Ark Royal

by Christopher Nuttall

  “You think they stay in the water?”

  “They’re certainly built for it,” Parnell said. “They remind me of that character from the TV show ... the guy who was a merman or something. But thousands of them could be under the waves, hiding from us.”

  Markus shuddered. He hoped the Marine was wrong.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “There will be a review, of course.”

  Ted nodded, glumly. There were strict rules for handling POWs, rules that would logically be applied to their alien captives too. Humanity’s treatment of POWs tended to range widely, but the war wasn’t old enough for common decency to be forgotten – and besides, the aliens would be a source of intelligence in their own right. There was no need to mistreat them even if there wasn't a political lobby that would rise up in arms at the merest hint the aliens weren't being treated gently.

  “Under the circumstances, I think we can agree that no action is required,” he said. It was legal to use all necessary force to prevent prisoners from escaping – and while he was sure the Marines would face a great deal of second-guessing, the Admiralty would probably take their side. “And the other aliens? Are they healthy?”

  The doctor sighed. She’d been irked at being called away from the rescued POWs in order to tend to the aliens, even though they were valuable prisoners. “I am no expert in the care and feeding of alien life forms,” she said, “and nor is anyone else in the navy. We have no baseline for what is normal for their race and what isn’t. There are steps we can take to ensure that their quarters are suitable for them, and we think we can provide them with proper foodstuffs, but there are too many unanswered questions for us to be completely sure.”

  She gazed down at her terminal. “I’ve used medical nanites to start building up a profile of a living alien,” she added. “I’m reluctant to risk more invasive procedures until we have an excellent idea of how their bodies will respond. The injured alien has been placed in a stasis capsule until we can work out how best to proceed with treatment. For the moment, sir, there isn't much more we can do.”

  Fitzwilliam smiled. “Should we place them all in stasis?”

  “If we had the capsules to spare, I’d recommend it,” the doctor said. “As it is, I'm worried about the condition of several of the former POWs. I’d prefer to put them in stasis if their condition worsens.”

  Ted sighed. “What is their condition?”

  “Drugged, mainly,” the doctor said. “Varying levels of dosage. My subordinates and I have had a chance to inspect a handful of the POWs; there's very little actual damage, but there are signs that the aliens took blood and skin samples. I don’t think they did anything more invasive themselves, at least to the surviving prisoners.”

  “Anyone they killed might have been forgotten,” Ted commented. Drugged as they were, the prisoners might not have noticed if they’d lost friends or family to the aliens. “Or simply held at another compound.”

  “We will ask them when they recover enough to talk to us,” the doctor assured him. “For the moment, however, we can only treat their withdrawal symptoms and pray none of them die.”

  “I have a question,” Fitzwilliam said. “Couldn’t we drug them ourselves?”

  “Keep them on the drugs, you mean?” The doctor shook her head. “Quite apart from the violation of medical ethics, Commander, the human body isn't designed for long-term addiction to anything. Nor do we have the supplies to start easing them off the drugs. All we can do is let them slowly clear their own systems and clean up the mess.”

  “Understood,” Ted said. “Dismissed, doctor.”

  He watched the doctor leave the compartment, then turned to Fitzwilliam. “Is there an alien city, after all?”

  “It looks that way,” Fitzwilliam confirmed. “There’s nothing to be detected from orbit, but we flew a couple of drones over the ocean and picked up low-level emissions from below the waves. We don’t have any suitable probes to drop into the water ...”

  “We could put one together,” the Chief Engineer suggested. “It wouldn’t take too long, if we recycle a number of spare parts.”

  “We can't stay in this system for much longer,” Ted said. He considered it for a long moment, then shook his head. “We’ll come back, one day, and uncover the aliens then.”

  “There is another possibility,” Farley pointed out. “We could drop rocks on the alien city from orbit.”

  Ted was revolted at the idea, although he had the uneasy feeling that suggestions like that were going to become more and more common as the war raged on. The aliens had depopulated Vera Cruz and invaded New Russia. God alone knew what was happening on the surface ... and, by now, they could easily have found other targets. There was no shortage of tramlines within two or three jumps from New Russia that would take them to more populated worlds.

  “No,” he said, firmly. “As long as we believe the aliens aren't committing mass slaughter, we will refrain from committing it ourselves.”

  “The Admiralty might disagree,” Farley pointed out, mulishly.

  Ted swallowed the urge to bite the young man’s head off. Tired as they were, stressed as they were, that was pushing the limits for addressing one’s commanding officer.

  “Yes, they might,” he said. He kept his voice very cold. “But we have received no specific orders to bombard alien civilian settlements and we will not act without them.”

  And such an order would be illegal, he knew. Killing enemy soldiers was one thing, butchering civilians was quite another. If he gave such an order, his crew would be quite within their rights to refuse to carry it out. And if they did carry it out, the Admiralty would charge them as being accomplices to genocide. The entire crew might go on trial ...

  Would it ever be legal? The thought was terrifying. Even the most heavily-militarised human society hadn't managed to turn everyone into a warrior. But what if the aliens had actually succeeded in producing a completely militarised society? Would there come a time when genocide was the only way to end the war? He shuddered, remembering the debates and moral quandaries they'd been forced to study at the Academy. The Bug Scenario, they'd called it, a situation where humanity waged a war with a completely alien race, one bent on exterminating humanity. Should the bugs be exterminated to save mankind?

  Angrily, he changed the subject. “Do we know where the prisoners came from?”

  “Most of them are clearly Latin American in origin,” Fitzwilliam said. “We assume they came from Vera Cruz, although in that case several hundred more remain unaccounted for. The remainder ... we don’t know yet. None of the DNA samples we drew matched with any of our records.”

  Ted wasn't surprised. The Mexican Government hadn't been in the habit of sharing its files with anyone, least of all the major interstellar powers. They would have to ask the Mexicans once they got back to Earth, maybe sharing the other DNA codes with everyone else and seeing who got a match. Perhaps the aliens had jumped more than one colony mission before the attack on Vera Cruz.

  “See to their care and feeding,” he ordered. He looked over at Parnell. “And the alien prisoners?”

  “I have a squad of Marines stationed in position to provide security for the aliens,” Parnell reported. Left unspoken was the very real possibility that the aliens could be threatened by Ark Royal’s crew. “As far as we can tell, the aliens themselves don't pose a threat, but we’re taking every precaution regardless.”

  “Good,” Ted said, silently blessing his ship’s paranoid designers. The quarantine ward was completely self-contained, to the point where the prisoners and their monitors could be completely isolated from the rest of the ship. If they had any viruses that could spread to humanity, they wouldn't get very far. “Make sure the guards are rotated regularly. I don't want to take any chances.”

  “Lots of curious crewmen,” Parnell added. “We might want to place recordings of the aliens on the datanet.”

  Ted hesitated, then shook his head. He could understand the cre
w being curious about their alien captives, but he had no way of knowing how the aliens or their superiors would react to such treatment. Humans wouldn’t be happy when they found out about the nude prison camp, even if cold logic suggested the aliens hadn't meant any harm.

  “No,” he said. He looked around the compartment. “Have we pulled everything useful from the penal camp and the alien base?”

  “We pulled a few samples of alien technology from their base,” Parnell said.

  “Aye,” Anderson growled. “I’m looking forward to studying it, I am.”

  “As soon as we’re on our way,” Ted assured him. “And the camp itself?”

  “There's nothing apart from the prefabricated buildings,” Parnell said. “We searched thoroughly and found nothing else from the Heinlein. I was hoping for a flight recorder, but ...”

  He shrugged. “I suspect the full story of their colony mission won’t be known until we actually manage to talk to the aliens,” he admitted. “Overall, if the prisoners hadn't been drugged, they would have been bored out of their minds.”

  Ted nodded. Even when he'd been commander of a starship permanently stuck in the reserves, he'd had something to do. Ark Royal had had no shortage of repair or modification jobs ... and when those palled, he'd had access to a vast entertainment library and the ship’s own production of rotgut. But staying in a prison camp for weeks, perhaps months, with nothing to do would have driven him out of his mind.

  “Unless anyone sees a strong reason to remain in this system,” he said, “we will proceed to Tramline Two within the hour. That should take us back on a course towards human space.”

  There was no disagreement. Everyone knew that the aliens had signalled for help – and no one knew how long it would take for help to arrive. If there was a large alien colony under the waves, help might well come sooner than later. Ted couldn't imagine the Royal Navy abandoning Britannia as long as there was a hope of saving it, or even Nova Scotia. No, the aliens would be on their way. The only question was how long they had before the shit hit the fan.

  “Good,” Ted said. He rose to his feet. “Dismissed.”

  ***

  “It must have been horrifically dangerous down there,” Barbie said.

  “It was,” Markus said, dramatically. “And the worst of it was jumping out of the shuttle in a combat suit.”

  The Marines had gone out of their way to tell him how horrific the whole experience was – and, if anything, they'd understated. Maybe there were people who skydived for fun, but Markus had already decided he wasn't one of them. He’d taken one look at the ground coming closer, his sense of perspective so badly screwed up that he’d been unsure if he was falling or rising, then closed his eyes tightly. The whole experience had left him trembling in his suit, permanently hovering on the verge of throwing up until he’d finally hit the ground.

  But there hadn't been any real danger, he knew, once they'd actually reached the ground. The aliens hadn't tried to prevent them from landing or even reinforce the guards on the penal camp. It was almost as if they wanted the POWs to be rescued. But why?

  He thought back through the recordings he’d taken – or borrowed from the Marines. Was the whole world a subtle trap? Or had the aliens simply decided not to risk more than a token attempt to defend the camp with Ark Royal hovering high overhead, ready to pour fire down onto alien defensive stations? But if it was a trap, the aliens would have had to know that Ark Royal had survived Russia ...

  The XO entered the briefing room, looking businesslike. “Mister Yang, I need to speak with you,” he said, bluntly. “Come with me.”

  Markus smiled as he followed the XO out of the compartment, feeling several reporters staring at his retreating back. No matter how they pretended, they knew that they weren't really capable of understanding what was going on. No, the only way to do that was to have friends and allies – sources, rather – among the military crew. Markus’s status within the group, already high because he had been allowed to embed with the Marines, would rise even higher if they thought he had the XO’s ear.

  “I understand that you took recordings from the prison camp,” the XO said. It wasn't a question. “We would appreciate it if you kept them to yourself for the moment.”

  “As you wish,” Markus said, quickly. There was no point in arguing. Besides, they weren’t trying to confiscate his recordings. “Do you think the aliens wanted us here?”

  “It's a possibility,” the XO conceded. “If they believed we survived New Russia, there aren’t many other places we could go. But why?”

  “The POWs,” Markus suggested. “They could have been conditioned ...”

  “We thought of that,” the XO said. Markus let out a sigh of relief. “For the moment, they will remain confined.”

  He smiled, rather dryly. “Do you have any other questions?”

  “Just one,” Markus said. “Where are we going next?”

  The XO hesitated, clearly weighing the question in the balance, then shrugged. “There are a handful of systems with tramlines that lead back to human space,” he said. “We’ll pick our way through them, trying to avoid contact with the aliens – if possible.”

  Markus frowned. “We’re not heading further into alien space?”

  “Not yet,” the XO said. “We need to report in to Earth and ...”

  He broke off as the alert howled, bringing the ship to battlestations. “I need to go to the CIC,” he said. “You get back to your compartment. Now.”

  “Yes, sir,” Markus said.

  ***

  “Apparently,” Gladys said, “they were all naked. The aliens and prisoners alike, I mean.”

  Kurt rolled his eyes. Gladys was older than Rose, younger than him ... and queen of the chatterboxes. When she wasn't flying her starfighter or resting, she was chatting to everyone from junior crewmen to Royal Marines. It made her very well informed of what was actually going on, although she heard too many rumours for them all to be true. Kurt rather doubted that anyone would have the nerve to organise a striptease onboard ship with the XO on the prowl.

  “Maybe they were molested,” one of the older male pilots grunted. “Wasn't there a film about Mars needing women?”

  “That was about the shortage of women on the first colony,” Rose reminded him. “There was an accident and twenty-seven colonists were killed, twenty-three of them women. It had Jeremy Underline in his first starring role. And Nasty Mildew.”

  Kurt smiled, despite the tension of being so close to Rose and yet pretending that everything was normal. Jeremy Underline was a heartthrob movie star; Penny had spent a year with her room utterly plastered in pictures of the handsome actor. It was odd to realise that Rose would have fancied him too ... but then, she was only five years older than Penny. Nasty Mildew was worth watching, he recalled, yet the general theory at the time had been that she didn't really exist in reality. The unions might have objected to VR actors – they took work from real actors, they felt – but surely no living human could have boobs that big and still walk upright.

  “There was a great nude scene,” the male pilot said. “I remember it well ...”

  “I’m sure you did,” Kurt said. He recalled, now, Molly throwing a fit at the filth Penny had been watching. Penny had been thirteen at the time, too young to watch anything even remotely sexual – and there had been nothing remote about Nasty Mildew. “But I don't think that was what the aliens had in mind.”

  “They'd have to work hard to find the wretched actor,” the male pilot said. “I always knew she was a fake.”

  “You’d think a VR composite character could actually act,” Rose said.

  “I don’t think anyone cared about her acting,” Kurt said. “Coming to think of it, Underline couldn't act his way out of a paper bag either. Maybe he was a composite too.”

  Gladys cleared her throat, noisily. “Maybe the aliens just don’t wear clothes and don't understand why we wear them,” she suggested. “There are colonies where peo
ple walk around in the buff.”

  “Best shore leave destination ever,” the male pilot exulted.

  “Most people who go to nudist camps really shouldn't,” Rose commented. She smiled at Kurt, a secret smile that was just a fraction too bright. “But didn't the alien bodies we recovered after the first battle have clothes?”

  “Probably protective gear,” Gladys suggested. She didn't seem to have noticed Rose’s smile, but Kurt knew she rarely missed anything. “The aliens might well need protection, even if they don't wear clothes normally. Can you imagine trying to fly a starfighter in the nude?”

  Kurt had to smile. “No,” he said, finally. The very thought was absurd, outside appallingly bad pornographic movies. He'd be lucky if he didn't accidentally castrate himself with the flight stick. “And nor should you.”