The Cruel Stars

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Yes, sir,” Maddy said.

  Alan looked down at the datapad as Maddy left, the hatch hissing closed behind her. Nineteen new pilots, thirteen of them yanked out of the training centre before they’d managed to acquire even a gleam of polish. Alan checked the comments on the first file and allowed himself a moment of relief as he realised the instructors had thrown a fit, then rushed to prepare the pilots as much as possible. And yet, he knew from grim experience that the instructors hadn't had a hope of actually succeeding. He was commanding children, children!

  “They’re not exactly babies,” he told himself, firmly. “Just ... inexperienced.”

  He scowled. Once, years ago, he’d watched bootleg copies of Star Fighter Maverick. The series had been banned, which had been part of the reason he’d wanted to see it. And yet, he’d found it impossible to understand why it had been banned in the UK until he’d reached adulthood. The characters were the sort of rogue agents who did well on movie screens, but were loathed and detested in the actual military. Not following orders was considered a Bad Thing, unless one had a very good excuse. A real pilot who pulled half the shit Maverick had done would have been tossed out long ago.

  Putting the thought aside, Alan started to compose a final message to his daughters. He hoped - prayed - that Jeanette would be allowed to see it, although he had a sneaking suspicion that not all of his messages were getting through. Jeanette’s replies hadn't answered some of his questions, making him wonder ... he sighed, knowing it would take a miracle for him to survive the war. If he survived, maybe he could start again. But that wouldn't be easy.

  Maddy returned, looking amused. “They weren't pleased, sir.”

  “I bet they weren’t,” Alan said. He put the incomplete message aside for later. “I just hope they got the message.”

  “It was expensive, apparently,” Maddy added. “They want their money back.”

  “A likely story,” Alan said. “Tell them to take a sexual travel package.”

  He snorted. What sort of idiot did the newcomers think he was? It was vaguely possible that some young fool had blown his paycheck on a bottle of aged whiskey, but rather more likely that he’d purchased a bottle of shipboard rotgut. No one in their right mind risked bringing anything they didn't want to lose on deployment, even though the odds of it getting stolen were very low. The odds of getting something lost or broken were much higher. He’d made sure only to bring copies of his family photographs with him.

  “Bennett already did,” Maddy said. “They weren’t pleased about that, either.”

  “Good,” Alan said. “Now, the pilots have all been assigned to their squadrons. Training will begin within the hour ...”

  ***

  “Should I be addressing you as Your Majesty now?”

  “That depends,” Abigail said. She wasn't in the mood for Anson’s sense of humour. “Are we ready to depart?”

  “More or less,” Anson said. He cleared his throat, perhaps picking up on her feelings. “All decks have checked in.”

  “And the pilots are training,” Poddy added. “I think they’ll be busy for a while.”

  Abigail nodded, curtly. It was hard to believe that Poddy had more experience than some of the newbie pilots, but ... groundpounders were strange. Their children were wrapped in cotton wool until they were almost too old to learn from their own mistakes. Alan would knock them into shape before they actually encountered something dangerous. If not ...

  She put the thought aside. “Bring the drive field online,” she ordered. Commodore Jameson had already ordered the convoy to be ready to depart. “And take us into our position.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  Abigail leaned back in her chair as a dull quiver ran through the ship. The repair crews had done a good job, but it was hard to be sure that everything was perfect. All their checks and rechecks insisted that they were ready, yet ... she couldn't help feeling unsure of herself. It felt as though something was about to go wrong.

  You’re imagining it, she told herself, firmly. You checked everything yourself before we started to power up the drives.

  “Signal from the flag,” Poddy said. “The convoy is to depart as planned.”

  “Well,” Abigail said. “Let’s not keep him waiting, shall we?”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  For all of Abigail’s misgivings, no trouble materialised as the convoy crossed the Terra Nova System, nor after it had started up the long chain towards Aquitaine. If there were any alien ships within the core systems, they kept their distance from the convoy. She honestly wasn't sure if the absence of alien contacts was a good thing or not; on one hand, the convoy couldn't hope to stand off a really determined attack, but - on the other - it suggested the aliens might have other priorities. They’d taken a bloody nose, yet that would force them to retake the initiative as soon as possible. They wouldn't want humanity to take the offensive itself.

  She paced her decks, chatting to crew and passing time with starfighter pilots. The latter were surprisingly young, young enough to worry her. It was far from uncommon for youngsters to start work early, in the belt - Abigail herself had been thirteen when she’d shipped out for the first time - but the starfighter pilots managed to combine the bravado of teenagers with the ignorance and inexperience of preteens. She couldn't help finding them a little disconcerting. Poddy was fifteen and she was far more experienced than any of the new pilots.

  “None of them went to space before being accepted for training,” Alan said, when she commented on it one night. “And they haven’t even had the full training period before being ordered into a real cockpit.”

  Abigail wondered, as the days slowly turned into weeks, just how much of a fuss a naval captain would have made if he’d had such undertrained pilots dumped on him. A big one, she assumed. Fleet carriers couldn't afford to deploy inexperienced pilots ... although, she admitted sourly, they also had better facilities for training the newcomers before they were launched into space and told to fight. It would have been better, she thought, to recruit volunteers from the belt. Belters might have problems coping with military discipline, but that only meant they’d fit in amongst the other starfighter pilots. They seemed to have problems with discipline too.

  She ran her crew ragged, going through drill after drill as they moved further from the core worlds. Combat drills, damage control drills ... she wanted to be ready, if - when - the enemy showed themselves. The new components seemed to mesh perfectly with the older systems, something that worried her more than she cared to admit. Normally, there were all sorts of compatibility problems. Technically, it was possible to wire French or Russian components into a British-designed network, but she knew from experience that it wasn't always easy to get them to work together. She would sooner have handled a dozen problems while they were installing the new components than deal with a single systems failure during an engagement.

  Paradox - a star system towards the end of the tramline chain - was surprisingly barren, save for a handful of asteroid and lunar settlements that were either independent or fuelling stations for one or more or the Great Powers. But then, most systems along the chain weren't much better. Aquitaine had been a lucky find, if the files were to be believed; there hadn't been any reason to think there was an Earth-like world at the end of the tramline chain. She suspected that some groundpounder had been dangerous incompetent, given that Aquitaine wasn’t that far from Earth. One of the giant space-based telescopes should have picked up a habitable world decades before the survey ship had stumbled across it. Maybe Aquitaine had been behind its primary star at the time. God knew there was nothing else particularly extraordinary about the system. The French had turned it into a colony and developed it over the last seventy years. They hadn't done a bad job, she admitted, if one wanted to live on a planetary surface. The groundpounders were blind to the simple fact that true civilisation was only possible in space.

  It may be safer to live on the ground, she thought, althoug
h she’d read enough horror stories about Earth to feel otherwise. Murder, rape ... even in the civilised countries, the crime rate was terrifyingly high, compared to the belt. But living planetside is also conducive to laziness.

  Abigail was inspecting the crew quarters when the alarms started to howl. She jumped, then hurried to the bridge. The enemy had been detected, then. She’d made it clear that alarms were not to be sounded unless the long-range sensors had picked up enemy activity. Given how many weak tramlines threaded through the Aquitaine Chain, she was surprised they hadn’t encountered the aliens weeks ago. But then, the aliens were probably more interested in probing towards Earth than harassing Aquitaine.

  Their tramlines change everything, she reflected, as she stepped onto the bridge. Red icons sparkled on the display, heading towards the convoy. They can cut their journey times down sharply, then appear in systems that should be safe.

  “Anson, report,” she snapped.

  “Enemy starfighters, coming at us on attack vector,” Anson said. “They’ll be within firing range in seven minutes. Commodore Jameson has ordered our starfighters to launch.”

  “They must have a carrier,” Poddy added. “But I can't find the wretched ship!”

  Abigail sat down. “They may be operating at extreme range,” she said. “But keep a close eye on the sensors anyway.”

  She frowned. New orders were popping up in her display. Commodore Jameson wanted the convoy to alter course, turning away from the alien starfighters. Outrunning the tiny bastards wasn't an option, but it was quite possible that the aliens were operating right at the edge of their range. The human ships might manage to put enough space between them and the alien mothership to force the aliens to back off. Unless they were feeling suicidal, of course ...

  Or unless their carrier is a great deal closer, she thought. They could get very close to us under a sensor mask.

  “There are only sixty starfighters within detection range,” Poddy said. “Where’s the rest of them?”

  Abigail’s lips twitched. “Don’t complain,” she said. “I dare say we’ll see them soon enough.”

  She allowed herself a moment to contemplate the possibilities as the alien starfighters converged on the convoy. The aliens might have been using their starfighters to search for the human ships, spreading them out to maximise their chances of finding their targets, or they might simply have gotten lucky. They had to have caught a sniff of the convoy at some point, she suspected. Perhaps an alien scout picked up the ships as they crossed the last system, then shadowed the convoy until an ambush could be organised. Commodore Jameson had already taken that possibility into account. His ships were launching recon drones to expand their sensor range.

  Not that it matters now, she thought. They did manage to ambush us.

  “Contact in two minutes,” Poddy said. “The second starfighter squadron is launching now.”

  Abigail felt an odd pang. Poddy sounded like a seasoned professional, rather than an excitable young girl. She’d never been allowed to be as footloose and fancy-free as a groundpounder girl - they were allowed to be childlike until they turned twenty, an absurdity that made little sense to anyone who grew up on the belt - but she’d still had her childish moments. Hell, Abigail expected her to mature as she served on the ship. Now ...

  Think about it later, she told herself. On the display, the red icons were falling into attack position. Right now, you have other things to worry about.

  ***

  “Herring Squadron is taking its time,” Maddy said, tartly. Her voice echoed oddly in the quiet CIC. “They’re not going to be deployed by the time the attack begins.”

  Alan nodded, grimly. The alien attack had caught them by surprise - and, as much as he’d drilled his pilots over the last two weeks, they’d still been slower to deploy than he would have preferred. They’d be in real trouble on a fleet carrier - he knew captains who would have called him up for the express purpose of tearing him a new arsehole - but right now they had worse problems. A starfighter trapped inside the carrier when the aliens attacked would be helpless, utterly unable to defend itself. And the aliens might be smart enough to target the flight deck first.

  Not that it matters that much, he reminded himself. Our armour isn't that good.

  He resisted the urge to contact the flight deck and order them to expedite. They were moving as fast as they could. And yet ... he wished, suddenly, that he’d taken a starfighter himself, rather than remaining in the CIC. He’d certainly planned to take a place in the rotating CSP, just to keep his hand in. But there was no time to take a starfighter now. The flight crews would prep his craft after the remaining starfighters were launched ...

  “Enemy craft entering attack range now,” Maddy reported. “They’re engaging the CSP.”

  Alan studied the display, watching the interplay of green and red icons. It looked remarkably bloodless, almost like a computer game rather than something real. It was easy to forget that each of those icons represented a starfighter and its pilot, that each icon that blinked out of existence meant that a living being - human or alien - had died. He remembered the vague reports from Ark Royal about the aliens, reports that suggested the aliens were roughly humanoid. And yet, they were still faceless. That bothered him more than he wanted to admit.

  “The first wave is breaking through the CSP,” Maddy said. “Their second wave is trying to pin the CSP in place. Commodore Jameson is ordering the CSP to move to engage the first wave.”

  Nothing wrong with their tactics, Alan thought. The alien starfighters were swooping down on their targets, choosing to engage the freighters rather than the escorts. It was a good sign, he told himself. The aliens wouldn't have ignored the escorts if they’d had enough forces to crush the escorts, then destroy the convoy at leisure. And they might just be in for a surprise.

  The aliens opened fire, savaging a pair of medium freighters. A moment later, a number of alien fighters vanished as the freighters opened fire with their point defence. The aliens seemed to hesitate, caught by surprise. Alan wondered, feeling a flicker of amusement, just why they were surprised. Their freighters were armed. Normally, human freighters didn't carry weapons - space pirates were the thing of trashy fiction, not real life - but it hadn't been hard to bolt a few weapons mounts to their hulls. The Admiralty had been desperate for something - anything - that might give the freighters a chance to survive ...

  “The CSP is driving the aliens back,” Maddy said. “But their second wave is heading straight for the freighters ...”

  She sucked in her breath. “Tomlinson is ignoring orders!”

  Alan looked up. “What?”

  The display centred on a single starfighter. Flight Lieutenant Alex Tomlinson was engaging an alien craft, battling backwards and forwards instead of following his wingmates to cover the freighters. Alan swore, harshly. The impulse to test himself against an enemy pilot, one-on-one, was understandable, but utterly out of place. Breaking formation in the midst of a fight was a court-martial offence. Tomlinson ... was too young, too inexperienced, to understand.

  “Order him back into formation,” Alan snapped. The alien pilot seemed inclined to accept the challenge ... Alan couldn't tell if the alien felt he had no choice, or if he was simply keeping Tomlinson away from his comrades. The aliens didn't actually have a numerical advantage. Their weapons just suggested they did. “Now!”

  “Aye, sir,” Maddy said. “I ... he just hit the bastard!”

  “Very good,” Alan snapped, crossly. “And now ... tell him to get back in formation.”

  He took a long breath, calming himself. Whitehead was going to give the young fool the chewing out of a lifetime, then Alan himself would have a go. Technically, it was Whitehead’s responsibility, but Alan knew he might need to drive the lesson home. The youngster was too young to understand that his little quest for glory - and he’d be feted as a hero, back home - might have cost lives.

  And then we have to tell him that, without brea
king him, Alan thought. That isn't going to be easy.

  “Monty has been destroyed,” Maddy reported. “Bad Penny has taken heavy damage, but her captain insists that she can still fly.”

  Alan winced. In the short term, losing the freighters wasn't a problem; in the long term, it could be disastrous. The forces deployed along the front line needed those supplies, the supplies the aliens had just destroyed. And the aliens would come back, time and time again, until the convoy was wiped out. Everything depended, now, on breaking contact before the enemy managed to mount a second attack.

  “The enemy craft are breaking off,” Maddy said. “Squadron COs are requesting permission to give chase.”

  “The Commodore will have to make that decision,” Alan said. “We don’t know what might be lurking in the darkness.”

  He studied the display for a long moment. The alien starfighters appeared to be flying into empty space, but something had to be lurking there. A fleet carrier? Or an escort carrier? It was hard to believe that the aliens might not have come up with the concept themselves, yet - even if they hadn't - they’d certainly seen human escort carriers in action. He wondered, idly, how long it would take the aliens to convert their freighters into escort carriers, then decided there was no way to know. It hadn't taken the Royal Navy long to convert Haddock and her sisters into makeshift carriers, but most of the components had been produced years ago and stored until they’d been needed. The aliens might be starting from scratch.