Ark Royal 3: The Trafalgar Gambit

by Christopher Nuttall

  He looked down at the CAG, “Kurt?”

  “We are seriously below complement for starfighter pilots,” Schneider said, flatly. His voice was grim, yet curiously dispassionate. “Right now, we have three and a half squadrons, two of which are made up of pilots who have never flown outside simulations and training exercises. We were better prepared for war when we sailed off to attack New Russia. And I have been unable to convince the remaining home defence squadrons to cut loose any pilots. In short, we don’t even have starfighters for the escort carriers.”

  Ted winced. After the first attack on Earth, it had been hard enough to convince the Admiralty that Ark Royal needed a handful of frigates and escort carriers as part of the flotilla. If the escort carriers hadn't been so useless in the line of battle, he suspected he would never have received approval. But then, without starfighters, they were damn near useless anyway.

  Commander Williams frowned. “What’s the bottleneck?”

  “Pilots,” Schneider said. He looked down at the table, almost guiltily. “Admiral, right now, we have starfighters without pilots.”

  “I know,” Ted said. The Royal Navy had produced Spitfires and Hurricanes in vast numbers, perhaps intending to sell some of their production line to other interstellar powers. But it was pilots that was the true bottleneck. A starfighter was useless without a pilot. “Do you have a solution?”

  “Only one,” Schneider said. “I’d like to draw from the lead class at the Academy.”

  “They’re kids,” Fitzwilliam protested. “They won't even have completed the goddamned accelerated training course, let alone the full training period.”

  “Yes, sir,” Schneider agreed. “But we don’t have anywhere else to look.”

  He met Ted’s eyes. “There’s a big difference between flying a shuttlecraft and a starfighter,” he warned. “If the pilots are too used to one craft, they won’t be prepared for the other. I don’t think we dare use shuttle pilots until they’ve been retrained and we simply don’t have the time. And every other experienced pilot is tapped already.”

  Ted nodded, slowly. The Admiralty was unlikely to agree to assign three new front-line squadrons to Ark Royal, let alone the escort carriers. Using student pilots was one hell of a risk – they might wind up shooting each other instead of the aliens – but he saw no other option either. There was no way they could recruit pilots from other nations. They’d have the same problem as shuttle pilots, with the added disadvantage of believing they were prepared for war.

  “Go to the Academy and ask for volunteers among the top-scoring pilots,” Ted ordered, finally. “Make sure they understand this is a voluntary mission ...”

  He broke off. Starfighter pilots were always supremely convinced of their own skill, even when they’d managed to land so badly they’d broken the landing struts. It was unlikely that the best student pilots would refuse the mission, no matter how often they were told that refusing would not reflect badly on their careers. There were times, he thought, when starfighter pilots were allowed too much latitude. But now, with death increasingly likely for each pilot, they could be tolerated.

  But if they prank my crew, he thought, remembering one incident on Formidable before her destruction, I’ll bring back the lash.

  “Aye, sir,” Schneider said. “I don’t think we will have any trouble finding volunteers.”

  “I don’t think so too,” Ted said, dryly. He looked around the compartment. “Are there any other issues we need to resolve?”

  “The crew could do with a day or two of leave,” Commander Williams said. “Right now, far too many of them are approaching burn-out.”

  “Sin City is gone,” Schneider pointed out. “I thought we were going to have riots when that hit the datanets.”

  Ted nodded. The aliens, for reasons known only to themselves, had targeted Sin City with a long-range missile. There was no military reason for the attack; Sin City might have been a wretched hive of scum and villainy, but it had no military significance. And half of the servicemen who might have been visiting had been on active duty instead. All the aliens had done was kill a few thousand prostitutes, visiting civilians and force an emergency evacuation of the rest of the complex. It didn't seem like an effective use of a missile.

  Unless they wanted to target our morale, he thought. Every enlisted crewman – and not a few officers – in every interstellar navy was intimately familiar with Sin City. One had been able get anything there for a price, from straight sex to VR simulations that covered the deepest darkest fantasies of the most depraved human mind. Do they know us well enough for that?

  He shrugged. It didn't seem relevant.

  “Assign them passes to Luna if they have places to go,” he said, finally. Sin City wasn't the only den of ill repute, merely the best-known one. “But we can't tie up shuttles to Earth, not now. They’ll be needed for recovery work.”

  “Aye, Admiral,” Commander Williams said.

  Ted nodded. “Are there any more issues?”

  There were none.

  “We will greet the ambassadors in several days, I assume,” Ted said. “As I said, we have to put up with their presence, so ... try to be polite, even if they are taking your cabin.”

  He stood. “Dismissed,” he said. “Captain Fitzwilliam – a word?”

  Fitzwilliam nodded, then waited until the compartment was empty, save for Ted, Fitzwilliam and Janelle. Ted gave her a look and she nodded, then headed through the hatch, which closed behind her. He felt a moment of concern – the bright and lively girl who had requested assignment to Ark Royal was gone, replaced by a stranger – but knew she had to work through her problems on her own. Perhaps it would have been kinder to urge her to change her name and emigrate to Britannia.

  “Admiral,” Fitzwilliam said. “Do you believe this mission can succeed?”

  “I hope so,” Ted said. “But we won't know until we try.”

  “We could have completely misinterpreted the data,” Fitzwilliam added. “Or the aliens could be trying an elaborate trick.”

  “It's possible,” Ted said. It was the Flag Captain’s job to play devil’s advocate. “But do we have many other options?”

  He looked up at the display, charting the route to the alien homeworld – if it was the alien homeworld. The researchers had written hundreds of papers, each one arguing for or against the conclusion. But the only way to know for sure was to go and see. Ted was confident his command could slip through the alien rear, remaining undetected until they launched the attack, yet he knew there were too many things that could go wrong. Murphy would make an appearance at the worst possible moment.

  “You’ll get a confidential briefing soon,” he warned. “If we make peace, well and good; if not, there are options.”

  “Yes, sir,” Fitzwilliam said.

  Ted was reminded, suddenly, of just how young his Flag Captain actually was. He’d used his family connections to try to take command of Ark Royal, yet – when thwarted – he’d shown the sense to actually learn from Ted, rather than doing his best to undermine Ted’s command. And, when he’d been handed the opportunity to relieve Ted and take command for himself, he’d rejected it.

  If he was my son, Ted thought, I couldn't be prouder.

  “Many of those options are not good,” he added. “They could make the war worse.”

  He had a sudden vision of humanity’s worlds burning, one by one, as the aliens wreaked a terrible revenge. And of alien worlds burning too. The limits humans had imposed on international and interstellar conflicts meant nothing to them – and why should they? They weren't human.

  Fitzwilliam snorted. “It can get worse?”

  “It can,” Ted said, firmly. He paused. “What arrangements did you make for the crew’s families?”

  Fitzwilliam flushed. “I had them moved to the estate,” he said. “They’ll be as safe as possible, even if we won’t be.”

  “Good thinking,” Ted said. He normally disliked any form of string-pullin
g – although he was honest enough to admit that might be because he’d never been able to do it for himself – but he had to admit that Fitzwilliam had done well. “Will they have time to send letters to their families?”

  “I believe so,” Fitzwilliam said. “But Admiral ... the camps were shockingly disorganised.”

  “Yes,” Ted agreed. Someone should have supplied footballs or board games or even tried to take additional volunteers out to work. “The emergency protocols were completely overwhelmed. No one expected a disaster on such a scale. Even a terrorist nuke would have been easier to handle.”

  “It would have been worse if they’d gone after the towers,” Fitzwilliam said. “Do you think that’s a good sign?”

  Ted sighed. “I hope so.”

  Chapter Ten

  The Academy felt ... different to Kurt as he walked through the long corridors, cut into the lunar rock, and made his way to the conference room. Once, it had been a place of fun as well as a place of serious training. The pilots he’d trained beside had worked hard and played harder. Weekends had been spent at Sin City, if they won passes in shooting competitions , where alcohol, gambling and girls had been available in large numbers. It had been hard, but it had also been fun.

  Now, fear ran through the air and the students looked harried. Their training courses had already been cut down to the bare minimum, concentrating on flying skills to the exclusion of all else. Kurt knew – he’d been involved with designing the Accelerated Training Courses – just how dangerous it was to allow the students loose after a handful of months of training, yet it seemed worse now. The students looked as though they expected monsters to chase them down the corridor if they stepped on a crack in the floor.

  He sighed, inwardly, as he stepped into the compartment. Perhaps it was the sense that it could have been the Academy, rather than Sin City, that had been destroyed. The Royal Navy had other training facilities, but none so extensive and capable. Or perhaps it was the grim awareness that starfighter pilots and carrier crews had borne the brunt of the war so far and couldn't expect to live long. Kurt and Rose were two of the longest-surviving pilots and they'd only been at war for a year.

  “Attention,” the Proctor snapped. The trainees in the room rose to their feet and saluted, poorly. Clearly, training had slipped even further than it had before he’d departed for Operation Nelson. “Commander?”

  Kurt took the stand and studied the trainees carefully. They looked so young; the boys looked barely old enough to shave, while the girls barely seemed to be growing into their adult forms. It was his cynicism, he told himself bitterly, but it looked to him as though they were younger than Percy and Penny. Perhaps it wouldn’t be long before Penny was offered a chance to go to the Academy, now the war had reached Earth. Percy’s name was already down for the next intake.

  And they were scared. It was clear from the way they held themselves, from the way their eyes twitched and hands clenched when they thought he wasn't looking. He could hardly blame them for being scared, he knew; he still feared, if only for his family rather than himself. But there was no time to allow fear to master them. They were needed.

  “Take your seats and relax,” he ordered, deliberately informal. The trainees obeyed, sinking into their seats with every appearance of relief. “Officially, I am not here.”

  He watched as some of the students exchanged glances, then looked back at him. The last time he’d spoken to a batch of recruits, they’d included Prince Henry ... not that he’d known it at the time. Was there someone else, equally secretive, in the bunch before him or was he simply being silly. The media had made such a song and dance about Prince Henry’s brave attempt to be a normal person that it was unlikely anyone else could hide for long.

  “And I will be blunt,” he continued. He caught the eye of a girl young enough to be his daughter and looked away, keeping his reactions under tight control. “I don’t know what you will have seen or heard on the datanets, or the official news bulletins. The truth is that the war situation has developed not necessarily to our advantage.”

  A couple of them recognised the quote, he saw. The others probably thought he was indulging in deliberate understatement. Once, the students would have read histories of war and learned about their chosen field. Now, they had no time for anything, but starfighter training and endless simulations. They no longer had time to study history.

  “My ship needs starfighter pilots urgently,” he added. “You are the top-scoring pilots in your grades. If you are interested in joining my ship and entering active service as quickly as possible, you will have the chance to do so now. You will skip the final tests and examinations and go straight to the front lines.”

  He took a breath. “This is deadly serious,” he warned. “I won’t tolerate any form of misbehaviour onboard the ship. You’ll be training endlessly with more experienced pilots, both in simulators and out of it, until you are flung into actual combat. And there is a very strong chance you could die within the first few seconds of fighting. You simply don't have the experience to know what you’re doing.

  “Normally, we would never consider this, any more than a father would consider giving his son the keys to the car without making sure he passed the driving test,” he concluded. “If you choose to stay here and complete the training course, you may do so. It will not be counted against you – and it may well be the wise choice. But if you feel that you can handle it, that you’re willing to risk everything to serve your nation now, report to the shuttlebay at 1900hrs. You’ll be picked up there.”

  He nodded to the Proctor, who stepped forward. “Dismissed!”

  The trainees rose to their feet and headed out of the door, some moving as fast as they could without running, others dragging their feet as if they wanted to stay and speak privately to Kurt. But that wasn't an option. He strode out of the room and headed to the transit tubes, where he knew he could catch a train to Luna City. Commander Williams had ordered him to take a few hours off, even if he had to wander the city rather than visit a brothel or a gambling hall. He’d spent several minutes devising ways for Rose to accompany him before reluctantly conceding she couldn't be spared from her duties.

  It had been a long time since he’d visited Luna City, the first of the major settlements built on Luna and a politically independent entity. The Moon itself was a patchwork of cities, corporate installations and mining stations, some as independent as Luna City, others belonging to a nation back on Earth. It had often puzzled Kurt why the Royal Navy hadn't put its training centre closer to Clarke Colony, but there was probably some reason for it that only made sense to bureaucrats. Perhaps they’d wanted the trainees to experience Luna City rather than Clarke or Armstrong.

  Or perhaps they weren't thinking at all, he thought, as he stepped out of the train and though the airlock into the first dome. Someone had scrawled This Place Has No Atmosphere on top of the airlock, he noted with some amusement. It was a droll reminder of just what would happen if the giant dome broke. Bureaucrats rarely bother to consider what they’re doing before it is too late.

  Inside, Luna City looked like any small town in Britain or America, save for the giant dome overhead that kept the atmosphere within the settlement. Unlike many of the other installations, most of the city was on the surface, despite the risks. After what had happened to Sin City, he couldn't help seeing, half of the population seemed intent on moving elsewhere. A number of shops were closed, the digital library was only open for half hours and the bars were the only places that seemed to be operating 24/7. Shaking his head, he stepped into one of them, only to discover it was almost deserted. The only occupants were a number of children in a booth in the far corner, snickering to themselves.

  I feel old, Kurt thought, in a moment of self-pity. How long had it been since he’d felt so untouched by the outside universe? And they’re young enough to be my grandkids.

  He looked up, sharply, as a man sat down facing him. “Commander Schneider,” he said, simpl
y. “Welcome to Luna City.”

  Kurt blinked in surprise. The newcomer had a face so bland it was instantly forgettable, with short brown hair and a wide innocent smile. He wore a simple black tunic, just like almost all of the other adult residents of Luna City, complete with a dangling oxygen mask and emergency air supply. Kurt didn't recognise him at all.

  “Thank you,” he said. He didn't have it in him to be polite, not now. “Who are you?”

  “My name doesn't matter,” the man said. He waved to the waiter, who walked over to the table. “What can I get you?”

  Kurt frowned. He was tempted to order one of the most expensive alcoholic drinks on Luna, but alarm bells were ringing at the back of his mind. Combat instincts were warning him to prepare to fight or flee for his life.