Ark Royal

Chapter Thirty-Four

Ted jerked back to full awareness as the alarms sounded.

Shit, he swore, inwardly. He'd committed the cardinal sin of almost falling asleep on the bridge. A young midshipman who dozed off while on watch would be lucky if he wasn't demoted all the way back to cadet by his outraged CO. Ted forced himself to put the thought aside, then stared at the display. A single red icon was emerging from the tramline they’d taken to reach Alien-Two.

“The battlecruiser, sir,” Farley said. If he’d noted Ted’s near-collapse, he said nothing. “They must have assumed that we were planning an ambush.”

Ted nodded, silently giving thanks for the alien commander’s paranoia. He’d taken the time to enter the tramline at a different point, thwarting any planned ambush… but, incidentally, giving Ark Royal some time to put distance between the two ships. He watched, coldly, as the alien ship started after them, without waiting for any sensor reports. It took his tired mind a long moment to realise that the aliens already knew their destination. There was literally nowhere else the human ship could go.

“They’re keeping their distance too,” Farley added. “They could overrun us well before we reached the tramline, if they pleased.”

“True,” Ted agreed.

He ran his hand though his hair, considering the possibilities. Maybe the aliens weren't as confident of their predictions as they acted. Or maybe they thought the human ship was powerful enough to best the battlecruiser, even though her starfighter squadrons had been shot to ribbons. Or maybe they were still herding her towards a final ambush. He silently cursed the alien FTL drive under his breath. With a bit of luck, the aliens could muster an ambush while Ark Royal followed a predictable path.

“Continue on course towards the tramline,” he ordered. There was no point in trying to hide, not now. The aliens knew roughly where they were. “And draw up a strike pattern for targeting the alien facilities in orbit around the planet.”

It was risky, he knew; if the aliens had a major colony on the surface there was a very definite possibility that one of the human projectiles would strike the planet’s surface and carry out an atrocity. But there was no time to target their weapons more precisely — and he had no intention of wasting irreplaceable missiles on targets that couldn't shoot back. He simply didn't have enough to spare.

“They didn't bring any starfighters,” Fitzwilliam said. He sounded disgustingly alert after half an hour in the sleep machine. He’d pay for that later, but for the moment he could carry out his duties without tiredness blunting his edge. “What happened to them?”

Ted shrugged. Maybe the alien pilots had made it back to Alien-One, maybe they’d been picked up by the battlecruiser… or maybe they’d expired in the merciless reaches of outer space. There was no way to know.

“Take command,” he ordered, surrendering to the inevitable. “I’m going to take some rest in the sleep machine. Alert me if the aliens start to run us down.”

Kurt cracked open the lid and sat up, feeling his head spinning slightly. It wasn't quite a headache, but it was bad enough to blunt him. His chronometer stated that he’d been in the sleep machine for barely an hour, nowhere near enough to replenish his reserves. But there was no more time to rest, not now. A quick look at the status display showed the alien battlecruiser, tracking Ark Royal with murderous intent.

He sighed as the other sleep machines opened, revealing two-thirds of his remaining pilots. The remainder, waiting in the launch tubes, were even more tired than the rest of them. Kurt forced his head to start working, thinking hard. The squadrons needed to be reorganised — Delta Squadron was effectively out of service, having one surviving pilot — but he was too tired to do it properly.

“Dave, Gus, Gladys and Mike, take the ready starfighters,” he ordered. “You're now classed as Beta Squadron. Everyone else in this compartment is part of Alpha Squadron.”

Rose looked irked — he’d effectively demoted her — but she looked too tired to argue in front of the others. If they made it home, Rose would probably be given a whole new starfighter squadron on a different starship, one where her experience could be passed on to starfighter pilots who had never even seen an enemy starfighter. Kurt allowed himself a moment of relief, then pushed it aside ruthlessly. Their relationship, their secret relationship, meant nothing. All that mattered was staying alive long enough to give the aliens one final bloody nose before they were overwhelmed.

“Alpha, go get a shower,” he added, after taking another look at the display and calculating the vectors in his head. The aliens, unless they sped up, would need at least two hours to overrun the carrier. By his assessment, the aliens were keeping tabs on their location rather than attempting to actually stop Ark Royal. “You all stink like…” — his imagination failed him — “a very stinky thing.”

“Same to you, sir,” Oxford said. “You shouldn't have worn your socks in the sleeping machine.”

It was a measure of how tried he was, Kurt decided, that he found himself giggling helplessly for several seconds. “Shower,” he snapped, when he could finally talk again. “Now.”

He watched them go, then looked over at Rose. “I understand,” she said. She leaned forward and kissed his lips hard, then strode past him into the shower. Kurt glared at her back, then forced his body back under control. She called back to him as her clothes hit the deck. “Come on, sir. The water’s fine.”

Kurt gritted his teeth, realising that he’d lost his detachment once and for all. Somehow, he managed to keep his eyes off her, covering himself by scrubbing thoroughly at his feet and legs as the water ran down his body. As soon as he felt clean, he stepped back out of the shower, towelled himself down and checked the display. The alien battlecruiser hadn't moved any closer. Indeed, it seemed to have decided to match the carrier’s speed even though it could have easily moved a great deal faster.

It's precisely what we want them to do, Kurt thought, as he pulled on a clean flight suit. They’re being very obliging. And that’s what bothers us.

“Stay here,” he ordered, as the other pilots scrambled out of the shower, water running off their bodies. “If the alert sounds, go to your fighters at once.”

The hatch opened as he reached it, revealing Gamma Squadron’s pilots. They looked even more haggard than the other pilots, unsurprisingly. And they stank too, just like the others before they’d showered. None of them really cared to remain in the cockpits for so long.

“Have your showers, then get a nap,” Kurt ordered. “And then join the remaining pilots here.”

He walked down to his office, closed the door firmly and brought up the squadron rosters. It seemed absurd to be doing the paperwork now, when the aliens were tracking them, but it helped keep his mind off other things. He could record a message for Molly and the children, yet it was unlikely they would ever hear it. Or he could call Rose…

Angrily, he shook his head. The aliens were in hot pursuit. They couldn't afford to be caught with their pants down, not now.

Ted didn't feel much better after several hours in the sleep machine — Fitzwilliam had evidently decided to let him sleep longer than he’d planned - but one glance at the display was enough to reassure him that the alien battlecruiser was still keeping its distance from the carrier. Unfortunately, it had also launched a spread of drones of its own, ensuring that Ark Royal couldn't hide without being detected.

“We have a lock on several targets in orbit around the alien world,” Farley informed him, when he stepped back onto the bridge. A shave and a shower had made him feel much better about himself. “I don't think there is a major risk to the planet itself.”

Ted nodded, studying the reports from the drones. There were dozens of large structures in orbit, most of them clearly industrial nodes. But there were relatively few defences, as far as he could see. Was it possible, he asked himself, that some of the nodes were actually drones or ECM beacons? If human technology could fool the aliens long enough to let Ark Royal launch an ambush, why couldn't the aliens do the same?

“It’s impossible to be certain at this distance,” Farley admitted, when Ted asked. “”But they would have had to set up the trap well before we arrived in the system.”

“True,” Ted agreed. “Are you ready to open fire?”

“The mass drivers are armed and ready,” Farley said. “We can fire on your command.”

Ted nodded. Given the distance between themselves and the planet, they would be past the perfect firing location before they knew if they’d hit their targets or not. But it didn't matter, he told himself. If they missed, or if the alien point defence was sufficient to stop the projectiles, he had no intention of wasting any more. Besides, the aliens were unlikely to give them time to stop and reload from the local asteroid belt.

“Fire,” he ordered.

Long hours ticked away as the silent projectiles rocketed towards their targets. Ted watched, keeping one eye on the alien battlecruiser, until the first reports started to come back into the display. Four facilities had been hit and destroyed, seven had turned out to have a surprisingly heavy concentration of point defence weapons and two more were missed outright. Under the circumstances, Ted decided, it was the best they could reasonably hope for.

The alien battlecruiser showed no reaction, no inclination to accelerate and enter engagement range. Indeed, the distance it was keeping was safe by several orders of magnitude. Ted puzzled over it, wondering just what the aliens would think of a CO who didn't try to save the facilities. A naval officer would understand that there was nothing the battlecruiser could have done, but his civilian superiors would have complained loudly at the absence of any actual attempt to save the planet. They wouldn't understand the realities of naval combat… he wondered, with a sudden flicker of envy, if the alien government was composed of naval officers. God knew there was a human colony that believed that military service was the only way to gain the vote.

He turned back to look at the tramline, stretching out ahead of them. At this rate, the aliens would let them leave the system without interference… and he couldn't help, but wonder if that was what the aliens wanted the human ship to do. It was easy enough to project the destination of the tramline, yet there was no way of knowing what might be waiting for them at the other end. And, with a stealthed picket ship, the aliens would have plenty of time to note Ark Royal’s course and set an ambush.

“Prepare two more drones,” he ordered, looking over at Farley. “I want to cause as much confusion as possible as we come out of the tramline.”

It might be wasted effort, he knew. Given enough time, the aliens could have seeded space with beacons and detectors. But he had to try.

Shaking his head, he picked up the latest report from the doctors and started to read. The aliens were very alien, unsurprisingly. But there didn't seem to be any threat of disease, thankfully. God alone knew what would happen if the Admiralty believed Ark Royal to be compromised. They’d probably insist on flying the carrier right into the nearest star.

But there was one thing the report couldn't answer. How, precisely, did the alien thought processes differ from human ones?

And just what were they planning for Ark Royal?

“Angle us towards the tramline,” he added, watching the timer closely. Soon enough, the aliens wouldn't be able to intercept them before they made the jump. There would be an opportunity, Ted calculated, to make an escape into silent running before the battlecruiser caught up… assuming that there was no waiting ambush. If there was… they’d just have to fight and pray. “Give me a countdown as soon as we reach the two-minute mark.”

“Why don't we just go faster?”

James concealed his tired amusement at Barbie’s question. Ark Royal wasn't trying to crawl through space, not with her drives straining desperately to push them faster and faster towards the tramline. But, compared to a modern human carrier — or the alien battlecruiser — she was a wallowing hippo. The only thing preventing the alien ship from closing to engagement range was her commander’s reluctance to close the distance between them and the carrier.

“Because we don’t have the drives to go faster,” he said. “It was a terrible oversight on the part of the designers.”

The thought made him scowl. He’d read all the debates in the various naval forums, after Ark Royal had been commissioned into the Royal Navy, in what little spare time he’d had since becoming fascinated with the ship. Some designers had argued that the carrier was simply too heavily armoured for her own good, that she would hold back the fleet if the Royal Navy ever went on the offensive. And she was cripplingly expensive. Even the American and Russian carriers that had come into service at the same time were lighter.

But now… now Ark Royal had a survival rate the modern carriers could only envy. New Russia had proven that; twelve modern human carriers, all wiped out with ease. Even now the alien weapons were a known quality, the modern carriers would still be in trouble. The last he’d heard, the designers were planning to add extra armour, hoping it would give the ships a fighting chance.

I guess the designers got the last laugh, after all, he thought. But will they ever know what happened to us?

“Heads should roll,” Barbie said, with great certainty. “When we get home, we will make sure everyone knows just how badly the designers performed.”

“Don't tell them that,” James said, quickly. “They did better than the more modern designers.”

His communicator buzzed. “We cross the tramline in ten minutes,” the Captain said. “Report to the CIC.”

“Understood,” James said. “I'm on my way.”

Barbie caught his hand before he could leave the compartment. “Commander,” she said, “once we cross the tramline we’ll be safe, right?”

James hesitated. The truth was that the alien battlecruiser would have no difficulty in crossing the tramline after them, although it might take the time to ensure that the humans couldn't lay an ambush. He'd thought about advising the Captain to do that, but it would be chancy. Too chancy, perhaps.

“We’ll be out of this system,” he said. He didn't have the heart to tell her that they might fly straight into an ambush. “I don't know what will happen afterwards.”

Shaking his head, he turned and walked out of the hatch.

“No sign of any picket ships,” Farley reported. “The tramline seems to be empty.”

Ted nodded, although he knew it meant nothing. The aliens could be hiding under stealth or simply running silent. It wouldn't be hard to use passive sensors to track the carrier’s progress, not now they were close to the tramline. And the battlecruiser was still keeping its distance.

“Sound the alert,” he ordered, quietly. The alarm howled through the ship, bringing the crew to battlestations. Ted watched as the ship’s weapons came online, followed rapidly by the starfighter pilots checking in. Tired as they were, they were still ready to fight to defend their carrier. “Reports?”

“All decks report ready, sir,” Farley reported.

Ted took a breath. “Jump,” he ordered. “Now!”

Space twisted around them, the display fading into darkness before lighting up again. Ahead of them, there was a dull red star, surrounded by hundreds of asteroids.

“No contacts,” Farley said. “No alien contacts detected at all.”

Ted stared at the display, wonderingly. Had the aliens merely sought to keep an eye on them rather than placing an ambush ahead of their course?

An alarm sounded from the helm console. “Captain,” Lightbridge said. “There are no other tramlines here.”

Ted swore in sudden understanding. The aliens hadn't engaged because they'd known Ark Royal was heading towards a dead end. She’d been heading in precisely the direction the aliens wanted her to go. Hell, the bastards could use the battlecruiser to keep the carrier penned in while they summoned additional reinforcements. He thought, desperately, as the carrier moved away from the tramline, but nothing came to mind. They were trapped.

“Silent running,” he ordered. Unless the aliens had surveyed the system very carefully, Ark Royal could pose as just another asteroid. One battlecruiser couldn't hope to identify them among the other pieces of space junk. “Leave one powered-down drone by the tramline, but hold the others. We need to hide.”

“Yes, sir,” Farley said.

Ted scowled down at the display. A thin translucent line — an alien tramline — winked into existence, mocking him. They couldn't use it to escape, even though it seemed to head back into human space. There was no way they could build an improved Puller Drive in time to make it out. Moments later, the alien battlecruiser popped into existence. Ted watched, holding his breath, then sighed in relief as he realised the aliens had lost them. But that wouldn't last indefinitely.

The conclusion was inescapable. They were trapped.

“You have the bridge,” he growled. Bitter helplessness warred in his mind. They were trapped — and it was his fault. If he’d taken the risk of jumping back towards New Russia instead… he shook his head, angrily. Now, he would have all the time in the world to second-guess himself. “Keep us drifting here.”

With that, he strode through the hatch and headed down towards his cabin.