They had used their four grenades to fend off the armored troops, killing one and driving the second back. There had been a blessed lull for about half an hour, then the corridor filled with Dominion troops. The Dominions shot gas canisters into the bridge, and then walked in behind ballistic shields.
One by one the Marines ran out of ammunition. Some resorted to throwing their empty rifles at the Dominion soldiers, some swung them like clubs. The Dominions shot them down and turned on the rest. “Surrender!” their officer ordered, “Or we’ll kill you.”
Cookie looked at the eleven surviving members of her one hundred and twenty man attack force. They were huddled together behind the last bank of consoles, pressed against the far wall of the bridge. Then she looked at her watch: two hours and seven minutes since she had spoken with Emily. Two hours and seven minutes paid for in blood.
There was nothing more to do. There was nothing more she could do. She looked at the blood-stained, exhausted faces of her Marines.
“We can surrender,” she told them, giving them permission to save themselves. They looked at her, faces grimed with dirt and blood, teeth bared, eyes glaring.
“Bugger that!” Wisnioswski snarled.
Meyer somehow cracked a smile. “There’s only thirty of them, Sarge, we should ask them to surrender.”
Cookie nodded. “Okay then,” she said, her heart bursting with the pride she had for these men. “Always together.”
“Never alone,” they replied.
A voice called them from the corridor. “This is Major Bruno Farber of the Dominion Security Directorate! Your battle is over and you have lost. Lay down your weapons and come out!”
“I am Sergeant Maria Sanchez of Her Majesty’s Royal Marines,” Cookie hollered back. “Go to hell!”
Not very original, she thought ruefully, but short and to the point.
A moment later the flash-bang grenades came flying in and Cookie’s world blossomed with light and pain.
The Ducks swarmed over them, butt-stroking them with rifle butts, then tying their hands behind their backs and putting black hoods over their heads. Cookie had to concentrate just to breath. Then they were dragged into a line and forced them to kneel on the floor. The hoods were ripped off. In front of them stood a husky, bald-headed man with the insignia ‘DSD’ on his black uniform. In one hand he carried a sonic pistol.
“My name is Major Bruno Farber of the Dominion Security Directorate. You have been tried for war crimes against the Dominion of Unified Citizenry and found guilty. I sentence you to death.” He turned and walked to the end of the line of prisoners. Meyer looked at him without comprehension.
“Always together, Albert!” Cookie called out. “May the Gods of Our Mothers embrace you and lift you up.” One of the Dominion guards roughly clubbed her to the ground.
Major Farber stuck his pistol against Meyer’s forehead and pulled the trigger. Meyer’s head snapped back in a spray of blood.
Farber stepped to the next Marine.
“Always together!” Wisnioswski shouted. A rifle butt knocked him backwards.
Farber pulled the trigger. He stepped to the next Marine.
“You filthy bastard!” Cookie screamed. “We’re POWs. They’ll hang you for this!”
He pulled the trigger and stepped to the next Marine. Four more died in quick succession. Next in line was Otto Wisnioswski. He put the gun to Wisnioswski’s head.
“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.”
Epilogue
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.