Ark Royal 2: The Nelson Touch

by Christopher Nuttal

  “That’s a relief,” Kurt said, as he followed them into a small room. It was also odd. The last time he’d been to Sin City, he’d had to avoid the attentions of hundreds of sellers, all of whom seemed to think he had money to burn. “Anything particularly dangerous?”

  “Just this,” Rose said, picking up a headband from the table. “We don’t know who it belonged to.”

  Kurt sighed as he took it. The headband directly simulated the pleasure centres in a person’s brain, allowing them to forget their troubles in a wash of orgasmic pleasure. It was definitely safer than drugs, legal or illegal, and it had few physical effects, but the mental addiction could be impossible to break. Once, he’d tried it as a teenager, then thrown it away in horror at just what it had done. A few more doses, he knew, and he would have done anything for another one. The last he’d heard, the girlfriend who had introduced him to the experience had been sent to a mental hospital. She could easily be dead by now.

  “We’ll know if someone is addicted soon enough,” he said. Symptoms would appear within a day or so, hopefully before they actually tried to fly a starfighter. It would play merry hell with his training schedule if they had to force everyone to wait until someone either showed signs of withdrawal or nothing happened within two to three days. “Maybe they didn't have time to become addicted.”

  He sighed. The last group of pilots might have included some of the dregs of the service, but at least they hadn't been complete newcomers.

  “We’ll have to hope,” he said. “What else did we find?”

  He cast an eye over the small pile. There were several small bottles of alcohol – they’d go into the R&R collection – a small handful of unidentified pills that had to be illicit drugs and a number of datachips. Probably pornography, Kurt decided, and probably something not entirely acceptable in polite company. He picked up the chip, toyed with inspecting it, then dropped it into the disposer. Moments later, the drugs and all of the datachips had been destroyed.

  “Check the bottles, then put them in the shared stockpile,” he ordered Rose. “As long as these are the only problems we should be fine.”

  “I can't say I’m impressed,” the XO said. “There should be punishment duties at the very least.”

  Kurt eyed her, stung. “Commander,” he said, “these are young and stupid rooks, not experienced pilots. Mistakes – and attempts to parse out the limits of the rules – are fairly standard for them.”

  “Between them,” the XO said, “they have been forced to pay out over a thousand pounds, merely to replace items of clothing they forgot to bring. I don't think it bodes well for discipline.”

  The hell of it, Kurt knew, was that he agreed with her. It didn't bode well for discipline, particularly in the cramped confines of a carrier’s pilot barracks. But, at the same time, he knew that most of the newcomers had barely enough training to get through the intensive course. They’d certainly not been taught anything past piloting, perhaps in the hopes they’d pick it up while on deployment, and it showed. By God, it showed.

  “They have only had three months of training, Commander,” he said, carefully. “I believe we will have plenty of time to teach them how to comport themselves as proper crewmen as well as pilots.”

  “I hope you’re right,” the XO said. “Have you completed the inspections?”

  Kurt nodded, once.

  “The Captain wishes to speak with you, as soon as convenient,” the XO said. “I suggest you go now.”

  “Yes, Commander,” Kurt said. He’d been in the Navy long enough to know that when the Captain called, you went at once, unless there was a genuinely life-threatening emergency underway. And there wasn't one now. “I’ll go see him at once.”

  ***

  James was working his way through yet another set of paperwork when the hatch buzzed, informing him that someone was waiting outside. He hit the switch to open the hatch, then pushed the handful of terminals to one side as Wing Commander Schneider entered the small compartment. The Wing Commander looked tired, even though he'd had several days of leave between his last assignment and the return to Ark Royal. But there was no time to consider the problem now.

  “I’m sorry for summoning you,” he said, as he motioned for the CAG to sit down. He was gloomily aware that his voice sounded awkward. “But there is a topic I have to discuss.”

  “Yes, sir,” Schneider said, sitting down.

  James frowned. The CAG sounded ... guilty. Perhaps he thought James was going to blame him for the poor inspection results, particularly as Schneider had been one of the instructors at the Academy. But James had no intention of throwing the blame around so unpleasantly, not when he remembered being a young and stupid graduate himself. He’d had some wild times in Sin City too.

  “You have a pilot assigned to your command,” James said, carefully. He wished he could just tell Schneider the truth, but it would make it harder for him to give a honest answer. “I believe you also taught him at the Academy. His name is Charles Augustus.”

  Schneider looked puzzled, yet oddly relieved. “Sir?”

  “I need to know your impressions of him,” James said. “What do you make of him?”

  He cursed, inwardly, as Schneider considered. The CAG was far from stupid – and it was rare for a starship’s commanding officer to take any interest in a single junior crewman, unless the crewman had done something very good or very bad. He would deduce that there was some reason for the interest and do ... what? The Royal Navy was generally very good at preventing predators from rising to positions of power, but there had been some failures ...

  “He’s certainly capable,” Schneider said, finally. “Smart, motivated, rarely makes the same mistake twice ... and one of the very few not to forget anything when the rooks were shipped from the Academy to the Old Lady. But he has a chip on his shoulder about something, sir, and I don't know about what. His file is curiously light.”

  James groaned, inwardly. A light file suggested a false name; indeed, a complete false identity. And that meant that people very high up in the Admiralty had signed off on creating the identify for Charles Augustus. It wouldn't be hard to deduce his true identity from the simple lack of many other prospective candidates.

  “I expect you to keep an eye on him,” James said, finally. “But you are not to discuss this with him at all. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, sir,” Schneider said. “Can I discuss it with the Wing Commanders?”

  “His, perhaps,” James said. “No one else. No one else at all.”

  Chapter Ten

  “The new bombers seem to be working well,” Ted observed. On the display, they were launching their torpedoes a safe distance from the enemy starships. “But they’re still threatened by enemy weapons.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lopez said. She glanced down at her terminal. “They do give us some additional striking power.”

  Ted nodded. The missiles the bombers had once carried had been replaced by EMP-pulsars and bomb-pumped laser warheads. Humanity had produced hundreds of nukes a year even before the war, using them to push asteroids towards their destinations or heating up a pair of very cold worlds. Now, they were used – once again – as weapons of war. But Ted had a feeling that they were going to need many more nukes than humanity could produce before the war came to an end.

  He sucked in his breath as the simulated aliens realised they were under attack and returned fire, spilling out tens of thousands of plasma bolts in the hope of wiping out the missiles before they made contact. Most of them missed completely, but the aliens were pumping out so much sheer firepower that it hardly mattered. One by one, the missiles winked out of existence, leaving only a couple to detonate and send laser bursts burning into the alien hull.

  “We may need to launch pulsars first,” he said. “EMP screws up their plasma weapons, we know.”

  He sighed. Humanity had adapted, reacted and overcome ... but what were the aliens doing, only a handful of jumps away? The absence of any
major attack since Ark Royal had returned home suggested they were planning something, even though some peaceniks dared to hope that the aliens had decided to sue for peace, now they’d taken a bloody nose. But the two attempts to make contact had ended in tragedy when the aliens had blown both of the peace ships out of space. Either they’d seen the transmissions as a challenge to do battle or they’d simply not been interested in talking.

  Shaking his head, he turned to look at his Flag Lieutenant. “Draw up a plan for more overall exercises,” he ordered. “We need to prepare to adapt to new realities.”

  He looked back at the display, just in time to see a flight of alien starfighters materialise from nowhere and fall on one of the American carriers like wolves on a flock of sheep. The Americans fought back savagely – this time, their armour could soak up alien fire – but it wasn't enough. As soon as parts of the armour failed, the aliens concentrated their fire and blew their way right into the hull. Moments later, it was all over; the aliens scattered as the American carrier blew apart into flaming debris.

  “We’ll also need to keep half our starfighters back for defence,” Ted observed. The Americans had weakened their fighter cover and paid the price. “Pity we can't simply reconfigure the interior too.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lopez agreed.

  Ted looked down at the live feed from the umpires, who were monitoring the exercise from afar. The various national units had learned to work together, even though they were still a little shaky in places, but it hadn't really mattered. No matter what they did, there was no evading the fact that five out of six carriers – seven out of eight, if the smaller carriers were included – were hellishly vulnerable. They’d just have to pray the aliens didn't mount a serious attack. If there had been time to build more heavily armoured ships ...

  “The armour did hold up longer than expected,” Lopez said. “It’s a promising sign.”

  “And what happens,” Ted asked reasonably, “when the aliens start producing better weapons? We already know they have a mid-range plasma gun. They might just improve the weapons their starfighters carry and then we’d be in real trouble.”

  He sighed. “But we don’t have any other cards to play,” he added. “All we can do is keep working on the simulations and hope that the aliens don’t come up with any other surprises.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lopez said.

  Ted was still mulling over the problems when he summoned his senior officers to a conference, two hours later. This time, most of them attended via hologram, reluctant to leave their ships for even a few short hours. Ted didn't really blame them. The aliens might launch an attack on Sol at any time, whereupon the fleet would be expected to go into battle as part of Earth’s defence force. There was no way to know if the aliens had the Sol System under observation, but Ted wouldn't have bet against it. Humanity did it’s best to keep an eye on the New Russia system too.

  “Our carriers are still strikingly vulnerable,” he said, once they had reviewed the results of the previous set of exercises. “We’re going to have to hold back nearly two-thirds of our starfighters to provide cover – and use drones to create false targets for the aliens. Even so, it’s going to be a major headache for us.”

  It would be worse than that, he knew. If the aliens just came at them, without any regard for losses, the lightly-armoured carriers would be wiped out in one single pass. After that, the aliens would just concentrate their attacks on Ark Royal until the Old Lady was battered into scrap. It would happen, sooner or later, despite her armour. Or the aliens would come up with something new. He gritted his teeth at the thought.

  “Then we have to keep them focused on their own defence,” Captain Bellerose said. “If we remain hidden, we might manage to get a striking force into attack range without being detected.”

  “Perhaps,” Ted said, “but we don't know just how capable the alien sensors actually are.”

  “Then maybe we should reconsider the operation,” Captain Atsuko said. The Japanese officer looked uncomfortable as all eyes swung to him. “We agreed to take risks to win the war, or at least knock the aliens back on their heels, but not outright suicide.”

  Ted concealed his private amusement. Japanese tactics in their wars had often been alarmingly close to suicide. Maybe they’d learnt something from two bloody defeats ... or maybe they were merely concerned about losing one of their carriers. Edo might well be targeted by the aliens if they decided that Earth was too heavily defended to be worth attacking, at least until humanity had been weakened considerably. The Japanese couldn't afford to lose a carrier for nothing.

  “The operation is not suicide,” the Rhino boomed. “It is merely very dangerous. I don't think any of us believed otherwise.”

  Ted tapped on the table before the others could start taking sides. “We will continue to review our tactics,” he said. “In particular, we will work on forcing our pilots to work together ...”

  ***

  “It could have been worse,” Kurt said. “And we learned a great deal from our failures.”

  He sighed, knowing that none of his superiors would be impressed. The rooks had learned the basics, true, but they hadn't mastered the tricks experienced pilots had learned through actual combat. Most of the rooks had been killed, either through poor flight discipline or alien stealth. Fortunately, it had all been simulated. But he hadn’t hesitated to make it clear to the pilots that they couldn't afford such losses in a real battle.

  “It could have been worse,” Admiral Smith repeated. “What did you learn from your failures?”

  “The rooks learnt that they needed more practice,” Kurt said. “We put them up against the American Black Knights, sir; the Americans wiped the deck with them, even though they were badly outnumbered. I think there won’t be so much grumbling in future about endless exercises.”

  He sighed, again. It had been five days since the rooks had arrived and he’d spent far too much of his time monitoring their exercises, lecturing them on their flaws and waiting grimly for the first actual fatality. Somehow, he doubted the aliens would be the first to kill one of the rooks. It was much more likely that their inexperience would get one of them killed first, no matter what precautions he took.

  “Keep working on them,” the Admiral ordered. “The Admiralty has been urging us to leave as soon as reasonably possible.”

  Kurt swallowed. He hated to admit failure, but it might save lives. The rooks didn't deserve to die when some of them had the makings of very good pilots. “Sir,” he said, “the rooks will not be ready for quite some time. Is there no way we can request more experienced pilots from the Earth Defence Force?”

  “The Admiralty doesn't want to give any of them up,” the Admiral said. “Under the circumstances, it’s hard to blame them.”

  “I know,” Kurt said. He’d been briefed on Operation Nelson two days after the rooks had arrived. Since then, he and his Wing Commanders had worked them so hard that several of the rooks had dreamed of flying starfighters in their bunks. But if nothing else, they were just too tired to have many discipline problems away from the cockpits. “But it’s going to get a large number of pilots killed.”

  “Keep working on them,” the Admiral ordered. “We don’t want to lose any time for training before we leave.”

  “Understood,” Kurt said. “When do you want to leave?”

  “A week, no longer,” Admiral Smith said. “After that, I have a feeling the Admiralty will order us out anyway.”

  “I’ll go back to training,” Kurt said. He half-rose to his feet. “With your permission?”

  Admiral Smith nodded. “Keep me informed,” he said. “And watch everyone carefully.”

  Kurt stood and retreated through the hatch.

  ***

  “He’s right, Admiral,” James said. “We are in a worse position, training-wise, than we were before we headed to New Russia.”

  Admiral Smith nodded, suddenly looking much more tired. “It can’t be helped,” he said, bitt
erly. “Everything we see at New Russia suggests the aliens are trying to build up overwhelming force and then come straight at Earth. They might well win, too, and if that happens we’re in deep trouble. If we can knock them off balance, just for a few short months, it might make the difference between victory and defeat.”

  James scowled. He’d made an effort to catch up on international politics after chatting with his Uncle Winchester and he’d come to the conclusion that several nations didn't want the British to hog all the glory. Or, for that matter, they didn't want the aliens to take the time they needed to prepare themselves and attack Earth. Or ... that they merely wanted the war to end before it destroyed the economy. Striking deep behind enemy lines would hopefully scare hell out of the aliens, perhaps even bring them to the negotiation table. And maybe it would even shorten the war.

  He remembered some of the classified documents he’d accessed through the fleet’s datanet and felt his scowl deepening. No one had really expected to have to move to a wartime footing and the contingency plans, such as they were, had proved largely inadequate. British industry – and American, French, Chinese and Russian – had worked miracles, yet much more was needed to keep the human race in the war. Matters weren't helped by the urgent need to share technology, design a shared class of carriers and battleships and a hundred other problems, each one needing to be massaged carefully into submission. There were quite a few people who would prefer the war to come to an end, sooner rather than later.