Ark Royal 2: The Nelson Touch

by Christopher Nuttal

  He paused for effect. “And yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely, they drew their plans against us.”

  “The War of the Worlds,” Charles said. “They made us read it in training.”

  “Us too,” the Rhino said. “Although we found it a little disappointing. What does one do if confronted with a seemingly-unbeatable enemy? We used to come up with all sorts of alternate endings, ranging from eventually capturing and reverse-engineering their technology to simply carrying out an urban resistance against the bastards. The heat-rays are impressive, but they can only kill what they see, while the Black Smoke gas could be dispelled with water.”

  “Sir,” the intelligence officer said, breaking into the discussion. “You need to see this.”

  Charles looked back at the display and swore out loud. Aliens, hundreds of aliens, were swimming below the dolphins, never looking up towards the light. Below them, there were smaller aliens and some very strange creatures. Charles remembered one of the more pathetic explanations of the Birds and the Bees he’d had at school and had to fight down a laugh, then realised that they were looking at alien children. They were like tadpoles, he recalled, remembering the speculation he’d heard after their first return to Earth. The odd forms below the alien adults were children who had yet to grow into their full bodies.

  “Tadpoles start out looking a little like sperm,” the Rhino said. Clearly, he'd been having similar thoughts. “They grow into frogs over several months. The aliens, it seems, follow the same basic idea.”

  Charles shuddered, remembering some of the less pleasant speculation about how the alien society might have developed. Humanity’s ideal – one man, one woman, several children – was shaped by biological requirements. The man impregnated the woman, then fed her and defended her, while she had the children and then raised them. Human emotions were built around protecting one’s children first and foremost – and, less pleasantly, resisting cuckoos in the nest. So much about human society had been shaped by the mating urge – and the urge to keep children safe. But for the aliens it would be very different ...

  The alien men ejaculate millions of sperm, he thought, and the alien women launch countless eggs into the water. Their infant mortality rate must be terrifying – and I bet they don’t give a damn. Because they don’t have the emotional link between parents and children that we have ...

  He shuddered again, contemplating the possibilities. The aliens lived in a far from friendly environment, even though they were perfectly capable of living underwater indefinitely. It was easy to imagine creatures comparable to goldfish or even minnows snapping up alien sperm and eating it, perhaps even gobbling up fertilized eggs ... he felt sick and swallowed hard, trying to think about something – anything – else. The whole concept was disgusting.

  And what, he asked himself, would they make of us?

  As a child, he'd firmly believed that girls were gross and sex, an act that involved parts of the body he associated with bodily wastes, disgusting beyond imagination. But, as a teenager, his opinions had changed radically, to the point where he’d spent most of his time plotting to commit the act he'd been so disgusted with, years earlier. And, even now, he knew he'd be tempted if someone offered him the chance to visit a brothel. Every damn deployment usually started with someone having to be rousted out of a whorehouse and then yelled at for several hours by the Sergeants for not having been ready to go on command. Or making a tearful farewell to his wife.

  Humans couldn't separate themselves from sex, not completely. There might be heterosexuals and homosexuals – and perversions that were banned even in Sin City – but they all involved sex. But, for the aliens, there would be no time being wasted on sexual matters. Nor would they have any of humanity’s complex and often useless regulations barring sexual contact. They simply never had sexual contact. It struck him, suddenly, that an alien king could have a child with a beggar girl and neither of them would ever know about it.

  He snickered, suddenly. “They’re all bastards,” he said. “Quite literally. They’re all bastards.”

  He watched as the dolphins swam past the alien children and down towards the alien city. It was a weird structure, reminding him more of coral reefs than anything else, surrounded by countless brightly-coloured fish. There were few signs of high technology of any sort, apart from a number of sealed boxes of uncertain origin. One building had an open roof; inside;, several dozen aliens drifted together, either asleep or stunned. Other aliens seemed to be sleeping wherever they chose, clinging to the reefs or hanging just inside rocky caves. It was hard to pick out anything that might be shops, government buildings or anything else that would be common in any human city.

  “They don’t seem to have any shops,” he observed. “Or anything we would consider useful.”

  “They might not have them,” the intelligence officer pointed out. “They eat fish, I assume, and there's just too much fish around for them to try to have dedicated fishmongers. I think they’re actually more flexible than we are when it comes to eating – trying to sell food and drink here would be like trying to charge for oxygen or fresh water.”

  “They do, on asteroid settlements,” Charles recalled. One of his earlier deployments had been to an asteroid where the ruling power had tried to do just that, only to have their settlers rise up in revolt. “And there were people who wanted to try it on Earth.”

  “There’s a limited supply of oxygen or water on an asteroid,” the intelligence officer explained, “and they need scrubbers and recycling plants to keep the system operational, even with the best genetically-engineered grass carpets we can produce. It’s viable there to charge for oxygen. On Earth, there’s no point in even trying.”

  He looked back at the latest set of images. “I’d bet good money that the first alien governments were actually communistic in nature,” he added. “Why not? There wouldn’t be any real advantages to either tribal or monarchical governments. Even capitalism would be of limited value in a world where everyone could get food and drink whenever they wanted.”

  “If that is true,” the Rhino mused, “how did they ever develop intelligence?”

  “They’re probably not naturally top of the food chain,” the intelligence officer said, after a moment. “Like us, they probably have problems fighting ... well, a sabre-toothed shark one-on-one. So they develop basic weapons and tactics ... and, somewhere along the line, those tactics become outright intelligence. And then they discovered they could climb out of the water and go on dry land. I’d bet good money that their intelligence was just sufficient at that point to allow them to take advantage without actually abandoning their roots.”

  “But they have to know we wouldn't be interested in the deep waters,” Charles said. “Why would they react so badly to us?”

  “Maybe they fought a war with another alien race, one based on the land,” the intelligence officer said. “Or maybe they just suspected the worst when they first encountered humanity. Our history with other forms of life isn't that good.”

  Charles nodded, slowly. Humanity had saved the whales and dolphins after an extensive cloning program, as well as moving samples from Earth to several other worlds, but countless species had been wiped out entirely. No one had seen a dodo for hundreds of years and no one ever would, not outside VR productions or movies. But how would the aliens know what had happened? It wasn't as if humanity had seen fit to advertise its crimes.

  “Which leaves us with a real problem,” the Rhino said. “Just what happened when the Heinlein Colony encountered the aliens?”

  Charles nodded. If only the aliens could talk!

  The Rhino’s communicator buzzed. He lifted it to his ear and pressed a switch. “Yes?”

  He listened for a long moment. “I’ll be on my way,” he said, then returned the device to his belt. “Charles, there is a meeting I have to attend. Call me if the situation changes.”

>   Charles nodded, then returned his attention to the display. The dolphins were swimming over a large assortment of crab-like creatures, apparently corralled in a zoo ... or a farm. Perhaps the aliens could farm after all. He watched, then flinched back as an alien face appeared in front of him. For a long moment, he had the distressing impression that the alien was looking right into the trailer, before remembering that the alien was looking at the dolphin. It was impossible to read any expressions on the alien’s face.

  “Evade,” the intelligence officer ordered. “I think ...”

  The image blurred. Charles heard a woman’s voice scream from the front of the trailer.

  “They killed the dolphin,” the intelligence officer said. “Shit.”

  Charles nodded, then ran into the front compartment. One of the women was screaming in pain, despite two medics trying to hold her down. A medic pressed a sedative tab against her neck, but it was several very long moments before it took effect. The other women hastily snapped on their filters, then urged the dolphins to run. There was no longer any time to hesitate. The aliens knew they were being watched.

  Shit, Charles thought, as he reached for his communicator. Bloody buggering shit!

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “You’ve all seen the records,” Ted said, as soon as his subordinate commanders had assembled – via hologram – in the conference room. “The real question is simple. Just what the hell is actually going on?”

  He looked – again – at the records from Primrose. “One possible answer is that we are actually dealing with at least two different alien factions,” he continued. “One of them wants to fight the war to the bitter end, the other is prepared to actually try to talk to us. But another possible answer is that the whole situation is a trap.”

  “It seems odd,” Shallcross said, “to sacrifice one ship and risk another just to lure us into a trap.”

  “I know,” Ted said. Captain Cook’s report had gone over the possibilities in exhaustive detail. “But these are aliens. We don’t have the slightest idea of just how they think.”

  He looked down at the table, then moved his gaze from face to face. “Are there any clues, any at all, that the aliens might have internal divisions?”

  “Nothing,” Commander Steenblik said. The Intelligence Corps officer sighed. “We went through the records from Target One carefully, but we didn't see any telltale signs of divided loyalties or multiple different powers. I would have expected to see their orbital weapons pointed at their fellow aliens, or targeted at the ground ...”

  “It isn't hard to use an orbital weapons platform to bombard the planet below,” the Rhino pointed out. “But they installed plenty of ground-based weapons. I don’t think we can assume there were multiple powers occupying the system.”

  “Earth does have multiple powers,” Shallcross pointed out. “For all we know, we've overrun the alien counterpart of Washington or Britannia, not Earth. This clearly isn't their homeworld.”

  Ted had to admit he had a point. Humanity had Earth and Terra Nova, both ruled by multiple powers, but the other worlds had been shared out among the spacefaring nations. It was possible, he suspected, that the aliens were utterly unaware of humanity’s national divisions, all the more so as they’d clearly attacked several worlds belonging to different human nations. If they’d just gone after New Russia, it might have been harder to unite humanity against a common foe.

  “Which leads to a simple question,” Ted said. “What – exactly – is going on?”

  Commander Steenblik frowned. “The data package they sent us is quite definitely an extensive First Contact package,” he said. “I believe that part of the reason it is such a large package is because of the sheer volume of data they sent us. They didn't attempt to compress anything, for example, or assume our system could automatically read it. I think they sent us both a contact package and the manual for reading it.”

  He paused. “However, it might be some time before we understand it well enough to put together a common language,” he added. “The analysts are still working on it.”

  “They came out of Tramline Four,” Captain Fitzwilliam said. “It’s possible that it leads towards a world controlled by Faction Two.”

  “But Faction One was definitely determined to prevent Faction Two from making contact,” Shallcross pointed out. “We dare not assume that they have complete control over the links from their world to Target One.”

  “Faction One might also be vastly more powerful than Faction Two,” Captain Atsuko offered, glumly. “Faction One blew up a starship without, as far as we know, any provocation. That would be an outright declaration of war in some cultures.”

  Ted nodded. The attack on the alien starship hadn't been an accident, but a cold-blooded attempt at intercepting and destroying the ship. There was no way a human diplomat could have smoothed matters enough to avoid war, unless one power was so vastly more powerful than the other that war would be nothing more than suicide. And that suggested that Faction One was still in control.

  Assuming that we’re not misreading what we’re seeing, he reminded himself. We could be completely wrong – and pushing ourselves into a trap.

  “Maybe there is a war going on,” Shallcross suggested. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

  “The enemy of my enemy is my enemy’s enemy, no more, no less,” the Rhino quoted. “The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries. I love that book.”

  “I thought everyone who read it ended up in jail,” Captain Fitzwilliam said.

  “I’m fifty,” the Rhino said. “Plenty of time for me to run afoul of the law somewhere.”

  He cleared his throat, loudly. “I will not pretend to be a diplomat, Admiral, because the last time I tried to be diplomatic I ended up causing a mess. What I will suggest is that we should be very careful. Faction Two might have some reason to work with us, but they will almost certainly have an agenda of their own, an agenda that might not match with ours. We would be well-advised, I feel, to handle the situation with extreme care.”

  Ted leaned forward. “An agenda that won’t match with ours?”

  “We know nothing about how the aliens organise themselves,” the Rhino said. “Faction One might just be ... the High King or something along those lines, with Faction Two intent on overthrowing them and becoming the High King themselves. Or Faction Two might want to stab Faction One in the back, despite them being embroiled in a war against us. Or Faction Two might actually be intent on keeping the war going as long as possible, then stabbing both us and Faction One in the back. Or there might be several different factions.”

  He shrugged. “I’ve been in wars that were effectively civil wars,” he added. “One side would often try to cosy up to us, then attempt to convince whoever was on the ground that their rivals were actually terrorist fuckers who needed to die. We were lured into disposing of a set of enemies for them, while we made new enemies for ourselves. It never pays to leap into the situation without knowing just what’s waiting for us first.”

  “I see,” Ted said. “But this isn't something as simple as a tribal war?”

  The Rhino looked at him. “How do we know that, Admiral?”

  Captain Fitzwilliam cleared his throat. “We could send a squadron of frigates through Tramline Four,” he said. “There's a world there that probably should be reduced as soon as possible, judging from the energy signature.”

  “Frigates alone wouldn't be enough,” Shallcross said. “We’d need the entire fleet.”

  “Except the world might be owned by Faction Two,” Captain Atsuko pointed out. “We’d just offend them too by attacking their world.”

  “We don't know that,” the Rhino said. “The fleet enters the system and attempts to make contact – at least we know how we can start opening channels now. If they talk back to us, we can build up a working language fairly quickly. And if they don't, we can engage the system’s defences and smash its infrastructure.”

  Ted fr
owned. Target Two – as the analysts had named the world – was definitely an alien industrial node. Instead of a habitable world, the aliens had set up their operations in orbit around a gas giant, leaving the rest of the system alone. The drones had already picked up orbital industrial stations, cloudscoops and even a small shipyard. Fitzwilliam was right, he knew. Target Two needed to be smashed as quickly as possible.

  But what if, he asks himself, it belongs to Faction Two?

  He sighed. An alien power evaluating human space probably couldn't tell the difference between British, American, French and Japanese planets, let alone their starships. Ark Royal was unique, but the other carriers followed the same basic idea, even if there were differences in size and weapons mix. It was quite possible that the aliens had never realised that humans had national groupings ... and, if they attacked Faction Two, it was equally possible that the war might get worse.