Vanguard (Ark Royal Book 7)

by Christopher Nuttall

  She sat down and waited, resting her hands in her lap. Whatever she got, be it an assignment to a mining scow or a survey ship, she would take it and be glad. A survey ship wouldn't be bad, even if she might wind up stuck in survey for the rest of her career. There was always the prospect of being the first person to meet a third alien race.

  “You both graduated with high marks, both theoretical and practical,” the Commandant said, shortly. “Your practical experience is limited, but there are ... problems creating truly realistic training scenarios. Accordingly, you are both being assigned to HMS Vanguard as junior middies. I trust you both find this acceptable?”

  “Yes, sir,” Nathan said.

  George echoed him a second later. There was little prospect of becoming first middy on Vanguard - if she recalled correctly, there were at least six or seven midshipmen assigned to a battleship - but it had its compensations. As long as she didn't screw up, she’d remain firmly on command track, rather than being diverted into survey or - horror of horrors - staff work. There was no way to know if her uncle had had a quiet word with the personnel department or not, but at least her grades provided justification for the assignment. She knew, without false modesty, that she’d done well.

  “Mrs Kale has your travel details,” the Commandant added. “You’ll have an hour before your shuttle departs, so I suggest you use that time to send messages home before you arrive on Vanguard. You’ll be very busy right from the start.”

  He paused. “I won’t give you much advice, because you should have been paying attention in class. However” - his expression hardened for a second - “ you should recall that you are very junior and inexperienced officers. You must earn the respect of the crewmen under you if you wish to proceed. Listen to personnel who are more experienced than yourselves, even if you outrank them. Your rank badges do not make you little gods. A single mistake can kill you.”

  George nodded, not daring to speak. She’d been taught to check everything, time and time again, because space was merciless. And yet, she knew all too well that a single mistake, something that could easily be overlooked, something that would be perfectly safe on Earth ... could get them killed in space. She wondered, absently, just how long it would be before she was trusted to work on her own, then dismissed the thought. Having someone else check her work was just common sense.

  “Thank you, sir,” Nathan said.

  “Good luck,” the Commandant said. He rose. “Dismissed.”

  George and Nathan saluted, then turned and marched out of the office. Mrs Kale, without looking up from her computer terminal, held out a pair of datachips. George took hers, picked up her holdall and headed out of the hatch. Nathan followed her and, as soon as the hatch had hissed closed, he wrapped her up in a tight hug.

  “Vanguard,” he said. “A battleship!”

  “It could be worse,” George agreed, mischievously.

  She pulled her reader off her belt and slotted the datachip into it. They had a shuttle flight in an hour, as the Commandant had said; she scanned the list of requirements quickly, then nodded to herself as she shut down the terminal. There was no need to make a run to the stores before they arrived on the giant battleship. She had two full changes of clothes with her - as well as extra underwear - and she shouldn't need anything else immediately. Her reader had enough books loaded to keep her content for years.

  “I need to pick up an extra uniform,” Nathan said. “Coming to the store?”

  George sighed. “What happened to your spare?”

  “Don’t ask,” Nathan said. “I mean it. Really don’t ask.”

  “What happens in Sin City, stays in Sin City,” George said. She’d been twice, but she hadn't cared for it very much. Cadets and spacers - and everyone else - were welcome, as long as they had money to spend. Ironically, it was also the safest place on the moon. No one was fool enough to tangle with the city’s authorities by mugging the guests. “Let’s go.”

  She picked up some extra chocolate and sweets at the store, then followed Nathan down to the airlock. The shuttle docked on schedule - she was surprised to discover that there were a handful of crewmen waiting to board the craft too - and she hurried onboard. Maybe it was her imagination, but the crewmen looked tough, unwilling to suffer fools gladly. How could she give orders to them?

  “It’s only a short flight,” Nathan said. “There’s hardly any time to sleep.”

  “I’m too excited to sleep,” George said. It was true. Everything she’d done, over the last four years, had been building towards this moment. “I’m going to read.”

  She opened her reader as the hatch banged closed and the shuttle took off, accessing the other files on the datachip. There was surprisingly little about Vanguard herself, save for a handful of deck plans that looked to be intentionally vague and a great deal of buzzwords that seemed designed for public consumption. She’d been told, back at the academy, that much of the information freely available online was inaccurate in many ways, but it didn't look as though the academy wanted her to be any more informed. But then, she was only a midshipwoman en route to her first posting. No doubt she’d be filled in when she arrived.

  “There’s very little on the command crew,” Nathan observed. “And the XO slot is completely empty.”

  George frowned as she checked her own reader, then nodded. “It’s missing completely,” she said. Were they meant to look it up for themselves, while they were at the academy? Had they just failed a test? Or had something else happened? “Maybe they want to surprise us.”

  “Seems a bit of a petty surprise,” Nathan observed. “Is that normal?”

  “I don’t know,” George admitted. She’d tried asking her naval relatives for details of their first duty postings, but none of them had been particularly specific. Perhaps midshipmen didn't do anything spectacular; her uncle, at least, hadn't been particularly successful until the First Interstellar War. “It could be a bureaucratic mix-up.”

  “Or it could be a test to see how we react,” Nathan speculated. “Prince Henry might have come back from Tadpole Prime to serve as XO. Or maybe it’s Stellar Star herself!”

  “I very much doubt it,” George said, primly. The thought was amusing, but it was the kind of thing that only happened in bad movies, the ones written and produced by hacks who thought they could substitute nudity for storytelling. Given how much nudity was available on the datanet, she had a feeling they were wasting their time. “Every time you hear uncontrolled laughter rippling out of the officers’ wardroom you just know they’re watching Stellar Star.”

  She glanced through the rest of her reader, but found nothing else beyond basic facts she could have downloaded from the public database, if she’d wished. Shaking her head, she opened one of the latest novels from her favourite writer and settled down to read. Her uncle had been the one to introduce her to wet-navy stories and, after she'd gotten used to the tropes, she’d found she rather enjoyed them. It seemed odd to think that sailing on water could be as dangerous as travelling through interstellar space, but it could be ...

  There are no storms in space, she thought, wryly. And fewer enemies.

  The intercom bleeped. “If I could have your attention please,” the shuttle pilot said, “we are currently approaching HMS Vanguard. Passengers are reminded that we are landing in Shuttlebay Four; all passengers are to walk through the hatch and then remain within the reception bay until collected by greeting parties. Please make sure you take all personal possessions with you upon disembarking this craft, as we will be proceeding to HMS Rubicon shortly.”

  “As if we brought much,” Nathan muttered.

  “Good thing my sister didn't come,” George muttered back. “Anne has more clothes in her room than everyone in our class, put together.”

  “That’s a lot of clothes,” Nathan said. “How much money did she waste on them?”

  George shrugged. It was impossible to say just how rich her family actually was, not when half of their wealth was
invested in everything from land to asteroids and industries. Her father and grandfather had steered the family through the chaos caused by the bombardment, although they’d taken quite considerable losses after the floodwaters had ravaged Earth. And, as long as some of her more idle cousins didn't get their hands on any of the steering levers, the family should be wealthy and powerful for a very long time to come.

  And Anne could buy expensive gold bikinis and handbags for years without putting a serious dent in her trust fund, she thought, darkly. She’d never gotten along with her sister, who had always preferred to emulate their mother. But then, it had been her sister who had convinced her to shorten her name to George. Father may give her money, but he’ll never give her the keys to the kingdom.

  She stared down at the deck, despite the urge to stare as the shuttle approached the massive battleship. Nathan was one of her friends, one of the few who hadn't seen her as a rich bitch or as the ticket to promotion, yet even he sometimes showed flickers of envy. And the hell of it was that he had a point. She had enough money in her trust fund to get out of just about anything short of mass murder. There was no way she had to work a day in her life if she didn't want to.

  “She’s impressive as hell,” Nathan said. A dull thump echoed through the shuttle as the craft touched down in the shuttlebay. “Ugly, too; she looks like someone crossed a hammer with a dumbbell.”

  “Our new home,” George said.

  She rose, picked up her holdall and headed for the hatch, feeling an odd twinge of nervousness. She’d been scared when she’d gone to boarding school - it was customary for aristocratic children to go to boarding school - and uncertain when she’d gone to the academy, but this was different. A screw-up at the academy might get her expelled, if it was bad enough; it wouldn’t get someone dead. Here, the slightest mistake could cost the lives of her shipmates. She hesitated at the hatch, then stepped out of the shuttle and looked around the shuttlebay. A handful of other shuttles were sitting on the deck, but there was no one in sight. She followed the lines drawn on the deck through a large airlock, Nathan tagging at her heels, and into a larger room. A marine stood at the far end, weapon in hand. It was clear that no one was to go into the battleship without an escort.

  The hatch opened with a hiss, revealing a dark-skinned woman wearing a commander’s uniform. George stared, impressed. The woman’s bearing said, very clearly, that she was not someone to mess with. She was followed by a tough-looking midshipman who gave her a brief once-over, then scowled at her. George shivered. Judging by his age, he was almost certainly the First Middy.

  “Midshipman Bosworth, Midshipwoman Fitzwilliam?”

  “Yes, Commander,” Nathan said.

  “I am Commander Onarina,” the Commander said. “Welcome onboard HMS Vanguard.”

  “Thank you, Commander,” George said.

  “This is Midshipman Fraser,” Commander Onarina added. “He will see to it that you’re bedded down in middy quarters and give you a basic orientation. I’m afraid you’ll have to hit the ground running, but your grades suggest you should be up to it.”

  George swallowed. The look in Fraser’s eyes promised nothing, but trouble.

  “Thank you, Commander, Nathan said.

  “I’ll speak to you all later,” Commander Onarina added. She studied them both for a long moment, then straightened. “Dismissed!”

  Chapter Five

  “Were we ever that young and innocent?”

  “Young, perhaps,” Mason said. “Innocent ... I think not.”

  Susan shook her head as the two new middies headed down the corridor, following the First Middy. The boy - it was hard to think of him as being twenty-two - looked mature enough to cope, but there was a question mark over the girl. Her file clearly stated she was twenty, having joined the navy at the earliest possible age. She’d made it through the academy, naturally, but she might well lack the maturity of someone with more life experience. Still, she’d known what she was getting into when she signed up. Susan made a mental note to keep an eye on her, then turned to Mason.

  “So,” she said. “You want to complete the tour?”

  “Of course, Commander,” Mason said.

  He led the way down the corridor towards the rear turrets, chatting all the time. “The boffins came up with a new material for our internal hull,” he explained, cheerfully. “In theory, if you were to detonate a nuke inside our hull, the damage would actually be minimal. No one’s tried, naturally. I don’t think I’d care to be the person who proposed that to the Admiralty.”

  “It would be an alarmingly realistic test,” Susan agreed. “And even if the hull survived, what about the control systems?”

  “That’s the real question, Commander,” Mason said. “The ship has countless redundancies built into the command network. In theory, we can lose four-fifths of the grid and keep operating, although there are obvious limits. There are three formal command stations within the hull - the bridge, the secondary bridge and the CIC - and we can steer the ship from Main Engineering, if necessary. She’s built to take a shitload of damage, really.”

  “Let’s hope we don’t have to test it,” Susan mused. “What’s the real danger?”

  “You’re familiar with plasma cannons, I assume,” Mason said, as they stepped through a series of airlocks. “Warspite’s giant cannon was merely the first in a series of increasingly dangerous weapons. Ours are far more powerful than Warspite’s and our rate of fire is a great deal more rapid. The real danger, however, is overheating the guns or losing containment within the plasma chamber. If the former occurs, we’d have to shut down the guns to allow them to cool; if the latter, we’d have to vent the plasma into space or risk an explosion.”

  “It wouldn’t be as bad as a nuke,” Susan pointed out.

  “No,” Mason agreed. “But it would ruin the gun completely, perhaps even melt the turret. I don’t think our engineering crews could repair the damage without a shipyard.”

  “And it would have to be a shipyard that had the right parts in stock,” Susan said. “One of the reports I glanced at said there were shipping problems.”

  “There are,” Mason confirmed. “Each of the main guns needs to be crafted specifically for a battleship. We couldn't tear a Warspite-class cruiser apart to replace the missing gun.”

  He waved a hand as they passed through the last airlock and into the turret. A handful of crewmen were sitting at consoles, practicing their tactical skills against simulated targets, just in case the turret had to engage targets independently. It wasn't likely, given how much redundancy was built into the system, but it was a wise precaution. Susan had to admit that Commander Bothell had done an excellent job of preparing the battleship for war. She just wasn’t sure about the captain.

  “We can engage multiple targets simultaneously,” he said, “or concentrate our fire on a single target. Even a Tadpole superdreadnaught wouldn't be able to stand against our fire for long.”

  Susan glanced at him. “Long enough to ram us?”

  “No, according to the simulations,” Mason said. “In practice ... let’s just say no one wants to try it and find out.”

  He shrugged. “Put a light cruiser like Warspite up against us and we’ll blow her out of space casually,” he added. “She won’t even scratch our paint! Starfighters ... they shouldn't be able to inflict much damage, save for stripping our hull of weapons and sensor blisters ... and even then, we have hardened replacements in stock. It won’t be easy for anyone to stop us from reaching our destination.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Susan said. She took one final look around the turret, noting the access hatches that allowed the crew to perform repairs while the ship was underway, then followed him back through the airlock, making a mental note to return at some point and explore the turret thoroughly. “Where next?”

  “Engineering,” Mason said. “I think you’ll like it. We have six fusion cores, each one powerful enough to keep the ship moving on its own ...”r />
  Susan couldn't help feeling tired, two hours later; Mason had shown her everything from the fusion cores to the bridge, sickbay and tactical compartment, his personal domain. Vanguard was lavishly equipped, compared to a cruiser; Susan rather suspected that the Admiralty intended to use the battleship as a flagship, if all hell broke loose. Vanguard would tend to draw fire - she was hardly unnoticeable - but she had the greatest chance of surviving a modern-day fleet battle. The war would have gone very differently if Vanguard had fought in the Battle of New Russia.

  “I’ll be happy to cede the post to you whenever you want it,” Mason said, as he led the way to her cabin and opened the hatch. “Commander Bothell’s next duty slot was tomorrow morning” - he glanced at his watch - “seven hours from now.”

  Susan nodded, frowning as they walked into the cabin. It was larger than she’d expected, easily big enough to swing a cat; a giant painting of a starship she didn’t recognise hung against the far bulkhead, illuminated by a lamp mounted on the overhead. A small bookshelf, embedded in the bulkhead, housed a dozen paper books; beside it, a coffee machine bleeped for attention. Another portrait - she smiled as she recognised the king - hung above the drinks machine. She would have bet ten pounds that the XO’s safe was hidden behind the portrait. It was practically tradition.