The Right of the Line

by Christopher Nuttall

  “The alien ships are picking up speed,” Anisa reported. “I think they’re trying to run us down.”

  “It certainly looks that way,” Stephen said. He didn’t have a report from Nicolson yet, but his long-range sensors had picked up flashes of energy from Alien-One. It was quite likely that the planet had been hit - and hit badly. The virus could break contact, if it wished, but - perversely - it might gain something if it brought Stephen to battle. It presumably didn’t want Force One and Force Two to reunite, then finish the job. “Order the starfighters to slow them down.”

  He sucked in his breath. “And signal Force Two. They are to alter course to assist us.”

  “Aye, Commodore.”

  Stephen nodded. If the long-range sensors were accurate, Alien-One had been bombarded heavily. The plan had certainly called for the planet to be bombarded, although he still had no way of knowing precisely what had happened. He tried not to think about just how many host-bodies had been killed in the last few minutes ... maybe it wasn’t genocide, by the strict legal definition, but it was close enough. Cold logic told him he’d had no choice, that they must either commit genocide or be the victims of genocide; emotion suggested otherwise. They should have been able to find another way.

  We might have just blown up their homeworld, he thought, numbly. But we may never know for sure.

  He shrugged. The xenospecialists hadn’t been able to isolate the virus’s homeworld, not even by comparing the virus’s DNA to host-body DNA. There was no way to know, but he suspected that Alien-One was - had been - yet another infected world, bigger than most. It was hard to believe that a race would rise to master technology and spread out to explore the tramlines, all the while unaware of the threat growing beneath its feet. The world that had birthed the virus might never develop any other form of intelligent life at all. No, it was more likely that the virus - assuming it had evolved naturally - had done so in a different system altogether. And then the explorers from outer space had landed ...

  Poor bastards, he thought. He had no way to know what had happened, but he could imagine it. By the time they realised the threat, it was too late. They never stood a chance.

  ***

  Richard resisted the urge to laugh out loud as he led his makeshift squadron towards the alien ship. The aliens seemed stunned by the scale of the devastation, by suddenly finding themselves smashed by a wave of missiles ... by the same tactic they’d used themselves to such great effect in both Falkirk and Zheng He. The virus had to have lost some control over its fleets, he reasoned; the main body of the fleet was still trying to run Invincible and the rest of the ships down, while most of their starfighters were covering the shipyard instead of adding their weight to the battle. The timing, for once, spoke against them. He had no intention of giving them time to recover.

  “Form up on me,” he ordered, as flashes of plasma fire cut through space. The enemy ship was determined to keep them as far away as possible, for all the good it would do. “Concentrate your fire on the drive section.”

  He studied his display carefully as the alien battleship grew larger and larger. She was a monster of a ship, studded with weapons and defences that made Invincible look puny. A single missile had struck her amidships, blasting a hole through her armour, but there was nothing to be gained by trying to drop a torpedo into the hull. Post-battle analysis had made it clear that the alien ships had extensive layers of internal armour, as well as heavy point defence. A starfighter torpedo wouldn’t do much damage unless it sparked off a chain of explosions that threatened to tear the ship apart.

  But there was another target. “Lock torpedoes,” he ordered, swerving from side to side as the enemy point defence grew stronger. “And fire!”

  His starfighter jerked, the torpedoes lunging towards their target. The enemy point defence hastily retargeted itself, giving him a clear route away from the ship as it tried to take out the torpedoes before it was too late. The other starfighters followed suit, giving the alien point defence more and more targets to blast out of space. A handful broke through the defences and slammed into their targets. Seconds later, the enemy battleship was spinning out of control.

  Crippled, Richard thought. His hands were starting to shake. He gripped the stick tightly, silently praying he’d make it back before something worse happened. Crippled, just like me.

  “We can finish her,” a pilot said, in a thick Russian accent. “We kill her now.”

  “Leave her,” Richard said. A crippled battleship was no longer a threat. He understood the urge to finish the job, to have the right to paint a battleship on his starfighter, but they had to think a little more tactically. “We need to cripple as many ships as possible.”

  He ignored the angry mutter of protest. “Re-form on me,” he said. His vision swam, just for a moment. He wanted a drink. Or a stim. He sipped water from the tube, wishing it tasted better. “And follow me to the next target.”

  ***

  “Update from Alaska,” Anisa said. “She and her consorts are altering course as ordered.”

  “Then alter course to the RV point,” Stephen ordered. The plan had worked, better than he’d had a right to expect. “And divert the drones to confuse the enemy.”

  “Aye, sir,” Anisa said.

  If that’s even possible, Stephen thought, quietly. The virus knows - now - which ships are real.

  He forced himself to relax as the range started to grow. The enemy fleet was reducing speed, reluctant to waste more time and ships trying to run Invincible to ground. Stephen didn’t really blame them. The range had opened up too far, allowing him to use his starfighters to batter the enemy ships to rubble without putting his own in serious danger. There was no way the virus could stage its starfighters forward without carriers and all of its carriers were either gone or hopelessly out of place.

  We did it, Stephen told himself. A thrill of excitement ran through him. We bloody did it.

  He leaned back in his chair, studying the first reports from Alien-One. The analysts had warned that preliminary results were not always reliable - there were no shortage of cautionary tales of preliminary reports that were overoptimistic, mistaken or flat-out lies - but he could see that the virus had taken a major blow. The planet itself was effectively dead, while hundreds of industrial nodes and production facilities had been destroyed or crippled. It would take years for the virus to recover, even if it launched a crash-program to rebuild. He had no way to know how much they’d actually hurt the virus, overall, but it was hard to believe that they hadn’t done a great deal of damage. They might just have bought the human race time, time it desperately needed ...

  An alert sounded. Stephen looked up, sharply. “Report!”

  “Long-range probes have just reported a major enemy fleet entering the system through Tramline Two,” Anisa said. “Projections indicate that they’re heading to Tramline Four.”

  Stephen blinked in surprise. That didn’t make sense. If the virus had summoned reinforcements ... his blood ran cold. It did make sense. The virus had decided there was no point in trying to prevent him from destroying the remaining facilities within the system, so it was trying to block his escape instead. He ran the calculations, working his way through the vectors as quickly as possible. There was no hope of returning to the tramline and escaping before it was too late.

  Another wave of red icons appeared on the display, coming from the shipyard. “Enemy starfighters,” Anisa reported, sharply. “They just launched everything they have at us.”

  Those pilots are going to die, Stephen thought, coldly. The starfighters could not reach Invincible, launch their attacks and then get back to safety before their life support packs ran out. But the virus wouldn’t care. They’re going to try to weaken us, to win time for their main fleet to finish the job. And that means ...

  He worked his way through the possibilities, feeling a cold lump of fear forming in his stomach. Whatever he did, people were going to die. The faster ships might be abl
e to escape, but that would mean leaving the rest of the fleet to its fate. And that would give the virus a chance to infect more people ... hell, he couldn’t even organise a last-ditch defence. The fleet was too scattered. No, he had to re-concentrate the fleet and escape. There was nothing else he could do.

  “Signal the fleet,” he ordered. There was only one option, only one chance left. It wasn’t much, but it was all they had. “All ships are to head for Tramline One.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  I really need a drink, Richard thought.

  His display was a solid mass of red light. The alien starfighters were throwing caution to the winds, attacking in a single formation that threatened to crush the remaining fleet under a tidal wave of death and destruction. Richard knew the alien pilots would not survive, but he also knew the virus didn’t care. The pilots were host-bodies, no more important than Richard’s toenails. They could be spent like water, if necessary. His pilots were nowhere near as expendable.

  “Form up on me,” he ordered. “Switch weapons to autofire” - a risk, but one they had to take - “and prepare to engage.”

  The range closed with terrifying speed. He’d never seen anything like it, not outside simulations. It looked as if the alien starfighters were practically flying wingtip-to-wingtip, something Richard would never have dared. The slightest mistake might set off a chain of disasters ... he allowed himself to hope, just for a second, that the virus’s fighters would wipe themselves out, then dismissed the thought. It wasn’t going to happen.

  He risked a look at the system display. Force One was pulling away, hurrying to link up with Force Two and the remaining carriers. The latter were launching all their fighters to provide cover, but they weren’t going to reach Invincible in time. Panic bubbled up at the back of his mind, threatening to overwhelm him. His entire body felt leaden as the alien starfighters prepared to fire. He wanted - he needed - a stim.

  You won’t survive with them, a little voice said at the back of his mind. Your career will be blown to shit and ...

  You won’t survive without them, another voice countered. You’re already in trouble.

  He cursed under his breath as he removed the stim tab from his belt. Monica was going to kill him. Probably literally. She hadn’t thought to search his pouch. He’d told himself he could resist, he could hold himself together ... that the mere fact that the stim was there would be enough to keep him from craving it. He’d told himself ... he cursed again as he pressed the tab against his bare skin. It didn’t matter. He’d fallen off the wagon after ... after he’d only been on it for a few days.

  A flush of energy shot through him, just as the alien craft came into range. His pilots didn’t wait for orders before opening fire, filling space with hundreds of plasma bolts. There were so many starfighters bearing down on them that even automated targeting systems, dangerously unreliable in the midst of a dogfight, had no trouble picking off dozens of targets. The aliens opened fire at the same moment, aiming to scatter rather than wipe out the human craft. Richard had no trouble understanding their tactics. They wanted to make sure he couldn’t stop them from reaching the handful of real ships in the fleet.

  “Follow me,” he snapped.

  His starfighter seemed to leap under him as he pushed it forward, charging right at the enemy formation. The guns fired automatically, alerts flashing up to warn him that the plasma containment chambers were on the verge of overheating. Richard dismissed the warnings, knowing it simply didn’t matter. They couldn’t stop firing. There was no way they could risk letting the alien starfighters get any closer to Invincible.

  The alien craft split into two formations, one continuing the charge towards the fleet while the other stayed and fought it out with the human starfighters. Richard gritted his teeth, snapping out orders to ignore the latter as much as possible. It wasn’t easy. The alien pilots flew with suicidal intensity, tearing their way through his formations and scattering his pilots asunder. A display blinked on, silently counting the number of pilots that had been blown out of space. Richard dismissed it with a wave of his hand. He didn’t want to know.

  Fuck, he thought.

  New alerts flashed up as the enemy starfighters closed with the fleet, firing torpedoes. Richard swallowed hard, wondering just how many of them would get through the point defence and slam into the armour ... the already damaged armour. The enemy starfighters kept coming, boring in after the torpedoes ... he realised, in a flash of horror, they were deliberately planning to ram the carrier. A single starfighter might not do much damage to the hull, but if they smashed themselves into the point defence weapons ...

  Invincible’s point defence opened fire, wiping dozens of starfighters and hundreds of torpedoes out of space. Richard felt, just for a moment, a flicker of hope before the remaining torpedoes slammed home. Alerts flashed up as explosions billowed along the carrier’s armour, warning him one of the flight decks had been smashed beyond easy repair. Richard picked off an alien starfighter without thinking, wondering what they’d do if both flight decks were destroyed. They’d have to land on the hull and hope they could get into the ship before their life support ran out. Their flying suits should give them some protection, but everyone knew it was just a polite fiction. Very few pilots had survived bailing out in the midst of a dogfight long enough to be rescued.

  Damn you, he thought. A low buzzing sound ran through the cockpit. He ignored it as he hurled himself at another alien starfighter. Damn you to hell.

  “Richard,” Monica snapped. “You have a bastard on your tail!”

  Richard glanced at the display. An alien starfighter was right on top of him ... and he’d been too focused on his target to notice! The alien was already targeting him ... he let out a breath, expecting to die at any second, before Monica blew the alien starfighter into dust. He cursed himself, bitterly. Monica would notice that something was wrong. She would demand ...

  An alien starfighter blew Monica’s starfighter to bits.

  For a moment, Richard couldn’t believe it. Monica couldn’t be dead. She was so full of life. He couldn’t believe it ... she’d risked her life to save his ... no, she’d saved his life at the cost of her own. Bitter guilt washed through him, mingled with relief and disgust. She hadn’t deserved to die. He was the only one who deserved to die ...

  He dragged his mind back to the present. The command and control network was an utter shambles. Too many senior pilots were dead, too many formations had been shot to hell. He forced himself to take command, to reorganise the remaining pilots on the fly. It was what she would have wanted ...

  But he knew, deep inside, that it should have been him who died.

  ***

  Invincible shuddered as the enemy torpedoes slammed into her hull.

  “Direct hits, port superstructure,” Anisa said. “Heavy damage ...”

  Stephen barely heard her. He could calculate the damage for himself. The armour plating was warped and broken - explosions shook the ship, again and again, as enemy starfighters plunged into his ship - and the port flight deck was offline. He tried to convince himself it could be fixed, given time, but experience suggested otherwise. The internal sensors in the section were gone. That alone was enough to tell him that the damage was near-total.

  “Leave the damage control teams to their work,” he said. He wanted to supervise, but it wasn’t his job. Not any longer. “They can’t mount another offensive like that, can they?”

  He studied the display. Enemy Force One - what was left of it - was falling behind, but Enemy Force Two was hard on their heels. Surprisingly, it wasn’t redlining its drives. Stephen couldn’t help finding that ominous. The virus seemed to be giving up its best chance to run the human ships down before they reunited ... it bothered him. The enemy ships clearly had something in mind.

  They know where we’re going, he thought. There was no alternative, not now. He couldn’t hope to break contact and escape, not with so many d
amaged ships under his command. They know where we’re going and they’re trying to set up a surprise for us.

  He could see it, in his mind’s eye. Enemy Force Two would keep its distance, shadowing the human ships as they raced down the tramline chain to Zheng He ... where the ships that had driven his fleet out of Zheng He in the first place would be waiting for them. It was the sort of plan that a flag officer from a decade ago would have rejected out of hand, but now ... the flicker network allowed fleets to be coordinated on an interstellar scale. Stephen might escape Enemy Force Two, only to run straight into another enemy fleet. They would sell their lives dearly - he was sure of that - but they’d still be smashed.

  “The enemy starfighter force has been wiped out,” Anisa said. “Our remaining starfighters are requesting permission to land and rearm.”

  They wiped themselves out, Stephen thought. The enemy had expended thousands of starfighters just to slow him down. They might just have succeeded. Invincible had lost one drive node and two more were in critical condition. Other ships were worse off. We didn’t win the engagement.