He stood and poured himself a drink, watching the red liquid splashing into the glass. It looked too thin to be blood, but he couldn't help shuddering at the accidental symbolism anyway. The pilots, too young to appreciate the navy’s traditions, might not realise that it wasn't intended to be blood. Normally, back home, they would be drinking alcohol and nursing hangovers the following day. That couldn't be allowed on the navy’s starships, particularly during wartime. He shook his head as he carried his drink back to the front of the compartment. He had to speak, he had to tell them what they needed to know, but the words refused to come. What was he meant to tell them?
They don’t even have bodies to bury, he told himself. Captain Shields had promised a proper funeral, once they were well clear of the captured ship, but it wouldn’t be the same. Everyone would know that the coffins they were launching into space were empty. They can’t even say goodbye.
He took a long breath, then placed his glass on the stand. “Today, you saw the elephant for the first time,” he said, ignoring the fact that Monica and the reservists had faced death before. “And it cost the lives of seven of your comrades.”
It was hard not to wince at the thought. Seven pilots ... that was almost an entire squadron. Thankfully, the losses had been scattered over the five squadrons that had engaged the enemy, but still ... it wasn't as if they were going to get any replacements in a hurry. He’d already put out a call for anyone on the carrier who might have experience flying starfighters, but - so far - no one had come forward to volunteer. It was starting to look as though Invincible didn't have any spare starfighter pilots. That was an oversight that would need to be corrected when they returned to Earth. It wasn't uncommon for older pilots to transfer into command or engineering tracks when their reflexes started to fail. He’d have to check the personnel files.
“I know how you feel,” he added, after a moment. “You are shocked to discover that death can come for any of you, for all of you. You are no longer immune to death. Your comrades died today, but it could easily have been any one of you. This engagement was not fought in the simulator. There will be no resurrections for the dead pilots, not this time. They are gone and they will not be coming back.”
He allowed his voice to harden. “Many of you will dwell on their deaths. You will ask yourself, time and time again, if there was anything you could do to stop it, to save them from certain death. And the answer will always be no. There is always an element of chance in starfighter combat. You will face death yourself, time and time again. And, eventually, your time will run out. It already ran out for your comrades.
“I wish I had something more cheerful to tell you. I wish I could say something that would make it all better. But there is nothing. All you can do is remember them, remember how they died, and strive to make sure that their deaths are not in vain. You must learn from what happened to them and apply the knowledge to save your own lives. It will not be long before we engage the enemy again.”
He paused and studied them, wondering how the message was sinking in. Some of the pilots looked angry, angry at him for telling them something that they had to consider heartless as hell itself. He didn't really blame them, even though he was talking about the cold realities of life as a starfighter pilot. They didn't want to hear what he had to say. But there was no choice. They had to hear him. And they had to take what he said to heart.
“I know you don’t want to hear this,” he said, putting his thoughts into words. “But you have no choice. You have to understand the truth.”
There was a long pause. “Stand,” he ordered. “And raise your glasses.”
He looked at the photos, feeling another stab of guilt. Had he failed the dead? Had there been lessons he could have imparted, lessons that would have saved their lives? He knew he’d done everything he could, but he didn't really believe it. If he’d said something else ... what could he have said? He’d done everything he could and ... and it hadn’t been enough to save their lives. He stood, feeling older than his grandfather. The sense that he’d failed was almost overpowering.
“I ask you to remember Flying Officers Samra Alibis, Christopher Higgins, Luis Cordova, Andrew Gabion, Peter McCray, Elspeth MacDougall and Ted Brannan,” Richard said, quietly. He didn't know them as well as he felt he should, now. Samra he’d met - and talked to, privately - and Luis Cordova had been an immigrant from Catalonia, but the others were practically strangers. “They flew beside you. They fought beside you. And they died beside you. The pain of their loss will fade, in time, but I want you to remember them. They died so that you might live.”
He paused, again, then lifted his glass to his lips. “Remember them.”
The mocktail tasted odd, almost a child’s drink. He had to smile, remembering the time he’d gotten in real trouble - as a young man - for drinking below the legal minimum age. He’d been lucky to avoid a trip to a borstal, although - as it had been his first offense - the police had settled for a sharp warning in his record instead. He took another sip, wondering if he should seek out the still after all. But turning up drunk when he was meant to be on duty would probably get him executed. The captain would pitch him out the airlock with his bare hands.
“Remember,” he repeated.
He gave them a moment to finish their drinks, then leaned forward. “Does anyone want to say anything?”
There was a long pause. “I liked Samra,” Flying Officer Roger Nye confessed. “We went through the Academy together. She was paired up with me more than once. People gave her a hard time because of her skin, but ... I never doubted her. She was fun, once you got to know her. I ... I was tempted to ask her out. I would have done, if we’d been in different squadrons.”
And you never thought about going to Sin City for a weekend, Richard thought, although - if he’d taken someone to Sin City - he wouldn’t have bragged about it. Sin City was tamer these days, after the original Sin City had been smashed during the Tadpole attack on Earth, but what happened in Sin City stayed in Sin City. Or did you go and, afterwards, kept it to yourself?
“Peter and I were old friends,” Flying Officer Stanley Hammond said. “We went through school together, then ... we both applied to join the military. Neither of us were expecting to be streamlined into starfighter training, but ... the aptitude tests said we’d be good at flying starfighters. And we thought they were right.”
He met Richard’s eyes. “You were right too, sir,” he said. “We thought we were invincible. I always had the impression that we’d die together. And yet, we were wrong. He’s dead and I have to carry on, somehow. I have to write to his parents and ...”
“I have to write to them first,” Richard said. “Make sure your letter goes into storage. It won’t be sent until after the family is informed.”
He winced. Peter McCray’s family would get a letter from him, a letter from the captain and - probably - a letter from McCray’s training officer on the moon. Op Minimise would be in full effect to make sure that the family were informed before the media picked up on the death and broadcast McCray’s name far and wide. But McCray wouldn’t be the only person to die. If a battleship or carrier was taken out, thousands of people would die. The media wouldn't overlook that. He still had nightmares about the First and Second Interstellar Wars. It had been all too clear - too clear - that his father could die at any moment ...
“Yes, sir,” Hammond said. “I understand.”
“Elspeth used to joke that she’d been named after the princess,” Flying Officer Gavin Patterson commented. “I thought she was joking until I met her parents. They were - they are - absurd royalists. Their house was covered with tat from the Royal Wedding, everything from expensive mugs to paintings of the king and his family. They even had a rare painting of Prince Henry. I never understood them.”
Richard shrugged. He’d sworn an oath to the king, years ago, but it had been more to the monarchy itself than the person sitting on the throne. He didn't really like - or admire - what he’d he
ard of Princess Elspeth, although her brother had managed to forge a career for himself that was largely independent of the Royal Family. It was ironic, he supposed, that the man who’d proven himself worthy of the throne had taken himself out of the line of succession. Richard had no doubt he could have followed Prince Henry to the very gates of hell itself.
“They like the Royal Family,” he said, finally. “And I hope they understand that their daughter died in the kingdom’s service.”
He listened as the other pilots shared their stories. Some of them were dramatic, some were funny ... a couple were sad, even though Richard had thought they were better not shared for a while. There would be time for a proper wake on Earth, once they were safe from enemy attack ... if, indeed, they managed to make it back home. He didn’t like their chances if they ran up against the enemy fleet. A knife-range engagement would end with Invincible being unceremoniously blown out of space.
We’ll just have to keep avoiding them, he told himself. He smiled at the thought. It wasn't going to be easy. Who knew what they’d encounter in the next system? And when we find out everything we want to know, we can come back with an entire fleet and blow hell out of them.
“I want you to remember what we said here, now,” he said, once the stories were finished. “And remember our fallen comrades. And - also - remember that you are not invincible.”
He allowed his eyes to sweep the room. “Dismissed,” he said. “Squadrons three and five are to remain on alert. The remainder of you ... get some sleep. You’ll need it.”
“And no hangover tomorrow,” Monica added. “If any of you have any illicit alcohol, believe me. You’ll regret it when we catch you.”
Richard watched them go, then gave her a sharp look. “Do they have any illicit alcohol?”
“Not that I know about,” Monica said, with an expression that suggested butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. “But you know as well as I do that someone could easily have brought alcohol onto the ship or purchased it from Petty Officer Gordon in Engineering.”
“I bloody well hope not,” Richard said. Technically, naval officers had no right to privacy - and no expectation of the same - but he was damned if he was searching private lockers without a very good reason. The pilots would be pissed even if the search was technically legal. “And if you find out that someone has alcohol, I expect you to tell me.”
Monica lifted her eyebrow. “You don't want to rely on their common sense?”
“They have common sense?” Richard grinned at her, humourlessly. “How long did it take us to develop common sense?”
“Only a year or two,” Monica said.
“It’s the training,” Richard said. “It’s designed to make it impossible to actually develop common sense. Probably because someone who had common sense would think twice about flying a starfighter into combat.”
“You’re in a morbid mood,” Monica said. She looked pensive, just for a second. “Did their deaths affect you that badly?”
“Not their deaths so much as the remaining pilots,” Richard admitted. “They know they’re not invulnerable, now. It's going to cost them.”
“They’ll get over it,” Monica said, briskly. She met his eyes, meaningfully. “You got over it, didn’t you?”
“I didn't let myself get close to any of my pilots,” Richard said. It struck him, suddenly, that Monica was the closest thing he had to a friend on the massive carrier. Starfighter pilots were not encouraged to make friends with anyone outside their compartment. “And I told myself that deaths weren't ... important. But now ...”
He shook his head. “Did I do alright?”
“I think you laid it on a bit thick,” Monica said. “But you told them what you had to tell them, what they had to know. I dare say some of them won’t forgive you in a hurry. A couple may even come to hate you.”
“As long as they behave themselves, I don’t care,” Richard said. He’d heard stories of starfighter pilots who’d pranked their commanders, but any one of his pilots who thought it was a good idea to prank him would wind up wishing he’d never been born. Richard considered himself to be a fairly tolerant man, but there were limits. “How did you learn to cope?”
“I just kept telling myself to carry on,” Monica said. She learned forward until her lips were almost brushing his. “Where there’s life, Richard, there’s hope.”
She kissed him, very lightly, then stepped backwards. “I’m due to take command of the next shift,” she said. “I’d better get some sleep.”
Richard felt his heart begin to race. His body was suddenly insistent on reminding him just how long it had been since he’d slept with anyone. He’d hoped to have time to visit Sin City - or a brothel - during his shore leave, but he simply hadn’t had time. Instead, he’d just had to make do. He wanted her suddenly, he wanted her so much it hurt. And yet, she was his subordinate. He couldn't sleep with her. There were limits to how far the rules could be bent, even for pilots.
No one would care if we were discreet, he thought. That was true. But it wouldn’t be long before everyone found out the truth.
He smiled at her, rather wanly. “Go get some rest,” he ordered. “We’ll go through the records tomorrow.”
“I’m sure they’ll enjoy it,” Monica said. She looked surprisingly flushed. He wondered, suddenly, if she’d expected him to chase her. “I know I’ll enjoy it.”
“You just like rubbing people’s noses in their mistakes,” Richard charged. “But you’re right. It does have to be done.”
He winced in pain. They’d have to discuss what mistakes had gotten Samra and the others killed, if they had made mistakes. It would be easier for the pilots to accept that their dead comrades had done something stupid, rather than having done everything right and still being blown out of space. It simply wasn’t fair to do everything right and still lose. But the universe wasn’t fair. He’d come to terms with that years ago.
“Yes,” Monica agreed. “It does.”
Chapter Seventeen
“So tell me,” Stephen said. “Precisely what are we looking at?”
“A biological computer network, combined with pieces of hardware,” Doctor Sana Thompson said. She sat in his ready room, an untouched cup of tea beside her. Doctor Tisane sat next to her, drinking Panda Cola. “It's really quite a brilliant piece of work.”
Stephen frowned. The image in front of him was ... odd. He was no computer expert, but he couldn’t help thinking there was something ramshackle about the whole arrangement, as if the person who’d put it together had drawn supplies from a dozen different sources. He hadn’t seen anything like it outside the independent asteroid colonies, which did purchase obsolete equipment from the Great Powers and refurbish it for practical use. The virus, it seemed, felt much the same way.
“It doesn't look brilliant,” he muttered, taking a sip of his tea. The Royal Navy believed in simplicity - and the alien computer network was anything but simple. “Explain it to me, in plain English. Please.”
Sana smiled, as if she’d been waiting for the question. “As near as we can tell, they took nine computer cores - from at least three different races - and plugged them into a datanet that used the virus itself as an interface to link the cores together. The bioneural network seems to have had a considerably greater degree of efficiency than ours, although it is hard to be certain as the biological material has degraded quite badly over the last week. Our networks would certainly not be able to handle the different cores without a great deal of improvised modification. I wouldn’t care to try to take the network into combat.”
Stephen frowned. “Nine cores, from three different races?”
“We think so,” Sana said. “The cores seem to have been designed by people who had three different ways of looking at the world. Our cores could, at a pinch, be installed on an American or Russian starship, but these cores were incompatible with most of their fellows until the virus started linking them together. It’s really quite frightening, sir. The
virus could presumably do the same to any captured human core.”
“Presumably,” Stephen echoed. The Royal Navy’s crews had strict orders to destroy their datacores if there was a reasonable possibility of the cores falling into enemy hands, but anyone who had served in space knew it wasn’t always possible. And there was the question mark hanging over Dezhnev’s fate. “This is starting to sound worse and worse.”
Sana took a sip of her tea. “We have been trying to hack the cores, sir, but even our best hackers are having trouble devising translation software. The people who built the cores simply didn’t share most of our assumptions about how computer systems should be put together and programmed. It may be a very long time before we manage to draw useful data from them.”
“If at all,” Doctor Tisane said. “We may find it impossible to relate their datafiles to anything we can use.”
“Perhaps,” Stephen agreed.
He frowned, again. The Tadpole computers had eventually been cracked - setting off a whole new wave of innovation in the process - but, from the classified reports he’d read, even extracting visual data had been a pain in the ass. The Tadpoles had used visual data, just like their human counterparts, but they’d combined it with sensory data humans weren’t designed to understand. It had been hard enough to download copies of their starcharts and they’d been almost purely visual data. The virus was far more alien than the Tadpoles and, for all he knew, had stored classified data within its bioneural matter. There might be little of value within the captured cores.
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