09- We Lead

by Christopher Nuttall

  “But very dangerous dogs,” she muttered back.

  “I bet you owned a whole horde of dogs,” Corporal Roberts said. “And went fox-hunting with them.”

  “Hah,” George said. She had gone fox-hunting, once. The uncle who’d taken her and her sister had bragged about it - there was something political involved that she’d been too young to understand - but she’d just found it sickening. “I prefer man-hunting myself.”

  She rolled her eyes as she watched the conversation. The gentle teasing about her origins had been growing stronger over the last few days, although she wasn't sure if it was a sign of acceptance or a probe to check she hadn't been spoilt rotten. Some of the questions they’d come up with were insane. How was she to know if there was any difference between posh girls or common girls? She’d certainly never noticed any difference between men!

  “The ship is ours,” Sammy reported. “And we have willing allies.”

  “Just don’t trust them completely,” Sergeant Tosco reminded them. “Treat them well, but not too well. They could be recaptured just as easily.”

  George nodded in agreement. The Foxes didn't crush their enemies, not completely. They beat them, then integrated them. And yet, it was hard to see how they could integrate humans, let alone Tadpoles. Biology would prevent it.

  They integrated another race, she mused, as she helped count the prisoners. They probably think they can do it again.

  ***

  Henry sniffed as he boarded the alien starship, tasting something ... indefinably alien hanging in the air. It was hard to describe, a strange mixture of spice woven into a fleshy smell that made him want to gag. He’d shared close quarters with starfighter pilots, back during the war, but they hadn't been so bad. The Foxes, it seemed, liked having the smell hanging in the air. Perhaps it reminded them of home.

  “Your Highness,” Engineer Jolene Anderson said. She was a tall woman, wearing naval trousers and a very loose shirt. Her skin glittered with sweat. “Welcome onboard the Black Hunter.”

  Henry raised his eyebrows. “Black Hunter?”

  “Our rough translation of her name is Black Hunter Of Prey And Food,” Jolene said, seriously. “We decided to shorten it.”

  “A good idea,” Henry said. He cocked his head as Jolene turned, ducking her head to pass through the hatch. “Is she in working order?”

  “We have to replace one of the power cores, but otherwise she’s in good shape,” Jolene assured him. “From what they’ve told us, Black Hunter was being refitted after her last encounter with human starships before being hastily thrust back into the line of battle. They didn't have time to run the tests they should have run before clearing her to leave.”

  “Lucky for us,” Henry said. “Did you recover anything from the computer cores?”

  “Our hackers are working on them now,” Jolene said. “The crew - the former crew - has been quite helpful, but we don’t want to trust them too far.”

  Henry nodded in agreement. Everything they’d learned about the Foxes told them that the aliens submitted to superior force, submitted completely. They saw nothing odd about rearranging their hierarchy to put humans at the top - or the bottom - as long as the pecking order was properly sorted out. There was something oddly Roman about them, he thought, although even the Romans hadn't been perfect when it came to assimilating conquered populations. But then, the Foxes weren't human. They lacked the racism, religion, nationalism and other problems that plagued humanity.

  He found himself staring as he followed her onto the bridge. The command deck looked absurd to his eyes: the commanding officer sat on a throne-like structure, peering down at his underlings from high overhead. The subordinates themselves were almost completely isolated, unable to even see their comrades. There were no holographic projectors, as far as he could see. Henry couldn't help thinking that the whole design was terribly inefficient, compared to a human bridge. And yet, the arrangement must have been meaningful to the designers. It would have been easy for them to come up with something more efficient, if they wanted it.

  “The command and control systems aren't that different from ours,” Jolene informed him, nodding to the places where human-designed computer cores had been fitted to the alien technology. “The prize crew should have no difficulty in controlling her.”

  “Very good,” Henry said. He had no idea what Admiral Naiser would want to do with the ship, but it might be useful. “Did you find an FTL communicator system?”

  “We believe so,” Jolene said. “Commodore Watson-Stewart is already studying the computer files.”

  Henry took one last look, then allowed her to give him a brief tour of the alien ship. It was strange, very strange. Tadpole ships were completely alien, but this ship was just familiar enough to be disconcerting. The more he looked into cabins - he couldn't help thinking of them as dens - the more he realised that hierarchy was practically branded into the ship. A senior officer would literally look down on his juniors, only to be looked down upon himself by his superiors. The dim lighting - red enough to make him feel creeped out - only made the impression worse. He found his hand reaching for the pistol at his belt, several times, as they moved from compartment to compartment. It was a minor miracle, he decided, that no one had fired at shadows.

  “Their power cores are actually slightly inferior to ours, Your Highness, but the design allows them to be fixed easily,” Jolene told him, as they entered the engineering compartment. A team of human engineers were carefully removing parts of the alien system, following instructions from a single captured alien. “It reminds me of some of the modifications we made to Vanguard, really. The trade-off may not be as bad as it seems.”

  Henry nodded in agreement. Replacing a power core on a fleet carrier or a battleship was an absolute nightmare. The heavy armour surrounding the drive units had to be removed, carefully, before the power core could be disconnected and floated out into space. Making it easy would have given the enemy a perfect target, a weak spot on an otherwise near-impregnable hull. Henry was sure that humanity’s enemies would take full advantage of such an opportunity.

  “And we can replace theirs with one of ours?” He asked. “You’re sure?”

  Jolene gave him a sharp look. “It will not last forever, Your Highness,” she said, rather tartly. “Frankly, the system will be weaker because we cannot lock the power core solidly in place without ripping chunks of the hull apart. But it will last long enough to be useful, I believe. We could easily fly her home without resorting to Ark Royal’s parasite trick.”

  “Very good,” Henry said. “Let me know if you find anything interesting.”

  Jolene smiled. It lit up her entire face.

  “Your Highness, this is interesting,” she said. She waved a hand down at the engineers. “All of this ... this is how another intelligent race solves its problems. Some of their solutions are the same as ours, others are different. And their solutions open up new avenues for scientific research. There’s enough here to spark genuinely original work back home.”

  “Assuming we get Black Hunter home,” Henry pointed out.

  “Even without the ship, there’s a lot to take from her,” Jolene said. “And we’ll learn a great deal over the next few days.”

  “I hope so,” Henry said. “We might need it.”

  ***

  George closed her eyes as warm water washed over her body, sluicing away the chemicals that had cleansed her skin of anything that might be dangerous. A blast of hot air followed, drying her within seconds. She walked forward, through a pair of airlocks, and into a small changing room. A pair of trousers and a tunic were already waiting for her, hanging from a rack. She glanced at her body in the mirror - thankfully, the chemicals didn't seem to have caused any reaction - then donned the clothes and headed for the hatch. The rest of the platoon were waiting outside.

  “Very good,” Sergeant Tosco said, as George joined them. “The boffins seem fairly certain there isn't any real risk, but ... we ha
ve to be careful.”

  George nodded, sourly. Perhaps, if they were lucky, they could have proper showers later, once they went off-duty. She could sneak into one of the privacy tubes and use the shower there, if she was careful. It wasn't as if anyone would complain. She'd be alone, of course, but that wouldn't be a problem.

  “There’s no point in taking risks,” Sammy agreed. He paused, dramatically. “Do we get the prize money?”

  Sergeant Tosco smiled, rather thinly. “The Admiral has ruled that we get a third of the prize money,” he said. “Technically, we only took their surrender. We didn't board the vessel and shoot everything until they gave up. Vanguard and her gunnery crews also played a role.”

  “So did the boffins who came up with the voder programs,” Sammy said. “And the other ships too ...”

  “We have a third of the prize money,” Sergeant Tosco said. “The exact amount of money will not be settled, I think, until we get home. There’s ... a certain disagreement over just how much Black Hunter is worth. It isn't as if we took a Tadpole ship.”

  “No,” Roberts agreed. “We’d have a second war on our hands.”

  “For the moment, you’ll each get a cut of the minimum amount,” Sergeant Tosco said. “The full amount will be determined when we get home ...”

  “When the taxman can claim a share,” Sammy muttered.

  George shrugged. Technically, prize money was tax-free. But someone who won a great deal of money could be forced to pay taxes anyway, through some complicated legal system she didn't pretend to understand. She’d read some grumbling about it in naval journals, although it wasn't a big issue. Large prize awards were very rare.

  And you don't need the money, she reminded herself. You could easily give it up and never notice.

  “The bad news is that some of us may be going back onboard Black Hunter,” Sergeant Tosco added. “Those of us with naval experience will be very useful, I am sure. The Admiral seems to have something in mind already.”

  Ouch, George thought. Her scalp itched uncomfortably. Maybe she had had a reaction to the chemicals after all. We went through decontamination for nothing?

  “Report back to your bunks for a rest,” Sergeant Tosco concluded. “You’ll be back on your feet before you know it.”

  How reassuring, George thought.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “I assume there was no permanent damage?”

  “No, sir,” Susan said. She was certain that Admiral Naiser knew the fleet’s status as well as she did, but it was important to be sure. “The damage the task force took during the brief engagement has been repaired.”

  “Very good,” Admiral Naiser said.

  He tapped a switch. A starchart appeared in front of them, hovering over the table. Susan took a sip of her coffee - she needed the caffeine - as she studied the captured data. They’d had a rough idea where the tramlines led, of course, but the alien files showed just what was waiting for them. It didn't look good.

  “They have a major naval base here, at ES-11,” Admiral Naiser said. “That guards their rear flank, it seems. And its presence raises other questions.”

  Susan nodded. “Is there another hostile power out here?”

  “We found no reference to one in the files,” Admiral Naiser said. “Yet.”

  That, Susan knew, was all too true. There were literally billions of terabytes of data in the alien computers, ranging from navigational files to alien entertainment. For all she knew, a good third of the audio-visual files were alien porn! Surveying them all would take years, even with the best hackers in the navy. They might well have missed something important, tucked away in the alien files. If there was another alien race, pressing against the enemy rear ...

  “It beggars belief that they would have started a war with us, if they were threatened by another power,” she pointed out. “A war on two fronts would be disastrous.”

  “True,” Admiral Naiser agreed. “And yet, their behaviour is partly instinctive. They may not have thought better of it.”

  “Maybe,” Susan mused. It would be nice to think there were potential allies nearby, although she knew better than to assume they were friendly. The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries - was quite right. Her enemy’s enemy was her enemy’s enemy; no more, no less. “Or they may just have put a naval base in place at a chokepoint, just to make sure their rear is covered. We did the same at New Russia.”

  “After we knew there was a major threat coming at us,” Admiral Naiser countered.

  “They knew that aliens existed,” Susan reminded him. “We thought we were alone in the universe until suddenly we weren't.”

  She shook her head. In hindsight, she couldn't understand how her predecessors had made such an elementary mistake. She knew there were at least four other races inhabiting worlds not too far from Earth. They hadn't seen anything larger than a dog-like creature on a colony world. The chain of events that led to Earth birthing an intelligent spacefaring race had been so unlikely, they’d assumed, that they’d been practically unique.

  “It may be the answer,” Admiral Naiser said. “We’ll have to plan on the assumption we won't find allies on the far side of enemy space.”

  He adjusted the display. “We have two options,” he said. “On one hand, we follow the tramlines through ES-17, ES-15 and ES-12 to ES-11. We can also follow the tramlines through ES-16 and ES-14 to ES-12, then hop to ES-11. However, if we’re reading the files correctly, the latter route would actually be longer because of the distance between tramlines. Worse, the enemy would have ample time to mass a force and send it against us.”

  “Or merely reinforce the defences at ES-11,” Susan agreed. The Foxes didn't seem to like going on the defensive - she didn't like going on the defensive - but surely even they couldn't avoid military logic. If ES-11 fell, the task force would have a straight run to ES-1, their homeworld. “They know we have to pass through that system.”

  “It would be useful if they did send ships away from their defences,” Admiral Naiser said, thoughtfully. “If we were taking out their FTL communications nodes as we advanced ...”

  “We'd also be telling them where we were,” Susan said, as his voice trailed off. “They’d know which nodes were failing, wouldn't they?”

  “The techs think so,” Admiral Naiser said. He held up a datapad. “I couldn't make head or tail of half of what they said, but the gist of it is that the Foxes would notice. There’s also a possibility that they might notice a gravity pulse running down the tramline when we jump into the system, like a string that’s been plucked. If that happens ... well, leaving the network in place and sneaking around is suddenly impossible.”

  “And they might even get an accurate idea of just how much tonnage is crossing the tramlines,” Susan added. She shook her head, cursing the enemy under her breath. They were far too innovative for her peace of mind. “They’d know which way we were going.”

  “Probably,” Admiral Naiser said. His voice suddenly hardened. “Which is why we’re going to be splitting our force.”

  He adjusted the display. “We’ll be dividing the task force into two formations,” he said, bluntly. “Commodore Hoover will take one element into ES-16 and follow the tramlines to ES-12, while I take the other element into ES-15. We’ll link up again in ES-12 and thrust together into ES-11.”

  Susan frowned. Dividing one’s forces in the face of the enemy went against everything she’d been taught at the academy. It would upset the Foxes if they could monitor events in real time, but it still raised the spectre of one squadron being trapped and defeated in detail. And yet ... it wasn't as if they couldn't avoid action, if necessary. They wouldn't be trying to hide, not really. No cloaked fleet would be able to get close enough to force engagement if they were careful.

  And alter course regularly, she thought, morbidly. They’ll certainly try to do unto us as we did unto them.

  “Risky, sir,” she said. It would confuse the aliens, yet it would also te
mpt them with the prospect of scoring a decisive victory. “We could cloak as soon as we crossed the tramlines, making it harder for them to track us.”

  She paused. “We don’t know they can get accurate tonnage readings.”

  “No, we don’t,” Admiral Naiser said.

  Susan met his eyes. “What if we sent destroyers through first, with orders to blow the FTL communications nodes before the remainder of the fleet crossed? We’d make it harder for them to guess what we were doing.”

  “And slow us down,” Admiral Naiser said. “Each successive jump would cost us several hours, even before we started crossing the system itself. And there are other reasons to make a major commitment to both prongs.”

  He studied the console for a long moment. “If the files are accurate, both ES-15 and ES-14 have major colonies, both of which need to be rendered harmless. They will have strong incentive to keep us from hitting them.”