The Right of the Line

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Yes, Admiral.”

  She leaned forward as Captain Shields materialised in front of her. Technically, she should have invited him to visit her ship in person, rather than send a holographic representation, but neither of them had the time. The British had been a little cagey about just how much damage Invincible had taken during her last deployment, but Svetlana was very good at reading between the lines. She just hoped they’d reach their destination and link up with the MNF before the shit hit the fan, again. The politics could destroy her as effectively as an alien missile.

  The problem with climbing so high, she reflected wryly, is that it’s a very long way to fall.

  “Captain Shields,” she said, banishing the thought. “Thank you for coming.”

  “Thank you for inviting me,” Captain Shields said.

  Svetlana studied him for a long moment. He was tall, lanky rather than muscular, with short blond hair a shade too bright to be natural and a neatly-trimmed goatee. She couldn’t help thinking he looked weak, compared to her brothers and cousins; she recalled, from his file, that he was an aristocrat, a man who’d been given his command because of his blood rather than his competence. But that meant nothing, she reminded herself sharply. Svetlana wouldn’t have climbed so high if she didn’t have powerful relatives, including one who sat on the Politburo itself. And no one had seriously pushed for Captain Shields to be removed from command, even after the disastrous First Contact with the virus.

  But he couldn’t have done a better job, Svetlana thought. Hindsight was generally clearer than foresight, but ... without knowing about the virus, without understanding the true nature of the threat, there had been little else that could have been done. He took every precaution we could imagine. It’s just that our imagination was so profoundly inadequate.

  “It is my intention to depart on schedule, even if we don’t get all the ships we were promised,” Svetlana said, stiffly. The British, French and Americans had all promised warships that had unaccountably failed to materialise. There was no point in carrying out fleet exercises when the number of ships assigned to the fleet changed with every passing hour. “Can you and your ship make the deadline?”

  “I believe so,” Captain Shields said. “Barring unanticipated problems, we should be able to depart as planned.”

  And that is a slightly more mealy-mouthed answer than I would have liked, Svetlana thought, amused. But I should be grateful you’re not telling me what you think I want to hear.

  She felt a flicker of annoyance at a bad habit she’d never quite been able to break. A Russian officer would have promised her the sun, the moon and the world itself if he thought it was what she wanted. But then, it wasn’t uncommon for the same officer to then look for scapegoats if he couldn’t give her what she wanted. Too many Russian leaders had threatened punishment for failing to meet impossible deadlines, rather than offering rewards for good performance. And when those officers - and scientists - had failed to meet the deadlines, they’d been executed ... depriving Russia of their services. Who knew how much had been lost because of a merciless response to predictable failure?

  “Good,” she said. She tapped a switch, forwarding him a document. “I’ll be splitting the task force into three subunits. Resolute One will be under my personal command; Resolute Two will be yours; Resolute Three will be under American command, once the Americans finally decide which flag officer they’re throwing to the wolves. Each subunit will be built around a fleet carrier, giving us options for both offense and defence.”

  “Understood, Admiral,” Shields said. His eyes peered at something outside the range of the holographic scanner. “You intend for us to take the offensive?”

  “Ideally, I’d like to get the task force to Zheng He in one piece,” Svetlana said. “But afterwards ... yes, I feel we should find a way to take the offensive. A little aggressive raiding up towards Falkirk, perhaps even Alien-One, will knock the virus off balance and give us time to assemble our fleets.”

  She smiled to herself. Her training officers had once told her that no one went wrong by constantly planning ways to take the offensive, even when there was more to be gained by holding a defensive line than attacking enemy targets in an engagement that might be costly even to the victors. And she liked the idea of going on the offensive, of taking her ships into enemy territory and making them panic for once. She had always regretted that her duties during the Second Interstellar War had kept her from the operation that had ended the war.

  “The virus may not care,” Shields cautioned. “And we still know nothing about just how many ships it actually deploys.”

  “All the more reason to keep it off balance,” Svetlana said. “We cannot give it time to bring its full might to bear against us.”

  She smiled, inwardly. She agreed with his concern, although she knew better than to admit it where her superiors - or political enemies - might hear her. In the past, Russia had been able to use an immense superiority in men and materiel to grind the enemy down - tactical sophistication had been very much a hit-and-miss affair, when simplicity was the key to victory - but now ... it took years to build a fleet carrier. She couldn’t afford to throw Russian starships into a meat grinder when they were, effectively, irreplaceable.

  And yet, that would be seen as an act of cowardice, she thought, curtly. They’d prefer me to get a lot of men killed rather than withdraw from a battle I couldn’t win.

  “We will start our exercises once we depart,” she said, calmly. “I want both simulated and live-fire drills, despite the costs. We need to fight as a unit.”

  “Agreed,” Captain Shields said.

  “Make no mistake,” Svetlana said. “This is not a pleasure cruise. I will not be hosting dinners” - she thought she saw a flicker of approval on his face - “and we will not be exchanging visits. Instead, we will be working to prepare for combat.”

  “Easy training, hard mission,” Captain Shields quoted. “Hard training, easy mission.”

  “Better to get the bugs out before the enemy takes advantage of them,” Svetlana agreed, calmly. She leaned back in her chair. “Do you have any concerns you want to raise?”

  “Merely a concern about the enemy ships bypassing Zheng He and attacking further into the Human Sphere,” Captain Shields said. “We know they somehow managed to reach Earth.”

  Svetlana frowned. “And we still have no idea how they got to the surface,” she said. “There were no attacks in Russia, but that doesn’t mean the virus isn’t there.”

  She frowned. A handful of her uncle’s political enemies had pointed out that the virus was unlikely to survive in Russia. It needed hot and wet atmospheres to thrive, not a bitterly cold environment. Svetlana had disagreed, reminding them that Britain was hardly a tropical country; the virus might not have been able to spread through the atmosphere, but the infected had still been able to carry out their mission. The virus could remain active in a person’s body, even if they couldn’t spread it by coughing and breathing. It wouldn’t care about the temperature outside as long as the host body was alive.

  “We’ll proceed with care,” she said, “and keep flanking units in place at all times.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “And are you sure that your ship isn’t infected?”

  Captain Shields looked back at her, evenly. “We decontaminated the ship thoroughly, once we returned to Sol. The crew was tested, time and time again. The virus was simply never offered the chance to infect and subvert a crewman before he could be tested. No one was infected.”

  “But you cannot be absolutely sure,” Svetlana mused. She’d seen the reports. The virus was apparently capable of making bodies for itself. Absurd shambling blobs, to human eyes, but bodies nonetheless. Her imagination provided a whole series of grim images, of tiny alien creatures slipping into the tubes while the starship’s crew was distracted by their larger cousins. “What if you’re wrong?”

  “We do tests regularly,” Captain Shields said. “We are fairly sure we�
�re secure.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Svetlana said. The FSB had gone nuts, trying to locate anyone who might have been infected before they had a chance to spread the infection. She supposed she should be grateful. A combination of her family’s influence and the FSB’s distraction had ensured that she hadn’t been assigned a personal zampolit. “And what about Captain Campbell?”

  “I have been assured that she doesn’t carry active viral material within her bloodstream,” Captain Shields said. He spoke with a hint of irritation, as if he’d answered the question before. “And we are keeping her under close watch. If that changes - if there are any reasons to suspect that she has been ... subverted - we will obviously take steps.”

  The FSB would have killed her and burnt the body, just to be sure, Svetlana mused. She’d read the briefing papers very carefully, but they’d left her unsure if the British had come up with a workable concept or if they were clutching at straws. They wouldn’t have risked turning her into a weapon.

  She pushed the thought to one side. She had no qualms about killing the enemies of the Rodina - and she wouldn’t waste her time mourning traitors - but she was reluctant to penalise someone who hadn’t committed a crime. No one had known, back then, about the virus ... and even if they had known, it might have been impossible to take precautions. The poor bastards had been prisoners! The virus could have simply infected them and that would be that.

  “Keep a very close eye on her,” she ordered. She took a long breath. “We’ll speak again, before departure. Until then ... inform me if anything changes.”

  “Yes, Admiral,” Captain Shields said.

  His projection vanished. Svetlana kept her face impassive. The British officer had been cooperative, but ... she sighed, inwardly. The briefing had made it clear that she had to be careful, that she had to be in command, that she had to be seen to be in command ... and that, most importantly of all, she could not lose. Mother Russia didn’t just demand success, she needed success. Svetlana wouldn’t have been given her command if there had been any more qualified candidate.

  She leaned back in the chair, taking a moment to gather herself. She was a national hero as well as an international hero, but she knew as well as anyone just how fickle the public could become if she failed. They wouldn’t have the chance to judge her properly, let alone make up their own minds. They’d ... they’d be told what to think by their betters. Her lips twitched as she remembered the absurd gyrations the propagandists had gone through when they’d tried to present her to the public. Svetlana was a military hero ... no, a heroine ... a heroine who’d defied the role laid down for her by convention and law ... she snickered, remembering how the wretched bastards had tied themselves in knots. They could hardly say they disapproved of her military career, but they couldn’t exactly approve of her leaving her feminine calling either. No wonder they’d gone a little mad. Svetlana had read reports claiming that she’d not only beaten the Tadpoles on her own, as if she hadn’t had a starship under her feet, but defeated the Lord High Tadpole himself in single-combat.

  And the fact that there isn’t a Lord High Tadpole isn’t allowed to get in the way of a good story, Svetlana thought. It had its amusing side - and its useful side - but, on the whole, she just found it irritating. How many people actually believe the crap those assholes shat out?

  She dismissed the thought with a shrug. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was winning and making herself - and, by extension, Russia - look good. And if that meant taking the credit for someone else’s work, she’d do it. It wasn’t honourable, but there was no time for honour.

  Because if the truth comes out, she thought as she walked to the hatch, our days might be numbered.

  ***

  Stephen stepped back from the holographic projection, feeling - for the first time since he’d heard the news - a glimmer of optimism. Admiral Zadornov was clearly competent as well as practical, something that was definitely a relief after dealing with too many officers who couldn’t find their fly buttons without a map and a dedicated navigator. She might be Russian - and very well-connected, if her file was to be believed - but that didn’t mean she was bad at her job. Indeed, she was a genuine international hero.

  And she wants to go on the offensive, Stephen thought. Admiral Zadornov was hardly alone in wanting to take the offensive - Stephen couldn’t help thinking that Lord Nelson would have approved - but too many people were only concerned with stemming the alien onslaught, rather than launching an offensive of their own. And if she’s right ...

  He shook his head. If only the virus was predictable! He didn’t know - no one knew - which way the virus would jump, if pressed. It was easy enough to guess what a human would do, or one of the allied races, but ... the virus might do nothing. It might halt its offensive. Or it might alter its plans and drive straight at Earth. There was simply no way to know.

  And it doesn’t care about the lives of its people, he thought, morbidly. It took months to train a naval crewman ... years, really, for them to learn everything they needed to know. The virus, on the other hand, was really a single entity. It didn’t need months to train before it went to war. We can kill a hundred of them for every one of ours and still lose the war.

  Stephen sat down, then shook his head. There was no point in fretting over what couldn’t be changed, not now. They were committed. All they could do was hope for the best ...

  ... And prepare, whatever it took, for the worst.

  Chapter Eleven

  The enemy starfighter appeared out of nowhere.

  Richard swallowed a curse and yanked his starfighter to one side as a hail of plasma bolts tore through the space he’d been a second ago. The enemy pilot was good, damn him. He twisted on his axis, trying to bring his plasma guns to bear on Richard’s starfighter as Richard rolled out of control. The bastard probably set his guns on automatic, Richard thought as he struggled to regain control. It was hard to pull up just enough to take a clear shot before it was too late. A plasma bolt slapped his drive field as the enemy craft exploded into a ball of flame.

  “Nice shot,” Monica called.

  “Concentrate on your flying,” Richard snapped back. A dozen - no, a hundred - alien starfighters were materialising, flying out of an asteroid belt that looked like something from an unrealistic movie. “Don’t give them time to overwhelm us.”

  The alien starfighters closed, impossibly fast. Richard snapped orders as the wing reassembled, bracing themselves for impact. They’d been caught on the hop, but they reacted well, forming up into a defensive formation as the enemy craft opened fire. Richard bit down a curse as plasma bolts burned through space and tore into his starfighters. The pilots slipped into evasive patterns - he’d been amused to discover that every other space navy had its own version of the drunken pilot manoeuvre - and returned fire. A handful of enemy starfighters vanished from the display as human blasts struck home. But they just kept coming.

  They can afford to spend themselves freely to bring down just one or two of our pilots, he thought grimly, as one of the German flyers exploded into a fireball that was rapidly extinguished by vacuum. And there’s no way we can afford to trade one-for-one without running out of pilots.

  He gritted his teeth as he saw an emergency beacon glittering in the display, only to be silenced by an enemy plasma bolt. The pilot had been lucky to eject - it was commonly acknowledged that the ejection seats were designed more for PR than actual use - but her luck had run out seconds later. Data from the earlier engagements had made it clear that the virus targeted emergency beacons as well as communications platforms and recon drones, although it was unclear if it was picking off helpless pilots as part of its strategic vision or if it was just targeting anything that happened to be putting out radio noise. Richard had heard that Nazi pilots during the Battle of Britain had been encouraged to shoot British pilots who bailed out of their aircraft, just to ensure that those pilots weren’t simply given a new aircraft and sent back into th
e fight, but there was no way to know if the virus had bothered to give the issue any actual thought. It was impossible to tell if it knew the human pilots were a dwindling resource. It certainly didn’t have any trouble churning out new pilots ...

  It must know, Richard thought. He picked off an enemy starfighter with practiced skill, then diverted another from killing an American pilot. It could have interrogated the people it infected and drained them of everything they know.

  “They’re pressing our flanks hard.” Fritsch sounded worried. “We can’t take these losses.”

  “No,” Richard agreed. Another swarm of alien starfighters emerged from the asteroid field and headed straight for the fight. “I think we’ve worn out our welcome.”

  “I’ll say,” Francesca Bernardello said. She sounded reassuringly calm. A former test pilot would be used to far worse situations. “I haven’t had such an unwelcoming reception since I took my childhood friends to meet my aunt.”

  “Hah,” Richard said. “All ships, fall back on the fleet. I say again ...”

  He swallowed another curse as the alien starfighters pressed their advantage, firing thousands of plasma bolts at the retreating human craft. The odds of any single bolt finding a target were very low - the starfighters were tiny against the immense vastness of space - but the virus could afford to spend them freely. Rear-mounted guns shot back as the human starfighters started to run, but their targeting was far from accurate. Richard allowed himself a cold smile as two alien starfighters were picked off. The gods of the umpire computers were with them today ...