none of us can do anything complicated right now.  The only one who still had a little spring in her step was Dafna Simon, the surviving drone pilot.  Dafna looked like a waif to start with, with a slender build, large brown eyes and hair longer than regulations strictly allowed.  One her best day she looked like a stiff wind would carry her away, but she was still animated and smiling, which was more than Zahiri could say.

“Dafna, anything from the recon drones?”  Stupid question, really.  Ten recon drones were out in an arc roughly fifty thousand miles from the asteroid belt.  They were stationary, power plants dialed down and barely generating any heat, with their passive sensors straining to pick up anything that looked like a Victorian vessel.  They were programmed to ignore Dominion vessels, but if they detected a Victorian ship, then – and only then – they would go active.  If a recon drone had reported in, Dafna would have already told her.

Dafna Simon smiled and shook her head.  “Not yet, Ma’am, but I think it will be soon now.  I’ll let you know as soon as I hear something.”

Captain Zahiri tried to smile back, but wasn’t sure she pulled it off.  She put down her empty cocoa mug.  What if the Fleet never came? What if the Fleet had been defeated and she just didn’t know it?  In a few short days her crew would be too weak to operate the ship.  Then what?  Do they knock on the door of Siegestor and surrender?  Ask for a cup of sugar and maybe a hot meal?  Would they be imprisoned for life?  Executed?  Tortured?  She looked at Fatima and Dafna, both beautiful young women.  What would become of them?

Overcome by doubt and the gnawing, relentless hunger, Captain Sadia Zahiri covered her eyes with her hand and tried not to weep.  It took her a moment to realize that someone was sitting beside her, with an arm around her shoulders.

“Easy, Sadia, easy now,” whispered Dennie Hod.  “It’s okay.  You’re doing everything you can.  Now just give it over to the Gods of Our Mothers and what will be will be.”

Sadia Zahiri didn’t look up.  If the others were staring at her she did not want to know.  She felt small and vulnerable, the child lost on the playground who suddenly realizes that her mother is nowhere to be seen and she is alone.

Only she wasn’t alone.  She covered Dennie’s hand with her own.  “There’s a chance this won’t work, Dennie,” she confessed softly.

Dennie Hod chuckled.  “Gods of Our Mothers, you just figuring that out now? We’re sitting on the bottom of the Duck’s secret shipyard while they’re turning over every rock to find us.  Sounds like pretty crappy odds to me, but you got us this far, so I figure you’re still a step ahead of them.”  He patted her hand.  “Besides, we’ve still got hot chocolate, so how bad can it be?”

Three hours later Dafna suddenly sat bolt upright at her station.  “Captain!  You need to see this!”

Chapter 33

The Battle of Siegestor

The reconnaissance drone sniffed the solar winds for a taste of home.

Drone #6 was positioned forty-five degrees over the asteroid belt’s plane of orbit and fifty thousand miles towards the Dominion home world, Timor. If Drone #6 had been human, it would have been awed by the majestic arc of stars spiraling far overhead and below, billions of suns burning with untold promise against the raven-wing darkness.

The drone constantly collected sensor data, testing for light, heat, radio waves and changes in the electromagnetic emissions that washed over it like a tide.  Every three hours it roused from its slumber to compare the sensor data against its library of Victorian and Refuge ships.  If it found no match, it slipped once more into the restful trance of standby mode and its passive sensors sniffed anew.  Although it had been on station for many days now, it had no sense of urgency or impatience, could not feel nervous or restless and would never know apprehension.  Or joy.

On the tenth day at 1600 Fleet Universal Time it once more activated and compared the last three hours of sensory data to its database.  This time there were four matches to Victorian ships and five matches to Refuge ships.  More than enough.  Having identified a match, Drone #6 came to a full state of readiness and compared the real-time sensory input to its library of known propulsion systems.  A match was confirmed.  It patiently sorted through the data until it identified the target most likely to carry a high ranking Fleet officer.  The target was forty-five thousand miles away with a vector that would take it under the drone’s present position in two hours.  Activating thrusters, Drone #6 adjusted its heading to an intercept course and ignited its secondary propulsion system, saving the primary system in case it had to take evasive action and flee.

An hour later it was close enough.  It fired its tight-beam communications laser.

* * * *

On board the Victorian battleship Lionheart, Hiram Brill was trying to come to grips with two immutable truths:  first, the asteroid belt they were approaching was impossibly huge.  Forty miles deep, some fifty miles wide and thousands and thousands of miles long, the Dominions could hide a dozen jumbo-sized shipyards in it and it still might take a year to find any one of them.

His second problem mirrored the first:  he had no idea where the Laughing Owl was either.

The plan was to get within thirty thousand miles of the asteroid belt and come to a position of rest relative to it, and then send the eight remaining Owls to scout it out and find the Laughing Owl and Siegestor, in no particular order.  Hiram didn’t like it; the odds of a Duck patrol sniffing out one of the Owls were too good.

“Stop worrying,” Colonel Dov Tamari scolded.  “By the blood of the One God, you are like an old woman, Hiram.  I’ve told you, Captain Zahiri is one of my most experienced captains.  She knows we can’t search the entire asteroid belt, so she’ll leave messages for us.”

Hiram was amused, but tried to look offended.  “That is no way to speak to your superior officer.”

Tamari snorted.  “Well, somebody has to tell you before you have a breakdown.  Besides, you are driving everybody crazy.  The Owls are getting ready to search for the Laughing Owl even as we speak, or in your case, fret.  Captain Zahiri knows this is how we do things.  She’ll leave messages.  Trust me on this, Hiram, and help me resist the impulse to strangle you.”

Across the bridge, at the Sensors Officer’s work station, a light began to frantically blink.   A moment later, the voice of the ship’s AI filled the room.

“Unidentified laser strike!  Unidentified laser strike on Upper Deck Plate 53.”

The Lionheart was already at battle stations, so no alarm or chime sounded, but the bridge lights flashed once.  The Sensors Officer typed furiously at his station, and then scanned the results.  “Looks like a tight-beamed communications laser, Type A34,” he announced with a note of relief.

Everyone on the bridge exhaled.  Brother Jong looked at Hiram quizzically, eyebrows raised in silent question.  Hiram leaned forward and whispered, “Type A34 comm laser is used in Victorian reconnaissance drones,” he explained.  “This drone is probably from the Laughing Owl.”

“Ah,” Brother Jong exclaimed.  “Good news, then?”

Hiram smiled broadly.  “It could be very good news.”

Captain Eder glanced at his Communications Officer.  “I’m on it, sir,” the Comm Officer said.  He transferred the data download from Sensors to his Communications work station and typed an encryption key.  Hiram knew that two floors below, in the a cramped room called “the Pit” by its occupants, there were five other Communications staff frantically working to determine which encryption key would work to decode the drone’s message.

In a moment the Comm Officer put a hand to his headset.  He nodded, then said, “Send it up, Murray.”  He turned to Captain Eder.  “We’ve decrypted the message, sir, where do you want it?”

“Main screen,” Eder ordered, leaning forward.  “And Mr. Lair, contact all the other captains and Task Force leaders and ask them to assemble soonest in their day rooms.  If this is what I think it is, we’ll be underway in a few minutes.”

The main comm screen on the battleship Lionheart would have done a full-sized movie theater proud.  In a moment the image of a woman – a captain from her shoulder insignia – appeared.  She looked utterly exhausted and…gaunt, like she’d been working hard for far too long without an opportunity for food.

“This is Captain Sadia Zahiri of the H.M.S. Laughing Owl.   If you are who I need you to be, what you’re looking for is here.  Verify your identity by transmitting the date of my birth to the drone.  If you do, the drone will give you a code, then it will return to the asteroid field.  When you reach a distance of 20,000 miles from the asteroid field, broadcast the code you received from the drone.  That will activate a beacon.  What you are looking for is at the beacon.

“Be prepared for action.  The Ducks are running constant patrols along the asteroid field and have several defensive points within it.  If we are very lucky, we’ll still be here when the beacon is triggered, at which point we will try to sneak out of the asteroid field and join you.  Keep an eye out for us.  We ran out of food a while ago, so there is a good chance that our Mildred will be driving by that time.”

Captain Zahiri blinked rapidly several times and took in a deep breath.  “Just in case, there are several personal messages attached to this transmission.  Please see that they get to the appropriate people.  This is Laughing Owl at 0930, 2615.08.17 FUT.  Good hunting to you!”  She paused, smiling faintly.  “Watch for us,” she whispered softly.  “End transmission.”

The image froze with Captain Zahiri staring straight at them, her dark eyes now steady and unblinking.

Captain Eder turned to Colonel Dov Tamari.  Tamari nodded in reply.  “That’s Sadia, alright.”

“Any chance this is a set-up, Colonel?  Could she be sending this under duress?”

Tamari shook his head.  “None, sir.  We have a contingency for that.  If she were under duress, she would have inserted certain code words either into her message or into the message header from the drone.  It’s her.  The message is genuine.”

“Good,” Eder said simply.  “Commander Brill, Colonel Tamari, I think it is time for you to return to the Carrier Haifa.  Brill, we’re using your plan for this unless I notify you otherwise.  Remember, the longer we can keep them from seeing us, the better, so radio silence.  Comm laser for all communications.”  He gave Hiram a hard look.  “And Brill, remember what we’ve got to do after this.  We can afford to lose tugboats if we have to, but we can’t lose a carrier.  Understand?”

Hiram nodded.  He didn’t like it much, it was too cold and calculating, but he had come to the same conclusion himself.  He wondered if Peter Murphy had thought this through as well and decided he probably had.

“Good,” Eder said shortly.  “I’ve already spoken to Tuttle about this.  Once we’ve a fix on Siegestor, it’s your show. Lionheart and Wellington are here to draw the enemy away from the shipyard and give you a clear shot, but we’ve got to conserve our force as much as possible.  The two destroyers will escort the tugs to give them a little extra protection, but once the tugs finish their job, the destroyers will take up station with the carriers.”

“Yes, sir, I understand,” Hiram said.  And he did.  It was the brutal, ruthless economics of warfare.  Hiram was awed by it and revolted by it in equal measure.  The time might well come, he knew, when he was on the receiving end of that cold economic analysis.  He sent a brief prayer of thanks to the Gods he didn’t believe in that Queen Anne had expressly ordered Captain Eder to rescue Cookie.  No matter what, she wouldn’t be left behind.

“Okay, get going,” Captain Eder ordered. “Keep the shuttle at Haifa; we’ll begin as soon as you arrive.”

Hiram saluted.  The Fleet wasn’t big on saluting, but somehow it seemed appropriate.  Eder waived him off.  “I suppose I should give you some big pep talk, Brill, but you know what you’re about.  Don’t muck it up.  I’ve got a granddaughter on the way and I have every intention of being around to spoil her rotten.”

Hiram smiled.  “Well, in that case, sir…”  Eder snorted and walked back to the bridge, calling for his aid to find Captain Zahiri’s birth date and be quick about it.

Hiram turned to Colonel Tamari.  “Dov, do you want to take the shuttle or shall we use one of the Krait transporters?”  Under Hiram’s direction, one had been installed on every ship.  He wasn’t sure why he had done it, it just seemed like a good idea.  “We could be there in two minutes instead of a long shuttle ride.”

A look of abject horror crossed Tamari’s face. “Scramble my atoms in a blender and project them through space?  No thanks.  Save it for the infantry, Hiram; they’re so bloody daft they probably think having their molecules torn apart and reassembled is fun.”

* * * *

The signal came through thirty minutes later that the shuttle had reached the Haifa and all was ready.  Captain Eder fixed a comm laser on the drone and transmitted Captain Zahiri’s birth date.  A moment later the drone sent a fifty-digit coded number, then turned in place and powered its drive to start the journey back to the asteroid belt.

Captain Eder nodded to himself.  Now it begins.  He sent the signal to all ships for slow speed, full stealth.  With the Owls well in front, the task force began moving toward the asteroid belt.

Four hours later the Lionheart reached the 20,000 mile mark, still undetected.  Eder hated to break radio silence, but gamely broadcast the coded signal, knowing as he did so that he would alert any Dominion patrols in the vicinity.  The task force picked up speed and began a dash toward the looming asteroid belt.

On board the Haifa, Hiram Brill sent a comm laser to each of the twelve tugboats.  They altered course thirty degrees to the right and pitched slightly upward, aiming them slowly away from the rest of the task force on a course that would take them to the top of the asteroid belt.  The carrier Haifa fell in behind them, along with the two destroyers, Oxford and Edinburg.  The carriers Rabat and Fes and the mobile shipyard Meknes slowed slightly and began to fall behind the rest of the task force.  The task force began to form a ‘V’ with the Lionheart and the Wellington on the left arm, the two carriers and the shipyard at the bottom of the ‘V’ and the tugboats, destroyers and Haifa on the right arm.

Three hours later the Horned Owl stopped two thousand miles short of the asteroid belt. Captain Bengt Thuree took a long look at the passive sensors.  At first it seemed hopeless; the thousands of asteroids twirling by made a complete hash of the sensor data.

“Can you clean this up a bit?” he asked the Sensors Officer.  “Maybe filter out everything moving in the same direction as the asteroids and let’s see if there is anything left?”

“Sure, skipper,” the Sensors Officer said, his face alight with excitement.  He was a fresh graduate of the Academy and an exception to the rule that the crew aboard Owls were older than average.  I was never that young, Captain Thuree thought a little sourly.  Or that full of energy. Getting old, dammit.

The sensor display suddenly blinked off, then reset.  The swirling asteroids were gone.  Now the display showed several red triangles moving against the direction of the asteroids and a couple of more moving across the asteroid belt away from the Horned Owl’s position.  Then the sensor display reset again.  This time there were two additional red triangles cutting across the asteroid belt, but aimed right toward the oncoming Victorian battleship and cruiser.

“Well, it was too good to last,” Captain Thuree sighed.  “Send a laser comm to Lionheart; tell them a patrol – two destroyer-sized ships – is on an intercept course.”  He looked again at his Sensors Officer and felt a pang of sadness.  There was little chance this eager, enthusiastic lad would live to see his next birthday.

“Captain!” the Sensors Officer called.  “We got another one!”  He pointed to a larger red triangle that had just appeared.  “Mildred identifies it as a cruiser. It must have been moving in the same direction as the asteroids, so it got filtered out.  Then it turned and the computer picked it up.”

“Mildred, plot a course projection for the new target.  Show me where it’s going,” Captain Thuree ordered.

“Processing complete,” Mildred replied and a dotted red line appeared in the sensor display.  It crossed the early course projection of the two enemy destroyers.  All three met just short of where the Lionheart was supposed to be at that time.

“That’s it then,” Thuree muttered.  “Send the data packet to the Lionheart.  Tell them a Duck cruiser has joined the party and all three enemy ships will intercept them in forty minutes.

Then the Sensors Officer gasped.  Captain Thuree swiveled back to the display.  There, slightly to their right, was a pulsating blue square that blinked once every second.  It was the beacon, the bloody wonderful beacon, blaring its position for all to see within thirty thousand miles.  The secret location of the Duck shipyard was a secret no longer

“Well done, Sadia,” Captain Thuree murmured.

The Battle of Siegestor had begun.

* * * *

On the Laughing Owl, they drank the last of the hot chocolate.   Captain Zahiri put the mug down and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.  She grinned at the others.  “I think it’s time for us to leave.  Pilot, any recommendations?”

Forrest Janson smiled weakly.  His course had been laid in for days.  “I think straight up, Ma’am.  Take us out of the asteroid belt and then head for the nearest friendly forces.”

“Excellent suggestion, Mr. Janson.  Let’s everybody strap in; this could be a rough ride.  Mildred!”

“Yes, Captain Zahiri?”  The AI’s voice was pleasantly cheerful, as always.  Six days without food hadn’t seemed to affect it in the least.

“Once we start, you are to assume control of the ship. Follow Mr. Janson’s course, but avoid enemy ships.  Take us out of the asteroid belt and then proceed at high speed to the nearest Victorian forces.  Acknowledge!”

“Your order is received and confirmed, Captain,” the AI said soothingly.

Zahiri sat in the shock seat and strapped herself in.  There was a good chance that in her weakened, half-starved condition, the coming maneuvers would knock her unconscious.  She took a last look around.  Dafna Simon had helped Fatima get into her chair and strapped her in, then climbed into her own chair.  When she was strapped in securely she gave Zahiri a brilliant smile and a thumbs up.  Across the bridge Dennie Hod nodded at her, and then closed his eyes.  Forrest Janson was looking at her intently.

“Okay, Forrest, take us out of here.”

Since his course was already laid in, Janson simply pushed a button on his console.  There was a moment of silence, then a scrapping noise as the magnetic clamps that held the Laughing Owl to the Siegestor released.   The ship scraped along the bottom of the huge shipyard for a heartbeat.  There was a loud ‘bang’ as it hit something, but then the thrusters pushed it down two hundred feet to clear any protuberances jutting from the bottom of Siegestor.  The mammoth Dominion shipyard continued forward and the Laughing Owl slipped backwards.  Thirty seconds later the shipyard had rumbled away and the Laughing Owl had a clear view through a screen of asteroids to open space beyond.

As much as he would have loved to pilot her, Janson knew he was too weak and his reflexes were shot.  “All yours, Mildred.  I pass control to you,” he whispered.  It was like handing a newborn child to a beloved aunt for safe keeping.

“Yes, dear, I accept control,” Mildred said cheerfully.

Then the Laughing Owl leapt ahead.  Despite the best efforts of the inertia compensators, everyone was crushed into their seat.  The ship lurched violently left, then right, then right again and gained speed.  Zahiri, trying to watch the holo display through red-dimmed eyes, saw that they were cork-screwing through the remainder of the asteroid field, making turns and dodging asteroids with a reckless skill no human pilot could hope to match.  Then the ship steadied out on a straight course and accelerated even harder.  The red haze blurred Zahiri’s eyes and then washed away her thoughts.

Every ship for five thousand miles suddenly saw the sensor plume from the Laughing Owl’s engines as it hurtled upwards out of the asteroid belt, then arced over toward the Victorian task force.

And behind it, clamped securely to the bottom of the Dominion shipyard, the beacon continued to wail its siren song.

* * * *

“Get them up on the plot where I can see them, dammit!”  Eder barked.  The Sensors Officer typed a command and the holo display reset.  The battleship Lionheart and the cruiser Wellington were in the center of the display.  Ahead of them and thirty degrees to the left were two Dominion destroyers bearing down on them, while thirty degrees to the right was the enemy cruiser.  At the far side of the display was a blinking red circle that represented the Dominion shipyard, Siegestor.  Off to the right, almost on top of the asteroid field, twelve small blue specks represented the tugboats, still getting into position.  They seemed to be moving with pitiful slowness and Eder wondered again how he could have agreed to an attack plan that relied on civilian craft for the critical element.

The important thing was to keep the enemy’s attention on them and off the tugboats.  The vital, unarmored, fragile tugboats.  But if he stayed on this course, the destroyers and cruiser would come into missile range at the same time.  Let’s not do that, he thought.  He considered the holo, then gestured to his Communications Officer.  “Get Wellington and Rabat!”

In a moment the comm screen showed Captain Bruce Hillson of the Wellington and Emily Tuttle of the Rabat.

“We’ve got three enemy ships on an intercept course with us, in missile range in about twenty minutes,” Eder said crisply.  “They seem to be coming in piecemeal, so I think we caught them by surprise and they’re scrambling without too much coordination.  Keep an eye out for more ships dribbling in; we don’t want to get caught by a missile up our rearmost because we were too focused on what was in front of us. The tugs are almost in position, but we have to keep these bastards distracted for a while.”

He nodded at Emily.  “Commander Tuttle, launch half your birds and jump the cruiser.  Go in loud, I want them to know you’re there.  You don’t have to kill it, just keep it busy and for Gods’ sake keep it away from us.    Captain Hillson, I want the Wellington two hundred miles off my starboard quarter.  We’re turning into the destroyers so we’ll reach them a couple of minutes before the cruiser can get into play.  Launch the jammers first, but at the cruiser, understand?  When we get within range of the two destroyers we’ll hit them with all of our missiles.  We’ll follow with lasers while we’re reloading and then turn to meet the cruiser.  Remember, we need to kill them or cripple them, but in any event the priority is to give the tugs enough time, got it?”

“Yes, sir,” both of them said in unison.

“Do you have any questions?”

“No, sir,” Hillson said. Captain Hillson was Old School; he never had questions.

Eder looked at Emily.  “Tuttle?”

“What if one of the destroyers or the cruiser turns to make a run on the tugboats?” she asked.

Eder nodded approvingly.  “If that happens, divert all your gunboats to that threat.  Deploy other Wings as you see fit, but keep the tugs safe until their mission is accomplished.”  He looked back and forth between them.  “This is the real thing, not another simulation” Eder reminded them, “so get it right the first time.”

The Lionheart and Wellington veered left and lined up with the Dominion destroyers.  Jamming missiles and decoy drones shot out at the cruiser and turned the enemy’s sensor data into fuzzy snow.  For the moment, the Dominion cruiser was flying blind.

“Fire all missiles on the destroyers!” Eder ordered.  Sixty missiles sped away, aimed thirty each at the two enemy ships.  The destroyers abruptly realized the danger they were in and split, one going high, the other low, leaving behind a trail of chaff and decoys to spoof the incoming missiles. One of the destroyers even had the presence of mind to fire its own missiles, but the other just ran.  The Victorian missiles followed them.  Captain Eder nodded in approval; a promising start.

The promising start soon fell apart.  Decoys tricked a dozen missiles within seconds and they veered off, finally catching and destroying the wrong target.  Another eight missiles lost lock in the chaff cloud and emerged too far away to regain their target.  After a moment of searching, the safety protocol kicked in and the missiles self-destructed.

But that still left a lot of missiles.

Both destroyers fired off their close-in anti-missile defenses.  Another missile exploded harmlessly, but the rest bore in.  One of the destroyers shuddered and staggered to the side, then began a lazy end-over-end tumble.  It was out of the fight.  The other destroyer dropped more chaff and decoys and turned sharply.  Two missiles had caught it, but its last frantic efforts had broken the sensor lock of the others.  It turned sharply one more time and limped away as fast its damaged power plant would take it.

“Leave it!” Eder ordered.  “We’ll save our lasers for the cruiser.”

* * * *

On the carrier Rabat, Emily hit the ‘launch’ button for the heavy gunboats.   Rabat carried sixty-six heavy gunboats, one third of Fleet’s entire gunboat force.  In ten seconds forty gunboats were in the air, forming up over the carrier.  Four minutes later the remaining twenty- six gunboats joined them and they accelerated for the Dominion cruiser.

Once its boats were launched, the Rabat fell back to stay out of missile range from the enemy cruiser.  Fes, still loaded with its sixty-six ships, followed closely behind, but the Meknes, converted from a carrier into a rearmament platform, crept up the right flank of the action, ready to assist any of the gunboats that had just launched.  This left the Meknes more exposed than Emily would have liked and she kept the gunboats on the Fes ready to launch at a moment’s notice.

Now it was all position and geometry.  Lionheart and Wellington were turning left to meet the destroyers head-on.  The enemy cruiser, its sensors baffled by the jamming, couldn’t see the maneuver and so continued on its original course well to the right, expecting to join up with the Dominion warships at any moment.  Meanwhile, the Rabat gunboats were rocketing towards the cruiser, hoping to catch it from the far right.

Each squadron of ten gunboats had a Squadron Leader.  There were three squadrons to a Group and two Groups to a Wing.  Each Group had a Group Commander and each Wing a Wing Commander, who was also known by the unfortunate acronym of “WC.”    Each carrier carried a Wing – roughly sixty boats – plus a few extra gunboats that had specialized tasks such as jammers or hedgehogs.  After many, many hours in the simulators, the practice had developed that the Wing Commanders gave the tactical orders.  The Group Commanders stood ready to step in if the Wing Commander was distracted or simply too busy to deal with the problems one or more squadrons was running into.

Emily’s Wing Commanders were Alex Rudd on the Rabat, Grant Skiffington on Fes and Avi Yaffe on Haifa.  Yaffe was slow talking, slow moving and pokerfaced.  People working with him often wondered if he was actually awake.  He was one of the former pilots from the Refuge Coast Guard who turned out to be a so-so pilot but a brilliant tactician and, surprisingly given his reserved nature, a pretty good manager of the often egotistical pilots.  Emily had first moved him from pilot to systems on his heavy gunboat, but soon realized he was quietly directing his entire Squadron, and also giving timely suggestions to his Group Commander.  She had called him into the office and asked if he would like a shot at directing a Wing.  “It means you won’t fly any more,” she warned him.  Yaffe thought about it for ten seconds, then shrugged.  “Not that good at flyin’ anyway,” he confessed, “but I do like movin’ the pieces around.” He took the job.

Those three men, Rudd, Skiffington and Yaffe, were her arms and legs as Emily wielded the Heavy Gunboat Force.

Now Emily sat beside Alex Rudd in the Rabat.  “Just like old times,” Rudd commented, peering intently at the hologram display.  The enemy cruiser was to their west and the six Squadrons of gunboats were racing towards it.  Thanks to the C2C communications with the Lionheart, Emily could see that the Lionheart and Wellington were just finishing a missile run against the two destroyers.  Depending on how that turned out, they would either follow in with lasers or turn back towards the Dominion cruiser.  The cruiser, still trying to burn its way through the heavy jamming, had not yet realized that it was caught in a classic pincer.

Emily grinned at Rudd.  “We’ve got him; he just doesn’t know it yet.”

Rudd nodded in agreement.  He thumbed his comm. “Squadrons one and two, take him high.  Three and four, low.  Five and six, take any opening you see.  First missile on my command, then swarm him.”

They watched the holo display, magnifying the view until they could see the specks of the gunboats approach the larger red triangle of the cruiser.  It looked like a pack of wild…well, grogin, loping in on prey.

“Fire first missile!  Prepare to fire lasers!” Rudd ordered.  He turned to Emily and smiled.  “Damn, I love this stuff!”

Then he looked back at the holo display and turned ashen.  “Oh, shit.”

* * * *

Twenty thousand miles northeast of the Lionheart and the skirmish being fought there, the twelve tugboats were cruising the top of the asteroid belt.  Their drives were powered low in a feeble attempt to make the tugboats stealthy.  The tugs operated in six pairs, each pair looking for smaller asteroids roughly the size of a house.  When they found one they would come up beside it from behind, lock onto it with tractor beams and carefully lift to the top of the asteroid field, keeping it at the same speed relative to the field.  So far they had only found and positioned three rocks big enough, or small enough, to work with.  There were lots and lots of small chunks of rock and debris floating in the asteroid belt, but they were too small.  Conversely – or perversely – thought Hiram, from there the asteroids seemed to jump to the size of a large building.  Those would be harder to extract from the asteroid field and extremely difficult to position properly for an attack.  The middle size turned out to be in short supply.

“Think we’ve got a fourth one,” Peter Murphy said over the comm.  “It’s about ten miles in and fifteen miles west of here. I’ve got two tugs on it now.  Should know in a few more minutes.”  Murphy didn’t ask what was happening elsewhere and Hiram did not tell him about the escalating fight by the Lionheart.  He needed the tug captains focused on finding the proper sized rocks and pulling them out of the asteroid field, nothing else.  Meanwhile he had the Oxford and the Edinburgh drifting along the top of the asteroid belt about five hundred miles in front of the tugs and the carrier Haifa.  They had watched anxiously as more Dominion warships raced to oppose the Lionheart, but so far Hiram’s task force had not been noticed.  That couldn’t last long, he knew.  They had to make their attack and soon.

“Murphy,” he commed, “anything you can do to speed things up?”

“Well sure,” Murphy replied, a little testily.  “Just give me a better quality asteroid field, or tell me that we only need three rocks and I’ll tell you we’re ready.  Otherwise just let us do our job.”

“Commander Brill?”  It was Haifa’s Wing Commander, Avi Yaffe.

“Yes, Wing Commander, what is it?”

“I think we should launch the gunboats.  Our sensor horizon this close to the asteroid field is very short.  If the Ducks find us we will have only a minute or two warning, not enough time to scramble the boats in time to help.”

Hiram frowned.  “I thought the boat pilots were in their launch pads with hot engines.  All they have to do is launch.  We can have forty boats in the air in a few seconds.”

Yaffe stared at him for a long moment, and then nodded slowly.  “Well, Commander, that’s true enough, but just because the boats are launched doesn’t mean that they are anywhere near where we need them to be.  Right now it is about a fifteen minute flight to the tugboats, and maybe a twenty to thirty minute flight to the destroyers.  Take your pick, but in either case by the time we get there with the gunboats, the tugboats could be shot to shit or the destroyers could be pretty well chewed up.  What we need, sir, is to have the gunboats providing support on site so that if the Ducks find us, the gunboats are right there and can help.”

Hiram sighed inwardly.  He should have thought of that.  “Good suggestion, Yaffe.  Go ahead and implement it immediately.  Anything else you think we should be doing?”

Yaffe slowly nodded.  “Well, sir, since you asked, I’ve been watching the battle with the Lionheart and the Duck cruisers.  That could turn bad pretty quick.  If the Ducks throw more ships at ‘em they may need some help from us as well.”

Hiram suppressed a wince.  No plan survives first contact with the enemy, wasn’t that the old saying?  “What do you suggest?” he asked.

“Let’s send forty of our gunboats to support the tugs and the destroyers, with the bulk of them on the tugs since they are the most critical piece of all of this.  Keep twenty or so in reserve and use them where we need them.  Also, let’s get a couple of recon drones up to extend our sensor reach.  Come to think of it, we ought to send a couple of jammers up as well.  If we see some Ducks about to trip on us, we can hit them with jamming and buy the tugs an extra few minutes before the Ducks can lock on to a firm target.  It might make all the difference.”

Hiram nodded again.  “Do it, Wing Commander.”  He switched channels to talk again with Peter Murphy.

“How’s that rock look, Murphy?” he asked, trying to sound casual and failing miserably.

“Too big,” Murphy replied shortly.  “We’re still looking.  Seem to have a pocket of slightly smaller rocks here, so we’ll find something.  I’ll call you, Hiram, as soon as I have something worth reporting.”  He didn’t exactly say, ‘Don’t bother me again,’ but his tone carried the message loud and clear.

Hiram sighed.   Who would have thought that in a giant asteroid field it would be hard to find six bloody rocks?

* * * *

“Oh shit,” Rudd gasped.  Emily’s head snapped up.  She bit back a curse.  A second Dominion  cruiser and three frigates appeared on the sensors, hurtling directly towards the Lionheart and the Wellington. Geez, couldn’t they have waited just ten minutes?

“Toby, get me a direct line to Captain Eder and Captain Hillson.”

Seaman Partridge tapped in the proper code on his console.  “You’re up, Ma’am.”

“Lionheart and Wellington, this is Commander Tuttle.  Our drone has picked up a second Duck cruiser and three – I repeat, three – frigates emerging from the asteroid field at high speed and bearing down on you.  ETA twenty minutes.”

Captain Eder studied the sensors, but the jamming and fields of chaff degraded his sensors as well as the Dominion cruiser’s he was stalking.  “Tuttle, when will your birds hit the first cruiser?”

Emily glanced at the status board.  “We have six Squadrons hitting it now, sir.  They have fired one missile and are moving closer for another shot.”

Eder nodded once.  “Okay, Commander, tell your birds we are coming in from the south west and will be firing lasers.  Our ‘Friend or Foe’ is squawking, but I would appreciate it if they did not shoot any missiles at us.  We will come in with heavy lasers and whatever missiles that have been loaded in time.  I expect to fire in-“ he glanced at his display – “four minutes.  Lionheart out.”

Hillson flashed an unexpected grin.  “Emily, tell your nasty little grogin that I’ll forgive them this one time if they don’t leave anything for us.  The way the Ducks are coming in there’ll be plenty to go around.  Wellington out.”

Emily studied the holo display.  The entire battle was now shaped like an upside-down “L,” with the short arm projecting out to the right along the axis of the asteroid field.  The tugboats and the Haifa were on that short arm, gathering rocks.  The destroyers Oxford and Edinburgh were there, guarding them, and so far the Ducks were not paying any attention to them.

On the long arm of the “L,” the Lionheart and Wellington were mixing it up with the Duck destroyers and the first cruiser, but now the second cruiser and its escorts were moving down the long arm of the “L” to join the fray.

And right at the junction of the small and long arms of the “L,” lay the Siegestor, the Dominion’s secret shipyard.

The comm screen lit up; it was Grant Skiffington, Wing Commander on the carrier Fes.

“I know what you want, Grant, and the answer is no,” she said before he could speak.

Grant stared at her, jaw flexing.  “We should launch my boats on the second cruiser right now, Emily.  We can-“

“I said ‘no,’ Grant.  You are my only reserve.  Don’t worry, you’ll see plenty of action, but right now I need you where you are.”

Skiffington’s face flushed red.  “Dammit, Emily, we can take out the second-“

Emily reached across and cut off the communication.  No time for this.  “Sensors, ETA on second cruiser and the escort?”

“Fifteen minutes before they’ll be in close missile range of the Lionheart,” the Sensors Officer replied crisply.  “With all the jammers and chaff floating around, I’d be surprised if they can achieve a target lock before that.”

Emily thought about that for a moment and recalled some of the training exercises Alex Rudd had thrown at her and the other recruits, particularly the storage facility that had to be defended.  “Toby!  Get me Captain Eder on the comm!”

Eder came on a moment later and Emily explained what she had in mind.  Eder considered it, then nodded once.  “It means we have to take out the first cruiser right off, but I think we can do that.”  He stroked his chin.  “Okay, Tuttle, let’s try it.  The alternative is a straight run in, which is risky and rather dull.”

* * * *

The sixty-three heavy gunboats from the Rabat descended on the first Dominion cruiser like the wrath of God.

They fired their first round of missiles close in, giving the cruiser’s anti-missile defenses little time to react.  Then the second missiles.  Then they fired the ten-inch lasers.  Incredibly, the cruiser’s anti-missile defenses sputtered to life and promptly jammed, decoyed or shot down a total of eighty missiles.  The next forty missiles hadn’t yet reached the cruiser when the lasers struck, scouring many of the anti-missile defense emplacements off the hull and leaving huge rents in the side.  Air and debris boiled out like pus from a suppurating wound.

The gunboats turned to run parallel to the cruiser while they recharged their lasers.  All of the gunboats crews whooped and hollered.  They were about to bag a Duck cruiser…and it felt wonderful!  Without further thought or any consultation, all of the gunboat crews did the same thing: they diverted their second engine to recharge the ten-inch laser that had just been fired.  It would take thirty seconds, and during those thirty seconds their acceleration rate would be significantly reduced, keeping them close to the enemy ship.

The Group Commanders, sitting next to each other on the Rabat, exchanged a look and both nodded, and then signaled their respective Squadrons to fire all remaining missiles and break off.  Another one hundred and twenty missiles shot out, their target so close and so big that they followed a straight trajectory.  There was no need to weave and turn and jam.  The missiles simply sprinted forty miles and smashed headlong into the already scarred hull of the cruiser.  Missiles struck thunderously from below, from the port side and from above. Pieces of hull peeled off the ship and tumbled into space, air vented, tongues of flame shown through cracks and rents, anti-missile pods collapsed and disintegrated.  Each missile gouged a hole in the cruiser and the missiles that followed smashed deeper and deeper, probing the soft interior, seeking a critical path, a vulnerable opening.  Explosions riddled the interior spaces, shrapnel and concussion killing all they touched.  Fireballs raced down corridors and up utility shafts, always getting closer and closer.  In moments the air inside the cruiser scorched lungs and eyeballs in equal measure.  The fires sucked in all available oxygen and roared like a berserk, vengeful demon.

The final missile exploded a mere twenty feet from the antimatter drives. Two thousand pounds of high-yield explosive turned its immediate surroundings into a maelstrom of plasma. The final bulkhead blew out and the superheated plasma reached the object of its desire.

The cruiser simply vanished.  One moment it was there, the next moment it was gone, its antimatter drives exploding in a paroxysm of churning light, spewing raw energy and radiation.

And in its agonized death, the Dominion cruiser took its revenge.

In one enormous pulse of destruction, the energy flare from the explosion swept out for fifty miles in all directions, greedily enveloping thirty-eight of the precious gunboats.  When the deadly sun-bright light diminished, four Squadrons were gone, vaporized in an instant.  There was no wreckage, no bodies, no survivors.  The remaining gunboats – by random luck outside of the kill zone when the cruiser exploded – were all damaged to one degree or another.  As one, stunned and disoriented, they turned toward their carrier and began to limp home.

On the Rabat, Alex Rudd looked at the casualty figures and blanched.  “Gods of Our Mothers, grant them mercy!” he whispered in a strangled voice.   Emily came to look over his shoulder.  At first she did not understand what had happened, but a ten second replay of the holo display told her everything she needed to know. Horror mixed with consternation.  The cruiser’s antimatter pods had been breached, and maybe it had been carrying antimatter missiles as well.  And she learned the hard way the hidden design flaw of the heavy gunboats.

She opened up the comm.

“Meknes and Rabat, move up to assist survivors!  Fes, launch your gunboats and wait for orders,” she said.  Skiffington will be happy with this, she thought bitterly.

* * * *

On board the Dominion cruiser Swift Justice, the captain was confused, a sensation he enjoyed not in the least.  His sister cruiser, Redemption, had just blown up in front of him, the victim of what his sensors identified as small missile ships of some sort.  Whatever they were, they were painfully vulnerable because more than half of them had been torn apart when the Redemption’s magnetic containment bottle had ruptured.  The rest of the small ships were in retreat, to where he did not know nor presently care about.

His focus was on the Vicky battleship and cruiser in front of him, largely obscured by jammers and chaff, but there nonetheless.  They had turned away from him, retreating further behind even more chaff and more jammers.  The captain’s forehead wrinkled into a frown.

Why weren’t they attacking him?  A Vicky battleship, for God’s sake, plus a cruiser, against his cruiser and three frigates.  They should be attacking.  Did they know about the other reinforcements coming soon?    Was either the battleship or cruiser already damaged?  He shook his head.  Too many unknowns.  His sensors couldn’t burn through the chaff and the damn jammers and sending a drone would take too long.  His eyes flicked to the holo display.  The three frigates cruised alongside in a “V” formation.  Excellent.  He thumbed the comm.

“New orders,” he told them.  “Recon by force and report back on the status of the Victorian forces behind this cloud of chaff.  Report back at the soonest possible time.  Acknowledge!”  The senior frigate captain acknowledged the order. His voice seemed…strained. Probably shitting in his pants, the cruiser captain thought.  I would be.

The frigates accelerated ahead and disappeared into the edge of the chaff cloud.

The cruiser captain waited.

No comm messages.  No drones.

“Captain,” the Sensors Officer said.  “Picking up evidence of several explosions from within the chaff cloud.”

“Consistent with the signature of detonating mines, the kind the Vickies use?” the captain asked dryly.

The Sensor Operator checked his readings.  “Yes, sir,’ he confirmed.

The captain nodded sourly.  The Vickies were cunning little bastards, he had to give them that.  But let’s see how cunning they are in an hour when the rest of his reinforcements arrive.

“Helm, get us out of here,” he snapped.  “Take us back to the asteroid belt.  Stay away from that damn chaff cloud.  Sensors, I want to know the minute you see any more of those small attack craft heading in our direction.  Weapons, send two antimatter missiles straight through the cloud.  Let’s see how they like a taste of that!”  He sat back in his chair, fuming.  “And send word to the reinforcements to get here ASAP.  We can’t keep dribbling forces into this fight and getting our asses kicked; time to kick some Vicky ass for a change.”

* * * *

Monitoring the battle from the Rabat, Emily saw the enemy cruiser turn back to the asteroid field, but behind it there were two ‘vees’ showing the missiles they had fired.  The missiles marched straight toward the chaff cloud the Lionheart had made.

Emily’s brow furrowed.  Two missiles?  Why only two?

“Oh, bugger me,” she snarled and stabbed the comm button.  “Lionheart!  Wellington!  Scatter!  Scatter! You have two antimatter missiles coming to your location behind the chaff.  Repeat, two antimatter missiles aimed at you.  Get out of there!”  She hit a second button to go live to all ships.  “Antimatter missiles near the chaff cloud.  All ships move away now!”

There was a brief lull in the fighting as the Victorian ships accelerated away from the chaff cloud, then the entire cloud pulsed white, as if a giant lightning bolt had gone off deep within it.  When the sensor display finally came back, Emily ordered an active sweep and was rewarded with clear returns on the Lionheart and Wellington, as well as dozens of heavy gunboats.  “Mildred, take census,” she ordered.

The AI digested the sensor data and reported: “Wellington and Lionheart, no significant damage noted.  Fes on station and undamaged.  Entire compliment of Fes heavy gunships on station and undamaged.  Rabat on station and undamaged.  Thirty-eight of Rabat’s heavy gunships unaccounted for, status unknown.  Twenty-two of Rabat’s gunships being rearmed or repaired at Rabat and Meknes.  No preliminary reports yet on damage status.  All tugboats are on station near asteroid belt.  Destroyers Oxford and-”

“Stop!  Report status of enemy ships,” Emily said.

“One enemy cruiser retreating to asteroid field at high speed.  One cruiser, four destroyers and six frigates have just emerged from the asteroid field. No other-“

“Stop!” Emily snapped.  “Repeat last!”

“No other-“

“No, just before that.”  Emily ground her teeth in frustration.

“One cruiser, four destroyers and six frigates have just emerged from the asteroid field,” Mildred repeated.

Emily spun to Chief Gibson.  “Chief, are you getting this on sensors?”

He studied his display, then shook his head.  “Nothing here, Commander, but the antimatter missiles really screwed the sensors.  They won’t be fully functional for a while yet.”

“Mildred, what is the source of your data on the new enemy ships?” Emily asked.

“Source is a C2C transmission from the Horned Owl.”

Emily quickly connected to the Lionheart, Wellington and Fes.  “Warning!  Large enemy force heading towards us from the asteroid belt.  One cruiser, four destroyers and six frigates.  No specific ETA, but very soon.  Nothing on our sensors, but warning from an Owl.  Rabat out.”

“Mildred, use a laser comm to connect me to the Horned Owl.”

“Of course, dear.”

Captain Thuree’s face immediately popped up on the comm screen.  He in turn was gazing at another display and seemed unaware of Emily’s presence.  Emily saw one of Thuree’s crew nudge him.   He looked up, eyebrows rising when he saw Emily.

“Thank you for your warning, Captain Thuree.  Do you see anything else?”

Thuree’s face grew grim.  “Our sensors have been degraded by the antimatter blast, but my Sensors Officer thinks he saw one, possibly two frigate-sized vessels moving along the top of the asteroid belt toward the tugboats.  There is too much interference from the asteroid field to track them.  I don’t have a laser link with Haifa or any of the other ships there to warn them, and if I send a drone I’ll give away my position.”

“Hold one, Captain,” Emily replied.  She glanced questioningly at Toby Partridge.  He nodded.  “I have a good connection with Haifa and Oxford, Ma’am.”

“Captain Thuree, I will pass along your warning.  Please keep us informed of any other sightings; you really saved our bacon with the last one.  Rabat out.”

“I do not eat bacon, Commander, but I am happy to have saved yours.  Horned Owl out.”

Captain Eder’s face appeared on the comm screen.  “Tuttle, Lionheart and Wellington are turning west in an attempt to lure off the incoming Duck ships.  We’ll leave a trail of mines and jammers to try to force the Ducks to spread out.  Once they spread out a little, I need your grogin to take out anything you can.  We can’t let them set up a coordinated attack, do you understand?  Pay particular attention to the cruiser and the destroyers; they can really hurt us if the Ducks use them properly.”

“Yes, sir,” she said crisply.

“And try to reach Commander Brill and ask him, if it would not be too much trouble, if he would please launch his bloody attack on the Duck shipyard so we could get the hell out of here.”

“ Ah, yes, sir.”

“Lionheart out.”  The screen went blank.

* * * *

Hiram Brill was on the comm to Peter Murphy.

“Murphy, not that I want to put any pressure on you, but how are you doing over there?”

“Five rocks so far,” Murphy replied.  “We’re looking at another one right now.  Might be a little small, not sure yet.”

“Look fast, Peter, we just got word a frigate is coming this way.  I’ve got two gunboat squadrons looking for it now, but we don’t have much longer.”

“Don’t rush me, Hiram.  “We’re not baking brownies here.”

Hiram took a deep breath.  He thought about the sensor display Emily had sent and the growing weight of the Dominion forces as reinforcements poured in.  Time was the enemy now.

“Murphy, you’ve got ten minutes, no more.  In ten minutes we have to start the attack, with or without the sixth rock.”

“Dammit, Hiram, we’ve got to-“

“Ten minutes, Peter,” Hiram interrupted, then cut the connection.  One more thing to do.   He checked to make sure he had a solid laser link to Barn Owl, then thumbed the comm.  “Any sight of her?” he asked. He had detached the Barn Owl to look for the Dominion prison ship, Tartarus.

“Not yet,” replied Captain Karen Selby of the Barn Owl.

“Keep looking,” Hiram said.  He sat back and looked at the display.  The asteroid belt raised hell with the sensors, so the prison ship could be anywhere, but he would find it.

* * * *

Emily sat in her chair and thought.  The entire gunboat Wing from the Fes was hunting for the Duck reinforcements, and it wouldn’t be long before they found them.  Two cruisers, four destroyers and six frigates.  She stroked the bump on her nose, a little reminder from Camp Gettysburg of how things can go wrong.   Did the Dominions really have that many reinforcements?  They had been coming in in penny packets, but now they show up with a small task force.  Could they pull that together this soon?  She rubbed her nose and recalled all the times she had used decoy drones to spoof the Ducks.  The decoys worked so well because they looked like the real thing on sensor displays.  It wasn’t until you got close enough for optical sensors that-

Nodding to herself, she called to Toby Partridge.  “Get me Commander Skiffington on the Fes, and tie in the Owl closest to the Duck frigates.”  The connection was made in a moment.

“You have Commander Skiffington of the Fes and Captain Ayala Perl of the Fish Owl,” Toby told her.

“Grant, what is your ETA on the Duck frigates or destroyers?” she asked abruptly.

“Fourteen minutes to missile range on the frigates,” Grant said forcefully, “fifteen to missile range on the destroyers.  But I would have been closer if you-“

Emily cut him off.  “Captain Perl, if you accelerate hard, how long before you could do an active sensor scan of the new Duck ships?”

Captain Perl narrowed her eyes.  “An active scan?  You mean drop stealth?”  She sounded shocked.  For an Owl, stealth was life.

Emily nodded.  “Yes, Captain.  Time is of the essence.  How soon can you get a solid scan on the Duck ships?”

Perl looked like she had tasted something sour, but dutifully checked her displays and said something to her pilot, then turned back.  “At high speed, we can pass over their entire line of ships within five minutes.  But at that distance we could get perfectly good passive scans without the need to further give away our location.”

Emily shook her head.  “I need to know if they are using drones to decoy us, Captain.  If you are close enough to use optics with a very high degree of certainty, I’ll accept that, but otherwise use active scanners, then bug out. Captain Perl, commence your sensor run now.”  Emily turned to Skiffington.  “Grant, take your Wing up to the ten minute line and hold there until I give you specific attack orders.”

* * * *

Captain Perl of the Fish Owl watched their acceleration climb as the little ship turned onto a course that would take them one thousand miles over the line of Dominion reinforcements moving against the Lionheart.  They were running with only passive sensors, using them to fix the location of the Dominions.  Now, though, that was about to change.  She turned to her XO.

“Billy, I’ve been an Owl captain for five years and I’ve never given this order before, but I guess there is a first time for everything.”  She took a deep breath.  “Commence active sensors.  Continuous sweeps until I say otherwise.  And as soon as you get data, send it to the Rabat.  Don’t wait for my order or even try to analyze, just send it.”

Bill Holcomb looked at her a little wide-eyed, but nodded.  “This is going to be very interesting,” he said.

Perl snorted.  “Oh, yes, ‘interesting’ is the word for it.”

“We’ll be over them in one minute, skipper,” the Sensors Officer warned.

Perl watched the clock.  After thirty seconds, she said: “Commence active scanning now!”  And to the pilot:  “Keep accelerating, Cindy!  I don’t think the Ducks are going to be very happy with us.”

“Missile launch!  Two incoming missiles!  No, make it four!”  Holcomb’s voice sounded a little squeaky, Perl thought.  “Passing over the frigates and coming up on the destroyers.  More missiles after us.”

“Mildred, initiate full anti-missile protocol,” Perl ordered.  Instantly a series of vibrations were felt as the AI launched chaff, jammers and decoy drones.

“Passing the destroyers,” Holcomb reported.  “Or I should say, the destroyer.  Good data from the sensors; only one destroyer down there.”

“Get it to the Rabat!”

“Done, Captain,”  Holcomb assured her.  He studied his sensor display.  “Passing the cruisers, now.   They’re ignoring us, bigger fish to fry, I guess.”  He typed in a final command.  “All data sent to Rabat and receipt acknowledged.”

“Cindy, full stealth and get us out of here!” Perl barked.  The Fish Owl banked hard to a new course ninety degrees off their line of direction and the acceleration reduced.

Captain Perl sat back in her chair and blew out a long breath.  She thought of her little granddaughter on Cornwall.  Four years old and cute as a button.  She prayed to the Gods of Our Mothers that Jessica was still alive.  She vowed then that if she survived this battle and this damn foolish war, she would go back to Cornwall and find her daughter and granddaughter and never, never leave their side again.

* * * *

Emily called Grant Skiffington first.  “Grant, the sensors show two cruisers, one destroyer and no – repeat – no frigates.  Send in your Wing.  Concentrate on the cruisers.  Good hunting!”  Then she switched frequencies to Captain Eder.

“Lionheart, this is Rabat.  Owl scan shows two cruisers, one destroyer and zero frigates.  Fes Wing is moving in on cruisers.  Acknowledge.”

On the Lionfish, Captain Eder nodded in relief.  Two Duck cruisers were hard enough, but add in a task force of destroyers and frigates and it didn’t bear thinking about.  As it was, the sides were about even, with Eder holding a slight advantage in power and the Ducks holding the edge in mobility.  At least, that is, without the gunboats.

But Eder had the gunboats and he intended to make good use of them.

He studied the holo display, which showed the two enemy cruisers still trying to penetrate the chaff and jammers to get a clear fix on Lionheart and Wellington.  “Helm, keep us moving in a gentle curve away from the asteroid belt and any more reinforcements they might come up with.  Keep us just outside of their missile range.  There is an ugly rumor that their rate of acceleration is faster than ours, so once they’re clear, be prepared for some hard maneuvering.”  He looked at the display once more.  Somewhere back there, lost in the clutter, was a Wing of gunboats.  The Duck cruisers thought they had spoofed him and were making him run.

They’d learn the truth of it soon enough.

* * * *

On the far side of the Battle of Siegestor,  Hiram Brill waited anxiously for the clock to tick off ten minutes.  At eight minutes Murphy called.

“We have number six in position.  A little bigger than I’d like, but it’ll have to do.”

Hiram took a breath.  “Tugs on rock Number One, start your attack run!  Tugs on Number Two, you are in the batter’s box.”  Please God, let this work, he thought fervently.

The first two tugs activated their tractor beams and accelerated forward, dragging the one hundred ton chunk of rock and ice behind them. The rock was nowhere near the mass of the cruisers and battleships they usually moved, but on the other hand they didn’t try to play “Pin the Tail on the Donkey” with a battleship either. The beacon locked to the bottom of the Dominion shipyard gave them the location, but instead of heading straight for it they lifted up, climbing sharply over the top of the asteroid field and dragging their asteroid along behind them.  A combat patrol of gunships took up position on either side of them and several more raced a few hundred miles in front, scouring the area for any enemy ships that might interfere.   So far they hadn’t seen anything, but they had all heard the report of the incoming frigate and rode with their fingers on their missile launch button.

The tugs continued their climb, then Mildred chimed to let them know it was time and they arced over into a steep descent until they unknowingly mimicked dive bombers from World War II.  Their sensors picked up the enormous bulk of Siegestor.  They factored in its forward speed, lined up the direction of their dive and then cut their tractor beams to release the rock.  The pilots jammed their thrusters into emergency power and slammed the throttles forward, lifting once more into a climb and clearing the path for the tumbling, jagged-edged rock that now sped along its ballistic trajectory.  One of the gunships positioned itself thirty miles behind the asteroid, its cameras locked onto it and sent the image back to the Haifa.

Hiram stared at the holo display.  He could see the bulk of Siegestor as it moved ponderously forward, and he could see the spinning, tumbling asteroid as it plummeted downward.  Avi Yaffe came and sat down beside him, eyes glued to the screen, saying nothing.

“I think it’s going to hit,” Hiram said in a low voice, willing it to be so.  They could see hurried glimpses of other asteroids flashing past their rock as it sped towards the Dominion shipyard.  If even one of them struck the rock, it might be enough to push it off course.  Hiram watched as the rock continued its course – the display made it look like it was falling toward the Siegestor – and got closer.  Siegestor began to grow larger and larger and the angle elongated so that they could more clearly see the rock was overtaking the shipyard from the rear, not simply dropping straight down onto it.

Then, almost imperceptibly, Siegestor seemed to move slightly to the right, sliding ever so slowly out of the rock’s careening path.  Beside Hiram, Avi Yaffe groaned aloud.  Siegestor seemed to move a bit further to the right, then further still.  Then the rock was by it and the gunship zoomed the camera out a little, allowing them to see the rock plunging deeper and deeper into the asteroid field below the Dominion shipyard.

A clean miss.

He gritted his teeth, then activated the comm.   “Tugs on Number Two, start your attack run!  Tugs on Three, get ready!”

* * * *

The captain of the Dominion cruiser, Swift Justice, had dropped below the chaff cloud full of jammers and lethal mines.  He immediately launched a reconnaissance drone to seek out the Vicky battleship and cruiser, then opened up a communication line to the Security Coordinator on the Siegestor.  The officer who replied to his signal was the Admiral in charge of Siegestor’s security, and he was furious.

“Swift Justice, where have you been?  We’ve been calling you for the last hour!” he thundered.

The Swift Justice’s captain frowned.   What was this?  “Sir, I am in the midst of a battle with a Victorian battleship and a cruiser.  Their jammers prevented me from receiving your signal.  We cannot match their fire power, can you send me reinforcements?”

“You fool, they are a diversion!  Siegestor is under attack!  They are using tugboats to make kinetic strikes with asteroids.  Break off immediately and attack the Vicky tugs at these coordinates.  I am scrambling every ship we have.  Get back here now!”

“But, Sir, let me alert the Duty First and Fist; they’re still under jamming and if I can get them we can-“

“No!  Obey your orders, Captain!  Full military speed!  Leave immediately.  I’ll send a drone to the other ships to tell them.  Acknowledge your orders!”

The captain of the Swift Justice muttered under his breath.  By the time the Admiral found the other ships it would be too late.  Well, he would send a comm drone into the chaff cloud to broadcast the message, that was the best he could do.

* * * *

The Fes gunboats reported in.  “Commander, we’ve still got one Duck cruiser and a destroyer in the chaff cloud, but the other one is bugging out. Must be pulling 150 Gs. What do you want us to do?”

Grant Skiffington looked at the display.  The second cruiser was clearly running for it, accelerating madly for the asteroid field and probably stressing its inertia compensator to the breaking point.  It was out of the fight.  But the other Duck warships were a perfect target, moving slowly and as of yet unaware of the approaching gunboats.

“Stick to the plan,” he ordered.”  “Go after the destroyer and the cruiser.”

“Roger that!” the gunboat pilot said happily.  The display showed sixty gunboats form a crescent moon formation and dive into the chaff cloud.

As it turned out, the gunboats caught the Duck cruiser and destroyer just as they emerged from the chaff cloud. The problem was that the gunboats pretty much blundered into them, like a man bumping into his opponent in a very dark alleyway.  The destroyer had its anti-missile defenses set on automatic and when the gunboats emerged from the cloud, they immediately triggered them.  Missiles, lasers and rail guns leapt into action before the gunboats could achieve a target lock.  Three gunboats simply disintegrated under the close-range fire, five more went into frantic evasive action and collided with each other.  The other gunboats scrambled back out of immediate range with squad leaders screaming at them:  “Shoot back, goddammit, shoot back!”  Two dozen more gunboats emerged from the chaff cloud, locked on the destroyer and fired everything they had.  The destroyer’s anti-missile defenses fell silent as the ship, torn open and vented to space in too many places to count, began a slow end-over-end roll and drifted out of the battle.

The Dominion cruiser, meanwhile, wasted no time.  Pouring on the acceleration, it turned up and blasted directly away from the gunboats…and directly into the path of the Lionheart and Wellington.  Captain Hillson, always concerned he might run short of missiles, opened up at close range with four ten-inch lasers.  The damage was severe, but not enough to stop the Duck.  The Dominion captain counter-fired, sending two missiles directly into the bow of the Wellington.  Hillson cursed under his breath and fired ten of his twenty missiles.  The Duck cruiser staggered to the side, huge pieces of the hull plating peeling off its flanks.  A laser turret fired at the Wellington and missed despite the close range.  Three of the Wellington’s small laser turrets spotted the movement and fired on it, scouring it off the Dominion’s hull.

Then the Lionheart sped past, raking the Duck ship from stem to stern with twelve ten-inch lasers and countless smaller ones, plus anti-missile fire.  The enemy cruiser split in half lengthwise, the two lengths slowly drifting away from each other.  At first long tongues of fire leapt out, but in a moment the air had escaped and the fires snuffed out.  There were no escape pods.

The bridge crew of the Wellington watched the entire slaughter on video display.  Standing next to Captain Hillson, his Exec snarled, “That’ll teach the bastards!”   But Hillson, who was older and had grandchildren, simply muttered, “May the Gods have mercy upon them.”

The final note of the skirmish came as Lionheart sped on.  Eder radioed a terse message implicitly rebuking Captain Hillson for shooting only ten missiles. “Wellington, please remember you have a battery of twenty missile tubes.  Don’t pussy-foot with the bastards, kill them!”

* * * *

The second team of tugboats moved slowly forward, hauling their asteroid along behind them.  Rather than turn up and then dive down on the Siegestor, they were going to try a long, gently angled shot from behind.  They edged cautiously into the asteroid belt, avoiding the rocks, weaving around debris and working to get directly behind the shipyard.  Finally in line with the Siegestor, they accelerated.  Everything would depend on the momentum of the rock they hauled behind them.  There were no explosive warheads here, only brute kinetic force.  They swerved around a slower asteroid, straightened their path and began the countdown to the release point.

That was when the Dominion frigate appeared right in front of them.

Six missiles shot out at point blank range.  Three struck the first tug and three struck the second.  The frigate immediately flipped over and disappeared deeper into the asteroid belt.  Only one of the six gunboats escorting the tugboats even got a shot off.

“Bugger me!” the lead pilot screamed.  “Where did they go? Where did they go?”

Behind him, the Systems Officer frowned in consternation at his displays.  “The hell with where they went, where did they come from?”  He played back the last sixty seconds.  There was nothing on the screen, just asteroids, and then the frigate seemed to appear out of thin air.  He played it again, and then a third time before he saw it.  The frigate wasn’t hiding behind an asteroid; it had been sitting on it.  When the tugboats got close enough, it simply lifted off and shot its missiles.

“Aren’t you the clever little darling?” he muttered, torn between frustration and admiration.  He quickly typed up a short report, attached the sensor data and sent it to Haifa.  They’d see more of that damn frigate and next time they had to be ready.

Hiram Brill gritted his teeth in frustration.  Beside him Avi Yaffe keyed the mike.  “All Haifa grogin!  All Haifa grogin!  We need you to scrub a corridor from the tugboat launch area all the way to the Dominion shipyard.  Repeat, we need you to sterilize a corridor to the shipyard so the tugs can make their strike.  Next tug launches in five minutes!  Tugboats five and six, prepare for your run.  Tugs seven and eight, you are on deck.  Tugs nine and ten, you are also on deck.  We’re going to try a clean shot with Rock Three, but if it doesn’t work, we’re sending in Rocks Four and Five simultaneously.”

Yaffe turned to Hiram, who looked like he wanted to pound the table in frustration.  “Relax, my friend, this is why we have six asteroids, not just one.”

* * * *

Skimming along the bottom of the asteroid belt, the Dominion frigate Draugr turned toward the location where the Victorian tugboats were milling about, getting ready to launch their next strike.  Captain Astrid Drechsher was enjoying herself.  She’d picked off the Vicky tugboats and flitted back into the asteroid belt before the Vicky escort could react.  Now they’d be searching for her and desperately trying to protect the next pair of tugs on their run at the shipyard.  There would be dozen of those damn gunboats in front of the tugs, so she didn’t plan on being in front of the tugs.

At the Dominion War Academy, Astrid Drechsher had been quiet and bookish.  She had none of the bravado of some of the louder students, none of the ferociousness of others, nothing that marked her as a warrior or a leader of combat troops. She did not stand out. Most of her classmates did not even know her name.  A few of her instructors urged that she be dropped from the Academy, but others noted her high marks and her questions in class and said she should be kept on.

Sometimes the late-blooming flower is the most breathtaking.

When her class finally began to study the strategy and tactics of space warfare, most of her fellow students gravitated to the battleships and cruisers and immersed themselves in fighting fleet against fleet, armada against armada.

Drechsher thought about submarines. Submarines that fought alone, always out-numbered, always hunted.

She studied the submarines from Old Earth, unquestionably the world with the richest military history.  She read about Richard O’Kane and Slade Cutter, about Max Valentiner and Otto Steinbrinck, and the Japanese submariner, Mochitsura Hashimoto and his dreaded I-58. She studied how the Old Earth Wolf Packs in World War II had brought Allied shipping to its knees.  She read histories about how Japanese and American submarines were some of the most feared warships in their respective navies.  She learned how one sneaky ship lurking in the shadows could raise havoc with the enemy and disrupt its planned movements.

In her first years, she gained a reputation for being distant and a bit of a recluse.  While her classmates socialized and partied, Drechsher spent hours, days and entire weekends in the simulators.  She found officers from visiting destroyers and cruisers and pleaded with them to teach her what they knew about stealth maneuvers and surprise attacks.  She traded her virginity to a frigate XO, Lt. Commander Johann Teller, in exchange for him playing war games with her over a three-day holiday weekend.

She told him he could have her again if he caught her.  Teller had her twice on Saturday, once on Sunday, but not at all on Monday.  When they shut down the simulators on Monday night, he invited her to his hotel.  She shook his hand, turned and walked away, her mind swirling with everything she had learned.

“You’re learning how to be cunning,” Teller called after her, “but you were born ruthless.”

Then came the Third Year Exercises, the four-day battle simulation that would decide where the cadets would be assigned following graduation.  One half of her class fought the other half in real time.  Each student was allowed to choose the type of ship he or she wanted to fight.  Every student was assigned the role of Captain, Sensors Officer, Weapons Officer or Executive Officer.

Drechsher selected a frigate.  So few of her classmates wanted frigates that she was given the role of Captain.  One or two of the teaching cadre suggested kindly that she would be better off choosing a battleship or a cruiser, for they were the real warships of the Dominion Fleet.  Drechsher thanked them politely, but her mind was made up.

When the battle commenced and the two fleets groped towards one another in the war zone, Drechsher went to full stealth and crept far below the plane of advancement of the other ships.  Thirty-six hours later, when her side had been almost annihilated and was in flight, she maneuvered one hundred miles behind the enemy’s sole surviving battleship, almost spitting distance.

A minute later the battleship was dead.

Within twenty-four hours the two remaining enemy cruisers were dead.

At that point the Third Year Exercise was terminated – the battle was a draw – and Drechsher staggered off to bed.  She woke three hours later to a knock on her door.  When she opened it an unassuming looking Captain stood there, holding his hat in his hands.  Drechsher brought herself to a bleary-eyed attention.

“You are Cadet Astrid Drechsher?” he asked politely.

A wave of concern spread through her.  Had she done something wrong in the exercise?   Was she going to be punished?  “Yes, sir,” she answered, painfully conscious she was standing there in bare feet, wrapped in an old, ratty-looking terrycloth robe.

“I am Captain Scott Kaeser,” he explained.  “I was invited to watch the Third Year Exercises and I saw what you did.”  His eyes twinkled.  “Do you know that even now the captain of the enemy battleship still doesn’t know what killed him?”  He shook his head and chuckled softly.  “I would like to chat with you about how you learned to do what you did today and maybe a little about your career.”  He smiled almost shyly.  “But perhaps, Cadet, it would be better if you took a minute to freshen up and put on a uniform, lest someone get the wrong idea of just what type of discussion I had in mind.  There is a coffee shop down the block, we can meet there.”

A year later Astrid Drechsher graduated fourth in her class, with the prized Citizen Director’s Award of Merit for her role in the Third Year Exercise.  She was commissioned as a Junior Lieutenant assigned to the Dominion Frigate Draugr.

Most of her classmates still didn’t know her name, but all of her instructors did.

Now Captain Drechsher sent some reconnaissance drones ahead of her to sniff out exactly where the remaining Vicky tugboats were.  Her passive sensors were picking up at least thirty gunboats actively searching the asteroid field behind them.  Let them; she wasn’t there.  A few minutes later her drones reported hearing tugboats and sent an exact location.  That was her target.

Where the Vickies wouldn’t expect her.

Chapter 34

Attacking Siegestor

Emily stared at the holo display, trying to keep up with the flow of the battle.  It helped her to orient herself by picturing the entire battle as if on a football field.  Why she used this approach she had no idea, but it seemed to work.  The field was not a simple plane; it was three dimensional, like a giant cube of space.  The enemy could attack her from below or above.

The asteroid field and the Siegestor shipyard were to her “front,” but at the very back of the field.  The asteroid belt spilled left and right off the field and out of sight. The Lionheart and Wellington were abreast of her to her left, fighting the two Duck cruisers and one destroyer.  The carrier Fes was a little bit in front of her, but its entire Wing was now off to the left, helping the Lionheart and Wellington.  Off to the right corner of the battlefield was the carrier Haifa, guarding the tugs on their mission to sling-shot asteroids at the Duck shipyard.  Also with them were the H.M.S. Oxford and Edinburgh, riding shotgun.  An enemy frigate had just attacked and destroyed two of the tugs, but the area was swarming with gunboats and confidence was high that the frigate had been driven off.

“Commander!” Toby Partridge called out.  “There’s an enemy cruiser here, heading toward the asteroid field.  Sensors show it received a radio message from Siegestor just before it turned for the asteroid belt.”

Emily swiveled her chair and zoomed in on the holo display.  Dammit, what was that doing loose?  “Where is it going, Toby?”

“Best guess is that it will turn toward the tugs and attack,” Partridge replied. “I think we have to assume the Ducks are aware of the tugboats and are calling in their forces to deal with them.”

Emily commed Grant Skiffington.  “Grant, scramble all of your gunboats to head northeast to the tugboat rally point.  Try to intercept the Duck cruiser that is in the area.”

Skiffington immediately commed back.  “We chased that ship out of the chaff cloud and it ran.  It’s out of the fight,” he explained condescendingly.

Emily stared at the comm screen in disbelief.  Didn’t he understand?  “That cruiser is the Dominion Swift Justice.  We think it is going after the tugs.  Now scramble your gunboats to the tugs!  That’s an order!”

Skiffington gave her a sour look and cut the comm connection.  A minute later sensors showed the Fes Wing wheeling about and accelerating sharply toward the tugboats.  Okay then. She turned in her chair to Alex Rudd.  “Can you scramble the Rabat’s gunboats to back up the Haifa?”

“We’ve only got twenty-five effective gunboats left,” Rudd cautioned.

“Scramble them!” she said.  “This whole trip is wasted if the Ducks kill the tugs.”  She turned toward Partridge.  “Toby, call the Haifa and warn them a Duck cruiser is in-bound.  Then call the Meknes and tell them to launch anything that can fly and shoot.  Then call all ships and tell them to rally at the tugs.”  Lastly, she turned to Captain Zar.  “Captain, would you be kind enough to get us to the tugs, ASAP?”  She leaned back, mind churning, but for the moment there was nothing else to do.  She turned back to the holo display, watching as all of the Victorian forces began to converge on the northeast corner of her “football field.”

They had to finish off the damn shipyard.

And then, hopefully, find Cookie.

Chapter 35

On the Dominion Prison Ship Tartarus

Cookie suddenly felt the prison ship shudder and for the first time ever was conscious that it was accelerating.  She looked anxiously at Wisnioswski.  “Did you feel that, Otto?”

Wisnioswski was looking at the ceiling.  He nodded slowly.  “Something’s happening; they’ve never goosed it like this before.”  The acceleration continued and Cookie was suddenly conscious of the low background whine of the ship’s engines straining.  They’re running, she thought.  Her next thought followed:  From whom?

There could be only one answer to that.

“There’s a Victorian warship out there,” she said abruptly.

Wisnioswski looked at her incredulously.  “One of ours?”

She nodded.  “One of ours.”

Confirmation of this came an hour later when the door to their cell slid open and Karl and Schroder walked in.  Karl’s expression was thunderous. Schroder, as always, carried a neuro-baton and a sneer. Cookie slid the fork she had stolen from Karl’s room into the back of her pants.  Behind her Wisnioswski climbed laboriously to his feet and stood beside her.  Schroder glanced at his bare feet and snickered.

“Still trying to figure out how to tie shoelaces without your cunt’s help, eh?  Not to worry, the boys and me, we have some plans for you, we do.  You won’t be needin’ to wear shoes at all, will ya?  It’s a mercy, really.”  He smiled at his own wit.

Cookie ignored him and turned to Karl.  “Karl, what is it?” she asked softly, keeping her voice gentle and reasonable.  “You’re obviously upset, but it can’t be anything we’ve done because we’ve been here in this cell.”  She hoped that he hadn’t discovered the missing fork – she had plans for that fork.  But if that’s what this was, well, she would use it now and damn the consequences.

Karl glowered at her.  “Victorian warships are attacking a very important Dominion facility.  Losses are already high.”  He leaned forward, his face reddening with anger.   “This is intolerable!” he grated.   “This is an insult to the Citizen Director and the people of the Dominion!  You and your kind are a blight upon the universe with your arrogance and your bullheadedness and your blind refusal to accept the order and structure the Citizen Director is trying to bring to the Human Universe.  Don’t you understand?  You are beaten!  Defeated!”

Cookie just stared at him, knowing anything she said could only make it worse.

It got worse anyway.  Karl took a deliberate step away from her.  “I wash my hands of you,” he continued in an eerily calm voice.  “Schroder is right; we suffer you to live only at our peril.  You leave us no choice.”  Karl stared at her for a long moment, then turned and left.  And with that, Cookie knew, her fate was sealed.

Schroder smiled warmly at her, but he kept the neuro-baton at the ready.  “We’re a little busy right now, me and the boys, but tomorrow morning, maybe then we’ll come by and have us a little party.  Won’t that be nice?  We’ve got plans for you and your crippled friend here.”

“When you were just a boy in school, Schroder,” Cookie asked matter-of-factly. “Did the girls make fun of you because you picked the wings off flies?”

Schroder glowered at her and stepped forward, the neuro-baton thrust forward.

“Come on, you sick little freak,” Cookie taunted.  “Afraid of a girl and a cripple?  Or can you only get it up when your victim is tied up so they can’t fight back?”  Go for it, you little bastard, she mentally pleaded.  If he got just a little closer she could get that shock stick away from him and then-

But Schroder seemed to suddenly realize there were two of them and only one of him.  He stepped back quickly, keeping the neuro-baton ready.  When he was in the doorway he smirked at her.  “Be fun to see which one of you lasts longer, eh?  I hope it’s you, bitch, I really do.  Sweet dreams.”  He slid the door shut.

Neither Cookie nor Wisnioswski said anything.  The silence dragged on, then Wisnioswski chuckled.   “Shit, Sergeant, you are the very epitome of diplomacy. ’Did the girls make fun of you because you picked the wings off flies?’  Nice touch.  Charming, engaging, all that crap.”

Cookie laughed, despite herself.  “‘Epitome’ of diplomacy?  Pretty fancy word for a Marine.”

Wisnioswski looked offended.  “I’m more than just a pretty face, Sergeant.”

Cookie leaned in closer and put her head next to his, always mindful the cell was probably bugged.  “We’re out of time, Otto.  It has to be tonight.”

Wisnioswski nodded somberly.  “We knew it was coming.  No use waiting.”

Cookie felt a heavy weight lift off her shoulders.  Tomorrow by this time it would all be over.

Chapter 36

The Battle for Siegstor

“Tugs five and six, commence your run!  Tugs seven, eight, nine and ten, get ready, you’ll be going next,” Hiram ordered.  He watched through optical scanners as the tugs assigned to Rock Three activated their tractor beams and lurched forward.  They were taking the high approach, mostly because no one had been able to find that damn Duck frigate.  Forty gunboats formed a loose corridor through which the tugs would tow their precious cargo.  Those tugs should be safe.

He frowned.  What was he missing?  He nervously scanned the holo display.  Tugs five and six were already on their way with a long line of gunboats to shield them.  The other four tugs were moving slowly along the asteroid belt, matching speed with it and so appearing to be motionless.  Far to the left and right the destroyers Oxford and Edinburgh were guarding the flanks.  His eyes drifted back to the four remaining tugboats, sitting on top of a dense mass of swirling asteroids that…that…

Hiram cursed loudly.  Beside him, Avi Yaffe looked at him in alarm.  “What is it?”

Hiram ignored him, frantically waving to the Communications Officer.  “Connect me to the destroyers!”  A second later the green light flashed on his console and the tired, strained faces of Captains Michael Strong and Michael Sweeney appeared on the display.

“Come back in!  Take up station next to the last four tugs and blast the area with active sensors!  Execute immediately!”  Hiram barked, trying hard not to shout.

On the holo display he could see the destroyers turn and race towards the tugboat assembly point.  Both of them shot recon drones on active pinging into the asteroid field.  Hiram slumped back into his chair and blew out a lungful of air.  Avi Yaffe peered at him quizzically.

“It’s the Duck frigate,” Hiram explained, shaking his head in frustration.  “Whoever the captain is, he likes to get in close.  I think tugs five and six are probably okay, but then I realized the last four tugs are just sitting there and I didn’t have anyone close enough to really protect them.  Gods of Our Mothers!”  He wiped nervous sweat off his face.

Yaffe nodded, then ordered the Sensors Officer to launch active sensor drones from Haifa to compliment the two destroyers. Within a minute the area around the tug assembly point reverberated with enough sensor energy to weld hull plating.

* * * *

“God in Heaven!”  Captain Astrid Drechsher flinched at the sound of the Victorian sensors hammering away at the space around them.  Over the last two hours she had managed to bring the Draugr within five hundred miles of the Vicky tugs, technically within missile range but still not able to fire because of the asteroid field clutter.  She was still trying to get closer when the Vickies opened up with active sensors and the Draugr’s sensor display lit up.  The audio output wailed like a fire siren. The sensor array was designed to make a sound when it detected search sensors in case the Sensors Officer was busy looking at something else, but it did have its drawbacks.

“Set it to visual display only or we’ll all be deaf,” she said, trying to keep her voice mild.  The damn Vickies were using enough active sonars to wake the dead…or kill the living.

“We’re within the red zone, Captain,” the Sensors Officer said.  “The only reason they haven’t detected us yet is because of the clutter in the asteroid field.  If we go any closer…”  His voice trailed off, but his meaning was clear enough.

Drechsher settled into her chair and thought through the problem.  The primary target was too well guarded to get at.  She had three options:  Close in any way and fire her missiles, knowing the Vickies would blow her ship to hell.  She rejected that out of hand.  She rather doubted there was a time and a place for suicidal attacks, but if there was, this wasn’t it.

She could attack some of the ships guarding the tugs and then go after the tugs themselves.  She mentally shook her head.  Too many Vickies out there for that to work.

Or she could change the odds by luring away some of the ships guarding the tugs.

“Captain!” her Sensors Officer called out.  “I’ve picked up a Vicky carrier coming in at high speed.”  He peered at his display.  “She’s applying Dark Matter Brake, throwing off a huge plume.  She’ll come to rest within a hundred miles or so of the tugboats.”

“Pilot, turn us around and take us out of here.  Set course for-“  Drechsher looked at the display and picked a point just inside the asteroid belt, near the Vicky carrier – “there.  Let’s do this very quietly, Pilot, very quietly.  Weapons!  Our new target will be the carrier. Missiles only, save the lasers for the tugs.  As soon as we fire on the carrier, we will turn and make a run at the tugs.  I’ll need all missile tubes ready to fire by the time we reach the tugs.”  She only had six missile tubes and three lasers.  There was almost no chance of taking out the carrier, but if she could draw off the destroyers and those annoying gunboats, she might get another chance to take out the tugs.

The Draugr turned and began to pick its way through the asteroid field.

* * * *

The Dominion cruiser Swift Justice activated its Dark Matter Brake and dumped its speed in a huge plume of heat and light.  It quickly fired a brace of five decoys to keep the Vickies guessing and gingerly entered the asteroid field.  It was still west of the Victorian destroyers and tugboats, moving against the flow of the asteroid belt.  Siegestor was behind it, perhaps a thousand miles away.  Its sensors pulsed with the active sensor searches from the enemy gunboats.

“Captain,” reported his Sensors Officer, “I think they’ve already launched a pair of tugs at the shipyard.  They are probably towing one or two small asteroids and will try to sling-shot them into the shipyard.”

The Captain mentally shrugged.  Nothing to be done about them, but he could still stop the others.  “Do you have a fix on the remaining Vicky tugs?” he asked.

The Sensors Officer shook his head.  “Too much clutter, sir.  We’ll have to get a lot closer to pick up anything.”  He hesitated.  “Sir, there’s active sensor probes everywhere.  They’re going to detect us very soon.”

The Captain seethed.  There must be some way to disrupt the attack.  “Show me everything within missile range,” he snapped.  The holo display rippled and eighteen objects appeared each pulsing red.  He leaned forward to see the identification tags better.  Sixteen were the small attack craft the Vickies seemed to be using, one was tentatively identified as a destroyer and the last one, larger than the rest, was just coming to a stop outside of the asteroid belt, enveloped by a Dark Matter Brake plume.

“What is that ship?” he asked.

“Sir, sensors identify it as the Victorian ship Fes, one of their new carriers.”

The Captain looked at the display.  The Fes had arrived with no escorts.  All of the smaller Vicky attack craft were busy searching within the asteroid belt and could not possibly respond quickly if the Fes needed help.  Good.  He smiled.  Although he was unaware that the Dominion frigate Draugr was targeting the same ship, he gave the order that would bring the utmost confusion to the Victorians. And in that confusion and chaos, maybe he could find the damn tugboats. He turned to his Weapons Officer.

“As soon as we’re clear of the asteroid field, lock all weapons on the Fes and fire.  We will already be within range, so fire at once!  Do you understand?”

The Weapons Officer nodded.  He was an old hand, but he had never actually been in combat until an hour ago and what he dreaded the most was making a mistake and letting down his ship.  “Orders understood, sir!” he barked.

The Captain leaned in and spoke softly.  “Just like all of the drills, Reinhardt.  We’ll be at point blank range, so just kill the bastards.”  He clapped him on the shoulder and turned to the helm.

“Helm, mark a course for the carrier Fes, then take us out of the asteroid belt by the quickest means possible.  Execute!”  He sat back in his command chair, displaying nothing but confidence.

And with all of his attention fixed on the Victorian carrier, he never once gave a thought to the Victorian battleship.

* * * *

The Refuge carrier Fes skidded to a stop just short of the asteroid belt, casting a huge plume of heat and light that effectively deadened its sensors for several minutes.

Grant Skiffington was furious.  Furious at himself for not realizing the importance of the escaping Duck cruiser and furious at Emily Tuttle for rubbing his nose in it.  “Prepare to take on any gunboats that need refueling or rearming,” he barked to his bridge crew.  They glanced at him warily.  The skipper didn’t have many temper tantrums, but when he did it was best to stay out of his way.

“Anything on sensors?” Skiffington snapped.

The Sensors Officer shook his head.  “With the DMB plume, we’re blind for another two minutes, Commander.”

Skiffington gritted his teeth.  He wanted to do something, not just sit here and wait to learn if the gunboats found their prey.  Why did he let Emily Tuttle talk him into this job?  He should have taken a destroyer or better yet, tried to get another cruiser command.  Now he was sitting here, watching while other people met the enemy head on--

Four hundred miles to the west, the Dominion Ship Swift Justice burst from the concealment of the asteroid belt, confirmed its lock on its target, then fired every weapon that could be brought to bear.  Twenty-five missiles and five heavy lasers lashed out in a paroxysm of destruction.

One hundred miles to the east, the Dominion Ship Draugr barely cleared the top of the asteroid belt before it fired its six missiles and one heavy laser, then dropped down into the asteroid belt again and changed course for the Vicky tugboats.

On board the Fes, the Sensors Officer breathed a sigh of relief as the sensor display finally cleared up.  Then the missile alarms began to wail.  Skiffington looked up in consternation.  He saw the holo display and paled.  In his haste, he had left his ship exposed.

He turned to his bridge crew.  “I am so sorry,” he said.

The Weapons Officer slapped the toggle for the anti-missile defense to ‘auto,’ but it was too late, much too late.

The first missile struck home, followed immediately by five more, then six more.  And more, and more yet.  Of the thirty-one Dominion missiles, twenty-four smashed through the thin hull plating and exploded deep in the Fes’s interior.  All six of the laser beams found their target.  Inside the Fes, fuel and lubricants burst into flame and munitions exploded. A horrific, endless minute later the air itself burned.  Those not already dead died in agony.

In less than three minutes, the Fes broke into four parts, each a funeral pyre.

It happened so fast.   There were no life pods.

* * * *

“Turn!  Turn!” Captain Teller of Swift Justice ordered.  “Get us into the asteroid field!”  Just then a proximity alarm blared.  The Captain stared at the display panel, aghast.

Hurtling towards them was the Victorian battleship, Lionheart.

“Weapons, lock on them and fire!” he ordered, his voice shrill, but even as he said it, he knew that there were no missiles ready to fire and the lasers were not yet recharged.  His beloved ship was toothless.

“Evasive maneuvers!  Helm, dive into the-“

He never got to finish.

The Lionheart fired forty missiles and ten heavy lasers at point-blank range. The ten-inch lasers speared through the hull and ravaged the Swift Justice from one side to the other, creating gaping canyons of destruction and death, made worse by the vacuum that instantly filled them.   Seconds later the missiles fell upon it like an avalanche from Hell.

Exactly two minutes and fifteen seconds after the Swift Justice killed the Fes, it blew apart.

A scant five hundred miles away, the death of the Swift Justice was recorded by the Draugr’s sensors.  Captain Drechsher stared disbelievingly at the sensor display and the pulsing red icon where the Swift Justice had been until a moment ago.  She stared a long time, not seeing the worried glances exchanged by her bridge crew.  Finally the senior member of the bridge crew, the Sensors Officer, came and knelt down beside her.

“Captain?” he said softly.  He touched her shoulder.  “Captain, we have to leave.  If they get us there is no one else to tell Timor what has happened here.  Captain, please, we have to report that we’ve lost the shipyard, that Timor might be attacked!”

Captain Drechsher took a deep breath and let it out slowly.  “Captain Teller spent a long weekend with me once in the battle simulators when I was still at the Academy,” she said, her voice distant and flat.  “He taught me a lot of what I used today.  I am indebted to him.”

“We have to leave now, Captain, before they find us!” the Sensors Officer repeated.

She sighed and nodded slowly.  “Of course we do,” she agreed.  “Helm!”  She calmly gave the orders to take them away from the killing ground and on a speed run to Timor.  She would warn the Citizen Director of the unthinkable.

The Victorians were coming.

And with that, except for a damaged frigate and a few armed shuttles, the shipyard Siegestor was defenseless.

* * * *

“Commander, Fes is Code Omega!” Avi Yaffe called out.

Emily shot out of her command chair to stand close to the holo display.  “Where are they?” she demanded.

The Sensor Officer swiveled the display and typed a command.  The display enlarged and a blinking orange icon appeared.  “We got a pretty good sensor reading during the attack.  The Duck cruiser Swift Justice took out the Fes and then was destroyed by the Lionheart.”

“Any survivors from the Fes?” Emily asked softly, but the Sensors Officer shook his head.

“Commander, we got a glimpse of a Duck frigate.  It fired a few missiles at the Fes and disappeared into the asteroid field.  Don’t know where it is now.”

“Warn the Haifa and the destroyers, but I think this is going to be over soon,” she said, still thinking of Grant Skiffington.  She remembered the puzzle he used to confirm the friendly identity of ships as he escaped from the Dominion ambush.  How simple and effective it was.  “Do you remember during our first year at the Academy, there was a professor who taught us the role of the different types of ships?” she asked suddenly.

The Sensors Officer looked at her in bewilderment.  “Commander?”

“Professor Yavis.  He told us the job of frigates was to find the enemy, then go silent and report home.”

The Sensors Officer shook his head.  “I remember Professor Yavis, I guess, but I don’t remember anything about frigates.”

Emily smiled.  “Grant Skiffington did.”

* * * *

On board the Refuge carrier Haifa, Hiram Brill and Wing Commander Avi Yaffe watched through optical sensors as Tugs Five and Six launched their asteroid at the Duck shipyard and then lifted up and out of the way.  Two minutes behind them Tugs Seven and Eight swept in with their load, and two minutes behind them the last two tugs came in with theirs.

Rock Number Three crashed through the shipyard’s forward flight deck, shearing fuel pipes, electric lines and smashing the shipyard’s forward fire-fighting apparatus.  The rock had been launched with a slight downward trajectory and punched through the deck of the flight bay into the fuel storage area.  Although the rock had not been traveling as fast as a missile, it had tremendous mass and that mass carried it through the deck of the fuel storage area into the repair bay located immediately beneath it.  Before it came to rest it crushed three Dominion cruisers that were having their weapon systems upgraded in preparation for the final attack against the Victorians trapped in Refuge.

Fires erupted, munitions blew up, precious air vented into space, hundreds of men and women died in the blink of an eye.  The entire shipyard, enormous as it was, shuddered from stem to stern.  Every single person aboard the shipyard immediately knew the Siegestor had been hit.  Hit hard.

And then the second rock hit.

The second rock was larger than the first and the tugs had managed to achieve a higher velocity before they launched it.  Secure from the threat of Duck warships, the tugs had swung out of the asteroid field and accelerated as much as they could, then turned back toward the shipyard, tracking it using the Laughing Owl’s beacon.  For a heart-stopping moment they thought they had launched it too late and the asteroid would pass by the Siegestor’s stern without hitting it, but it seemed to curve into the hull of the gigantic shipyard, striking it about three hundred yards from the stern.

This section of the shipyard was the primary construction yard and in it, side by side, sat four new Dominion battleships.  They had been scheduled to be finished the week before, but problems with the computer systems had delayed their departure.  The four battleships were to be the strong iron fist of the Dominion’s attack on the Refuge wormhole.  They were fueled, loaded with missiles and mines and, save for the annoying software glitches, ready to go.

The second asteroid tore through the hull and skidded across the construction bay, shearing each of the four battleships in half.  It reached the far bulkhead of the construction bay, punched through it and plowed through the crew quarters on the far side.  Behind it the antimatter bottles in one of the battleships ruptured and blew up.  The stern of the shipyard vaporized.  The explosion violently thrust the remaining air in Siegestor forward in a shock wave that instantly crushed the lungs and other organs of anyone still alive.  Only a few dozen life pods escaped the wreck.

The last asteroid hurtled harmlessly through the expanding debris.  What little was left of the shipyard began to tumble end-over-end.  The scorched and blackened hulk soon ran into other asteroids in the asteroid field, each damaging it a little bit more.

Siegestor was dead.

Avi Yaffe turned to Hiram Brill.  They solemnly shook hands.  Hiram turned to the Communications Officer.  “Send the following to all ships. ‘Well done.  Mission accomplished.  The Dominion does not yet know it, but its days are numbered.’”

“Yes, sir!”  She was grinning ear to ear.

“Avi,” Hiram ordered.  “Get all the gunboats back.  With a little luck we’ll be sending them out again soon.  Refuel and rearm.  Try to get them some rest.”

The comm screen lit up with the face of Emily Tuttle.  Hiram beamed at her.

“You did it, Hiram!”  She smiled, but something was wrong and Hiram sensed it right away.

“Emily?” he asked slowly.  “What is it?”

“We lost the Fes,” she told him.  “Grant was on it.  He’s gone.”

“Ahhh…crap,” Hiram said wearily.  Then, thinking like a commander, “How many gunboats did we lose?”

“That’s the good news,” she said, trying to put some optimism into her voice.  “His entire Wing was out, so they all survived.  We’re busy now squeezing them onto the Haifa and the Rabat.  We’re even docking some on the Meknes until we get a better handle on it.”  She paused, looking at him.  “Any word on Cookie?”

He shook his head.  “Not yet.  I’ve got most of the Owls out; we’ll hear something soon.”

Half an hour later, as the Task Force regrouped and the losses were tallied, the Communications Officer motioned urgently for Hiram’s attention.  “It’s Barn Owl!”

The main comm screen refreshed to show Captain Karen Selby.  Plainly visible over her shoulder was the Barn Owl’s view screen, and on it was the picture of a large ship.  Captain Selby was grinning.

“Found the prison ship for you, Commander,” she said.  “It’s a slow bastard and didn’t get very far.  I’m sending coordinates to you now, so come and get her.  Should take you about two hours to overtake her.  Far as I can tell, her top acceleration is no more than thirty gravities.”

“Do they know you’re there?” Hiram asked.

“I wouldn’t think so,” she said confidently.  “We came in under full stealth.  We’re running a parallel course about twenty thousand miles off their starboard side.  The picture you see is from a very stealthy recon drone.  They haven’t so much as twitched.”

“Thank you, Captain,” he said fervently.  “Thank you.”

“We’ll leave bread crumbs so your regular Navy types can find us,” Selby said mischievously.

Captain Eder came on the comm a moment later.  “Commander Brill, I’ve heard you’ve located the Tartarus two hours from our present location.”

“Yes, sir.  She’s running, but slowly.”

“Go get her, Commander,” Eder said.  “Take the destroyers with you.  The Refuge troops under Captain Eitan are also under your command, though I remind you that Captain Eitan actually knows what he is doing when it comes to boarding an enemy vessel and you do not.”

“Yes, sir,” Hiram said dutifully.

“You need to be back here in ten hours, Commander, got that?  Ten hours.  You know there is more to this mission that just destroying the shipyard, much more.  I can give you ten hours, no more.”

Ten minutes later, the Haifa departed from the rest of the Task Force with seventy-three gunboats crammed into its flight deck and the two destroyers riding shotgun.  Emily called Haifa on her private channel.

“Good hunting, Hiram.  Bring her home.”

Chapter 37

On the Dominion Prison Ship, Tartarus

It was the middle of the night.  Cookie knelt on the hard floor of the cell, slowly whispering her final prayers.

“My thanks to you, Gods of Our Mothers, who have kept me in life and sustained me and enabled me to reach this season.

“Thank you for the trials that have made me strong.

“Thank you for the blessing of loving another above myself.”

She paused.  This was the point of no return.   When she spoke these words she would be bound to her task and to her fate.  She would never hold Hiram again; the little curly-haired daughter would never be.  She took a breath and continued.

“Thank you for this final purpose, which I dedicate to you.

“With my death I honor you.

“I ask that you take me under your protection, and when my time is upon me, take me up into your arms, cloaked in your love.

“This, your daughter asks.”

She finished her prayer.  She felt calm.  Centered.  Embraced in a warm glow of deep and abiding spirituality that infused every corner of her soul.  She sighed, grateful to a power she could only begin to understand, and loved more than life itself.

She stood up.

Now it was time to kill as many of the fuckers as she could.

Wisnioswski stood in the corner, watching her gravely.  “Time to go, Private Wisnioswski,” she whispered softly.

“Feed the Beast,” Wisnioswski growled.

They had worked out two different scenarios.  The first was if Schroder and two of his henchmen came into the cell.  That would be very tricky.  The second – the one she preferred – was if there was just the usual guard patrolling in the corridor.  Schroder had not yet come, so they would go with the second.  She nodded and Wisnioswski lay down, took a breath and then began to make his whole body tremble and shudder violently.  Cookie didn’t think he looked particularly sick, but in the dim light of the cell perhaps it would suffice.

She banged on the door and called out.  “Hey, he’s having a seizure!  I think he’s swallowing his tongue!  He’s having a seizure!  Help!”

It took close to a minute before she heard heavy footsteps approaching the door.  A gruff voice said, “Stand away from the door, in the corner!”

“Hurry!” she cried.  “I think he’s dying.

“Go to the corner and face the wall,” the guard ordered.

Cookie took a step toward the corner and faced it.  She was still a good four feet from the corner, but at that moment Wisnioswski threw another fit.  He writhed on the bed, his eyes bulging, lips in a grimace.  This time he had bitten his lips and spluttered blood all over his face and chest.

Cookie looked over her shoulder; her heart sank.  There was not one guard, but two.

One stood in the doorway, the muzzle of his rifle pointed down.  The second guard, meanwhile, had positioned himself mid-way between Wisnioswski and Cookie, shifting his attention between the two of them with short, jerky movements of his head.  Cookie’s mind raced.  Could they handle two armed guards?  She could tell Wisnioswski to abort.  The signal was to tell him, ‘Be strong, Otto.’  They could wait for another chance, but there was so little time; Schroder and his men would come for her in the morning.

No, she would die before she let herself be taken again by them.  She kept silent, and while the guards’ attention was on Wisnioswski, she retrieved the fork from her waistband.  One fork against two men with rifles.  Gods of Our Mothers, take me into your protection.

Wisnioswski suddenly sat part way up, clutching his chest and moaning.  When the second guard turned to him, Wisnioswski coughed a thick glop of spittle and blood onto the guard’s face.

“Oh, Gods!”  Cookie cried fearfully.  “Is he contagious?”

Frowning, the first guard stepped into the cell, his attention on Wisnioswski.  The second guard nervously let his rifle drop a few inches and turned away, frantically trying to wipe the blood off his face.

And there it was.

Cookie took one step to her right, placing the second guard directly in between her and the first guard near the doorway.  The second guard looked up, the first sign that he was aware of her close presence, of the fact that she had moved toward him rather than away.

He looked at her, just beginning to bring up his rifle.  With her right hand, she thrust the fork forcefully through his left eye, through the thin bone of the eye socket and into his brain; with her left hand she plucked the rifle sling off his shoulder.  Ignoring the shriek of agony from the injured guard, she stepped one quick step to the left to clear the line of fire.  Fast.  It was all so very fast.

But not fast enough.

Even as she cleared her line of fire and tried to bring the rifle up, the second guard stepped forward, raising his rifle.  Cookie blinked, dropped her rifle and stepped back into the injured guard, grabbing his battle harness and jerking him to her.  The other guard fired, his flechette rifle spitting out six quick rounds containing hundreds of razor sharp darts that shredded the injured guard’s back, severed his spine and pulverized his heart.  The guard died instantly, transforming into two hundred pounds of dead weight.  Cookie struggled to hold him in place as her shield.

The second guard took two quick steps to the side to give him a better shot.  He leveled the rifle.  That was when Wisnioswski gave him an elbow strike to the temple.  The guard staggered.  Wisnioswski kicked him hard in the knee.  It wasn’t as effective as if he had been wearing military-style boots, but it was enough to spill the guard to the floor.  Then Wisnioswski stomped him hard in the throat.  Once.  Twice.  There was a cracking sound, like a piece of green wood breaking.  The guard jerked violently, hands to his neck, bulging eyes looking pleadingly at Cookie. His feet drummed against the deck, stopped, then twitched violently, and then he sighed a long, sad sigh and was dead.

Cookie was struck by how young he looked.

Wisnioswski stood over him, breathing hard, looking grimly satisfied.  “Fuckers!” he spat.  “They took my hands, but forgot about the rest of me.”

The rifle Cookie took from the first guard was an assault style sonic rifle with a full charge.  She had trained on various Dominion weapons and knew how to handle this one.  Anticipating that they would be fighting in the narrow confines of passageways and rooms, she adjusted the beam to wide spread and made sure the safety was off.  She checked the guard’s belt and pouches – trying to ignore the fork sticking out of his eye – and came up with a simple radio communicator and a magnetic key card, which was probably a master door key.  He also had a second charge for the rifle and a small flechette pistol.  She tucked the pistol into her waistband.  Next, she stripped off the guard’s light body armor.  It wouldn’t stop a large caliber round or a blaster, but it would save her from a flechette gun or a sonic rifle if she wasn’t too close.  Hopefully.  The second guard had only the flechette rifle.  Without hands, Wisnioswski couldn’t use it, so she left it behind.

It was all a question of time, now.  The plan was to somehow reach Engineering before they were discovered.  Neither of them had any idea how to get there, but Karl had a ship’s computer in his quarters and Cookie knew all too well how to get there.  Ducking into the passageway, they quickly moved down it to the stairway that would take them up two floors to where Karl lived.  With luck, maybe he’d even be there.

They moved purposely down the passageway, looking for someone to kill.

* * * *

Avi Yaffe stood on the bridge of the Haifa and snorted.  “By the One God, that is a really slow ship,” he said cheerfully.  They had the Tartarus on visual as it sluggishly tried to accelerate away from them.  Not that it could, of course.  Its top rate of acceleration was feeble at best; the Haifa, the Oxford and Edinburgh had overtaken it in ninety-eight minutes.  Hiram had seen faster garbage scows.

In the main flight bay, filled to the gills with gunboats in various degrees of repair, Rafael Eitan was having his final briefing with the teams that would be transported aboard the Tartarus from the kraits.  He was sending one hundred and fifty men over from a total of five kraits.  Their job was simple and focused: seize the shuttle bay.  Eitan had studied the reports of Cookie’s assault on the Dominion battleship in the first part of the war and took to heart the lesson that Cookie and her men learned through such great suffering:  troops transported onto an enemy ship with nothing but pop guns and plastic swords could not stand up against automated weapons and grenades.

No, the job of the assault troops was to seize the shuttle bay, open the outer doors and hold on long enough for four shuttles loaded with two hundred Refuge Special Reconnaissance Force soldiers and Victorian Marines to arrive with heavy guns, armor, explosives, Marvins – those creepy looking robotic vehicles the Vickies were so fond of – and of course, the beach balls.  Once landed, they could leave the shuttle bay along numerous passageways and fan out through the ship.  The job of the heavy assault troops was to look for high-value prisoners, download the prison ship’s computer core and, as an absolute priority, rescue Sergeant Maria Sanchez and Private Otto Wisnioswski.

When he finished, Rafael looked at the various platoon leaders.  All of them had served with him for years.  They were tough and experienced, but they had never faced anything like this before.  “The lead krait will scan the ship and find the shuttle bay, then find a room near it to beam us over.”  He saw the look of surprise on some of their faces and grinned back at them.  “Oh, yes, gentlemen, you didn’t think I was going to let you have all the fun, did you?”   They chuckled, one or two of them exchanging uncertain glances.  “I will lead the transporter force,” he continued.  “Once the heavy assault troops have joined us, all of you will change into armor and heavier gear and swap out weapons for something with a little more punch to it than the air guns.  Then you’ll join in the hunt for the two Victorian prisoners.  They are the top priority!  Once they are secured, we fall back to the shuttle bay and deplane to the Haifa.”

He looked at them grimly.  “No one gets left behind.  Everybody comes home.”  They all nodded.  This was the solemn pledge they made to one another.  The idea of leaving a dead comrade behind was unpleasant; the idea of leaving one of their own behind as a prisoner of the enemy was utterly abhorrent.

Rafael stood.  The platoon leaders jumped to their feet.  “Load your men onto your assigned kraits,” he said briskly.  “We depart in thirty minutes.”

He had one more thing to do.  He strode quickly to the other side of the shuttle bay, where a mixed bag of Victorian Marines and Refuge SRF troopers were getting the assault shuttles ready.  As he approach he could see five Marvins walking on board.  He paused.  The Marvins were ugly killing machines and, truth be told, they scared the hell out of him.  The Marvins could be remote controlled by an operator who remained behind in a shuttle, or they could be set to automatic and just let loose.  They would rampage through a building or a ship, killing everyone they saw unless they got a ping off an IFF transponder.  The assault teams that would transport over to the prison ship all had non-metallic transponders implanted in their chest cavities.  They worked…most of the time.  There were always lurid stories about Marvins suddenly blowing away a squad member because the poor bastard’s transponder failed.

The Marvins themselves were a nightmare. Fast, armored, relentless and lethal. And they scuttled on eight legs, like bastard spiders from hell.  During their design trials, some sick sonofabitch in Psy Ops had suggested they be fitted with a loud speaker so that they could ‘talk.’  Now when a Marvin stalked through a building or a ship hunting its prey, it could croon, “I’m coming for you!  I’m commming…”  It was not unknown for troops in training exercises to soil themselves, even though they knew the Marvins were only firing blanks.

And the Marvins were tough.  If you were very lucky you could take one out with armor-piercing rounds, but it usually took a heavy blaster, grenades or anti-tank weapons.

As he got closer, he could see two dozen beach balls rolling happily around the deck, darting here and there as their controllers calibrated their sensors.   As they dashed about, occasionally bumping into each other, they looked so silly that Rafael had to smile.  The beach balls were spherical reconnaissance devices that propelled themselves forward by rolling.  Operated remotely, a beach ball sent back a real-time audio-visual display of everything it saw and heard.  They came in two sizes.  The soft balls – Eitan frowned; odd name, for they were anything but soft – were smaller than the beach balls and had more limited sensors.  The larger beach balls could see thermal images through walls and could link to computer systems.  They also had sophisticated face-recognition systems.

Once on board the Tartarus, the beach balls would be set loose to quickly map the interior of the ship and to find Sanchez and Wisnioswski.

Rafael stopped amidst the hustle and bustle of the troops loading the assault shuttles, searching for a face he hoped he wouldn’t find.  But there he was.

“Commander,” Eitan said in a low voice.  “Nice of you to come down and see the troops off.”

Hiram Brill at least had the grace to look abashed.  He was dressed in combat gear, armor and combat helmet and carried a sonic rifle.  But he stuck to his ground.

“I won’t get in your way, Raf, but I’ve got to go over.  Cookie is over there somewhere,” he said firmly.

Rafael suppressed a sigh.  “No, Commander, you are not going over.  All my men are specialists at this sort of thing.  You aren’t trained for it.  Most likely you will get yourself killed, which would be a shame, and maybe get one of my men killed” – his voice hardened – “which I will not allow!”

Hiram looked up at him.  Rafael was right; Hiram was a liability in this type of fight.  He didn’t have the training.  He didn’t have the experience.  Logic dictated Hiram should wait behind on the Haifa.

Bugger logic.

Hiram leaned in closer and said very softly in Rafael’s ear:  “Captain, in this operation you report to Colonel Dov Tamari, and Colonel Tamari reports to me.  I’m going.  Accept that as a fact.  Now, make it happen.”

Rafael gave him a cold look, then snapped his fingers at a grizzled, bald sergeant who had been standing nearby, trying very hard to look like he wasn’t eavesdropping.   The sergeant snapped to attention.  “Yes, sir?” he barked.

“Sergeant Maimon,” Rafael said icily, “this is Commander Brill of the Victorian Fleet.  He is in command of this operation and has graciously decided to go in with the first assault wave so that he can share his insights on how to properly execute the boarding of an enemy ship.”

“Yes, sir!” Sergeant Maimon shouted, keeping his face expressionless.

“Sergeant Maimon, despite the many important things you would normally be responsible for, you will be Commander Brill’s personal bodyguard.  That will be your only task, Sergeant.  Keep him alive and do your best to prevent Commander Brill from inadvertently killing one of our troops.”

“Yes, sir!”

“If the Commander should take it upon himself to want to wander aimlessly through that big Duck prison ship over there, Sergeant, my express orders are that you are to sit on him until he comes to his senses,” Rafael continued, never taking his eyes off Hiram.  “And if he absolutely refuses to stay out of the way or otherwise does anything to endanger the mission, you are to place him under arrest and return him to the Haifa forthwith.  Do you understand, Sergeant?”

“Forthwith, sir.  Yes, sir!”  Sergeant Maimon cast a baleful glance at Hiram.

“Carry on, Sergeant,” Rafael said.  And to Hiram, “Welcome to the SRF, Commander.”  Then he turned on his heel and walked stiffly away toward the krait ships, which were loaded and ready to go.

“Well,” Hiram said dryly, “I managed to piss him off.”

Sergeant Maimon looked at him dubiously.  “Beggin’ the Commander’s pardon, sir, but you do know how to shoot that sonic rifle, don’t you?”

Hiram smiled.  “Oh, yes, Sergeant, they taught us how to shoot in basic training.”

Sergeant Maimon pursed his lips, as if tasting something sour.  “I see, sir.”  He took a breath.  “Let’s find you a seat and get you strapped in, sir.”

“Don’t worry, Sergeant, I won’t make any trouble.  I just need to be over there.”

Maimon stopped and looked him straight in the eye.  “I’m sure you won’t, sir.  But beggin’ your pardon, sir, if you get one of my boys or girls killed, then Commander or no, I’ll kick your bloody ass into the middle of next week.”

Hiram nodded.  “I think we have an understanding, Sergeant.”

* * * *

The mood on board the Dominion Ship Tartarus was one of barely suppressed panic.  Although Cookie had never seen them, there was a reinforced company of Dominion Security Forces on the ship, put there because the prison ship sometimes carried as many as 2,000 prisoners under the jurisdiction of the Dominion Intelligence Directorate.  Most of the prisoners were political prisoners, but even the softest academic could be hardened by prison and the DID took no chances.

Of course, most of the prisoners died within a year of their imprisonment, but there were always new enemies of the State to fill their cells.  The DID relished its work.

Now, with three Victorian warships hovering nearby and boarding parties no doubt in route, the DID officer in charge was faced with a simple decision: Should he kill all of the prisoners before the Vicky boarding parties got on board?  Or should he maximize the defense of the ship in an effort to keep control long enough for rescue to come?

Logistically, it was difficult.  Although he had recommended it several times, the Tartarus had never been retrofitted so that the cell blocks could be sealed off and vented into space.  That would have been quick and efficient.  No, he would have to send men up and down the rows of cells, opening each door so that they could shoot the prisoner.  It would take a while, no matter how zealous the Security Force soldiers might be in their duties.

Defending the ship was no sure thing, either.  He frowned, thinking through the problem.  The boarders would probably arrive in a matter of minutes.  He thought furiously.  There was another way.  He turned to his personal bodyguards.  “Follow me,” he barked.  “We’re going to the bridge.”  As he walked he thumbed his comm unit and crisply gave orders to the Security Forces to guard the two shuttle bay entrances, but to leave two quick reaction forces at either end of the ship so that they could attack any boarders who might come in through the hull.

Once on the bridge, Colonel Konig wasted no time.  “Captain, turn on all of the ship’s internal monitoring equipment,” he ordered, “And arm the ship’s scuttling charges.”

The Captain’s eyes narrowed.  “Arm the scuttling charges?”

“Now, Captain,” Konig repeated. “Do it now.”

Konig sat down in the Captain’s chair.  He would watch the fight that was about to ensue.  If the Security forces won, then all was well.  If they lost, well, he would do his duty.

* * * *

Cookie led Wisnioswski down the passageway, sonic rifle to her shoulder.  They passed numerous rooms.  If the door was closed, they kept moving.  If the door was open, she quickly checked.  If it was occupied and the occupant would likely see them go by, she pulled the flechette pistol out and shot them once in the head.

They rounded the last corner before the steep stairway.  Two men were talking at the bottom of the stairs.  Too far away for a confident shot with the flechette pistol.  Cookie kept walking toward them at a steady pace, rifle up and ready.  It was a moment before one of them looked up and really saw her, or at least saw her rifle.  As soon as she saw their eyes widen and their mouths open, she fired one quick shot with the sonic rifle.  Whaapa!

Both men collapsed, blood streaming from their noses, ears and eyes.  Cookie stayed upright, sweeping the rifle back and forth, looking for a threat. Seeing nothing, she slipped out the pistol, shot each of the men in the head and tucked the pistol back into her waistband. Wisnioswski quickly checked the men for weapons.

“Nothing,” he told her.

“Stay close,” she ordered, then began moving up the stairs.  They moved quietly thanks to the prison slippers they had been issued.  At the top of the first rise there was a large open door.  Cookie paused, straining to hear if anyone was nearby.  From the distance there came a stuttering, popping sound.  Gods of Our Mothers!

She turned to Wisnioswski.  “Otto, I think Victorian troops have boarded!”

Wisnioswski grinned sharkishly.  “Can we find them?”

Cookie listened again, but she couldn’t hear any more shooting.  There was someone shouting, but she couldn’t tell from which direction.   Besides, if they blundered into a Victorian boarding party now, in the heat of battle, there was a good chance they’d get shot. She shook her head.  “Let’s stick to plan,” she whispered.  “Get to Karl’s, then find out where Engineering is.”

They slipped past the open door and went up the second flight of stairs to another open door.  The corridor was empty, but now she could more distinctly hear the sound of shouting and someone running.  She slipped into the corridor, turned left and went six doors down.  Karl’s quarters.  She had watched Karl type in his entry code a dozen times.  In a moment she had the door open and they stepped inside.

Where Karl stood staring at them, eyes wide in shock.

* * * *

Rafael Eitan and his men materialized in a snow squall.  At first the snow was so thick he couldn’t see where they were, but as the transport finished, the wind abruptly died and the snow settled to the floor.  He quickly glanced around; all thirty men were present.  Four other groups of thirty were being transported to other rooms near the shuttle bay while he was standing there.

“Shall we take a stroll to the shuttle bay, gentlepersons?” he asked softly.  The Lieutenant and NCO snorted, but the men and women crowded into the little room grinned at him.  The Lieutenant elbowed her way in front of Rafael.  “With all respect, sir, if you would be kind enough to let me get on with my job?”  She was Daniella Tal; her parents were close friends with Rafael’s parents and she had known Rafael since childhood.  She’d had a crush on him when she was nine and now looked at him with amused exasperation.  Rafael bowed and swept an arm, letting her take the lead.

Tal signaled two of her troops and they crept to the doorway.  She opened the door just a crack, then a little further, then she slowly pulled back into the room and quietly shut the door.  She walked to Rafael and put her mouth to his ear.

“I think the shuttle bay entrance must be right around the corner.  There are twenty Duck soldiers in a group about forty feet down the corridor.  They are looking around the corner to where the shuttle bay is.”  She smiled, green eyes dancing.  “I think they are waiting for us to come in on shuttles to take the shuttle bay.  They don’t know we are already here, behind them.”

Rafael nodded.  He suspected this scene was being played out with the four other groups, but that meant it would be only a matter of minutes before they were discovered.  He bent over to Lieutenant Tal.  “We need to hit them hard, right away before they realize we’re here.”

Tal nodded enthusiastically, then snapped her fingers to get everyone’s attention and pointed at ten men and women.  She used crude sign language to tell them what they were going to do, then crossed back to the door.  At the door, she looked back to make sure everyone was with her, flashed Rafael a grin and slowly opened the door once more.  Then, her rifle up to her shoulder, she pushed open the door and crept into the corridor.  Slowly, quietly, her ten hand-picked troopers followed her out.

The first five out knelt down, keeping their weapons trained on the unsuspecting Dominions.  The next five slipped in behind them, standing erect.  Tal’s lips twitched; she was using an infantry formation not used since the American Civil War on Old Earth.

None of the Dominions noticed them, their attention locked on the shuttle bay around the corner.  Tal almost felt sorry for them.  Almost.  It could so easily have been the other way around.

“Now,” she said softly.

It was over in a moment.  None of the Dominions even had a chance to scream.

Rafael stepped out, glanced at the pile of bodies and nodded approvingly to Tal.  “Take their weapons, armor and communicators,” he ordered.  He thought about it longer.  “In fact, strip them.  Hurry now,” he urged.  “Lots to do.”

* * * *

A half mile off the starboard side of the Dominion prison ship Tartarus, four Victorian assault shuttles matched the course and speed of the vessel, waiting for the shuttle bay doors to open.

Each of the shuttles held fifty Victorian Marines, one or two Marvins and an assortment of beach balls and their controllers.  The Marvins were powered down and just stood there, menacing in their sheer bulk and ugliness, but momentarily harmless.  The beach balls, on the other hand, scurried about the deck like rampaging children, making noise, bumping into things and generally raising hell.  There was always a bit of tense competition among the beach ball controllers – who would stay in the shuttle to control the beach balls as they went through the ship – and the combat Marines, who considered the controllers to be little more than weenies and were not shy about saying it.

Now, waiting for the shooting to start, the Marines each sat wrapped in their own thoughts, trying with varying degrees of success to keep their nerves under control.  Most of all, they didn’t want to be bothered.  The controllers knew this and took every opportunity to torment them.  One beach ball rolled and bumped its way down the deck, stopping in front of a tall Marine who had put his head back and closed his eyes.

“Well, helloooo, handsome,” the beach ball chirped.  “I am a self-propelled, armored, multi-band sensor reconnaissance unit of seductively spheroid shape and uncanny wit.  Are you a sentient life form?”

“Bugger off, weenie” the Marine said without opening his eyes,” I’m trying to sleep.”

“Oh, I’ll sleep with you anytime, big boy,” the beach ball cooed.  It rolled forward and nudged his knee.  “Oh my goodness!  We’ve got a problem here.  A scan of your anatomy reveals that you either have no male sex organs or that they are too small to be measured by my equipment.  Is that possible?  Could it be that small?”

“Go away,” he said irritably.  Marines sitting on either side of him began to smirk.

The beach ball spun around in a tight circle, lights flashing.  “I’m being told to bugger off by a dickless wonder!  Rejected!  Spurned!” it wailed loudly.  “It’s just as well, with a dick that small, you could never satisfy a real sphere!”

Grunting, the Marine lashed out with his foot, but the beach ball suddenly bounced up two feet and the Marine missed it.  The beach ball rolled out of range, made a rude noise and rolled away.

“Told you you’d never kick it,” one of the other Marines said.  “Like trying to catch a damn pigeon, just can’t get close enough.”

The beach ball stopped in front of another Marine.  “Hello there! I am a self-propelled, armored, multi-band sensor reconnaissance unit of seductively spheroid shape and uncanny wit.”  It rolled a little closer and seemed to peer at him. “Why bless my soul, I didn’t know they let Dominion wart hogs enlist in the Victorian Marines! Or are you just the mascot?”

And so, totally distracted from what lay ahead, the Marines watched in irritated amusement as the beach balls bantered and insulted and then dodged the inevitable backlash.

At the far end of the row, Hiram Brill watched in disbelief.  “Gods of Our Mothers, is it always like this?”

“No, sir,” replied Sergeant Maimon laconically.  “Sometimes the shuttles just get blown out of the sky and everybody dies.”

* * * *

Karl stared at Cookie, his mouth opening and closing like a carp’s.  Cookie kicked the door shut behind her.  “Karl, I want one thing from you and one thing only:  Where is Engineering?”

Karl stared at her for a long moment, not saying anything.

“Karl, you tell me what I want to know or I am going to shoot you right here,” Cookie said conversationally.

“I never meant for them to hurt you,” Karl stammered.  “The Victorians have boarded us.  You and I can go to them, I can surrender-“

Cookie sighed.  “Karl, for the last time, which way is Engineering?”

Wordlessly, Karl pointed toward one wall.

“And which deck is it on?”

“Fifth through tenth,” he said.

“Ok, that wasn’t so hard.  Now, Karl, call up the ship map on your computer and show me,” she said pleasantly.  Slowly, fearfully, Karl did as she ordered.  Once the map appeared, he tried a cautious smile on her.  “Hey, Cookie, we had some good times together, didn’t we?”

“Gee, Karl,” Cookie said, “torture and rape; it hardly gets better than that.”  Then she shot him, once, through the forehead.  He dropped like a stone, and just as lifeless.

Wisnioswski stepped over the body and studied the computer screen.  “Four decks below us, but a bit of a hike to get there.”

Cookie shrugged.  “We aren’t doing any good here,” she said.  They spent a minute getting some food and a bottle of water from Karl’s galley kitchen, then Cookie memorized the quickest way to Engineering.  Wisnioswski was right; it was a bit of a hike.

The trouble didn’t really begin until they were climbing the stairs down to the fifth level.  They could hear a lot of shooting ahead of them.  They reached the corridor entrance just in time to see three Victorian Marines in a close range gun battle with two Dominion soldiers.  The Marines had been caught in the open by Dominion soldiers wearing heavy armor and carrying blasters.  The Marines had only light armor and were shooting air rifles. They were hitting their targets, but the rounds were not penetrating.

In short order, the enemy blasters shot the Marines to pieces – literally to pieces – as the enemy blasters tore them apart.  When it was over, the Dominion soldiers approached them cautiously, rifles at the ready.  Cookie waited until they had passed the doorway where she was hiding, then adjusted the sonic rifle to tight spread, stepped out and shot them both in the back of the head.  WHAP!  WHAP!  The two Ducks went down, blood spurting from their helmet seals.

Cookie scanned the corridor for anyone else, then snatched up the guards’ blasters.  She unslung her sonic rifle and put the sling over Wisnioswski’s shoulder, then added one of the two blasters, keeping one for herself.

Wisnioswski stared at the three dead Marines.  “Poor bastards,” he muttered, and yet to Cookie he seemed more energetic, more focused, more himself than he had been since their capture months ago.

“I’m using you as my mule, Wisnioswski,” she told him.  “Stay close in case I need one of the spare rifles.”  She frisked the bodies of the Dominions and came up with three additional power units, which she stuffed into her pockets.  She looked longingly at the heavy armor, but decided it would take too long to strip the bodies and get it on.  With a last glance at the fallen Victorian Marines, they pressed on.

* * * *

Rafael Eitan stepped into the shuttle bay and glanced about.  The sound of gun shots came from the two other entrances, where Dominion troops were holding off the attacking Refuge Special Reconnaissance Forces.  Rafael quickly signaled that ten of his men were to attack the Dominions at one of the entrances, and another ten were to do the same at the last entrance.  That left him ten men and those he sent in search of the control panel to open the giant outer doors.  The harsh fact was that he didn’t need to rescue all of his troops; what he had to do was open the shuttle bay doors.

Across the shuttle bay deck, one of his men was waving his arms frantically, trying to catch his attention.  The thing he missed the most in a transport assault, Rafael decided, was a good combat helmet with all of its communication devices.  He jogged over to the man – Specialist 4 Leckie – who was standing by a doorway.

“This looks like the control room, sir,” he said motioning to the small room.  Rafael stepped inside. There was a large console with a bewildering array of buttons, toggles and dials, along with display monitors showing the outside of the vessel and the entire deck on the side near the blast doors.  He turned back.  “We have five guys trained in how Dominion shipyards operate.  Where are they?”

Specialist 4 Leckie smiled.  “I’m one of them, sir.”

Rafael nodded in relief.  “Okay, Mr. Leckie, can you figure out which control opens the blast doors?”

Specialist 4 Leckie glanced at the control panel for a moment.  “Well, sir, based on my years of experience and the rigorous training I was given in order to prepare for this mission, I think that big red button with the label that says, ‘Open Doors’ is a good bet.”

Rafael looked at the control panel.  There were two big push buttons.  One was red and said ‘Open Doors,’ while the other was blue and said, ‘Close Doors.’   He nodded ruefully and turned back to Leckie, who was grinning ear to ear.  “Specialist, did anyone ever tell you that no one likes a wise ass?”

Leckie’s grin grew larger.  “Many times, sir.

Rafael jutted his chin at the control panel.  “Do it.”

Leckie sat at the control panel, studied it for a moment longer just in case he had missed something, and then slapped the red button.  Immediately a klaxon began sounding and an automated voice warned that the outer doors would open in two minutes.  “All personnel not wearing vacuum suits must be inside the yellow line!  Warning!  All personnel not wearing vacuum suits must be inside the yellow line!”

There was a buzz as a force field materialized just outside the yellow line.  The force field would retain the shuttle bay’s air once the doors opened.

Within minutes all four Victorian assault shuttles were inside the shuttle bay and unloading.  The heavy assault troops poured out and immediately reinforced all of the entrances into the shuttle bay. The five Marvins were powered up.  Two were left to guard the shuttles and the other three were assigned to assault teams.  Beach balls bounced out of the shuttles and rolled to the entrances.  No smart quips now, they just stood ready for orders. Rafael ordered all of the surviving troops from the transporter assault to get into the standard ground assault gear used by the Victorian Marines.  He pulled his combat helmet on with a sigh of relief, uplinked to the Company AI named Caesar – who came up with these names? – and watched in satisfaction as data began to scroll across the helmet visor.

The news was good and bad.  Of the one hundred and fifty men who transported over to the prison ship, thirty were dead, fifteen wounded and three were missing.  Some rescue mission.  He had one hundred or so men still effective, plus the two hundred men from the Victorian shuttles under the command of Colonel Dov Tamari.

Hiram Brill emerged from one of the shuttles with his watch dog, Sergeant Maimon, in tow.  The scene in the shuttle bay was one of chaos, but the chaos of the hive.  Every soldier had a job and was doing it.  And it was surprisingly quiet.  Instead of shouting orders, everyone wore helmets with a full range of communications.  Each man and woman in the assault company had a specific niche in the communications web.

Except him.  He was supposed to be sitting in the control room on the Haifa.

No, that’s not right, he reminded himself.  He was the commander, he was supposed to be wherever he was; that was the perk of being the commander.  His gaze turned to the heads-up view inside his visor.  “Caesar, where is the Controllers’ room?”

The AI came back immediately.  “Shuttle Number Three, rear compartment.”

“Sergeant Maimon, follow me, please.”  He walked a hundred feet to Shuttle 3, climbed on board and found himself a chair in the corner where he could watch most of the display screens.  The displays would show him what the beach balls and the Marvins were seeing.  The Sergeant in charge of the room saw someone unauthorized sitting in the corner and started over, but Hiram lifted his helmet visor and smiled at him.  “And a fine morning to you, Sergeant Stafford,” he said warmly.

Stafford stopped in his tracks, a little unnerved to have the Commander in his control room and more than a little pissed that no one had warned him he was coming.

“Just thought I’d sit here a while and see how things develop,” Hiram continued cheerfully.  “Carry on, Sergeant; I won’t get in your way.”

Suppressing a scowl, Sergeant Stafford returned to his position behind the Controllers.

Rafael Eitan checked the stats again and saw that all of his men were suited up and ready.  His helmet pinged and Colonel Tamari’s  face appeared in one corner of the display.  “Captain?” he barked.  “Caesar reports your troops are ready.  I want you to secure the Engineering deck.  Take some prisoners, but no more than a handful.  The Ducks seems to have a company or more of Dominion Internal Security Forces on board; they can be tough little fuckers, so watch yourself.  I am sending my two hundred troops forward to secure the rest of the ship and the bridge.  Sergeant Sanchez and Private Wisnioswski are somewhere in the middle part of the ship and seem to be moving towards Engineering, so keep your eyes peeled.  Our scanner shows they are alive and moving, but we do not have a fix on their exact location.

“Haifa called in warning us that a lot of people appear to be moving in on us here at the shuttle bay.  That’ll be more of the Duck Security Forces, so it’s time we got out of here.”  Colonel Tamari grinned. “Good hunting, Raf.  Move out.”

“Sir, I’d like to take some of your beach balls to scout ahead of us and one of the Marvins to give us some extra punch,” Eitan said.

Tamari grunted and in a moment the squad assignment icons appeared on Eitan’s Heads-up Display.  As he watched the icon for one of the Marvins changed color and position, joining the Refuge Special Reconnaissance Force.  Four of the beach balls blinked twice and then joined his forces as well.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Use them well, Raf, but use ‘em fast.  We’ve got to get control of this ship before the Ducks get their heads out of their asses and organize a counter-attack,” Tamari growled.  “And by the Mothers’ tits, be careful with your blasters down in Engineering.  Some of your boys get carried away down there and you’ll take out the whole bloody ship.”

“I’ll try to avoid that, sir.”

Tamari grunted.  “See that you do.  Stay in touch.”

Rafael spent another minute organizing his force, then switched his comm to the Controller’s room, known for reasons entirely lost to him as the “Hot Box.”

“This is Captain Eitan, who are my beach ball controllers?”

“This is Sergeant Stafford, Lieutenant; I’m riding herd on the controllers.  I’ve given you Specialists Balek and Cocchi, each controlling two BB’s.  What would you like?”

Rafael considered for a moment.  He needed to reach Engineering, but Maria Sanchez and Otto Wisnioswski were wandering around here somewhere as well.  “First, I need direct comm to Balek and Cocchi; if things get hot I won’t have time to go through you.”

“Done,” said Sergeant Stafford and two new communication icons appeared on Eitan’s visor.

“Send Cocchi’s BB’s toward the stern looking for the two Victorian prisoners.  Send Balek’s BB’s toward Engineering by the most direct route they can find.  Map all enemy units.”  Rafael took a moment to slave the Marvin to one of the beach balls.  “Tell Balek that there will be a Marvin trailing about one hundred feet behind one of his BB’s.”  Rafael had been trained in the use of the Marvins as heavy support weapons, but he liked to put them out front just a little behind a beach ball.  When they encountered problems he could then spill his men along either flank and either force the enemy back or eliminate them.  It had worked great in training; now he’d get to see if it worked in real life.

“Send out the beach balls,” he ordered Balek and Cocchi.  He shifted his comm to the Company net.  “All units, double check your IFF transponders!  I will activate the Marvin in one minute!”  He dutifully checked his own and got a good green test light.  It would be rather embarrassing if the Company commander got killed because he forgot to turn on his own IFF.

In the Controllers’ room, Specialist Mariella Cocchi activated her two beach balls and whispered over the comm circuit, “Lassie!  Lassie, go find Timmy!  Find Timmy!  Good girl!”

Sergeant Stafford gave her a dark look, but before he could say anything, Hiram interjected:  “You’re to be commended, Specialist, not many people know the Old Earth Search and Rescue protocols.”

Cocchi flashed him a smile of thanks.  Stafford glowered and went back to work.

The four beach balls bounced once high in the air, then raced down the corridor towards Engineering. When the BB’s reached the first fork in the corridor, Balek kept her two going straight while Cocchi took hers to the left.  Then each Controller put their BB’s on autonomous function and sat back and watched the displays.

A few seconds later the Marvin lumbered down the corridor, keeping pace with the beach ball it was slaved to.  Behind the Marvin went Eitan’s hundred-man force.

Meanwhile, from the Haifa, Colonel Tamari led his two hundred men and the two Marvins towards the bow of the ship and the enemy bridge.

* * * *

Cookie and Wisnioswski never reached Engineering.  As they rounded one corner, they bumped into a squad of Dominion Security Forces.  The Security Forces hesitated for a split second, but Cookie, blaster already leveled, pulled the trigger twice, then hastily backed around the corner out of the line of fire.  A grenade bounced and rolled to the corner; not knowing what else to do, she shot it with the blaster and sent it skittering back down the passageway, where it exploded and took out another of the Dominion troops.

“Back!  Back!” she screamed at Wisnioswski and the two of them ran back to the next junction in the corridor.  Cookie fired three more blaster shots at the bend of the corridor they had just retreated from.  There was a second Dominion grenade, but they were out of its kill zone.  Cookie glanced anxiously down the other end of the corridor just in time to see five men in the uniform of Victorian Marines appear. Two of the Marines immediately opened fire on them, forcing Cookie and Wisnioswski to dart into the side passageway.

“Friends!  Friends!” Wisnioswski bellowed in anger and fear.  “’All together, never alone,’ you fucking morons!  We’re friends!”  More shots came from the Marines, to be answered with shots from the Dominion Security Forces.

“We’re havin’ fun now,” Cookie muttered, then dragged Wisnioswski down the corridor to a steep staircase that went up a level. At the top of the stairs she shot a quick look left and right, didn’t see anything, then darted across the corridor to a small passageway.  Behind her Wisnioswski stumbled and fell flat, unable to break his fall with his injured arms.  As Cookie ran back to help him she saw two Dominion Security Force soldiers reach the top of the stairs, but further along the corridor behind them she saw the lumbering, lethal shape of a Marvin.

The Dominions raised their blasters to their shoulders.  Cookie dove to the floor, then covered her head as the air above her seemed to crackle and snap.  A gust of heat blew past her and when she looked up she saw the lower half of the two Duck soldiers collapse back down the stairs, seemingly in slow motion. There were no upper halves. The Marvin lurched into motion again, coming towards her, but as it reached the top of the stairs a grenade arched through the air and exploded on top of it.  The Marvin staggered to a stop, then its eight legs seemed to lose strength and it collapsed to the deck.

Cookie waited for the second grenade, but none came.  Cursing under her breath, she grabbed Wisnioswski by the arm and went through the first door she could find.

And stopped.

The Dominion prison ship Tartarus was twenty-six decks high.  Cookie stood on a catwalk six decks from the bottom.  Below her were five decks of prison cells and soaring above her, lost in the dim light, were twenty more decks of prison cells.  The decks continued forward and back out of sight as they curved gently with the curve of the hull.  This was the main prison population on the ship.  Part of her tried to count the cells, but quickly gave up.  There were hundreds, maybe thousands.

A few feet away, a man stood in his cell looking at her with wonderment.

“Who are you?” he croaked.  He had a beard and was emaciated.  One eye was gone, the eye socket a scared crater weeping yellow pus.  Cookie could smell him even ten feet away.

“The Victorians have boarded,” she said, side-stepping his question.  “Who are you?”

“The Vickies?  Here?”  The man seemed to stagger.  Then a look of horror passed over his face.  “No, no.  You must warn them, if the DID think the ship will be lost, they’ll blow it up.  They have scuttling charges.  You must leave!  Quickly!”  He was panting with the effort of speaking.

“Who are you?” Cookie asked again.

“I am Friedrich Altmann.”  He stared at her through his one eye.  “I was the captain of this ship.”  He stared at her for a long moment.  “My God, are you really here?”

* * * *

On the bridge of the Tartarus, Colonel Konig sat by the control console and watched the monitors closely.  It was a hard to tell, but his men seemed to be holding their own better than he might have hoped.  Could they hold long enough for rescue?  He decided that if the Vickies reached either the Engineering Deck or the Bridge, he would detonate the scuttling charges.

He settled down to wait.

* * * *

Cookie stared at Captain Altmann.  Bugger me! she thought frantically.  “Wisnioswski, on me,” she ordered and then bolted through the door back into the corridor. To the left she could hear the firefight still raging between the Victorian Marines and the Dominion Security Forces.  She turned right, ran until she came to an intersection, and turned right again, with Wisnioswski pounding along heavily behind her.  Now she and Wisnioswski were parallel to the corridor where the Marines were, but headed in their direction.  Moving as quickly as she could, not bothering to stay quiet, she led Wisnioswski through three more intersections without seeing anyone.  Two more, she thought.

That’s when their luck ran out.  As she approached the next intersection, four men suddenly stepped out, flechette rifles to the ready.  Cookie’s heart sank as she realized they were dressed in the black of the Dominion Security Forces.  Cookie and Wisnioswski stopped. Wisnioswski stepped half in front of her.

“Man are we glad to see you,” Wisnioswski said.  “There is a squad of Vickie marines back there and-“

“Nice try,” one of the Security Forces said and all four of them fired.  Something punched Cookie hard on the thigh, then Wisnioswski slammed into her, knocking her to the ground and falling on her.  One of the Security Forces stepped forward, ready to deliver the final shot.

“Hello there,” said a sultry woman’s voice.  The four men spun around to see a round metal ball with several blinking lights.  It slowly rolled forward a few feet and stopped.  It chirped.

“I am a self-propelled, multi-band sensor reconnaissance unit of seductively spheroid shape and uncanny wit,” it breathed.

* * * *

In the Hot Box, Mariella Cocchi suddenly sat straight.  “Commander Brill, you need to see this!”

Hiram and Sergeant Stafford rushed to her station and stood looking over her shoulder.  On the large display monitor, they could see Cookie and Wisnioswski running down the corridor.  Cocchi stabbed the comm button and transmitted to all of the Refuge Special Reconnaissance Forces:  “I have a visual on Sergeant Sanchez and Private Wisnioswski.  Require assistance at these coordinates,” and she sent the location to their heads-up displays. Then she slaved her second BB to the first and sent the emergency signal.  Three hundred yards away, the second beach ball turned and raced down the passageway, seeking its companion.

Hiram thought his heart would stop.  Cookie was so close.  Now all they had to-

Then four men stepped out of the side corridor, their backs to Cocchi’s beach ball.  There was a brief, muffled exchange, then the men fired. Cookie and Wisnioswski went down hard, blood splattering the walls and deck.

“Gods of Our Mothers!” Hiram sobbed, then Sergeant Maimon pulled him away.  “Let her do her job!” he whispered harshly.

Specialist Cocchi thought frantically, then pushed the comm switch that would link her through the beach ball’s external speakers.  She leaned closer to the mike and said in a throaty voice, “Hello there…”

* * * *

“I am a self-propelled, multi-band sensor reconnaissance unit of seductively spheroid shape and uncanny wit,” the sphere said.  The four Dominions gawked at it.

“It is my task to return these two prisoners to their cells, so I must ask that you step away from them now.”  It rolled slowly forward another few feet.  “If you interfere, I will be required by Dominion Military Regulation 437-74 to report you to your superiors for insubordination.”  It rolled forward again until it was only fifteen feet away.  With a snarl, one of the Dominions raised his rifle.

“Not nice,” the beach ball chided.

Then it blew up.

Shrapnel tore through the four of them, knocking them off their feet and rendering them senseless.  The beach ball held only half an ounce of explosive, enough to reliably self-destruct, but not enough to guarantee that it would kill anyone near it.  Still, one of the four Dominions caught a piece of shrapnel in the throat and was desperately holding his hands to his neck to keep from bleeding out.  The other three were stunned and wounded with varying degrees of severity.  They lay groaning on the deck.

Cookie tried to sit up, but Wisnioswski lay unconscious across her stomach.  She could see the Dominions struggling back towards full consciousness, groaning and weakly moving their limbs.  “Otto, get off me!” she screamed at him, but he was out cold, two deep flechette wounds in his chest and blood bubbling in a pink froth from his mouth.

“Fuck!” she snarled, squirming underneath him and pushing at him.  One of the Dominions slowly sat up.  She tried desperately to reach the blaster just out of reach, and then remembered the flechette pistol in her belt.  She yanked it out, aimed it unsteadily at the Dominion and fired.

And missed.

“What’s happening?” Hiram shouted.  “What’s happening?”

“I don’t know!” Specialist Cocchi said.  The second beach ball was still thirty seconds away from reaching Cookie’s location.  Cocchi was blind.  “Thirty seconds more!” she cried.

“Bugger me!” Cookie snarled and grasped the pistol in both hands.  The Dominion soldier was fumbling on the ground next to him, trying to pick up his rifle with clumsy fingers.  Cookie set the pattern to a wide spread and aimed it just as the Dominion finally grasped the rifle and lifted it.  She fired.

Once.  Twice.  Thrice.

The first shot somehow missed entirely.  The second caught him in the shoulder and neck.  Blood fountained and he spun around, facing her directly.  The third took him in the chest and knocked him flat.

Cookie sagged in relief. Then she heard an odd, metallic sound and looked up to see a second beach ball rolling rapidly down the passageway to her.  It came to a skidding stop near her, quickly taking in the array of fallen bodies.

“Controller!  We have an emergency,” Cookie said, using her best sergeant’s voice.  “Connect me to the officer in charge of the assault task force.”

On the other end, Specialist Cocchi turned to Hiram Brill.  “Commander, Sergeant Sanchez insists on speaking to you.”

Hiram felt a wave of emotion, fought it back and leaned forward to speak into the mike on Cocchi’s console.  “Cookie, it’s Hiram.”

Cookie closed her eyes for a moment.  How many hours, days and weeks had she sat in her cell trying to imagine what it would be like to hear Hiram’s voice again?  She never imagined it would be like this.  With an effort, she opened her eyes and focused on the task at hand.  “Commander,” she said finally.  “There are two thousand prisoners on board.  One of them was formerly a captain of this ship.  He says the Ducks have scuttling charges and will set them off if they think they are going to lose the ship.”

Hiram rocked back on his heels.  “Cookie, did he tell you where the switch for the bomb is?”

“On the bridge,” Cookie replied.  “He said it could only be activated from the bridge.”

“Hold one!”  He snapped down his visor and selected the comm to all officers.  “This is Commander Brill.  The Ducks have a scuttle charge that can be triggered from the bridge.  Order everyone to fall back!  Stop the attack immediately and fall back to the shuttle bay!”  He switched back to Cookie.

“Where are you?  Are you safe?”

Cookie wanted to laugh.  Safe?  She didn’t think she would ever feel ‘safe’ again.  “Wisnioswski is hurt bad; we need a corpsman.”

Hiram glanced at Mariella Cocchi, who nodded and began to speak urgently into her mike.  “They’ll be there soon, Cookie.  Hold on.”

Hiram switched off, dropped his visor and called Colonel Tamari, Captain Eitan and Captain Yaffe of the Haifa.  He quickly explained the situation.  “Pull everyone back to the shuttle bay,” he ordered. “Captain Yaffe, you need to take out the prison ship’s entire bridge.  Once it is clear that the entire bridge is neutralized, we’ll resume the attack.  Everyone clear?”

Everyone was.  “Good,” said Hiram.  “Captain Yaffe, time is of the essence.  Execute as soon as you are able.  Gods protect you all.”

Hiram disconnected from the command net, disabled his speakers and removed his helmet.  He stepped out of the Hot Box and found a quiet corner in the shuttle bay.  Alone and unseen, he put his hands over his face and wept.

Cookie cut the communications channel.  One of the other Dominion soldiers groaned and tried to sit up.  “Don’t you dare!” Cookie hissed at him. She waved the flechette pistol at him.  “Don’t you fucking dare!”  The man slumped back to the deck.

Private Wisnioswski still lay across her.  His breath came in labored rasps and with each breath more blood trickled from his mouth.  Feet pounded behind her and she looked up to see five marines and a corpsman running up the passageway toward her.  Wisnioswski was gently pulled off of her and laid on his back.

“Two flechette wounds,” she said.  “They hit his lung; he’s breathing blood.”

The Marines eased her down to the deck.  “You’re hit, too,” one of them told her, taking in the nasty wound on her leg.

“No shit; figure that out all by yourself?” she grunted at him.  Now that the adrenalin was subsiding, the pain in her leg was excruciating.  “Secure those prisoners, Private, at least one of them is still alive.”

His eyes widened and he wheeled about, rifle up.  One of the Dominion soldiers blinked slowly at him; the others lay still.  He quickly secured the conscious one and checked pulses on the others.  “Three dead,” he told her.  “What the bloody hell happened here?”

Cookie hissed in pain as the corpsman probed her wounded leg.  “They caught us as we were trying to make it to you guys, but then one of the BB’s came up and blew itself up in the midst of them.”

“No shit?” the Marine said, impressed with the Controller weenie despite himself.

“Bugger me, that hurts!” Cookie said to the corpsman.

“Almost done,” he assured her.  He pressed a med spray against her leg and injected her with something.  In the background she could hear one of the Marines talking to someone.  “Oh, yeah,” he chuckled, “she’s okay.  Already givin’ orders.”  Cookie felt herself starting to drift away, had a sudden image of an anchorless row boat drifting on a lake on a summer’s day.  White fluffy clouds.  Soft breeze…

“Keep him alive!” she suddenly cried.  The corpsman looked at her, startled.  She gestured weakly to Wisnioswski.  “Keep him alive; he’s come too far to die now.  Keep him alive!”

“Don’t worry,” the corpsman assured her, “he’ll be in a med tank in ten minutes.”

“Better hurry,” Cookie giggled as the pain meds lifted her to a soft, warm place.  “The Ducks are going to blow up the ship.”

* * * *

On the bridge, Colonel Konig of the DID watched in relief as the Victorian assault teams began to pull back, defeated by his Security Forces.  He took a deep breath and looked at the console, where the button to detonate the scuttling charges waited.  God did favor the Dominion, Konig thought.  As He should.

* * * *

On the combat bridge of the Haifa, Captain Avi Yaffe stood beside his Weapons Officer, Lieutenant Marjorie Stopa.  The Sensors Officer crowded in beside them, pointing eagerly to a spot on the oversized display.   “Right there, sir, see?  That’s the enemy bridge.  You can see twelve people sitting in a grouping that suggests different consoles.  In fact, it looks a lot like this bridge would on a sensor display.”

“Are you ready, Marjorie,” Yaffe asked softly.

“Hell yes, sir,” Stopa said, amused.  “From this range I could throw a rock and hit it.”

Yaffe straightened.  “Okay, Marjorie, do it.”

Stopa took one last look at her holo display, then stabbed the firing button.  She had already programmed the sequence of the shots.  Three of the primary 10-inch lasers were fully charged and in standby mode.  They fired simultaneously, each striking the hull of the Tartarus about fifteen feet apart, forming a neat triangle.  The temperature of the hull went from 150 F below zero to 2500 F in 1/100,000 of a second, causing the hull plate to shatter apart with explosive force.

One tenth of a second after the first lasers fired, the second bank of three 10-inch lasers fired, their beams smashing through the unarmored interior bulkheads of the prison ship and through the bridge itself.  The lasers struck the hull on the other side of the ship, somewhat dissipated, but still heated it rapidly enough to cause structural cracks and blow a small hole.

The four 5-inch lasers fired into the same space, but they really weren’t needed.  Lieutenant Stopa was just a belt and suspenders kind of woman.

On the bridge of the Tartarus, there was no warning.  The nearest Vicky warship was three hundred miles away.   Distracted by the infantry battle taking place on board the ship, Colonel Konig had ceased to pay attention to the threat the warship posed.

The first 10-inch lasers blew a hole into the bridge compartment, which immediately vented into space.  The console holding the bomb switch took a direct hit and simply vaporized.  Colonel Konig was just beginning to realize that something was happening when the second barrage of 10-inch lasers tore through the compartment.  One struck him a grazing blow and everything north of his chin vanished.  He never felt the hundreds of shards of metal that ripped his body apart a moment later, nor the sudden lurch and acceleration as his chair tore off the deck and hurdled into space when the compartment explosively depressurized.

With threat of the scuttling charges gone, Colonel Tamari and Captain Eitan took their men back into the prison ship.  Engineering was secured first, then the remaining Dominion Security Forces surrendered.

Marjorie Stopa nodded to herself, then grinned impishly at Captain Yaffe.  “Well, Captain, I guess I never thought I’d use a 10-inch laser like a sniper rifle.”

Yaffe sat down heavily in his command chair, trying not to show how relieved he was.  He breathed heavily.  “That’s why we joined the Fleet, Lieutenant, we learn something new every day.”

Chapter 38

On the Battleship Lionheart

On the Lionheart, the mood was celebratory.  The shipyard was destroyed, the Victorian captives rescued and they’d found an intelligence trove in the other prisoners aboard the prison ship.  The ship captains and mission commanders sat around the conference table, flush with victory.  Captain Sadia Zahiri was there as representative for the various Owl captains. Colonel Tamari was there for the Marines.  Rafael Eitan was there for the Refuge Special Forces. Only Hiram Brill was missing, excused by Captain Eder so that he could visit Cookie who was in the sick bay on the Rabat.

Captain Eder let them enjoy it for a few minutes, then cleared his throat.  The room fell silent.  He looked at them individually, each one, then spoke.  “Let’s all start by acknowledging that we were very, very lucky,” he said grimly.  “The Ducks had enough forces to stop us if they had been coordinated, but they panicked and came at us in penny packets.  Even with that, they hurt us.  We lost the Fes, two tugboats and more than seventy gunboats either destroyed or so badly damaged that they are no longer combat ready.  On top of that, someone managed to kill one of our two colliers, the Big Apple.  We don’t know what happened, just that near the end of the battle she went Code Omega.  Her loss means that we have far fewer munitions than we planned for at this stage.”

He paused.  Their smiles were gone now.  “That’s the bad news.  The good news is that we took out the Duck shipyard.  The Dominion High Command doesn’t know it yet, but they can no longer replace their losses beyond what they can produce at the Might of the People Ship Works, which as we all know is not much.  Also-“ he smiled, “we successfully rescued Sergeant Maria Sanchez and Private Otto Wisnioswski.  The doctors tell me that they were both treated very harshly in captivity. Sanchez says the Ducks were going to kill them both within a few hours, so we were just in time.  A special mention on this to Specialist Cocchi, who apparently saved the prisoners by using the self-destruct mechanism on her beach ball like a stun grenade to disable some Duck soldiers who were about to kill them.”

“Two Royal Marines saved by a Controller weenie,” laughed one of the captains.  “Will wonders never cease?”  Chuckles ran around the table, but no one took their eyes off of Captain Eder.

“Some of you already know,” Eder continued, “that we have one more mission to accomplish.  We are to follow some of the new wormholes until we reach Victorian space, then attack the Dominions holding the Refuge/Victorian wormhole from their rear.  Once we launch our attack, Admiral Douthat will attack through the wormhole from Refuge.”

He paused and the other captains and commanders looked at each other, except for Emily and Hiram, who had both known about the extra mission.  One or two of the captains looked concerned.

“The problem is that I no longer believe we have the force necessary to launch such an attack.  Last I heard the Ducks had upwards of fifty ships at the wormhole.  I think they probably have enough force to both hold the wormhole against an attack from Admiral Douthat’s forces in Refuge and beat off any attack we might muster.  The notion had been that we would launch a surprise attack with sufficient force to seriously degrade the Dominion forces at the wormhole.  Admiral Douthat would then bring the rest of our Victorian forces, augmented by the Refuge Coast Guard, through the wormhole and break the Dominions before they could reorganize.”  He paused once more, looking solemn.  “With our current losses and the lack of full supply for our munitions expenditure, I do not think this is still feasible.”

The men and women at the table exchanged glances.  Was Eder giving up?  Would they settle for the shipyard and go home?

‘Given this, I am putting the matter on the table for discussion,” he resumed.  “I want your input on what you think the next step should be and why you think it both advances our strategic objective and is feasible.  No bullshit posturing.  We have to decide what we are doing in the next hour or so and commit to it, or else fold our tents and return at best possible speed to Refuge.”

Captain Bruce Hillson of the cruiser Wellington was the first to speak.  “I say continue with the attack,” he said forcefully.  “We’ll have to maintain our distance so they can’t overwhelm us, but we should stick as closely to the original plan as possible.  We just took out their biggest shipyard and we did it in their own backyard.  We need to keep the initiative.”

Oxford Captain Michael Strong shook his head in disagreement.  “Initiative is a funny thing – you’ve got it only so long as you are winning.  If we lose one battle, the initiative suddenly shifts back to the Ducks.  I think we need to find some way to damage the Ducks, but only if we can do it in a way that conserves our Assault Group.”  He looked around the table.  “We cannot afford to lose any of our larger ships.”

“Michael, I respectfully disagree,” said Captain Sadia Zahiri.  “You would have us take no risks.  This is war; we have to take risks!  The side that is not willing to take risks loses!  We just knocked those Duck bastards on their heels.  If we press forward, we’ll force them to react to us.  We’ll make them move when they don’t want to.  We’ll disrupt their plans, cause them to shift forces from one place to another and most of all, we’ll shake their confidence.  I say we press forward and figure out a way to do as much damage as we can.  If we lose some ships, so be it.”

The debate raged on. There was a sharp divide between those who thought that attacking the Dominion forces at the Refuge/Victoria wormhole was an invitation to catastrophe and those who thought that the Assault Force should just maraud around Dominion space raising hell, and then run for home.  A very small minority thought they should quit while they were ahead and go back to Refuge now.

Through it all, Emily said nothing.  She glanced about, looking for Hiram, but of course he was with Cookie.  No help there.  She closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose.  What was the most important thing to be accomplished?  That was easy: Get the Duck assault fleet away from Cornwall and preferably out of Victorian space.  She chewed on this for a moment, parsing it down to fundamentals.

The immediate goal was to get the Ducks away from Cornwall.  Did it matter how they got the Duck ships away from the planet?  She mentally shrugged.  No, not really.  It would be nice to blow their ships into small atoms, but what they really needed was to move the Ducks away.  How to get them to move?  Well, there were only two ways to do that:  attack them or lure them away.  Attacking them head on was fraught with problems; she agreed with Captain Eder on that point.  Even if the Victorian fleet won, it would be a bruising, knock-down battle and they were sure to take heavy losses.

So, how else could they get the Ducks to abandon Cornwall and Victorian space?  She opened her eyes and looked at Captain Eder, who was already watching her.

“Yes, Commander Tuttle?” he asked, just the faintest hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth.

“I think the answer is obvious,” she said matter-of-factly.  Captain Hillson looked impatient.  He started to say something but Eder held up a hand to quiet him.  “And?” Eder asked Emily.

She smiled.  “We must attack Timor, the Dominion home planet.”

Chapter 39

With the Victorian Assault Force in Dominion Space

There was a long moment of silence as everyone digested her words, then Captain Zahiri laughed out loud and slapped her knee.  “Gods of Our Mothers, I like it!”

“Preposterous!” Captain Hillson protested.  “We’ve already acknowledged we don’t have enough ships to attack the Duck Fleet occupying Victorian space and now she proposes that we attack the Duck home world instead?  Rubbish!”

Captain Eder rapped his knuckles on the table.  “Quiet!”  He glared about the table, pausing for a moment on Captain Hillson.  He turned back to Emily and nodded.  “Continue, Commander.”

“The fundamental thing we are trying to accomplish is forcing the Dominions to abandon Victorian space,” she said mildly.  “I think we can all agree to that.”  There was a cautious nodding of heads.

“We don’t really care why the Dominions leave Victorian space, just that they do it.  If the Dominion High Command thinks that its home world is vulnerable to attack, they will recall their fleet from Victoria.  It is as simple as that.”  She looked about the table.  Some of the faces were hostile, some confused, and some were thoughtful.

“And you don’t think attacking the planet, with all of its defenses, is more risky than attacking their assault force in Victoria?” Captain Hillson asked coldly.

“We don’t have to take Timor,” Emily replied.  “Heck, we don’t even have to actually attack it, we just have to give the impression that we have the ability to attack it.”

“May I remind the Commander that we have only six warships, plus a little over one hundred gunboats, with which to attack Timor,” Hillson countered tartly.

Emily shrugged.  “The Dominions don’t know that.”

One by one, the others at the table began to smile

* * * *

The carrier Rabat had been designated as the primary medical facility for the assault force for the simple reason it had the largest and newest surgical suite. Cookie and Wisnioswski had been moved there to tend to their wounds.  Cookie’s leg wound had been repaired and the regeneration specialists had begun the laborious process of growing Wisnioswski a new pair of hands.

Both of them had also had a full psych scan.

Doctors and nurses bustled around Cookie in an endless blur.  They studied her blood and urine, took countless EKGs and EEGs and scanned and probed.  They found broken bones poorly reset, old bruises and scars.  They studied readouts, reports and charts.  They learned that gynecologically she was a mess, with numerous infections, tears and two badly healed punctures.   Bit by bit, her physical needs were taken care of and the process of healing her wounds begun.

What the doctors didn’t know, what the scans could not tell them, was that now that she was safe and no longer had to keep up her guard, Cookie’s emotional world was a tumultuous dark storm speeding across a barren plain, a swirling wall of fear and doubt and self-loathing all embraced in a silent scream of horror.  For months and months Cookie had stood at the edge of the abyss, and for a time she had even sought refuge in it.  Now she was safe and for the first time she had little to do but stare into the mirror of her mind and try to cope with everything that had happened.

And inside, deeper than even she herself could see, she was falling…falling…

Hiram Brill sat in the small office of Rear Admiral Martha Wilkinson, the Fleet Senior Surgeon, who had insisted on accompanying the Task Force into Dominion space.

“Commander, you and Sergeant Sanchez are close, correct?”

Hiram nodded.  He still hadn’t seen Cookie and now Admiral Wilkinson had insisted on speaking to him before he did.  He had been nervous before; now he was scared.

“I don’t mean to pry, but when I say close, what I really mean is; are the two of you emotionally intimate?  Physically intimate?” she asked softly.

Hiram nodded again.

“Okay, then” she said softly, but firmly. “You’ve got to know that Cookie has been treated harshly, extremely harshly.  She’s been sexually abused for an extended period of time, beaten, subjected to psychological and physical abuse that would have killed most people.  Physically, she should recover.  She has a wound to her leg, but that will be healed within a week.  There are two fractures in her left humerus, one bad break in right radius and a number of torn ligaments.  The humerus is a bone in her—“

“I know what the humerus is,” Hiram said.

Wilkinson nodded.  “Cookie had extensive damage to her vagina and uterus from tears and two rather nasty puncture wounds, and a serious infection.”

Hiram closed his eyes.

“Commander!”

He opened his eyes and stared at her.  Wilkinson frowned at him.

“Commander, I know this is not easy for you, but if it’s not easy on you, think what it must be like on her.  But she’s going to need support, a lot of it.  That means you, Commander Brill.  The physical damage to her vagina and the infection almost killed her, but surprisingly enough the Dominions repaired the worst of it.  We’ve got her on drugs for the infection, which should clear it up.”

Hiram blinked.  He had feared that Cookie would be treated badly, but hearing it, all of it, was heartbreaking.  “Will she be able to have children?” he asked.

Wilkinson smiled.  “Yes, but not yet.  The damage to her uterus has to be further repaired or she will not be able to carry a fetus to term.  I think we can repair that, but if worse comes to worst, we can always harvest some of her eggs and the fetus can be carried in a med-pod.”

Hiram breathed a sigh of relief, but then caught himself when Wilkinson shook her head.  “I’m not making myself clear, Commander.  I think Cookie has been deeply traumatized, but she hasn’t been able to admit it to herself.   She spent most of her time in captivity trying to keep Private Wisnioswski alive.  They used his vulnerability to control her.  She…she had to do things…”

Hiram closed his eyes.  All the time he had been searching for her, he had thought that if he could just get her back, everything would be alright.  Now…now it all seemed to be getting away, slipping through his fingers.  And he didn’t know what to do.

“Cookie is extraordinarily tough,” Wilkinson continued.  “That will both help her and hurt her.  She’s going to think that she can handle this all on her own, that she should handle it all on her own.  She’s used to being in control, in control of others as a sergeant in the Marines and in control of herself.  But she’s been forced to feel humiliated and helpless.  Cookie can accept a certain amount of humiliation, but helplessness?  Being made helpless is like being forced to drink acid; it eats you from the inside out.  For someone like Cookie, helplessness is worse than death.”  Wilkinson paused.  “Is she religious, Commander?”

Hiram considered it.  “Yes, but she is very private about it.  I’m not particularly religious, so we haven’t really talked about it very much.  But yes, she’s religious.”

Wilkinson nodded.  “Sometimes it helps,” she said.  “Then again, she just might be very angry with the Gods right now for making her go through this.  We’ll see.”

“What can I do?” he asked her.

“The psych scan gave me less information than I had hoped, but it does suggest that she’s struggling badly.  If I’m right, she is going to have sudden bouts of depression and moments of utter rage.  Big mood swings set off by little things that normally wouldn’t matter.  Somebody doesn’t get out of her way when she’s in a hurry.  Somebody laughs near her and she thinks they are laughing at her.  A loud noise.  Whatever the trigger is, it may trigger a severe emotional response or it could even set her off into a full blown flash-back.  It’s all hard to predict, but given what she’s been through, none of these things would surprise me.  You just need to be there if she reaches out for help.”  Wilkinson’s tone of voice and the look on her face told him that it was going to be very hard.

Hiram left her office and went to Cookie’s room in the sick bay.  The nurse stationed there told him Cookie was still sleeping and that he should come back later. He wandered out of sick bay preoccupied, his mind in turmoil.  For lack of anything else to do, he decided to grab some dinner.

Later, he would wonder if it all would have been different had he stayed.

* * * *

Cookie woke a few minutes later.  She got dressed into her uniform – no way was she going to wear hospital johnnies – and strapped her knife to her forearm.  Since her return she had always gone armed when she was awake, and kept the knife under her pillow when she slept.  She could not bear to be without it.  Wearing a sidearm was mandatory since the Tillekes had created the transporters and a ship could be boarded at any time.  In sick bay they wouldn’t let her wear a pistol, but she had borrowed a small fighting knife from one of the Marine guards and never went anywhere without it.  If the nurses saw it, they didn’t say anything.

When Cookie left her room, the floor nurse called to her.  “Sergeant Sanchez, Commander Brill was here a few minutes ago and I asked him to come back when you were awake.”

Cookie felt an odd combination of elation, disappointment and…dread.  She pursed her lips.  “Did he say where he was going?”

“Dinner, I think,” the nurse replied.

Cookie nodded her thanks and began to walk slowly to the mess hall.  Her leg was still stiff from the flechette shot she took on the Tartarus, but mostly she was hesitant about seeing Hiram again.  He wouldn’t treat her like damaged goods.  She knew that.  She did.  He would be kind and considerate and patient and all the things that made her fall in love with him in the first place.

But she wasn’t the same woman Hiram loved.  That woman was gone; that woman had been degraded and used. It wasn’t right that Hiram should ever be with her again, or even want to.  But how would she explain that to him?  How could he understand?

Without conscious thought, she turned away from the mess hall and wandered down corridors, not really paying attention to where she was.  She limped along, people stepping aside to get out of her way.  She was marked; they could see it, even if they didn’t understand what they were seeing.  When some of them looked at her there would be a flash of recognition, immediately followed by a look of pity or, sometimes, revulsion.

She understood the look.  She saw it in her mirror every day.

Then at an intersection a Marine MP held up a hand, stopping everyone.  “Wait a moment, please,” he said without further explanation.  But then two more guards appeared from the other corridor, leading a line of perhaps thirty men dressed in black uniforms.  They carried no arms, wore no armor or helmets and each wore a shock collar to prevent escape.  They were Dominion Security Forces, prisoners captured on the Tartarus.

And fifth in line was Schroder.

There was no conscious decision, no deliberate thought. One moment Cookie was looking at the line of Dominion prisoners, the next her arm was around Schroder’s neck, her fighting knife was at his throat and she was pulling him into a corner.  The guards were screaming at her, “Let him go!  Let him go!  Stand back!”  But they were armed only with neuro-batons and the trigger for the shock collars, and of course Cookie wasn’t wearing a shock collar.  And she wasn’t about to let him go.

Schroder struggled for a brief second, then Cookie pushed the knife into the skin of his throat, just a quarter of an inch.  He went very still, his eyes rolling in his head.  The assault had been so fast that he didn’t even know who it was who attacked him.  One of the guards was talking urgently into his radio, while the others pushed people back until Schroder and Cookie were alone in a small space.

One of the guards stepped cautiously forward.  Cookie tightened her grip around Schroder’s neck.

“Hey, Sergeant, let’s be cool about this.  This man is a prisoner; you know the rules, we can’t mistreat him.”  Cookie looked at him without speaking.  Something in her look made him flinch back a step.

Cookie felt oddly elated.  She should feel nervous, she knew.  Guards were shouting at her, her career was over, Hiram was lost to her.  But Schroder was here, right here, and Cookie knew that whatever else might be, the Gods loved her, for they had delivered to her the one person in all the universe that she needed the most.

The guard gave her a lopsided grin and tried a different approach.  “Sergeant, com’on now, help me out here.  Something happens to this guy, I’ll be filling out paper work for the next month.  He’s a prisoner, Sergeant.”

“I was his prisoner,” Cookie shouted.  “I was your prisoner, wasn’t I Schroder?”  She put her mouth close to his ear.  “Remember when you beat me, Schroder?”

On the battleship Lionheart, Emily and Captain Eder were in the middle of planning the attack on Timor when Emily’s comm beeped the emergency tone.  Startled, she pressed the activation stud.  She listened without speaking for fifteen seconds.  “I’ll be right there!” she said.  “Under no circumstances is anyone to use lethal force against her.  Do you understand, no use of lethal force is authorized.”  She cut the connection, turning back to Eder.  “Captain, I have an emergency on the Rabat and have to get back there.”

Eder nodded.  “I’ll arrange for a shuttle-“

“Too slow,” Emily said.  “Do you have one of the new Tilleke transport units on board?”

Eder nodded.  “I’ll take you there myself.”

In the mess hall on the H.M.S. Rabat, Hiram was just finishing dinner when an excited buzz of conversation swept the hall.  Curious, he motioned to a passing soldier.  “What’s going on?”

The soldier skidded to a stop.   “Sir, it looks like someone has taken one of the Duck prisoners hostage and is threatening to kill him.”

Hiram was out of his chair and running, screaming to Mildred for the location of the incident.

Cookie said:  “Do you remember when you cut off Wisnioswski’s hands and hung them around his neck?  Do you remember when you and your boys gang raped me, Schroder?  And then did it again for weeks and weeks?  Remember when you choked me until I blacked out?”

Schroder convulsively clawed at her hands, trying to get free.  Cookie put the knife beneath his eye and he froze. The guards and others watching her had gone absolutely silent.

Cookie lowered her voice.  “Do you remember jamming your neuro-baton into my body – inside me – and triggered it?  You said you wanted to give me something I’d always remember.  Well, Schroder, I remember.  I screamed in agony and begged you to stop.  I screamed and screamed.  And you laughed.  Do you remember, Schroder?  You laughed.”  She dug the knife into the skin below his eye and drops of blood trickled down his cheek.  “Well guess what, now I’m laughing.”

In the background came the sound of many men running towards them.  Cookie knew who they were, what they wanted.  But not today, she thought.

She pulled Schroder up to his feet.

“Cookie, don’t!” someone yelled.  The voice was far off, distant.  Her focus entirely on Schroder.  Schroder, who had done so much.  Who had taken so much, so much that she would never get back, no matter how hard she tried.

Schroder, whose time had come.

“Gods of Our Mothers, my gift to you,” she murmured, then pulled the knife hard across his throat, severing the neck arties and slicing the trachea.  Blood fountained high in the air and splashed the bulkheads.  The blood was red, the color of joy.

The color of justice.

Then, wary of the miracles they could perform in the sick bay, she plunged the fighting knife through the thin bone of his temple and into his brain.  She twisted it.

Just to make sure.

Tears streamed down her cheeks.  It was done.  She had done it.

She let the twitching, shuddering body fall to the ground, knife still sticking out of his head.  Blood covered her from head to toe.  Her eyes focused slowly and she saw Hiram Brill standing not ten feet from her, staring at her with a look of vast sadness.  Her heart sank.  He was gone forever.

“Can you love me now, Hirii?” she cried, her voice thick with anguish.  “Can you love me now?”

Chapter 40

Onboard the carrier H.M.S. Rabat

Marine guards immediately closed in on Cookie.

“Hold!” a voice snapped.  Commander Emily Tuttle stepped forward.  “Pick up the prisoner and bring him to the Auxiliary Loading Dock.”  The guards looked at her in confusion.

“Do it!” she said forcefully, then turned to two other Marines.  “Assist Sergeant Sanchez to the Auxiliary Loading Dock.”  She lowered her voice.  “Gently, very gently.”  She turned once more, spying Admiral Wilkinson pushing through the crowd.  Wilkinson stopped when she saw the body on the deck and Cookie standing next to it, covered in blood.  She cast a stricken glance at Emily.

“Admiral, I would greatly appreciate it if you could give Sergeant Sanchez a mild sedative.  I need her calm for the war crimes trial I am about to conduct,” Emily said matter-of-factly.

Wilkinson clenched her jaw.  She pointed at Schroder.  “Is that the man who abused her?”

Emily, who had arrived in time to hear most of what Cookie said, nodded.

“Gods of Our Mothers!  Commander, you can’t try her for killing him.  She’s an emotional wreck.  He raped and tortured her for months.  He-”

Emily held up a hand, stopping her.  “Admiral, I need Cookie to be a witness.  The trial is for this prisoner.  I am trying him on charges of war crimes.”

Wilkinson’s mouth closed with an audible ‘snap.’  She looked in bewilderment at the blood-soaked figure being loaded onto a gurney.  “But…but he’s –”

“Doctor!” Emily interrupted.  “There has been no examination, no declaration of death.  I have determined that the trial of this man should be held immediately.  Do you disagree?”  She stared hard at the Fleet Surgeon.

Martha Wilkinson was many things, but two of those things were not stupid or hesitant.  She walked to the gurney and examined the man lying on it.  “Mildred, please record this as the preliminary inspection of the Dominion prisoner –” She glanced at Emily.”

“Schroder,” Emily supplied.  “Rank not yet ascertained.”

“Dominion prisoner Schroder.”  She bent over and peered at his face.  “Please note that my preliminary inspection reveals a shallow puncture wound on Schroder’s cheek that will require one or two stitches.  Mr. Schroder has some blood on his face due to this injury.  Mr. Schroder also has a laceration on his right temple with some bleeding.  Details about this wound will have to await a more in-depth examination.  Mildred, state the time.”

“The time is 18:23, Universal Fleet Time.”

“This is Dr. Martha Wilkinson.  Due to the press of time I conclude this preliminary medical examination of Mr. Schroder at 18:23 UFT and release him to the custody of Commander Tuttle for further proceedings. Time permitting, I will resume my examination at a later date. End recording.”

Emily nodded somberly.  “Mildred, please record my receipt of the prisoner Schroder at 18:23 UFT.  End recording.”  She turned to the baffled Marines and to Hiram and Cookie.  “We shall reconvene in fifteen minutes in the Auxiliary Loading Dock.”  She thumbed her comm.  “Captain Zar?”

Captain Rahim Zar had been watching the monitors in the corridor.  He came on at once.  “Yes, Commander?”

He sounded so casual and matter-of-fact that Emily could have kissed him.  “Captain Zar, do you have any question that I have the authority to carry out a war crimes trial of one of the Dominion prisoners?

“No, I shouldn’t think so,” he replied slowly.  “The accused should have a lawyer, of course.”

Emily rubbed the bridge of her nose.  She hadn’t thought about lawyers.  Lawyers were a…complication.  The problem with lawyers was that they sometimes insisted on following inconvenient rules.  “Of course, Captain Zar.  Do you have any recommendations?”

“Well, it so happens I have a fine young legal officer on board, Michael Mastromonaco.  I’ll give him a quick briefing and have him report to the, ah, courtroom.  Speaking of which, Commander, I will make sure the courtroom is prepared and ready for you.”

Emily let out a deep breath.  “Thank you for your support, Captain.”

“All for a good cause, Commander,” he said gravely.  “Mildred, please note the appointment of Second Lieutenant Michael Mastromonaco to represent the interests of Prisoner Schroder.”

It took another thirty minutes to get everyone to the Auxiliary Loading Dock.  Chairs and tables were already in place when they arrived, along with a tray of water, coffee and finger foods.  Emily gulped down a coffee and stuffed some food into her mouth, then sat down.  While she was getting organized a gangly looking lieutenant with hair a little too long strode quickly into the room and saluted her.  He was so skinny that a stiff breeze would have blown him away.  He wore thick glasses.  Emily thought he probably smelled like an old library: dusty, musty and wise.

“Second Lieutenant Mastromonaco reporting, Commander.”

“Relax, Lieutenant,” she told him.  He let his boney shoulders droop.  “Did Captain Zar brief you on what I am doing here?”

“I understand that I am representing Prisoner Schroder in a war crimes trial.  Commander, I will require a statement of the charges and adequate time to confer with my client,” he said firmly.  “And I will want the entire proceedings recorded.”

“Very well, Lieutenant.  Mildred!  Record proceedings orally, no visual.  Commence recordings now.”

“Recording,” said the grandmotherly voice.

“Prisoner Schroder is hereby charged with war crimes, to wit: first, that over a period of months while he was one of the guards on the Dominion Prison Ship Tartarus, Prisoner Schroder inflicted on one or more female prisoners rape and rape by two or more individuals.  Second, that while a guard on the Tartarus, he mutiliated a prisoner in his charge by forcibly amputating the prisoner’s hands.  Three, that while a guard on the Tartarus, Prisoner Schroder physically abused, beat and caused torment and pain to two or more Dominion soldiers in his charge in violation of the Queen’s Code of Military Justice.”  Emily eyed the young Lieutenant.  “The Fleet reserves the right to bring additional charges depending on the evidence introduced.”

Mastromonaco nodded.  “I will need to confer with my client, Commander.”

“Mildred, note that the hearing is adjourned for twenty minutes.”  Emily stood up and nodded in the direction of the gurney which stood in the corner, a puddle of blood slowly collecting under it.  “Your client, Lieutentant.”

Mastromonaco looked at Schroder’s corpse.  He took a deep breath.  “Hmmm…yes, Captain Zar suggested that this would be unusual.”  Mastromonaco turned back to face her.  “Commander, I believe that I will not require the entire twenty minutes.”

Emily resumed the trial.  “Mildred, please play back the recording you made of an incident in passageway No. 3 earlier today.”  The AI complied.  When it reached the part where Cookie said:  “I screamed in agony and begged you to stop.  I screamed and screamed.  And you laughed.  Do you remember, Schroder?  You laughed,” Emily said, “Stop there, Mildred.”  She turned to Cookie, who sat on a folding chair.  Hiram sat next to her, holding one hand.  Someone had cleaned the blood off Cookie, but while her face was clean, her clothes were still splattered with blood and gore.  She was staring at her hands.  Her jaw was set firmly, but a muscle twitched noticeably in her cheek.

“Sergeant Sanchez,” Emily said softly.  “While you were a prisoner of the Dominion, were you sexually assaulted?”

Cookie’s eyes flickered to Emily.  “Yes, many times,” she whispered.  “Many times.”

“Was the Dominion soldier known as Schroder one of your assailants?”

Cookie nodded.  “There were five of them.  Schroder was their leader.”

Emily pointed to Schroder’s body.  “Is that Schroder?”

Cookie’s face hardened, then she unexpectedly smiled and laughed.  “That’s him.”

Next Emily linked to the sick bay and talked to Otto Wisnioswski.  “Private Wisnioswski, during your captivity, were your hands forcibly removed?”

Wisnioswski lifted his stubs and showed them to the camera.  “They cut off my hands with an electric arc welder.”

“Who did this to you?”

“A bastard named Schroder and some of his pals.  I don’t know their names.”

Emily turned to Lieutenant Mastromonaco.  “Lieutenant, do you have any witnesses to call for the defense?”

Mastromonaco pursed his lips, then shook his head.  “Defense rests, Commander.”

Emily straightened in her chair.  “The Tribunal has considered the testimony and finds the defendant Schroder guilty of war crimes in violation of the Queen’s Code of Military Justice.  I hereby sentence the defendant to be put to death by vacuum.”  She nodded to one of the Marines.  “Execute the sentence by placing the defendant in the air lock and expelling him into space.”

Which the Marine did, a puzzled look on his face as he wondered why he was executing a corpse.

Emily nodded once the order was carried out.  “Mildred, let the record show that the prisoner Schroder was found guilty of war crimes and executed on this day.  The Tribunal is now closed.”

People in the audience stood up, puzzled, smiling or frowning, and wandered off to their various duties. Junior Lieutenant Mastromonaco approached Emily.

“You did rather well today, Lieutenant,” Emily told him.  “You should be pleased.”

Mastromonaco shook his head.  “I am satisfied with the outcome, Commander Tuttle, but I am not pleased.”

Emily cocked her head at him.  “Oh?”

He paused, some inner dialogue flitting across his face.  “May I have permission to speak freely, Commander?”

Emily stared for a moment at this intense, earnest young man.  “Go ahead, Lieutenant.”

“The fact is that today you corrupted justice, Commander.”  Emily opened her mouth to protest, but Mastromonaco raised his hand to stop her.  “Please, Commander. Although I am new to the Fleet, I’ve been a lawyer for years. You suborned justice and I helped you do it.  Between us, we made a mockery of one of the most important institutions Victoria has, one that sets us apart from the Dominion and from the Tilleke.  It was for a good cause, I know that, but there were other ways to protect your Marine without creating a phony trial.”

“He was guilty, Lieutenant,” Emily said, a bit more coldly than she intended.  She was being chastised by a Junior Lieutenant and she was surprised by how much it stung.

“Of course he was,” Mastromonaco agreed.  “That is why it was so easy.  But maybe next time the facts will be a little bit grayer, a little less certain, but you’ll still be tempted to use a mock trial to achieve your end.  And that, Commander, is how the road to hell is paved, brick by brick.  Once we exploit the justice system for some short-term goal, we’re on the slippery slope.  Pretty soon, no one trusts the justice system will actually deliver justice.  When that happens, Commander, we will have lost something priceless, and it all started here.  Don’t get me wrong, it was important to protect Sergeant Sanchez, but the way you went about it carries a price, one that you ignore at your peril.”

He stepped back and gave her a short bow.  “By your leave, Commander?”

“You are dismissed, Lieutenant,” she told him.

Hiram sat with Cookie.  Cookie turned to him, letting go of his hand.  “You don’t have to stay.  I understand,” she said.

Hiram shook his head and took her hand again in his.  He raised it to his mouth and kissed her fingers.  “Can’t get rid of me that easy.  I’m staying.”

Emily came and sat beside them.

“I killed him,” Cookie told her.

Emily shook her head.  “I’m afraid you’re wrong, Cookie.  The record is quite clear: Prisoner Schroder was just tried for war crimes and executed.”  She felt a twinge as she said it, courtesy of the very polite tongue lashing she had just received.

“But-“

“Sergeant Sanchez, don’t argue with official Fleet records,” Emily ordered with mock sternness.

Cookie said nothing.   Emily touched her shoulder.  “I sent you in harm’s way, Cookie, and, to my shame, I had to leave you behind.  Now, thank the Gods, you’re back, but the rule stays the same:  ‘Always together.  Never alone.’”

Cookie took a deep breath.  She tightened her grip on Hiram’s hand.  Unabashed tears rolled down her cheeks.  “What happens now?” she asked.

“Now?” Emily’s eyebrow arched.  “Now we move a piece on the board and bluff the Ducks into moving one of their pieces.  And if they move the piece we want them to move, we crush them once and for all.”

* * * *

Captain Zar met Emily as she walked back to her day cabin.  “Well, I’d heard that you could be rather unorthodox,” he said dryly.

“Yes, that was what young Lieutenant Mastromonaco said, too.”

“Scolded you, did he?” Captain Zar chuckled.  “Speaks his mind, Mastromonaco, you have to give him that.”  He grew serious.  “And Sergeant Sanchez, will she be all right?”

Emily sighed.  “I don’t know,” she said honestly, “but at least she won’t be in a cell.”

Chapter 41

Timor – at forts surrounding the Might of the People Shipyard

“Goddammit, they’re here!”  Dominion Commander Folker was in charge of one of the ten space stations defending the Might of the People Ship Works.  He had discounted the rumors that a Vicky task force had somehow gotten through the Refuge/Victoria wormhole and then destroyed the other shipyard, the one only spoken of in whispers.  The rumors, which had only started two days ago and grew more fantastic every hour, said the Vickies had destroyed the other shipyard and then vanished into space, leaving behind a trail of dead Dominion ships.  One of the Dominion Internal Defense Security wings had been scrambled to the asteroid belt where the secret shipyard had been, but there was no trace of the Vickies when they arrived.

But now the Vickies were here.

Commander Folker watched with growing alarm as the sensor returns identified three Vicky Trident Class Cruisers accompanied by no less than eight destroyers.  Where the hell had they come from?  He took a deep breath and quelled his emotions.  Okay, the Vickies were here, but his station could handle eleven ships, even with three cruisers among them.

Maybe.

“Charge the energy weapons,” he ordered.  Four industrial-sized antimatter engines supplied power to fifteen ten-inch lasers, plus two dozen five-inch lasers and several dozen smaller lasers that would serve as his anti-missile defense. The lasers were of a rather old design and his overall range wasn’t that good, but it didn’t have to be.  Anything coming for the Might of the People Ship Works from this direction would have to go through his fortress and two others just like it in order to get a clear shot at the shipyard.

“Commander!”  It was his Sensors Officer.  “We just picked up another force behind the first.  We count two battleships, four more cruisers, at least ten more destroyers and a bunch of other ships I’m not familiar with.  One of them is really big.  I designate the first group ‘Hostile 1’ and the second group ‘Hostile 2.’”  Red triangles appeared on the huge holographic display that showed the space around the station for two hundred thousand miles in all directions.

Folker gestured to his comm officer.  “Pass the alert to the other stations, make sure they can see what we see and tell them to watch their sectors closely.  And pass it through to the DID Security Forces and see if they’ve got some ships they can scramble.”  Twenty-four Victorian warships would be enough to make the DID jackals piss in their pants, Folker thought grimly.  They might send him help, or they might decide that every ship was needed in case it turned out the real target was not the shipyard but Timor itself.

Before the Comm Officer could fulfill his orders, the Sensors Officer called out again: “Sir!  I’ve got ten more ships coming in on a parallel course to the first two groups.  I designate them ‘Hostile 3.’”

“What are they?” barked Folker.  Thirty-four ships!  This was going to be a bare knuckles brawl and no mistake.

“Still a little far away for a reliable ID, but it looks like three more cruisers and seven destroyers.  We’ll be within energy range of Hostiles 1 and 2 within forty minutes.  Within energy range of Hostile 3 in about forty-five minutes.”

Folker nodded.  Perhaps the Dominion was not the only one with a secret shipyard.  Perhaps these devilish Vickies had pulled the same trick.  “Keep your eyes peeled, there may be more.”

Time stretched out.  At thirty minutes, Hostiles 1 and 2 slowed their pace, allowing Hostile 3 to pull even, then all there groups accelerated.  A minute later they all launched missiles.  Folker ordered the anti-missile system to be set on AI and sat back.  The missiles bored in, but then the smaller laser turrets began to snipe them.  One after another veered off course or began to tumble end-over-end.  Folker nodded in satisfaction; the station’s defenses were going to knock down most, if not all of the incoming missiles.

Then all of the remaining Victorian missiles detonated at the same time…and chaff and jammers turned the station’s sensors to snowy fuzz.  Folker leaned forward, heart in his mouth, waiting for the Vicky ships to burst through the chaff cloud.

But nothing emerged.  There were no warships.

Then things happened very quickly.

Something – the computer couldn’t tell what – slid from the chaff cloud.  Whatever it was, it seemed to float towards the station like speckles of dust.  More jammers activated and the sensors lost what little they could see.  Commander Folker’s forehead wrinkled in bewilderment.  Where were the Vicky warships?  What was the ‘dust’ that drifted towards his station?  Then an old classroom on tactics from the War College came to mind.

Oh, crap!

“Mines!” Folker bellowed.  “The Vickies ejected mines and then turned around.  Those are mines, coming straight for us!  All lasers to fire and keep firing.  Anti-missile fire on automatic!”

Folker gnashed his teeth in frustration.  This was an old, old trick.  If you can’t take the risk of getting within range of enemy guns, eject a minefield without the stabilizers to make them cover a fixed location.  The mines will continue on the course of the ship and at the same speed.  When they reach their target, proximity fuses detonate the mines.  It was a simple solution for taking out a fixed target…or a target like a space station that has a fixed orbit and cannot maneuver.

The station’s lasers erupted in fire.  The ten-inch lasers drilled long tubes of destruction through the onrushing mines, but it was like sticking a pin in an avalanche.  On and on the mines came.  Even as dozens and hundreds of mines were destroyed, the thousands left over moved inexorably towards him.

“Commander!”  It was the Sensors Officer.  “We’re picking up something else.  Behind the mines there are – well, it looks like big rocks, like asteroids.  I count twelve of them, all moving on our trajectory.”

The laser fire continued, but it was slower now as the massive capacitors had to recharge.  Even with four antimatter engines, they couldn’t maintain anything close to continuous fire.

The leading edge of the minefield struck ten minutes later.  The massive armor of the station held at first, but there were too many mines.  And they just kept coming.  The first hull breach occurred fifty seconds later.

“Engineering!  Pump sealant into the breached compartments!”  The sealant would expand and close off the entire compartment.  Anyone still alive in there would perish, but there was no help for it.

The first asteroid was blown to dust by the lasers.  The second was shattered into pieces, but the pieces continued along the same trajectory.   Then more mines detonated and wrecked some of the laser firing ports.  The intensity of the laser fire diminished sharply, and with that the station was doomed.

The remnants of the second asteroid stuck home, followed immediately by the third asteroid.  The pieces from the second asteroid struck an undamaged portion of the hull and did little more than gouge huge divots into the outer armor, but the third asteroid struck an area already depleted by mines and collapsed a forty-by-eighty section of the hull, opening up three different compartments to space.  The station shook so violently that everyone standing was thrown to the deck.

Commander Folker lay on his back, clutching a broken wrist.  The sensor display above him still worked and he could see several more asteroids about to strike.  “Grendel!” he called to the station’s AI.

“Yes, Commander?” a deep voice replied instantly.

Commander Folker shook with rage and shame.  “Signal Timor:  Station Nine is lost.”

The remainder of the asteroids struck within the space of forty seconds.  As it turned out, the command center was never breached, although the station lost all power.  There was sufficient air for three days, but without power there was no heat.  Commander Folker and his surviving staff died of hypothermia ten hours later.

* * * *

In his headquarters on the planet surface, Citizen Director Anthony Nasto stared in disbelief at Michael Hudis.  “What do you mean, the Might of the People Shipyard was attacked?  By whom?” he shouted.

“By a task force of thirty-four Victorian warships.”

“And how in the hell did Victorian warships get past Admiral Kaeser at the Refuge/Victoria wormhole?” Nasto thundered, his face turning a dark crimson.

Hudis flinched.   “They didn’t, sir.  Somehow – we don’t know how yet – they came into Dominion space another way.”

Nasto looked stunned, then got control of himself.  He shifted his gaze to the Admiral standing next to Hudis.  “Well, Admiral Wagner, is the shipyard safe?” he asked coldly.

Admiral Wagner was an old Fleet work horse.  He had held every position in the Fleet except for the Fleet Admiral role, now held by Admiral Kaeser.  He had survived three prior Citizen Directors and the constant in-fighting among the senior Admirals, largely by being good at his job and not getting involved in politics.  People sneered at him behind his back, but trusted him nonetheless.

“The shipyard is safe for now, Citizen Director.  The DID rapid response force was summoned, but declined to launch against the Victorians for fear of leaving Timor without adequate cover.”  Wagner spoke with a slight hint of sarcasm.  The fact known to every Fleet senior officer was that the DID commander had panicked at the thought of facing such a large force of Vicky warships and had dropped into a tighter orbit around Timor, ostensibly for the purpose of protecting the planet from attack.

“My staff managed to pull together twenty-five ships of various types and scrambled them to the outer shell of forts,” the Admiral continued.   “As we approached, the Victorians withdrew  – intact, I am afraid – under the cover of chaff, jammers and a large minefield.”

“Show me,” Nasto said brusquely.   Admiral Wagner called up a holographic map of the Might of the People Ship Works and the shell of fortified space stations surrounding it.  Three of the stations pulsed a flashing red.

Admiral Wagner pointed to the red colored forts.  “These are three of the ten forts surrounding the Ship Works.  Stations Five and Nine were destroyed; Seven was badly damaged.”

Citizen Director Nasto studied the display.  The remaining seven forts glowed a cheerful green.  He glared at Wagner.  “What aren’t you telling me, Admiral?”

“The key factor here is that we did not drive off the Victorian assault force, Citizen Director, they withdrew,” the Admiral explained as if he were speaking to one of his junior officers.  “I think they came here for the sole purpose of trying a tactic to see if it would work.  It did work, and it took them only an hour to find out.  Victoria now knows it can make a breach in the shell of forts guarding the Ship Works.”

“So put a replacement fort in there to plug the hole,” Nasto said irritably.

“As the Citizen Director is aware,” Admiral Wagner said placidly, “all of our resources have been channeled into the ship works at Siegestor for the past several years.  A replacement fort was begun, but work was suspended once Siegestor came on line.  If work was started today on that fort, it would take six months at the minimum to complete it, arm it and tow it into position.”

Nasto eyed the Admiral coldly.  Nasto had personally given the order to channel all resources to Siegestor and Wagner damn well knew it.

“You said you’ve got twenty-five warships-“

Admiral Wagner held up a hand.  “I said I managed to scrape up twenty-five ships.  Most of them are old and the crews are second rate.  As I said before, we did not drive off the Victorian assault, they withdrew.”  He stared evenly at the Citizen Director, sure of his ground.  “I believe we can expect another assault by the Victorians at any moment, with the intention of destroying the Might of the People Ship Works, and I do not have the ships on hand to stop them.”

“And what if you’re wrong, Admiral?” Nasto said icily.  Wagner understood.  The shell of forts surrounding Timor, the Dominion home world, was configured the same as the defensive shell around the shipyard.

“If I am wrong, Citizen Director,” he replied, “then the assault on the Ship Works could have just been a test to see if they could breach the defensive shell without heavy losses.  Now that they know they can, they might return in larger numbers and attack Timor itself.”

“What larger numbers?” Hudis cried.  “The Vickies can’t get anything past Admiral Kaeser’s fleet at the Refuge/Victorian wormhole.  The ships we’re seeing must have been some remnant left over from our attack on them in Tilleke.”

Admiral Wagner dropped his mask of polite neutrality and looked at Hudis with undisguised scorn.  “Thirty-four Victorian warships are hardly a remnant.   In any event, this is hardly the time to gamble.”

“Wars are won by taking risks,” Hudis retorted.

Wagner nodded.  “Yes, Citizen Secretary, that is what we teach every junior officer at the War College.  But senior officers learn a harsher truth: choose your risk carefully.  Are you willing to risk the entire existence of the Dominion, Citizen Secretary?  Because that is what is at stake here.  If the Victorians have found some other way into Dominion space, then they can attack our home world while the greater part of our forces sit at the Refuge/Victorian wormhole, too far away to help us.”  He spoke to the Citizen Secretary, but everyone understood he addressed the Citizen Director.

Citizen Director Nasto didn’t like it.  Didn’t like it one bit.  But he had not clawed his way to the pinnacle of the Dominion power structure without accepting hard truths when he saw them, and he saw one now.  “Admiral, recall the Fleet from Victorian space.  I want them here at the soonest possible moment.”   He turned to Hudis.  “Do we have a DID cruiser in orbit around Cornwall?”

Hudis nodded.  They kept one ship orbiting the Victorian home world in case the Vickies tried something unexpected.

“Good,” Nasto said.  “Get me a connection to Admiral Kaeser.”

Standing next to him, listening to every word and understanding their implications, Admiral Wagner kept a neutral face.

Chapter 42

On the Dominion Ship Fortitude

“Captain, incoming call from the Citizen Director’s office!” The Communications Officer said.  “Alpha Level priority.”

Admiral Scott Kaeser said nothing; every call from the Citizen Director’s office was Alpha Level priority.  “In my Day Room,” he instructed.  Once there, he closed the door and stabbed the comm button.  Citizen Director Nasto’s face appeared instantly on the screen.

“Admiral,” Nasto said without preliminary, “there have been some developments here you have not yet learned about.”   Six minutes later Admiral Kaeser sat still, shocked at what he had learned.  The Victorians had a back door into the Dominion’s sector!  God’s Balls, his entire plan for the defeat of the Victorians was out the window.

“I am recalling your entire task force, Admiral,” Citizen Director Nasto continued.  “We can’t risk an all-out assault on Timor without your force here to protect the planet.

Kaeser thought frantically. With some of the last ships in from Siegestor – the now dead Siegestor – his force was up to forty-seven ships.  It should be more than enough to protect Timor…unless the Vickies managed to knock out the Might of the People Ship Works.

“But there is one more thing I need you to do, Admiral,” Nasto said evenly.  “On your way back through Victorian space, you will bypass their home world, Cornwall.”  He paused, looking intently at Kaeser.

Kaeser blinked.  Of course he would bypass Cornwall. But what did–

Nasto leaned into the camera.  “Admiral Kaeser, I want you to make Cornwall burn!  Do whatever you have to do – antimatter missiles, kinetic strikes – whatever you have at your disposal you are hereby authorized to use.  I want Cornwall sterilized, Admiral.  I want the Victorians annihilated.  When that bitch queen dares to poke her nose out of Refuge and go home to Cornwall, I want her to find nothing but ashes.  Do you understand me, Admiral Kaeser?”

“Yes, sir,” Kaeser said.  “I understand your order.”

“Then make it so, Admiral.  And when you are finished, come home to Timor; we may have need of you if that Vicky task force comes back.”

The connection was severed.  Admiral Kaeser, stunned and speechless, sat at his desk.

He had his orders, now he had to figure out if he was going to obey them.

He summoned Captain Bauer.  Once he was there, Kaeser waived him to a chair.  “Fritz, the entire Assault Task Force is being recalled to Timor.”  Bauer started to object, but Kaeser held up a hand to forestall him.  “Siegestor has been destroyed.”  Bauer goggled at him.  Kaeser nodded.  “It’s true, the Citizen Director just told me.  What’s more, the Might of the People Ship Works was attacked.  No damage yet, but Admiral Wagner says it is vulnerable...as is Timor itself.”

“But how?” Bauer breathed.

Admiral Kaeser grimaced.  “It seems that while we’ve been sitting here at the wormhole, the Vickies have found a back door into Dominion space.  They attacked Siegestor, then disappeared and reappeared at the Ship Works.”

Captain Bauer looked stunned.  “This changes everything.”

“Fritz,” Kaeser said heavily.  “That’s not the worst of it.  The Citizen Director has given us other orders as well.”

Then he explained what Citizen Director Nasto had ordered them to do.

Chapter 43

On the Victorian Space Station, Atlas

“Still no word?” Queen Anne looked tired, but at that she looked better than everyone else in the room.

“No, Majesty, nothing yet,” Admiral Douthat confirmed.  She shrugged.  “These operations never adhere to a fixed schedule, Majesty. We’ll just have to wait for Captain Eder to get his task force to the Refuge/Victorian wormhole.”

“And you are confident that when he does arrive, you’ll know he’s there?” Sir Henry asked for the fifth time.

Admiral Douthat suppressed a sigh.  “Yes, Sir Henry, once Captain Eder’s task force arrives, he will be able to signal to us and we will begin our attack.”

They had been waiting for days now for any word from Captain Eder, but there was nothing. No reports.  No attack on the Dominion forces blockading the Refuge/Victorian wormhole.  And, thankfully, no drones with Code Omega messages.  Admiral Douthat and her staff waited stoically, while Queen Anne and Sir Henry fumed, fidgeted and flirted with despair.

“Your Majesty, Captain Eder understands that the preservation of the Task Force is his number one priority,” Douthat said reassuringly.  “He will not take any unnecessary risks.”

Sir Henry shook his head.  “Forgive my nervousness, Admiral.  I have complete confidence in Captain Eder.  My concern is with what happens when this war ends.”

“Let’s fight one war at a time,” Admiral Douthat said tartly.

“We already lost our home world because we were not prepared for war,” Queen Anne reminded her pointedly.  “If we do not prepare for the next war now, we will lose it before it begins.”   She turned to the fourth person in the room, Brother Han, who had replaced Brother Jong, now with the Eder Task Force attacking the Dominion shipyard.  “Brother Han, let us talk of the Tilleke.”

Brother Han was very old, easily the oldest of The Light that Queen Anne had met.  His head was bald and his bushy white eyebrows contrasted sharply to his walnut skin.  He looked at her calmly.  “By all means,” he said.

“Has The Light seen any preparations by the Tilleke to invade either the Dominion or Victoria?”

Brother Han pursed his lips.  “Emperor Chalabi made his preparations years ago, when he found a way to set Victoria and the Dominion against each other.  Now he waits.”

Queen Anne glanced at Sir Henry, then back to Han.  “Waits to see who is going to win this war?”

Han shook his head.  “No.  For the Emperor, who wins this war is a matter of great indifference.  As long as the winner is weakened and vulnerable, he will have succeeded.  Victoria or Dominion, it does not matter.”

“So he will invade?” Sir Henry asked sharply.  He did not like being lectured to.

Han nodded.  “When he is ready.”

“And when will that be?” asked Admiral Douthat.

Han shrugged.  “Emperor Chalabi can be very patient.  When he thinks you are at your weakest, militarily and psychologically, he will move very swiftly.”

“Can we stop him?” Queen Anne asked softly.

Brother Han smiled at her earnest naiveté.   “I do not know,” he said finally.

A long, gloomy silence ensued, then Queen Anne shook herself and slapped the table.  “Admiral Douthat, the coming battle against the Dominions is in your hands, as it should be.  We will pray for your victory.  Meanwhile, Sir Henry and I shall send out emissaries to some of the other Sectors; we’ll need allies in the war with Tilleke.”

At that moment the door opened and one of Admiral Douthat’s aides entered the room.  He whispered urgently to the Admiral for a moment.  Douthat looked startled, then frowned.  “Nothing from Captain Eder?” she asked.  The aide shook his head.  Douthat stood up.

“Forgive me, Majesty, but there are developments at the wormhole.  I must return to my command post.”

Queen Anne raised her eyebrows in silent question.

“It would seem, Your Majesty, that the Dominion are withdrawing, but I don’t know why.”

* * * *

On board the H.M.S. Lionheart, Captain Eder turned to Emily Tuttle.  “Think they bought it?”

Emily rubbed the bump on her nose.  “Some will want to risk it, but the wiser heads will honor the threat.”

Brother Jong was studying the navigation display.  “Nine hours to the wormhole for Gilead, and then we have a choice.  We can run through The Light and try to get an update on the tactical situation at the Refuge/Victoria wormhole, or we can go directly from Gilead to Victoria using the normal wormhole route.”

“How long for each?” Eder asked.

“Gilead to The Light to Victoria will take thirty hours,” Jong answered.  “Gilead directly to Victoria will take twenty, but in either case we’ll come out some distance from the Refuge Wormhole.  We’ll need an additional twenty-four hours to reach it, so total travel time will be fifty-four hours to go through The Light or forty-fours hours to go the direct route into Victoria.”

“We’re already behind schedule,” Emily reminded him.

Eder considered.  “I’m going to send the Tartarus on to The Light with the Dominion political prisoners,” he ordered.  “I don’t want to have to drag them around with us and whatever intelligence we get will be strategic rather than tactical.  The rest of the Task Force will go directly to Victoria and will move to the Refuge wormhole.”

Brother Jong cleared his throat.  “May I suggest, Captain, that we go through Gilead with maximum stealth and keep a sharp lookout for Tilleke vessels.  I would not be surprised if we see some.”

Captain Eder looked at him for a long moment, the nodded.  “I should have thought of that.  Mildred!”

“Yes, Captain Eder?” asked the disembodied AI.

“Pass orders throughout the Task Force:  full stealth and any sighting of a Tilleke vessel is to be reported C2C to me immediately.”

A pause.  “Done, Captain.”

Eder stood.  “Let’s go home, ladies and gentlemen.  It feels like it’s been a long time.”

As the others filed out, Captain Eder gestured to Emily to remain.  “I want to commend you on your idea on finessing the Ducks with the attack on the MOP Works,” he told her.

“I hope it works,” Emily replied.

“It could, though most of my commanders would have launched an all-out assault on the shipyard.”  He made the comment matter-of-factly, not challengingly.

Emily shrugged.  “We have two missions as I see it.  The first is to break out of Refuge and recapture Cornwall; the second is to win the war against the Ducks.  I’m focusing on our first mission.  If I can accomplish it without any more pitched battles and the loss of a lot of our people, I will.”

“You don’t think you have to militarily defeat your enemy to win the war?” Eder asked.

Emily looked startled.  “No, do you?”

Eder grinned at her, white teeth against his swarthy skin.  “The enemy is defeated when the enemy believes it is defeated.”

* * * *

The Task Force had almost reached the one-way wormhole into Gilead when one of the Owls raised an alarm.

“Lionheart, this is Laughing Owl.  We are picking up intermittent sensor readings that strongly suggest the Task Force is being followed.  Cannot tell the size of the vessel nor its nationality.”

Captain Eder looked at Brother Jong and raised his eyebrows.  “Not The Light,” Jong reassured him.  “Our patrols were pulled in so that we would not inadvertently bring attention to your Task Force.”

“Are you sure this isn’t just a sensor ghost?” Eder asked warily.  Gods knew they had chased plenty of sensor ghosts before the war.

Sadia Zahiri’s reply was long enough in coming that Eder could almost see the scornful exchange of looks on the bridge of the Laughing Owl.  The Owls had the best passive sensors in the Fleet; if they said they had an enemy vessel under stealth, it was a fact, not a ghost.

“No, Captain, no chance of a ghost.  We are getting energy readings and the target has changed course and speed twice to maintain contact with the Task Force.  We are sending you our readings now.”

Eder looked at the readings.  He had never been a Sensors Officer, but it looked like there was something there.  He ran through the options available to him once more, and cursed under his breath at the fool who designed the Owls without any weaponry.

“Are you confident that he doesn’t see you?” he asked next.

Zahiri chuckled.  “Laughing Owl has no emissions leakage that we’re aware of.  We are quieter than the ambient space around us.  No, we can hear his feet shuffling, but he cannot hear us.”

“Can you get a recon drone close enough to him to get a solid reading, enough to determine who it is?”

There was another long pause as Zahiri considered this.  “Maybe, but we are behind the bogie and that means sending the recon drone fast enough to overtake it.  If he’s a stealth scout like me, I’m guessing his sensors are pretty good.  There’s too good a chance he’ll see the drone emissions.”

Eder shook his head in frustration.

“‘Course, you could just dump a stealth drone out of your boat bay and let the bogie overtake it,” Zahiri suggested.  “Heck, the drone might not even have to activate its engine; if the bogie gets close enough, the drone will sniff him out.”

Eder smiled.

Thirty minutes later the trap was set.  Eder had the Task Force change direction again, only this time as the Task Force fell into alignment along the new course heading, he had the Wellington, Oxford and Edinburgh all drop back a little, placing the bogie within comfortable missile and laser range.  He also had one of the colliers cross the Lionheart’s stern, temporarily masking the battleship from the bogie’s sensors, and during that brief window of time he ejected a stealth drone from the rear shuttle bay.  A tractor beam nudged it onto the right course, then quickly shut down.  The collier cleared the battleship and everything looked perfectly normal.

Another thirty minutes later and everything was in place.  The bogie was almost right on top of the reconnaissance drone.

“Bring it up!” Eder ordered. “Active sensor sweep!”  The drone, barely a thousand miles from the bogie, lit up its sensors and pulsed a rapid pattern of energy beams in a one hundred and eighty degree arc.  The energy wave struck the bogie and reverberated outward.

And suddenly, for all to see, there was a Tilleke light cruiser where a moment before there had been nothing.

The bridge crews on four different Victorian ships flinched to see an enemy cruiser appear so close to them.   As the sensor sweep started to die away, the Tilleke ship began to vanish once more.  “Constant sensor sweep!” Captain Eder called. “Hammer them!”

“Open a channel,” Eder ordered.  “Tilleke ship!  Tilleke ship, this is Captain Eder of the Victorian battleship Lionheart, drop your stealth and cut your power!  You are surrounded and outnumbered!  Cut your power now or we will fire on you!”

“Power surge!” cried the Sensors Officer.  “I’m seeing a huge power surge from the Tilleke ship!  It looks-“

An energy beam blossomed from the Tilleke cruiser and jittered across space to where the destroyer Oxford sat primed to fire.  Before it could react, the bow of the Oxford collapsed in a slag of molten metal and plasma.  The destroyer’s atmosphere explosively decompressed through the massive breach, pushing the stricken ship sideways into the path of the cruiser Wellington, momentarily blocking the Wellington’s shot at the Tilleke.

Another energy beam from the Tilleke cruiser struck the Edinburgh a glancing blow, but it tore a thin line of destruction across its hull that belched air and debris.

“Gods help us!” Captain Sweeney exclaimed.  Then he caught hold of himself.  “Fire!  Fire everything!” he screamed.  The Weapons Officer of the Edinburgh mashed a button with the flat of his hand.  A moment later lasers shot at the Tilleke ship, followed immediately by ten missiles.  Shuddering under the impact, the Tilleke cruiser wheeled about and fired a brace of laser beams back at the Edinburgh, then blew an enormous cloud of chaff.  The chaff began to expand in all directions, turning an already fluid tactical situation into a hazy nightmare.

On the Lionheart, Captain Eder couldn’t believe what he was seeing.  He had expected the sensors to reveal a small stealth scout ship, not a cruiser.  Instead of a mouse they were fighting with a lion.  He cursed himself for placing Lionheart at the head of the column, now farthest away from the Tilleke marauder.  “Pilot, bring us around!  Open comm to the Wellington!” He snapped.

Instantly the picture of Captain Hillson appeared on the screen.  “Captain, attack that ship!” Eder said forcibly.

“I can’t!” Hillson shouted in frustration.  “The Oxford is literally plastered on my bow.”

“Well, break free, dammit!” Eder snarled.  He turned to his hapless Pilot.  “Get us around faster!”

Meanwhile the Edinburgh finally reloaded its missile tubes.  What it did not have was a target.  “Missiles are up!” The Weapons Officer called out.  “Laser battery Number One will be ready in two minutes; Number Two shortly after that.”

“Sensors, do you have a target?” Captain Sweeney asked impatiently.

“Nothing, sir,” the Sensors Officer said unhappily.  “The laser hits we took buggered the bow sensors for now.  We’ll have to reset and recalibrate most of them.”

Captain Sweeney had a choice to make – either send out recon drones to search for the enemy cruiser or just fire his weapons blindly into the center of the chaff cloud.  Sweeney had always admired men of action, men who could make a decision when a decision needed to be made, men who boldly took the initiative.

“Fire all weapons into the center of the chaff cloud!” he ordered.  “Reload!”

Instantly ten missiles leapt from their tubes and blasted into the chaff cloud, their proximity fuses ready to explode the warheads as soon as they sensed the Tilleke warship.

But the Tilleke cruiser wasn’t there.  After firing his weapons, the Tilleke captain had gone to stealth mode and reduced power to keep his emissions to a bare minimum.  Now he was creeping obliquely away from the chaff cloud and his sensors recorded the Vicky missiles exploding behind him.   If the Vickies began to close in on him again, he would drop stealth and kick in maximum military power to accelerate away as rapidly as possible.  But until then, he was content to creep away unseen.  What he didn’t know was that the Edinburgh’s first volley had sheared off one of his laser turrets and started a small fire.  The fire, fed by a little bit of air escaping from the hull, left a thin trail of heat and combustion products, like small footprints in the sand.

As the Lionheart wheeled about and raced to the rear of the formation, Captain Eder badgered his Sensors Officer.  “Where is it? Does anybody have a lock on it?”

No one did.

Emily’s ship, the carrier Rabat, had been immediately in front of the Oxford, Edinburg and Wellington when everything had unceremoniously gone buggered.  She had no idea what was happening or where that Tilleke cruiser had come from, but she saw the Code Omega from Oxford and decided the best place for her grogin to be was in space and ready to fight.

“Battle stations!” she ordered.  “Launch all grogin! Launch all grogin!”  She gestured to Alex Rudd, who  had come running when he heard the alarm.  “Alex, send all of your gunboats down the west side of the column to the rear.  Tell them to use active sensors and find the Tilleke ship.  Keep their IFF beacons on or else they are going to get shot at by our own ships.”  Rudd turned to his console and Emily called the carriers Haifa and Meknes.

“Launch any grogin who can fly,” she ordered.  “We’ve got a Tilleke cruiser back there somewhere.  Send your grogin back along the east side of the column.  The Rabat squadrons will take the west side.  Hiram, the IFF’s are to stay on to reduce the risk of friendly fire.  All sensors to be shared with Rabat and Lionheart.”

“Most of the grogin on my ship are down for repair,” the Meknes captain reminded her.

“Send what you can and tell them to join the Haifa squadrons,” she assured him.  She cut the transmission and went back to the battle holo display.  As she watched a swarm of blue rectangles appeared and began to move to the rear of the column.  She also saw the large solid blue square that was the Lionheart racing to the rear.  She thumbed the comm again.  “Lionheart, be advised that approximately ninety gunboats are moving along the east and west flanks of the column toward the enemy ship.  All IFFs are on.”

“Lionheart acknowledges.”

And the, abruptly, there was very little for Emily to do.  She had sent her men and women into harm’s way again, and now it was up to them.

Captain Sweeney skirted the edge of the chaff cloud rather than dive into it.  His bow sensors were still down and he was shooting off recon drones set to actively scan.  After several minutes one of the recon drones on the western edge of the chaff cloud registered a faint heat trail.

“Might have something here, Captain,” warned the Sensors Officer.  He posted it to the holo display.

“Report it to Lionheart,” he snapped.  “Pilot, full acceleration.  Weapons at ready!”  Time to pay the bastards back for the Oxford.

But in the heat of the moment, the Sensors Officer did not forward the readings to Lionheart.

“Sensor readings getting stronger,” the Sensors Officer called.  Then, “Oh, Gods, there it is. There it is!”

The Tilleke cruiser came out of stealth no more than five hundred miles in front of them.

The captain of the Tilleke warship watched with concern and resignation as the area flooded with Victorian recon drones, all actively pinging.  Then the enemy destroyer suddenly changed course and accelerated towards him.

“Has the primary energy weapon recharged yet?” he asked, knowing the answer.

“Not yet, Honored One.  Six more minutes,” the Freeman Weapons Officer answered.  The Emperor’s Sword was a fearsome weapon, but it took almost eight minutes to recharge. He had heard that the Emperor’s ship designers were designing a new ship specifically to house the plasma beam and that it would have a much shorter recharge cycle.  He held no hope of ever seeing it in action.  The Freeman was an old hand; he knew how much trouble they were in.

The captain scowled.  There was no time.  “Target the destroyer with the secondary weapon.”

“As you command.”

The beam that lashed out at the Edinburgh was different than the destructive plasma beam that had killed the Oxford.  It was thinner, a pale green instead of the lightning white of the plasma beam.  It struck the Edinburgh square on the bow.  Instantly, all the power of the ship died.  The computers stopped, life support fell silent, and lights went out all over the ship.  Not even the emergency batteries came on.  Later they would learn that the antimatter engines continued to operate, but the electricity generated from the ship’s turbines simply ceased to flow.

Edinburgh continued on its ballistic course: blind, deaf and rudderless.  Meanwhile the Tilleke cruiser dropped back into stealth and changed course, still hoping to slip out of the tightening sensor net.  But it was not to be.

“Multiple contacts, Honored One,” the Tilleke sensors operator reported.   The holo display showed a band of red lights in front of the cruiser and on either side.  Coming up fast behind it to the right was the larger symbol of a Victorian battleship, hell-bent on destruction.  On the other side was the symbol for a Victorian cruiser.  The Tilleke sensors operator could not know that the collision with the Oxford had badly damaged the Wellington’s forward sensors and it was almost flying blind, groping about for some sign of the Tilleke ship.

“Which direction?” the Tilleke captain asked.

The sensors operator gestured helplessly.  “Everywhere,” he said simply.

“Very well,” the captain replied, his mind already grappling with the next issue.  There were secrets on his ship, weapons and stealth systems that were superior to anything the Victorians or Dominions had.  They must not fall into enemy hands.  He straightened.  He knew his duty.  He swiveled his chair to the computer console and rapidly typed in the secret code.  An interrogatory flashed on the screen.  He spoke into the microphone, enunciating carefully.  “For the everlasting glory of the Emperor, this I command.”  The computer screen flashed again.  The captain leaned back in his chair and exhaled a long breath.

His duty was done.

From the Combat Center on the Rabat, Emily watched the sensor displays and the position of her grogin on the holo display.  She watched as Lionheart sped down the west side of the column, its sensors actively sweeping all before it.  She saw the recon drones spreading out to form a large globe around the chaff cloud, scanning in all directions.  Then she straightened as the Edinburgh suddenly changed course and darted to the southwest.  They must have seen something, but when she glanced at the sensor data for an update, there was nothing.

Then the Tilleke cruiser appeared on sensors for five crucial seconds, allowing every active sensor source in the Task Force to get a lock.  The Tilleke ship then disappeared again, but Mildred began tracking it, plotting possible courses and taking into account different speeds.  Three growing concentric circles appeared.  The inner one was red and was labeled “75%”, the next was blue and “50%” and the last was black and “10%”. Then Emily noticed that the Edinburgh was in trouble.  Sensors showed she was not emitting anything and there was no IFF beacon.  She was moving in a straight line on the same course she had been on when the Tilleke ship briefly appeared.  What had happened?  Was Edinburgh on a Long Walk?

Hurriedly, she thumbed the comm.  “Alex, can you send two of your birds to see what’s going on with Edinburgh?  We’re showing her as intact but completely without power.”

Rudd didn’t reply, but the holo showed a pair of gunboats suddenly make a beeline for the stricken ship.  Emily nodded and turned her attention back to the main display.  The sensors were tracking a small heat source as it moved first southwest, then due west and finally straight up.  The Lionheart was turning and accelerating again, while the gunboats from Rabat were speeding in towards it from all directions.

They moved in closer and closer, hemming in the Tilleke from all sides, but now the target neither accelerated nor changed direction.  In a minute the gunboats would have a lock on it and would fire their ten-inch lasers, then close in and fire their missiles.

Emily frowned.  Why wasn’t the Tilleke captain maneuvering?  He must see all of the grogin vectoring in on him.  Then her comm sounded and Alex Rudd’s face appeared.  “Commander,” he said anxiously, “I think it’s an ambush, like the Duck ship at Siegestor that blew itself up.”

Emily blinked, then she thumbed the comm that would allow her to talk to all of the grogin gunboats at once.  “All grogin, fall back!  Fall back immediately.  The enemy ship is going to self-destruct!”

And as she said it, it did.

The cruiser vanished in a now familiar ball of incandescent white light that expanded in all directions to devour anything it could touch.  The white globe grew and grew for fifteen seconds, white pulsing on white as the antimatter fuel devoured itself, then it turned an angry, cancerous red.  When it finally dimmed the Tilleke ship and twelve of the grogin gunboats were gone.  No life pods, no Omega Code drones.  Gone.

Then one of the gunboat pilots muttered, “We got that bastard!”

To which another pilot replied, “Asshole.”

Twenty minutes later the Edinburgh returned under its own power, escorted by two of the Rabat gunboats.  Captain Sweeney had no explanation for what happened.  “The Tilleke beam hit us and our power just went out.  Poof!  We went ballistic and eventually the two gunboats caught up to us, but without power we couldn’t even radio them.  We just kept drifting along, then after about fifteen minutes our power came back.  Just came up.”  He shook his head.  “Don’t know why.  But I tell you one thing; while the power was gone the Tilleke could have taken us out with a pop gun.”

Then Captain Sweeney looked around, frowning.  “Say, how many people did you save off the Oxford?”

Everyone looked at one another, then the Sensors Officer cursed loudly and ordered up a replay from the last hour.

One  hundred thousand miles away, the Oxford had commenced its Long Walk.

The Tilleke plasma beam had shorn off its entire bow.  Vomiting air, with its bow torn open back to the Number Two and Three laser turrets, the Oxford’s antimatter cells went into automatic shutdown.  Battery powered safety lights came on, but the forward third of the ship was an airless tomb.  With the artificial gravity gone, the bodies of the ship’s crew caught in the melee floated weightlessly down darkened corridors.  A bare handful in the bow had managed to climb into the emergency vac suits.  One by one they pulled themselves to the nearest bulkhead door, where they waited for help that never came.

Mildred remained functional, powered by a brick of ziridium nestled deep in her core.  But the rest of the ship rapidly began to fail.  In Life Support, the main CO2 scrubbers went off line.  The monitoring equipment tasked with maintaining sufficient air pressure had been knocked out by one of the many explosions, so although there was 45,000 pounds of compressed air available to alleviate the crisis, the tanks were never vented into the ship.  The ship’s air pressure, bedeviled by a hundred rents in the hull, plunged.  Despite their training, in the violence of the assault, with the confusion and smoke, the screams of injured and dying sailors and the roar of escaping air, most of the crew did not find their vac suits in time.

Not that it would have made any difference.  The Oxford and all aboard her were doomed.  Six minutes after the plasma beam cut off the bow of the ship, Mildred calculated the ship would die in moments and tried to launch the Code Omega drones, but the firing tubes had been destroyed.  Unable to connect to the various mechanical and electronic controls throughout the ship, it was as if Mildred’s arms and legs had been amputated.

But she was not done yet.  Years earlier the Artificial Intelligence had been designed by a deeply religious woman who had foreseen with grim certainty that there would be deaths like this.  Not a quick death, however unwelcome and shocking, but a slow death fraught with terror and pain and wretched solitude.  The designer knew there was nothing she could do to prevent these tragedies, but she prayed that at least she could give comfort to the dying.

So, as the Oxford spun away with the remnants of its crew, as the air bled out and the temperature plummeted, and as the bitter chill of hopelessness began to settle into those still alive, Mildred performed her final task.

She sang.

In a rich, lilting contralto, Mildred sang.  And all through the ship the crew, no matter how frantic, no matter how terrified, no matter how resigned, stopped and listened.  Some quietly wept, some actually smiled, but they all listened.

Mildred sang.

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found…

It was the last thing ever heard by the remaining two hundred and sixteen men and women still alive on board the Oxford.

Chapter 44

With the Lionheart Task Force in the Gilead Sector

The various captains sat at the conference room table, subdued and quiet.  Brother Jong sat with them.  They could have participated in the meeting by video like they usually did, but there seemed to be an unspoken need to be together.  Captain Sweeney had brought two bottles of dark, smoky Scotch and ceremoniously went around the table putting a finger’s worth in each glass.  When he was done he looked to Captain Eder.

Eder raised his glass.  “Absent companions,” he said solemnly.  Everyone echoed his sentiments and raised their glass.  Emily sipped hers carefully; she had learned the hard way that she had little capacity for liquor.  She noticed that Brother Jong raised his to his lips, but did not actually drink.

“In five hours we will pass through the wormhole into Victorian space,” Captain Eder said softly, swirling the Scotch in the bottom of his glass.  “We still have to see if the Ducks have withdrawn from the Refuge wormhole.  If they have, we can rejoin with Admiral Douthat and the rest of the Fleet.  If not, we’ll see how we can be most effective.”  It wasn’t much of a plan and they all knew it, but it was all they had for the moment.

“What about that Tilleke cruiser?” Captain Zar asked.

Eder glanced at Hiram Brill.  Hiram nodded.  “We know four things,” he said, “maybe five.”  He spoke absently, as if he was describing a meal he had eaten the week before.  Sitting across the table, Emily realized his real attention was on Cookie, still aboard the carrier Rabat under the care of Dr. Wilkinson.  Wilkinson, Emily decided, was either a witch or an angel, with an unerring ability to appear by a person in their moment of greatest need.

“First,” Hiram continued, “we know the cruiser was based closely on the chassis of a Duck cruiser, so the Ducks may have either built the hull and sold it to the Tilleke or at least given them plans for it.  Second, we know they have a weapon we have never seen before.  We certainly don’t have it and we don’t think the Ducks have it.”

“Was that what they used on the Oxford?” Captain Sweeney asked.

Hiram nodded.  “It is very powerful, but it seems to take a long time to recharge, given that they only used it once during the entire engagement.”

“Thank the Gods for small favors,” one of the captains muttered.

“The energy beam appears to be a stream of very hot ionized gas, but when we looked at the sensors in slow motion, we saw it was actually five separate bolts of gas. It’s nothing like the plasma rifle we use, and it looks like the Ducks figured out the heat transfer issues that would allow them to build a really big plasma weapon. It literally melts whatever it hits, almost instantaneously.   Also, plasma beams would have an extremely high degree of electrical conductivity, so once a plasma beam has struck an object, a high electrical charge can be channeled to the target through the beam.”  He ticked off his finger.  “So you get damage from extreme heat, mostly in the form of slag.  You get shatter damage as the hull cannot absorb all of the heat in a short time and the metal literally shatters apart, and you get electrical damage to the ships systems and to the crew as the electrical charge put through the beam electrocutes anything it touches.”  He nodded emphatically.  “It is a very nasty piece of work and I was surprised to see it on a platform as small as a cruiser, although that may explain why it took so long for them to recharge it.”

“What else?”  It was Bengt Thuree of the Horned Owl.

“Well, we know that the Tilleke are in the Dominion sector monitoring the battle between us and the Ducks, and we can surmise that they are not actively helping the Ducks.”  Hiram paused, looking at his notes.  “And there’s one more thing,” he said, his tone grim.

“Let me guess,” said Sadia Zahiri of the Laughing Owl, “the Tilleke have come up with a really good stealth system.”

Captain Eder took over.  “That’s what it looks like.  We know it got within six or seven thousand miles of us and we didn’t have a clue.  And it wasn’t a small ship,” he acknowledged ruefully.  “So from now on we have to be on our toes, with a shell of recon drones around us at all times. And occasional active scanning.”

“It will make us less stealthy,” warned Zahiri.

“Can’t be helped,” Eder said curtly.

“What game are the Tilleke playing?” mused Captain Thuree.

Everyone looked at each other.  Finally Hiram spoke:  “I don’t know, but we aren’t going to like it.”  He paused, considering.  “And if I’m right, neither will the Dominion.”

Four hours later the Task Force slipped through the wormhole into Victorian space.  They found a half-completed fort and signs that the Dominion had abruptly abandoned the position.  They turned away from Cornwall and towards the Victorian/Refuge wormhole.

They had no idea they had just doomed twenty-five million people to death.

* * * *

On the Dominion battleship Fortitude, Admiral Kaeser contemplated his life as a soldier.  He had joined the Fleet at age seventeen, just a wide-eyed kid from a small farming community in the rolling plains of Timor’s Southern Hemisphere. The young boy from the plains had flourished and grown.  The Fleet had fed him, educated him, taught him skills, taught him responsibility and eventually given him command.                All it demanded in return was discipline and obedience.

And he had been happy to give it, happy to obey the orders of the masters who often did not wear the uniform of the Fleet, but rather the civilian dress of politicians. But he was cursed with intelligence.  As he grew older, he watched. He listened.  He witnessed corruption, ineptitude, selfishness, and the pettiest of politics.  In time he realized that his beloved Fleet was not just the shield of the Dominion, it was also the terrible sword of the politicians who managed to grasp power from other grasping politicians until they in turn were toppled by politicians even more grasping than they.

And still he served.  In his darkest hours, when all of his achievements tasted like ashes, he told himself that he was above petty politics, that what mattered was that he served for the benefit of the billions of people that made up the Dominion of Unified Citizenry.

But now the Dominion had started a war, and he was being ordered to slaughter three billion people because that war was going badly.

He wondered how it had all come to this.

And he wondered what he was going to do about it.

“Our orders are clear,” Fritz Bauer said bleakly.  They were sharing a drink in Admiral Kaeser’s private quarters.  Kaeser’s drink sat untouched in front of him.  Bauer clutched his in his hand.  “We are to sterilize the planet Cornwall and destroy the Victorian people.”  He looked grey and drawn.  His tunic collar was loose and nervous sweat stained his underarms.

“Do you know how many people there are on Cornwall?” Kaeser asked mildly.  Bauer just looked at him without answering.

“Three billion, more or less,” Kaeser told him.  “Another three billion on Christchurch.  What do you think the Victorians will do to us, to the Dominion of Unified Citizenry, if we drop antimatter bombs on Cornwall?”

“If we do it right, there won’t be anybody to do anything.  We will be victorious.”  Bauer’s voice was that of a desperate man faced with a dilemma he could not solve on his own.  And yet, Kaeser remembered, it was Bauer who came to him when he was under arrest and Bauer who made it possible for Kaeser to return to power.  Don’t underestimate him just because he is terrified, Kaeser cautioned himself.

“We’ll never be able to kill all of the Victorians, Fritz,” he said softly.  “You know that.  Even if we turned the entire planet of Cornwall to smoldering ash, their main Fleet has already escaped.  They are not defeated, Fritz, not by a long shot.  We’ve lost Siegestor.  Siegestor!  Until we can significantly update the Might of the People Ship Works, we can’t replace our losses.  And remember, Fritz, somehow the Vickies found a back door into Dominion space.  Now we have a two-front war on our hands.”

Bauer said nothing, just turned the glass of liquor in his hand.  Looking at him, Kaeser suddenly understood.  “Your family is safe, Fritz.  I told you I would take care of them and I did.  They are in Darwin, hidden and out of sight.  The DID won’t be able to find them.”

Bauer took a long, shuddering sigh.  “They are all I have left, sir.  If I don’t survive this war, I don’t want them hunted down and killed because of something I did.”

Kaeser grunted.  “My concern is not that we’ll be killed for not nuking Cornwall, but that the Victorians would hunt us to the ends of the galaxy if we do.  And other sectors would help them, including The Light.  Those damn fanatics scare the hell out of me. I don’t know how they do it, but they know everything that happens.  They must have spies everywhere.”

Now Bauer stared at him.  “Is that what you’re worried about, that we might get caught?” he asked with surprising harshness.

Kaeser shook his head.  “No.”  He held up his hands.  “I have commanded a warship.  I have fought the enemy and killed him when I could, soldier to soldier.  But this…  I don’t want to die with the blood of three billion people on my hands, Fritz.  I don’t want my crew to have to live with it, either.”

“It is the order of the Citizen Director,” Bauer said, but he was not arguing the point, he was testing his Admiral.

Kaeser nodded once more.  “Yes, it is.  And that leaves me with a decision to make, and I need to know if you will follow my orders.  Not because you have to, Fritz, but because you want to.”

Bauer clenched his jaw and balled his fists, then visibly forced himself to relax.  “What are your orders, Admiral?”

Kaeser smiled ruefully.  “I really don’t know how this will end, Fritz.”

“I know that, sir.”

Kaeser stood, straightening his tunic.  “Then let’s begin.”

The Dominion battleship Fortitude reached Cornwall a day after departing the Refuge wormhole.  Admiral Kaeser had sent the entire rest of the Assault Force on the fastest route back to Dominion space and then to Timor.  Only the Fortitude turned for the planet Cornwall.  When they arrived they found a single Dominion Intelligence Directorate cruiser in orbit.  The AI informed him the captain was Captain Kurt Adler.

"What do you know about Adler?" Kaeser asked Captain Bauer.

"One of the up and coming DID officers," Bauer said.  "Strict disciplinarian, dedicated to the Citizen Director.  He follows orders with zeal and believes that the enemies of the Dominion deserve to be punished.  He also fancies himself quite the military strategist, although his performance at the War College was only so-so."

"Self-confident?" Kaeser queried.

"Absolutely, and he does not take kindly to any subordinate who questions an order.  Nor, for that matter, does he care much for criticism from any of his peers."  Bauer chuckled.  "We have had our share of run-ins, Kurt and I."

By now the Fortitude was coming up behind Captain Adler's ship, the Justice.  As they watched, the Justice fired off a volley of ten missiles, aimed at the planet surface of Cornwall.

Kaeser groaned.  "Dammit!  He must have received orders directly from the Citizen Director."

The Sensors Officer looked up from his console.  "All ten missiles struck the planet, Admiral."

"Where?" Kaeser asked.

"Major metropolitan areas.  Five were nuclear devices in the 500 megaton range; five were antimatter warheads."  There were too many variables to determine in advance how many megatons of dynamite an antimatter explosion would yield, but they all knew that an antimatter explosion in the atmosphere, at or near ground level, would be horrendous beyond imagination.

Admiral Kaeser leaned close to Captain Bauer.  "Fritz, I want you take the weapons station," he said softly.  Bauer looked at him and Kaeser nodded.

"Open a comm to Justice," he ordered.  In a moment the comm screen flickered and Captain Adler was looking at him.  Why is it that all DID officers look like they are perpetually sneering? Kaeser wondered.

"Captain Adler," Kaeser said harshly, "I demand to know why you are firing on the planet in violation of the Citizen Director's orders."

Adler's sneer diminished, but only a little.  "What are you talking about?  I received order from the Citizen Director to fire on Cornwall."

"When did you receive that order, Captain Adler?"

Adler frowned and gestured to someone off screen.  He appeared to listen for a moment, and then turned back to the camera.  "We logged the order forty-five minutes ago." he said confidently.

Admiral Kaeser nodded.  "And tell me, Captain, did you log in the transmission countering the order thirty minutes ago?"   From the corner of his eye, Kaeser could see his own Communications Officer shoot him a startled look, then dive for his console, looking, no doubt, for the message from the Citizen Director that Admiral Kaeser was referring to.

Adler's eyes widened, then narrowed.  "I don't know what you are-"

"You imbecile!" Kaeser shouted. "In direct contradiction of the Citizen Director's order, you have just annihilated ten major Victorian cities and undermined the Citizen Director's latest peace proposal!  Now the Sultenic Empire and Sybil Head will come into the war, all because of your gross negligence!  Captain Adler, you are under arrest.  You are to be confined pending a full Court Martial when we return to Timor."

"You can't arrest me!" Adler blurted.  "I'm not in your chain of command.  Only a DID officer-"

From the corner of his eye, Admiral Kaeser could see his Communications Officer trying to get his attention, no doubt to tell him there was no order from Timor countering the attack order.  Kaeser ignored him.

"Not in my chain of command?" Kaeser roared.  "I am the commander of the Dominion Assault Force, hand-picked by Citizen Director Nasto himself!  I command every ship in Victorian space.  Before, I was arresting you for negligence in the commission of your duties, Captain, but now I am arresting you for treason!"  Kaeser leaned forward, his chin jutting out.  "Who is the second in command of the Justice?  Speak up!"

A stocky, dark haired man stepped into view of the camera.  "Commander Bittman, Admiral.  What are your orders, sir?"

"Commander, I place you in charge of the Justice, effective immediately.  I want you to personally take former Captain Adler to the brig and secure him.  He is to have no communication with anyone until you have reached Timor, at which point he will be transferred to the custody of the Fleet Security officer in charge of the Citizen Director's personal security.  Do you understand, Commander?"

At the mention of Fleet Security, Commander Bittman stiffened in shock.  Fleet Security was the mortal enemy of the DID.  Consigning Captain Adler to their custody was a sign that the DID had somehow fallen from the Citizen Director's good graces.

"Commander Bittman, acknowledge your orders!" Kaeser said sharply.

"Of course, Admiral.  "I acknowledge your order," he replied, not quite stammering.

"Then follow them and notify me once Captain Adler is safely in the brig."

The comm screen went dark and Admiral Kaeser looked at his watch.  "Helm, bring us in until we are seven hundred miles behind the Justice.  Briskly now!"  He looked at his watch again.  A minute for Commander Bittman to overcome Adler's protests and have the guard on duty take him under arrest.  Another five minutes to take the lift to the brig and arrive at the entrance.  In the meantime the bridge would be under the command of the third officer, probably either Sensors or Weapons.  Either one would be fine.  He was betting heavily that the bridge crew would be shocked at what had happened and would be paying very little attention to their screens.  He looked again at his watch:  two minutes had passed.

The Fortitude crept ever closer to the Justice.

Three minutes.  Four.  Then six.

Kaeser thumbed the comm and connected to the Justice.  The face of a young officer appeared on screen.  "Yes, Admiral?” he asked nervously.

Kaeser got on top of him at once.  "Why have I not yet been informed that Captain Adler is in a cell?" he snarled.  The junior officer visibly wilted on the screen.

"I-I don't kn-"

"What is your name and rank?"

"Lieutenant Kaufman, sir.  I am the Sensors Officer."

"Lieutenant, I want you to personally go to the brig and find out what the holdup is," Kaeser said coldly.  Unable to stop himself, Kaufman popped up and half-sprinted to the lift doors, completely unaware that he had not left anyone in command.

Kaeser checked his watch.  Almost seven minutes.  Thanks to a little verbal bullying, the three most senior officers in the Justice's chain of command were absent from the bridge.  He turned to Captain Bauer, standing by the Weapons station and nodded once.

Bauer pressed the firing button.  Thirty-eight missiles and four heavy lasers leapt out at the unsuspecting Justice from a mere seven hundred miles.  There was no attempt by the Justice to shoot any down.  The missiles all struck in the center of the cruiser and it died within seconds.

"Okay, let's go home," Admiral Kaeser told his shocked crew.

Chapter 45

On the H.M.S. Sydney

The problem was, Admiral Douthat fumed, that when you had to make the most important decision of your career, you had no damn information on which to base it.

For days Admiral Douthat had kept the entire Victorian Fleet on ready status, just out of sensor range of the Refuge/Victorian wormhole.  For days they had waited for some signal from Captain Eder and the Lionheart that they had launched their attack on the Dominion forces blocking the wormhole.  For days they had heard nothing.

Day after day she sent hundreds of reconnaissance drones through the wormhole, trying to keep the Ducks nervous and off balance.  The Ducks, of course, reciprocated in kind, which, she had to admit, made her nervous and off balance.  But day after day it was the same.  A half dozen Dominion heavy cruisers patrolled near the wormhole entrance, while on the very edge of sensor range the drones picked up signs of dozens more.  Once or twice they thought they detected new ships being added to the Dominion Assault Force, but they couldn't be sure.  The Ducks further complicated matters by mining the entire area near the mouth of the wormhole, mines which blew up dozens and dozens of the reconnaissance drones Douthat sent through.  The mines inevitably were destroyed in the gravity surges near the wormhole entrance, but they successfully reduced the amount of information getting to Admiral Douthat.

Then it all changed.

The recon drones went through.  The recon drones came back.

All of them.

When the Sensors Officer read the results from the first drone, he refused to believe them.  "Gandalf, run a diagnostic on the first drone," he ordered the AI, and while that was being done he looked at the sensor log of the second recon drone.  He frowned.  It was the same as the first.

So was the third.  So was the fourth.

Gandalf reported back that the first recon drone's systems were functioning within parameters.  The Sensors Officer pursed his lips.  "Communications find Admiral Douthat and patch me through to her."

The Comm Officer checked her display.  "Um, Commander, says here that she is in a meeting with the Queen.  You don't want me to interrupt that, do you?"

The Sensors Officer didn't bother to reply.  The woman at the Comm Station was a new rating and he didn't have time to either educate her or berate her, so he gently pushed her aside and typed in the code that would send an emergency signal to Admiral Douthat's aide.

"This is Lieutenant Perry," the aide replied immediately.

"Lieutenant, this is Commander Barnes, Fleet Sensors Control Officer.  I want you to interrupt the Admiral and tell her that there is a recon drone report regarding the wormhole I must discuss with her immediately. Do you understand?"

"I will tell her immediately, Commander," the Admiral's aide said calmly.  "Please hold this line open."

A moment later Admiral Douthat entered the view screen.  "What have you got?"  Barnes liked that about her; she never wasted time.

"At 1700 Fleet Standard Time we sent forty recon drones through the wormhole to Victoria."  He paused.  "They all returned."

Douthat's eyebrows shot up.  "All?"

"They report no sign of Dominion forces.  No ships, no mines, no missile sleds.  I have double checked the drones and they were functioning normally."  Barnes fell silent.

"No other data?" Douthat asked.

Barnes shook his head.  Admiral Douthat gestured to an aide off screen – probably Perry – and a moment later the faces of her top four captains appeared on the screen.

"Recon drone reports from ten minutes ago show the Dominions may have withdrawn from the wormhole entrance," Douthat told them briskly.  "This may be the Lionheart and the Task Force making its move.  Launch another recon mission with drones and a frigate.  As soon as they are back, if there is still no sign of the Ducks launch your Battle Groups through the wormhole.  I will be on the Sydney within thirty minutes.  Captain Aukes, you have tactical command until I rejoin you.  Once you go through the wormhole, I want updates every five minutes."

She paused.  "I think this is it, people.  Dismissed."

Five minutes later forty more recon drones burst through the wormhole into Victorian space, followed immediately by the frigate, Olympus.   All of the recon drones went to active pinging.  They found nothing except a handful of deactivated mines.  Olympus fired off more recon drones, expanding the sensor bubble out to fifty thousand miles.  Minutes ticked by, then the new sensor reports flooded in.  Still nothing.  Captain Allison Levitsky of the Olympus ordered them out to 100,000 miles, which would allow their sensors to detect an unstealthed vessel out to a light second.  Then she tapped her fingers impatiently while she waited.  Captain Aukes sent increasingly impatient requests for updates.  Levitsky sent back a tart reply.  "Nothing yet to 50k.  Expanding shell to 100,000.  Let me do my job, please."

Close to thirty minutes later the recon drones reported back.  Levitsky, formerly an Owl captain, pursed her lips, then smiled.  "Take us back, Mickey," she told the helm.  Two minutes later they emerged into Refuge space where the rest of the Fleet, now including Admiral Douthat, impatiently waited.

"Plenty of nothing!" Levitsky signaled to the Sydney.  "Drone shell out to 100,000.  No Ducks."

Twenty minutes later the Victorian Fleet was in Victorian space, accelerating hard towards Cornwall.  They had only traveled for ten hours when an Owl scout picked up emissions from a large number of ships coming fast on a reciprocal course.  The Owl went to battle stations, a relatively simple task since she carried no weapons.

Several of the approaching ships were under stealth, but most were not.  This caused some puzzlement until they got a hard read on the emissions:  tugboats.  Victorian tugboats.   The Owl captain chuckled.  "Communications, please inform Admiral Douthat and Captain Aukes: 'The Prodigal Son has returned.'"

They met in a conference room on the Lionheart.  Admiral Douthat had read Captain Eder's summary report, but wanted the details that the report had not gone into.  She had been shocked, but not surprised, to read of the loss of the carrier Fes, the destroyer Oxford, four tugboats and the eighty-seven gunboats destroyed or rendered inoperable.  And she seethed when she read what the Dominions had done to Maria Sanchez and Otto Wisnioswski.

When Captain Eder finished the short version of his report, Admiral Douthat nodded in satisfaction.  "You've no doubt that the Siegestor shipyard is destroyed?"

Captain Eder shook his head.  "The science boffins have gone over the sensor reports extensively.  The last we saw of Siegestor it was in several pieces, all going in different directions."

Queen Anne leaned forward.  "If I may, Captain Eder, after you destroyed Siegestor, what made you decide to attack the Dominion's old shipyard, the one you call the ‘MOP Works’?"

"Simple, Majesty, we didn't think we could accomplish our assigned mission of attacking the Ducks in the rear at the Refuge wormhole.  We'd lost many more ships that I had anticipated, our munitions were low and, well…" he shrugged.  "We didn't want to just return to Refuge, so we looked for an alternative means of convincing the Ducks that they needed to recall their Fleet from Victorian space."

"So since you were too weak to attack the Duck ships, you decided to attack the Duck home planet?"  Queen Anne stared at him in puzzlement.

"Not the planet as such, Majesty, but the MOP Works, their second shipyard.  It was all a bluff, you see," Eder said, smiling.  "A bit of stage drama to rattle them and make them think they were vulnerable to a significant attack.  We hoped that if it worked, the Citizen Director would recall his forces from Victoria to protect Timor and the MOP Works."  His smile broadened.  "And from what you've told me, it worked.  The Duck forces sitting on the wormhole are gone!"

Sir Henry cleared his throat.  "Captain, what do you make of that Tilleke cruiser you ran into?"

Eder's smile disappeared.  "Very bad news, that.  They clearly have the edge over us in stealth technology, and that new energy weapon is going to give us fits!"  He shook his head.  "The boffins are studying it, but we are going to have to change tactics.  It may be short ranged – at least we hope it is – but one shot was enough to kill the Oxford."

Sitting beside Emily, Hiram Brill leaned in and whispered, "Sir Henry doesn't care about the technology; he's thinking about the politics."

Sir Henry frowned.  "Tell me, Captain, have your analysts drawn any conclusions from the fact that the Tilleke ship was even there?"

Eder shrugged.  "Not really, sir.  Either they were there to help the Dominion or they were there to keep tabs on how the war is going between Victoria and the Dominion."

Sir Henry stroked his chin with his long fingers.  "Hmmm, yes.  Thank you, Captain."  He glanced at Queen Anne, who gave a slight nod in reply.

"See?" Hiram whispered to Emily.  "The old boy is already plotting two or three moves ahead.  He knows the Tilleke are waiting until the end of this war is imminent, then they'll launch an attack against the victor, catch them while they're weak.  Emperor Chalabi is a cunning bastard and likes to play the long game, but so does Sir Henry."

Admiral Douthat rapped her knuckles on the table.  "We are six hours from Cornwall.  Soon we'll see if the Dominion has withdrawn from it as well.  Please go back to your ships and prepare for combat."  She stood up, looking at Queen Anne and Sir Henry.  "If the Dominion forces have retreated all the way into Dominion space, we will have to make a decision whether to chase them or to stay at Cornwall.  Our analysts will be looking at this, Majesty, but the ultimate decision is a political one.  When the time comes I will need your decision promptly."

Queen Anne nodded once, then looked at Hiram and Emily, then back to Admiral Douthat.  "If it would not be too disruptive, I would like to borrow Commander Brill for several hours.  I promise to let him rejoin you in time for any military action that may be forthcoming."

Admiral Douthat nodded.  "Of course, Majesty."  She shot a hard look at Hiram, as if measuring him for an airlock.  "Everyone else, return to your ships.  We have a lot to do and not much time to do it."

* * * *

The Owls sped ahead to scout out the approach to Cornwall.  Two hours later Sadia Zahiri of the Laughing Owl reported in.  The fact that she reported by comm rather than messenger drone meant she did not fear discovery by the Ducks, which meant the Ducks were gone.  Smiling, Admiral Douthat opened her comm screen and was taken aback to see a tense, angry Captain Zahiri looking back at her.

"Admiral, the Dominion forces have abandoned Cornwall, but before they left they bombed the planet with antimatter strikes."

Douthat's jaw clenched.  This was her greatest fear.  "How bad?"

"They destroyed ten major cities.  Reports from the surface are still skimpy, but they fear twenty-five to thirty million dead," Zahiri told her.

Alyce Douthat closed her eyes.  She didn’t know whether to curse or pray.

"But, Admiral," Zahiri said, "there is something more.  The Duck Admiral left a message buoy.  I think you need to hear it."

They reconvened in the Lionheart's conference room: Admiral Douthat, Captain Eder, Queen Anne, Sir Henry, Captain Zahiri and Hiram Brill.  And, sitting unobtrusively in the corner, Brother Jong.

"The planetary strikes destroyed the cities of Liverpool, Brighton, Belfast, Westminster, Dover and Lancaster," Captain Zahiri said. She glanced quickly at Queen Anne.  "And of course London was destroyed during the initial attack."  It seemed so long ago.  "But what I want you all to hear is this messenger buoy left in orbit around Cornwall."  She touched her tablet and a hologram came on above the middle of the table.  It showed a grey-haired man of middle years wearing the uniform of an admiral in the Dominion Fleet.  The man looked evenly at the camera for a moment, then spoke.

"I am Admiral Scott Kaeser of the Dominion of Unified Citizenry Navy," he said.  “I am in command of the task force that has had the Victorian Fleet bottled up in Refuge for the last three months.  Two days ago I received an order to return to Dominion space.”  He paused and pursed his lips.  “I was also ordered to bomb Victoria.  To sterilize it.  This I chose not to do.  Unfortunately, one of our ship captains also received the order.  That ship was in orbit around Cornwall at the time and fired several high-yield weapons against the planet surface."  Admiral Kaeser’s face hardened.

"I am an officer of the Dominion Fleet," he continued.  "I owe my loyalty to the Fleet, but I will not abide the slaughter of innocents.  I destroyed the ship that was firing on your planet and I apologize to you that I did not arrive in time to prevent it from happening.  Now we must look to the future.  You will undoubtedly launch an attack against Timor.  Timor is my home world.  If you attack – when you attack – I will do my utmost to defeat you. Do not think otherwise. If I fail and Timor lies helpless at your hands, remember that we did not destroy your planet even though we could have.  Even in the embrace of war, I hope that counts for something.  Kaeser out."

The hologram collapsed.

Everyone in the conference room looked at each other.  "Do we believe him?" Queen Anne asked harshly.  "Our planet is in ruins and he tells us it could have been worse?"

"Your Majesty," Hiram Brill said evenly, "it could have been worse.  They could have made the entire planet uninhabitable for centuries to come.  But even if we take him at face value, the real question is whether we push on to attack the Dominion or stay here and try to build up Cornwall's defenses."

Queen Anne looked coldly at Hiram, then relented a bit and turned her gaze to Admiral Douthat and Captain Eder.  "Are our forces strong enough to attack?"

Captain Eder started to shake his head, but Admiral Douthat said, "Yes, Majesty, we can launch an attack within three days."  Eder shot her an incredulous look, but said nothing.

"And how long would it take us to build up a credible line of defense?" Sir Henry asked gruffly.

Admiral Douthat pursed her lips.  "Two to three years if most of our industrial base has survived the strikes against Cornwall.  Five years if the industrial base is badly damaged or destroyed, maybe six."

Sir Henry snorted derisively.  "More like ten."

Queen Anne rose to her feet.  "It seems every time I meet with you, Admiral, we are rolling the dice with the fate of Victoria in the balance.  Let us strive to make this the last time.  Admiral Douthat, you have my permission to launch an attack on Dominion space.  I wish you Gods' speed."

* * * *

Two hours later Admiral Douthat and Captain Eder sat across from Emily Tuttle and Hiram Brill.  Emily waited patiently for Douthat to start.  Hiram looked distracted.  Admiral Douthat looked at them both and scowled.   “You both know that Queen Anne has given us the go-ahead for an attack on the Dominion home world.”  She jerked a thumb at Captain Eder, who sat expressionless beside her.  “For reasons I don’t entirely understand, Captain Eder here has urged me to allow the two of you to review the proposed attack plan.  Have you completed your review?”

Emily and Hiram exchanged a glance and then nodded.  The attack plan had been prepared by a committee of the cruiser and destroyer captains, primarily drawn from the Queen’s Own Guard for the simple reason that it was the most intact of the old battle groups.  The fact that it was the most intact, however, also meant that it had seen the least action and was, relative to the remnants of either the Coldstream Guards or the Black Watch, less experienced and less knowledgeable.

“Well?” Douthat asked, an edge in her voice.

“It is a very solid, traditional Fleet attack plan,” Emily offered.

“Very traditional,” Hiram echoed.

Douthat looked from Hiram to Emily, then turned to Eder, started to say something, but changed her mind and turned back to Emily and Hiram again.  “You don’t like it,” she said flatly.  “Why not?”

“It’s not a bad plan,” Hiram explained, “for a barroom brawl.  Oh, there is a good chance we’ll win, but use that plan and we’ll suffer significant losses.  And then we’ll be sitting ducks – no pun intended – for the Tilleke when they kick the door in.”

“We need to fight one war at a time,” Douthat said coldly.

“Perhaps,” Hiram conceded.  “But while we may fight only one war, we damn well better plan for two or the Tillies will clean our clock when they come in.”  He gestured to the tablet.  “This plan will result in a third or more of our ships getting shot to pieces.  We can still beat the Dominion, maybe, but even if we win we will be helpless when the Tillies come in, guns blazing.”

Douthat glanced at Eder.  Eder nodded once.  She sighed.  She had written a good part of that plan, knowing it wasn’t what they needed but not being able to come up with anything better.  Captain Eder had tried to be diplomatic, but it was clear he didn’t like it, either.  Now these two young officers…   Well, it was galling, that’s what it was.

“What do we need?” Douthat asked sourly.

Emily smiled and leaned forward.  “We want to win without losing too many ships.  We think we can do that if we do three things.”

She explained what they were. When she finished, Admiral Douthat stared at her.  “How do you propose to achieve those three things?” she asked skeptically.

“We have ideas how to accomplish the first two,” Emily replied.

“And the third?” Douthat probed.

Emily shook her head.  “I don’t have any idea,” she admitted, but then smiled.  “But I think Queen Anne might.”

* * * *

Three days were spent in frantic rearming and repairs.  Missile racks were filled, laser cannon repaired and calibrated, laser turrets replaced, new crews were brought on board from Cornwall and anti-missile defenses restocked.  On the second day, two carriers from Refuge arrived, carrying a total of seventy-five new gunboats.  They did not have crews, but Emily had been scouring the Victorian Navy for suitable pilots, gunners and System Operators and had them in simulators around the clock.

Near the end of the third day, there were two meetings.  One was held in secret.

The first meeting was held in the conference room aboard the battleship H.M.S. Lionheart, and the table was crowded with holograms, tablets, empty coffee cups and tired, disgruntled people.  The most senior in rank was Admiral Alyce Douthat, First Sea Lord and Commander of Her Majesty’s Fleet, such as it was. The most junior officer was Ensign Lori Romano, formerly Specialist 4 (Artificial Intelligence Systems).  Romano was the first ensign in the Fleet in three hundred years, a rank re-instated by Admiral Douthat for those Specialists and NCOs elevated to officer rank but who had not graduated from the Academy.

Douthat looked exhausted and worried.  Romano looked exhausted, worried and terrified at being in the same room with the august persons around her.

Admiral Douthat rapped on the table to get everyone’s attention.  “Okay, all of you have the outline of the plan.  It hinges on two things: first, the location of the Dominion battleship Vengeance; and second, the operational status of the transporter systems.”  She looked to Captain Eder.

Eder nodded.  “The Ducks have split their forces.  The bulk of their fleet is in high orbit around Timor.  They know we have a back way in, but they don’t know where it is, so they are worried we could attack from anywhere.  The Owls we left behind report that they’ve got a battleship and approximately forty-five other ships positioned around Timor.  There are two or three heavy cruisers near the MOP Works, but the MOP Works is close enough to Timor that they could rapidly reinforce from the planet if it looked like the shipyard was our primary target.

“The Ducks have left a picket line at the Victoria-Dominion wormhole.  That is comprised of five destroyers, several frigates, one cruiser and –” Eder smiled down the table – “they have reinforced it with the battleship Vengeance.  As of one hour ago, the Vengeance was still there.”

Admiral Douthat turned toward Ensign Romano, who squirmed uncomfortably in her seat.  “Relax, Romano, although you are the junior officer, you are the expert on the Tilleke transporter devices and we all are relying on you.  You know what we’re planning.  Can the transporters do it?  Do we have enough of them?  Are they reliable?”

Romano took two deep breaths to steady herself.  “Yes, Ma’am.   Well, I guess you all know we used the transporters to attack the prison ship Tartarus.  They worked flawlessly.  I think it was because we reduced the maximum number of people being transported from forty to thirty so we wouldn’t overload-“

Sitting across from her, Emily cleared her throat and raised her eyebrows.  Romano flushed, then stammered on.  “Yes, well the important thing is that they worked.  So the next thing is the number of platforms.  We’ve been building them and now we have a total of fifteen transporter stealth ships, patterned on the little Tilleke vessels we captured at the beginning of the war.  We also have transporters in half of our ships, two in the Lionheart, two in the cruisers and-“

“Ensign,” Douthat interrupted.  “The last time we attacked the Vengeance, we were unable to send a second wave of Marines.  Has that problem been fixed?”

“Oh, yes, Ma’am.  Absolutely.”

“Good,” Douthat looked to Emily.

“If I might ask Ensign Romano a quick question?” Emily asked.  Douthat eyed the voluble Ensign for a moment, then nodded reluctantly.

“Ensign Romano, is there something else you wanted to tell us all about the transporter system?” Emily asked.

Romano frowned in puzzlement.

“About the improvement you made to the transporter system?” Emily prodded.

“Yes, Ma’am!” Romano said, finally understanding.  “Ah, I couldn’t get over why the transporters would not transport metal or anything explosive, so I kept poking around in the design and finally realized that it was designed not to.  It’s not a limitation of the physics; rather it appears that the Emperor did not want his Savak commandoes to have the ability to transport with heavier weapons.”  She stopped, smiling broadly.  Admiral Douthat and Captain Eder looked at her blankly.  Emily sighed.

“What Ensign Romano is saying is that she has removed the design limitation from the transporters so that now we can send our soldiers through the transporter with their normal weapons and armor, including energy weapons and battle helmets,” Emily explained.

“Yes, exactly!” Romano exclaimed.

Rafael Eitan leaned forward.  “Admiral, this will give us an enormous advantage when we go in, not only in terms of raw firepower, but command and control as well.  It’s a huge help.”

Admiral Douthat nodded at Romano.  “Ensign, thank you for your contribution.  You are dismissed to attend to your other duties.”   With a greatly relieved expression, Romano hurried from the room.  Admiral Douthat shook her head.  “I swear I don’t understand half of what she says.  Will those damn transporters really work the way she says they will?”

Emily and Captain Eder both nodded.  “They worked just fine when we took the Tartarus,” Eder replied.

“She’s very capable,” Emily said reassuringly.  “She just requires some translation now and then.”

Admiral Douthat stood.  “You know what you have to do.  Brother Jong assures me that twenty-four hours will be sufficient.  As we go forward with this, remember that the Dominion killed twenty-five million of our fellow Victorians.  Innocent civilians. You are dismissed. ”

While Admiral Douthat was holding her meeting, Queen Anne and Sir Henry met with Brother Jong.

“You know they’re coming,” she said to Jong.

“Of course, Majesty,” he replied solemnly.

“And Abbot Cornelia?”

Jong bowed his head.  “We have a common foe, Majesty.  I believe the phrase from Old Earth is that ‘we can either stand together or hang alone.’”

Queen Anne sat back in her chair, glancing once at Sir Henry, who nodded minutely.  “Brother Jong, I have placed a destroyer at your disposal.”

“Then, Majesty, with your permission, I shall depart at once.”  He paused briefly, then added, “I regret that Queen Beatrice did not live to see you in this role, Majesty.  She would have been very proud.”  He smiled at her, nodded briefly to Sir Henry and left the room.

When Jong was gone, Sir Henry shifted his seat and looked at the Queen.   “I hope we can trust the little bastard,” he said sourly.

The Queen smiled wearily.  “We can, but it is still a long shot.”  She shrugged.  “We just don’t have enough ships.”

Sir Henry offered her his arm.  “Your Majesty, perhaps we might order some wine, go to the Command Center and watch the war?”

Queen Anne took his arm.  “Tell me, Sir Henry, with lines like that, did you have trouble getting dates as a younger man?”

Chapter 46

The Attack on Dominion Space

Fifty missiles shot through the wormhole, locked on the Dominion destroyers five hundred miles away and streaked towards them.  The three destroyers began to shoot chaff and jamming pods and saturated the space around them with anti-missile lasers and shot, but it was too late.  Ten missiles were destroyed or spoofed, but with a solid lock on their targets, the rest accelerated and struck the destroyers within a moment.  One of the three destroyers managed to turn and limp away trailing air and chunks of its hull, but the other two broke up under the onslaught.

The battle for Dominion space had begun.

Sensor drones had been mixed in with the attack missiles, and after thirty seconds they dutifully turned and raced back through the wormhole to Victorian space.  Emily blinked in delighted surprise when she saw the quick hits on the three destroyers.  Second line troops, she thought, to sit so close to the wormhole like that.  But she would take what she could get, cheap shot or no.  A dead enemy was a dead enemy.

The sensor report also revealed two more destroyers a thousand miles out, along with a handful of frigates.  In the deep background, they could dimly make out the emission signatures of two Dominion cruisers and the battleship Vengeance.

A moment later the second wave of missiles erupted through the wormhole, this time targeting the half dozen ships at the thousand mile range.  Behind the missiles came the carriers Rabat and Haifa, which launched their gunboats, turned and dove back into the wormhole to Victoria.  Sixty grogin gunboats formed up in squadrons and spread out, making a wide detour around the Dominion warships at the thousand mile range.  They had bigger game in mind.

The Dominion ships reacted with a fusillade of missiles and laser beams, but the gunboats were small and the emissions and debris from the earlier explosions wrought havoc with the Dominion sensors.  There were no hits on the gunboats, and soon the Dominion destroyers and frigates had more pressing concerns.

The fourth and fifth waves followed immediately.  In the fourth wave the two new carriers from Refuge – Rishon and Ashdod – slipped through the wormhole and launched more gunboats and, mixed in with them, fifteen Krait-class transporter ships.  The krait ships immediately went to stealth and swung around to follow the gunboats that had gone before.  The new gunboats, all with inexperienced pilots, drew up in sloppy formations and went over the “top” of the Dominion warships at the thousand mile circle.  They were new, bunched too close together and the Dominions could track them with little difficulty.  Missiles reached out and caught some of the gunboats on the periphery.  Emily watched it all through the sensor drones.  Sending the newbies straight over the Dominion destroyers had been a cold-hearted decision on her part.  It sickened her and satisfied her in equal parts.

The new gunboats were bait, intending to serve as a distraction while she positioned her real forces.  While she didn’t want to lose any of her new pilots, she simply couldn’t afford to lose her experienced pilots.  She had strong assets and weak assets; if she had to, she would sacrifice the weak assets to preserve and maximize the strong ones.  It was a terrible calculus, measured in lives, but one that had been used by generals long before Hannibal crossed the Alps.

So why did she feel so guilty?  Or did she feel bad because she did not feel guilty enough?

The Victorian fifth wave included six destroyers.  It could have included two cruisers as well, but Emily held them back.  She wanted to lure in the big fish, not scare them away.  She sweetened the bait by sending in one of the carriers, the Rabat.   The Haifa, Rishon and Ashdod stayed back in Victorian space, along with the Meknes.

Intent on shooting the last wave of gunboats, the Dominion destroyers ignored the new wave of Victorian warships a few minutes longer than they should have.  The Victorians opened up with laser fire, scoring hits that finally got the Ducks’ attention.  The Ducks, of course, had no way of knowing that the Victorian laser fire had been powered down and was not at full strength.  The Duck destroyers survived the initial laser barrage and fell back, calling for help from their big brothers.

Loitering at the twenty thousand mile mark, two Dominion cruisers and the oversized battleship Vengeance heard the call for help and sped off at full military speed.  The ships had a combined closing speed in excess of thirty thousand miles per hour and the distance shrank rapidly.

Emily watched it all.  Now it was all about position and timing. She needed to threaten the Duck destroyers and frigates enough to bring in the big guys, but she couldn’t get too far from the wormhole entrance or risk being overrun and annihilated.

What could possibly go wrong? she thought ruefully.  As if reading her mind, Alex Rudd grinned at her from across the bridge and waggled his eyebrows.

The time ticked down.  “We are within missile range of the battleship,” Chief Gibson warned her.  “The only reason they’re not firing is because they probably don’t have a firm lock on us. It’s possible the Duck destroyers are masking us.”

“The Duck ships are coming in hard,” Tobias Partridge reported.  “Still accelerating.  The two cruisers are starting to pull away from the battleship, maybe a sixty second separation.  Clear laser range within less than fifteen minutes.”

“Where are the new gunboat squadrons?” Emily asked.  She was staring at the hologram battle display, at the icon for the Dominion battleship Vengeance.  That damned ship had chased them clear across Victorian space to the Refuge wormhole and had destroyed well over a dozen Victorian warships.  It had caused the sacrifice of Cookie.  It was silly to hate inanimate objects, but Emily hated that ship.

“Presently in between the two Dominion destroyers and the two cruisers and the battleship,” Chief Gibson said.

“And the first gunboats from Haifa and Rabat?”

Alex Rudd was monitoring the battle display.  “They have all gone quiet, but they should be astride the path Vengeance will take to come to the support of the Duck destroyers.”  He looked up, grinning evilly.  “Perfect place for an ambush.”

“And the krait transporter craft?” Emily asked.  They were the key.  She had the stray thought that she had to find a better name for the little transporter ships than ‘krait.’  ‘Krait’ was what the Tilleke called their transporter ships.  She pushed the thought aside, glancing up at the countdown timer Mildred was running.

“Mildred estimates they are in position,” Chief Gibson told her.

And the Gods help us if they aren’t, Emily thought.

Two minutes and counting.  Emily’s hand was not trembling, but she had to repress the impulse to sit on it anyway.  Chief Gibson and Toby Partridge were looking intently at their monitors, but Rudd was grinning like a fool.  He really enjoyed this razzle-dazzle stuff.

She opened the command comm to the six Victorian destroyers.  “Fifteen seconds to Phase One!”  She watched the clock, even though she knew Mildred would automatically warn her when the time had elapsed.

“Phase One, execute!”

The six destroyers each fired all of their lasers, then all of their missiles, all targeted on the Dominion destroyers and frigates at the thousand mile range.  Then they reloaded and fired again.  The lasers were at full strength this time and the missiles followed them in.  Two enemy frigates succumbed immediately, blinking off the holo display.  The Duck destroyers had time to return fire, then began to fire chaff and jammers.  They ran for the safety of the Dominion cruisers and battleship coming fast towards them.

As the second wave of missiles reached the enemy ships, the Victorian destroyers reloaded once more and fired another wave of sixty missiles.  One of the enemy destroyers staggered as it was hit by several missiles, then began to slowly tumble along its long axis.  Another frigate vanished in a fireball, but the remaining enemy frigates and the destroyer seemed unscathed.  The two cruisers and the battleship continued to come in hard and fast.  Now laser beams reached out for the Victorian destroyers and the recon drones reported missile launches.

Time to run, thought Emily.

“Phase Two!  Phase Two!” she ordered.

Immediately the six Victorian destroyers made wide, sweeping turns to reverse their course and thin out the enemy’s incoming fire.  They dumped chaff and fired decoys that exactly mimicked Victorian destroyers, then accelerated to full military power and headed for the wormhole entrance, pursued by dozens of Duck missiles.  One of the destroyers unmasked itself as a new “Hedgehog Class” destroyer and began methodically shooting enemy missiles, but there were a lot of them.

“Phase Three!” Emily said.

Two things happened in quick succession.  First, the Rishon and Ashdod gunships turned and swooped down on the Dominion cruiser nearest the Victorian destroyers.  Next, the Rabat gunships targeted the second cruiser.

All hell broke loose as the Dominion cruisers suddenly realized they were being swarmed by vicious, small attack craft that seemed to be firing an inordinate amount of missiles and lasers.  The two cruiser captains, hard, experienced men not given to panic, broke off their attack on the fleeing Victorians destroyers and activated their close-in anti-missile defenses.  This had little effect on the Rabat grogin, who had kept a prudent distance from their target, but the new gunboats attacking the first cruiser suffered badly.  Meanwhile the Dominion battleship Vengeance came into close laser range and began blasting the gunboats from the rear.  The attack on the first cruiser began to falter as first one, then five, then two dozen gunboats exploded after being hit by laser or anti-missile fire.  The Rabat gunboats, being more widely dispersed, fared somewhat better, but they were caught between two fires and soon they would have to break off.

The two cruisers and battleship were focusing entirely on the gunboats.  Good, Emily thought.

“Phase Four!  Now!”

Onboard the carrier Rabat, Colonel Tamari of Her Majesty’s Fleet Marines thumbed the comm.  He uttered one word: “Go!”  Fifteen stealthed krait-class transporter ships activated their transporters and beamed four hundred and fifty heavily armed Fleet Marines and Refuge Long Range Reconnaissance troops to designated spots on the enemy battleship.

The Vengeance never saw it coming.

* * * *

“Goddammit!”  Rafael Eitan had hoped to materialize on the bridge of the Vengeance.    He looked around at the high walls lined with industrial sized shelves, filled with boxes and crates. This sure as hell wasn’t the bridge.  He checked his HUD display and could see a large number of Victorian and Refuge soldiers scattered throughout the ship.  He flipped through the channels – as a commander he could access any unit’s communications – and found that about half the units were already in contact and some were under heavy fire.  He also realized that almost none of the teams had ended up where they were supposed to, a snafu he’d have to take up with Ensign Romano once they managed to take control of this big bitch of a ship.

And it was a big ship.  The assault force was scattered over thirty different decks in a ship over a thousand yards long.

Sergeant Maimon walked through the rapidly melting snow to where Rafael stood.  “Looks like the usual cock-up, sir,” he said cheerfully.  He glanced around the storage room.  “What do you think, Captain, should we take inventory or go find some little Ducks to kill?”

Rafael grinned despite himself.  “Let’s go find someone who might give us directions, Sergeant.  How far away can the bridge be?”

There were thirty Refuge Long Range Reconnaissance troopers, an entire krait’s worth, and they went up both sides of the passageway.  The last five men walked backwards, constantly checking their rear.  Far off they could catch snatches of gunfire and shouting, sometimes followed by screams, sometimes by silence.  Captain Eitan walked in the center of the group – his job was to be more than a rifleman.  As he walked he kept an eye out for any signs that might tell him where he was and at the same time kept checking his heads-up display to see what was going on with the other teams.  There were four companies on the Vengeance, three Refuge Long Range Recon and one of Victorian Fleet Marines.  Rafael’s company had three platoons, which were labeled on his HUD. He quickly spoke with each of his three platoon leaders.  One was already in contact and under heavy fire.  He directed the other platoon, which was the closest, to move that way and give support.  He watched his HUD until he saw that the second platoon was moving in the right direction, then turned his attention back to the platoon he was embedded in.

He was not particularly concerned about being in the wrong place.  Things always went wrong.  As Sergeant Maimon was fond of saying, “Any damn fool can get things done when everything goes right.  The real test is when things go balls up.”  Sergeant Maimon made sure that in the Long Range Recon training exercises, things constantly went wrong.   Men and women who could not improvise and achieve the mission did not last long.

A telltale flashed in the corner of his HUD, alerting him that the Colonel was trying to reach him.  He blinked twice to connect.

“Status?” asked Colonel Dov Tamari.  Colonel Tamari was riding in the carrier Rabat, monitoring the battle.

“Missed our assigned destination and are now trying to find the bridge.  Do you know which way we should be going?”

Colonel Tamari shook his head.  “All the teams are out of position.  As soon as you get a location fix, spread the word.”

“Always glad to help the Royal Fleet Marines find their way,” Rafael deadpanned.

Colonel Tamari snorted rudely.  “Also, don’t forget to drop repeaters; it is just a matter of time before they start jamming you.”

“Yes, sir.”  Rafael signed off and made his way to the front of the column.  His platoon leader, Lieutenant Bina Shalvey was just behind the point men, Nur and Amali.  Nur was a little older and very steady.  Amali had the reputation for the fastest reflexes in the Company, but sometimes was prone to be a little too quick.  Just as he reached them, a man stepped into the passageway, turned and gawked at them, then crumbled to the ground with a  neat hole in his forehead.

Rafael stifled a curse.  He pushed behind Private Amali, confirmed the man was dead – not much doubt about it with his brains splattered on the wall – and then turned to Amali, forcing himself to keep his voice even.

“Private, I want you to question this man and find out where the Combat Command Center is,” he ordered.

Private Amali scrunched her face in confusion.  “But sir, he’s dead!”

Rafael stuck his face close to hers.  “That’s right, Private, that’s why I told you we wanted a live prisoner, because it is considerably harder to interrogate a dead one!”

Private Amali looked abashed.  “Yes, sir.  Sorry, sir.”

“You are Long Range Reconnaissance, Private,” he reminded her.  “You are more than your trigger finger.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ten minutes later they bagged a prisoner.  A smiling Private Amali hauled the man off the floor by his collar and presented him to Captain Eitan.  The man was in a uniform that suggested he worked in one of the support services, like Environmental or Engineering.  He glared at them defiantly.  Rafael nodded to Sergeant Maimon, who stuck a spray injector against the prisoner’s neck and injected him with a fast acting tell-all drug.  In a moment the pupils in his eyes dilated and the muscles in his face relaxed and softened.  He looked for all the world like he was about to take a nap.  He smiled a goofy smile.

Rafael leaned closer and smiled warmly.  “Hi, my name’s Raf, what’s yours?”

Ten minutes after that they had a map.  Engineering was, not surprisingly, at the rear of the ship near the engines, Life Support was on the fifth deck in the center of the ship, the bridge was on the thirtieth deck about one quarter of the way back from the bow, and the Combat Center was a mere two decks above where they were standing.

Rafael uploaded it to the four companies.  Colonel Tamari immediately issued orders:  “Listen up!  Fleet Marines are closest to Engineering, so they get that.  First Company gets the bridge, Second takes the Combat Center and Third Company is in reserve.  Be advised that prisoners have told us there are five hundred – repeat, five hundred – Dominion Security Forces on board.  We have recovered the kraits and will be sending you reinforcements as soon as we can.  Execute!”

Five hundred security forces? Eitan thought in disbelief. God’s Balls! “Second Company!  Our target is the Combat Command Center.  It is two decks above us on Deck Fifteen.  Move out!”

Alpha and Charlie platoons were still a couple of hundred yards out, moving as quickly as they could through the narrow corridors,  Nur and Amali led the Bravo Platoon up a series of  stairs, guns raised to their shoulders.  The stairs felt like a death trap.  Hell, Rafael thought, the stairs were a death trap.

At the top of the stairs was another corridor, disappearing left and right in a gentle curve.  Rafael signaled to Colonel Tamari with a location check and sent a large, glowing question mark.  A moment later Tamari replied, “Left, I think.”  Rafael signaled to Nur and Amali to go left.     They had barely taken two steps when a grenade came hurling along the outer wall, slid to a stop sixty feet away and blew up.  The narrow corridor channeled the force of the explosion and everyone in the front was knocked off their feet.  Two men didn’t get up. The soldiers behind them laid down suppressing fire to discourage the Dominion Security Forces from charging in.  Instead, another grenade arched out.  Everyone hastily retreated and the grenade blew up harmlessly.

Rafael looked at his watch; time was slipping away.  “Bina,” he said softly to the platoon lieutenant, “take out that blocking force.  I’m going to try to guide the other platoons to come at this from another side.”  Lieutenant Shalvey nodded briskly and turned to the soldiers strung out in a long line behind her.  “Alpha Squad, take the corridor in the other direction and tell me what you find.  Bravo Squad, send a wasp down there to see what they’ve got.  Move it!”

One of the sergeants reached into a pocket and took out a small box, a little larger than a jeweler’s box.  He opened it and took out a tiny reconnaissance drone, activated it through his combat helmet and sent it flying down the corridor and around the bend.  The display from the wasp drone projected onto Rafael’s and Lieutenant Shalvey’s HUDs.  Forty feet back from the turn in the corridor four men sat with a tripod-mounted energy weapon of some sort.  Two of the enemy were crouched down behind clear ballistic shields.

“That gun looks nasty enough, don’t it?” the sergeant commented.

Shalvey sighed.  It was never easy.  “Okay, soft balls, set them for four seconds.  Three second spread, two and two.”

Moments later two softball-sized spheres raced down the corridor, followed the curve through the bend and then sped toward the four enemy defenders.  It took the defenders a second to spot them in the dim corridor light, but they opened up with everything.  The tripod gun turned out to be a heavy pulse laser.  They successfully shot the first two soft balls, but the second two following closely on their heels got through and blew up, spraying the defenders with shrapnel.  The two defenders behind the ballistic shields were knocked down by the blast concussion against their shields, but not taken out of the fight.

“Two more,” Shalvey ordered.  This time, as soon as the defenders saw the explosives rolling towards them, they retreated out of sight and Shalvey moved her platoon forward.  The corridor gradually bent in a fixed curve and every hundred feet or so they ran into more defenders, with more and more at each barricade.

By this time Rafael had guided the other two platoons onto Deck Fifteen, coming at the Combat Command Center from the other side of the ship.  They quickly met up with Shalvey’s third squad, and then promptly ran into a large, well-defended barricade bristling with Dominion Security Forces armed with energy weapons.

Wasps buzzed back and forth and soon the visual picture was complete.  Rafael and his troops held the western half of the circle while the Dominion forces held the other half.  Somewhere in that half, there was an entrance into the Combat Command Center, but punching through to it would cost most of Rafael’s Second Company to do it and could take hours.  And in the meantime, the damn Ducks were sending up reinforcements.  Rafael could almost hear the clock ticking in his head.

Rafael studied the map on his HUD, then went over and put his hand flat against the bulkhead.  Sergeant Maimon stood beside him.  “What do you think, sir?” the older man asked.

“Sergeant Maimon,” Rafael replied, white teeth flashing in a grin, “I think it’s time to blow things up.”

Scanners showed the bulkhead was four inches thick and they detected numerous electronic emissions and voices on the other side.  It took twenty minutes to set the charges, then the platoon withdrew as far as they could around the bend and lay flat.  Everyone sealed their helmets and turned the external audio off.

Sergeant Maimon pressed the trigger.  The cutting charge relied more on heat than actual explosive force.  There was a distinct, high-pitched ‘crump’ followed by a hissing sizzle sound like drops of cold water hitting a hot frying pan, then a seven foot high, ten foot wide section of the bulkhead shuddered and sagged, then fell backwards into the room.

No sooner had it hit the floor than Shalvey’s platoon was up and running through the opening.  One brave soul pulled a pistol and began to fire, only to be dropped by Amali with a crisp shot to the center of his forehead.  Two others ran frantically to the main entrance, intending to slap the “Emergency Open” button and let in help from the security guards on the outside.

“Freeze!” Nur bellowed.  One skidded to a halt and lived; the other desperately reached for the button and fell to Nur’s sonic rifle.

“Everybody down on the floor!  Down!  Anybody still standing will be shot!” shouted Lieutenant Shalvey.  The fifteen surviving Combat Command crew lowered themselves to the floor.  Refuge soldiers quickly swarmed over them, securing their hands and patting them down for weapons.  Rafael Eitan ducked in long enough to make sure things were under control, then called Colonel Tamari.

“This is Jumper One Actual.  The Combat Command Center is ours, for now at least,” he told the Colonel.  “Can you get those tech boffins over here right away?  We expect a counter-attack any moment.”

“ETA ten minutes,” Tamari replied.  “Kraits are loaded and have been hovering near you.”

“Tell our favorite Ensign to make sure she puts them in the Command Center.  Tell her we have a beacon broadcasting on the emergency frequency.  Also, we need reinforcements and Marvins, as many as you can give us,” Rafael said.

“Reinforcements will come by transporter, but we’ll need to send shuttles with the Marvins.”

“Understood.  If you can get close enough, we could use some Bee Keepers.”  Bee Keepers were the operators for the wasp drones.  Rafael wanted reconnaissance drones saturating the entire area around the Command Center.

“Already in the works, Jumper One.”

“Jumper One out.”  Rafael closed the circuit.  Sergeant Maimon stood beside him.  “Word is that we took Engineering,” the Sergeant said, “but the Ducks have already launched a counter-attack.  Marines say they’re holding, but as sure as my Aunt Edna died a virgin, they’ll be screaming for help pretty soon.”

Rafael frowned, checking the disposition of his forces on the HUD.  Then he called the other two Refuge Company Commanders.  The news was ugly.

“Raf?  We are getting our asses kicked here.”  Kris Green was commander of First Company.  She was shouting over the sound of fighting and she sounded angry.  “We almost reached Environmental when we ran head-on into a Duck DID reinforced company.  They’ve got bots and all sorts of nasty shit.”

“What’s your status, Kris?”

“Twenty – two zero – dead.  Thirty walking wounded.”  She paused.  “I had to leave three of the more seriously wounded behind.  The bastards just killed them.  We are retreating down the main corridor to the shuttle bay we started at, but they are pushing us hard.  The bots are very hard to kill.  Also, the Ducks keep flanking us and popping up behind us.  I think they are going up a floor and running until they are behind us, then just taking a stairway down.  I have sent troops to probe ahead of us.”

The word from Third Company was equally grim.  “We are trying to get to Combat Command to help you,” Ahmed Hameed of Third Company told him.  He was breathless and panting.  “We’re coming fast, but they’ve got a bunch of bots with flame throwers and cannon chasing us.  We’re on Deck Ten now and I’m moving up to Twelve to try to shake them off.”

“I can certainly use you, Ahmed, what’s your ETA?”

“Fifteen or twenty minutes,” Hameed panted.  Rafael checked his HUD and queried Third Company’s casualty status.  He blinked when he saw the results.  He shook his head; that had to be wrong.

“Ahmed, Caesar says you have a fifty percent casualty rate.  Is that right?”

“These damn bots are chewing us up, Raf.  Sixty dead or missing.  Many wounded.  Getting low on ammo and batteries.  No more wasps so we can’t scout out our route to you.”

Rafael thought frantically.  The platoon he was embedded with had come along an open passageway on Deck Thirteen, lined with heavy equipment and high catwalks to allow maintenance on the machinery.  It would make a nice spot for snipers.

“Ahmed, listen.  Go all the way up to Thirteen, then come straight towards the Combat Command Center.  Be advised there are Ducks wandering around up here but they are mostly preoccupied with us right now.  I am sending someone to help you on Thirteen, so ID your targets before you fire.  Jumper One, out.”

Rafael looked around to see who he could send.  His eyes fell on Amali and Nur.  “Amali, Nur! Grab five guys, go down to Thirteen and get in position on the catwalks to cover Third Company as they come in.  You’re shooting bots, so take the heavy plasma rifles.  Watch your rear and watch your flanks; the Ducks know this ship a hell of a lot better than we do.  Go!”

Sergeant Maimon called from the corridor.  “Got a Duck bot coming!”

Rafael took a deep breath.  He suddenly flashed to when he and Emily were being chased by grogin in the forest high above his home village.  Stay focused, Raf.  He thumbed his comm.  “Jumper One Actual to Tower, ETA on reinforcements?”

“Soon, Jumper One,” Colonel Tamari replied instantly.  “We’re trying to get the shuttles carrying the Marvins past the two Duck cruisers.  Soon.”

Rafael grunted.  Somebody else’s problem.  “Tower, Jumper One.  Get the boffins here and we can take out the cruisers!  But hurry, we are under heavy attack.”

“Jumper One, Tower.  Krait is five minutes out.”

Thirty miles away from the Dominion battleship Vengeance, Senior Pilot Stephanie Mastromonaco scanned the sensor display.  Dozens of small ships buzzed around the enemy cruisers, which sent up a hell-storm of anti-missile fire.  Fire from the battleship had stopped abruptly, which told her that the troops who had transported over earlier must have taken the key targets.  No one was painting her ship or seemed aware she was there.

All to the good.  On board her krait she had twenty-one passengers, including twenty very frightened Victorian tech specialists trained on how to fly and fight a Dominion battleship.  They were not soldiers.  Every time a stray explosion made the ship lurch, they screamed and looked frantically up at the ceiling.  She shook her head in exasperation.  Didn’t they understand that if a missile hit them, they’d never even know what happened?

No matter.  Her job was to get in close to the Vengeance and beam the techs to the right room.  She goosed her thrusters and dropped closer to the battleship.  Big sucker, she thought, then blanched when a targeting sensor beam painted her.  “Enemy sensors!” Gertrude warned.  “Evade!  Evade!”

Without thinking, Mastromonaco dropped a hundred feet and shot sideways a thousand feet.  A small anti-missile missile sped past, streaming a red exhaust trail, missing her by no more than two hundred feet.  Mastromonaco dropped another thousand feet and jinked hard to the right, then climbed and jinked to the left.  She never saw it, but Gertrude screamed, “Laser beam!  Laser beam to port.”

“Gertrude, tell me where it came from!” Mastromonaco snapped.

A red circle appeared on the visual image of the Vengeance.  “Magnify!” Mastromonaco ordered, taking the ship into a tight spiral towards the battleship.  Another anti-missile missile sped past her.  Keep on missing, she pleaded silently.  Keep on missing!

The image flickered and zoomed in.  On the hull of the battleship, two gun blisters sat side-by-side, one identified as an anti-missile turret and the other as a laser turret.  Somebody down there was firing on independent control, showing a little initiative. “Great, just frigging great,” she muttered darkly. “Don’t you guys know I am supposed to be stealthy?”  She couldn’t stay out here exposed for very long without getting tagged by one of those guns.  She scanned the battleship’s hull, which was cluttered with gun blisters, sensor bubbles, environmental controls and God knew what else.  Then she saw something that made her grin.  Half way down the hull there was a pair of stubby wings sticking out, not for flying, but as a platform for more sensor nodes.  Underneath those wings her little krait would be invisible to the two gun turrets that were causing her so many problems.

“Hang on, boys and girls!” she whooped, then plunged down toward the hull like a rocket, violently jigging side to side.  Three minutes later she flipped the ship upside down, slid sideways using the little docking thrusters and then clamped onto the underside of the wing.  She let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding.  Safe.  For the moment, at least, they were safe.

“Thank you for flying on Krait Airlines,” she said sweetly to her passengers, most of whom were vomit stained and shaken to their core.  “Now please get the hell off my ship and go win the war.”

The transporter operator, green with nausea, located the beacon from the Long Range Recon leader, calibrated the jump and pushed the initiation button, then slumped back in his chair.  “God’s Balls, I feel terrible,” he complained, then threw up for the third time.

A scant moment later a snow storm erupted on the Vengeance’s Combat Command Center.  Twenty-one human shapes appeared in the swirling, blowing snow, then solidified into real people.  Rather sad looking, ragged people, Rafael Eitan thought skeptically.  A few of the techs sagged to the floor, some dry heaving helplessly.  The rest just stood there looking dumb-founded.

Except for one.  “All right, people,” Emily Tuttle said cheerfully.  “We had a fun ride in, but now we have work to do!”

Rafael walked to her and saluted, then smiled.  “I’m glad to see you, Commander,” he said, trying hard to keep it formal and not entirely succeeding.  “But what we really need are some reinforcements.”

“About a minute behind me, Raf,” she said, smiling back at him.  Just for a moment her mind darted back to their night together on Atlas, then a tech standing near her dry heaved and collapsed to the floor, moaning.  So much for romance.

“Raf, these are all tech boffins with no combat experience.  They just came into a hot landing and had their first transporter experience.  As you can see, they’re nauseous and dehydrated.  Do you have some water or even sweet tea we can get into them?”

Sweet tea?  Here?  Eitan started to look around, but Sergeant Maimon was at his elbow.  “I’ll take care of it, sir,” the Sergeant said briskly.  He glanced at Emily.  Whoever this Vickie Commander was, it was pretty obvious the Captain was rather smitten with her.  Sergeant Maimon, therefore, would make sure that the Captain looked like the most competent, efficient captain in the long and storied history of the Refuge Long Range Reconnaissance Force.

That’s what sergeants do, or at least that is what sergeants do if they like their captain.

What was left of Ahmed Hameed’s Third Company staggered up to Deck Thirteen.  Behind them four armored combat bots slowly negotiated the stairs.  The soldiers of Third Company reached the top of the stairs and found themselves in a very long, open passageway lined with what looked like storage tanks on the left and right.  On either side, tucked in just below the ceiling, ran a long catwalk.  From the far end of the passageway, a white light blinked on and off, stopped, then repeated.  A voice spoke into his helmet speaker:  “Got you covered, Captain,” the voice said laconically.  “But it would be best if you moved ass.  Our Wasp says those damn bots are almost to the top of the stairs.”

Captain Hameed took a deep, shuddering breath.  “We’ve got friendly snipers up in the catwalks,” he shouted to his troops.  “Move out fast to the far end.  Nobody gets left behind!  Drop gear except for guns and ammo.  Go!”

But they were not capable of speed.  Those who were not wounded were too tired.  Those who were not too tired helped the wounded.  They moved at a lurching, staggering shuffle, nervously looking over their shoulders at the bastard bots from hell that had already killed half their Company and just kept coming.  They kept coming with energy beams, projectile weapons and twice, when the bots had closed the distance enough, with flame throwers that had all but shattered the morale of the Third Company and sent men screaming in panic.

The first bot made it to the top of the stairs and turned to pursue them.  Seeing its prey, it opened fire with a laser beam, but then rocked backwards as a plasma pulse scorched its front sensors.  Its gyros compensated and the bot stabilized, then a second plasma bolt struck it, then a third.  As programmed, it fired all of its weapons, hoping to kill or at least suppress its unseen enemy.

Four more plasma beams struck its front panel in quick succession, finally burning through the armor and frying its internal circuitry. The bot stopped firing and just stood there, inert.

“Tough bastard,” Corporal Nur murmured, a little awed that it took seven plasma bolts to stop the damn thing.

“Not tough enough,” Private Amali grinned.  Around her the other snipers chuckled.   Amali glanced at her energy pack; still at ninety percent.  Smiling contentedly, she put the scope back up to her eye and settled into the simple pleasure of killing things at a distance.

“Here comes the next one!” The snipers went back to work.

* * * *

The first Dominion attack to take back the Command Center was rushed and the DID officer didn’t really have enough troops to pull it off.  He augmented his attack with two combat bots, using them as shock troops.  The bots were each seven feet tall, painted black with demonic scarlet ‘faces’ that leered at their prey, and bristled with weapons.  Hoping to shatter the resolve of the Vicky troops in the Command Center, the DID officer sent one of the bots forward to scout out the defenses and demolish them.

The combat bot moved silently, hovering four inches above the deck on an electro- magnetic cushion.  When it came in contact with the enemy it would start playing the discordant, frantic movement of ‘The Rite of Spring’ by Igor Stravinsky.  This had been selected by the Psy Ops researchers as the sound most apt to cause a human being to flinch and run.  It had certainly had that effect on audiences when The Rite of Spring first premiered on Old Earth.

The bot moved boldly down the corridor, passing side corridors and rooms with little more than a quick scan by its thermal sensors.  Up ahead five soft balls suddenly bounced around the corner, fixed on the bot and accelerated towards it.  The bot blasted them with shotgun pellets and needler weapons and the soft balls exploded harmlessly.  The bot paused, concentrating most of its sensors on the corridor in front of it.

Twenty feet behind it, Sergeant Maimon quietly opened a door and glanced outside.  Seeing no infantry support for the bot, he lobbed a plasma grenade underhanded and stepped back into the room.  The bot, sensing the motion, whirled about, opening fire with needlers, shotguns and even a laser that slashed left to right at knee height.

None of which affected the plasma grenade overly much.

It blew up two feet away from the bot, encapsulating it with searing heat and slag.  It disrupted the bot’s electro-magnetic propulsion and the bot dropped to the floor, still upright, but immobile.  The blast also melted most of the bot’s sensors, leaving it blind, and melted its armor plate, closing or warping most of its firing tubes.  The bot still had energy, but it couldn’t move, see or fire any of its weapon systems.

Annoyed but undaunted, the DID officer sent in the second bot, this time heavily supported by some seventy soldiers.  They snaked down the main corridor and two side corridors, hoping to get close enough to the heavy blast doors at the Command Center to plant cutting charges on it.  Inside the Command Center, Eitan decided to leave the blast doors closed, but sent troops out the back and flanked the Ducks to harass them with sniper attacks and grenades.  This worked for about thirty minutes, until the DID officer stopped to consider just where these harassing attacks were coming from.  Some dogged reconnaissance revealed that the Vickies had blasted through the rear of the Command Center, so the DID officer moved the focus of his attack.  He left a light covering force on the blast doors and sent the rest around to the rear to press the attack there.

About this time Captain Hameed’s Company reached the Combat Command Center.  Although they were still short on ammo, his men’s morale had gotten a boost from seeing the Duck bots shot to pieces by the snipers.  Now Third Company wanted payback.  When they came around the bend and saw only six men covering the blast doors to the Command Center, they didn’t hesitate.  There was no fancy maneuvering, no clever plan; they just opened up with everything they had and mowed down the unfortunate Dominions.  In three seconds it was over.  Hameed’s soldiers looked at the bloody carnage they had wrought, and then nodded in satisfaction and smiled at one another.  It felt pretty good to be on the giving end for a change.

A speaker on the blast doors crackled to life.  “Ahmed, this is Raf. Nice job.  We are opening the doors.  Please come inside fast; our wasps tell us more Ducks are on the way.”

* * * *

Emily’s crew of specialists wandered around the Combat Command Center, cups of tea held in shaky hands, trying to find familiar equipment.  They had been trained on the equipment that Victorian spies had reported was on the bridge and Combat Command Center of Dominion battleships, but of course things were never quite the same in real life, and this was no exception.  One by one or two by two, they gradually found what they were looking for and sat down to get better acquainted with the controls.

Emily tried not to hover, but as the sounds of fighting outside intensified, she leaned over to the person at the weapons station.  “Fiona, how long before you can track a target and shoot?”

Fiona Campbell pursed her lips in thought.  “Oh, Mum, I should think five or ten minutes, no more.  It is just like the simulators, isn’t it?”

“As fast as you can, Fiona,” Emily said.  From across the room, Rafael Eitan beckoned to her.   “What have you got, Raf?”

“Four shuttles just landed in one of the shuttle bays.”  He grinned at her.  “They’ve got ten Marvins and their controllers and they’re starting a sweep through the ship.  Three Marvins are coming here, two to Engineering and two to the bridge.”

Emily felt a surge of elation…and relief.  “Can we hold until they get here?”

Rafael grimaced and shrugged.  “I think so, but it will be heavy going.”

Emily looked around the Command Center.  The work consoles were scattered throughout the room.  Once the fighting got inside, all of her specialists would be exposed to enemy fire.  Fiona Campbell’s weapons console was just a few feet away from the breech in the wall that Raf had blasted; there was no way she would be able to handle the targeting of those two Duck cruisers once the bullets started flying.  She absently rubbed the bump on her nose as she thought about it.  How do you defeat the enemy without fighting?

She turned and looked at the captives huddled in the corner.  One of them bore the rank of Dominion Admiral.  Okay then.  Emily squatted down beside him.  “Admiral, you have a problem.”

“No, Commander,” Admiral Bohm retorted, “you have the problem. In about three minutes the DID will storm this place with their Dragon bots and you will be dead.  I suggest that you surrender to me now if you wish to spare your troops.”

Emily laughed.  “You know, last time a Dominion officer told me that, I had to blast her out of space.”  She reached forward to open his tunic.  He tried to squirm away, but one of the Refuge Long Range Recon soldiers grabbed him and held him still.  Emily felt inside the tunic and withdrew a large wallet.  In it was an ID card, a money chip, a card for a restaurant on Timor she had never heard of…and three photographs.  The Admiral looked at the pictures, his lips thin with stress, then turned away, feigning indifference.

Interesting.

Following her hunch, Emily  inspected each of the pictures.  The first was one of the Admiral himself, much younger, standing with a number of classmates at the Dominion War Academy.  The second was a picture of the Admiral with a petite, luminous woman, with raven black hair and pale, pale skin.  She was very pretty but, if Emily guessed correctly, she was also ill.  She flipped the picture around and saw the date was twenty-six years earlier.  She flipped it back and studied the Admiral’s face.  The woman was looking at the camera, but the Admiral was gazing at her with great adoration.  The look on his face was a mixture of love and a fierce protectiveness.

Emily looked up.  “I am sorry about your wife, Admiral; what did she die of?”

Admiral Bohm clenched his jaw.  “Her name was Julia.  She died of acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia.”  He fell silent, but Emily had the distinct impression he had been just about to say something more.  A young Dominion warrior, perhaps already being groomed for an Admiral’s star.  A beautiful young wife with a cruel disease.  What else?  What was she missing?

She looked at the last picture.  All of the pieces abruptly fell together.

The last photograph showed a young man in a Dominion cadet’s uniform, with the gold braid of an honor graduate, standing in front of the Dominion War Academy.  He had dark hair and pale skin the color of moonlight, and he looked so much like his long-dead mother that it made Emily catch her breath.  And standing beside him, beaming with a father’s pride, was Admiral Bohm.

“Your son looks like his mother,” Emily said matter-of-factly.

The Admiral said nothing.

“Having children is a wonderful thing,” she continued, “and in your case doubly so because he is a constant reminder of his mother.  You must cherish him, for every time you see him you can see her living through him.”

Admiral Bohm kept silent, but there may have been the slightest nod.

There was something more, something the Admiral was still hiding.  She glanced at his uniform again.  Not black, so he wasn’t DID, just a normal part of the Dominion Fleet.  No way to know his politics.  But he was an admiral, he was in charge of the Dominion’s largest battleship, at least since the death of Admiral Mello.  She glanced again at the photograph of the son’s graduation.  What hopes and aspirations did he have for his son?  His only living child, his only link to his beloved wife.

And then she had it, mentally chiding herself for not seeing it earlier.

“Admiral Bohm,” she said evenly.  “We have just landed shuttles in your shuttle bays.  They brought with them Victoria’s version of your combat robots.  There are twenty of them,” she lied.  “They are each more armored and more heavily armed than your bots-“

“Dragons,” he supplied.

“Than your Dragons.  We call our combat robots ‘Marvins.’   With twenty of them on board, I can pull our soldiers back to secure areas and let the Marvins roam around until they have killed everyone on board the Vengeance. Every last person, do you understand?”

“You wouldn’t do that,” he protested, but she could see the doubt.  After all, he knew what the Dominions had done.

Emily leaned over until her mouth was just an inch from his ear, invading his psychological space and forcing a sense of intimacy that would put him off balance.  “Admiral Bohm, we didn’t start this war.  You ambushed our Fleet, then you attacked Cornwall.  You dropped nuclear weapons on our home world and killed our queen.  You took two of our soldiers as prisoners and your Dominion Intelligence Directorate thugs raped the woman for six months and chopped the hands off the man.”

“I had nothing to do with-“

“And then,” Emily pressed on, “Citizen Director Nasto ordered that Cornwall be bombed with antimatter bombs until it was nothing more than ashes and everyone was dead.  We stopped that,” she told him, choosing to omit that one of his fellow admirals was really the one who intervened. “But we still lost over twenty-five million souls.”

“So here is what I am going to do.” She held up the picture of his son.  “First, Admiral, I am going to send your son’s photograph to all of the Marvins with instructions that they are to scour the ship for your son, and when they find him they are to shoot him in the head and then drag his body back here for you to see what you could have prevented.  Then I am going to send orders to every Victorian soldier on board this ship, telling them that they are to hunt down everyone on board and shoot them.  No prisoners.”

Bohm stared at her with a mixture of cold fury and pure horror.

“Your son will die within the next hour unless you surrender this ship and tell your security forces to stand down,” Emily told him in a flat tone.  She could see he believed her.

Admiral Bohm scowled at her.  “You are a ruthless, immoral witch.”

Emily nodded in agreement.  “You decided to wage total war against Victoria, Admiral.  This is what total war feels like.”

Fifteen minutes later the last of the Dominion Security Forces had piled their weapons in a corner and were being led to a shuttle bay under the guns of ten Marvin combat bots.  The last of the Dominion Dragon bots had been deactivated.  Then Emily had Bohm order the two Dominion cruisers to surrender.  One shut down its weapon systems and turned off its power plant, but the other tried to run, accelerating wildly, spitting chaff and jammers.  The missiles and energy beams of the Vengeance caught it within seconds and sent it tumbling, airless and shattered.  A few life pods shot out, set a course for Timor and soon vanished from sight.

“They’ll warn the Ducks we’re coming,” Fiona Campbell cautioned.

“Yes,” Emily replied.  “They will.”  She smiled.

* * * *

It took three days of frantic, round-the-clock activity to ship all of the Dominion prisoners to POW camps back at Refuge.  They decided on Refuge rather than Victoria because Emily was afraid that the prisoners would be lynched if they were housed there.  It had become a war of ghastly horrors, and Emily did not want to add another one.

Admiral Bohm was reunited with his son.  Bohm had never been a demonstrative man – few career military men are – but when he saw his son, alive and well, the Admiral covered his face with his hands and wept.

More crews were brought in from Cornwall to man the Dominion battleship and cruisers.  The Victorian Fleet had just added three large capital ships to their ranks.  The H.M.S. Vengeance was now the largest ship in either the Victorian or Dominion fleets.  Emily transferred back to the Refuge carrier Rabat, which now had a full complement of grogin gunboats with full crews.

On the fourth day, the new Assault Force, made up of one battleship, four cruisers, six destroyers, four carriers, a Hedgehog, a repair vessel and a gaggle of Owls and tugboats, moved deeper into Dominion space to meet up with Captain Eder and Admiral Douthat.

Phase One was complete.

Chapter 47

The Final Battle

Admiral Kaeser had two insurmountable problems.

First, he had fewer ships than the Victorians and the ships he had were smaller, with fewer missile tubes and lasers.  And second, he was hamstrung by Citizen Director Nasto and that little weasel, Hudis.  Despite all of his arguments and pleadings, they insisted that the Fleet be kept in orbit around Timor, rather than let him aggressively patrol and then meet the Vickies in a moving battle.  In a moving battle he could use stealth, deceit and maneuverability to compensate for his fewer numbers, but tied to the planet he would be forced to go toe-to-toe with a heavier opponent.

He had already received word that the battleship Vengeance, the Dominion’s pride and glory, had been captured.  Not only did he have to suffer its loss, but it was actually in enemy hands and would be used against the Dominion.  Captain Astrid Drechsher of the frigate Draugr had volunteered to go hunt for the Vengeance and destroy it, but Kaeser had told her no.  He thought the battle – and the war – might take a different turn, and if it did he would need as many Astrid Drechshers as he could find.

The enemy force that had come through the wormhole from Victoria had now moved deeper into Dominion space.  Kaeser had sent out scouts, of course, but the Vickies had detected the scouts and destroyed them, so now Kaeser was not sure where the force was.  Worse, it was a relatively small force, only fifteen ships.  Where was the rest of the Victorian Fleet?   There was another battleship out there somewhere, plus a bunch of Victorian heavy cruisers and God knew how many destroyers.  And the cursed carriers, though in his mind Kaeser still could not think of them as a serious threat.

But where were they?  From which direction would they come?  He shook his head.  If the Citizen Director would not let him send out patrols to locate and fix the Vickies, then he had to have as many ships as he could find to protect Timor.  The Citizen Director had insisted that Kaeser leave twelve ships to protect the Might of the People Ship Works, but Kaeser knew that was not enough and that he really needed them here, at Timor, where they might do some good.

Taking a breath, he mentally stepped back.  Every enemy has a weakness, a flaw that can be exploited if the time and the conditions were right.  For the Vickies, it had always been their insufferable arrogance.  It was a cultural conceit, a personality flaw of an entire people. That had allowed the Dominions and the Tilleke to lure the vaunted Victorian Fleet into the ambush in Tilleke space, and that had allowed Admiral Mello to make his surprise attack against the Vicky home world itself, with devastating results.  The Vickies’ arrogance had been rubbed in their faces, but had they really learned anything, or even now could he take advantage of their Achilles heel?

He stared moodily at the hologram of Timor’s defenses, mentally figuring out how he would go about defeating them if he were the Victorian Admiral.  He studied the hologram for a long time, then nodded briskly to himself.

Some risks were worth taking.

* * * *

“One of the Owls is scouting out the MOP Works,” Toby Partridge called out.  “Sensor packet coming in now.”

The original plan was to bypass the MOP Works altogether and proceed directly to the planet, but it never hurt to look.

“Put it up, Toby,” Emily said.  The main hologram flickered as the new data was added.  The forts protecting the MOP Works were still there, but oddly, there were fewer of them.  Where there had been eleven active forts, now there were only four.  And the defending ships…  She leaned forward to look at the information bars, then frowned. “Can this be right?” she asked.

Chief Gibson folded his arms and shook his head.  “That’s what the sensors say, but we need to confirm it.”

“Which Owl reported in with this?” Emily asked.

“Laughing Owl, Ma’am,” Partridge replied.

Emily’s eyebrows went up and she exchanged a glance with Alex Rudd.  Captain Zahiri was the most experienced of all the Owl captains.  She would have sent an annotation if she thought the data was either wrong or incomplete.

“Well, this is tempting,” she said to Rudd.

“Very tempting.”

She took a breath.  “Okay, here’s what we have.  The Ducks have pulled back most of their forts and ships from the MOP Works shipyard to defend the planet.  Good news for us.  Sensors only pick up twelve destroyers and four forts.  No battleships, no cruisers.  This looks too good to pass up.  The forts look like they are positioned such that they can’t support one another, so we are going to take out just one fort to give us a path into the shipyard, then concentrate on taking out the destroyers.  I don’t want to lose anybody, so let’s keep a distance and just chip away at them.”

Alex Rudd and Chief Gibson looked at one another, then shrugged. “How do you want to take the fort?”

Emily considered this, absently rubbing her nose.  “Well, shoot, let’s start by asking them to give up.”

It took almost thirty minutes to get the commander of the MOP Works defense on the comm screen.  Finally a balding, pudgy man of about fifty appeared, wearing the uniform of an admiral.

“I am Admiral Manfred Duerr,” he said solemnly.  “To whom am I speaking?”

“I am Commander Emily Tuttle of the Victorian First Assault Force,” Emily said crisply.  “Admiral, I am calling to give you a chance to surrender.”  She was sending her reply not only to the MOP Works itself, but to all of the Dominion forts and destroyers.  “You must realize that we have a force strong enough to defeat you.  Perhaps more importantly, you must know that Timor has abandoned you.  There will be no reinforcements, Admiral.  You are on your own.  I am giving you this chance to save the lives of the men and women under your command.”

Admiral Duerr looked at her with disapproval.  Emily was reminded of a French general during World War II on Old Earth who insisted on surrendering only to someone of equal rank.  “Commander, you presume too much,” he said haughtily.   “I can assure you that your force is insufficient to penetrate our defenses and that if you try, you shall die.  Moreover, I have been assured by the Citizen Director himself that if I call for reinforcements, they will come.”

This was just what Emily expected.  She opted for planting a seed of doubt, if not for Admiral Duerr, then for anyone else listening in on the broadcast.  “I rather doubt that, Admiral.  We have been eavesdropping on the Citizen Director’s communications.  He has no intention of supporting you, that’s why he had those other forts towed back to Timor.  That’s why most of the warships were recalled.  The Citizen Director is hoping that before you fall, you might take a few of my ships with you, soften us up, so to speak.”  Emily smiled.  “That is not going to happen.  We’re going to start with the fort nearest us.  We’ll begin in twenty minutes.  If you want, order them to take to their lifeboats now, because in a little while it will be too late.”  Emily cut the communication.

Rudd looked at her, amused.  “We’ve been eavesdropping on the Citizen Director?”

Emily shrugged.  “No, but if we had that’s what I expect we would have heard.  You never know, it might make Duerr a little less confident.”  She turned to Toby Partridge.  “Get me Captain Zahiri of the Laughing Owl on the comm, Toby.  I’ll take it in my Day Room.”  A minute later Emily was seated in the privacy of her Day Room and Sadia Zahiri was looking at her from the comm screen.

“It’s time, Sadia,” Emily told her.  “I need to send you on your errand.”

No lifeboats left the Dominion fort.  Two hours after the conversation with the Admiral, the first asteroid was maneuvered into position and sent hurtling toward the fort from thirty thousand miles away.  The fort fired a volley of missiles on the ships involved, but at that distance there was enough time to spoof the missiles, shoot them down or evade them.

The first asteroid missed, as did the second.  The fort caught the third with three missiles, causing it to break up into several pieces.  Two of those pieces slammed into the fort, pushing it very slightly out of its fixed orbit around the MOP Works, giving it a spin and a wobble.  On the Rabat, Emily frowned, then ordered the next asteroids to be released closer to the fort.  “Bring it in to twenty thousand miles,” she said.

Next to her, Alex Rudd shifted his feet.  “Don’t get impatient, Emily,” he said in a low voice.  “We’ve got time, reel ‘em in slow. We have to make them believe. And we don’t want to lose any of our ships for nothing.”

Emily stifled a retort, then mentally shook herself.  “Disregard that order!” she corrected.  “Release at twenty-eight thousand miles.”  She glanced at Rudd, who smiled and nodded.  “Impatience is the hobgoblin of little admirals,” he said pompously.  “Keep it up, Cadet Tuttle, and I might let you graduate from my Tactics Course yet.”  Emily snorted rudely.  Rudd chuckled.  From the Communications Console, Toby Partridge cast them an inquisitive look, which made Emily turn away to hide her smile.

“Much better,” Rudd told her softly.

The next three asteroids missed, one by a scant hundred yards.  Finally, the last asteroid squarely smashed into it, buckling the fort’s armor plate and rupturing its hull.  The fort staggered further out of orbit, venting a huge cloud of air behind it.  A few minutes later lifeboats shot out of the fort’s shuttle bays, turned and headed for the MOP Works.

The tactical map now looked like a sack.  By taking out this fort, they had opened the sack on one end.   In the middle of the sack lay the Might of the People Ship Works.  Above and below the shipyard were two forts, with a third far behind the shipyard forming the end of the ‘sack.’   The twelve Dominion destroyers were about even with the shipyard.   The shipyard in turn was within missile and laser range of each of the three forts, so whoever went into the sack to get the shipyard would be exposed to fire from at least one of the forts.

The door to the MOP Works was open…a little.

Emily’s best move, she knew, was to now take out a second fort, leaving a much larger and safer hole through which to attack the MOP Works.  And she would have done that…if the MOP works had been the real objective.

“Bring the tugs in closer – twenty thousand miles – and throw the next batch towards the shipyard,” Emily instructed.  She glanced a little anxiously at Chief Gibson.  “Master Chief, anything?”

Although the Combat Center was cool, Master Chief Gibson was sweating, droplets of water reflecting in his grey hair.  God of Our Mothers, the Master Chief is getting old, Emily realized with astonishment.  “Nothing yet,” he said.

The Dominion destroyers shot mountains of chaff into the zone between the shipyard and the Victorian forces, fogging the Victorian’s sensors and daring Emily to move closer.  But Emily raised the dare.  She didn’t need to move closer because recon drones on the other side of the chaff cloud told her precisely where the shipyard was.  The first asteroid missed the shipyard and went tumbling harmlessly into space.  The second and third got closer, but still missed.  The fourth looked dead on, but laser and missile fire from the shipyard and the forts broke it up just in time, the pieces flying either side of the shipyard.  The Dominion destroyers began to creep up to the left and right side of the ‘sack,’ anticipating that the tugboats would have to move closer in if they hoped to score a hit.

“The destroyers are creeping up,” Master Chief Gibson warned.

Emily grinned at Alex Rudd.  “Almost time.”  She got the rest of the Assault Force on the comm and snapped out orders.

* * * *

In orbit around Timor, Admiral Kaeser had been following the battle closely, using information beamed to the Fortitude directly from the Might of the People Ship Works and the three remaining forts.  It had pained him to lose the fourth fort, but he needed the Vickies solidly committed.

“Admiral Duerr,” he said.  “How are you holding up?”

Admiral Duerr grinned wolfishly.  “We’ve had a couple of close calls, but we’re holding our own.  The Vickies are still throwing rocks at us, but I think they’re getting ready to send in their ships to take a crack at the destroyers.”

“Keep their attention, Admiral, that’s all I ask.  Keep their attention.”

Duerr laughed again, a man who enjoyed a good fight.  “It will be my pleasure, Admiral Kaeser.  It will be my pleasure.”

* * * *

Emily watched the battle hologram.  Yes, the Duck destroyers were creeping in.  “Mildred, tell me when they have reached missile range.”

“Yes, Commander,” Mildred replied.

Another asteroid missed the shipyard, this one by a wider margin.

The Dominion destroyers crossed the invisible line in space that brought them within range of the Victorian missiles.

“Now!” Emily shouted.

“Now!” Admiral Duerr cried.

Many things happened in an instant.

The Dominion cruisers volleyed one hundred missiles against the Victorians, then accelerated madly forward, laser beams stabbing out.

The H.M.S. Vengeance, the Victorian’s newest battleship, fired sixty missiles in return.  It’s crew, still new to the Dominion control systems, fumbled for a gut-wrenching moment to get the laser batteries on line, then began to pepper the oncoming destroyers with ten and twelve-inch lasers.

Emily’s six destroyers darted forward, each volleying its missiles, then concentrating all of their lasers on two specific Duck destroyers.  The Assault Force’s only Hedgehog swept forward with them, already targeting incoming missiles.

The four Victorian cruisers concentrated all of their eighty missiles against the fort to the left of the MOP Works, then accelerated in to blast it with laser strikes while reloading their second volley.

The four carriers – Rabat, Haifa, Rishon and Ashdod – split up, with Rabat and Haifa diving below the plane of advance so that they would be looking ‘up’ at the MOP Works and the Rishon and Ashdod climbing up so that they would be looking ‘down’ at it.  Inside the carriers a total of three hundred gunboats waited for the order to launch.  Many of the crews were new and untried, and they sat in their gunships, stomachs clenched with anxiety, bile in their throats.

More than two hundred and forty missiles passed each other in flight, their guidance systems trying desperately to parse through chaff and jammers and lock onto the real targets.  The Victorian missiles had the benefit of numerous recon drones beaming them real-time data on both the destroyers and the fort on the left, which everyone had decided to call the “Alamo.”

The Victorian Hedgehog burst into action, shooting hundreds of laser beams and dozens of small anti-missile missiles against the incoming flock of Dominion missiles.  Three minutes later the surviving missiles on either side reached their targets.  One of the Victorian destroyers seemed to pause mid-flight, then shuddered and tumbled.  Life pods popped out from all sides as the crew hastily evacuated the stricken ship.  Three other Victorians destroyers took hits but continued forward, damage control teams racing to put out fires and temporarily seal hull breaches.

The Dominion ships were fewer in number and had more missiles and lasers aimed at them.  One of them was already heavily damaged by laser strikes which knocked out its anti-missile system.  Naked before the incoming missiles, its crew was in the midst of abandoning ship when the missiles struck.  It fireballed, killing all of the crew still onboard and incinerating several of the life pods attempting to flee.

Two other Dominion destroyers were crippled, tumbling and turning as internal explosions tore them apart.  Of the remaining nine, six took hits but stayed in the fight.  One of the unharmed destroyers, its captain succumbing to panic, abruptly turned and ran, trailing chaff and decoys.

On the left flank of the battle, missiles from the four Victorian cruisers closed in on the Alamo, but the Alamo’s strong anti-missile system began knocking them down, one by one and two by two, then three by three.  Ten of the eighty missiles fell, then fifteen, then thirty, then fifty.  Of the original eighty, only fifteen reached their target, and of those only five successfully breached the hull.  The fort was hurt, but not crippled, and it began to pour out a steady stream of missiles and lasers at the incoming Victorians.

“Press on!” Emily commed to the ship captains.  If her ships could punch through the Dominion destroyers, they would be so close to the MOP Works that the forts wouldn’t dare fire on them for fear of accidently hitting their precious shipyard.  She glanced anxiously at the sensor display and the battle hologram.  Where were they?  Had she misjudged the whole thing?

Then everything changed.  For the worse.

One moment there were three Dominion forts and the MOP Works struggling to hold their own, and the next moment twenty-eight Dominion warships were boiling out of the sensor shadow behind each of the forts and the MOP Works to join the fight.

“Multiple contacts!  Multiple contacts!” Master Chief Gibson shouted.  “We have twenty additional destroyers and what looks like eight frigates.  The frigates are coming from the rear-most fort.  Seven destroyers from the left fort, seven from the right fort and six coming from behind the MOP Works.  All the destroyers are in missile and energy range; frigates will be in range in six minutes.”

Emily recalled the earlier recon estimates of the total forces guarding Timor.  She allowed herself a surge of satisfaction.  The Dominion Admiral had screwed up – this ambush had left him with only twenty or so ships to guard the planet.

Finite resources, she thought to herself.  We all have to make do with finite resources.  The trick was in exploiting your enemy’s finite resources while not allowing your own to make you vulnerable.

“Download the sensor update and send the communication drones!” she ordered.  Then, “Toby, connect me to all ships!”  Across the Command Center he punched some buttons and then nodded to her.  “All ships!  All ships!  Disengage now!  Disengage now and proceed to the planet!  Orders to the carriers: launch all gunboats to cover the warships.”

As the Dominion destroyers and frigates raced forward, all of the Victorian cruisers, destroyers and carriers abruptly turned away, Dark Matter Brakes flaring, and dove towards the planet.  The Hedgehog, named the Lochaber Axe, fell in with the rear line of the retreating ships and began to shoot down incoming Dominion missiles.  Other ships dumped chaff and mines.  Tasting blood, the Dominion forces accelerated further.

* * * *

On the Dominion battleship Fortitude orbiting the planet Timor, Admiral Kaeser frowned in confusion.  The trap had been sprung and the Vickies were running, but why were they running towards him?   No matter.  He began issuing orders, getting the planet-side missile batteries and his remaining Fleet ready to fire if the Vickies came within range.    He paused, nodding slowly to himself.  His plan was working well so far.

So why did he feel uneasy?

* * * *

The Dominion destroyers began to outpace the cruisers and brought the Victorian ships into missile range first.  There was, fortunately, no concentrated volley of missiles, so Lochaber Axe was able to knock down the incoming missiles without difficulty.  Then the grogin gunboats flashed in to swarm the two leading destroyers, blanketing them with missile and laser strikes.  The destroyers abruptly jinked and veered away, holed in numerous places by laser fire and missile strikes.  Four more destroyers that had been overtaking the Victorian ships prudently powered back to let the other Dominion warships catch up.

“Thirty second countdown has commenced,” Mildred announced calmly, but loud enough to pierce through the noise on the Command Center.  “Twenty-seven…twenty-six…”

“Carriers to start recovering the gunboats!” Emily said into the comm.  “All gunboats to be aboard.  If a carrier is not available, land in the shuttle bay of the nearest ship!”

“Twenty-two...twenty-one…”

“Within missile range of the planet’s defense envelop in sixty seconds!” Master Chief Gibson said loudly.  “Dominions continue to overtake us from behind.  Within their missile range in forty seconds!”

On the holo display there was a ripple of pulsing lights that indicated mine explosions.  “The Ducks ran into the minefield!” Rudd exulted.  He tapped his keyboard for a moment, leaning closer to peer at the data display.  “We got one for sure and may have damaged some others.”  On the holo display, one red square suddenly flared and disappeared while two others veered left and right and seemed to slow down.

“Ten…nine…eight…”

“Prepare for DMB and flip up,” Emily broadcast.

On the Dominion ship Fortitude, Admiral Kaeser watched in growing wonderment as the Victorian raiders hurtled directly at him.  He shook his head.  What were they trying to do?  In a few seconds they would be vulnerable to fire from the planet, from his orbiting ships and from the Dominion warships chasing them. Were they mad?

“Two…one…”

“All ships, tilt up and full military power!” Emily commanded.  Almost as one, the Assault Force turned away from the planet and went to full power.  Their curve took them on a path skimming just beyond the missile range of the planetary defenses and just beyond the reach of Admiral Kaeser’s orbiting forces.  Then the Victorian ships executed another turn, leveling off and taking them further away from the pursuing Dominion destroyers and frigates.  The pursuing ships were all in a line now, bunched together, doggedly staying on the heels of the Victorians, moments away from launching another missile volley.

“Countdown commencing,” intoned Mildred.  “Fifteen…fourteen…thirteen…”

And from two hundred thousand miles above them, far beyond the reach of any sensors, came a flight of shooting stars.  They arced across the sky, huge cauldrons of heat and light and frothing energy.  In a few moments anyone with a sensor, or even a porthole, could see them as they hurtled toward the combatants.   Strangely, as they came closer instead of speeding up they appeared to be visibly slowing down.  But the more they slowed, the greater the penumbra of heat and light that trailed them like swirling comet tails filled with Icterine yellow, Palatinate blue, green the color of a Caribbean sea, and Carnelian red.  They were so brilliant that on the Fortitude Admiral Kaeser could easily see them with his naked eye.  The spectacle was breathtakingly, astonishingly beautiful, and he knew he would never see the likes of it again.  They seemed to fill the sky, as numerous as the stars themselves, but from his vantage point on the Fortitude, Admiral Kaeser could see that in fact there were only forty or so.

“Dark Matter Brakes,” he muttered foully.

The Victorian Fleet had arrived.

“Four…three…two…one,” Mildred counted down.

The thirty-nine ships of Admiral Alyce Douthat’s Fleet swept in behind the remaining thirty-one Dominion destroyers and frigates, still dumping speed so as to not overrun them.   In front of the Dominion ships, Emily’s task force flipped over to point their bow weapons at the Ducks.  And in that instant, the odds shifted from thirty-one confident Dominion warships attacking fourteen Victorian ships to fifty-four Victorian ships – including two battleships – attacking thirty-one very nervous Ducks.

The threat sensors on every Dominion ship blared their warning as targeting sensors locked onto them.  Thirty-one captains cringed at what must follow.

But the dreadful onslaught of missiles and lasers did not come.  Instead, the comm screens on each of the destroyers and frigates suddenly showed a short, stout dark-haired woman wearing the uniform of an admiral in the Victorian Fleet.  She scowled at them.

“My name is Admiral Alyce Douthat,” she said in a voice like gravel in a cement mixer.  “Each of you has exactly five minutes to decide whether you will live or die.  You will immediately turn off your sensors.  Any ship still showing sensors will be destroyed.  You will bring your ship to relative zero velocity and abandon ship using your shuttles and life pods.  You will not scramble your computers.  You will not activate any self-destruct device.  When you abandon your ship, proceed to the planet surface.  You will not be interfered with.

Admiral Douthat’s eyes hardened.  “Disregard this order and you will be destroyed without further warning.  You have five minutes, starting now.”

The face on the screen vanished and was replaced by a clock ticking down from five minutes.

For several long seconds, nothing at all happened.  All of the ships continued at the same speed.  The Dominions kept on their power and their targeting sensors, but they did not fire.

“Lots of chatter on the Ducks’ comm frequencies,” Toby Partridge said softly, holding headphone to one ear.  “Mildred has decrypted some of it and they appear to be arguing about whether or not to fight or surrender.”

Emily nodded, trying hard not to hold her breath.  She jumped a little when her comm flared to life.  Admiral Douthat nodded to her.  “Glad to see you made it, Tuttle, and nice job snatching the Duck battleship.”

Emily nodded back.  “What can I do for you, Admiral?”

“Let’s give the Ducks a little more to worry about.  Scramble all the gunboats and have them take position on the flanks.  Douthat, out.”  The comm blinked off.                A minute later the gunboats poured out of the four carriers and moved in squadrons along the flanks of the Dominion destroyers and frigates.

Perhaps the Dominion captains had already decided, or maybe the image of 300 gunboats swarming out of the carriers made the difference, but whatever it was, the Dominion captains began to shut down their sensors and reduce speed, one by one, until there were only four destroyers left.  They didn’t even fire their missiles, they just stubbornly refused to come to a stop and kill their targeting sensors.

On board the Lionheart, Admiral Douthat shook her head and sighed, then nodded once to Captain Eder. Several dozen ten-inch laser beams lashed out.  Sixty missiles followed.  The destroyers died with no life pods or shuttles escaping.

Admiral Douthat shook her head again.  “Give me a brave, stupid person and nine times out of ten you’ll get a dead, stupid person.”

The other Dominion ships had slowed to a stable orbit, fixed over Timor’s equator.  Within a minute shuttles began to emerge from shuttle bays and move to the planet far below.  For some of the ships without adequate shuttle capacity, life pods popped out of the hull and began to move very slowly behind the shuttles.  Douthat nodded in satisfaction.  “Beam over the security teams onto the Duck ships and make sure they’re safe, then send the new crews over by shuttle,” she ordered.  The captured ships would be very thinly crewed until reinforcements from Victoria arrived, but that didn’t matter.  Douthat was pretty sure that she didn’t have to actually project power, just flaunt it.

Then she commed the Dominion battleship Fortitude to demand that Admiral Kaeser surrender.   But when the comm opened to the Fortitude, Admiral Kaeser wasn’t there.

Chapter 48

The United People’s Palace, Timor

Admiral Kaeser wasn’t surprised by the summons.

Michael Hudis might have been gloating, if he hadn’t looked so scared.  “Come to the Palace immediately, Admiral,” he said, his voice cold and brittle.  “You are summoned by the Citizen Director himself.”

This could go one of two ways, Kaeser reflected. Citizen Director Nasto might want to speak to him about how best to protect Timor from defeat now that most of the Fleet was gone, or he might charge Kaeser with treason and have him shot on the spot.  Kaeser put the odds no better than fifty-fifty.

He spent ten minutes conferring with Captain Bauer and the captains of two of the cruisers, both of whom he had known for years and trusted. Finally, he placed a call to a number he had memorized years before.

“Yes?” answered a gruff voice.

“I’ve been summoned to the Palace,” Admiral Kaeser said evenly.

“Yes, I know,” the gruff voice replied.  “I was there when he gave the order.”

Kaeser paused, waiting to see if there would be more information. When there was none, he said: “I think it may be time.”

“Oh, yes,” the man with the gruff voice chuckled.  “I should think it is.”  He paused.  “We knew it would come, I just thought it would be the Tilleke, not the Victorians.”

“Better for us in the long run,” Kaeser said.

The man snorted.  “Well, we’ll certainly find out, won’t we?”  Then he cut the connection.

Admiral Kaeser packed his briefcase very carefully and, finally, boarded the shuttle.  The Fortitude was riding in synchronous orbit over the capital city, so the ride down was short. Once they reached the atmosphere, he could see that the shuttle was being escorted down by two DID military jets.  While it was true that the jets could not follow the shuttle back into space, the missiles hung under their wings reminded him that they didn’t have to.

Captain Bauer kept him updated with what the Victorians were up to, but for the moment they seemed busy placing crews on the destroyers and frigates they had captured.  Admiral Kaeser grimaced: the Victorians would now have seventy-eight warships, while he had five.  Who was it that said in war quantity has a quality all of its own?

But then, just as they were landing, Captain Bauer sent one more message.

“The Victorians are demanding the unconditional surrender of the Dominion!” he said, his voice shaking.  “The Victorian Admiral has given us two hours in which to comply.”

“We’re just landing at the Palace,” Kaeser said.  “Keep your eye on them, Fritz, but under no circumstances are any of the cruisers to use targeting sensors, do you understand?  Do not give the Vickies an excuse to fire on you.  Once the firing starts, we will not be able to stop it.”  Once the firing starts, Kaeser thought bleakly, Timor is doomed.

“Yes, Admiral.”  Bauer sounded resolute and terrified.

Michael Hudis and four armed DID guards waited to greet him when he reached the Palace.  “This way, Admiral, Citizen Director Nasto is waiting,” Hudis said.  Kaeser nodded and they set off, the guards forming a box around them.  As they walked, Kaeser saw more DID guards every hundred feet or so in the long corridor.  A few more turns and they reached a door with three DID guards standing in front of it.  Kaeser had been here once and remembered it as a small office and conference room where the Citizen Director liked to hold private meetings.

One of the guards opened the door.  Kaeser walked through, wondering if he would walk back out alive.

At the table sat Anthony Nasto, the Citizen Director; Admiral Wagner; Michael Hudis; and a small, balding little man with slightly bulging dark eyes who Kaeser recognized as Erik Niederman, the Director of the Dominion Intelligence Directorate.  Admiral Kaeser came to attention and said formally to the table: “Admiral Kaeser, reporting to the Citizen Director at his order.”

“Sit down,” the Citizen Director said coldly.

Kaeser sat down, trying to take in the sense of the room as he did so.  Michael Hudis looked worried, but when he glanced at Kaeser, he smirked.  Hoping for payback, thought Kaeser.  Admiral Wagner was expressionless, as usual.   Niederman, he saw with a chill, looked amused.  And the Citizen Director looked coldly furious.

All in all, not an auspicious beginning.

“The Victorian Admiral has demanded our unconditional surrender,” Nasto spat.  He slammed the table with his fist.  “Under no condition will we surrender!  None!”  He glared at everyone around the table.  “We still have our planetary defenses.  Thousands of missiles!  I want everything launched against the Vickies!  Everything!”  He slapped that table again for emphasis.  “And the defending ships in orbit, why aren’t they firing?”  He glared at Admiral Kaeser.  “Why?”

“I gave them orders not to use their targeting sensors,” Kaeser replied, struggling to stay calm.  “As soon as the cruisers turn on their targeting sensors, the Vickies will destroy them.”

“That is the same rank cowardice that you have shown since this campaign began,” shouted Nasto.  “Admiral Mello was right!  You can’t win if you don’t fight and you, Admiral, are afraid to fight!”

“Admiral Mello over-extended his forces and was annihilated,” Kaeser replied sharply.  “Citizen Director, the planetary defenses will not prevent the Victorians from retreating to a safe distance and making kinetic strikes on us.  We can intercept some of them, but not all, and we do not have enough ships left to force-“

“We don’t have enough ships left because of your gross incompetence!” shouted Nasto.  “Anyway,” he continued more calmly, “the Vickies will not use kinetic strikes; they have repeatedly said that does not comport with their code of warfare.”

“They may feel less, um, constrained since we bombed their home planet,” Kaeser suggested.

“Are you suggesting that we surrender?” Nasto asked, an ominous edge in his voice.

“He is!” Hudis said helpfully.  “He should be arrested and shot.”

Admiral Wagner looked at his watch and pursed his lips, but said nothing.  Director Niederman raised his eyebrows.  “And who would command the Fleet?” he asked.

“What fleet?” Nasto said scornfully.  Niederman shrugged, conceding the point.

An aide came into the room and handed Citizen Director Nasto a slip of paper.  Nasto read it, frowning, then looked up.  “Sensors show the Vickies are pulling back to a deep orbit of 50,000 miles.”

“Perhaps they are retreating, sir,” suggested Hudis.

Kaeser shook his head.  “They are pulling back out of the effective range of our planetary defenses,” he explained.  “Our planetary missiles have an effective power range of no more than 30,000 miles.  After that, they go onto a ballistic trajectory and are easily destroyed or avoided.”

“I want all of our planetary defenses to fire on the Vickies now, while they are still in range,” Nasto ordered.  “We will fight, fight until the last man.  I will never surrender, do you hear me?”

Kaeser glanced at Wagner.  Wagner stood.  “May I be dismissed to carry out your order, Citizen Director?”

Kaeser stood and leaned over the table.  “Citizen Director, your order will result in the total destruction of this planet and everyone on it!  Our only course is to surrender.”

Then, from the corridor, came the sound of a gunshot, followed by several more in rapid succession.  The single guard in the room ran to the door and everyone waited to see what was happening.  No one noticed Admiral Wagner draw a small needle pistol from his briefcase. He calmly stepped behind Citizen Director Nasto and shot him in the back of the head.  As the guard turned back into the room, Wagner shot him twice in the chest.

Admiral Kaeser picked up the guard’s needle rifle, locked the door and turned back.  The sound of fighting grew louder outside.  Kaeser looked at the DID Director.  “Director Niederman, I suggest you order your men to put down their weapons.”

Niederman smiled and held out his hands, palms up in placation.  “I never argue with the man who has a gun.”  He glanced from Kaeser to Wagner.  “This has been well-played.  I mean that sincerely.  My men never got a whiff of it.”

Kaeser gestured with the rifle.  “The Vickies are going to start bombing us in a few minutes, Director, call your men.”

Niederman carefully withdrew his comm unit from his pocket, then thumbed it.   “This is the Director.”  He spoke clearly.  “All DID personnel, stand down.  I repeat, stand down until you receive further orders from me.”

He put down the comm and smiled at Admiral Kaeser.  “See?  Cooperation without threat of reprisal.”  He smiled warmly.  “I think that the DID and the Fleet can work well together to create a government that-“

Kaeser shot him.

Michael Hudis held his hands in front of him.  “Wait!  Wait!  You need me!  I can be useful!  You need someone to be the face of the new government.  I can help with that, I can-“

“Nope,” said Admiral Wagner mildly, and shot him.  Then he walked over to where the Citizen Director lay, put the muzzle of his pistol on Nasto’s forehead and fired two more bullets into his head.  “Can’t be too careful,” he grunted.  Then he grinned sheepishly.  “Saw that in a movie once.”

The two men stood there for a moment, surrounded by bodies and blood-splattered walls, when there was a knock on the door.  “Admiral Wagner?  Admiral, it’s Commander Lowe, sir.  The Palace is ours.”  Commander Lowe was Wagner’s personal aide.

The two admirals nodded in relief, and then both threw their weapons on the table.  “I never was cut out for the infantry,” Kaeser said, wiping his hands.

Ten minutes later a young sailor handed Admiral Kaeser a comm unit.  “It’s Victorian Admiral Douthat.” She eyed him nervously and Kaeser realized there was blood splattered on his tunic.  Kaeser held up the unit.

“Admiral Douthat, this is Admiral Kaeser of the Dominion Naval Forces.”

On the Lionheart, Admiral Douthat frowned in puzzlement.  Kaeser, at the Palace?  She had expected to speak with Citizen Director Nasto.  She glanced at Sir Henry, who was looking intently at nothing at all, trying to parse through the possibilities.   Sir Henry shook his head.  “Ask him if he has spoken with the Citizen Director.”

There was a pause, then Admiral Douthat’s voice came through the slightly tinny speaker.  “Admiral, in twenty minutes, we will release the first asteroid toward your planet.  Has Citizen Director Nasto conferred with you about this?”

Kaeser and Wagner exchanged a look.  Wagner shrugged a “Go ahead” gesture.

Kaeser spoke carefully.  “Citizen Director is not able to take your call, Admiral.  He is…indisposed.”

On board the Lionheart, Sir Henry pumped a triumphant fist into the air and smiled broadly.  Douthat stared for a moment at the comm, nodded to herself and spoke:  “Admiral, I will assume in that case that you are in charge of the government of the Dominion of Unified Citizenry.”  She paused.  When Admiral Kaeser did not say anything to contradict her, she continued.  “Admiral Kaeser, you have it in your power to spare the people of the Dominion untold hardship and death.  Now that Citizen Director Nasto is…no longer with us, I put it to you:  Will you, speaking on behalf of all Dominion forces, surrender at once and without condition?”

Admiral Kaeser took a deep breath.  “The Dominion of Unified Citizenry hereby surrenders.  All active military and State Security forces are hereby ordered to stand down, immediately and without exception.”

Chapter 49

Two Weeks Later

On the H.M.S. Rabat

Admiral Martha Wilkinson pushed a hand tiredly through her hair.  “The neuro realignment worked fine, that isn’t the problem.”

Emily frowned.  “How does the neuro realignment work?”

Wilkinson waived a hand.  “To give you the details, I’d need one of the neuropsychiatrists, and they are insufferably obtuse and pedantic.  Even if one of them agreed to talk to you, we’d need a regular neurologist to translate what he said.”  She pursed her lips.  “The short answer is that they go in and locate the physical site of the memories – the bad memories – and they dilute them to the extent that they seem distant and unrelated to your actual experience.  It is as if you have read about someone else’s experience, but you don’t feel any of the emotion that you would if it were your own experience.”

“And that worked with Cookie?” Emily asked.

“It worked just fine. It was quite a job, mind you; they had to work through six months of memories of physical and sexual abuse, plus everything that happened to the soldier who was with her, but they got it done.  Those memories no longer cause her the intense anguish they had before.  The entire experience of her imprisonment has been softened and diluted.”

Emily raised her eyebrows in a silent question.

“The problem,” Wilkinson said, visibly frustrated, “is that now Cookie views herself as damaged because she had to have treatment in order to deal with the bad memories and her emotional response to them.”

Emily considered this, remembering how independent Cookie was and how much she prized being one of the tough, confident Fleet Marines.  “You’re saying her problem now is that she thinks she is a weakling because she needed treatment to deal with her prison experience?”

Wilkinson nodded.  “It’s a little more complex than that, but yes, that sums it up.  It’s tearing her apart.  She doesn’t trust herself now.  She’s worried she can’t rely on her own judgment.”  Wilkinson threw up her hands.  “I can’t clear her for active duty until she’s past this.”

“Can’t you do more neuro realignment?”

“No,” Wilkinson said firmly.  “It is a great treatment, but there are risky side effects.  Cookie will have to wait at least a year before she can undergo any further realignment.”

“What about Hiram?  Can’t he help her?”

“She won’t see him,” Wilkinson explained.  “I think she feels like she has somehow failed him.”  She sighed.  “The longer I keep her in Sick Bay for treatment, the worse it gets.  I think the isolation and inactivity is hurting her, but I can’t release her like this.”

“You’re not saying she’s suicidal?”

“No, but she desperately needs a change, needs to get out of her head and just relax for a while.”

Emily sat back.  She was taking the Rabat back to Refuge for repairs.  Round trip would be ten to twelve weeks and there would be very little that demanded her attention while the ship was actually in the dry dock.

She smiled.  “Give her to me; I’ve got something to take her mind off her troubles.”

Chapter 50

In Gilead Space

Ships in the Night

The thirty Tilleke warships slid eel-like through the wormhole that connected Tilleke space into Gilead space.  Each of them was a dark, mottled black, the black of starless space, the black of an assassin’s blade.  Under heavy stealth, with heavily muffled power emissions, they moved slowly away from the wormhole entrance deeper into the Gilead Sector.

From the Gilead Sector, they had several options. They could enter The Light, though why anyone would want to encounter the mad monks of that obscure religion was beyond reason.  Or they could go to Darwin, or Victoria, or even take the old trader’s route to Refuge.

But Victoria was the prize of prizes.  He who controls Victoria controls all of Human Space.

Five weeks ago the spy ships in the Dominion of Unified Citizenry reported that the Victorian Fleet was entering Dominion space and that the Victorian and Dominion fleets were evenly matched.

Then the spy ships fell silent.

Not that it mattered, thought Prince RaShahid, eldest son of His Most Imperial Majesty Chalabi. Whatever needed to happen must have already occurred.  After the passage of five weeks, one side had ravaged the other, or perhaps they had managed to destroy each other.  He smiled at the thought.  Either way, he was going to Victoria and then the Dominion to pick up the pieces and assert the Emperor’s rightful control over his expanding dynasty.

The Emperor’s Pride had barely gone 5,000 miles when a single ship suddenly materialized on the sensor display.  Prince RaShahid, eldest son of His Most Imperial Majesty, Chalabi, jerked up in shock.

“What is this?” he demanded.  His Sensors Operator, a trusted Freeman, looked anxiously at his controls and then straightened.  “A single ship, Noble Born, destroyer-sized, and powered down.  They must have been under stealth; our sensors showed nothing until they suddenly appeared.”

“Whose ship?” the Prince grated.  He was not a man who took kindly to surprises.

“We cannot get a clear sensor picture, My Prince,” the Freeman answered, his face a frown of concentration.

Then a chime sounded, indicating that The Emperor’s Pride was being hailed.

“How can they see us?” fumed RaShahid.  The Freeman did not answer.

The communications chime sounded once again.

The Prince thought for a moment, then nodded brusquely to the Communications Freeman.  “Open a channel.”

The comm screen remained dark; only a voice could be heard.

“Your spy ships are dead.”

The voice was low, even, and without passion.

“You are here on a fool’s errand,” it continued.  “On incorrect assumptions.”

Prince RaShahid turned angrily to the Weapons Officer, a noble-born.  “Destroy that ship!” he grated.

“We don’t have a firm lock,” the Weapons Officer protested.

“Shoot anyway!  Make them move!  When they move, we’ll get a fix.  I should not have to tell you this!”

From anyone else, this would have been grounds for a kafari, a duel of honor where one man must die, but this was the son of the Emperor and the heir to the throne.  The Weapons Officer choked back his anger and fired a spread of missiles, saturating the area where the unknown ship seemed to be.  The Battle Display showed eight bright green dots racing toward a smudge of red.

“I see you have fired missiles at me, Prince RaShahid,” the voice chided.  “Did you think it would be that easy?  Watch.”

Just as the missiles reached their target area, the red smudge vanished, then suddenly reappeared 1,000 miles away.

“Am I here, My Prince?  Can you shoot me now? Or am I here?”

A second red dot, as indistinct as the first, appeared 500 miles to the right of the first.

“Or am I really here?”  A third red dot appeared.

“Use the lasers!” snapped Prince RaShahid.  “All ships! Shoot them!  Shoot them!”

Laser beams lanced out from thirty Tilleke warships, some large, some small.  They flashed through all three of the targets showing on the Battle Display.  All three targets disappeared.  Prince RaShahid nodded.  Good.  Let the lesson be learned:  All who stand in the way of the Emperor, die.

Then the speakers on the communications screen burst into life.

“You think you killed me, don’t you?” the voice asked sardonically.  A new red dot emerged on the Battle Display, just over 1,200 miles from The Emperor’s Pride.  But then a second appeared, this one closer, and then a  third, and a fourth.  Then a  dozen.

“You are a foolish man, Prince, and now your crew can see it for themselves.  You thought the Victorians would destroy the Dominion, or that the Dominion would destroy the Victorians.”

Prince RaShahid looked warily around the bridge of The Emperor’s Pride.  There were eight Freemen on the bridge, all studiously looking at their consoles, none daring to look at him.  But each one of them had heard every word.  Anger welled up inside him.  Anger at the mysterious voice that could not be silenced.  Anger at the men who had witnessed his shame.  One of the Freemen coughed. Smothering a laugh, perhaps? But ‘perhaps’ was sufficient proof for a Noble Born.  The Prince snapped his fingers to get the attention of the Savak guard in the corner, then pointed at the Freeman.

The Savak guard walked behind the man, who still kept his head down, not daring to look up and seal his fate.  The burly Savak grabbed the man’s head and, grunting, twisted it around until it faced backwards, the doomed man’s shriek suddenly punctuated by a wet ‘crack!,’ followed by silence.  The Savak released the body and it sprawled limply across the work console.  The Savak went back to his post in the corner.

“But you were wrong,” the voice continued, “And your eminent father was wrong as well.  The Victorians and Dominions did not destroy each other, they formed an alliance.  You come now with your thirty ships, thinking to feed on a dead carcass, but instead you find a living, ferocious tiger, thirsty for revenge.  Thirsty for blood.”

More red dots appeared on the Battle Display.  “Noble Born, sensors show sixty ships, but we cannot get a lock on any of them,” the Sensors Freeman reported, glancing nervously at the Savak standing in the corner.

“Now you must decide, My Prince,” the sardonic voice continued.  Prince RaShahid was learning to hate that voice.  “You must decide to forge ahead like a brave, courageous son of the Great Emperor and face certain annihilation, or you must turn back to Tilleke Space.”

Suddenly, one by one, the red dots signifying enemy ships blinked out; vanished, leaving only one, now glowing more brightly.

“This one shows as a battleship, Noble Born!” the Sensors Freeman said urgently.  “Strong signal, very large ship!”

Then that red dot, too, vanished.  But the voice relentlessly continued, seemingly coming from nowhere.

“If you continue to Victoria,” it said, “you will find the superior forces of the Victorian and Dominion alliance waiting for you.  When you do, you will wonder just who it was that met you in Gilead with this warning.  And you will wonder when you will see them again.”  The voice grew cold.  “I will tell you this, my dear Prince, the next time you see us will be the last.  And when we are through with your paltry attack fleet, we will go through the wormhole into Tilleke space and your father, His Most Imperial Majesty, will die cursing your name for a fool.”

The voice went silent.

Prince RaShahid sat for a long moment, trying desperately to understand what had just happened and what it meant.  Then he sighed and ordered the assault force to turn around and return to the Tilleke Sector.

He wondered how he would face his father.

And if he would survive it.

Chapter 51

On the Planet Refuge

They started up the mountainside at dawn.  Emily patted Rosie’s head and the horse nuzzled her.  “This is Rosie,” she told Cookie.  “She has some fancy names in Berber and Hebrew that I can’t pronounce, meaning ‘Bride of the Wind,’ but to me she is just ‘Rosie.’”

Cookie nodded, but didn’t say anything.  She took a long look up the mountain, then studied her horse, a brown gelding named ‘Tripper’ for reasons no one had bothered to explain.  Cookie watched how Emily climbed into the saddle, then mimicked it perfectly and swung up onto her horse.  Tripper looked over his shoulder at her, but didn’t do that unsettling sideways skitter thing that some horses are prone to.  The breeze ruffled Cookie’s hair and for a moment she closed her eyes and just breathed in the smells of a different world.  Then Rafael Eitan stepped up to her and slid a needler rifle into the holster in front of Cookie’s right leg.  Cookie frowned and raised an eyebrow in question.

“Just in case we run into grogin,” he said cheerfully.  “They’re usually not down this low, but better safe than sorry.  Hope you’re a better shot than Emily.”

Cookie gave Emily a considering look.  “You brought me here to help me relax?  Really?”

They climbed the mountain slowly, the cool morning air giving way to mid-morning warmth.  Cookie and Emily rode together while Rafael ranged a hundred yards or so ahead, keeping an eye out for grogin.  The forest was a riot of birds, small rodents and gorgeous, breath-taking vistas across the valley to the mountains on the far side.  Cookie didn’t say anything, just greedily drank in the landscape – exotically huge and rich after so many months inside space ships and…prison.

Mid-day they stopped at an alpine pond nestled in a small flat.  A stream rushed down the steep mountain to it, cascading the final fifty feet in a waterfall over a tumult of rocks, the spray making tiny, fleeting rainbows in the air. Raf put a bottle of white wine in the pond to cool, then broke out some cold chicken and cheese, followed by fruit that looked like a pear but tasted more like a cross between a watermelon and an apple.  He fetched the bottle of wine from the pond, took a sip and pronounced it ‘just perfect.’   He poured them each a drink in small metal cups, then raised his in a toast.

“To a reminder,” he said, gesturing at the scenery all around them, “that the world can be a beautiful place.”  Far off in the distance, they heard the long, undulating cry of a grogon on the hunt, the sound echoing off the valley walls.

Rafael smiled ruefully.  “Well, beautiful some of the time, at least.”

They mounted the horses and climbed further up the mountain.

After another hour they came to the first stand of shatah mallah trees, the tall trees with the short waxy leaves that fluttered in the wind like ocean waves flowing down the mountainside.  Cookie stopped to stare at them as the breeze stirred the leaves and they began their rhythmic, flowing motion.  She stared at it in wonder and delight.

“They call them the ‘Dances with God’ trees,” Emily told her.  “The first time I saw them I thought it was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen.”

Cookie nodded.  “I’m beginning to understand why they call this planet ‘Refuge.’  These mountains are…incredible.”

“Yeah, well, you haven’t seen the grogin yet,” Emily retorted.  “It’s not quite as perfect as you might hope.”  Then she gazed out on the snow-covered peaks across the valley from them and sighed.  “But still, pretty darn nice…”

Cookie stared off into the distance.  “He’s not going to take me back,” she said, trying to sound matter-of-fact but not quite making it.  She sighed.  “He thinks he can, but I saw his face when I killed Schroder.  Every time he looks at me, he’ll see that.”

“You didn’t kill Schroder,” Emily retorted firmly.  “I tried him in a military court and sentenced him to death.  He was executed.  It’s all in the record.”

Cookie gave her a withering look.

“He was a sadistic, twisted, mean little pervert and he deserved to die,” Emily said defensively.

Cookie’s lips curled in a sardonic smile.  “Yeah, well, I obviously agree with you, but that’s not the problem.  The problem is that when I slit his throat I didn’t really pay attention to the fact that I had an audience, and that Hiram was in that audience.   I can live with what I did – if I had to do it over I’d do it again – but that’s the image Hiram has stuck in his brain.  That’s what he sees every time he’s near me.”

They rode for a minute or so in silence, then Emily said, “I think you underestimate him, Cookie.  Hiram wasn’t horrified at what you did.”

“Bullshit,” Cookie said, angrily wiping a tear from the corner of her eye.  “I saw the look on his face.  Hell, I see it in his face every time we’re together.”

“Listen to me, you damn stubborn idiot,” Emily said very gently.   “He wasn’t horrified at what you did; he was horrified at what they had done to make you need to kill Schroder.  Can’t you see the difference?”

Cookie shook her head stubbornly.  “He’ll never forgive me.”

“There’s nothing to forgive,” Emily said simply.  “And when you understand that, when you accept that, you’ll be able to forgive yourself.”

Cookie snorted and swiped at another tear.  “What the hell is that, the sound of one hand clapping? The arrow that never reaches its target?  For Gods’ sake, Emily, who put you in charge of my emotions?”

From up the trail, Rafael waived at them.  “Got to keep moving if we want to make it to the village by sunset!”

They rode in silence for another two hours and then reached Ouididi. Cookie eyed the high fence and the barbed wire at the top.  Once again the children ran out to meet them, including Rafael’s younger sister.

“You came back!” Nouar cried delightedly, throwing herself into Emily’s arms and hugging her.  Then she looked curiously at Cookie.

“This is my closest friend, Maria Sanchez.  We met at the same training camp where I met Rafael,” Emily explained.

Cookie leaned over and shook Nouar’s hand.  “Everyone calls me Cookie.”

Nouar laughed.  “That’s a silly name!”

Cookie smiled.  “My mother tells me it’s because I looked so sweet when I was born.”

Looking at the tall, muscular woman with the weathered face, short hair and tattooed tears on her face, Nouar looked a little doubtful, but managed a polite smile nevertheless.

The mothers came next: the petite Leila, the plain, stout Aicha and the tall, shrewd Hakima.  They each greeted Emily warmly.  Leila, Rafael’s birth mother, looked searchingly at Emily, then Rafael, then back at Emily.  To her surprise and mortification, Emily blushed furiously.  Leila hugged her and whispered, “I’m glad you’ve come back to us, Emily.  I’m so very glad.”

Aicha hugged her briskly.  “You must be hungry,” she said, practical as always.  “Supper will be ready soon.  I’ll have the children take your bags upstairs.”

Hakima was a little shy at first, perhaps remembering how she had treated Emily when they first met.   “Well, I’m glad I didn’t drive you off,” she said.

“So am I,” Emily said, smiling.  She turned to Cookie.  “These three wonderful women are Rafael’s mothers, though how they managed to fail so miserably with him I’ll never understand,” she teased.

“Ah, excuse me,” Rafael said indignantly,  “but I’m standing right here.”

The fathers were next: Amin the woodsman, Danny the former soldier, and Yael the scholar.  They murmured polite hellos and faded to the background, letting the older children carry the bags up to the guest rooms and allowing the wives to fuss about the guests.  But Emily saw Danny watching Cookie closely and saw he knew her for a kindred spirit: a fellow warrior, bruised and battered by war.

Supper was boisterous and loud, with teasing and laughter and shouts and everyone talking at once.  Cookie, Emily saw, was totally overwhelmed and finally Aicha leaned over and whispered something into her ear.  Cookie nodded and she and Aicha both stood.  “A long day for our guests,” Aicha said simply.  “I’ll show Cookie to her room while the kid-folk clean the table.”   Then she took Cookie by the arm and led her upstairs.

Nouar leaned over between Emily and Rafael, her brown eyes alight with curiosity and mischief.  “And you two, do you have separate rooms or are you sharing a bed?”

Emily blinked – she hadn’t thought about this.  Rafael groaned and rolled his eyes.  “I think I know a little sister who could use a spanking.”

Nouar’s lips thinned and she waived a fork menacingly.  “Just you try it, Rafael Eitan, and I’ll show you what Uncle Danny and Uncle Amin taught me about fighting.”

“We’ll have no fighting and certainly no stabbing,” Aicha said curtly as she came down the stairs.  “Nouar, I would prefer it if you would wash that fork rather than get your brother’s blood on it.”  Then she glared at Rafael.  “As for you, Rafael Eitan, until you are a parent in this household, it is not for you to decide who needs a spanking and who does not.  Am I clear?”

“Yes, Mother,” the captain of Refuge’s elite Special Reconnaissance Force said meekly.

“Good,” Aicha replied, then turned to Emily.  “Emily, may we talk to you for a minute?”  She led her into another room where the fathers and the other mothers waited.  Leila offered her a glass of wine and invited her to sit.  From the other room came the sounds of children laughing and bantering as they cleared the table and washed dishes.  Emily could hear Rafael’s voice among them and for some reason she couldn’t define, she felt a strong stab of emotion that threatened to bring her to tears. Everything here – the hugs, the dinner, the laughter and bantering, the noisy, loving supper, Rafael, his many mothers and his quiet fathers – it all seemed so solid and dependable and almost within her grasp.  And at the same time it seemed so fragile and ethereal, a will of the wisp that could turn to mist at a moment’s notice and slip away forever.

Leila touched her arm.  “Emily?  Your friend, Maria, she seems very troubled.”

Emily could only nod.  The parents exchanged somber glances and Emily sensed some current of insight and comprehension move among them, unspoken but perfectly understood.

Leila nodded patiently.  “Can you tell us?”

Emily told them the story of the Dominion warships chasing the Atlas space station across Victorian space, of Emily’s desperate attempt to save Atlas and the Queen by sending Cookie through the teleporter to the Duck battleship, of Cookie’s capture and horrendous abuse at the hands of the Dominions, and of her eventual rescue.  She paused for a long moment, considering how much more to say, then told them the rest of it – of Schroder and the chance meeting in the corridor.  Of Cookie and the knife.  The mock trial and the real execution of a man already dead.  Of Cookie’s depression.  And Hiram.

“Well, then,” Leila sighed heavily, shaking her head.  Aicha, the stoic, practical one, sat still, tears running down her face.  Hakima looked thoughtful.  Amin and Yael looked somber and exchanged a concerned look.   It dawned on Emily then that none of them were looking at her, but instead they were all looking at Danny, the former Marine.

Danny looked white as a ghost.

Leila turned to Emily once more, a questioning look on her face.  “Emily, I think I understand about your friend, but why have you brought her here?  None of us are psychiatrists or anything like that.”

“She hasn’t had much luck with psychiatrists,” Emily said ruefully.

Leila nodded slowly.  “Why have your brought her here, Emily?” she asked again.

Emily hadn’t tried to put it into words before, but now they came to her.  It was as complex as her life over the last years, as simple as the truth.

“I brought her here because she desperately needs help, even though she doesn’t really know it.”  She looked at them earnestly.  “I brought her here because I am responsible for her, because I sent her into harm’s way.”  She bit her lip.  “Because Cookie is my friend and I don’t have many friends.”

But there was one thing more, the one thing that was so much more. Unspoken but crowding out all of her other thoughts. She wanted it so badly, but was afraid to give voice to it, lest it slip from her grasp.  Leila, Aicha and Hakima all looked at her, nodding, encouraging her.  Giving her permission.  Amin had put his hand on Danny’s shoulder and looked at her with shadowed, worried eyes.  Yael smiled at her, but glanced again at Danny.

Emily tried to say it.  “I…I brought her here because this is the only home I have now…and I don’t know where else to go.  Because if I can save Cookie, then I can save myself, too.”

Then a curious thing happened.  The three mothers stood together, but instead of going to Emily, they went to Danny, who kept saying in an anguished voice, “I’m okay.  I’m okay.”  And it was the fathers, Amin and Yael, who came to Emily and put their arms around her shoulders and Emily was crying and crying and could not understand why because it was Cookie who needed help, wasn’t it?

And then little Nouar was there as well, hugging Emily fiercely and even though she had no idea what was happening, she told Emily firmly, “Everything will be alright.  I promise.”

And with that, somehow, Emily knew it would be.

Chapter 52

At the Imperial Palace

Qom, Tilleke Space

A day later Prince RaShahid’s ships reached the Tilleke home planet of Qom.  He took a ferry to the Palace and walked to his father’s private chambers.  Two Savak guards stood on either side of him as the Emperor walked into the chamber and sat down.  The Prince fell to one knee, his eyes on the floor.  “My father, I have failed you,” he said.  He explained what happened.

To his astonishment, the Emperor laughed.

“I smell The Light in this,” Emperor Chalabi said ruefully.  “They are cunning and treacherous and must be treated with great care, my son. Watch them and learn, for they are masters of deceit and psychological warfare in all of its forms.

“I have told you that the best way to defeat your enemy is to convince him you are not a threat, then to take him by surprise and annihilate him.  The second best way to defeat an enemy is to convince him not to fight in the first place.  The clever little monks of The Light are gifted at this.”

“I am Your Imperial Majesty’s dutiful servant and I beg your forgiveness for my blunder,” Prince RaShahid said earnestly.  He was earnest; his life hung by a thread.

Emperor Chalabi looked at his son with a mixture of fondness and irritation, knowing exactly what he was thinking.  Kill him or not?  Would his son learn from this?  Could he?  Then his thoughts drifted to The Light and his mood darkened.  He should have destroyed them years ago, but he hadn’t and now they were once again meddling in his affairs.  He wondered how Abbot Cornelia’s head would look lacquered and set upon a spike in his Meeting Chamber.  One day, he promised himself, he would find out.

His eyes drifted back to his son, still kneeling on the floor, terrified to look up.  A threat, his son, but also a useful tool.  One does not discard a knife simply because it has a sharp blade.  No, that wasn’t the right analogy.  One does not discard a scorpion simply because it has a sharp stinger, not if one can put the scorpion in his enemy’s bed.

“Rise, my son, but remember this lesson.  We will continue to build our forces, for perhaps the Victorians and Dominions will stand together against us.  But in a few months, a year at the outside, we will be ready.”  He smiled the smile that only a handful of people had seen and still lived.  “And when we are ready, we will strike.  Not the way they expect us to, but in a way they can’t even imagine.”

Emperor Chalabi stepped forward and took his son’s arm.  “But now, come with me.  I want to show you a new weapon I am working on and the strategy we can use once it is ready.  I think you’ll like it.”

Together, arm in arm, they walked from the room.  Father and son.  A family.

Each wondering when they would have to kill the other.

End of Book II