Ark Royal

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Thank you, uncle,” he said, sourly. He couldn't escape the feeling of being used – without even being given a reward for his service. “And ... can I avoid this from happening again?”

  Uncle Winchester reached out and grabbed James’s shoulder. “The family gives you an advantage over your less ... wellborn comrades,” he said. “You have automatic entrance to places like Sandhurst or the Luna Academy, if you wish to take advantage of it. But the price comes in upholding the system of government ... and serving as part of backchannel discussions, if necessary. And if you fail the family, or refuse to pay your dues, the results will be unpleasant.”

  James nodded. Automatic entrance was one thing, automatic graduation was quite another. There was no way he would be allowed to pass through the Academy without actually being qualified, something that Uncle Winchester – among others – had hammered into his head while he was still packing his first regulation suitcase. It hadn't really dawned on him that there was another price for access to the Old Boys Network. But the network had always been good at entangling people before it demanded payment. Hell, one didn't even have to be an aristocrat to engage in a little mutual back-scratching.

  He returned to the party and noted, to his relief, that nothing seemed to have gone spectacularly wrong. Most of the drinks were being claimed by senior officers, he couldn't help noticing; the Captain, thankfully, had restricted himself to juice and water. Absently, James wondered if he should tell the Captain what had happened, before deciding that it would be a bad idea. No one would trust him if he did. All he could do was watch his Captain’s back ...

  ... And pray to God that his faith in his CO was not misplaced.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “I’ve told everyone at school that you’re a pilot and they’re dead excited. How many BEMs did you kill?”

  Kurt smiled at his son’s enthusiasm. Percy had never quite believed that his father – his staid harassed investment banker father – was also a starfighter pilot, not until Kurt had been featured on the local news. Kurt was privately rather annoyed by how easily the media had gotten access to his files – they’d even dug up a set of photos taken when he’d first served on a carrier – but it had definitely improved his relationship with his son.

  “I killed seven enemy starfighters,” he said, shortly. “Thirteen more and I will make ace.”

  “That’s great,” Percy said, grinning from ear to ear. “I ...”

  He was pushed out of the screen by Penny, who looked sulky. “Madam Cowpat is still being a pain,” she said. “Why do I have to put up with her again?”

  Kurt sighed. “Just put up with her,” he ordered. Not that he could really blame Penny for disliking her teacher. It was clear that Madam Capet was far from ideal as a French teacher, but for some reason the school couldn't sack her or even convince her to shape up. “You’ll move onto the next teacher soon.”

  “The only French words I know are rude ones,” Penny continued. “You should demand your money back.”

  “What you get out of school depends on what you put into it,” Kurt said. Had he been so blatantly disrespectful to his teachers as a child? Probably. “And if Madam Capet is so completely unsuitable, we can arrange some private tutoring during the summer holidays.”

  Penny’s face fell. She’d been talking about joining her friends on a visit to the moon ... although Kurt had privately resolved to forbid it even before the war had started restricting civilian spaceflight. No teenage girl wanted to spend her summer holidays with a private tutor ... hell, Kurt wasn't even sure if he could afford a private tutor. His boss wasn't legally allowed to fire him for being recalled to active service, but Kurt suspected that it was only a matter of time before the penny-pinching bastard started reducing Kurt’s salary. But if Penny needed it ...

  “You two nip off downstairs,” Molly ordered, her face appearing in the screen. She sat down in front of the monitor as the two teenagers left the room, closing the door behind them. “When are you coming home?”

  Kurt blinked at her tone. “I don’t know,” he confessed. “The war has only just begun.”

  “I’m being driven crazy by these two,” Molly said, ignoring him. “Penny is fighting with one of her friends, while Percy is talking about joining the Royal Navy. I expect you to put that out of his mind.”

  “Why?” Kurt asked. “He won’t be able to sign up for another two years, at the very earliest ...”

  “I won’t have my son risking his life,” Molly snapped, interrupting him. “He will not be allowed to throw his life away.”

  Kurt felt his head start to pound. “Your husband is already risking his life,” he remarked, sharply. “What about me?”

  “If it were up to me,” Molly said, “you wouldn't have gone at all.”

  She sighed, rubbing her own forehead. “Suzie’s father is one of those damned peaceniks,” she added. “She gave Penny a very hard time and now the girls aren’t talking to one another.”

  It took Kurt a moment to place the name. One of Penny’s friends, a young girl on the verge of womanhood, so much so that he felt like a dirty old man whenever he looked at her. She hadn't struck him as particularly malicious, although teenagers could often be very unpleasant to one another one moment and then make up the next. If her father was indeed a peacenik ...

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “Tell Penny to ignore the silly girl.”

  Molly gave him a sardonic look. “And were you so easily able to ignore taunts when you were a child?”

  Kurt scowled, recognising her point.

  “They’re just driving me mad,” Molly added. “I almost slapped Penny this morning, after she started to throw a tantrum. Please ... when are you coming home?”

  “I don't know,” Kurt admitted. “I ...”

  “You’re a goddamned hero,” Molly snapped. “Can't they gave you a few days of leave?”

  “All leaves have been cancelled,” Kurt reminded her. “We aren't allowed to leave our posts ...”

  “And yet they let you down to London,” Molly thundered. “How many girls did you eye there?”

  Kurt gritted his teeth. “Molly ...”

  A window flashed up on the display, warning him that his session was about to expire. “Molly, I will be back as soon as I can,” he promised. “But I don't get to choose my timing ...”

  The session expired. He swore out loud as the screen went blank, then stood up and left the privacy cubicle. He’d have to write out an email or record a v-mail ... and then hope that she was in a forgiving mood. Molly bore grudges for eternity, digging them up at the worst possible moment and rubbing them in his face. The last thing he wanted was her screaming at the children because of him, not when the family was already under so much stress. It was one of the reasons most junior naval personnel were not advised to marry. A military family could be torn apart by constant separations and not having any real control over their own lives.

  “You don’t look well, sir,” Rose said, as he entered their quarters. “Bad news from home?”

  Kurt sighed. “What do you say to a teenage girl who keeps picking fights with her teacher and who fell out with her best friend, purely because her father is a starfighter pilot?”

  “My father would probably have yelled at me for an hour,” Rose said, after a moment. “But I had to work desperately just to meet the requirements to enter the Academy. What’s her problem with the teacher?”

  “She isn't very good,” Kurt sighed. “Once, she was proctoring an exam and she changed the examination papers, midway through the session.”

  Rose blinked. “Is that even permissible?”

  “She seems to have gotten away with it,” Kurt observed. “I think she was the one who wrote the exam too.”

  “I see,” Rose said. “It strikes me that you could file a formal complaint ...”

  “It was a little hard to do it when Penny got in so much trouble,” Kurt admitted. It had smacked of blaming the victim. Kurt�
�s father had been a firm believer in not trying to hide behind excuses, no matter how accurate they were. “But I suppose you’re right.”

  “Tell your daughter to concentrate on her book studies if the teacher is such a bitch,” Rose added. “And then promise her a reward if she passes and a punishment if she fails.”

  “It's hard to punish her these days,” Kurt confessed. “I’m here, Molly spends half of her time at work ... the kids have just too much leeway to get into trouble.”

  “They do get better,” Rose assured him. She stood and headed towards the hatch. “Good luck, sir.”

  Kurt scowled after her, then picked up his terminal and started to write, feeling the age-old frustration bubbling up within him. Molly was a wonderful person, really she was, but when she got the bit between her teeth she was almost intolerable. The kids could drive her to the edge of a screaming fit – and, when it wasn't the kids, it was everything from money to how much time she could spend with her husband. He couldn't even remember the last time they’d had sex.

  He finished writing the message, then scrolled through the message log. As always, a handful of messages had arrived in the buffer while the carrier was on deployment, held at Earth until they returned home. Half of them were untraceable spam – spammers could be fined a pound for every unwanted message, but the bastards were very good at remaining untraced – but the remainder were various messages from the press and other organisations. Some of them wanted interviews, some of them wanted permission to interview his children for background news – he wrote back categorically denying permission – and a couple invited him and his pilots to Sin City.

  They’d love it, he thought. Even now, two hundred years after settlement, the moon was still a patchwork quilt of tiny settlements, with no overall authority. Sin City prided itself on allowing anything, as long as the money was there, from whores to gambling and illicit VR simulations. Rumour had it that travellers could get anything there, as long as they had the money. And discretion was part of the package.

  It was tempting, he had to admit, if he could convince the XO to let them go. The pilots needed some reward for their efforts, something more than the respect of their formally sneering peers and mentions in dispatches. But at the same time ... he had no interest in gambling or semi-legal VR games. If he went, he'd want to see a whore ...

  ... And that would be betraying Molly.

  Part of his mind insisted that wouldn't be a bad thing. Their relationship had changed; they were no longer the horny teenagers who’d fallen into bed together. Molly was too tired for sex most of the time and, in all honesty, investment banking had killed Kurt’s fire too. It wouldn't hurt her if he went to Sin City for a few hours of pleasure with a whore. The rest of his mind insisted that it would be disastrous. Molly hadn't given him permission to sleep with anyone else; she'd be heartbroken – or at least very angry – if he cheated on her.

  “Damn it,” he muttered out loud. Starfighter pilots chased women like there was no tomorrow ... because, quite often, there was at least the prospect of there being no tomorrow. Now, after the aliens had sliced apart the defences of New Russia, it was quite likely that the rest of the starfighter pilots would die too, along with the other officers and men. He’d been horny as hell when he’d been an active duty pilot ... and now he was such a pilot again. “What the hell do I do?”

  He found himself unsure of what to say. He didn't have to go to Sin City; it would be simple enough to arrange the trip, if there were pilots who would want to go. Besides, there was a war on. It was quite likely that permission would be refused. He could claim that he’d asked the XO and been turned down.

  And what, he asked himself, is the difference between that and your reluctance to suggest to the headteacher that Madam Capet be held to account?

  Angrily, he reread the message. There was no official flight from the Royal Navy’s yards to Sin City, not when the Luna settlement had such a bad reputation. But there were plenty of ways to reach the settlement from Armstrong City or Baxter Base. They could go ...

  Irked, he forwarded the message to the XO – let him handle it – then started to write out a new message to Penny. Maybe he could talk some sense into her. Or maybe she would just do whatever the hell she felt like, anyway. At her age, listening to authority was an overrated pastime. But one day, he feared, she would go too far. For all the money parents like him invested in private school, there were still some pupils who ended up in prison before they were even old enough to legally drink.

  And then he started to write another letter to Percy.

  ***

  “I suggest we insert a handful of additional rail guns here and here,” Anderson said, tapping the paper schematics. James wasn't sure why the ancient engineer insisted on using paper, rather than holograms, but it certainly added novelty to the experience. “We lost the guns here fairly quickly, which could have been disastrous. It certainly will be next time.”

  James nodded. He’d reviewed the recordings of the battle during the long trudge back to Earth and one thing had become immediately clear. They’d surprised the aliens, surprised them badly. But that wouldn't last. The aliens would realise their own weaknesses, then adapt, react and overcome, just like humanity. By then, humanity had to be ready to close the gap.

  The aliens might not be able to break Ark Royal’s armour – although the destruction of one of the frigates suggested that only applied to starfighter weapons – but they could certainly sweep her weapons and sensors off the hull. If that happened, the carrier would be blind as well as defenceless, waiting helplessly for the alien capital ships to come into range and open fire. So far, there was no proof that the aliens had any form of projectile weapon – either ballistic or powered – but that would certainly change. Humanity definitely had to take the lead.

  “I won’t disagree with you,” he said. He looked down at the paper sheets, puzzling them out. “Can we operate the rail-guns there, though?”

  “We’d have to run a few extra power lines,” Anderson said. “It would be simple enough to link them into the turrets we already have, but if we lost them ... well, we’d lose the entire subsection. It will only take a few days if we have help from naval crewmen here.”

  “That won’t be a problem,” James said. After the battle, Ark Royal had been granted absolute priority over every other starship in the system. Indeed, they’d even been able to convince the other powers to make contributions of older spare parts for the ship. “Can you do it without putting us out of action?”

  “Easily,” Anderson assured him. “We will be able to spring back into battle within seconds.”

  James allowed himself a moment of relief. No one really knew how the aliens would react to the bloody nose they’d received, but it was quite possible that they would launch an all-out attack on Earth. Careful analysis of the ship’s sensor records had revealed that the aliens could probably access at least a dozen new tramlines that would lead them directly to Sol. Three of them, in addition to the unnamed star system, were so completely isolated that there would be no warning before the aliens advanced on Earth.

  Beats them being free of the tramlines, I suppose, he thought. If they were, we would be screwed.

  “Make it so, then,” James ordered. The Chief Engineer rolled up his papers, then headed towards the hatch. “Send in Midshipwoman Lopez on your way out.”

  The hatch opened and the Chief Engineer stepped through. Moments later, Midshipwoman Lopez entered and closed the door behind her. She looked tired, James noted, which wasn't too surprising. When she wasn't tending to her duties, she was helping the senior officers with their paperwork and refusing requests for interviews from the media.

  “Sir,” she said. James hadn't told her why he’d asked her to report to his cabin, something that was rarely good news. “What can I do for you?”

  “I want you to understand something first,” James said, silently damning himself. He had no right to keep an eye on his commanding of
ficer, let alone involve a young and defenceless officer in his activities. “If what I am about to say makes you feel uncomfortable in any way, you are free to leave and forget about it, as long as you keep your mouth shut.”

  The young woman’s eyes narrowed. James winced, inwardly. Clearly, she suspected that her superior was about to make an indecent proposal. Which was true enough, James had to admit, even if it wasn't quite the proposal she thought was coming.

  “The Captain, as you know, used to have a problem with drinking,” he said. “Do you think he still has a problem?”

  Midshipwoman Lopez looked thoroughly uncomfortable. “I believe,” she said, after a moment, “that he has largely stopped drinking. However, I do not monitor his alcoholic intake.”

  “No, you wouldn't,” James nodded. He did his best to avoid sounding threatening or disapproving. “I need you to let me know if you have good reason to believe that this has changed.”