The Cruel Stars

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Signal from the flag,” Maddy said. “We’re to change course to evade the aliens.”

  Alan nodded. Assuming the aliens did have a fleet carrier nearby, it wouldn’t be long before they resumed the offensive. And if they didn't ... he contemplated the possibilities. There had to be a starfighter base of some kind within the system. But that didn't matter, he told himself grimly. The important thing, right now, was to break contact and try to sneak to their destination without being detected. Again.

  “Recall Herring Squadron, then order Kipper to take position on the hull,” he said. “I want Herring ready for immediate turnaround.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “And then inform Whitehead that I want to speak with him, once he’s turned his ships around,” Alan added. “I’ll see him in the ready room.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  ***

  “They’re out there, somewhere,” Poddy said. “But where?”

  “Maybe they lost us,” Anson said. “Or maybe they’re planning something really bad.”

  Abigail kept her thoughts to herself. Assuming the convoy was being shadowed, Commodore Jameson’s course changes shouldn't have kept the aliens from launching another attack. But no attack had materialised. It suggested, very strongly, that the aliens weren't shadowing the convoy. Perhaps the alien scout had just pulled back when the attack began, only to lose the human ships when they altered course. It was possible. Using its active sensors to hunt for targets would reveal its location to passive sensors ...

  And we’d send our starfighters after him, if we saw him, she thought. So far, the recon probes hadn't picked up anything worth mentioning. He has to know that too.

  She glanced at the report from the flagship. Two freighters destroyed, a third badly damaged ... it didn't look good. Thankfully, the third freighter wasn't radiating anything that might lure the aliens or the convoy might have had to abandon her to her fate. The only good news was an assessment by an analyst that suggested the aliens had actually been operating at extreme range, hence the brevity of their attack. But she wasn't sure how to take it. The Royal Navy’s analysts, in her option, appeared to be paid by the word. They certainly didn’t bother to use one word when three would do.

  At least these analysts are sharing the danger, she reminded herself. They know better than to make foolish mistakes. Or to draw unsupported conclusions and present them as certainties.

  “Keep us on course,” she ordered, pushing her doubts aside. It would be four days before they could pop through the tramline, thanks to the course change. There hadn’t been any choice. If the aliens really had lost the convoy, their best bet was to take up position along a least-time course to the tramline and wait. “And alert me the moment they show themselves.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Anson said.

  Abigail settled back into her chair and told herself, firmly, to wait. She'd done everything she could do, now the aliens had shown themselves. And yet ... a few hours of watching and waiting would take their toll. The aliens would force them to play hide and seek all over the system if they resumed their offensive now. She yawned, despite herself. Tiredness was going to wear her down.

  It’ll get to all of us, she thought. She’d have to leave the bridge eventually, just to get some sleep. The others would have to do the same. And yet, she didn't want to leave her ship in someone else’s hands when the aliens resumed the offensive. It would feel like she was neglecting her duties. We only have four days to go.

  She rubbed her forehead. Four days ... they’d already burned up some of their fuel and ammunition. And the more the aliens pressed the offensive against the convoy, the more the defenders would burn through their supplies. It might not be too long before they were effectively defenceless. And then the aliens would close for the kill.

  And she tried not to think about what would happen if - when - the aliens forced them to change course again.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “Tell me something,” Alan said, as he studied the younger man. “Do you understand how foolish you were?”

  The youngster looked torn between rebellion and a desperate desire to brace a non-existent bulkhead. Alan couldn’t help thinking of someone wearing his father’s uniform, rather than one he’d earned in his own right. Alex Tomlinson was nineteen, according to his file, but he barely looked old enough to shave. He certainly didn’t have the military bearing. Alan rather thought he looked like a civilian playing at being a military officer.

  “Ah ... Commander Whitehall made it clear, sir,” Tomlinson said. He sounded young too, his voice carrying very definite traces of Sussex. “I should have stayed in formation.”

  “Correct,” Alan said. “You were lured out of place. If they’d had more starfighters, young man, they would have either dogpiled you or punched through to hit the freighters. I am aware” - he held up a hand before Tomlinson could say a word - “that it isn't always easy to avoid a dogfight. However, you had other priorities and you should have stuck to them.”

  He allowed his voice to harden. “Not to be repeated, clear?”

  “Clear, sir.”

  “Good,” Alan said. It didn't look as though Tomlinson’s wingmates had decided to indulge in a little barracks-room justice, thankfully, but none of the older hands would be very pleased. They knew the dangers, even if Tomlinson was too inexperienced to see them. “I expect you to spend the next two days going through the engagement in the simulators. And consider yourself lucky that there’s no time to beach you.”

  “Yes, sir,” Tomlinson said.

  Alan eyed him for a long moment, then pointed a finger at the hatch. “Don’t force me to take notice of you again,” he ordered. “Dismissed.”

  He watched Tomlinson slowly walk to the hatch, his gait suggesting that he wanted to run for his life. It would hardly be the first time Tomlinson had been in trouble - his file suggested that he’d been a handful at school - but it might well be rather more significant than a short, sharp encounter with the headmaster’s cane. His permanent naval record had already been updated to reflect his mistake, although Alan - and Whitehead - wouldn't set anything in stone until the end of the deployment. It was still possible that Tomlinson would do something to redeem himself.

  Or get killed in a later engagement, Alan thought. None of us might make it back to Earth.

  He leaned back in his chair and studied the near-space display. Aquitaine was a beautiful world, a blue-green orb floating against the darkness of interplanetary space. The French had done well for themselves, he conceded. Seventy years of intensive development had led to a number of cities, small communities and a thriving orbital industry. He rather suspected the colonists were more French than the French - he’d heard that the colonists on Britannia prided themselves on being more British than the folks back home - but it hardly mattered. It was better to have a national identity than a melange of ethnic communities that disliked and distrusted their fellows. A great deal had been lost, during the Troubles, but a great deal more had been preserved.

  And the aliens are already raiding the system, he reminded himself. The convoy had been attacked twice more during the voyage, once in the Aquitaine System itself. Two tramlines that lead towards occupied space and the aliens appear to be raiding through both of them.

  He brought up the starchart and studied it for a long moment. The alien raiding patterns were odd, to say the least. A reflection of their concerns about taking heavy losses - Aquitaine was important, but hardly a vital target - or something more subtle? Perhaps they wanted the raiders to report back to higher authority between raids ... it certainly seemed to make sense. And it proved the aliens didn't have an FTL communicator ...

  His wristcom bleeped. “Alan,” Abigail said. “Commodore Jameson has requested that we join him for a holoconference.”

  Alan frowned. He’d been hoping for a trip to the orbital station. There probably wasn't any time to go down to Aquitaine itself, but visiting the station would have given
them a chance to eat something that hadn't been recycled or preserved for months or years before consumption. Or ... he shook his head. He couldn't blame Jameson for wanting to keep the ships fully manned. The aliens hadn't probed the orbital defences yet, but everyone knew it was just a matter of time.

  “We’ll take it in the CIC,” he said, rising. “I’ll see you there.”

  He took one last look at the near-space display - reassuringly clear of alien starships, although he knew that meant nothing - and walked through the hatch. A pair of crewmen were working on an open access panel, replacing a datanode that had been showing signs of failure during the brief engagements. Alan stepped past them, raising his eyebrows as he saw Maddy and Anson slipping out of her cabin, hand in hand. He didn't really care what they did when they weren't on duty, but they were in a war zone. The aliens might attack at any moment.

  And you spent last night fucking Abigail, he reminded himself, sharply. Who are you to complain?

  He dismissed the thought as he stepped into the CIC. The consoles were unmanned, something that would never have passed muster on a fleet carrier. But a fleet carrier had enough trained crew to keep the consoles manned at all times. Alan took a seat, tapping his ID code into his console. A list of updates blinked up in front of him, none of which appeared to be urgent. The French CO didn't seem to have any real idea of what he wanted to do with the convoy’s escorts, now they were here. He smiled at Abigail as she stepped into the compartment, closing the hatch behind her. Perhaps that had changed.

  Commodore Jameson’s face appeared in front of them, a handful of other faces appearing briefly and then fading into the background. Alan kept his face impassive with an effort, remembering some of the holoconferences he’d attended as a young man. The compartments had been large enough to maintain the illusion that everyone was in the same space, even though they’d known it wasn't true. Now ... Jameson looked small and the others wouldn't even register as long as they kept their mouths shut.

  “The French are very pleased to see us,” Jameson said, without formalities. “They’ve requested that we launch a raid through Tramline Two into Yeller, where the enemy forces have apparently established a base. They believe we can make a significant impact if we take out the fuelling station before it can be used to support a major thrust against Aquitaine.”

  “I’d be surprised if the station was that important, sir.” Captain Hamline’s face flashed into existence. “Their drives are, if anything, more advanced than ours. They wouldn't need any additional reactor mass or HE3 for quite some time.”

  “And yet, they have established a mining station near the gas giant,” Jameson said. “That much is indisputable.”

  “Yeah, so let the French go take it out,” Captain Malone said. “This isn't a job for escort carriers.”

  “The French have two fleet carriers,” Jameson said. “And neither one can be risked on this operation.”

  Alan frowned as he brought up the starchart and studied the tramlines. A mining station in Yeller made a certain amount of sense, although he doubted that taking it out would impede the aliens for longer than a few weeks ... if at all. Humanity’s fleet trains could and did transport HE3 through the tramlines, if necessary. It wasn't particularly economical, yet it was doable. Taking out the mining station might annoy the aliens - and it might remind them that humanity wasn't dead yet - but he couldn't imagine it actually stopping them.

  “This is a precursor to a potentially larger operation,” Jameson added. “However, the second operation will not start until the first is completed.”

  Abigail leaned forward. “What is the second operation?”

  “Classified,” Jameson said. “What you don’t know you can't tell.”

  Alan glanced at Abigail. She didn't look pleased. He didn't really blame her, although he understood Jameson’s concerns. The Great Powers wouldn't mistreat prisoners from the other Great Powers, but there was no reason to believe the aliens would follow the same rules. Besides, those rules only applied to honourable combatants. No one would bat an eyelid if a terrorist or insurgent was tortured to force him to talk. All the old decencies had been forgotten long ago.

  We really did lose something, didn't we? Alan looked down at the console, trying to keep his face impassive. But we couldn't have won while keeping one hand tied behind our backs.

  Jameson was still speaking. “We’ll jump into the Yeller System under full silent running, then proceed towards the target. If it looks clear, we’ll strike and obliterate the mining station before retreating to the tramline. If the defences are too strong, we’ll fall back ... hopefully, without them ever knowing we were there.”

  “It sounds very simple,” Abigail muttered.

  “Plenty of room for something to go wrong,” Alan muttered back. There was nothing wrong with the picture, as far as he could tell, but ... he shook his head. The aliens had established a mining station they didn't need, in a system that was literally one jump away from an enemy naval base. Put that way, it was starting to look like a trap. “What are they doing?”

  He cleared his throat. “How do we know this isn't a trap?”

  “We don’t,” Jameson said. “The analysts are unsure why the aliens bothered to establish a mining station in the first place. Yes, it is possible that it is a trap. And yet, we have to spring it.”

  “I don’t like that logic,” Captain Hamline said. “Are we planning to try to capture the mining station?”

  Jameson shrugged. “It depends,” he said. “If local space appears clear, we may try to land on the station. But if it doesn’t ... we’ll probably launch kinetic projectiles at the installation from a safe distance.”

  And pray that our estimates of a safe distance aren't grossly inaccurate, Alan added, mentally. If this is a trap, they’ll want to make sure we’re too deep within the system to escape before they close the jaws.

  “Capturing the station does add a few more variables,” Malone offered. “Has there been any progress in talking to the bastards?”

  “Nothing,” Jameson said, curtly. “Ark Royal did capture scraps of alien computer nodes, so something might have been devised” - he shrugged - “but if it was, I don't know about it. We have no way of guaranteeing that they’ll hear, let alone understand our messages.”

  Abigail nudged Alan. “You’d think they’d understand the basics, if nothing else.”

  Alan shrugged. There had been countless attempts to devise a first contact package that would allow both sides to build up a basic vocabulary before moving on to more advanced concepts. But none of the packages had been tested properly until the first interstellar war had actually broken out, whereupon they’d proven completely useless. As far as anyone could tell, the faceless aliens had no interest in anything, but war. The analysts were sure they had radio - they must have radio - yet they’d shown no response to human transmissions. It was hard to escape the sense that humanity was in a war to the death.

  Perhaps they think the galaxy really isn't big enough for both of us, he thought.

  It wasn't a pleasant thought, so he contemplated it for a long moment. If the aliens ruled the spiral arm, humanity might be grossly outnumbered; if the aliens ruled the whole galaxy, humanity might be so badly outmatched that the aliens could simply smash their way to Earth with the high-tech equivalent of human wave attacks. But all the evidence suggested that the aliens weren't that numerous, even if they were advanced. Perhaps there was another threat on the far side of alien space, something that kept the aliens from expanding away from humanity. Or perhaps they simply didn't have any tramlines leading away from the human sphere ...

  “We will depart tomorrow morning, then head straight for Tramline Two,” Jameson concluded. “Naturally, we’ll slip into silent running as soon as we are well away from Aquitaine. We don’t want them following us through the tramline.”

  Unless it really is a trap, Alan thought. But they’ve gone to a great deal of trouble just to snag a handful of war
ships and expendable escort carriers.

  He winced, inwardly. The Admiralty had made it clear that they considered the escort carriers to be expendable. Jameson wasn't a bad guy, but his superiors would happily expend the ships under his command to buy time for Earth. Or Aquitaine, in this case. Alan didn't blame the French for wanting to give the aliens a bloody nose, but the whole situation bothered him. What were the aliens doing?

  The starchart glowed in front of him. Alan studied the tramlines, trying to parse out their reasoning. The aliens might be alien, but their military logic couldn't be that alien ... could it? So far, everything they’d done spoke of a cautious mentality, one unwilling to take unsupported leaps into the dark. They’d only launched a thrust at Earth after becoming convinced that the defenders couldn’t stand in their way.