“Stop.” He gazed at the display, studying the Tilleke ranking officer on the bridge of the London. Did she know? “Put me though, Mildred.”
A slight burst of static, then Grant suddenly could hear everything on the bridge of the London. “-anti-missile defense should fire in just a moment,” one of the Savak was saying.
“I am Lieutenant Grant Skiffington,” he said, hearing the simultaneous translation by Mildred. “I am the commanding officer of Her Majesty’s Ship London.” On the screen, First Sister Pilot’s head jerked up in shock.
“In a few moments, you are going to die,” Grant said pleasantly. “I just want you to know that I am the man who killed you.”
First Sister Pilot’s eyes darted to the ceiling speaker, then to the holo display where the Victorian missiles relentlessly bore in. Her shoulders sagged.
The missiles bore in.
First Sister Pilot sat back in her chair and crossed her legs. She said something to the others in a low voice that Grant couldn’t hear. The women cast stricken looks at the holo, then stood behind the First Sister Pilot, crowding together with bowed heads, touching each other for comfort. Some were crying. Grant felt not a shred of pity.
“You killed my father,” he told her. “I hope you burn in hell.”
First Sister Pilot stared back defiantly. “Fool! I live through my Sisters.”
“Cut transmission, Mildred,” Grant ordered, not quite sure who had gotten the best of that exchange.
The holo display collapsed.
“Twenty seconds,” said the Weapons Officer.
“Goodbye, Mildred.”
“Goodbye, Lieutenant. I hope you have a pleasant day.”
Twenty seconds later the missiles reached the London unimpeded.
Commander Peled walked shakily to where Grant sat on the floor. There were splashes of blood on his face and he was holding one arm. There were splashes of blood on his face and uniform, but he seemed uninjured, if thoroughly shaken. “They hit us pretty hard, Skiffington,” he said. “You and I are the only officers left.” He looked around the shambles of the bridge, the deck covered with wreckage, bodies and blood. “I think it’s time to clean up this bloody mess and go home.”
Grant shook his head. “One more thing to do, sir. We can’t go back empty handed.”
Then the air turned cold and more snow began to fall across the blood stained deck.
Chapter 32
On Board the Collier H.M.S. Bawdy Bertha
In Tilleke Space, Approaching the Wormhole to Gilead
“They’re still gaining on us, Captain!” The Sensors Officer’s voice cracked with tension.
Captain Michael Zizka yawned and scratched his ample stomach. His bridge crew was strained almost to the breaking point; even his XO was showing the signs. Well, he could hardly blame them. They were kids, the oldest of them barely twenty five, and what they had seen had shocked them to their core. But he needed them to keep it together for a little longer, just a little longer.
He consciously yawned again, aware of the eyes on him, then stretched and frowned irritably at the holo display. Unconsciously he fingered the cigar he kept in his breast pocket, the one he’d been saving ever since the Fleet doctor forced him to stop smoking years earlier.
“Goddammit, Helen,” he said mildly. “You know how to give a proper status report. I want information I can use, not prattle! Of course the bastards are gaining on us! They’ve been gaining on us for ten hours, now haven’t they? So what I want to know, Helen my dearest, is when the fucking traitorous sons of bitches are going to have us in missile range. And when we can expect to reach the wormhole entrance to Gilead? That’s what I need to know, Helen darling. Now can you please help a broken down old freighter captain and give me that information? Can you now?”
The bridge crew exchanged glances; the helmsman covered her mouth to hide a smile. Helen Fletcher, his brand new Sensors Officer, barely twenty one years old, took a deep breath.
“Merlin estimates the first two Dominion ships will have us in missile range within thirty two minutes. At current speed, we will reach the Gilead wormhole entrance in thirty four minutes.”
Two bloody minutes short! he thought savagely. He put on his brightest smile. “There now, a fine report, Helen! Short and to the point.” She managed a weak smile back at him. He glanced at his Executive Officer, Francis Pyne, but he wasn’t smiling. His jaw was set, his eyes were too bright.
He knew. He knew what Zizka had known from the first hour of their flight out of Tilleke space: The Bawdy Bertha was fat and slow and running for her life.
But she was losing the race.
Despite red-lining their engines and stressing the inertia compensator, the Dominion destroyers were going to catch them. The only question was when.
Resupply and Maintenance Vessel #313 — his beloved Bawdy Bertha, named after his third wife — was one of four colliers assigned to the Second Fleet. She had taken up station fifty thousand miles behind the Second Fleet’s line of advance. They had expected they would wait there out of harm’s way, then move forward to replenish the Fleet’s missile stocks and perishables like chaff and decoys, and perform minor repairs as needed. There was never any question that the Second Fleet would win the battle. Of course it would win.
But ten hours earlier the first Code Omega drones had come to them, blaring their message of disaster and ruin. They downloaded what they could, then watched grimly as the report showed ship after ship blown apart or tumbling aimlessly through space. Second Fleet had started out with 120 war ships; at least 70 had been destroyed outright, and many more were lying dead in space, not moving. Others were missing, either running for their lives, or on their own Long Walk to hell.
Captain Zizka had wasted no time. He turned and ran, ran for the wormhole to Gilead at maximum military speed. He had no missile launchers and only four two-inch laser turrets, next to useless in a stand-up brawl. He didn’t doubt that the Dominion or Tilleke would chase him, and if they chased him they would catch him. But Bertha was the only ship in a position to warn Victoria that more than half of her entire Navy had been destroyed.
And to do that, they had to reach Gilead. If Bertha was destroyed, its Code Omega drones would launch automatically and fly toward Victoria. But the drones were notoriously fragile. They could make it through the gravity tides of one wormhole, but would not survive a second. For its drones to reach Victoria, Bertha had to be in Gilead space, so the drones would have to transit only one wormhole to reach Victoria.
And to reach Gilead space, Zizka had to delay his pursuers for two minutes. He didn’t have missiles to shoot at them, but he had a cargo hold full of spare parts, fifteen anti-matter bottles, decoys and mountains of chaff, so he was going to do what any self-respecting freighter captain would do: he was going to throw things at them.
“Chaff!” he ordered. Chaff rockets spit out the back of the ship, blossoming into a large oval of millions of strips of sensor-reflective tape. On the hologram, it looked like an ink squirt from a very large octopus, which is where the idea had originally come from, he supposed.
“Eject the first three anti-matter bottles!”
“They are out and armed, Captain,” Pyne reported.
Zizka glanced again at the holo display. “Set detonation for twenty five minutes.” This was their best guess for when the DUC ships would come through the chaff cloud. If they didn’t change speed. If they didn’t go above or below the plane of advance. If, if, if…