Ark Royal

Chapter Twenty-Five

“We could probably get to the asteroids,” Charles said. “We’re experienced in such matters.”

The XO shook his head. Three days of drifting in space hadn't convinced the aliens that Ark Royal was dead. Their ships remained on the tramline to New Russia, watching and waiting for the humans to show themselves. And, in the meantime, the stress was starting to take its toll on the crew.

“Too risky,” he said, finally. “We can’t risk detection.”

“Understood,” Charles said, ruefully. Mining asteroids wasn't something his men had signed up to do, but it would make a break from assisting with repairs and watching the reporters like hawks. God knew that the reporters were still trying to make their way into secure compartments, despite being told — time and time again — that they were not allowed to enter without permission and an escort. “But we will have to mine the asteroids sooner or later.”

He nodded to the XO, then headed back to the barracks. Inside, he saw a handful of Marines wrestling and two more trying to catch up on their sleep. Rolling his eyes, he barked for quiet and issued orders. Another counter-boarding drill would keep his men out of mischief for a few hours. After that…

Better here than on New Russia, he thought. He’d gone through the sensor records carefully, but he had no idea if the Russians had made it to the surface or now. Instead, all he could do was pray that they’d made it — and that their fellow countrymen were prepared to meet them.

Shaking his head, he started to organise the drill. Everything else would have to wait until they returned home — or the aliens caught up with them again.

“There are only two known tramlines in this system,” Ted said, studying the display. “Four more, if the assumptions about alien capabilities are accurate.”

There was no disagreement from his senior crew. Barong — the crew were already muttering that the star should have been named Boring — was uninteresting, only really useful in times of peace, when a convoy could shave a few hours off the voyage to Vera Cruz. The Russians might have been able to stake a claim in later years, or perhaps someone would set up an independent trading facility and try to charge passage fees for anyone making their way through the system. They’d have to be careful, Ted knew. It wasn't as if Barong was important enough to force people to pay. They could simply detour around the system if necessary.

“Going back to New Russia would be extremely dangerous,” Ted added. “They will certainly have ramped up their sensor networks — and there are those ships patrolling the edge of the tramline. We may well jump straight into a trap. This time, they’ll be ready for us — and we are already short on starfighters and projectiles.”

He looked over at Anderson, who shrugged. “Unless the first survey of this system was rushed — and there is some evidence to suggest it was — there’s no hope of finding materials we can use to make additional nukes,” he said. “The asteroids appear to be bog-standard pieces of rock and metal, not rare elements.”

“Pity,” Fitzwilliam observed. “We taught them respect for our weapons, didn't we?”

“Yes,” Ted said. “But that will make them all the more determined to prevent us from returning to human space.”

He wondered, idly, if Ark Royal was the only starship carrying the modified weapons. It didn't seem likely. The Admiralty might well have outfitted other ships with the weapons — if there was one thing humanity had in abundance, it was nukes — and if the aliens launched another attack, they’d get a nasty surprise. But the aliens would still be hopping mad over the attack on New Russia.

“I have decided, therefore, that we will proceed down the tramline to Vera Cruz,” he added. “From there, we will jump into unexplored space and work our way around to a point where we can return to human space.”

“Captain,” Fitzwilliam said slowly, “that will add several months to our travel time — at best.”

“It will,” Ted agreed. It was the XO’s job to play devil’s advocate, no matter how annoying it could be. “However, does anyone feel that we have a realistic chance of sneaking back into the New Russia system without being detected?”

There was a long pause. No one spoke.

“Our orders are to return home and report in,” Ted continued. “However, right now, taking the direct route home is a form of suicide. Therefore, we will take the long route home — and, in addition, worry the aliens by probing the edge of their space.”

He smiled at their reactions, then explained his reasoning. The attack on New Russia made sense, the attack on Vera Cruz and the other colonies did not. Logically, the aliens should have saved their strength… unless there was a strong reason to remove the human presence on those worlds. The only answer that made sense to him was that the aliens had colony worlds within one or two jumps of Vera Cruz.

They might have encountered one of our survey ships, he thought. Survey ships set out for years at a time, rarely heading home early unless they discovered something truly spectacular. No one would notice if one of the ships was several years overdue, allowing the aliens plenty of time to dissect her and her crew. And they would have no trouble pulling a complete astronomical chart of the human sphere from her computers.

The thought made him scowl. Whatever the outcome of the war, procedures would have to be carefully revised in the face of First Contact. The survey ships would have to be escorted, their computers would need to be rigged for immediate destruction if another alien contact went bad and their crews would have to be outfitted with suicide implants. It would probably take years to devise the new protocols. God knew the first set, as inadequate as they were, had taken almost a decade of scrabbling before there was a version all of the interstellar powers could accept.

“We might run into stronger alien forces,” Fitzwilliam pointed out, finally. “They might well try to trap us.”

“They might,” Ted agreed. “The alternative is staying here, in hiding. Unless someone’s invented a much better FTL drive…?”

He smiled, then looked around the compartment. “Barring discovery, we will power up our drives two days from now and start inching towards the tramline,” he continued, bringing up the main display. “Should the aliens catch wind of us, we will throw caution to the winds and flee for Vera Cruz.”

“If they do,” Anderson observed, “they will almost certainly run us down.”

Ted nodded. No matter how hard Ark Royal and her escorts struggled, the faster alien ships and their starfighters definitely would overtake her if it came down to a straight chase. Ideally, he wanted to get to the tramline without being detected at all. But it might not be possible…

He shook his head. If they were lucky, they would escape without further harassment. But if they weren't lucky, they would just have to fight.

James couldn't help feeling enthused about the Captain’s plan, even though he knew that it was staggeringly risky. But if he’d wanted to avoid risk, he would have taken that slot in the Admiralty he’d been offered when he'd been promoted to Commander. It would have made him nothing more than a tea boy — one had to be a Commodore to gain attention at the Admiralty — but it would have been safe. Instead, he’d attempted to gain a promotion that would ensure he'd see combat.

How careless of me, he thought, as he strode through the starship’s passageway. He smirked at the thought. If I’d known where I was going, I might have applied to a modern carrier instead.

Another piece of carelessness, he knew, was failing to keep himself occupied to the point where he could decline the chance to meet the reporters with a clear conscience. Most of the work he had to do had either been delegated to subordinates — he'd hated being micromanaged as a junior officer and saw no reason to torment his subordinates, now he'd been promoted — or simply placed to one side. There was no point in writing out endless reports if no one was ever going to see them. And the only other duty that needed attention, sooner rather than later, was ticking off a handful of couples who had bent the rules on relationships onboard ship.

He pushed that thought aside as he stepped into the modified briefing compartment. The reporters were sitting down, looking pale and worn. It had taken several days, but the implications of their current location had finally dawned on them. Their ship was going to have to run the gauntlet back to human space… or make a long detour through space that might well be occupied by an alien colony or two. James found it hard to feel any sympathy. They should have known the job was dangerous, he told himself once again, when they took it.

“Commander,” Yang said. “Is the story true?”

James smiled. “Which one?” He asked. Like all ships, rumour spread through Ark Royal at the speed of light. “The one about the Engineer, the Helmsman and the Navigator?”

Yang scowled at him. “That we’re trapped here, in this system,” he snapped. “Are we trapped?”

“Not precisely,” James said. He didn't want to discuss any specifics with them. It was absurd to think they might betray the ship to the aliens, but still… “We just have to run the gauntlet on our way out.”

Barbie looked up at him, nervously. “Do… do we need to use the tramlines at all?”

James stared at her in absolute disbelief. “Do we need to use the tramlines?”

“The nearest stars aren’t that far from here,” Barbie said, carefully. “Surely we could just make our way to them without using the tramlines…”

“No,” James said, crossly. “Let me see.”

He ticked off points on his fingers as he spoke. “The closest star system to us that isn't New Russia is three light years away,” he said. He knew he sounded disdainful, he just didn't care. “Placed in context, that means it takes three years for light to reach it. Assuming we work the drive to the bone, we should be able to make a third of light speed, if we don’t mind the risk of burning out the system in the middle of the interstellar desert. It will take us roughly nine years to reach this star.”

Barbie’s face twisted, but James wasn't finished. “There's nothing to slow us down in interplanetary space,” he added, “so we would just keep going if the drive burnt out. That would send us rocketing through the system at a sizable rate, making it impossible for us to stop. Nor could anyone catch up with us long enough to offload the crew. If we didn't run into the star, we'd just fly through and carry on to the next star system.

“All of this assumes, of course, that the food supplies don’t run out. We produce only a limited amount of supplies in the hydroponic bays, as we tore half of them out to store weapons and spare parts. I estimate that we would run out of foodstuffs within two years, at the very latest. In order to get part of the crew through the voyage, the remainder would have to be eliminated, their bodies fed into the recycling system to nourish the rest of us.”

Barbie blanched. “You’d have us eating human flesh?”

“Oh, it would be the only way to survive,” James assured her. The fact that the food processors could turn human flesh into something safe to eat was a closely-guarded secret, one devised by bureaucrats intent on ensuring that the crews always had something to keep them going. So far, no one had ever had to use the systems. “But I’m afraid that’s not the end of it.

“Nine years. Think about it. Nine years. The aliens could win the war by then; we might arrive at our destination only to discover an alien fleet waiting for us. Or perhaps humanity would have won the war. The universe would have moved on and we would be hopelessly out of date.”

“That’s enough,” Yang said, sharply.

James smiled, then shrugged. “We will do our very best to get you all home,” he said, wondering just how much of his lecture would make it into the final reports. Somehow, he suspected the detail about potential cannibalism would be erased by the censors before it was broadcast to the British public. “And I suggest that you relax and let us work.”

“We will,” Yang said, finally. He gave James a look that promised future trouble. “And thank you for your candour.”

Yang didn't seem amused. James smiled to himself, wondering if Yang was interested in Barbie. Why not? Whatever usual restrictions the reporters had on their behaviour — assuming that there were any restrictions — would have faded when they'd finally realised that they were trapped. Anyone with even a small amount of experience would be able to tell that Ark Royal had escaped by the skin of her teeth. And, the next time, their jury-rigged repairs might not stand up to what the aliens handed out.

James shrugged. If they made it home, they would be heroes and Yang’s superiors would see no profit in hammering James — or Captain Smith. And if they didn't make it home, the whole episode was thoroughly irrelevant. There wouldn't even be a messenger buoy left behind to mark their passage.

Maybe we should leave one here, James thought, making a mental note to suggest it to the Captain. The Russians will know where we went, even if they can't know what happened afterwards. If humanity wins the war, sooner or later they will come looking for us…

Kurt stared down at his screen, trying to compose a message. Silent running was strange for the pilots; half of them remained in their cockpits, ready for immediate launch, while the other half tried to relax. But it was so hard to relax, knowing that the alert might sound at any moment. Alien passive sensors were watching for them even now.

He cursed his own weakness as he angrily banished the half-written message from his screen, rather than bothering to save it for a later rewrite. Sleeping with Rose had been a mistake, of that he was sure. He’d known that right after the first time, which hadn't been enough to stop himself from doing it twice more. Everyone knew that Rose, as the new senior squadron leader, was expected to coordinate her plans with her superior officer’s plans. No one would raise eyebrows at them spending time together, let alone disturb them. And no one would realise that they’d spent more time fucking like wild animals than actually doing their work…

You should be ashamed of yourself, he told himself. He was ashamed, he knew, no matter how hard he tried to deny it. Just not ashamed enough.

Angrily, he stood up and headed for the hatch, thinking hard. Relationships between officers of different ranks were forbidden, as were relationships between starfighter pilots who happened to share the same wardroom. Sure, there were times when such rules might be ignored — if Ark Royal never made it home, there would be no reason to care about regulations — but somehow he doubted this was one of those times.

He stepped through the hatch, recognising and cursing his own weakness. As CAG, it was his duty to send Rose into danger, time and time again. He would have to do it until she ran out of luck and died… or until he died, whereupon Rose would be promoted into his shoes. But now… he didn't want to send her into danger. She wasn't just a pilot to him any longer, she was far more than that. Or did she think that he was nothing more than a convenient leman for her? He didn't have to fly beside her, he wasn't likely to brag about his conquest…

Women, he thought, ruefully. Can’t live with them, can't live without them.

But what was he going to do?

Sooner or later, he knew, someone would find out. They would walk into his office and see him screwing Rose while she was bent over the desk, or even see them exchanging warm glances and draw the right conclusions. There were few secrets in the wardroom; pilots knew each other so well that they would probably deduce the truth from a moment of carelessness. And then? Kurt didn't want to think about what could happen next.

Normally, you would be transferred, a mocking voice at the back of his head pointed out, sardonically. Or she would be transferred… but she’s already been transferred once, hasn't she? What sort of reputation will she get if she transfers again?

And no one will blame you…

Kurt nodded to himself as he passed a small group of crewmen carrying a box of spare parts in the other direction. Rose’s file might not be too detailed, but the world of starfighter pilots loved its rumours. One transfer might go unnoticed, a second would be all-too-noticeable… unless, of course, there was a valid excuse.

He shouldn’t touch her again, he knew. But he knew that all of his resolve would melt when she met him again, soon enough.

His communicator buzzed. “CAG,” the XO said, “report to Briefing Compartment A. I say again, report to Briefing Compartment A.”

Kurt’s blood ran cold. Did the XO know?

“Understood,” he said, bracing himself. He couldn't afford to walk into the compartment looking guilty. The XO, the general disciplinarian on the ship, would notice and start wondering why. “I’m on my way.”