Fighting For The Crown (Ark Royal Book 16)

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  He felt weirdly detached from the universe as the frigate picked up speed, looking down on the enemy system as she made her way towards the tramline. The virus had turned the entire system into a giant industrial node ... he found it hard to believe what he saw. His tactical staff had tried to estimate the system’s industrial capability and ... Mitch shook his head. The numbers were just too high. And yet ... he snorted. Human communism had failed because of human nature. The virus was a single entity, although one that existed in many parts. It wasn’t in constant competition with itself.

  Mitch didn’t relax, not completely, until they were through the tramline and into the next system. The virus had set up facilities there too, although - thankfully - not on as grand a scale. Mitch brought up the starchart and studied it for a long moment. They’d seen three major enemy industrial nodes, widely separated. It looked odd to him - despite decades of investment, Earth still had more industry than New Washington or Britannia - but he supposed it made a certain kind of sense. Alien-One had been on the edge of the virus’s empire, as had the system they’d just attacked. It could muster forces to react to a threat - and support those forces - quicker than any other interstellar power.

  He frowned as he stood and headed to his cabin. The human race had trouble supporting colonies - and fleet deployments - hundreds of light years from Earth. It wasn’t easy to assign an entire fleet train to a fleet, let alone establish industrial nodes orbiting planets that couldn’t make use of them - let alone pay for them - for decades. There were dozens of systems along the edge of explored space that barely had any contact with Earth, simply because they were too far away. The pre-war projections had suggested it would be years before they were brought closer to the homeworld. In hindsight, it would have been wiser to establish naval bases and depots along the border. But the politicians would never have gone for it. They’d spent too much of the nation’s GNP on the fleet.

  Mitch sat in his chair and stared at the terminal without really seeing it. He knew he should sleep, now they were clear of the infected system, but ... he felt too keyed up. He wanted to stand and tour the ship, just to make sure every last station was ready for trouble, yet ... his crew knew their jobs. They didn’t need him peering over their shoulder, bothering them. They didn’t need ...

  The hatch bleeped. Mitch looked up. “Come.”

  He smiled as Staci stepped into the cabin. “I just completed the tactical analysis of the previous system,” she said, holding out a datapad. “It’s not good news.”

  Mitch nodded as he ran his eye over the summery. The alien system was effectively impregnable, unless they massed a far larger fleet or invented a whole new war-winning superweapon. There were just too many starships, battlestations and automated weapons platforms orbiting the planets. He glanced at her tactical concepts and nodded, again. It would take a lot of firepower to grind the system into dust.

  “No,” he agreed. “We’re lucky they didn’t spend all those resources on ships.”

  He opened a drawer and removed a bottle of shipboard rotgut, then poured them both a glass. He wasn’t supposed to condone anyone brewing on his ship, but - as per tradition - he was prepared to turn a blind eye as long as things didn’t get out of hand. He didn’t mind his crew having a glass or two, when they were off duty, but he’d crack down hard if someone turned up to their duty station as drunk as a lord. His lips quirked into a smile as he passed Staci a glass, then lifted his in a toast.

  “To humanity,” he said. “And to our allies.”

  “To humanity,” Staci echoed.

  Mitch took a sip. It tasted foul. Charlotte would probably detest it. And yet ... Mitch recalled the sweet wines and expensive liqueurs he’d sampled on her estate. He had no idea how someone could drink them, but ... he shrugged. It was unlikely Charlotte - or her husband - had ever had to drink the cheap stuff. They’d happily spend more money on a tiny bottle than the average person earned in a month.

  He let out a breath as he put the glass on the desk. “We’ll have to see what the admiral thinks, before we come up with any real plans. Unless they really have invented a supernova bomb.”

  “They did have a theory involving compressed gravity fields,” Staci said. She shook her head, curtly. “But if someone did blow up the star, wouldn’t that play merry hell with the tramlines?”

  Mitch frowned. No one had ever really accounted for the tramlines. It seemed logical enough that stars, easily large enough to warp the fabric of space itself, could produce lines of gravimetric force linking them together, but ... no one knew for sure. There were people who believed the tramlines had been created by a long-gone alien race, so advanced they were almost gods ... he remembered what they’d discovered on the infected world and scowled. That theory seemed almost believable now. And yet ... he shook his head. If something happened to a star, it seemed likely the tramlines would shift in response.

  “No way we can test it,” he mused. He shrugged. “It isn’t as if we have such a weapon anyway.”

  “No, sir,” Staci agreed. “We have to find a way to take out the system.”

  Mitch glanced at the datapad, again. “We need more firepower,” he said. “If we rain missiles on them like water, sooner or later we will get something through the defences. And if we do ... we still won’t infect the entire system. We may have to destroy every last facility within the system before we can declare victory.”

  He keyed his terminal, bringing up the starchart. How many other infected worlds were there? The virus didn’t need a full-scale invasion to establish itself. Once it got into the biosphere and started to turn the locals into hosts, total conquest was just a matter of time. They might never complete the task of exterminating the virus. For all he knew, it might have infected another STL starship and sent it to a system that - apparently - lacked tramlines.

  “We are learning more all the time,” Staci said. “Sooner or later, we’ll come up with a working vaccine.”

  Mitch nodded. “We’ll reach the RV point in a few days,” he said. “And then ... if we don’t link up with the fleet, again, we’ll head straight to New Washington. And then” - he smiled, coldly - “we’ll find a way to take the war to the enemy one final time.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “Captain,” Sibley said. “We have incoming starfighters.”

  “Stand by point defence,” Thomas ordered, stiffly. “Prepare to repel attack.”

  He gritted his teeth. The fighting had raged across the system for the last two days, with the enemy fleet - keeping its distance - hurling wave after wave of starfighters at the human ships. The tactic was cowardly as hell, but he had to admit it was working. The damage was starting to mount rapidly, particularly after the enemy had taken out a handful of freighters. Thomas had barely managed to snatch any sleep over the last day or so and he knew it wasn’t much better for anyone else. The starfighter pilots were being pushed so badly they’d been forced to resort to stimulants just to keep themselves in the game.

  Which is going to bite us pretty damn hard, he thought, as the red icons swooped into his point defence envelope. The poor bastards will start shooting at each other soon enough.

  He watched, numbly, as a handful of red icons vanished. The remainder kept coming, launching torpedoes towards the hull before breaking off and fleeing back to their mothership. A couple more died - they made the mistake of flying in a straight line for more than a second or two - but it hardly mattered. The point defence had to hit the torpedoes, blowing them out of space before it was too late. A dull thump echoed through the ship as the survivors reached their target. Thomas glanced at the status display - the damage control teams were already on their way - and then looked away. He trusted his crew to handle the repairs, while he concentrated on the overall situation. They’d been damn lucky the missiles hadn’t struck the gunboat ring.

  His heart sank. The gunboats had feinted at the alien capital ships twice, but their point defence was just too good. Thomas’s
missiles hadn’t gotten anywhere near the brainship, either by stabbing at the brainship directly or trying to grind down the escorts first. He was all too aware the fleet could probably crush the alien ships, even now, if it was prepared to take horrendous losses in the process. The virus probably had reinforcements already on the way. The fleet might win one encounter, only to lose the next.

  He wanted to order the fleet to alter course, to run for the tramline, but he knew it couldn’t be done. Not yet. They had to find the flicker station, the station they knew was there even though they hadn’t found it in two days of intensive searching. Thomas was all too aware the enemy could track the fleet, that there was no hope of breaking contact. If the enemy could signal ahead ...

  “Captain,” Donker said. “We took damage to sectors ...”

  “Evacuate the section, if it cannot be repaired,” Thomas ordered, curtly. They’d already lost a handful of resupply shuttles. They couldn’t afford to lose more. The fleet train was the fleet’s greatest weakness and the virus knew it. In hindsight, they needed a new breed of freighters, ones that were mounted on military hulls. “And then seal the compartment completely.”

  He cursed under his breath as more red icons swooped into attack formation. If the host bodies were starting to wear themselves out, like their human counterparts, they weren’t showing any sign of it. The wear and tear on their equipment had to be staggering and yet they were - somehow - maintaining a remarkable operational tempo. Thomas would have been impressed, if they hadn’t been attacking him. It was just a matter of time before the tech started to break down, but ... he doubted it would happen quickly enough to save the fleet. They needed to get out of the trap before it was too late.

  And that means finding the flicker station and destroying it, he reminded himself, sternly. We cannot jump through the tramline until it’s gone.

  ***

  “Move, move, move!”

  Colin forced himself to keep moving as the entire battlecruiser shuddered violently. The deck shifted under his feet, the gravity field flickering before it reasserted itself. Alarms howled in the distance, emergency lights coming on everywhere. The battlecruiser was under heavy attack. Colin hadn’t felt so exposed since his first time on the training field, when he’d encountered incoming fire for the first time. It had been a grim reminder of just how fragile the human body truly was.

  The ship lurched again as he stumbled towards a hatch. The light overhead was green, but the display beside the hatch blinked a warning. The compartment directly behind the hatch was fine; the compartment beyond that was in serious risk of decompression. Colin glanced at his platoon, then checked his mask and keyed his access code into the hatch. It opened, revealing an empty corridor. Colin led the way forward, making sure the entire team was inside before closing the hatch and setting it to airlock protocol. The interior hatches weren’t proper airlocks, but they’d do. He hoped. They were short on options.

  He frowned as they reached the second hatch. The light was red, the display warning of slow decompression. Colin keyed the hatch, then switched on his helmet light as the airlock hissed open. Beyond, the compartment was dark. A handful of people were making their way towards him. Colin stepped to one side to allow them to enter the makeshift airlock, checking their masks as they moved. The shipsuits should keep them alive long enough to get them to safety, if anywhere was truly safe now. He’d spent far too long helping evacuate sections and repair the damage to be confident.

  His blood ran cold as a couple of injured crewmen stumbled towards him. He snapped orders to his men, ordering them to take the wounded to the triage centre as he continued poking into the compartment. The temperature was dropping rapidly, suggesting the leak was growing bigger. Colin stepped through a hatch that was badly damaged, too badly damaged to keep the air inside, and looked around. The compartment was blasted beyond recognition. He saw a pair of bodies lying on the deck, both charred to the point he couldn’t tell if they’d been male or female. He logged their position, then turned slowly, allowing his suit’s sensors to log the damage. The gash in the hull would have to be patched, sooner rather than later, but the rest of the compartment would have to wait. The crews just didn’t have time to fix the damage.

  If it’s even possible, Colin thought. He peered through the gash, staring out into empty space. Lights twinkled in the distance ... enemy ships? Friendly ships? Or stars? He didn’t know. We could die here.

  He pushed the thought out of his head as he swept the remainder of the damaged section, noting and logging three more bodies. One of them had been bisected, an attractive young woman who was missing everything below her waist; the remainder were battered beyond easy recognition. He looked around for the missing legs, then decided it was pointless. If they weren’t on the deck, they’d probably been sucked out into space. It wasn’t as if the crewwoman needed them any longer. She was dead.

  Poor bitch, he thought, as another quiver echoed through the hull. She deserved better.

  Colin kept speaking, recording his report, as he made his way back to the airlock. The medics had arrived and taken control, hastily checking the survivors to see who could be treated effectively and who would have to be given painkillers and told to wait until they could be treated properly. Colin knew the score - not everyone could be treated immediately, not in the middle of a battle - but it still made him feel sick. There were crewmembers who were about to die ... crewmembers who could have lived, if they’d received the proper treatment. He didn’t envy the medics. Whatever choices they made, people were about to die. And someone was sure to blame the medics for their choices.

  He breathed a sigh of relief as he stepped through the airlock, even though he knew the safety was nothing more than an illusion. The starship was under constant attack. A single missile in the right place would be more than enough to ruin their day, once and for all. He wanted to remove his helmet and sit down, but he knew he couldn’t. He had too many duties to perform.

  And it’s just a matter of time until we’re completely worn out, he thought. What’ll happen to us then?

  He kept a wary eye on his platoon as they continued their duties. They weren’t used to being helpless. He’d heard some of the higher-ups float plans to board the alien starships, plans that struck him as demented and yet were better than sitting around and waiting to die. In his experience, aggressors couldn’t be allowed to get away with it or they’d keep doing it ... he shook his head. The sensor reports were all too clear. A boarding party would be vaporised well before it reached its destination. Colin knew himself to be brave, but ... boarding the ship would be nothing more than suicide. He’d throw his life away for nothing.

  “I could have been an accountant, like my mother wanted,” Davies said. “It would have been far safer.”

  “And to think you can’t count past twenty without taking off your pants,” Willis put in. The normally affable marine sounded tired, as tired as the rest of them. “I’m sure you keep miscounting the number of drinks I owe you.”

  “Hey!” Davies laughed. “I’ll have you know my counting is perfect. I verified it myself.”

  “Hah,” Willis said. “I bet ...”

  The deck shook again. “Focus,” Colin ordered. Light banter was one thing, even though civilians would see it as stupid or irredeemably offensive, but there were limits. The banter was starting to develop a harder edge. “Concentrate on your duties.”

  “Yes, boss,” Davies said. “You think we’ll get out of this in less than twenty pieces?”

  “We better had,” Willies said. “You can’t count past twenty without ...”

  “I said focus,” Colin snapped. “We want to get out of this in one piece!”

  He glanced at Kevin, wishing he could read the alien’s emotions through his suit. If the constantly shaking hull, and passages through damaged sections, were unsettling him ... he hated to think what it must be like for Kevin. He’d never enjoyed moving into different environments ... he shuddered
, remembering the first time he’d set foot on a boat. His instructors had informed him that commandos had to have a sailing ticket ... it was funny, in hindsight, that he’d never realised it before joining the marines. The boat had been disconcerting and the rickety old aircraft they’d used for parachute jumps had been worse, but at least they’d been human. Kevin didn’t even have that consolation.

  Alarms howled. He gritted his teeth, forcing himself to move faster. There was no time to rest. If he got out of this alive, he promised himself, he’d spend his entire leave in bed. He’d hire a hotel room and arrange to have his food delivered to his bedside, perhaps by a young woman who’d be impressed by his service ... he bit his lip, hard. His mind was wandering in all directions. There was no time to think about life after the mission, let alone after the war, either. And that meant ...