Fighting For The Crown (Ark Royal Book 16)

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  He found a spare shipsuit in the locker and pulled it on as the doctor went about her business. It was a size too large, but it would have to do. He’d have to change when he returned to the wardroom anyway, just in case ... he took one last look at Marigold, then forced himself to step out of the compartment and into the corridor. It was lined with makeshift beds, crammed with personnel ... Tobias swallowed, hard. Some of them looked badly hurt. They were the ones who should be in sickbay ...

  And if we’d been a little less lucky, he thought numbly, we could have been badly injured, too.

  He shuddered as he made his way back to pilot country. He’d known that war meant death and destruction. His father had died in the war. And yet, he hadn’t quite understood what it meant. His father had been vaporised. The gunboat pilots he hadn’t let himself get to know had been vaporised. The men and women in the corridor had survived, but they’d been badly injured. Modern medicine was good, yet ... they’d bear the scars for the rest of their lives. It was hard to believe they would ever be the same again.

  Poor bastards, he thought. Oddly, looking at the wounded made him more fearful than reading the lists of the dead. The lists were just ... words. The men in front of him were all too real. They deserve better.

  He forced himself to keep moving. There was nothing he could do for them, except ... he swallowed hard. All he could do was refrain from staring, just to let them keep what little dignity they had left. And he knew, deep inside, that it wasn’t enough. But it was all he could do.

  ***

  “I’ll be fine, Captain,” Senior Crewwoman Elaine Winslow said. “It’s just a flesh wound.”

  Thomas kept his face under tight control. Crewwoman Winslow had lost a leg. She was going to need months of treatment before she returned to something close to normal, even though the navy would pay for a cloned or prosthetic leg. The awards she’d receive for saving her subordinates, at the cost of being wounded herself, hardly seemed to make up for it. Her file had made it clear she’d never seen herself as one of the navy’s lifers. It hardly seemed fair to take such an injury, shortly before her enlistment came to an end.

  “You did your part,” he said. “Rest now.”

  He felt almost pathetically useless. He’d had deportment classes and etiquette lessons, but he’d always been uncomfortable dealing with wounded crewmen. It was never easy to know what to say. He’d never even exchanged pleasantries with Crewwoman Winslow before she’d wound up in sickbay. Her subordinates spoke well of her, but ... Thomas felt a stab of guilt. He should have made time to get to know her before the ship went into battle. She’d been wounded, badly, while she’d been under his command. And he hadn’t even known her name!

  The sense of uselessness grew stronger as he walked from bed to bed, exchanging a handful of words with his wounded crewmembers. Some of them were asleep, or pretending to be asleep; others were polite, yet distant. The prospect of being injured wouldn’t have seemed quite real, not until it actually happened. A handful had probably just seen their careers draw to an end. No one would give them a hard time for being given a medical discharge, but still ...

  Thomas spoke briefly to the doctor, then turned and left the compartment. The fleet had managed to break contact, but they all knew it was just a matter of time before the virus found them again. His crew were working desperately to repair the damage, patching holes in the hull and slapping new point defence mounts into position ... Lion had been lucky, compared to some of the other ships. A couple of battleships and a carrier had been so heavily damaged it was a minor miracle they’d managed to stay with the fleet. The admiral had already given orders for all non-essential personnel to be evacuated, just to ensure the remainder could be pulled off if the ships had to be powered down and abandoned. Their captains weren’t pleased ...

  A chill ran down Thomas’s spine as he made his way back to his ready room. It would be at least two days before they reached the tramline, then a week before they made their way back to New Washington ... anything could happen in that time. There was a major enemy fleet somewhere in front of them and another at the rear. He stepped to one side as a team of crewmen hurried past, conveying spare parts to the repair crews. Their efforts might be futile. Thomas was all too aware they wouldn’t be out of danger for a long time.

  This is just a pause in the storm, he told himself. And we have to make use of it before they find us again.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  “Transit in twenty seconds, Captain,” Lieutenant Sam Hinkson said. “Nineteen ... eighteen ...”

  Mitch waited, bracing himself. They were, technically, in explored space, but the virus had infected it heavily. They’d passed through a couple of systems that had been explored and settled before the war, yet they’d picked up no signs of human life. They hadn’t been able to tell if the colonies had been infected or simply bombed from orbit, but ... he knew that was wishful thinking. The virus didn’t need to land troops to capture the colony and then keep the locals under control. It could just infect the colony, then turn the colonists into host bodies. Resistance would be not only futile, but inconceivable.

  It’s been nearly a decade since the system fell, he thought, grimly. The only thing we can do for the colonists is turn their planet into radioactive dust.

  The thought would have sickened him, once upon a time. Now ... it was just a fact of life, just something they would have to accept, that they would have to do, just to win the war. He wanted to win before anyone started questioning their morality ... he wanted to win, just so his people would live long enough to start questioning their morality. Mitch was a student of history. The great victims of the past had always been beaten, ground under so thoroughly they couldn’t hope to recover, before the victimisers and their descendants had started to wonder if they’d done the right thing. It was hard to believe, sometimes, that the victims had ever been a threat. But they had been ...

  He put the thought out of his mind as Unicorn made transit. His eyes lingered on the display as it blanked and came back to life, reporting a handful of sensor emissions closer to the system primary. A handful of ships, holding station near Tramline Four ... the tramline that led down the chain to New Washington. They didn’t look anything like numerous enough to take the fleet in a straight fight, although Mitch knew better than to allow them to come within firing range of his ship. Unicorn had no place in such an engagement and everyone knew it.

  “Captain,” Staci said. “I’m not picking up any hint the fleet passed through the system.”

  Mitch wasn’t too surprised. His best-case estimate had suggested Unicorn would reach the RV point at least a day before Lion and the rest of the fleet. It was why he’d agreed to spend so long surveying the alien system, poking his nose into every nook and cranny he spotted on their voyage home. The sheer wealth of tactical data he’d amassed had made him seriously consider continuing the flight, rather than waiting to link up with the fleet. There was so much data that he knew he couldn’t allow it to be lost. GATO was going to need it to plot a - hopefully - war-winning offensive.

  “Helm, take us to the RV point,” he ordered. “We can give the fleet a couple of days before we proceed on our own.”

  He frowned as he peered at the tramlines on the display. Tramline Three looked as innocuous as any other tramline, but he knew the fleet was somewhere on the far side. It had to be. The alternative was unthinkable. And yet ... he wished he knew what the fleet had encountered, during its long voyage. The tramlines were predictable, to a certain extent, but what about the alien planets, installations and fleets? There was no way to know what they’d find until they went looking.

  His thoughts churned. He didn’t want to abandon the fleet. His orders weren’t that clear, he told himself; the tactical data he carried was vitally important, yet a week or so of delay in getting it to Earth wouldn’t make any difference. It had been hard enough to assemble the ships for Operation Lightning Strike. Putting together the sort of firepower nec
essary to smash the virus’s homeworld - he hoped to God it was the alien homeworld - was going to take months, if not years. He could give the fleet a few days without risking anything ...

  “Captain,” Hinkson said. “We are closing on the RV point.”

  “There’s still no sign of the fleet,” Hannah added.

  “Hold position,” Mitch ordered. He wanted to believe the fleet had already passed through the system, but - his thoughts reminded him, again and again - it was unlikely. “We’ll wait.”

  He brought up the tactical records and studied them thoughtfully. There weren’t that many systems between New Washington and the alien homeworld. They didn’t have many mobile units attached to their defences, unless they’d been lurking under cloak. And yet ... his mind raced with schemes, each one more impractical than the last. The enemy defences would have to be reduced sharply, yet the only way to do that was through force. There were no fancy tricks that could be used, no feints that might distract the enemy long enough to let a covert force land a major blow. It would be force against force and he feared, deep inside, that the combined navies couldn’t amass enough firepower to crack the planet’s defences.

  We can’t even hit the planet with BioBombs, he thought. Anything stealthy enough to pass through the defences without being detected won’t survive the passage through the atmosphere.

  The display bleeped. Mitch thought, just for a moment, that the fleet had arrived ... before realising two ships had entered the system from entirely the wrong direction. It was hard to tell what they were, but they looked as though they were heading down to New Washington rather than turning to engage the fleet. Mitch sighed inwardly, trying not to show his annoyance. He’d always been happiest doing something, rather than sitting patiently for someone else to do something. The idea of hurrying up and waiting had never sat well with him.

  He stood. “XO, you have the bridge,” he said. His head was starting to hurt. He’d worked the problem from a dozen angles and drawn a complete blank. His plans to attack the alien homeworld required ships that didn’t exist or technologies that had never been made practical. It was starting to look like an exercise in wishful thinking, not tactical planning. “I’ll be in my cabin.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Staci said.

  Mitch felt a flash of affection as he made his way through the hatch and into his tiny cabin. Staci would have a command of her own, sooner rather than later ... he felt a flicker of irritation at the thought of losing her, combined with the dull awareness it was going to happen one way or the other. He’d known a commanding officer who’d constantly blocked promotion for his subordinates, on the grounds he didn’t want to train up replacements. The idiot hadn’t realised his subordinates would resent it, then seek ways to get out from under his thumb. Morale had been in the pits well before the Admiralty started asking awkward questions. Naval service could be dangerous, and promotion could be slow outside wartime, but only a fool would make it worse out of petty stupidity. A discontented crew was one that would start looking for ways to make its feelings known.

  He lay back on his bunk and closed his eyes. They could wait two days, perhaps three, before they had to make their way to New Washington. It would mean abandoning the remainder of the fleet, but ... he shook his head. Unicorn was unlikely to make any real difference, if the fleet ran into something it couldn’t handle. The frigate was designed for surveillance, missile targeting and stealth insertions, not open combat. She’d be blown away in seconds if the enemy concentrated their fire on her.

  A thought crossed his mind. What if we set up a base in the alien system and start grinding down their defences? Either they send their mobile units to fight us, allowing us to take them out without crossing the fixed defences, or they let us get set up and lay siege to the system without interference ...

  He started awake as the intercom bleeped. He’d been asleep ... how long had he been asleep? Were they under attack? The alarms weren’t howling ... he rubbed his forehead as he sat up, one hand fumbling for the terminal. Staci knew what to do, if they came under attack. He wouldn’t fault her for snapping orders when he wasn’t on the bridge. Unicorn wasn’t tough enough to wait for him, if the shit really hit the fan ...

  “Report,” he snapped.

  “Captain, a large fleet of ships just transited the tramline,” Staci reported. “They’re heading towards us.”

  Mitch frowned. “Admiral Onarina?”

  “No, Captain,” Staci said. “These ships came from Tramline One. They’re heading towards us - and Tramline Three.”

  “... Shit.” Mitch stood, keying the terminal. A horde of red icons was bearing down on their position. The enemy fleet was big enough to swat Unicorn without even noticing. He counted a dozen battleships and carriers, surrounded by a swarm of starfighters. Either they feared attack or they’d caught a sniff of his presence. And yet, that was far too much firepower for one little frigate. “They’re heading down the chain, towards the fleet.”

  He brought up the starchart. The enemy might have a rough idea where the fleet was ... no, there was no doubt about it now. Mitch’s most optimistic estimate had suggested the decoys wouldn’t fool the enemy for more than a couple of days at most ... and that, he conceded privately, was probably too optimistic. Assuming the enemy had reversed course immediately, it might just have made it to the next tramline in time to track down the fleet and bring it to battle. Or simply maintain contact until reinforcements arrived.

  “I’m on my way,” he said. “Helm, move us out of their way. We don’t want them catching a sniff of us.”

  If they haven’t already, his thoughts added. It didn’t seem likely - Unicorn had plenty of time to evade contact, given that the enemy hadn’t tried to sneak up on them - but it was possible. Where do they think they are going?

  He pulled on his jacket, then returned to the bridge. The alien fleet looked larger than ever on the main display, sweeping space with sensor pulses as it made its way towards the tramline. It might not have been looking for Unicorn, but it was likely to find her if they got lucky. Mitch took his seat and nodded in approval as the frigate glided to one side, keeping the range open as much as possible. The alien ships stormed past, without so much as focusing their sensors on Unicorn . Mitch guessed they were pumping out so many sensor emissions that they were actually confusing their own sensors. They’d get a return off every piece of space junk in the vicinity.

  Not that there’s anything worth noticing, he thought. Apart from us, of course.

  “Captain,” Hannah reported. “They’re bringing stealth systems online. I think they’re planning to cloak.”

  Mitch frowned, then felt his blood run cold. There were enough ships in the fleet to give Admiral Onarina and her fleet a very hard time. No, there were enough ships to destroy her ... particularly if they combined the first fleet with the second. He had the impression he was watching the jaws of a giant trap steadily starting to close. One fleet would drive Admiral Onarina into the other’s waiting arms. And then ...

  His mind raced. Admiral Onarina and her ships were not expendable. He liked and respected her too much to even consider abandoning her to her fate. And yet ... he cursed under his breath. If Unicorn was lost, all her tactical data would be lost with her. The allies wouldn’t know where to send their fleets, not until they found the alien homeworld for the second time. Mitch squirmed mentally, torn between two competing priorities. He had to save the fleet and, at the same time, he had to get the information home.

  He keyed his terminal, drawing lines on the display. Perhaps they could rush to New Washington and then double back ... no, even on a least-time course, it would take three days to reach New Washington. The Americans would probably have the enemy system under observation - it was standard practice, if one had the ships to spare - but Mitch had no idea where to find the American pickets. They might not even accept his message. They’d fear Unicorn had been captured and her crew infected. God knew it had happened before.
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  We have to warn the admiral before she flies right into a trap, Mitch thought. The enemy fleet could be avoided, if there was enough warning. We have to warn her ...

  “Helm, take us after the alien fleet,” he ordered. “Hold us as close as you can without compromising the cloaking field.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  Mitch took a breath. “I am about to bend our orders to breaking point,” he said, addressing the bridge crew. It would be more accurate, he conceded privately, to say he was about to violate his orders. The Admiralty would not be amused, although it might be grateful if they saved the fleet. “If any of you have a problem with that, this is your one chance to say so. It will be noted and produced in evidence during the formal inquiry.”

  There was a pause. No one spoke.

  Mitch relaxed, slightly. He’d put the crew in a terrible spot. Breaking orders - or bending them to the point they were effectively broken - was frowned upon. So was mutiny. A Board of Inquiry could reasonably decide that anyone who did more than file a formal objection was guilty of mutiny, even if they - technically - had right on their side. And it could - probably would - be the end of someone’s career if they tried. The navy regarded the chain of command as sacrosanct. A captain would have to commit a serious offence before his subordinates were allowed to relieve him of command.