Fighting For The Crown (Ark Royal Book 16)

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  He forced himself to sit back and relax as Unicorn inched forward, maintaining a healthy distance between herself and the nearest alien ship. The virus had been extremely paranoid. Mitch rather feared there was an entire network of stealthed sensor platforms surrounding the planet. It was what he would have done. And there was no way they could be detected without bringing his active sensors online, ensuring their detection. He shrugged. As long as they were careful, it was unlikely they’d blunder into a trap.

  Hope for the best, he reminded himself. It wouldn’t be long now. And prepare for the worst.

  ***

  “I feel like the man who went fishing for minnows and wound up catching a whale,” General Sampan commented, as the report came to an end. “Do we have enough nukes to make a mark on that ... that mess?”

  “The BioBombs should spread rapidly in that atmosphere,” Admiral Li said. “Even if they don’t, the surface will be bombarded with thousands upon thousands of chunks of debris.”

  Susan nodded, tightly. Admiral Theodore Smith had fought a clean war. He’d insisted that the navy do everything in its power to refrain from committing atrocities, a tradition that had lingered until the virus’s true nature had been revealed. Susan wasn’t blind to the horrors unleashed on Alien-One, and the grim truth of what would happen as the BioBombs detonated, but she saw no other choice. There was no hope of coming to terms with the virus. It had to be destroyed, or every known and unknown intelligent race would be turned into soulless zombies.

  “At worst, we can push asteroids into the atmosphere ourselves,” Susan said. She felt a twinge of horror at how casually they were discussing genocide, then put it aside. “That isn’t the issue now.”

  She studied the sensor records, thoughtfully. There was no hint the virus knew the fleet had arrived, although she suspected that was meaningless. The enemy fleet wasn’t big enough to challenge hers in open combat. There was no reason to expect it to come charging through the tramline, blood in its eye. She wouldn’t stray from the planetary defences, not until reinforcements arrived. And yet, staying so close to the planet would make it easier for an attacker to take the defences apart from a distance. The virus was caught between two fires.

  Her fingers danced over the console, drawing up an operational plan. It looked remarkably slapdash, compared to the dog-and-pony shows she put on for politicians, but her audience was composed of military officers. They’d understand the harsh realities of war, including the simple fact they couldn’t plan for everything. The enemy had a say in how things would turn out. Susan stroked her chin as the plan unfolded. It was workable, she hoped. And, at worst, it would let them land one hell of a blow and break contact before the enemy could pin her ships down and destroy them.

  “We’ll depart in one hour,” she said, once the plan had been discussed, modified and passed to the staff officers for implementation. “If anyone has any problems, I want to know about them now.”

  There was a pause. The fleet had recovered, mostly, from the jump shock. A handful of crewmen remained in sickbay, but the remainder had either resumed their duties or bedded down for a few hours. They’d be ready to fight, when the fleet crossed the tramline. Or before. Susan’s eyes lingered on the near-space display. If she was in command of the enemy fleet, she would be screaming for help and reinforcements. How long would it be before the planet’s reinforcements arrived? Susan didn’t know. There was no way to know.

  “Dispatch scouts along the tramline, as planned,” she ordered, quietly. The survey ships had been reconfigured, when it became clear the war wouldn’t be over in a hurry. They could survive on their own for years, if they managed to avoid contact with the enemy. If worse came to worst, they could sneak back to the human sphere and report to their superiors. “If there are any enemy ships within one or two jumps of our position, I want to know about them.”

  Her eyes hardened. “Admiral Li, I want the fleet train to sneak into cloak as soon as we start to move,” she added. “They are to remain hidden until the battle is decided, one way or the other.”

  Li saluted. “Yes, Admiral.”

  Susan grimaced. The fleet train was vitally important - and terrifyingly vulnerable. The freighters had been designed to keep pace with warships, and armoured as heavily as they could bear, but she had no illusions. They’d be sitting ducks if an enemy warship come into missile range. The virus would cripple her, if it took out the freighters. And it would cripple humanity’s transport network as well.

  All the unsexy details, she thought, with a flicker of amusement. The freighters might be ugly as hell, but we couldn’t fight a war without them.

  She sighed, inwardly. If the battle went badly, the fleet train would have to make its way home ... that wouldn’t be easy. Of course not. The freighters had cloaking devices, but they weren’t cutting edge ... she put the thought out of her head. They’d worked through all the contingencies while they’d been planning the operation. Her crews knew what they had to do.

  “Our priority is killing that industrial node,” she reminded them. “The enemy fleet is secondary to the node itself. Once the node is gone, we can either destroy what remains of the fleet or break contact.”

  She frowned. Her training insisted the enemy fleet was a priority target. It would take months, if not years, for the virus to replace the ships, if they were destroyed. And yet, she was all too aware that they weren’t fighting a conventional war. The virus had just too much industry for anyone’s peace of mind. It had to be weakened, before it steamrolled humanity and the allied races.

  And we’re going to be feinting at the fleet anyway, she thought. We can take a bite out of them, even if we keep the range open.

  “We can do it,” she said. Her subordinates were experienced officers. They didn’t need a pep talk. Her lips quirked at the notion. She still thought her high school’s team had lost the lacrosse game after the gym mistress had given them a pep talk that hadn’t been remotely peppy. “Good luck to us all. Dismissed.”

  She smiled, coldly, as the holographic images vanished. The die was cast ... but, in truth, it had been cast the moment they’d captured the alien catapults. That had been pretty much their last chance to back out ...

  “We can do it,” she told herself, as she stood and headed for the hatch. “We must do it.”

  ***

  “And that is the plan,” Bagehot finished. “Are you all clear on your roles?”

  Tobias gritted his teeth. He’d thrown up, badly, in the first seconds after the jump. He hadn’t been the only one. Marigold had been the only gunboat pilot with the presence of mind to run to the head, before expelling the contents of her stomach. Tobias wasn’t looking forward to returning to his bunk, after the mission. Bagehot had arranged for it to be cleaned, while the pilots braced themselves for combat, but it was going to stink. And the crew would probably make snide jokes. Again.

  Now, that’s not fair, he told himself. They stopped being snide when we proved ourselves.

  Marigold stuck up a hand. “Sir, what happens if they don’t take the bait?”

  “We go in anyway,” Bagehot said. “It is vitally important we take out the node.”

  Tobias nodded. He’d seen the sensor reports. The planet was covered in industry. He hadn’t seen anything so challenging since the final level of ... he snorted at himself. The real world was different. People actually had to pay for things. And yet, the virus could and did encircle a world in industrial stations. The projections suggested a truly insane output. The system, alone, might be able to outproduce the entire human sphere.

  Which raises the question, Tobias mused, of precisely why the virus hasn’t crushed us.

  He contemplated it, for a moment, as the pilots raised a handful of other issues. The virus could be expanding in all directions, waging war on multiple fronts simultaneously. Tobias had studied enough history to know that was suicide, although the virus might be powerful enough to do it. Or it might regard the war as an idle divers
ion rather than a life or death struggle. Tobias found it hard to believe, but looking at the sheer scale of the enemy system ... he shook his head. The plan was sound, he’d been told. Their part of it certainly was.

  And the rest relies on factors beyond our control, he thought. They’d gone over contingencies, but there was little to say. It would work - or it wouldn’t. If it doesn’t work, we back off and try again.

  “To your ships,” Bagehot ordered. “Good luck.”

  Tobias felt his stomach churn as they made their way to the gunboats. Lion was picking up speed, heading directly for the tramline. The remainder of the fleet was holding back, leaving the battlecruiser and her gunboats alone. Tobias felt abandoned, even though it was part of the plan. They had to get into position before the main body of the fleet arrived.

  “I feel wretched,” Marigold said, as soon as they were in the gunboat. “How about you?”

  “At least you threw up in the toilet,” Tobias said. He’d had a shower and changed his clothes and he still smelt vomit on his skin. He wasn’t sure who’d thrown up first, but the stench had triggered everyone else. “Do you think they’ll bill us for ruined uniforms?”

  “They’re designed to cope with blood,” Marigold reminded him. She took her seat, running her hand down the console. “I don’t think a little vomit is going to leave a stain.”

  Tobias nodded as the hatch closed. The gunboat came to life, the displays lighting up. Tobias checked their position - Lion was still ten minutes from the tramline - and then sat down. The straps had never felt quite so restrictive. They could have boarded their craft after the jump ...

  Hurry up and wait, he told himself. He wanted to stand and kiss her, but the smell would probably put her off him for life. It was funny how those details never made it into the books and films. He supposed they’d discourage people from joining the military. That’s the way it goes now. Hurry up and wait.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Transit completed, Captain,” Lieutenant Michael Fitzgerald said.

  “No enemy contacts detected,” Lieutenant Commander Sibley added. “There’s no hint they know we’re here.”

  Thomas kept his face impassive. He’d studied the reports, of course, but he hadn’t really believed them. Not emotionally, at least. Intellectually, he’d known the sensor records were accurate - it wasn’t as if Captain Campbell had made them up out of whole cloth - but it was hard to wrap his head around what he saw. A massive energy source orbiting a planet, another orbiting a gas giant ... the scale was beyond his comprehension. It was the sort of target, he conceded privately, that gave planners fits. How could they hope to do enough damage to matter before the defenders drove them away?

  Through cunning, he thought. And as long as we get a BioBomb into the planet’s atmosphere, we’ll do one hell of a lot of damage even if we don’t hit anything else.

  “Helm, take us into position,” he ordered, quietly. “Tactical, prepare to launch gunboats at the slightest hint we’ve been detected.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  The tension on the bridge started to rise as they crept into the alien system. Thomas studied the reports, feeling as if someone had hit him with a club. The system was just too large. He understood, now, what the Aztecs had thought when they’d looked up and seen the Spanish sailing towards them. They would have understood boats, even if they didn’t have ocean-going vessels, but the Spanish ships would have been an order of magnitude bigger than anything the Aztecs had ever seen. Earth’s massive industrial network had grown in fits and starts, each industrial node added to a greater whole. The virus’s system looked somewhat more organised.

  Thomas frowned as he ran his eye down the list of recommended targets. The analysts had picked out a number of possible weak spots, nodes that - if destroyed - would put a crimp in industrial production. There were one hell of a lot of them. The system might not have immense layers of redundancy, unlike Sol, but it was big enough that it probably didn’t matter. Thomas had the nasty feeling they were going to run out of missiles and ballistic projectiles before they ran out of targets. And the targets probably had point defence weapons emplaced to protect them. It was what he would have done.

  His eyes lingered on the alien ships, a handful of light codes holding station near the target. They were alert, but not very alert. Thomas suspected they were surrounded by a network of stealthed sensor platforms, allowing them to step their weapons and drives down without fear of being attacked at point-blank range. Lion could land a solid blow, if she caught them by surprise, but ... he pushed the thought out of his head. It would be too great a risk.

  Sweat beaded on his back as the seconds ticked on. They’d planned it carefully, in hopes of ensuring Lion was in position before the remainder of the fleet crossed the tramline, but there’d been too many variables. If they were caught ... the virus had to be aware of the risks, surely. It had to know humans could build catapults of their own, even if it didn’t know a handful of its own catapults had been stolen. Thomas felt alone, in the midst of his crew. It was hard to escape the sense they were being watched, that the virus was just biding its time before it reached out and took them.

  It doesn’t have mental powers, he told himself, sharply. It can’t read our thoughts and see us coming.

  The timer pinged a warning. They had only ten minutes before the main body arrived. Time enough, if the projections were accurate. Time enough ...

  “Launch the gunboats,” Thomas ordered. “And prepare to launch missiles.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  ***

  “We have our orders,” Marigold said. A dull clunk ran through the gunboat as she disengaged from the hull and set out on a ballistic trajectory. “We’ll be within engagement range in twenty minutes.”

  “Got it,” Tobias said. He checked the laser links automatically, all too aware of what would happen if they lost contact with the rest of the gunboats. They couldn’t risk turning on their radios to regain contact. “I’ll be ready.”

  He forced himself to stay calm as the tiny craft picked up speed. It was hard to escape the impression that Lion was throwing eggs at a solid wall - and that they were the eggs - but the odds were in their favour. They were certainly better than flying into a mass of enemy battleships, each one crammed to the gunwales with energy weapons and missile tubes. And yet ... his heart sank as he studied the enemy position. The planet was bristling with potential defence platforms. If each of the industrial nodes mounted a single point defence weapon ...

  “If we get out of this alive,” Tobias said, “where do you want to go?”

  Marigold snorted. “Bed.”

  Tobias nodded in understanding. They’d caught a short nap, after the jump, but it hadn’t been anything like long enough. He felt ... on edge, as if it was just a matter of time before he got tired. Sleep was important ... he put the thought out of his head. He wanted to distract himself, not ...

  “And when we get home,” he pressed, “where do you want to go?”

  “I don’t know.” Marigold turned and winked at him. “Where do you want to go?”

  Tobias thought about it. He’d like to take her to a fancy restaurant, if he’d had the money. Naval crewmen had an excellent chance to save money - the military paid their living costs - but he’d sent half of his wages to his mother, then spent the rest on their last holiday. And then ... he shook his head. He could never take her somewhere near his home, for fear someone would recognise him. Colin had told him that some of Colin’s former cronies were still assholes. They hadn’t changed at all.

  If they even joined the military in the first place, Tobias thought. It had taken him a long time to get over the idea of the military as nothing more than a pool for thugs, uneducated delinquents and losers. His father had died well, he supposed, but ... he’d left his family behind. I suppose some of them were too stupid even for mine-clearing details.

  “Perhaps we could try somewhere new,” he said. “Do you think th
e Jupiter run is still open?”

  “It might be,” Marigold said. “I ...”

  She broke off as the console bleeped an alert. “They’re launching missiles now,” she said, curtly. “They’ll be past us in fifteen minutes.”

  Tobias nodded, not trusting himself to speak. The system was glowing with sensor emissions. The gunboats would be detected, no matter how stealthy they were designed to be. Hell, the missiles were only a little smaller. His eyes narrowed thoughtfully as the display updated. If they were spotted ahead of time ...

  “We’ll be ready,” he said. “I thought the distraction was about to arrive.”

  “It’s probably already here,” Marigold said. “They just don’t know about it yet.”

  ***

  Susan watched, grimly, as HMS Thunderous plunged through the tramline and into the alien system. The mischievous side of her mind insisted it was a moment for dramatic music, perhaps something composed by an artist out of his mind on drugs; the remainder of her mind was all too aware she was breaking tactical doctrine that had been shaped in the fires of the First and Second Interstellar Wars. She could have crept into the system, making sure no one knew the fleet - as big as it was - was even there until she shortened the range and opened fire. Instead, she’d practically announced her presence to the entire universe.