Ark Royal (23 page)

“We have ours too,” Ivan said.  “We have to get down to the surface before they react to our presence.”

“We understand,” Charles said.  It was going to be tricky, even if the alien sensors were no better than human sensors.  Entering a planet's atmosphere would leave a trail a blind man could spot.  The aliens could simply track them to their destination or intercept them in flight.  “You will have all the support we can muster.”

Ivan grunted.  “Perhaps you should shoot those reporters out of missile tubes,” he grated.  He muttered a handful of Russian words Charles recognised, then slipped back to English.  “They are pains in the buttocks.”

“You never spoke a truer word,” Charles said.  Royal Marines were discouraged from talking to the press, which hadn't stopped the assholes from badgering him and his men for interviews.  It wasn't as if they had anything useful to say – or even anything newsworthy.  “I will speak to the XO and ask him to tell them to leave you and your men alone.”

Ivan muttered something in Russian about Siberia and the proper punishment for inquisitive reporters, then tapped the display.  “The main body of settlement on New Russia is here,” he said, pointing to the main continent.  “We intend to land here.”

Charles gave him a surprised look.  Royal Marines were no strangers to long route marches, but Ivan was talking about walking several thousand miles to the settlements.  It would take weeks, even for the fittest soldiers in the human sphere.  He found himself eying the cyborg implants, wondering if they were far more capable than he had assumed.  But there was no way to know.

“There is a hidden military facility not too far from our planned landing zone,” Ivan explained, reluctantly.  “The planetary government will have relocated there, as planned, in the wake of the battle.  We will make contact with them, then proceed to gain a full report of conditions on the ground.”

“That makes sense,” Charles agreed.  He wondered, absently, if the Russians would ever have told anyone about the facility without being pressed, then decided it didn't matter.  It wasn't as if British secrets were shared openly either, although he knew that the other human powers had parsed them out.  “How do you plan to get down to the surface?”

There was a long awkward pause, long enough to make Charles wonder if the Russians really
did
have a plan – or if they were merely playing it by ear.

“That,” Ivan admitted finally, “is where we need your help.”

***

Ted had been right, he knew, when he'd told the reporters that military service was mostly boredom, broken by moments of screaming terror.  Knowing was half the battle, as the saying went, yet it wasn't that much help.  In a sense, he realised now, he'd been spoilt by spending most of his career as the commander of a starship held in the reserves.  It had been simple enough to arrange for bottles of booze to be shipped to him from Earth or even made a brief visit to Sin City or another Luna settlement.  The Admiralty had paid so little attention to
Ark Royal
that he could have turned her into a spacefaring gambling palace and they would never have noticed. 

But now, alone and isolated, Ted couldn't help feeling the urge for a drink.  It mocked him, reminding him that he hadn't been able to work up the determination to smash his remaining bottles of alcohol ... or even to do more than insist that Anderson dismantled his still.  He could pour himself a drink, the voice at the back of his head insisted; he could pour himself a drink and take a swig and no one would ever know.

But it wouldn't stop at one glass
, he told himself, savagely. 
Would it
?

It wouldn't, he knew.  Once, he had finished one or two bottles of Anderson’s rotgut every day.  In hindsight, it was a minor miracle he hadn't managed to invalidate himself out of the Royal Navy.  It wasn't uncommon for ship-made alcohol to be effectively poison, if the brewer didn't know what he was doing.  If the Admiralty had been paying enough attention to realise that he was drinking himself to death ...

They knew
, his thoughts reminded him.  Someone had made note of his drunkenness and reported it to the Admiralty.  It had even been in his personal file. 
They just didn't care
.

Angrily, he paced over to the bunk and lay down, pulling the blankets over his head.  He felt too keyed up to sleep, too tired to remain awake.  There were pills he could take, he knew, but they tended to have unfortunate side-effects.  Instead, he closed his eyes and forced himself to mentally recite the regulations governing waste disposal on starships.  It was an old trick he’d learned at the Academy.  The tutors had sworn blind that it beat counting sheep.  Slowly, he fell asleep ...

And then the alarms went off.

Ted jerked out of bed as red lights flashed.  “Red Alert,” Fitzwilliam’s voice said.  “I say again, Red Alert.  This is not a drill.  All hands to battlestations.  Captain to the bridge.”

Cursing, his blood running cold, Ted keyed his bedside console.  “Report,” he snapped.  “What’s happening?”

“Incoming alien starfighters,” Fitzwilliam reported.  There was a grim note to his voice that belayed any hope that it might be a sadistic drill.  “We’re under attack!”

Chapter Eighteen

James had privately expected to run into trouble long before they reached New Russia.  The aliens weren't fools, whatever else could be said about them, and they would have to suspect that some kind of counter-attack would be mounted as soon as possible.  Indeed, given the care the aliens had taken in mounting their invasion, it was unlikely that they would fail to seal the backdoor.  Or, at least, to hide picket ships in human systems.

“I’m picking up forty-seven alien starfighters, advancing towards us on attack vector,” Farley reported.  “They’re not even
trying
to stealth themselves.”

“Maybe it’s a diversion,” James said.  Where
was
the Captain?  He’d said he was on his way.  “Launch all starfighters, then order four squadrons to remain close to the flotilla and provide cover.”

He looked up as the Captain strode onto the bridge.  The older man looked tired, but not drunk or zonked out of awareness.  James let out a sigh of relief he hadn't realised he was holding, then rose to his feet and surrendered the command chair to his commander.  The Captain took it, nodded to him and then checked the tactical display.  A second flight of alien starfighters was just coming into sensor range.

“Alter course,” the Captain ordered.  “Bring us about to face the threat, then launch a shell of recon drones.  I want to know where those starfighters came from.”

“They must have a carrier somewhere within the system,” James muttered.  “Unless they set up a hidden base.”

The Captain nodded.  “Seems an odd place to hide a carrier,” he said.  “Unless they saw us coming and deliberately set up an ambush.  Why not?  We did it to them earlier.”

James looked down at the display, silently weighing up the potential vectors.  Just how much endurance did the alien starfighters have?  There was no way to know, which meant any estimates of the location of their carrier were nothing more than guesses at best.  For all they knew, the alien starfighters could travel for hours before needing to replenish their supplies.

“If they found us here, they have to know where we’re going,” James mused.  “They could have ambushed us at New Russia instead.”

“True,” the Captain agreed.  On the display, the first squadron of alien starfighters was breaking up, skimming along the edge of the flotilla.  “Go to the CIC and take command there.  If we lose the bridge ...”

James nodded and left the compartment.  Outside, much to his astonishment, he ran into a pair of reporters.  Were they actually trying to sneak onto the bridge during a battle?

“Get back to your quarters,” he snapped.  There was no point in trying to show them to the secondary bridge, not now.  “Get back there or the Marines will escort you to the brig.”

The reporters hesitated, then fled.

***

Kurt gritted his teeth as the starfighter was blasted out of the launch tube and into interplanetary space.  He checked the display briefly to make sure that the entire wing had launched from the carrier, then refocused his systems on the alien starfighters.  They seemed to be dodging and dancing at the edge of weapons range, rather than pressing the offensive against the human ships.  It made no sense to him until he realised that they were trying to get hard sensor locks of their own, pinning down the human ships.

“Alpha squadron, with me,” he ordered, visions of an alien mass driver running through his head. 
Ark Royal
was tough, but not
that
tough.  “We need to drive those bastards away from the carrier.”

He heard the acknowledgements as he led the flight towards the alien starfighters.  As before, they didn't seem as capable as his own starfighters, although that might not make a difference if there was enough of them.  The aliens hesitated, then ducked back towards the second flight of their starfighters, concentrating their forces.  Moments later, they turned and raced towards the outer edge of the flotilla.  Kurt switched his targeting systems to full power, then gunned his engine and roared towards them.  At such speeds, they entered firing range within seconds.

“Two targets down,” Alpha Three reported.  The computers had to handle the firing.  No human mind could handle an engagement at such speeds.  “One more broke off.  I might have winged him.”

Kurt doubted it.  Unless the alien starfighters were much tougher than they seemed, the merest kiss from a starfighter-mounted railgun would be enough to shatter them beyond repair.  Maybe the alien pilot had had a technical fault that had forced him to pull out and return to his carrier.  Kurt quickly checked the scanner, hoping to track the alien craft, but found nothing.  The alien had managed to evade before any of the humans could get a lock on him.

He yanked the fighter around and followed the aliens as they fell on the older starships like wolves on sheep, although
these
sheep were hardly defenceless.  A number of alien starfighters were picked off before they opened fire, but their weapons proved devastatingly effective.  They’d learned, Kurt noted absently, as he closed the range and opened fire; they were going after weapons and sensor blisters, rather than trying to simply punch through the hull.

“Clever bastards,” Rose observed.  She’d clearly made the same observation.  “Two more wings of alien starfighters have just come into view.”

Kurt swore.  Were there
two
enemy carriers out there?  Or had the aliens hidden a base somewhere within the system?  He took a moment to link into the live feed from the drones, but saw nothing.  Logically, if the aliens could stealth their starfighters, why not a carrier?

“Keep the bastards away from the ships,” he ordered.  Two ancient frigates were already effectively useless, their lost weapons making them easy prey for successive wings of alien starfighters.  “Alpha and Beta, fall in with me; Delta and Gamma, cover the ships.”

And hope it isn't a trap
, he thought, as he turned and accelerated back towards the incoming alien starfighters.  They’d have a few moments to tear a hole in their formation before the aliens blew past them ... unless, of course, they decided to stop and dogfight instead.  They might well realise that wearing down
Ark Royal’s
fighters would be a highly effective tactic ...

“They should have sent another carrier with us,” one of the pilots commented.

“As you were,” Kurt said, sharply.  He agreed, but there was no time for a discussion.  “Take them at a run.”

***

Ted watched, grimly, as the alien starfighters blew through the defending starfighters and lanced towards their targets.  They didn't seem to be going after
Ark Royal
in particular, which was odd ... and a reversal of military doctrine, at least as the aliens seemed to understand it.  He considered the problem as the flotilla closed up, the smaller ships linking their point defence systems together to give the aliens a nasty surprise, then decided that the aliens probably wanted to weaken his defences before going after the carrier.  It was the only answer that seemed to make sense.

“Launch a second shell of recon drones,” he ordered.  He'd wondered if he was looking at a diversion, but the aliens definitely seemed to be coming from the same direction.  “Send them out along the path taken by the alien starfighters.”

He looked back down at the display, silently calculating vectors.  But there were just too many unknown variables for the analysts to say anything for sure.  No matter how he looked at it, it was clear that the aliens had put some effort into their ambush.  But did they know that the flotilla was heading for New Russia?  They had to know ... unless they assumed that Ted intended to attack the alien homeworlds ...

A thought struck him and he pulled up the tramline chart, thinking hard.  The aliens had been careful – targeting a world that could pose a danger while ignoring ones that didn't – but Vera Cruz hadn't posed a danger.  It had been nothing more than an isolated stage-one colony world ... and its founders didn't have the resources to turn it into a centre of industrial production.  Had the aliens merely wanted to test their weapons against a defenceless target or had they something else in mind?  All they’d done, as far as Ted could tell, was give the human race a month’s warning, time to gather the defensive force that had been destroyed at New Russia.  Had
that
been the objective?