Fighting For The Crown (Ark Royal Book 16)

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  But we have no choice, he thought. The virus cannot be allowed to recover them itself.

  He frowned. “It makes no sense.”

  Admiral Onarina’s holoimage turned to look at him. “What makes no sense?”

  Thomas flushed. He hadn’t realised he’d spoken out loud. “The artefacts were present on an infected world,” he said. “The virus practically turned the world into a single entity. Surely, it would have known the artefacts were there.”

  “They were some distance from its settlements,” General Sampan said. “Planets are big.”

  “Yes, General,” Thomas said. “But ... the virus infected the entire ecosystem. It would have known it was there, just as we would know we were wearing clothes. It could hardly not have been aware of the artefacts.”

  “A mystery for another time,” Admiral Onarina said. “For the moment ...”

  She cleared her throat. “We will proceed as planned, unless any of you have any objections. We need to put some distance between ourselves and the system before we cloak and try to sneak our way home. And we have to be ready for when we’ll meet the enemy.”

  When, not if, Thomas thought. Time is not on our side.

  “We’ll be ready,” General Sampan said.

  “I want my objections to go on the record,” Admiral Li said. “The artefacts should not be destroyed.”

  “I understand,” Admiral Onarina said. “But my orders stand.”

  Thomas nodded. Admiral Li had a point, but they had no choice. They could neither hold the system nor guarantee they’d be able to regain control before the virus found the artefacts and made use of them. If, of course, it could. It might have simply noted their presence and ignored them. Thomas found it hard to understand, but if the virus had found the artefacts incomprehensible it might just have chosen to leave them alone. And yet, the virus had vast brainpower ... more computing power, some analysts believed, than a full-scale datanet. It could reason its way to comprehension, if it was prepared to devote the time and effort to the study ...

  “I want to be ready to depart as quickly as possible,” Admiral Onarina said. “Dismissed.”

  The holoimages blinked out of existence. Thomas rubbed his eyes. The lack of sleep was starting to catch up with him. He’d had to leave Commander Donker in charge of the rearming - thankfully, the enemy hadn’t fired on his ship - so he could attend to his other duties, but he just had too much to do. It hadn’t been so bad during the last operation, when they’d been operating alone. Admiral Onarina must be having problems commanding an entire fleet, with hundreds of personalities brushing against each other ...

  The intercom bleeped. “Captain, fleet command has requested we embark a few dozen survivors from Mao,” Donker said. “They’ll be redistributed once the fleet is back underway.”

  “Then bring them onboard,” Thomas said. “Find them berths, if you can. If not, sort out bedding in the hold.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  Thomas stood, trying not to rub his eyes again. It was never easy taking on refugees from other ships. The Chinese crewmen would presumably speak English - every spacer was certainly supposed to speak English - but they wouldn’t be used to serving on a British vessel. There would be problems, even with the best will in the world. And Thomas would have to handle them without causing a diplomatic incident.

  We can do it, he thought, curtly. We have no choice.

  ***

  There weren’t many advantages to being a gunboat pilot, Tobias had discovered. They didn’t have the glamour of starfighter pilots and they didn’t have the long-term career security of crewmen and officers alike. Indeed, it was unlikely any of them would ever be considered for serious promotion. They just didn’t have the training to fit into a more demanding role on a starship. Bagehot had hinted there might be a CAG position in their future - they knew, intimately, what gunboats could do - but Tobias wasn’t convinced. He didn’t resent the navy for being reluctant to promote them. Hell, he wasn’t sure he wanted to stay in the navy.

  He smiled as he spooned against Marigold, holding her tightly. The only real advantage was that no one expected them to help out after the battle, once they’d swept local space for starfighter pilots who’d had to eject. They’d tried to volunteer, only to be told they had to remain within their section and stay out of the way. Tobias hadn’t been too upset, although some of the younger pilots had been offended. They didn’t like the idea of doing nothing while the rest of the crew worked their asses off. Tobias knew better. He knew from grim experience that they’d just annoy people if they got in the way.

  Marigold shifted against him, one hand taking hold of his and directing his fingers to the place between her legs. He’d fumbled a lot at first, back when they’d started sleeping together. It had taken him longer than it should to learn how to take direction, to realise she knew her own body better than anyone else. In hindsight, he should have known porno movies weren’t real. The men and women in the films were actors, faking it. He still blanched at his own stupidity. He should have known better than to believe what he was seeing. Or the bragging he’d overheard in the changing rooms.

  He felt her shift again as his fingers went to work. She twisted, turning around to face him. Tobias drank in the sight, admiring how she’d slimmed down in the months since he’d first met her. He’d never really thought he could slim down either ... he grunted, despite himself, as she took him in her hand ...

  The alert rang. Tobias froze, caught between the grim awareness they had to get to their stations and a suicidal desire not to go. He wanted her, yet ... Marigold let go of him and jumped off the bed, snatching up her underwear and donning it with desperate speed. Her bare bottom winked at him as she yanked her panties up her legs, nearly falling over in her haste to get dressed. Tobias cursed as he forced himself to grab his trousers, leaving his pants behind. He didn’t need them, not really. He yanked on his jacket and ran for the hatch, pausing long enough to check Marigold was decent before he keyed in the code. The hatch hissed open, revealing a scene of absolute chaos. It felt as if the entire crew was running around like headless chickens.

  “Fuck,” he said. His face reddened. They’d been in the privacy tubes. Everyone would know what they’d been doing. No one seemed to be paying any attention to them, but ... he knew they knew. It wasn’t fair. “Fuck it!”

  “Move,” Marigold said. She looked as frustrated - and as embarrassed - as he felt. “We have to get to the boat.”

  Tobias nodded. Bagehot didn’t care what they did off-duty, but they’d been on-duty from the moment the alert sounded. Thankfully, the privacy tubes weren’t that far from the launch ring. He hurried through the corridors, breathing a sigh of relief when he realised the rest of the gunboats hadn’t been launched. The ship wasn’t under attack, not yet. He felt unclean as he jumped though the hatch and took his station, idly wondering if they had time to use the washroom. They hadn’t had time to wash.

  “Check the sensors,” Marigold ordered. “What happened?”

  “Incoming enemy ships,” Tobias said. The display sparkled with red light. “That’s not good.”

  “No,” Marigold agreed. “But at least we have someone to blame.”

  ***

  “Long-range sensors are picking up an enemy fleet transiting Tramline One,” Richardson reported. “At least seven battleships and carriers, if our sensor readings are accurate.”

  Susan frowned. They were a very long way from the tramline. The enemy fleet had had plenty of time to complete its transits and then drive on the planet. It hadn’t moved to block their escape, yet, but that would change shortly. Her eyes narrowed as more enemy ships appeared on the display. She had the firepower to take them, she was sure, but it would weaken her badly. She might not have enough firepower to take them out and get home afterwards.

  She glanced at her aide. “Have the landing parties returned to the ship?”

  “Yes, Admiral,” Richardson said. “They’re going thr
ough decontamination now.”

  Poor bastards, Susan thought. Decontamination got worse with every passing month. But better that than carrying an infection onto the ship.

  She put the thought out of her head. “Signal the fleet,” she ordered. “The monitors are to commence planetary bombardment, as planned. The remainder of the fleet is to depart orbit and thrust for the tramline on my mark.”

  “Aye, Admiral,” Richardson said.

  Susan said nothing for a long moment as the monitors launched a spread of shipkillers towards the planet, then started tipping chunks of debris into the atmosphere. It was overkill - and, worse, it would deprive her of missiles she feared she’d need later - but it would hopefully conceal what they’d been doing. The virus didn’t need to know what they’d found. She wasn’t blind to the theories that insisted it already knew ...

  She snorted. Right now, that wasn’t the problem. The real problem was the alien fleet that was going to be snapping at their heels, at least until they crossed the tramline. Who knew what they’d encounter on the far side? Another fleet, trying to pull off an impossible pincer? It might not be quite so impossible with the flicker network. They still hadn't found the stations they knew had to exist. And that meant they had to move, now, before the odds got any worse.

  “Mark,” she ordered. “It’s time to start the voyage home.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Thomas kept his thoughts under tight control as the fleet thrust away from the planet. The enemy had managed to reach the system quicker than they’d feared, barely giving the invading ships a chance to rearm before they were forced into another battle. Admiral Onarina was trying to evade, it was clear, but Thomas wasn’t sure it would work. The warships could outrun the alien starships, if they tried. The fleet train didn’t have a hope of outrunning its foes.

  He watched the display, silently assessing their chances. They could take the alien fleet. The multinational fleet had enough firepower, even with half its units damaged, to take on the aliens and win. He was sure of it. And yet, they’d take more damage in the process. Their escape would be slowed, perhaps stopped altogether. The virus might hope to expend a handful of ships to delay the fleet, long enough to muster the force necessary to tear it apart for good. There was no way to know what the virus was thinking, but ... it rarely showed any concern for individual ships and men. It was quite happy to expend units in pursuit of a larger goal.

  And we’re leaving a mystery behind, he mused. He’d studied the preliminary reports from the xenospecialists. They’d said little of value. The recovered tech could be anything from a home entertainment system to a set of military tactical datacores, if indeed they were anything within human comprehension. Who left that tech behind, and why?

  He mulled over the problem as the fleet picked up speed. The alien ships seemed content to keep their distance, rather than trying to close the range. Thomas hoped that was a good sign, that the enemy ships were the only ones within the sector, but he feared they hadn’t been anything like so lucky. The alien flicker network could be working overtime, trying to coordinate a trap ... the sort of trap that had been the preserve of bad novels based on impossible tech, before the FTL communications network had been invented and put into widespread use. Thomas gritted his teeth as his eyes flickered to the starchart. Their course was predictable. They had to pass through two particular systems, if they wanted to follow a least-time course back to Earth. And the virus knew it.

  Unless there’s something wrong with the tramline projections, he reminded himself. We never quite get them right.

  He put the thought out of his mind as the minutes started to turn into hours. Someone with advanced tech - very advanced tech - had set up a base on the infected world. Why? Did they think they could study the virus from a safe distance? Did they not realise the world was infected so completely it was - it had been - practically a single mind? Or ... had they been infected, the moment they breathed the air? Thomas shook his head. There just wasn’t enough data to make any real judgements, certainly nothing beyond guesswork. It was hard to believe the virus could infect an advanced society without anyone noticing, but no one had predicted an intelligent virus before it had first been encountered. The original contact team had been infected precisely because no one had known what to expect.

  It was a mystery. Cross-species viruses were vanishingly rare. The virus was perhaps the only one that could infect multiple races, if only because it created command and control structures within the victim’s bloodstream rather than taking direct control of their brains and muscles. And yet, humanity had been aware of that danger ever since The War of the Worlds. Bioscanners had been in operation long before First Contact. Thomas found it hard to believe a more advanced race, one with awareness of other civilisations, had been so careless. Perhaps they’d believed their immune systems were superior. God knew there’d been humans who’d believed themselves intrinsically superior to their fellow humans. The idiots had rarely managed to grow out of it before reality slapped them in the face. And yet ...

  Too many people forgot the truth about the world, Thomas thought. The world was red in tooth and claw and utterly merciless to people who took it for granted. And that bit us on the backside time and time again.

  “Captain,” Commander Donker said. “The marine platoon is returning to the ship. Their CO requests permission to skip decontamination, on the grounds they were already decontaminated on the research vessel.”

  Thomas considered it for a moment, then shook his head. It was probably overkill, but - in his experience - there was never enough kill. The virus was just too dangerous to take lightly. It might have been dying, but the dying could prove the most dangerous of foes. They already had nothing to lose. Thomas could envisage it packing itself down into a tiny mass, then clinging to a marine’s suit - or inching its way into his air supply - until it had a chance to breed again. Maybe he was being paranoid. The combination of bioscanners, biofilters, blood tests and UV lights should be enough to keep the virus from getting a foothold. But he didn’t want to take it for granted.

  “They go through full decontamination,” he said, flatly. “Have the missile tubes completed resupply?”

  Commander Donker looked pained. “Yes, Captain,” he said. “The logistics staff want to transfer additional supplies to the cargo holds.”

  “If we have the room, then go ahead,” Thomas said. “Just remember we have guests aboard, too.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Donker said.

  Thomas looked back at the display, cursing under his breath. Resupplying while underway was dangerous at the best of times. It was a great deal harder when an enemy fleet was breathing down his neck. The freighter crews were dangerously exposed to enemy fire ... if the enemy had the wit to realise it, taking out the freighters could make it impossible for the fleet to fight its way through the coming ambush. And that would mean ...

  You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, he thought, dryly. He’d argued against the plan, but there was no point in arguing anymore. We have to get home fast or we’ll be ground down and destroyed.

  ***

  “You know,” Davies said. “I’m starting to think Captain Hammond hates us. Did someone sleep with his wife or something?”

  Colin shot him a sharp look as they made their way into the decontamination chamber and undressed under the harsh UV lights. There was little privacy on a warship, outside the privacy tubes, but there was no privacy whatsoever in the chamber. The entire section was so closely monitored that a fly couldn’t pass wind without being noticed. Davies would be in deep shit if someone reported his comment to the major, let alone the captain. Colin was as annoyed as the rest of the platoon, but he understood the danger all too well. The virus could not be allowed to infect the ship.

  He felt an odd little chill run down his spine as Kevin walked past. The alien was just ... alien. His body bent in all the wrong places. Looking at him made Colin feel as though something was fund
amentally wrong. It was hard to tell where to hit, if one wanted to take the alien down quickly. Vesy were apparently less vulnerable to groin attacks. Colin rolled his eyes at the thought. It wasn’t something anyone wanted to think about. The idea of aliens who could cross-breed with humans had been absurd long before humanity had encountered real aliens.

  The decontamination process was as uncomfortable as ever. Colin kept his mouth firmly closed as foul-smelling liquid splashed down around them, leaving him feeling as if his skin had been thoroughly scrubbed by a wire brush. The light seemed to grow brighter and brighter as they moved into the next compartment, where their blood and hair were sampled repeatedly. Colin heard two of his mates grumbling under their breaths and snorted inwardly, trying not to admit he wanted to agree. The process was extreme, to say the least. But the danger was equally so.