The Nelson Touch

Chapter Nineteen

“This system is clearly more useful to the aliens than the last,” Ted said. He looked up at the display, showing dozens of alien ships moving between three tramlines. There might be almost nothing in the system apart from the tramlines, but that alone made the system worthwhile. “And our target is here.”

“Assuming, of course, that the intelligence officers are correct,” Captain Atsuko said, pessimistically. “If the system is largely useless…”

“The attack on our ships proves that we have found something,” Shallcross snapped. “We must proceed, now. The aliens are no doubt already scrambling to reinforce their defences.”

“Almost certainly,” Ted agreed. He tapped the display. “They have had enough time, I think, to get a signal through to Target One. We must assume that they know we’re coming.”

He scowled. He’d feared encountering an alien fleet in this system, but they’d seen nothing apart from a handful of freighters or freighter-like vessels. If their drive systems hadn’t matched the signatures from Alien-1, he might have wondered if they’d stumbled into someone else’s star system. The freighters showed no evident concern about a marauding alien battlefleet within the system.

All they’d have to do is turn off their drives and go dark, he thought. We’d never be able to find them even if we were inclined to try.

“Then the advantage of surprise is lost,” Captain Atsuko said. “We should withdraw, now.”

“We have not come all this way to withdraw,” Bellerose snapped. The Frenchman’s image seemed to splutter with indignation. “Right now, we are behind enemy lines. Even if we pull out successfully, without encountering any other threats, the aliens will have all the time in the world to prepare a warm reception for the next fleet heading their way. We have to move now!”

“I agree,” Shallcross added. “This isn’t the time to turn back, Admiral.”

Ted saw both sides of the argument. They had a wonderful opportunity to knock the aliens back on their heels, if they managed to get to Target One in time. But, on the other hand, they had been detected… and they’d been very lucky that the aliens who’d sighted them hadn’t realised the full size of the fleet until it was too late. Target One would have, at best, nine hours before the fleet arrived… longer, of course, if the aliens managed to delay Ted’s passage through the single remaining star system. If the aliens managed to put a substantially greater force in the system before they arrived, the task force could be chopped apart by overwhelming numbers.

But the Royal Navy hadn’t earned its reputation by backing down when the odds looked too dangerous to proceed, particularly when there was no strong evidence that the odds were badly against them.

“No, it isn’t,” he said, quietly. “We have to proceed.”

He looked from face to face for a long moment, then back at the display. “The aliens will, I hope, assume that we don’t know which tramline leads to Target One,” he said. “I want to dispatch one squadron of frigates to head directly to Tramline Two, escorted by a number of drones that will pretend to be our ships. The aliens were fooled by drones before; we can test them again, should the enemy enter this system in force. In the meantime, the remainder of the fleet will head towards Tramline Three, following a slightly elliptical course. We can at least try to hide our course as much as possible.”

“Too many unknowns,” Fitzwilliam muttered, too quietly for anyone but Ted to hear.

“Once we enter Target One,” Ted continued, “we can draw up a plan of attack.”

He paused. “I understand the risk we’re taking here,” he added. He wasn’t surprised that at least one of his subordinates had doubts about the wisdom of their planned course. “But we are short of options. There is no time to probe Target One long enough to sniff out every last trace of enemy presence. We have to move fast.”

“Yes, sir,” Shallcross said. “We have enough firepower to make the aliens regret tangling with us.”

Ted nodded. “Good luck to us all,” he said. “Dismissed.”

He watched until all the images had vanished, then turned to look at Fitzwilliam. “Too many unknowns?”

“Yes, sir,” Fitzwilliam said. “Did the aliens track us leaving the last system? If so, they know roughly where we arrived in this system. What are they going to do about it? Are they going to be fooled by our diversionary operation or are they going to refuse to take the bait, if they suspect it is bait? Or will they just refuse to take it anyway?”

Ted nodded. If the aliens knew that humanity knew that Target One was a very important system, they were unlikely to move any defences away from it. But even if they didn’t know that the humans knew, they were still unlikely to weaken the system’s defences, not when the humans could easily take it into their heads to explore Tramline Three as well as Tramline Two. Far too much depended on just too many unknowns. What sort of reinforcements, he asked himself, could the aliens expect and from where? They might have an idea, now, of how the tramlines bound alien-ruled space together, but they still knew almost nothing about the alien society itself. Where did they consider important enough to be defended at all costs?

“We have little choice,” he admitted. “We need to proceed now.”

“We’re as ready as we will ever be,” Fitzwilliam confirmed. “All we have to do is get across the system and through the tramline before they send reinforcements after us.”

“Yes,” Ted agreed. A thought struck him and he looked over at Lopez. “Detach two frigates with orders to move ahead and probe the tramline. I want as much intelligence as possible before the main body of the fleet arrives.”

“Aye, sir,” Lopez said.

“With your permission, Admiral, I will get back to supervising my crew,” Fitzwilliam said.

Ted nodded, never taking his eyes off the display. The aliens were still apparently unaware of the human presence, although it would take time for them to notice the decoy fleet. But if someone in the previous system had sent a warning… he shook his head, bitterly. Fitzwilliam was right, he knew. There were just too many unknowns.

“We found a few chunks of debris, but not much,” Anderson said. “Our best guess is that the alien overloaded his plasma cannons before ramming the hull.”

James nodded. Ark Royal’s solid state armour was a bitch to remove if repair work was necessary, he knew; it was one of the reasons why modern carriers were much more lightly armoured. It might have saved the carrier’s life — and the lives of all her crew — but it was also a major problem to repair.

Beside him, Commander Amelia Williams looked annoyed. “I assume it can’t be repaired without a spacedock?”

“Not completely, no,” Anderson said. “We’d really need to take off the entire segment of armour, which would mean cutting a large chunk of the hull loose, then replacing it with another piece of armour. Until very recently, they didn’t make it like that anymore.”

James gave him a sharp look. “But what can you do now?”

“We’re rigging up additional armour — lighter armour — to seal the gash and provide a limited amount of protection,” Anderson said. “However, I’d prefer to abandon this section of the ship altogether, sir; I couldn’t offer any guarantees about how well the replacement would hold when the ship comes under attack. The wankers might know where the hull is weak and target it directly.”

“Or simply ram a few more ships into our hull,” James muttered. It was a recurring nightmare, although he’d figured the aliens would prefer to ram the landing bays or launch tubes, rather than the armour itself. On the other hand, he couldn’t deny that it had been effective. “Do whatever you can do in the time we have left.”

“Yes, sir,” Anderson said.

Amelia walked with him as they left Anderson and his repair crews to get on with it. “We’ve replaced most of the damaged blisters from our spares,” Amelia said. “But they’ll do it again, won’t they?”

“Blow them off the hull?” James asked. “They’ve discovered the tactic works, so they’ll do it again and again. We don’t really have many other options.”

He smiled. At least the techs had finally managed to replace most of Ark Royal’s older sensor systems with newer ones. There were far fewer problems in integrating their systems with the rest of the Royal Navy’s, let alone foreign systems. But it was still a minor headache for the engineers.

Given time, we’ll have everything standardised, he thought. He’d seen some of the five year plans for humanity’s next few generations of combat starships. And something interesting and unique will go out of the universe forever.

“I suppose not,” the XO said. She said nothing else until they entered Officer Country. “And our… guest?”

“Our pilot,” James said, flatly. “He appears to be doing fine. Other than that, I’m not paying close attention. He doesn’t need the scrutiny.”

She looked surprised. James understood; if something happened to Prince Henry, the fact he was serving under a false name wouldn’t be taken into account by the inevitable enquiry. The senior crew of Ark Royal could expect to spend years answering questions on Earth, no matter what had happened. He couldn’t blame the XO for being worried about her career, all the more so as she hadn’t known what was going on until Admiral Smith had briefed her personally. She’d been walking on a political minefield without ever knowing it.

Which was the point, James thought, morbidly. Who would treat him normally if they knew the truth?

“Take the bridge,” he said, before she could ask any more questions. “I have to tour the ship.”

“Aye, sir,” Amelia said. She still didn’t sound happy. “And make sure you get some rest too.”

James snorted. “We’re in a system with dozens of alien freighters moving from tramline to tramline,” he said. “The next one, unless intelligence has really dropped the ball, will lead us right into a major alien system. I doubt there will be any rest for me.”

Ted sat in his command chair, watching the display as the probes slowly signalled their findings back to the fleet. The aliens didn’t seem to have anything in the system, certainly nothing large enough to show up on the sensors, apart from a steady stream of freighters. It was humbling — and worrying — to realise that few human systems had quite the same level of activity. He couldn’t help wondering if the aliens truly did have a far larger industrial base than humanity,

And what does that mean for us, he asked himself, if they do?

Human history repeated the same lesson, over and over again. Victory went to the side that combined the will to win with staggering levels of firepower. When one side had the will and the other had the firepower, it tended to end badly. The aliens presumably had the will to win, so why hadn’t they produced a far larger war fleet? Or were they fighting multiple wars of conquest simultaneously? It seemed absurd, yet there were just too many things about the aliens that didn’t quite add up.

“You should sleep, Admiral,” Lieutenant Lopez said. “We won’t cross the tramline for another seven hours.”

Ted looked towards the decoy fleet, heading towards Tramline Two and making its presence very noticeable. A number of alien ships had gone dark when they’d picked it up, which Ted found oddly reassuring. At least it was a predicable reaction. But who knew what the aliens in the next system would do, when they saw the decoys coming their way? Or the aliens orbiting Target One?

Maybe we should have attacked New Russia instead, he thought. But we would still have been fighting on our territory.

“I suppose I should,” he said. “But I wouldn’t be able to sleep.”

He felt tired, he knew, almost too tired to sleep. And yet he knew she was right; he should sleep, if only to ensure that he was refreshed for the battle to come. If there were seven hours before they reached the tramline, he could sleep for six of them, shower, then return to the CIC in time to take in the data from the frigates he’d sent ahead of the fleet. He’d certainly feel a great deal better for it, he knew. It wasn’t as if he had years of experience at playing Admiral.

Maybe the Admiralty was right to have their doubts, he thought. They weren’t giving me command of a single ship, or even a squadron, but ships that belonged to several nations. A disaster would make Britain look very bad, even assuming it didn’t cost us the war.

Bracing himself, suddenly feeling very old, he rose to his feet. “Inform me the moment something changes,” he said. “No; wake me in five hours, when the first of the frigates should make its return. I’ll need to see the results as soon as possible.”

“Aye, sir,” Lopez said, quietly.

Ted nodded to her, then stepped through the hatch and walked down to his cabin. It was odd, given how large and comfortable it was, but he’d barely spent any time inside the compartment since he’d returned to his ship. No, he reminded himself sharply; James Fitzwilliam’s ship. Whatever else he was, Admiral of the Fleet, Hero of Earth, he was no longer the commanding officer of Ark Royal.

He’d never been much of a packrat — naval training discouraged any form of hording early on, before a prospective officer could claim a large cabin — but the compartment was almost completely bare. A large picture of Ark Royal, painted before she was placed into the naval reserve, hung on one bulkhead, a painting of a brown-haired girl hung on another. Ted had never bothered to figure out who the girl was — the painting had been left there by the last Admiral to fly his flag on Ark Royal, nearly sixty years ago — but he hadn’t been able to bear to take it down. Now, though, it was a reminder that his life was almost as empty as the cabin.

He settled down on the chair and looked around. There were no traces of family life, nothing to imply that he had anything apart from the carrier herself. He’d never married, of course; he’d never even had a long-term relationship. There had been a handful of books in his old cabin, but he’d taken them down to Earth when he’d been recalled and never looked at them again. And even the ship’s logbook was now placed in Fitzwilliam’s cabin. It wasn’t his any longer either.

You wanted a naval career, he told himself, firmly. And you got it too.

He knew he should get up, undress and go to bed, but he was too tired to care. Instead, he just closed his eyes and allowed sleep to take him away from the war.

It felt odd, Kurt knew, to sleep on his own. Certainly, he hadn’t been able to share a compartment with Rose at the Academy, any more than he could do it on Ark Royal, but it still felt strange to have a bed to himself onboard ship. The soundproofed compartment was utterly quiet, save for the faint hum of the starship’s drives. There were no snoring from other pilots, no grunts and gasps as his comrades fought for sleep… nothing at all. It was somehow very hard to sleep.

Gritting his teeth, he sat upright and swung his legs out of bed. There was no point in trying to sleep, not when he wasn’t sure of why he couldn’t sleep. The mischievous part of his mind hinted he could call Rose for some activities that were not technically permitted by regulations, but he knew it would be foolish and insanely stupid. Instead, he walked over to his terminal and sat down. Moments later, he had the last set of messages from the kids up in front of him. Watching them made him feel strangely guilty, as if he had abandoned them in his heart as well as physically.

There was no choice, he told himself. I had to go to the war.

It had seemed so simple, once upon a time. There was no real threat of war, certainly nothing that would force the Royal Navy to recall all of its reservists. They’d always assumed that any conflict would be restricted to a few exchanges of fire before the diplomats hammered out peace terms. He’d assumed that he could take the small salary for being in the reserve without ever having to go back to the Royal Navy.

But he’d been wrong. He had been recalled. And his relationship with his wife, already rocky, had suffered for it. How could he blame her, really, for seeking comfort elsewhere when he’d certainly done the same? But he hadn’t thought he’d ever make it home…

Shaking his head, he opened the reply function and started to record yet another message for the kids. It would go home with one of the fast frigates, after Target One was attacked and — hopefully — captured. They’d see him… and, if he was unlucky, they’d see his final message too. He’d always thought the damn things were morbid as hell, but he could see the wisdom in recording one. The kids needed him to tell them he loved them, even after he died.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, finally. They were too young, really, to know their parents were separating. Even if they never formally separated, Kurt knew they’d parted too far to be reconciled. Maybe it would be better if he died at Target One. “I’m truly sorry.”