On Board the Atlas Space Station
In the Fleet Intelligence Center on the Atlas Space Station, Admiral Douthat stood behind Hiram Brill’s shoulder, looking intently at the holo display.
“You’re sure?” she asked for the second time.
“Yes, Ma-am, they are falling back. Not very far, but they are definitely falling back.”
“Why?” she mused. “Why not continue to press us?”
Hiram shook his head. He was tired, very tired, and he didn’t think so well when he was tired. “Not enough information, Admiral. It could be any number of things.”
Admiral Douthat tapped her finger thoughtfully against her upper lip. But it wasn’t any number of things, she thought, it was one of two. Either Admiral Mello had fallen back to rearm and coordinate a massive, overwhelming strike, or something had distracted him, something he had to take care of before he could continue the attack on Atlas. She needed to know which it was.
But before she could order a reconnaissance mission, Gandalf broke in. “A courier drone from Captain Grey of the New Zealand has entered communications range.”
“I’ve got it,” Hiram said, and a moment later the comm screen displayed the message. With a start, Hiram recognized Emily.
“This is Lieutenant Emily Tuttle of the New Zealand, temporarily in command of the Coldstream Guards. We’re down to ten ships. Gloucester and Canberra have detached and are returning to you. We have killed three Dominion supply ships, disabled two more and are in a final attack run on the remaining four. High probability of success. But the Dominions have sent at least thirty five and perhaps as many as forty — repeat, four zero — ships to protect the supply ships and they have just launched a missile volley at us. We will launch on the supply ships momentarily, then I intend to run for it. The forty ships came from the direction of Bogey One, so you might have an opportunity there. A list of other kills is attached to this message.”
On the screen Emily paused, seemingly unsure what to say next. “We are low on missiles and outnumbered here, so I don’t really think we’ll get out of this. Good luck to you. New Zealand out.”
Admiral Douthat leapt to her feet. Queen Anne, who had been silent until now, asked: “What is it? Will you try to rescue them?”
Douthat ignored her. “Gandalf! Orders to the Queen’s Own and Black Watch: Prepare to attack immediately! Each ship to tow as many missile pods as it can. Admiral’s flag shifting to Lionheart. And have a shuttle ready for me in Shuttle Bay Number One.” Then, without another word, she ran from the room, stubby arms and legs pumping, and her generous middle bouncing along in hasty rhythm. Her aides pelted behind her.
Queen Anne turned to Hiram in confusion. “What just happened? Are they going to rescue the Coldstream Guards?”
Still looking at the frozen image of Emily on the comm screen, Hiram answered slowly. “Admiral Douthat just ran the numbers. When Bogey One attacked, we counted eighty five ships. We think they lost ten when we blew up Prometheus, leaving seventy five. The Coldstream Guards killed three more and may have damaged a fourth, so that leaves seventy one. What’s more, the supply ships had an escort of another six ships, so that means that there were only sixty five ships actually on line against the Atlas.”
The Queen nodded slowly, comprehension dawning. “So-”
“Yes,” Hiram said. “If Emily’s report is correct, the Dominion have now pulled another forty ships off line in order to save their supply train.” He smiled grimly. “That leaves only twenty five ships actively pursuing us. Probably less, since we know we’ve killed or disabled a few.”
“So now we outnumber them,” Anne said.
“For a little while,” Hiram corrected. “The forty ships will come back, and somewhere out there Bogey Two is coming towards us, but this gives us a chance to go in and do some real damage.”
“But what if it’s a trap?” the Queen asked, her face furrowed in concern. “What if Bogey Two is already here, just waiting for us to make a mistake, then come in and grab Atlas while it’s unprotected?”
Hiram shrugged. “Admiral Douthat doesn’t mind a little gamble.”
“Gods of our Mothers.” Anne stared at him, emotions flickering across her face. “I thought space warfare was supposed to be like a game of chess, with calculated moves and intricate stratagems.”
“Yeah, that works when you’re winning. But when you’re losing, it looks more like poker…or bare knuckled brawling.”
“Gods of our Mothers,” she breathed again. “And the Coldstream Guards? Will Admiral Douthat be able to rescue the Coldstream Guards?”
Hiram just looked at her.
“I see,” she said after a moment.
She didn’t really have anything more to say. Out there, somewhere, an entire Battle Group had sacrificed itself in order to save Atlas. In order to save her. But though she may be a queen, she was still a young woman, with a young woman’s curiosity.
“I–I saw you when that message came through, from the junior officer onboard the New Zealand.” She hesitated, then plunged ahead. “Do you know her?
Hiram blew out a breath. “Emily Tuttle. I met her at training in Camp Gettysburg. She is a friend, a good friend, and someday she would have made a very good admiral.” He smiled ruefully. “I don’t make friends easily, Your Majesty. You may have noticed — I’m a bit odd.”
“Was she-” Anne faltered. “I mean, were you and she-”
“No,” Hiram said. “Emily is just a very good friend. The woman I care about, the woman I love, was with Second Fleet in Tilleke.”
Anne had no words for that, and after an awkward silence, turned and left the room.
Eight minutes later all of the Queen’s Own and Black Watch reversed course and began racing toward the diminished Dominion line.
Aboard the H.M.S. Yorkshire, Cookie wandered through the ship’s corridors, trying to create a plan for dealing with an attack by the Savak, should they have the misfortune to stumble into them again. She was carrying a Bull Pup, had a blaster pistol at her waist and was wearing one of the Marine’s combat suits, relying on its nano-enhanced mesh to stop any Savak pellets that might come her way. After the three bloody, hand-to-hand fights they had been through, she kept a weapon within reach at all times and never took the combat suit off except to shower and sleep, not that she was getting much of either.
And after the third battle, Cookie and the surviving Marines — all fifteen of them — wore a second blood tear tattooed on their cheek.
The third assault had been the worse, with Savak commandoes from two different kraits beaming onto the ship simultaneously. The Marines and Yorkshire’s crew had lost the Engineering Deck, taken it back, and then lost it again. Then the Savak started pushing out from Engineering and Cookie and Sergeant Zamir were unable to stop them. They fought a stubborn, grueling, bloody retreat, but it was a retreat and they were rapidly running out of time and space.
That was when Grant Skiffington gave orders to everyone to find a place to strap in and fast, then he ordered Gandalf to turn off the inertial compensator for exactly one half of a second and at the same time activate the Dark Matter Brake to reduce speed by ten percent.
The results had been spectacularly gruesome.
Six of the Yorkshire’s crew hadn’t tied themselves down properly and were lost, but the Savak were caught totally unprepared. Many of them died immediately as they were smashed into bulkheads. The survivors, save for two of the female Pilots, were shot. None of the Marines were inclined towards mercy.
Grant Skiffington. The memory of their love making flooded over her. What had she been thinking? She shook her head in exasperation. He had been surprisingly tender and gentle, but she still couldn’t believe that she made love with him, to him. God, she had needed it, but he wasn’t Hiram; he could never be Hiram. There was no guilt — well, there was not much guilt, but there was a deep, gnawing longing. Would she ever see Hiram again?
Nearby, the sound of a sob. Reflexively Cookie spun to the sound, Bull Pup coming up. “Identify yourself fast or get shot,” she barked.
Another sob, followed by an audible hiccup. “It’s me, Romano.”
Cookie let out her breath. Specialist 4 Lori Romano was one of the tech weenies, the invisible people who scurried around keeping the ship running so that the warriors could make war on the enemy. She was a petit, mousy girl who was supposed to be smart as a whip, but had pretty much gone to pieces in the repeated Savak attacks. While Cookie could hardly blame her for that, it did nothing to endear her, either.
“You okay, Romano?” she asked, pushing aside her irritation at being scared half to death.
“I…I just needed a little time by myself,” the young woman said, her voice thick with tears.
“You could get something in sick bay to help you,” Cookie suggested. A lot of the crew were on anti-anxiety pills, so many that the medic referred to himself as the ship’s “Morale Officer.”
“No, I don’t want any more pills. I just-” she rubbed her eyes with her knuckles, looking even more like a little kid. “I just want to stop thinking…”
She looked imploringly at Cookie. “I keep seeing Peter when they took a sword and …” She covered her face again. “Oh, God, I just want to stop thinking about it. All that blood.”
Then Cookie remembered. Linda Romano had been standing next to Specialist Peter Tillinghast when the poor bastard had been beheaded by one of the goddamned Savak. His body had stood for several seconds, wildly pumping blood until his heart finally got the message that it was all over. Romano, drenched in his blood, had screamed hysterically and torn at her bloody clothes until the medic finally knocked her out with a sedative.
Cookie tried to think of something to say, something comforting. Nothing seemed adequate.
“What do you do, Romano?”
Romano frowned, then hiccupped. “Corporal?”
“What do you do on the Yorkshire?”
“Oh.” She wiped her eyes again. “I’m an Artificial Intelligence Interface Systems Specialist.”
“I’m afraid I don’t really know what that is,” Cookie confessed, a little embarrassed.
“S’ok,” Romano said matter of factly. “You’re just a Marine. Nobody expects you to know any of this stuff.” Then her eyes widened in dismay as she heard her own words. “Oh! I didn’t mean that you couldn’t-”
Cookie waved dismissively. “Relax, Romano. I’m the first to acknowledge that the Marine Corp is not exactly a hot bed of intellectualism. The only degree we all have is-”
“Expert Marksman,” Linda Romano finished. “Yeah, I heard that one before.” Then Romano stared at Cookie, her brow furrowed. “Corporal — ”
“You don’t report to me, Romano, you can call me ‘Sanchez’ or even ‘Cookie’ if you want.”
“Cookie can’t be your first name,” Romano replied, her eyes crinkling in amusement.
Cookie sighed. “My first name is ‘Maria,” but only my mother calls me that.”
Romano nodded. “Okay, I just noticed that you’re not speaking like-” she stopped, flustered.
“Like a Marine?” Cookie prodded.
“Yes, exactly,” Romano blurted. “You’re speaking in full sentences, and your vocabulary…” she trailed off again, her face flushing.
Cookie grinned crookedly. “I made a friend in basic training. Smart and educated. She introduced me to books, and I’ve spent the last three years reading every chance I get.” She shrugged. “What can I say, it rubs off.”
“But when I see you with other Marines, you sound…you sound-” Romano groped for the right words.
“When I talk to my fellow Marines,” Cookie said patiently, “I sound tough. I’m a corporal, remember? I need to be tough and my men need to know I’m tough. Sounding too educated would not help, trust me on that.”
Romano looked at her, clearly not understanding.
“So tell me, in tiny little words, Artificial Intelligence Interface Specialist, just what it is you do,” Cookie pressed.
Romano sighed and shrugged, but Cookie saw that there was a little more color in her cheeks. “I make things work. You know most of the ship is driven by computers, right?” Cookie nodded. “People push buttons and stuff, but that only sends a signal to Gandalf, who makes it happen. But have you ever wondered how Gandalf makes things happen? That’s where we come in. Everything Gandalf does, it does through an elaborate interface with the ship’s mechanical and electrical systems. That’s what we do: we make sure it all works together.”
Cookie shook her head. She’d never really thought about this side of operations. She just thought that when the captain gave an order, it got carried out. She’d never spent much time wondering how. “How’d you learn all this stuff?” she asked, genuinely curious.
Romano shrugged again. “Lots of school. I had a master’s degree in AI before I joined the Fleet, and they put me through a bunch of specialist schools. But I think the real answer is that you’ve got to have a real aptitude for it, you know?”
Cookie nodded. She’d seen more than one Marine who had the training but not the aptitude — what you ended up with was a lousy Marine.
Romano smiled. “And you’ve got to be smart, I guess. We even have a joke about it: What’s an Artificial Intelligence Interface Systems Specialist without the ‘Intelligence?’” Cookie looked blank.
“He’s nothing more than an ‘ass’ that can’t spell right!” Romano finished, then laughed. “Sorry,” she giggled. “Just a little Interface Systems humor.”
“Gods of Our Mothers!” Cookie said in mock horror. “Do we need to do, like, electroshock therapy or something on you? Or quarantine? Is this sense of humor contagious?”
Cookie’s attempt at humor didn’t work. Romano’s face grew dark. “I don’t think I can take another attack. I don’t think-”
Cookie had an idea. “Come on, Romano. I’ve got a job for you.” She turned and walked down the corridor, Romano in tow, until they reached the entrance to Shuttle Bay 3. Two armed Marines stood at the doorway. One had his arm in a sling, the other’s head was bandaged.
“Open up, Billy,” Cookie ordered the one with the head bandage. The Marine looked curiously at Romano, but said nothing as he punched in the code to open the hatchway. Cookie and Romano walked onto a catwalk about twenty feet over the deck of the shuttle bay. There were three more armed Marines inside. They all turned towards the newcomers, blasters swinging up, then stopped when they recognized Cookie.
“Corporal, Sergeant Zamir said no one is allowed down here,” one of the Marines said, eyeing Romano suspiciously.
“It’s okay, Specialist Romano is going to help us with our little problem,” Cookie said.
“Corporal, I’d be a lot happier if Sergeant Zamir-”
“And I’d be a lot happier if I tore your head off and played soccer with it,” Cookie snapped. “And since I’m the corporal and you’re the private, which one of us do you think is going to be smiling one minute from now and which one is going to be sorry he was gave me some lip? Now move!”
Romano waited until the guard had stepped away before turning to Cookie. “You said I’m going to help you with a problem?” she asked apprehensively.
In reply, Cookie led her to the edge of the catwalk. She waved her hand to the deck. “See these?”
There, nestled side by side on the deck, were three black cylindrical tubes, each about three hundred feet long and twenty feet in diameter. They were matt black and made of something that so effectively absorbed light that Romano had to squint to keep them in focus.
“Know what they are?”
Romano nodded. “The ships the commandos used, the Savak.”
“Yep, that’s right. Supposed to be top secret and all that happy horseshit, but I suppose you know damn near everything Gandalf knows. And you know how the Savak got on board the Yorkshire?”
Romano pursed her lips. “W-e-l-l-l-l, they didn’t cut a hole in the hull, and they didn’t come through an air lock, so it’s got to be something our big brains back on Cornwall say is impossible.”
Cookie blinked, a bit taken back at how easily Romano figured out that the Savak had transported onto the ship. “We found these ships after each of the Savak attacks. We tractored them in here and opened ‘em up. One of them was booby trapped and killed three crewmen, but we got into the others okay. One was empty; each of the other two had a dead woman aboard, ‘Pilots,’ from what little we understand of their ranks.”
“Tell me what the problem is, Corporal, please. This other stuff just makes me want to crawl into a corner,” Romano said, no trace of humor in her voice.
“Okay, Artificial Intelligence Interface Systems Specialist Linda Romano, here is the problem: If we’re right, each of the Savak ships has a device that allows these bastards to transport themselves from this crappy little ship to its target without killing them in the process. The problem is that we’re not sure which set of controls relates to the transporter. Nothing is labeled. We can’t figure out how to make it work. And, truth be told, we’re scared shitless we’re going to push a button and there will be a big ‘boom!’ followed by intense unpleasantness and death.
“So, Romano,” Cookie continued. “Can you figure out how to make the transponders work?”
Romano eyed her impassively, but Cookie could almost hear the gears turning. “Can I look inside, please?”
“Sure.” Cookie led her to a small hatchway near one end of the cylindrical ship. Once inside they could see two longs rows of bucket seats facing each other. Above the seats was a curious mesh of wire and what looked like flood lights. At the end near the hatchway there was a waist-high partition, then five more chairs in a single row, facing a console with banks of dials, knobs, switches and computer screens.
Romano stared at the consoles for a long time, then gracefully stepped over the petition and sat in one of the chairs. For a minute or two she just sat there, looking, then she reached out and brushed her finger tips along the surface above and below several of the controls. Romano turned back to Cookie. “When do you need this?”
“Yesterday would be good,” Cookie replied.
Romano snorted. “Only a ship’s Captain can command completion of a task before it has begun, Corporal, and you’re not a Captain.” She gazed at the console. “I’ll need a hand here, maybe Nancy and Jimmy.”
Cookie nodded. “I can get whoever you need.”
Romano didn’t reply, and after a moment Cookie left her, gazing intently at the console and humming quietly to herself.