The Nelson Touch

Chapter Thirty-Nine

The aliens, somewhat to Ted’s surprise, didn’t actually follow them through the tramline. At first, he suspected the aliens had deduced the presence of the minefield and altered course to avoid it, but as the hours wore on it became clear that the aliens had given up the chase. Ted ordered his fleet to continue moving towards the next tramline, then called a meeting in his office. Captain Fitzwilliam, his XO and the CAG were all invited to attend.

“I have reviewed all the records,” the CAG said. Kurt Schneider looked tired, but it would be a long time before he could sleep. “The last burst of data we picked up from Prince Henry’s starfighter stated that his plasma containment chamber had started to overheat. After that… nothing.”

Ted scowled down at his hands. “Is there any reason to believe that Prince Henry might still be alive?”

Schneider shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “The plasma chambers are known to explode violently when they overheat. Even if the Prince did manage to eject, he’d be far too close to an exploding starfighter for his own safety. His flight suit might have been seriously damaged by the explosion.”

Killing him instantly, Ted thought. Or maybe he triggered his suicide implant.

It was the old nightmare, he knew. Trapped somewhere in space, the atmosphere slowly running out, without any hope of rescue. There were no figures for how many spacers had chosen immediate suicide rather than a slow unpleasant death, but he had the feeling that it was alarmingly high. Quite a few people had died through accidents in the early years of the expansion into space. He didn’t want to think of Prince Henry making that choice, yet every spacer knew it was a possibility. It was why they were given implants, after all.

“So we lost Prince Henry,” Captain Fitzwilliam said. “We will be lucky to see space again, sir.”

Ted nodded, grimly. Even if the Board of Inquiry agreed that the command crew of Ark Royal were personally blameless, they would still be tied up for months, if not years, while the investigation was carried out. Ted gritted his teeth at the thought, but he knew there was no way to avoid it. Prince Henry was dead and his death, no matter how unremarked, would have consequences. And there would have to be a public announcement.

“So,” the XO said. She ran her hand through her red hair. “What are we doing here? Making sure we get our stories straight?”

She sounded bitter. Ted didn’t blame her. She wasn’t the Captain, or the Admiral, nor had she had any involvement in the Prince’s assignment to the carrier, but her career was likely to take a blow anyway. It would have been different, he knew, if her incompetence or carelessness had got her into trouble, yet she was neither. She was simply the victim of a decision made far above her level, one that shouldn’t have impinged on her at all.

“They will blame us for this,” Schneider observed “And yet what were we supposed to do? Cuff him to his bunk and swear blind he was fighting alongside the rest of us?”

Captain Fitzwilliam tapped the table, hard. “I do not believe that we will be blamed for it, at least not in a serious manner,” he said. “It is human nature to seek someone to blame, but Prince Henry made his own choices. He wanted to be someone… common, someone who earned his position through his own hard work and merit, and he succeeded. His death came about as a result of his efforts. I believe it was what he would have wanted.”

Ted glowered at him. “How can you be so casual about a young man’s life?”

“We all knew, from the day we signed up, that there was a very real prospect of death while undertaking our duties,” Captain Fitzwilliam said, quietly. “No matter who we were, no matter where we came from, death was a very real possibility. For the Prince… his time simply ran out. He was likable and I will mourn, but I won’t allow it to overwhelm me.”

“If he’d been just another starfighter pilot,” Schneider snapped, “would you have cared?”

“Yes,” Captain Fitzwilliam said, sharply. “I would have cared.”

Ted nodded, knowing it to be true. On one hand, a senior officer had to be prepared to send his subordinates to their deaths; on the other hand, the officer couldn’t afford to start sacrificing his men lightly, without due consideration. Captain Fitzwilliam probably didn’t know the names of the other pilots on the ship, but he would never take their deaths lightly.

“But there is no blame, unless we wish to assign it to the Prince himself,” Captain Fitzwilliam added. “We should go home, make a full report and let the Privy Council decide how best to reveal the news to the public.”

The XO leaned forward. “And Lopez?”

“I will speak to her,” Ted said. He’d given her some time off after she’d seen the posted lists of dead crew and pilots. “After that, none of you are to discuss the matter with her or anyone else who doesn’t already know about her… relationship with the Prince.”

“Admiral,” Captain Fitzwilliam said, “there are protocols…”

“Her life will be destroyed when — if — the media finds out about her relationship with Prince Henry,” Ted said, firmly. “We will not report their relationship to anyone, but the King himself. She doesn’t deserve to have her life ripped apart and put on public display.”

He paused. “Besides,” he added, “do the protocols actually apply when she didn’t know who she was dating?”

“I don’t know,” Captain Fitzwilliam confessed. “It is unprecedented.”

“Then we will assume they don’t,” Ted said. Whatever happened to everyone else, it was unlikely his career would survive. God knew there would be some very nasty allegations about the loss of two fleet carriers. “That is an order, which you may have in writing if you wish.”

“And what happens,” the XO said quietly, “when it gets out?”

She looked up at Ted, grimly. “Someone will have seen them together,” she said. “Someone will have noted that they booked a privacy suite together. Someone will put two and two together when the media reveals the truth and starts pestering the crew for interviews. And you know just how much they would offer for a bombshell like this, sir.”

“When it happens, if it happens, we will deal with it then,” Ted said. She was right, he knew, but Lopez didn’t deserve to have her life ripped asunder. “Until then, not a word to anyone.”

He cleared his throat. “I expect all of you to go through the records and write up a full report, which will be submitted to the Admiral’s Chest,” he said, referring to his secure datacore. “After that, we will put the matter to one side until after we return to Earth. Dismissed.”

He watched them leaving the compartment, then stood and headed out of the hatch himself, down towards the lower sections of Officer Country. The Admiral’s staff were entitled to cabins, although he’d been careful not to assemble more staffers than he actually needed, unlike some Admirals. But then, shipboard duty wasn’t quite the same as duty on the ground or the Luna Academy. There, he’d probably need more aids just to keep his appointments calendar.

The hatch in front of him was closed, firmly. He hesitated — as the Admiral, he had the right to enter his assistant’s cabin whenever he wanted — and then pressed his hand against the buzzer. There was a long pause, long enough for him to start worrying, then the hatch hissed open, revealing a darkened room. Ted reached for the light switch and tapped it, bringing up the lights. Lopez sat on her sofa, staring at nothing. She barely even seemed to acknowledge his presence.

“Janelle,” he said, quietly. For a moment, he felt utterly helpless. Comforting someone who had lost a loved one was never easy, but this was going to be worse. He had to tell her the truth as well as comfort her, knowing that the truth wouldn’t set her free. “Janelle, we have to talk.”

Lopez looked up, surprised — perhaps — by his use of her first name. Her eyes were bleary, as if she had been crying. Ted didn’t blame her. Losing a loved one was always hard. If it had been up to him, he would give her a week of freedom from her duties and then talk to her. But somehow he suspected he didn’t have the time. She needed to come to terms with what he intended to tell her.

“Admiral,” she said. “I…”

Ted looked her up and down, then sat beside her. “We have to talk,” he said. “I’m sorry for your loss, but we have to talk.”

He found himself tongue-tied, again. “Charles Augustus… wasn’t just Charles Augustus,” he said. She looked up, sharply. “He was a bit more than just another starfighter pilot.”

Janelle looked at him. “Your son?”

Ted shook his head. Why would anyone assume that Charles Augustus had been his son? If he had been, he wouldn’t have been allowed to serve under Ted’s command, no matter how many layers there were between him and his father. But it was far more serious than that…

“His real name was Henry,” he said, quietly. “Prince Henry.”

Janelle stiffened beside him. “No,” she said. “You’re lying.”

Saying that to an Admiral was grounds for court martial, or at least some thoroughly unpleasant duties, but Ted let it pass. She was upset, after all, and there were no witnesses. And he probably wasn’t handling it very well. He might have come to think of her as a daughter of sorts, but he had no real experience in handling children. There had been no son or daughter in his life.

“I wish I was,” Ted said. He wouldn’t have played such a joke on anyone for anything, no matter how much he disliked them. “You must have read his file, when you had a chance. It was rather thin.”

Janelle twitched, uncomfortably. “Why… why didn’t he tell me?”

“He wanted a normal life,” Ted confessed. “I believe he intended to tell you after we successfully escaped Target One, but he never had the chance.”

He paused. “How did you feel about him?”

“I liked him,” Janelle said. She started to shake, tears dripping from her eyes. “But how much of what I saw was a lie?”

“None of it, I believe,” Ted said, trying to comfort her. “But he didn’t tell you about his family. Or his title.”

He hesitated, then wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly while she cried. She had cared for Prince Henry, perhaps even loved him, although Ted knew that such relationships, forged in the heat of battle, rarely survived the test of time. The stress of knowing that death could come at any moment pushed people into bed together, but if they survived they sometimes discovered they’d made a mistake. And that happened without discovering that one person wasn’t quite who they claimed to be.

At least there’s no risk of pregnancy, he thought. They would both have had implants.

“It will get worse,” Ted said. “His death will unleash the hounds of hell, otherwise known as the reporters.”

She shuddered. Like him, she’d seen the reporters who had been embedded with Ark Royal’s crew during their previous mission. She knew just how awful they could be when they thought the public — or they, at least — had a right to know. And that had been when she’d been nothing more than a very junior midshipwoman. What would they be like when she was the lover of the dead prince?

“Don’t tell them,” she said. “Please.”

“I intend to tell no one, apart from the King,” Ted said. He had a feeling the Prince’s father deserved to know. Besides, covering it up completely probably wasn’t possible. “But if they find out…”

He shook his head. “It could be very bad.”

“Yes, sir,” Lopez said.

Ted carefully released her and stood. “Take the next few days off,” he said. They were still in alien-controlled space, but he suspected she would be useless in the CIC. “And…”

He took a breath. “If you need to talk to someone, you can always talk to me,” he added. “I’ll always have time for you.”

There would be talk if people noticed, yet there was no choice. It was rare for an Admiral to talk openly to his subordinate, but there was no one else on the ship she could confide in, not now. Did she even have friends among the crew? Most of the people she’d worked with while the carrier had sat in the Naval Reserve were gone now, promoted to other ships. And as the Admiral’s assistant, she was isolated from the newcomers.

“Thank you, sir,” she said, miserably.

Ted looked at her sadly, then walked out of the cabin.

“You’d think they’d be coming after us with everything they had,” Rose said.

Kurt nodded. One system had given way to another — the site of the previous ambush — yet the aliens hadn’t even tried to bar their way. Indeed, they’d almost seemed inclined to just let the humans go without further trouble. The pilots had speculated that the aliens were scared of the fleet — why not, after they’d pounded their way through several alien formations? — but Kurt suspected it was something else. And, when they found out the truth, he had a nasty feeling they weren’t going to like it.

“Let’s not be ungrateful,” he said. The crew had been working constantly to repair as much as they could of the damaged ships. If the aliens wanted to give them time to make repairs, the Admiral had said, why not let them? “We can find other uses for our time.”

Rose snorted. She lay naked on the deck, happy after a long bout of lovemaking that had cheered them both up after the shock of discovering just how many pilots had been killed in the fighting and the struggle to reintegrate the remaining fighters into a handful of squadrons. The French pilots, at least, seemed to be fitting in well, but many of them were badly depressed. It was hard to blame them after watching Napoleon’s sudden and violent death.

“Yes,” Rose said, as she rolled over and straddled him. “I suppose we can.”

Afterwards, Kurt remembered his children and wondered, bitterly, what had happened to them. Had Molly poisoned their minds against him? Or had she simply left them in the care of the hired help and vanished with… someone? Or… what? There was no way to know until they reached Earth. Absently, he wondered just how she would react to discovering that there was no more prize money. Would she be horrified, knowing that her new lifestyle was hardly sustainable, or would she demand that he continue to finance her anyway? Or what…?

“You’re thinking about the future again,” Rose teased. She leaned down to kiss his lips, then pulled herself off him. “Don’t. It’s bad habit.”

“I got it from spending too much time in the Reserve,” Kurt admitted. “But you should think about the future too.”

“I try to avoid it,” Rose said. “If I think too much about the future, I might not have a past.”

She was right, Kurt knew. Starfighter pilots tried to live every day as though it were their last day to live. For too many of them, since the way had begun, it had been their last day. If there was trouble in Sin City or one of the more… sedate places, chances were that there was a starfighter pilot at the bottom of it. The MPs made allowances. Sometimes.

“You may not be flying for much longer,” he pointed out. “What will you do then?”

“This is wartime,” Rose reminded him. “Do you really expect them to keep the three-year rule now?”

“No,” Kurt said, after a long moment. “But you’ll burn out, sooner or later.”

Rose stood, her bare breasts bouncing as she moved. “I’ll just go on like you until I run into a plasma bolt with my name on it,” she said. “And the future can take care of itself.”

She walked into the washroom. Kurt watched her go, admiring the muscles in her legs and buttocks, then stood and followed her. She was right. They might as well enjoy themselves while they could, because time would run out sooner or later. And when it did, they would die just as quickly as Prince Henry.

Ted half-expected trouble when they transited back into the Terra Nova star system. The aliens might have been able to rush a blocking force in place to stop them, even though it was just one transit from Earth. But instead, there was an alarming shortage of starships — human or alien — in the system. And the planet itself was emitting almost no radio emissions. Cold ice ran down his spine as he realised that something had happened while they’d been gone.

“Picking up a signal,” Lopez reported. She’d insisted on returning to duty two days after their talk, even though he’d been prepared to offer her a longer break. There was something harsh and cold in her voice, as if something had died in her along with her lover. Ted worried about her, more than he cared to admit. “They’re saying…”

She took a long breath. “Sir, they’re saying that Earth has been attacked,” she added. “The aliens were beaten off, but they inflicted huge damage.”

“Take us to the tramline,” Ted ordered. They’d have to get the full story from the First Space Lord, but it explained why the aliens had taken so long to respond to Operation Nelson. They’d launched their own operation at the same time! “Abandon stealth; best possible speed.”

Bitterly, he settled back in his command chair to wait.