The Trafalgar Gambit

Chapter Thirteen

“That was a major balls-up,” Kurt said, glowering at the assembled newcomers. Half of them looked as though they were going to start crying. “If the aliens had attacked us like that, you would all be dead. And so would the crew of this ship.”

He sighed, inwardly. Why was it a surprise, he asked himself sarcastically, that the trainee pilots had bigger egos than piloting skills? There was an old joke, after all, that if a pilot didn’t know who was the best pilot in the sky it sure as hell wasn’t him. But it couldn’t be tolerated, not now.

This was a bloody stupid decision, he thought, morbidly. But he still couldn’t see any workable alternative, save drafting pilots from the remaining home defence squadrons. And most of these pilots are going to end up dead when we first face the aliens.

“Get some rest,” he ordered, “then we will have a proper debriefing session and go through each and every one of your mistakes. In particular, you might want to think about the simple fact that there is no ‘I’ in ‘team.’ You are part of a team and if you can’t act as part of a team, you’ll be put on the benches and flogged. Dismissed!”

He watched them sidle out the room and sighed, bitterly.

“I don’t think you’re allowed to flog pilots,” Rose said, as soon as the compartment was empty. “There are regulations against making yourself or someone else unfit for military service.”

“It’s amazing what regulations permit, if you look at them in the right way,” Kurt said, shortly. Rose was the last person he wanted to speak to at the moment. “It’s semi-legal to put someone in an airlock and threaten to decompress it to teach them a lesson.”

Rose snorted, then strode over to the hatch and locked it. “We need to talk,” she said, turning to face him. She rested her hands on her hips as she glared. “What is wrong with you?”

Kurt started. “Wrong with me?”

“You’ve been moping around like a depressed donkey for the last week,” Rose snapped. “I think I’ve been doing a shitload of your work in getting those incompetents ready for battle and cleaning up their messes. You’ve barely been present at training sessions that don’t involve you personally and…”

She took a breath. “And you declined my advances over several days,” she added, her voice softening. “Kurt… what is wrong with you?”

Kurt stared down at his hands. He wanted to tell her… and yet he didn’t dare. But that, his conscience prodded, was a cowardly attitude. Her career was at stake too. Hell, for all he knew, the people who were blackmailing him had also made advances to her, although that would have been harder. He’d been the only one to leave the ship and go to Luna City. In hindsight…

His blood ran cold. In hindsight, how had the blackmailers known he was going to go to Luna City?

Rose took his hands and guided him towards a chair, then pushed him into it. His mind blurred, part of him remembering him kneeling before her and taking him in her mouth, part of him recognising her concern as friendly, rather than sexual. He wanted to cry, to lose control completely and start screaming at the bulkheads, but somehow he held himself under control. She didn’t deserve to watch him come apart at the seams.

“Kurt,” Rose said, quietly. “What happened on Luna?”

Kurt swallowed, then decided to be honest. “I was ambushed,” he said. “And blackmailed.”

Rose’s eyes suddenly went very hard. “Blackmailed with what?”

“Us,” Kurt said. “Our relationship. They said they’d tell the entire universe if I didn’t do as they said.”

Rose stood upright, letting go of his hands. “Shit,” she said, as she started to pace the compartment. “What else did they say?”

Kurt ran through the whole story from start to finish, then put his head in his hands. It was over. He’d ruined her life as well as his own. God knew it would have been smarter to desert and take her with him. Or perhaps…

“They say they have proof,” Rose said, slowly. “What proof do they have?”

“Footage of us… making love,” Kurt said. “They must have been spying on us for quite some time.”

“Or maybe they got lucky,” Rose said. “Where was the footage taken?”

Kurt hesitated, trying to place it. He should have studied it more carefully when Fred had waved it under his nose, instead of trying to recoil in horror and denial. If he’d taken the terminal and its compromising recording for himself… he thought hard, trying to recall the details. It had looked like a hotel room…

“The hotel we went to in Sin City,” he said, finally. “I think…”

Rose snorted. “Such footage can be faked,” she said, snidely. “How many times did you go to Sin City as a young man and fuck the latest entertainment star in a VR environment? I believe that fucking Princess Elizabeth is quite common among some of the younger generation of pilots. They just plug in the right simulation and fuck away.”

“The footage would be perfect,” Kurt reminded her. “They’d have everything just right, from your breast size to my hairy chest.”

“My breasts are a matter of public record,” Rose sneered. “I had to be measured for the flight suit, remember? Given sufficient access, it would be easy to come up with footage that would be practically perfect in every way.”

She walked back over to him and patted his shoulder. “It might seem bad,” she said, “but it isn’t a total disaster.”

“It is,” Kurt said. “The allegations will trigger another investigation, just like the one into Prince Henry’s death. They will uncover time we spent together, more than could reasonably be justified. And then they will put us on the stand and ask us if we were in a relationship…”

“We’re also heroes,” Rose said. She snorted. “Ok; they find out proof we’ve been fucking during our off-duty hours. They try to charge us with breaking regulations. The public crucify them. They’d be much smarter to ask us both to resign with honour and bury the entire scandal under the rug.”

“I wish I shared your optimism,” Kurt said. “The evidence could also make it suggest the regulations were bent for us. That would also be a political headache.”

He sighed. The British Aristocracy had learned, the hard way, just how dangerous favouritism — or even the appearance of favouritism — could be. Kurt and Rose might not be aristocrats, but they were heroes — and the appearance of letting them off lightly because of their heroism could cause the government a whole series of problems. It was a toss-up if the government would let them resign gracefully, throw them out on their ears or send them to a work crew in the worst-hit parts of the country.

“Let’s go through this,” Rose said. “Someone is trying to blackmail you. What do they want?”

She went on before he could say a word. “They don’t want money,” she continued, “or they would have demanded it before you left Earth.”

“I don’t have much,” Kurt said. “And money is practically worthless right now.”

“So whatever they want,” Rose said, “is more likely to be a major headache. Did they give you any specific orders?”

“Merely that I would receive a message,” Kurt said. “And that when I received the message, I was to go to the observation blister and… see who met me there.”

“That means they have someone on the ship,” Rose said, slowly. “Did they realise we were fucking during Operation Nelson — or earlier?”

“Or the newcomer is part of the ambassadorial party,” Kurt said. It hadn’t occurred to him that someone on Ark Royal had betrayed them. It should have, he knew. Someone had ratted out Prince Henry and Janelle Lopez, after all. “And whoever it is has a great deal of access in places that are meant to be secure.”

Rose sat down next to him. “So we have… three options,” she said, after a moment. “They’re reporters, they’re someone involved with the government or they’re interstellar spies.”

She frowned. “Reporters aren’t big on delayed gratification,” she added. “And besides, blackmail could open them up to all manner of interesting criminal charges. You and they might end up sharing the same cell. That leaves a government conspiracy or international spies. I’d lean towards the latter.”

“But if they were in the government,” Kurt objected, “they could make sure we were both jailed…”

“They also wouldn’t need to resort to blackmail to force you to do what they wanted,” Rose countered. “If they’re the government, why bother with blackmail when they could just issue orders? You’re not the Admiral. I don’t think they’d need something out of a Z-List Evil Government Conspiracy Theory Movie to get you to do whatever they wanted.”

She paused. “And that suggests international involvement. But for what?”

“They knew I was going to Luna City,” Kurt said. “How would they know that without having access to the naval datanet?”

“There’s no shortage of international officers at the Academy,” Rose reminded him. “And where else could you go for a short leave?”

Kurt frowned. She was right. There had been no shuttles to Earth, Sin City was closed and anywhere else would have consumed half of his leave time just getting there and back. Luna City was the only logical destination. And, given access to the city’s public access datanet, the blackmailers could probably have tracked him right up to the moment he entered the cafe and sat down. Fred might even have been hard on his heels.

“And there was a possibility you’d be summoned elsewhere too,” Rose added. “Weren’t you on the list of people to attend a conference on countering alien starfighter tactics.”

“I was uninvited,” Kurt said. “Too much work to do here.”

Rose wrapped her arm around his shoulder. “You have to go to the Admiral,” she said. “We have to go to the Admiral.”

Kurt stared at her. “But…”

“This is an international spy mission being carried out under his nose,” Rose said, flatly. “If you keep quiet about it, you’ll probably wind up carrying the blame for the whole affair — assuming, of course, that we survive. And if that happens, you and I will be lucky not to be put up against a bulkhead and shot. But if we help the Admiral catch the spies, we will be able to request a honourable discharge as a reward.”

“Your career will be destroyed,” Kurt said. He cursed himself under his breath. “Rose…”

“Shut up,” Rose said. “I’m a big girl. I made the decision to fuck you because I believed we would die soon and I didn’t want to die without feeling some human contact. If we’d stopped it then, it would probably have been fine. You could have gone back to your wife and I could have found someone nearer my own age. Instead… we developed feelings for each other.”

She poked him with her finger, making him wince. “You’re not a rapist,” she said, “and I am not a helpless victim. We got ourselves into this mess and we’re damn well going to do whatever it takes to get out of it with our skins and reputations intact. And if that means baring everything for the Admiral… well, we can do it. We don’t have a choice.”

Kurt shook his head, slowly. She was right, he knew, and if it had been just him at risk, he would have done so without a second thought. But his children were also at risk.

“And what will happen to them,” Rose asked when he said that out loud, “if they discover their father is branded a traitor? Because that’s what will happen if you surrender to blackmail and do as they tell you.”

She stood up, then pulled him to his feet. “Kurt, I know how you feel,” she said. “But you can’t let fear blind you, even if it’s for your children.”

Kurt sighed and leaned into her embrace. “How can you be so cold about this?”

“One of us has to be,” Rose said. She sighed. “You’re the one who taught me to consider a situation and evaluate it thoroughly if there’s no need to act immediately. And this situation needs to be considered carefully. They think they have you by the balls — and they’re right. That’s what’s stopping you from thinking properly.”

She gently pushed him away from her, then straightened. “Get yourself cleaned up in the head,” she ordered. “And then we will go see the Admiral.”

Kurt nodded, cursing himself once again. Perhaps they could have escaped notice completely if they’d broken off the affair after their first return to Earth. He was fairly sure there were at least three other couples who’d had an affair, then been separated by being assigned to different ships. But he had been stupid. No matter the problem with Molly, no matter the growing awareness that he and his wife were slipping and sliding towards divorce, he could have prevented himself from having an affair with a subordinate. There was always Sin City and its endless chains of brothels.

He stepped into the washroom and studied himself in the mirror. His face looked pale and wan, reminding him that he’d slept poorly for the last few days. He turned on the tap, poured water into the bowl, then washed his face thoroughly. It didn’t make him feel any better. His life was about to change, which was bad enough, but he’d also damaged his children’s lives…

“Come on,” Rose ordered. She looked presentable, surprisingly so. “There isn’t time for you to do your makeup.”

“Oh, be quiet,” Kurt grumbled. “Rose…”

Rose stopped and looked at him. “Yes?”

“I’m sorry,” Kurt said. “I…”

“I think we have already established it wasn’t entirely your fault,” Rose snapped. “It was me who made the first move, not you. Yes, you fucked up; I fucked up too. And now all we can do is make a full confession and take the consequences.”

“I can’t say I’m too happy with the stress tests,” Anderson said. “The modified Puller Drive is developing power fluctuations at odd moments.”

Ted studied the display, wishing he knew more about how the system actually worked. The math, he’d been told, was too complex for the average spacer. Even engineers only mastered the bare bones, although they knew the hardware inside out. Or maybe the boffins were just keeping it to themselves to ensure they weren’t subverted by someone from outside the system.

“I see,” he said. “What will this mean for us?”

“At best, we may have to replace the whole system when we get back home,” Anderson said. “At worst, we may lose the modified drive in the heart of alien territory.”

Ted swore. Humanity’s Puller Drive had been heavily limited, compared to the alien drive system. The ships had been modified after an alien system had been captured intact, but Ark Royal had never been designed to have her drive modified. If they lost the alien drive system, they would have to pick their way home — if possible — along a course that would be easily predicable. The aliens would have no trouble intercepting them before they could make it back to human space.

“That could be bad,” he said. If they had time, he would have ordered an immediate return to Earth. But that would have delayed the mission for weeks, perhaps months, and crippled the ship as they tore the drive housing apart to replace the drive. “Can you keep it in check?”

“I think so, but if we take another pounding the drive might come apart completely,” Anderson said. “It won’t be good, sir.”

“No,” Ted agreed. “It won’t.”

He looked at the starchart, thinking hard. The tramlines they needed to use to reach Target One were alien; they couldn’t be accessed without an alien-designed drive. But if they didn’t use them, they’d have no hope of reaching Target One without travelling through too many unexplored and potentially occupied star systems. They had to rely on a drive system that was on the verge of breaking down.

“Keep me informed,” he ordered, finally. “What about the other matters?”

“The sealed compartments have been assigned to the research teams,” Anderson assured him. “But we don’t have any idea what the aliens would consider acceptable quarters.”

“We know they like it hot and moist,” Ted said. The alien captives had been given temperature controls and shown how to use them. They’d been happiest, it seemed, in temperatures that made Australia seem cool. “Make sure you separate their system completely from our own.”

“Aye, Captain,” Anderson said. He reached out and rubbed the bulkhead. “The Old Lady will do her duty.”

Ted had to smile. He’d been assigned to Ark Royal because the Royal Navy hadn’t wanted the embarrassment of sacking a knighted hero. Anderson, on the other hand, had been assigned to Ark Royal simply because there was nowhere else for him. His skill with the outdated systems — to say nothing of jury-rigged spare parts from every interstellar power — wouldn’t fit on any of the modern carriers.

“I know she will,” he said. So far, there had been no sign of the aliens, but he was sure that would change. In their place, he’d picket the systems between Terra Nova and Target One, if only with a couple of starships. “I have faith in her.”

The hatch bleeped, then opened. Ted lifted his eyebrows when he saw both the CAG and one of his squadron commanders, looking like naughty children. He half-expected to see a Marine escorting them into the office. But they were alone.

“Admiral,” Schneider said. “We need to talk with you.”

Ted had a sudden sense of doom. “Very well,” he said. He nodded to Anderson, who picked up his terminal and left the compartment. “Talk.”