His Majesty's Starship

by Ben Jeapes

  Julia Coyne. Gilmore knew she had turned down a chance to represent UK-1 in the All-System Choir Festival to come on this voyage. Yet, she hadn’t been forced to come. Her sense of adventure outweighed her love for music.

  Adrian Nichol, ever puppy-keen, willing to please and convinced of his own ability, even though Gilmore thought his habit of wearing his gold pilot’s wings in deep space, to show he was qualified for atmospheric landing craft too, was downright immature. It was good to see young people with ambition and drive: the sad thing was, life often knocked it out of them before their prime. What awaited Nichol, only time would tell.

  His crew.

  “As of 14:00 ship time, in about two minutes, we will be on space watch,” he said. “Port watch will commence: that is, myself, Ms Coyne and Mr Kirton. I’m sorry the crew is on such short order, but I know we’ll manage. Content yourself with the thought that when we get back you’ll probably never have to work again.” There was a chuckle; they certainly would all work again, but the fact that their upward mobility would be lubricated by having served on a ship of the delegation fleet was nice to know. “Two final points, one is Arm Wild. Be polite, be courteous, be honest and do remember, even though he knows we can’t be entirely representative of the whole human race, a month of close confinement with us could well colour his views. He wants to interview each one of us: we will all cooperate. And when the prince comes on board, we might all be on first name terms, but to us he is Sir, Your Highness or Prince James.” Gilmore checked his watch. “And from now on, I am Sir too. Port watch, stations.”

  It was only when the off-watch crew had left the flight deck that Gilmore realised Arm Wild had been waiting just beyond the hatch. He scanned mentally through the instructions he had been giving while ignorant of the alien’s presence and wondered if anything in them may have given offence.

  “May I compliment you on your crew?” the Rustie said.

  “Why, thank you, Arm Wild,” Gilmore said. The Rustie seemed in no hurry to move on.

  “I understand they all chose to follow you?”

  “They all volunteered, yes. I’ve served with all of them before.”

  “Then they accept you as their captain.”

  Gilmore shrugged. “Apparently.”

  “We have a matching ceremony with our own ship seniors,” said Arm Wild. “The whole pride must confirm them in their position.”

  Gilmore paled inwardly at the thought of having to win over a crew not of five but of something like a hundred. He could never do it, he was sure.

  “That ... must make their authority something very special,” he said.

  “I felt highly confident you would understand,” Arm Wild replied, with what sounded through the translator like satisfaction.

  Twenty minutes later the Saab/Messerschmidt 300 main engine so beloved of Ark Royal’s engineering officer fired and the ship pushed itself out of lunar orbit.

  *

  James Windsor took one last look around Britannia’s drawing room. If you ignored the curving floor, the starkness of the metal ceiling and the fact that most of the paintings were holograms, it could almost pass for a room back home. He had never really appreciated the comforts of Britannia until there had come a time when he knew he was going to spend at least a month on board Ark Royal; suddenly – and more and more so, as that time drew nearer and nearer – all of the royal yacht’s home comforts became a lot more apparent.

  The ship was a spinner, a rotating cylinder in space; you got the feel of gravity just about anywhere on board, as compared to Ark Royal which just had its one spinning ring. Britannia was larger than Ark Royal; the cabins weren’t exactly big but James had seen the plans for Ark Royal and knew the size of its cubby holes. Britannia was just more comfortable, and he wished she was going on the delegation instead of Gilmore’s toy ship. He knew there were good reasons why she wasn’t but that didn’t stop him wishing.

  The display showed Ark Royal, a thousand miles away and closing. A spinning top with an extended shaft: home, for the foreseeable future. Ugh. Looking on the bright side, it meant he would enjoy the occasional break away from her all the more. He already had a couple of invitations to attend functions on other delegation ships during the voyage to the Roving and he meant to accept them. Mix business and pleasure.

  There was a cough behind him: the ship’s doctor, waiting patiently with a case in his hand. James sighed and rolled up his sleeve.

  “This probably isn’t necessary,” he said as the doctor put an infusor together. “Free fall usually makes me chuck anyway.”

  The doctor pressed the infusor to James’s skin and the drug hissed its way into the prince’s bloodstream. “It’s your decision,” he said, with a hint of disapproval at abused medication which James ignored. The doctor wasn’t the first to show disapproval of James’s intentions: Britannia’s captain, too, had expressed reservations about what he and the ship were to do in the near future. The spray hissed and James winced, both at that and at a pang of prescience. If disapproval was all he got before this business was over, he would be lucky. He suspected he was going to make a lot of enemies.

  *

  “Sir, a message from Britannia.” Julia Coyne spoke from the command desk. “Please dock-”

  “Dock?” Gilmore said. He looked through the port at Britannia, a quarter of a mile off. “Why can’t the prince spacewalk like any normal human being?”

  “-because the prince is terribly spacesick, sir,” Julia said apologetically. “Britannia’s captain is afraid he will vomit in his helmet.”

  “He can’t be spacesick.” Gilmore looked at Britannia again. “She’s spinning! How can he be-”

  As if to contradict him Britannia’s rotation was slowing down, as it would have to if the two ships were to make physical contact. But she had been spinning – her crew had made the trip from UK-1 to this pickup point in one gee, and it still didn’t answer the question of why the prince was struck with spacesickness, an affliction that usually only hit lubbers in free fall.

  Suddenly the old ghost was back. Failure. He couldn’t manage this, his plans were falling to bits, everyone was going to see he was no good-

  Gilmore swatted it away with irritation and waited for a moment. Crises were like this: the initial confusion and disorientation but then, if he shut his eyes, he could normally see what needed doing. It was as if someone had laid out a plan of action for him to follow in stages, one, two, three.

  But that wasn’t happening either. Grow up, Gilmore, he thought angrily. If you can’t handle something as simple as a docking manoeuvre-

  “Very well,” he said calmly. “Ask Britannia to extend a docking tube. Plot manoeuvres to bring the lateral lock up to-”

  Julia was already looking even more apologetic. “What?” he said.

  “Britannia’s docking tube is non-operational, sir. They request that we dock bodily at the forward lock.”

  So, Ark Royal was going to have to stick its first ten metres of length into a hole in the front of Britannia. The manoeuvre would be complicated, fuel expensive and time consuming ... but his master commanded.

  “Very well,” Gilmore said again, with heavy irony as though the whole affair was of no consequence. “Sound the manoeuvring bell, all loose objects to be secured-”

  It took half an hour for Ark Royal to position herself properly. Five thousand ton spaceships didn’t respond to gentle spurts of the thrusters quite as well as personnel transport capsules – something Britannia’s captain knew but presumably (unbelievably) Prince James did not.

  Eventually the two ships were poised nose-to-nose, only metres between them. A burst on the thrusters moved Ark Royal forward, followed at once by another burst to slow her down and stop her, just as Britannia’s grabs took hold.

  Gilmore winced at the clanging going on outside the ship. “What are they doing out there? Riveting us together?”

  The noise did seem to go on for a very long time; a quite unreasonably lo
ng time, indeed. Gilmore would recommend in his log that Britannia’s docking equipment be given a full overhaul.

  “The prince is ready to come on board, sir,” Peter Kirton said at long last.

  “Let’s go meet him, then.”

  The Prince of Wales hung in mid-air, limp and green between two of Britannia’s crew. Normally a neat and dapper figure, he looked blearily up at Gilmore and moaned.

  “He’s well drugged, sir, and we think he’s stopped vomiting,” one of the newcomers said helpfully. The prince groaned. His eyes were glassy and unfocused.

  “Oh, God ... We’ll get him to the ring. Give me a hand, Mr Kirton. Leave the prince’s baggage here, we’ll get it stowed later ...”

  It took another hour before everything was properly sorted out, and twenty minutes of that were taken up by Britannia being unable to give Ark Royal clearance to disengage. The clanging again went on for a very long time. Did the king really travel in that ship? Gilmore wondered. Did he have any idea of what a shower they were? It surprised him; he had always thought better of Britannia’s crew.

  At long last, the two ships were apart. Britannia backed off from Ark Royal and slowly turned away, orienting herself to boost down the arc back to UK-1. Gilmore watched her receding blip on the radar screen with relief.

  “Right!” he said, and rubbed his hands. This was finally it. Finally it, after all this waiting. “Ms Coyne, plot an arc to join the delegation fleet. Half-gee boost.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Gilmore rubbed his hands together again and fought back a grin as the manoeuvring bell sounded. No more preparation, no more supplies to secure, no more last-minute worry.

  They were on their way to join the delegation.

  *

  The pinging noise interrupted the reverie of His Excellency R.V. Krishnamurthy of the Department of Diplomatic Affairs, Government of the Confederation of South-East Asia (or Greater India, as he preferred to call it), and he froze the display on his aide to answer the call. “Yes?”

  “Excellency.” In the wall display Shivaji’s captain, Surit Amijee, bowed slightly. “We’ve reached the rendezvous point.”

  “Thank you, Captain.” Amijee’s image vanished and Krishnamurthy stood up to look out of the porthole in the floor of his stateroom. All he could see was black beyond the port and his own reflection. But it was the rendezvous point for the delegation fleet.

  “Phase One,” he murmured. The countdown to Phase Two, in which the ships would travel to the point where the Rusties said they would ‘step-through’ between solar systems, was beginning. He felt an uncharacteristic surge of excitement. Excitement was something he tried not to feel – it clouded one’s judgement – but under the circumstances, perhaps he could allow himself this little luxury.

  Because he had been the mover behind this whole scheme. He had stuck his neck out, insisting that the Confederation be represented on the delegation. He had laid out the case for why the Confederation had to have a space presence. There was a lot riding on this mission, as Manohar Chandwani had made so clear the last time they saw each other.

  Well, he had eventually got his message across, though it had made him a whole fresh new crop of enemies in Delhi. Once he had got approval for his plan it had been put into operation in a very short space of time: Shivaji and various other items bought from the Confederation’s allies; a crew (all citizens, Chandwani had said: all Indians, he had made sure) gathered together from other space companies. He shuddered. Shivaji wasn’t the only ship on the delegation to be purchased or borrowed to meet the Rusties’ requirements, but still it was humiliating.

  The door chime sounded. “Come,” he said. It slid open and Krishnamurthy had a brief glimpse of the dark green uniforms of his NVN guards outside before they were eclipsed by an eager Secretary Subhas Ranjitsinhji.

  “Excellency,” said Ranjitsinhji. “We’ve reached the rendezvous point.”

  “Thank you, Subhas. Captain Amijee has already apprised me of the situation in, I believe, precisely those words.” Ranjitsinhji kept his face still, trying not to look disappointed. I don’t believe it, Krishnamurthy thought. He wanted to be the one to tell me and now he’s upset. Krishnamurthy pretended not to notice. “Who else is here?”

  “Apart from the Rustie ship, four others,” Ranjitsinhji said.

  The Rustie ship. The prideship. The nearness of that triumph of alien technology, just a few hundred metres away, made Krishnamurthy’s skin tingle. He had seen footage of the Rustie vessels. They were a wonder: no fusion flame, no careful balancing of action and reaction, just the playing off of one gravitational force against another. It attracted itself towards this object, repelled itself from that one. He was no spacer but still he felt it was uncanny, watching a ship move so effortlessly. Also off-putting was contrasting the size of the thing visually with the muzziness of its radar echo: its ceramic construction meant it hardly registered.

  They make their ships out of pottery! Doubtless we’ll find out why ...

  “And how is the network going, Subhas?” Krishnamurthy asked. Ranjitsinhji had been so full of his plans to install an agent on every ship that Krishnamurthy had let him go ahead, out of curiosity to see what would happen. The man did have a talent for getting his spies into the strangest places.

  Ranjitsinhji’s face fell. “I regret my initial plan was over-optimistic. I have recruited some agents-”

  “No matter, no matter.” Krishnamurthy turned back to the porthole. “The success of this mission will depend on diplomatic intrigue and the scientific application of military might. It’s all very well to have some obscure, below-decks toilet cleaner in our pay, but what could he actually accomplish? Still, your agents might come in useful one day.”

  “Thank you, Excellency ...”

  Ranjitsinhji trailed off and Krishnamurthy saw his assistant was looking at the still frozen display from his aide.

  “Rustie performance art,” he said by way of explanation. “Place Brave gave me the files and I copied them to you. Have you looked at them yet?”

  “Um-”

  “Fascinating. Truly fascinating. You can learn a lot from their stories of everyday Rusties. I recommend it, Subhas. Now, how long until the delegation fleet leaves?”

  “Twenty three hours, Excellency.”

  Krishnamurthy beamed. “It begins, Subhas. It begins.”

  - 7 -

  13-15 April 2149

  There was silence on Ark Royal’s flight deck as the countdown to Phase Two entered its final minute. Arm Wild sat in his custom-made Rustie couch, watching. His spectacles-that-weren’t gave him a vaguely owlish look that verged on the comical.

  Peter Kirton had the controls. “Sixty seconds,” he said.

  “Very good,” Gilmore said.

  “Exciting, isn’t it, Captain?” said a voice from the hatch, and Gilmore looked up in horror. Prince James was half in, half out of the flight deck, glancing about with interest; his space sickness appeared to have cleared up. Gilmore looked quickly around to check that there was a spare couch available.

  “Sir, we’re boosting in less than a minute. Strap down!”

  “Oh, don’t worry about me, I’ll hang on here-”

  “You’ll damn well strap down now!”

  The prince’s face grew cold. “Don’t take that tone with me, Captain.”

  Gilmore turned round. “Ms Coyne, make to prideship, ‘Request postponement of boost due to-’”

  “You wouldn’t!” The prince sounded shocked.

  “Forty seconds,” Kirton said.

  Gilmore turned back to the prince. “We’ll be boosting at 1.3 gees. You could hurt yourself badly, so strap down now!”

  “All right, all right,” the prince said. He airswam clumsily to the couch next to Arm Wild, who had been watching the scene without comment but with who knew what thoughts, and strapped in. He was finished just as the countdown reached zero.

  Fusion flames erupted from the sterns of the Earth shi
ps. There was a distant rumble from Ark Royal’s own stern – from below. Ark Royal had weight again: it was accelerating at a rate of 1.3 Earth-type gravities, which was the gravity of the Roving. It would take getting used to.

  “Convoy status?” Gilmore said.

  “All ships firing as planned, sir,” said Kirton. He was grinning from ear to ear. “All systems are green. We’ll be at the coordinates for Phase Three in three days, thirteen hours, twenty three minutes.”

  “Very good,” Gilmore said again, careful not to grin too. And it was – very good.

  “I resented your tone on the flight deck, Captain,” said Prince James in the privacy of his cabin. The prince had asked Gilmore to see him as soon as he handed over to Hannah and the starboard watch.

  Gilmore kept his voice low and calm, only hinting at his anger. “That is nothing,” he said, “next to my resentment of your assumption that you are excluded from shipboard procedure. You’re a prince and I’m just a lowly captain, but the laws of physics apply just as much to you as to me.”

  “But-”

  “Shut up,” Gilmore said. “I’ve been on ships when the boost has come on a fraction later than expected, or a fraction earlier, or not at all. It’s never happened with Samad on the engines, but it might still, through no fault of his own. I’ve seen people break limbs because they weren’t tied down, even at a very slight boost. But even that’s not important. What is important is that my crew are qualified professionals and if you are told to do something by any one of them, you damn well do it.”

  The prince’s eyes narrowed. “I’ll remember your insolence, Captain.”

  “Oh, for ...” Gilmore groaned. “You can’t really be this stupid, can you? The king’s too intelligent to let you be like this. For Christ’s sake, you’re going to take over his kingdom one day.”

  The prince bristled. “Do not take that tone with me, Captain.”

  “Then don’t deserve it, prince,” Gilmore said.

  James glared at him for a moment longer. Then: “I apologise, and I undertake to obey all instructions given by your trained professionals. That will be all, Captain.”