The Right of the Line

by Christopher Nuttall

  And they’re still closing on us, he thought, grimly. The alien ships were coming closer, boring towards the centre of the formation. What are they doing?

  He felt his expression darken. If the virus managed to ram a cruiser into Invincible or one of the other carriers ... it would be a worthwhile trade. The virus wouldn’t care that it had lost a cruiser, but humanity? Stephen knew, better than most, just how badly the Royal Navy had been sapped over the last two decades. There were newer and better carriers on the drawing board, ships that might turn the tide of the war ... if they were ever produced. But if the navy couldn’t keep the virus from reaching Earth ...

  “Sir,” Newcomb said. “The starfighters are on their way.”

  “Understood,” Stephen said.

  ***

  Wing Commander Richard Redbird felt alert - too alert - as his starfighter was catapulted out the launch tube and into space. His eyesight was a little too sharp, his breathing a little too ragged ... he cursed under his breath as his thoughts started to wander, bringing them back under control with the discipline of years in a cockpit. He’d taken the stim only a few minutes ago, barely long enough for it to take effect. He hadn’t seen any choice. He’d been tired and cranky after hours of simulations, even before the alarms started to howl. He certainly hadn’t been in any state to encounter the enemy.

  “Gosh,” someone said. “This environment is frightfully unrealistic.”

  “As you were.” Richard felt a hot flash of anger. Pilots might joke that real space was boring, compared to the elaborate asteroid fields and supernovas of simulated space, but the enemy ships out there were very real. They didn’t have time for stupid jokes. “Form up in squadrons and prepare to attack.”

  Richard glanced at the live feed from the sensor pickets and frowned. Seven ships ... the cruisers were probably covered in anti-starfighter weapons, if he was any judge. The virus clearly believed in quantity over quality. He didn’t blame it. The virus was smart enough to know that it couldn’t match humanity when it came to flying starfighters, so it had decided to swamp the human pilots with hundreds of starfighters and uncounted hundreds of thousands of plasma bolts instead. Getting into torpedo range was going to be a nightmare. The odds of any single plasma bolt hitting his starfighter were very low, but there were a lot of plasma bolts ...

  He bit his lip hard, tasting blood in his mouth. He couldn’t afford to let his mind wander, not now. The enemy ships were getting closer, their sensor cloaks stripped away as they passed through the inner picket line. Four large cruisers, two freighters and one ship that looked ... odd. He couldn’t help remembering some of the old interplanetary exploration ships, built in the days before fusion cores and artificial gravity. They’d been strange too, compared to modern ships. The drive section had been kept well away from the rest of the hull.

  “It looks like a survey mission,” Monica said. “And they’re coming right at us.”

  “They probably want to know what we can throw at them,” Richard said. He eyed the alien freighters, feeling a flicker of puzzlement. If they were carriers, surely they should be launching their starfighters by now. The human starfighters were closing the range with terrifying speed. “We won’t let them get much closer.”

  Alerts flashed up in front of him. He almost panicked, his hands twitching uncomfortably, as red icons flared to life. The freighters were launching starfighters ... no, they were launching missiles. Richard stared, unable to believe his eyes. He’d heard of the arsenal ship concept, back in basic training, but he’d never actually seen one. No one had been able to make it work. Missiles were too expensive - and too vulnerable to countermeasures - to be expended so freely. He felt his heart pounding as more and more missiles appeared on the display, the number steadily climbing upwards at a terrifying rate. No human admiral would ever fire missiles so freely. It was unlikely that any commander would have so many missiles on hand.

  It took him longer than it should have done to issue the right orders. “Engage the missiles as they come into range,” he snapped. “And then form up to engage the enemy ships.”

  He listened to the responses as the range closed with alarming speed. No sane enemy would waste a shipkiller missile on a cloud of starfighters, but accidents happened. Or ... he told himself, firmly, that it was unlikely that the enemy intended to use nuclear warheads to wipe out the starfighters. It might be theoretically possible, but the starships behind the starfighters made far more tempting targets. Even the virus had to agree - surely - that taking out a carrier was more important than killing a handful of starfighters. If nothing else, stranded pilots would die in interstellar space when their life support ran out.

  His guns started to pound as the missiles swept closer, passing through the starfighter formation and boring onwards towards the carriers. Dozens were picked off, but dozens more flashed in and out of range before they could be engaged and destroyed. Richard swallowed another curse as he glanced at their drives, knowing there was no way they could reverse course themselves and engage the missiles again before it was too late. Missiles didn’t have to worry about flesh and blood pilots. They were easily the fastest things in space.

  But the gunners will see them coming, Richard told himself. No one had managed to find a way to hide a missile drive. The incoming wave of death might as well have sent a message to announce its arrival. And the ships will take them out before they slam home.

  He snapped out orders as the squadrons regrouped, leading them towards the nearest alien ship. The cruiser opened fire, just as he’d predicted - it looked as if every last inch of the alien hull was covered in plasma weapons - but its targeting was shitty. Richard glanced at the two arsenal ships - they weren’t making any attempt to break off, even though they’d shot their bolt - and dismissed them. They wouldn’t get close enough to the human ships to be dangerous. The cruisers were the real problem.

  Sweat trickled down his back as the range closed. Alarms howled as plasma bolts flashed by his ship, a handful coming so close that he could practically see them with the naked eye. He corkscrewed in, twisting the starfighter from side to side in hopes of making his position completely unpredictable. The enemy computers had to be trying to guess where he’d be, quickly enough to put a plasma bolt in the same place. And then, he was suddenly within torpedo range ...

  “Fire,” he ordered. A dozen starfighters had followed him down, flying through the plasma storm ... he tried not to think about the ones who hadn’t made it. He didn’t know who had lived and who had died. He didn’t want to know their names. “I say again, fire.”

  The starfighter jerked as he volley-fired his torpedoes straight at the alien ship, then evaded a plasma bolt that came within bare metres of his hull. He blinked in surprise, unsure - in his addled state - precisely what was surprising. It took him long seconds to realise that the aliens, in defiance of all previous behaviour, were still trying to kill the starfighters, rather than engaging the incoming missiles. He heard one of his pilots cry out in horror, her voice silenced by a direct hit. He’d put them through hundreds of simulations, but somehow he’d missed that. He tried not to think about the implications as the alien starship shuddered under his blows, falling out of formation a second before it blew up. Spectacularly. The virus couldn’t have enough cruisers to trade them for starfighters ... could it?

  No, he told himself. It must have been a glitch, or ...

  He considered the problem as he issued orders, reforming the squadrons. The virus must have known that its ships wouldn’t survive the engagement, once it had realised they’d been detected. There was no point in trying to keep them alive for a few seconds more when they could take out a few more human starfighters. In the short term, trading cruisers for starfighters was a mug’s game. In the long term, it might prove decisive. He didn’t want to, but he glanced at the overall report anyway. Five starfighters were gone. They wouldn’t be replaced in a hurry.

  “I think we got them.” Monica sounded inhu
manly cheerful. “Good shooting, everyone.”

  “Yeah.” Richard cleared his throat and started again. “Very good shooting, everyone.”

  ***

  “Impressive,” Newcomb said. He sounded as if impressive wasn’t the word he would have chosen. “That’s a lot of missiles.”

  “And they’re all coming towards us,” Stephen said. The starfighters had barely put a dent in their number. “Tactical, the point defence is to engage as soon as the missiles enter range.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Stephen took a long breath. It wasn’t the first time he’d been on the receiving end of more missiles than any human commander would dare to fire - he shuddered to think what the Treasury would say about spending so much money for so little - but it was the first time he’d seen it in a minor skirmish. It boded ill for the future. There was no way Invincible and her consorts could reply in kind, certainly not against so few enemy ships. The virus’s starships had been wiped out, but they might just have sold their lives dearly.

  They must have depleted their stockpiles over the last few months, he told himself. He wanted to believe it. He desperately wanted to believe it. But he knew better. The virus couldn’t be that alien. It wouldn’t have expended so many missiles if it didn’t have thousands more in reserve. How many do they have if they’re spending them so freely?

  He watched, calmly, as the missiles swept through the defence perimeter. The escorts opened fire, picking off hundreds of missiles. They didn’t seem to have been targeted, leaving them free to cover Invincible. Stephen wasn’t surprised. A handful of destroyers were worthless compared to the escort carrier. The virus would gain more by crippling Invincible than by wiping out a hundred destroyers. And yet, as more and more missiles vanished from the display, it grew harder to believe that the virus was sane. There had to be a point of diminishing returns ... didn’t there?

  The point defence went live, filling space with hundreds of plasma bolts. Stephen kept his face under tight control as more and more missiles died, each one targeted for destruction long before it entered range. Unlike starfighters, missiles tended to follow predictable courses. They were small targets - it still took several plasma bolts to guarantee a hit, when plasma bolts were notoriously inaccurate - but they were rapidly worn down. None survived to hit the carrier.

  Stephen heard a sigh of relief echoing around the bridge as the last of the missiles vanished from the display. The virus had shot everything at them - including the kitchen sink, part of his mind whispered - and lost. Whatever it had had in mind, it had failed. Or had it? The display was empty, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t another ship somewhere out there, watching them. Stephen could easily imagine a cloaked watcher taking careful note of how the human ships had responded to the brief attack. The next time, the virus would know more about Invincible’s point defence. It might be able to get a missile - or a whole swarm of missiles - through the defences next time.

  And that makes sense, if one has the missiles to spare, Stephen thought. He’d seen the projections, studied the tactical simulations ... but he hadn’t been prepared for the real thing. Not really. The aliens had fired thousands of missiles in defence of their shipyards, yet ... that was different. He’d thought of it as a desperation ploy, not SOP. If they have millions of missiles on hand, expending a few hundred just to test the waters might be an effective practice.

  “Launch another cluster of recon drones,” he ordered. If there was a watcher out there, they might as well try to make life difficult for him. “And then recall the starfighters. I want one rearmed squadron ready to launch in twenty minutes.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Arthur said.

  Stephen leaned back in his chair, knowing that the brief engagement was only the beginning. They were still deep in human space ... they should have been safe. The thought was immensely frustrating. They should have had more time, damn it. But they couldn’t count on anything now. If a roving fleet of alien ships had attacked them here ...

  It was possible, he supposed, that they’d simply gotten unlucky. The fleet wasn’t trying to hide its passage. The virus could have seen them coming and planned a brief ambush. But that was whistling in the dark. If there was one alien task force prowling though human space, there would be others. Nowhere was safe.

  And if they take out the shipyards, we’re screwed, he thought. That would be the end of everything.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Richard’s hands started shaking the moment his starfighter landed on the deck. He stared at them, as if they were weirdly fascinating, as the starfighter was hastily moved through the tubes and into the hangar. His hands no longer felt as if they were part of him, as if they were something he’d put on for the occasion and could take off whenever he wanted. He felt ... he wasn’t sure how he felt. His body was drenched in sweat, his tunic clinging to his skin ... he shuddered as he heard the cockpit being unlatched from the outside. He knew he should be worried - normally, a pilot would open the hatch from the inside - but it was hard to care. He just wanted to sit and stare at his hands.

  Move, he told himself, firmly.

  It was hard, so hard, to get any traction. His body felt like a lump of useless flesh. He knew he could move, he knew he could climb out of the cockpit and drop down to the hangar deck, but it was hard to motivate himself. There was a bit of him that felt completely disconnected from the world around him, that no longer gave a damn about the consequences. He’d used too many stims in the last few days. The world felt dull and dead.

  The cockpit opened. “Sir?”

  Richard forced himself to look up. A pale face peered down at him. A worried face ... it took him a moment to realise the deckhand was female. She was pretty, in a way, but she’d cut her hair short and dressed like a man ... he told himself, once again, that his mind was wandering. He stilled his hands with an effort, and slowly started to unbuckle himself from the harness. He was damned if he was going to ask her for help. That would be far too revealing.

  “Sir?” The deckhand sounded worried too, damn her. “Do you need help?”

  “I’m getting too old for this shit,” Richard muttered. He brushed away her proffered hand, instead forcing himself to stand up on his own. His legs felt like sacks of potatoes. Mouldy potatoes. He wanted to take another stim, but he didn’t dare. “I’m coming.”

  He staggered out of the cockpit and carefully clambered down to the deck. The metal seemed to shift under his feet, forcing him to grab hold of the starfighter to steady himself. It wasn’t the first time he’d landed slightly the worse for wear, after hours in the cockpit, but ... he shook his head in frustration. He really was getting too old for this. His eyes swept the hangar deck, noting the number of pilots grinning like idiots and swapping lies about plasma bolts that had come far too close to wiping them out of existence. The poor bastards felt like vets now, he reminded himself. They’d been bloodied. But they hadn’t faced enemy starfighters yet.

  The deckhand gave him an odd look. “Was it bad out there?”

  “Yeah,” Richard managed. “It was bad out there.”

  He forced himself to walk towards the hatch, trusting in the deck crew to ready his starfighter for the next mission. Captain Shields had ordered a starfighter squadron to be ready for immediate launch ... Richard silently thanked all the gods he’d ever heard of that his squadron hadn’t been chosen for that duty. He might have to take his ship out again at a moment’s notice, but at least he’d have a few minutes to take a stim or do something to force himself to feel better. He didn’t dare fly without one, not now. The mere thought made his hands start to shake again. He wanted - he needed - to hit the rack and get a few hours of sleep.

  Monica met him at the hatch. “That could have been a lot worse.”

  “Yes,” Richard said.

  Sweat poured down his back. His emotions were spinning out of control. Five pilots were dead, but he didn’t know them. It was almost a relief, even though he knew he should be worried
about attrition. He couldn’t afford to lose anyone. And yet ... he didn’t know who he’d lost. They weren’t quite real to him. He knew there was something wrong with that attitude, but ...

  Monica eyed him, concerned. Richard winced, inwardly. If there was anyone who might realise that something was wrong with him, it was Monica. She’d known him for ... it felt like years. It was strange to realise that it had barely been a year or so. He wondered, briefly, what would happen if he went to the doctor and asked to be put on sick leave. The doctor might agree, but ... Richard shook his head. There was no replacement waiting in the wings, no one who could take his place. And he refused to seek leave when it meant abandoning his pilots. That would be the ultimate failure.