Ark Royal

Chapter Ten

Kurt had expected, he realised now, the alien carrier to look rather like human carriers, which tended to follow the same basic design. Ark Royal was the only real exception and then only because her designers hadn't known as much about designing starships as their successors. But the aliens, it was clear, had their own aesthetics. Their carriers were giant spheres, seemingly completely unarmed. And yet, when the human starfighters came within range, bursts of plasma fire swept out towards them from hidden gun ports.

“Evasive action,” he snapped, yanking his starfighter away from a burst of light that almost ripped him apart. The aliens, it seemed, didn't have to worry about running out of ammunition. Nor were they inclined to hold back some of their starfighters to provide a combat space patrol. “Let the bombers go in to launch missiles.”

He watched, grimly, as the bombers launched their missiles. The aliens, realising the threat, focused all of their attention on the nuclear-tipped warheads, wiping all but one of them out before they stuck the alien hull. One missile made it through and detonated, significantly damaging the alien carrier. It drifted out of formation, then exploded in a shockingly powerful blast. Kurt wondered, absently, just what the aliens used for a power source.

Antimatter would have killed us all, he guessed, as he led the fighters back towards the carrier. Nearly a third of the bombers had been wiped out, while the remainder had shot their missiles. The aliens had a definite advantage… he hoped, silently, that the human race managed to improve their own directed-energy weapons or plasma cannons. Without them, they were always going to be at a disadvantage.

The alien starfighters lanced back towards the human craft, intent on killing them before they could return to Ark Royal and rearm. Kurt barked orders, then led his craft through the enemy formation, firing madly at brief targets. Two alien craft died, the remainder fell back and let the humans escape. Behind them, Ark Royal and her escorts were approaching rapidly, launching a steady stream of missiles. Another alien carrier, already badly damaged, exploded into a ball of expanding plasma, leaving the remainder to escape as best as they could. The alien escorts were already putting themselves between the carriers and Ark Royal.

Brave of them, he conceded, reluctantly. They’re safeguarding the carriers at the cost of their own lives.

He watched grimly as the bombers returned to Ark Royal, then turned his starfighters to cover the carrier as she advanced on the alien craft.

“Sir, the bombers are reloading.”

Ted nodded, thinking hard. The bombers had lost nearly a third of their number, a staggeringly high loss rate even if they had taken out a single alien carrier. And the aliens were in full retreat. But he didn't want to let them escape, if it were possible to stop them.

“Order them to launch again once they have reloaded,” he ordered. “And then…”

He broke off as a red light flashed up on the display. “Sir, Amati is gone,” Farley snapped. “They just blew her apart!”

Ted stared down at the display. There was nothing left of the missile frigate save an expanding cloud of atoms. “What happened?”

“Unsure,” Farley said, after a moment. “I think… I think they have a short-range plasma weapon of staggering power.”

It would have to be, Ted realised. A mass driver would have been noticeable — and logically the aliens would have fired it at Ark Royal, rather than one of the smaller craft. And, whatever it was had to be short-ranged or Ark Royal would have been blown apart by now.

“Hold the range open,” he ordered, thinking hard. What was the minimum range? He keyed his console. “Analysis; I want to know what happened and why.”

There was a long pause. “Our best guess is that they have an intensely powerful plasma system,” the analyst said, finally. She sounded unhappy; analysts were rarely called upon to provide data during a battle. Or at least they hadn't been. That too was going to change. “I think they couldn't maintain containment for very long, sir. Once the field fails, the blast would simply come apart.”

And be harmless, Ted thought. One by one, the alien escorts were slowing their retreat, threatening to bring the human ships into range. If he wasn't careful, he would wind up impaling himself on their weapons.

“Thank you,” he said. Unlike a mass driver, the alien weapon’s plasma would move at the speed of light. There would be no warning before it struck home… and it was clearly an order of magnitude more powerful than the weapons mounted on alien starfighters. “Will our armour be able to handle it?”

“Unknown, sir,” the analyst said. “However, the weapon did manage to take out a frigate. We have to assume the worst.”

Ted closed the channel, then looked over at Farley. “Target missiles and mass drivers on the alien escorts,” he ordered. He was effectively letting the alien carriers go — they were picking up speed at a surprising rate — but there was no alternative. If nothing else, the aliens had taken a very definite bloody nose after trying to outflank Earth’s defences. “The bombers are to attempt to engage the alien carriers.”

He settled back in his command chair and watched as the range continued to open. The alien ships were in full retreat, not even trying to send their own starfighters to engage Ark Royal and her escorts. Ted allowed himself a moment of pleasure at their discomfort, then glanced down at the reports from engineering. The damaged weapons and sensors wouldn’t take too long to repair, thankfully. They could give chase if their FTL drive had been equal to the alien system.

“Captain,” Farley said, “they’re approaching the tramline.”

Ted sighed. By any standards, they had won a naval victory… but they still had no idea just how powerful the aliens actually were. It was impossible to tell if they’d degraded the enemy fleet by ten percent, one percent or point one percent. The only sign that the aliens might not be as strong as they had feared was that they’d sent only a handful of carriers through the back door. But they might well have been attempting to secure their lines of communication before launching the main thrust towards Earth.

“Recall the fighters,” he ordered, softly. “Let them go.”

Five minutes later, the aliens flickered out and vanished.

It was against regulations, but Kurt couldn’t help flipping his starfighter over in a loop-the-loop before guiding the tiny craft into the recovery bay. Outside, the maintenance crews were going crazy, cheering the fighter pilots as they cracked open their cockpits and jumped out onto the deck. Kurt found himself being kissed by several women and two men before he finally managed to disentangle himself and bellow for order. Slowly, quiet fell over the recovery bay.

“We won,” he said.

The sound of cheering almost deafened him. They’d all seen the images from New Russia, they’d all feared that their first engagement would be their last. But they’d adapted, reacted and overcome. The aliens would be back, he was sure, but they’d given them a bloody nose that would make them rethink their plans for overrunning human space.

“We will go over everything that happened tomorrow,” he continued. There was a chorus of good-natured groans, entirely understandably, but no one objected out loud. “For the moment, eat, drink and be merry… and any of you who turn up drunk will regret it for the rest of a very short and miserable career.”

He smiled at their expressions. It hadn't been uncommon for pilots to drink, sometimes heavily, despite regulations. Clearly, that was something that hadn't changed since he’d transferred to the reserves. But this was wartime and he was damned if he was going to be kind and sympathetic to any of his pilots who ended up drunk. There were treatments to force someone to sober up within moments and he would use them, if necessary.

“Make sure you get some sleep too,” he added. “We don’t know when the aliens will come back.”

That got their attention, as he’d expected. The aliens might just take a few hours to rethink their plans, then go back on the offensive. They would need a special weapon to take out Ark Royal, but that wouldn't be too hard for them. A mass driver would be quite effective, or a simple set of nuclear torpedoes. There was no way they didn’t have nukes, not if they had plasma cannons and an improved FTL system. Hell, they might even have something more effective, once they realised the potentials of their own system.

“And well done, all of you,” he concluded.

He turned and walked out of the bay, remembering the days when he’d been a simple pilot and could participate in after-action parties. But, as CAG, he wasn't supposed to be condoning any of it. It wasn't fair… he shook his head, annoyed at himself. The world was not fair. Just ask the crews of Formidable and Invincible.

“Kurt,” a voice called. He turned to see Rose following him. “Do you have a moment?”

Kurt lifted an eyebrow, but nodded, allowing her to follow him into his office. The analysts hadn't wasted any time, he noted; there was a complete copy of all of the sensor records on his terminal, just waiting for his input. The battle would be dissected over the coming days and weeks until every last micron of data was wrung from the records and used to plan humanity’s next move. But, for the moment, all Kurt wanted to do was sleep.

“You should be at the party I’m not meant to know about,” he said. “Why did you come here?”

“I killed five of them,” Rose said. “Do you think I killed enough?”

It took Kurt a moment to understand what she meant. “I think we’ve only just begun,” he said. “Three enemy carriers were destroyed, one more was badly damaged…”

“But she managed to escape,” Rose pointed out. “We could have taken her intact otherwise…”

Kurt nodded. Humanity was known for solving technical problems — now they knew what the aliens could do, human researchers would be trying to duplicate it — but he had to admit that recovering samples of alien technology would speed the whole process up considerably. But somehow he doubted the aliens would allow their technology to be captured so easily, not by a potentially deadly enemy. Human systems were rigged to prevent them falling into enemy hands.

“Maybe we could have,” Kurt agreed, finally. He gave her a long look. “Are you going to stop now?”

Rose blinked owlishly at him. “What do you mean?”

“Do you feel that five aliens are enough,” Kurt asked, “or do you mean to keep killing them until the war comes to an end?”

“Keep killing them,” Rose snapped. She sounded more than a little annoyed by his comment. “I don’t think that any number of the bastards can make up for him.”

Kurt scowled. Rose bothered him, even though she was hardly the worst of his problem children. It was easy to imagine her putting her desire for revenge ahead of sound tactics and careful planning — to say nothing of the overall objective. He understood the desire for revenge, even shared it, but he also knew that he had to put his own problems to one side and concentrate on his duty.

“Relax now,” he ordered, softly. “And remember that there will be other battles.”

“There will be,” Rose agreed. She grinned, suddenly. “We gave them a fright, didn't we?”

Kurt nodded.

“And we showed those fools back on Earth that we can kick butt with the best of them,” Rose said, her grin widening into a smile. “Thank you, sir.”

She gave him a peck on the cheek, then walked out of the compartment before Kurt could say a word. He stared at her, one finger touching the spot where she’d kissed him, then shook his head in disbelief. Rose… wasn't anywhere close to stable. But then, few pilots were.

“Damn it,” he muttered. He closed the hatch, then keyed his terminal. There was just time to record a v-mail to Molly before he went back to the pilot quarters for some sleep. “What’s gotten into her now?”

He waited till the recording light came on, then started to speak. “Hi, Molly, I don't know quite when you will get this message, but I think you’ll get it before I return home. We won a battle…”

When he was finished, he saved the message, uploaded it to the communications network and then went to get some sleep.

Ted sat in his cabin, eying the bottle on his desk. It was finest Scotch, a present from an old friend upon his promotion to Commodore; Ted had been saving it for a special occasion. Now, with an alien fleet in full retreat and his ship thoroughly vindicated, it seemed as good an occasion as any. But he wasn't sure he could ensure that he stuck to just one glass…

He’d won, he knew. The Royal Navy might call him a drunkard, the other commanding officers might question his qualifications, but none of them could deny that he’d won a battle against a powerful and seemingly overwhelming foe. Everyone had seen the recordings of New Russia by now, everyone knew that humanity’s very future hung in the balance. But he’d pulled off a victory and, in doing so, altered the course of the war. Or so he hoped.

It was worthy of a drink. Wasn't it?

He should know better, he told himself. Hundreds of thousands of naval crewmen experimented with drink… and, as a general rule, most of them learned to control the impulse or simply give it up. But Ted hadn't really learned, which was why he’d been assigned to Ark Royal as a mere Lieutenant-Commander. The Royal Navy had preferred to move him to a dead-end assignment rather than have him dishonourably dismissed from the service — or even quietly retire him when his first enlistment ended. There were days when he’d wondered just what his superior officers had been thinking. Had they been too lazy to do the paperwork for early retirement or had they questioned the wisdom of forcibly retiring someone who’d earned a knighthood through saving lives as a young Lieutenant?

The bottle glimmered faintly under the cabin light. It was worth over three hundred pounds, he knew; his friend had been making a point as well as presenting Ted with a gift. Part of him wanted to tear the bottle’s cap off and take a swig, part of him knew that he didn't dare indulge. Ark Royal was no longer orbiting a beacon in the Earth-Moon system, but facing a dangerous alien threat. The bastards could be back at any moment.

And he could lose his command. No one really cared if a reservist commander drank, not when there was no real danger to his crew. But now… his XO wanted his post and had friends in high places. Fitzwilliam hadn't done anything overt to stab Ted in the back, yet Ted knew the younger man was ambitious… and all of the arguments he'd used to convince the First Space Lord to let Ted remain in command had become less and less effective as Fitzwilliam learned more about the ancient carrier. Hell, he would be a good commander, Ted knew. The younger man had an optimism about him that Ted had long since lost.

But Ted had no intention of surrendering his command. It would be the first step towards early — enforced — retirement. There was no way he would be allowed to take command of a modern carrier, even an escort ship. He'd be lucky if he was assigned to an asteroid mining facility in the middle of nowhere. Humanity’s only winner or not, he would be lucky to be allowed to keep his rank. The Royal Navy would have its doubts about giving a modern starship to a known drunkard.

Angrily, he lashed out. The bottle plummeted from the desk and struck the deck, shattering on impact. Glass and alcohol splashed everywhere. Ted swore out loud, then stood upright and reached for a towel. There was no point in ordering Midshipwomen Lopez or another junior crewman to clear up the mess. Besides, he was more than a little ashamed of his own weakness. It was something he had to tackle on his own. Once the mess was cleared, he dumped the towel into the recycler, glass and all. It would at least serve a useful purpose when it was broken down for raw material.

His intercom buzzed. “Captain,” Fitzwilliam said. For an absurd moment, Ted wondered if someone outside the cabin had heard the bottle break, or smelled the Scotch through the airlock. “The Marines are ready to start sifting through the debris, while Primrose is ready to return to Earth.”

Ted grunted. “Tell them to make best possible speed,” he ordered. The frigate would carry the news of the victory to Earth. “And tell them that we will return to Earth within four days unless they have other orders for us.”

He scowled up at the star chart. The aliens definitely had a more advanced FTL drive than humanity’s. That was a given, now. If they used it aggressively, they might even be able to jump directly to Earth. And there wouldn't be any real warning before they arrived. Once Ark Royal returned to Earth, they might not be allowed to leave, even though they were ideally suited to raiding behind enemy lines.

Damn it, he thought, as he turned on the air conditioning to get rid of the smell. We’ve won one battle, but not the war. Not yet.