Kennedy Hudner - Alarm of War

“Enough,” said a voice.

Emily looked up from the floor. A tall, thin man in the uniform of a Dominion admiral stood there, flanked by four security guards holding short, stubby sonic pistols.

“These people murdered Admiral Mello!” Major Farber snarled.

“Which makes them my prisoners as the ranking admiral of the Dominion Fleet,” the man said mildly.

“No! I have jurisdiction here. I am in charge of security for the Vengeance. ”

The man’s eyes narrowed. “You will stand at attention and address me by my rank, Major, or I will see to it that you go out the airlock with these bodies,” he said, a touch of steel in his voice.

Farber reluctantly stood straight, glaring first at the prisoners, then at the admiral. “Admiral Kaeser, these people are spies and saboteurs. Under the rules of war, they are to be summarily executed.”

Admiral Kaeser eyed him disdainfully. “I see that the DSD now requires their officers to be stupid as well as bloodthirsty, Major. In your haste to shoot the prisoners, did it occur to you to ask how they managed to get aboard the Vengeance? ”

Farber looked bewildered.

“Ah, I thought not. You see, Major, since there are no shuttle craft moored to your hull, and since they did not blow a hole in your hull to enter, I thought that you might be mildly curious as to how THEY MANAGED TO GET BY YOUR SECURITY AND BOARD THIS VESSEL!”

Major Farber stepped back, ashen faced. “I assure you, Admiral-”

“You have been killing valuable witnesses, Major, and that makes me wonder why. You are either a fool and an imbecile, or you are trying to cover for your own pathetic negligence. Which is it, Major, are you an imbecile or have you been negligent in your duties?”

“Admiral-”

“Shut up, Major Farber. I leave these prisoners in your care. I will question them myself. They are not to be harmed, do you understand me? If they are harmed, it will go badly for you. Do you understand, Major?”

Farber nodded. His face was purple with suppressed rage.

“Good,” said Admiral Kaeser. “I have a war to fight.” He looked around the CIC of the Vengeance . The command consoles were shattered, the sensor controls burning; the weapons console ripped off its legs and overturned. “The Vengeance will be of no use to us in the immediate future. I will arrange to have you towed back to Timor. You will hold the prisoners until I am ready for them.”

The admiral and his security team turned and left. Major Farber reached down and grabbed Cookie by the hair, jerking her to him.

“Oh,” he whispered hatefully. “You have much to answer for, and it’s a long way to Timor.”

Queen Anne sat with her chief advisors on the patio of a resort on Refuge. Across the table sat the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Refuge. The patio overlooked an emerald green lake framed by towering mountains. It was, the resort host assured her, one of the most beautiful vistas in all of Refuge.

She barely noticed it.

In the five days since they had arrived in Refuge, the Dominions had launched two attacks through the worm hole. Neither had succeeded in reaching the Atlas, now tucked away in an asteroid belt on the far side of Refuge, but they had destroyed one of the two forts guarding the worm hole entrance. Both sides had taken losses, but while Refuge could quickly build more of its gunboats, reconnaissance drones reported that no additional reinforcements seemed to be coming to bolster the Dominion forces. At least not yet. But while there were no further attacks, it was also clear that the Victorian forces were too small to go on the offensive any time soon.

“Refuge pays its debts,” said Aamir Fareed Khan, Refuge’s Foreign Minister. “We will do whatever we can to help you, but our industrial base is small and we have little experience in designing and building large war ships. As for our naval fleet-” he shrugged eloquently — “it is comprised of seven hundred gunboats. Until this week, they had never fired a shot in anger.”

“You have already repaid any debt you might have owed us,” Queen Anne said earnestly, ignoring Sir Henry’s wince. “You have protected us since the minute we arrived in your sector, and for that we are eternally grateful. We know how to build large warships, although I must tell you, Minister, that our admirals have been very impressed with your gunboats. What we need now more than anything is your protection and time, time to rebuild our Fleet so that we can take the attack to the Dominions, time to retake our home world back from them.” If they could retake Cornwall, they would have the population they needed to man the ships they intended to build.

“Majesty, we will support you as best we can, within the limits of our industrial base and resources,” said the Refuge Prime Minister, Yisrael Tal. “We are ever mindful of the fact that without the support from your grandfather, there would be no Refuge.” He looked at her through shrewd eyes, seeing a very young woman with very little experience trying to save her world from the brink of disaster. He wondered if she really understood how the odds were stacked against her.

“But, Your Majesty, you began this war with ten battle groups and now you have little more than one . We do not know how many ships the Dominion has, nor the Tilleke, for that matter. Nor do we know how the other nations will align themselves in this war. From what you have told us, we must assume that Cape Breton is in league with the Dominions. But what will Sybil Head and the Sultenic Empire do? What of Darwin? And is there any hope that Arcadia is now anything more than a vassal state of the Tilleke?” He leaned back, his face troubled. “We pledge you our support, Majesty. Our history demands nothing less. But Your Majesty, as I look at your situation and the forces at your disposal, I fail to see any reasonable hope. Is there anything that you know that we do not?”

Queen Anne glanced at her chief counselors, then back across the table to the Prime Minister. She smiled a chill predatory smile that reminded him of nothing less than a sivit, just before it tore its prey to pieces. The Prime Minister had not hunted sivit since he was a foolhardy young man, when he learned the hard way that often when you hunted sivit, the sivit hunted you.

His estimation of the young Queen underwent a rapid recalculation.

“There are many things I do not yet know, Prime Minister,” Queen Anne said evenly. “But I do know that the Dominions have already made one crucial mistake, one that will inevitably lead to their utter defeat.”

Puzzlement registered on the Prime Minister’s weathered face. “And that is?”

Queen Anne leaned forward, her eyes locked on his. “They tried to kill me, Prime Minister, and failed.”

Hiram finally found her in a small tavern on the outskirts of Meknes, the capital city of Refuge. She was sitting alone at a corner table, a bottle of Darwinian brandy before her. From the looks of it, she had been at it a long time. Without speaking, he slid into the chair opposite her and signaled the waitress for a drink of his own. The waitress brought him a tall glass of dark ale. Hiram reached across and clinked his glass against hers.

“To a victorious battle,” he said, sipping his ale.

Emily shook her head with the exaggerated slowness of someone who has been drinking hard. “No, no, to absent companions,” she said. She took a long pull on her glass, then shakily refilled it. Brandy splashed on the table, but she ignored it. “I’ve been here all afternoon, but I can’t get drunk.” She would not look at him. “I don’t think I’ve ever needed to be drunk so much in my life.”