The Nelson Touch

Chapter Twenty-Six

Captain Tom Cook had few illusions about his command.

HMS Primrose was a warship only by courtesy. She’d started life as a heavy bulk freighter, one of hundreds designed to transports goods and settlers from Earth to Britannia, then been hastily reconfigured as a light carrier when it had become obvious that the Royal Navy needed more fighter platforms in a hurry. She was an ugly boxy creation, studded with weapons and sensor blisters, but he cared for her deeply. There was something about his ship that was solid and reliable.

Once, he’d wanted to protest his assignment to the light carrier. He’d paid his dues, he’d served in the Navy for years; surely, he was entitled to a shot at commanding one of the modern carriers. But now, with the aliens targeting the modern carriers specifically, he had good reason to appreciate his command. If nothing else, it attracted less fire from marauding alien starships. And the two squadrons of starfighters crammed into her makeshift launching bays gave her a punch that, he hoped, had come as an unpleasant surprise to the aliens.

“Captain,” the tactical officer said, “we have targeted the alien cloudscoops.”

Tom nodded, looking down at the reports from the long-range sensors. There was nothing particularly special about the alien cloudscoops; as far as the techs could tell, they were effectively identical in concept to humanity’s designs. They were really just long tubes, hanging down from an orbital station and sucking in HE3 from the gas giant’s atmosphere, which would then be converted into fuel for fusion plants or starship drives. Oddly, Tom found the sheer conventionality of the system reassuring. The aliens might have some tricks humanity couldn’t — yet — match, but their technology was based on similar concepts. They had nothing so advanced, so inexplicable, that it might as well be magic.

“Transmit the warning,” he ordered.

He frowned as the recorded message was beamed towards the alien installations. The Admiral had insisted, even though the aliens hadn’t bothered with any warnings when they’d wiped out everything noticeable in the New Russia system. If the aliens understood English, he’d pointed out, at least they’d have a chance to evacuate the platforms and save lives. And if they didn’t, the humans lost nothing. There was no way the aliens could save the cloudscoops from certain destruction.

“No response,” the tactical officer said. No dedicated Communications Officer for Primrose! “They’re not evacuating the platforms, as far as we can tell.”

Tom sighed. Did that mean that the aliens had no intention of abandoning the platforms, that they didn’t understand English or that they were daring the humans to open fire anyway? He had no way to know… he shook his head in grim disbelief. What sort of race would just ignore all attempts to open communications? Given the panic on Earth after the Battle of New Russia, the aliens could probably have talked the human race into surrender if they’d just tried. But instead they’d chosen to continue with their advance.

“Open fire,” he ordered. “Take the platforms out.”

He watched, grimly, as the first set of projectiles were hurled out of the mass drivers and launched down towards the orbiting platforms. Unlike starships, or even some of the more advanced stations, the platforms were completely immobile; they couldn’t hope to evade the incoming projectiles. He half-expected them to reveal hidden defences, but instead the projectiles just slammed into their targets and smashed them into rubble. Chunks of debris fell through space, mostly falling towards the gas giant below. Its gravity would eventually pull in all of the pieces of rubble.

“Targets destroyed,” the tactical officer said. “I say again, all targets destroyed.”

“Stand down from Red Alert, then take us back to Target One,” Tom ordered. They’d spent the last day destroying most of the alien installations in the outer reaches of the solar system, although several of them had been placed off-limits by the Admiral. Tom wasn’t sure if that was a good idea or not, but storming a complex on an uninhabitable world was always dangerous. “Launch an additional shell of recon platforms as we go. We may see something crawling out of the woodwork.”

He felt another quiver running through his ship as the helmsman took her away from the planet, muttering curses just loudly enough for Tom to hear. It was hard to blame him, really; Primrose made Ark Royal look elegant when it came to manoeuvring in space. Her designers had never anticipated that she might have to do anything more complex than dock at an orbital station, let alone evade incoming fire. Unlike most warships, she would be in deep trouble if anyone fired a mass driver at her from long-range.

“Captain,” the tactical officer said suddenly, “I’m picking up a starship on approach vector.”

Tom leaned forward, snapped awake. “Alien?”

“I believe so,” the tactical officer said. “Trajectory suggests she entered the system from Tramline Four.”

“Not that that proves anything,” the helmsman said.

“No,” Tom agreed. “Sound Red Alert, then launch a probe towards the incoming ship.”

He watched, grimly, as the data started to appear on his display. One alien starship, midway in size between a frigate and a battlecruiser, heading directly towards Primrose. It looked like an attack, yet there was something about the alien trajectory that he found oddly reassuring. He couldn’t help thinking that the aliens looked as if they were trying to sneak up to the small carrier, rather than make their approach obvious. But they had to know they couldn’t get within plasma weapons range without being detected.

“Contact the Admiral,” he ordered, although he knew it was futile. It would take around forty minutes for their message to reach Target One, then another forty minutes for the Admiral’s reply to reach them. By then, the whole situation would probably be resolved. “Inform him that we intend to engage the enemy, if possible.”

He hesitated, looking down at the display and silently calculating odds. A ship-to-ship engagement would be fatal for Primrose; she’d never been designed to be anything more than a carrier, even if she did have additional layers of armour bolted onto her hull. No, the only way he could fight was to have his starfighters take the alien craft out before she got into engagement range… or force her to go pick on someone else. Given the known capabilities of the alien drives, it was unlikely that he could avoid engagement if the aliens chose to home in on his ship.

“Prepare all starfighters for launch,” he said. “Standard attack profile; the fighters are to cover the bombers.”

There was a bleep from the tactical console. “Picking up a second starship, Captain,” the tactical officer said. “She’s following the first starship, trying to catch up with her.”

Tom gave him a puzzled look. The alien tactics made no sense. They had to know that sending one ship after another was asking for trouble, even against little Primrose. Had something gone wrong with their timing? Or was something else going on?

“Show me,” he ordered. The display changed. By his calculation, Enemy One would overrun Primrose in thirty minutes, but Enemy Two would catch up with her in twenty… maybe the aliens hadn’t blundered after all. But then Enemy One started to pick up speed, narrowing the time between her and Primrose. “What are they doing?”

The tactical officer looked blank. “Maybe they’re competing for the honour of taking us out?”

Tom rather doubted it. The Royal Navy worked hard to have glory-seekers excluded from the upper ranks, although an alarming number of them ended up flying starfighters or commanding small frigates. Surely the aliens took similar precautions? Or was he looking at something else, something he didn’t yet understand? Or were the aliens feeling safe enough facing Primrose to allow themselves the luxury of a competition?

“No,” the helmsman said. “Enemy Two is trying to overrun Enemy One.”

“What?” Tom demanded. He looked at the display… and realised the helmsman was probably right. Enemy One was on approach vector to Primrose, but Enemy Two was definitely on an attack vector to Enemy One. They weren’t racing to get to Primrose, he saw in astonishment; Enemy Two was trying to head Enemy One off before she reached Primrose. “What the hell are they doing?”

His intercom buzzed. “Sir,” the CAG said, “all fighters are ready to launch.”

“Launch fighters,” Tom said, gritting his teeth. A modern carrier would have had all of its fighters out in space by now. “Order them to cover the carrier.”

He stared down at the display, torn between several conflicting problems. If there had only been one enemy starship, he had to send his starfighters to attack it before it entered engagement range and blew his ship into plasma. But with two enemy ships, one seemingly interested in attacking the other, he wasn’t sure what to do. It might be the first real chance to actually talk to the aliens… or it might be a trick, one intended to lure the humans into a false sense of security. There was no way to know without taking a chance… and if he happened to be wrong, he and his entire crew would die.

“Update the Admiral,” he ordered, although he knew it was pointless. There was no time to kick the issue upstairs in hopes of receiving orders. Besides, as a Captain in the Royal Navy, it was his job to be decisive. “Launch a stealth platform. I want a full recording available to the Admiral, even if we are killed.”

“Aye, sir,” the tactical officer said. There was a long pause. “Captain, I’m picking up a message from Enemy One.”

Tom stared in disbelief. “What are they saying to us?”

“I think it’s the start of a First Contact Protocol,” the tactical officer said, after a long moment. “Either they don’t understand English or they’re trying to build up a new protocol for talking to us.”

“I… see,” Tom said.

He recalled, vaguely, one of the courses he’d had to take at the Academy. The lecturer had pointed out that English had evolved over the years, not least by stealing ideas and concepts from other languages. It was the sheer flexibility of English, she’d said, that made it so useful for human development. But, at the same time, it was so flexible that certain phrases or figures of speech might be different from one place to the next. A British officer might as well be speaking German at times, when addressing an American officer. Having a more formal language barrier, she’d concluded, might have made it simpler to realise that there might well be errors in translation.

For aliens, he suspected from a later briefing paper, it would be even worse. English’s idiosyncrasies, hard enough for humans to follow, would be completely impossible for aliens to understand. Certain forms of data — mathematics, for instance — might well be universal, yet it would be very difficult to hold an open conversation with one of the aliens. And, given that the aliens lived underwater for the most part, it was unlikely that any such conversation could be held without a technological bridge being established.

“Send back our own protocol,” he ordered, “and then try to decipher their message.”

He cursed their luck under his breath. A modern carrier’s analytical staff would have been able to decipher the message, given time, but his ship carried no analysts. Hell, it would take weeks to build up a common understanding even with formal analysts. And they didn’t have time…

You’re supposed to be decisive, he reminded himself. It might well be a trap, but it seemed remarkably pointless. Luring Primrose’s fighters out of position was hardly worth the effort, not compared to the sheer level of firepower the aliens could throw at them. And this could be the chance everyone’s been waiting for.

He keyed his console. “The fighters are to engage Enemy Two,” he ordered. It was going to be bloody. He knew, far too well, just how many point defence weapons an enemy starship carried. “Enemy One is to be watched, but not engaged unless she does something threatening.”

“Aye, sir,” the CAG said. “Fighters on their way.”

He sounded surprised. Tom didn’t blame him. If it was a trap, he was giving Enemy One a free shot at his hull. Not, he had to admit, that the aliens needed it. They had to know he couldn’t avoid engagement, not if they chose to press the issue. He gritted his teeth again, feeling pain shooting through his gums, then forced himself to relax. They were committed now.

“Enemy Two is closing into engagement range of Enemy One,” the tactical officer warned. “I think they’re locking weapons on her hull.”

Tom found himself praying for the first time in a very long life. His forces were closing in on Enemy Two, but she had enough weapons to hammer Enemy One and fend off his starfighters at the same time. It was going to turn into a nightmare, he realised grimly; he didn’t dare risk taking Primrose closer to either ship. The starfighters would have to hold the enemy ship off on their own.

At least they don’t seem to have missiles, he told himself. They don’t seem to have any long-range weapons at all. Why not? They’re well within their capabilities.

“Shit,” the tactical officer breathed. “Enemy Two has opened fire; Enemy One is returning fire.”

Tom sucked in his breath. The two ships were throwing blasts of plasma at each other, each blast capable of doing real damage to his ship if they struck home. The aliens didn’t seem to have superior armour, he realised numbly; they were inflicting horrific damage on one another, even if they weren’t using the super-cannons some of their frigates carried. But then, if the analysts were correct, those weapons had a very limited range and nothing else.

“Interesting,” the tactical officer mused. “Their plasma blasts seem to be deteriorating as they reach their hulls. Some form of countermeasure?”

“Unknown,” Tom said. It didn’t seem to matter. The aliens were still taking a beating. “But if they have a way of breaking up the plasma containment field before it reaches its target, I want to know how they do it.”

On the display, his starfighters were closing in on Enemy Two. The alien didn’t bother to wait for them to get into attack range before opening fire, spewing out countless bursts of plasma weapons fire towards them. Tom winced as two of his fighters vanished in flashes of light, their comrades ignoring the losses and diving into engagement range.

“Picking up a second message from Enemy One,” the tactical officer snapped. Red lights flared up on the display as he spoke. “She’s sending us a shitload of data.”

“Store it in a secure dump,” Tom snapped. Trying to sneak viruses or malware into the enemy’s computer systems was a well-known trick and, if nothing else, Ark Royal’s last operation had proved that some human and alien systems could be spliced together. Hell, the aliens had certainly captured enough human computers to work out plenty of ways to slip unwanted programs into their systems. “And then…”

He broke off as the display changed. Enemy One seemed to stagger, then blew apart into a colossal fireball. Moments later, Enemy Two altered course and started heading back towards Tramline Four, rather than attempting to engage Primrose. Tom watched her go, shrugging off the attempts by his starfighters to slow her down, then sighed bitterly. Whatever Enemy One had in mind, it was lost forever now… along with the enemy ship itself. Unless, of course, the final desperate message could be deciphered…

“Recall the fighters,” he ordered. It didn’t look as though they were going to succeed in taking down the battlecruiser and he’d already lost seven starfighters in the attempt. “And then send the Admiral a complete update. Tell him that we will return to Target One at best possible speed.”

He sat back in his chair, then pulled up the records from the engagement and started to go through them, one by one. The Admiral might be understanding, but he knew what the REMFs on Earth would do when they saw the records. They’d probably accuse him of failing to protect Enemy One, even though there had been no way to know that Enemy One might be friendly. The only real proof they had was the simple fact that one enemy ship had fired on another… and blown her into flaming debris. Offhand, Tom couldn’t think of a realistic situation where the Royal Navy would sacrifice a modern ship just to bait a trap.

But these guys are alien, he thought. If there were human cultures that were downright weird to his eyes, how weirder might an alien culture be? There were human societies that thought nothing of placing form over substance, men over women or even vice versa. They might have a different idea of what constitutes acceptable losses than we do.

It was a worrying thought. Losing Roosevelt alone had dented the Admiral’s fleet quite badly, even though most of her starfighters had survived. She was only an acceptable loss if they inflicted comparable — proportional — damage on the alien fleet. And there was no way to know if they’d done that… or if the aliens could absorb all the losses they’d taken so far without wincing.

The Admiral will be the one to decide what to do, he thought, finally. All I can do is keep my ship ready for operations.

“Keep a sharp eye on the data,” he added. “If they did try to sneak programs into our computers, I want to know about it before they can do any real damage.”

“Aye, sir,” the tactical officer said. There would be no argument, not when the dangers were all too clear. “I won’t do anything with the data until we get it to the fleet.”