Riding the Red Horse

by Christopher Nuttall

  Major Military Actions

  Major military actions will be in strategically important locations. By and large, that will be planetary orbit around Earth, cislunar space, and planetary orbit around Mars. The prior actions described happen in interplanetary space, and will be low intensity conflicts of a sort, the kind of thing that would be a great “SEAL Team 6” adventure. In near-planetary orbital space, it's like a surface-warfare centric naval battle using current satellite recon: Everyone knows where everyone currently is, nobody can change their vectors by enough to matter, and the aim will be to do enough damage to infrastructure until it gets expensive enough to talk it over.

  Functionally, this becomes warfare over offshore oil platforms, not war to the knife over land that's been in the family since the days of Saladin or Washington.

  Conclusion

  Most things related to space travel and space habitation come down to thermodynamics, and those thermodynamic constraints put paid to many genre tropes, like “Space is an Ocean”. Thermodynamically limited space opera is a greatly underserved niche, in the overlapping circles of a Venn diagram between Hard SF and military science fiction.

  Editor's Introduction to:

  A PIECE OF CAKE

  by Christopher Nuttall

  Chris Nuttall, a native Edinburgian and top 100 Amazon author, shot onto the Kindleverse from a standing start and burst across the ebook sky in a crescendo of bestelling fireworks. And that’s not even talking about what’s actually in the more than two-score books he’s published via Kindle or small press. I say “standing start”, but he spent years building his literary muscles for that shooting-star jump, and he deserves every accolade and every massive Amazon check he’s received.

  “A Piece of Cake” is set in the universe of his Ark Royal series, currently four volumes and counting. It’s an interesting space opera series, pitting an outclassed Earth against a technologically superior enemy. It also had quite a lot to say about a military’s judgment on who should, and should not, be in charge of fighting our battles, how rarely we get that question right, and why it is that no English-speaking people has ever lost a naval war except to another English-speaking people. Battles, we may lose. Wars? Not yet.

  The story is a prelude to Warspite, the fourth book in the series, and serves as a fair illustration of how the principles of war can extend down all the way to the lowest levels. More than that, though, it has things to say about imagination, innovativeness, and sheer determination…and how those things can be discovered in any group or any man.

  And it is a story to make Gorgidas, Epaminondas, von Steuben, and Prince Eugene of Savoy, to name a few storied soldiers of the past, smile in their biers.

  A PIECE OF CAKE

  by Christopher Nuttall

  Historian’s Note: This story takes place just after the start of The Nelson Touch, prior to the Battle of Target One.

  “You know,” Colin Richards said, “I feel all alone out here.”

  John Naiser smiled at his wingman’s tone. “You are all alone out here,” he pointed out. “It’s a million miles to the carrier and dozens of light years back to civilisation.”

  Richards snorted. “This is all your fault,” he said. “If it wasn't for the incident with the woman’s swim team…”

  “Oh, shut up,” John countered. “It was you who told the Admiral that it was all in jest. And the Princess laughed.”

  He sighed at the memory. In truth, neither of them had any idea if the events just prior to their graduation from the starfighter training centre had ensured their assignment to HMS Canopus, a bulk freighter that had been hastily converted into a starfighter carrier, but it was a sore spot. Most of his graduating class had been assigned to fleet carriers and sent to the front. He and Richards—and a bunch of half-trained reservists—had been sent to the backwaters of human space. No one really expected to run into the aliens here.

  Which is why they sent the Canny Man, he thought, as he glanced through the cockpit towards the frozen mass of Bluebell. They weren't going to waste a fleet carrier on this piece of real estate.

  Bluebell was beautiful, and under other circumstances, he would have enjoyed the long flight around the gas giant. She was easily as large as Jupiter, but a glowing blue set against the twinkling light of hundreds of distant stars. Like Saturn, she was surrounded by pieces of debris and asteroids; unlike Saturn, the debris had not formed into rings, but hung around the gas giant in a surprisingly stable orbit. The navigator had loudly proclaimed, to anyone who would listen, that the system wasn't natural at all, that someone or something had shattered moons into space debris for mining purposes, yet there was no clear proof. But then, only a year ago, the idea of alien life would have been laughable.

  And then Vera Cruz taught us that we were not alone, he reminded himself. He looked back at his instruments, seeing nothing. It is better to be careful than dead.

  “Pity we can’t use the shadow tramline,” Richards called. “We could go somewhere interesting.”

  “Yeah,” John said. “But what could be more interesting than watching pieces of space debris drifting by?”

  Richards made a sneering sound. “Picking my nose?”

  John shrugged. Bluebell had been useless, prior to the war, simply because she sat on the end of a chain of tramlines. There had been no impetus to survey the system, let alone lay claim to the gas giant and its rings of debris; indeed, no one was quite sure who owned the settlement rights. It would have remained useless, if the aliens hadn't proven themselves capable of using tramlines humanity hadn't even known existed. A data-crunching astronomer had concluded that Bluebell might possess as many as three shadow tramlines, inaccessible to human starships, but all-too-accessible to the enemy. Unknown to the aliens—hopefully unknown to the aliens, he reminded himself—a chink had opened up in humanity’s rear.

  “It could be worse,” he said. “We could be separated by light years. Or one of us could be promoted. We couldn't be so close then.”

  “I suppose,” Richards said. “But I want to get out there and get stuck into the enemy.”

  John smiled. Starfighter pilots relished the challenge of battle, even though they’d also borne the brunt of heavy casualties from the early stages of the war. Not that the fleet crewmen had done much better, he knew. Two heavy fleet carriers had been vaporised at New Russia and two more had died during the alien push towards Terra Nova and Earth. Humanity had learned how to counter the aliens, how to turn some of their tricks against them, but the knowledge had been dearly bought. A third of their graduation class hadn't survived the first two months of active service.

  “You’ll get your chance,” he said. He glanced down at his console again, then frowned to himself. “I’m not getting anything from the Canny Man.”

  There was a pause. “Me neither,” Richards said. “They should have pinged us by now.”

  John felt cold ice creeping down the back of his spine. Captain Singh was no one’s ideal of the very model of a Royal Navy Captain and his insistence on proper procedure had rubbed a few of the starfighter pilots the wrong way, but he’d never let his crew slack. And no one should have allowed two starfighters to come over the horizon and advance towards the carrier without being damn sure of their identity. These days, when an alien starfighter packed weapons that could slice into a lightly-armoured fleet carrier, a moment of carelessness could be disastrous.

  “Watch your scope,” he ordered. The ping was already overdue. “And cover my rear.”

  “I’d pay money to cover your rear,” Richards responded, but there was no humour in his tone. Professionalism trumped witty banter when it seemed likely that something had gone badly wrong. “Don’t let anyone get on your bad side.”

  The sense of unease grew stronger as HMS Canopus slowly came into view. There was no real need for the carrier to remain upright, not in space, but the Royal Navy preferred to maintain the illusion of formation where possible. And Singh would hardly have allowed
his crew to avoid placing his ship in the upright position, even though it was pointless. But now, Canopus was tilting firmly to one side, slowly drifting towards the gas giant’s gravity well. It was very far from normal.

  “I’m picking up no radio signals,” he said. They were practically within missile range of the modified starship! “Confirm?”

  “Confirmed,” Richards warned. “I’m not even picking up a—Jesus!”

  John swore too as the starship’s hull came into view. Something had cut into the armour, venting the entire ship. Canopus lacked the interior airlocks and blast doors of a fleet carrier—for all the good they did—and she was almost defenceless, if the enemy caught her by surprise. Now, her hull was intact, but her innards had been badly damaged. It was impossible to believe that any of her crew were left alive.

  “They must have jumped her,” he breathed. The Admiralty hadn't been too far wrong after all. Humanity’s enemies had found Bluebell and intended to use it as an advance base for an attack on Earth. “There wasn't any warning at all.”

  “Yeah,” Richards said. “They didn't get a message out before they died.”

  That we know of, John thought. There was no way to tell just how long ago Canopus had died, not from the outside. The two starfighters might well have been on the far side of the gas giant at the time. But it doesn't really matter.

  “We have twenty minutes,” Richards warned. “And then we’re fucked.”

  “Make that seventeen,” John said. Their life support packs weren’t intended for long deployments. The flight around the gas giant had drained them more than he cared to contemplate. “We need to get into the hulk and see if we can find an emergency station.”

  Richards didn't argue as the two pilots closed in on the hulk. There was no other chance of survival. Even if they’d had the fuel to make it to the tramline and the drives to jump through it, they’d run out of air long before they could be rescued. And there were no other human starships in the system. The aliens, assuming they’d stuck around to survey the system, would be more likely to come back and blast the hulk into atoms than try to rescue two stranded human pilots.

  Up close, the damage didn't look as bad as he’d feared, although he knew it could easily be an illusion. Ironically, having been designed in the early days of interstellar travel, Canopus had a layer of armour that was more effective at absorbing alien plasma bursts than some of the giant fleet carriers. But a few blasts had clearly burned through the hull and wreaked havoc on her interior. It crossed his mind that there might be no way to survive, but he pushed it aside with an effort. There was always hope.

  “I’m going to uncouple and get into the airlock,” he said, after they’d surveyed the entire hull. “If this fails, get to the drive section and try there.”

  “Understood,” Richards said. “Good luck.”

  John landed the starfighter on the carrier’s hull, then clicked a switch he’d never expected to have to use, opening the canopy to cold vacuum. In theory, his pilot suit could handle the sudden change in the environment, but the temperature dropped rapidly as the atmosphere raced out into space. Gritting his teeth, he pulled himself out of the starfighter and down towards the hull. He didn't dare lose his grip and fall into outer space. Richards might be able to save him from being lost forever, without a radio beacon or anyone to hear it, but it would waste precious oxygen. He forced himself onwards as the cold worked its way into his flesh and blood, crawling towards the airlock. It seemed to loom up in front of him as he stumbled to a halt, then pressed his cold hands into the scanner. There was a long moment of absolute nothingness, just long enough to make him panic, then the airlock hissed open.

  The system is self-contained, he reminded himself, as he stumbled inside and reached for an oxygen tank. It will remain operational until the ship herself is vaporised.

  He smiled at the thought, then attached the emergency tank to his suit. There was a hiss, then oxygen started to flow into the suit. For once, he had to admit, the bureaucrats had done a superb job. They’d insisted on emergency supplies being available at all times, guarding against eventualities only they could see. But this had worked out in his favour.

  “I’m proceeding through the inner hatch,” he said, as he keyed the switch. “Come in after me, I think.”

  The hatch hissed open, revealing a scene from hell. A young man and a slightly older woman hung in the air, spinning silently in front of him. Frozen goblets of blood drifted through the air, hitting the bulkheads and bouncing back into empty air. The gravity generator must have completely failed, he noted absently. He pulled himself forward and inspected the two bodies. They’d both died from being slammed into the bulkheads, if he was any judge. He couldn't imagine anything else that might have caused such injuries.

  “Lieutenant Montague and Midshipman Peters,” he said, out loud. Behind him, the hatch hissed open again, revealing Richards. “They deserved better.”

  “They did,” Richards agreed. “But we don’t have time to mourn them.”

  John nodded. “We need to get to the bridge,” he said. “And see what happened there.”

  The interior of Canopus was horrific. John had never considered joining the Royal Marines, or anyone else who fought up close and personal, and the sights before him were sickening. Some of the crew had died through injuries, but others had clearly suffocated to death when the atmosphere had vented out of the hull. They hadn't had time to grab masks, he saw, despite training and inclination. Canopus hadn't had masks scattered everywhere, or a system of internal airlocks. They’d died before they could reach safety.

  “The hatches are blown open,” Richards said. He glanced into what had once been a tiny compartment for the junior lieutenants to share. “I think Lieutenant Clarke died in her sleep.”

  John winced. Judy Clarke had been a good friend; she’d hoped to become a Commander Air Group one day, on one of the bigger carriers. The attrition was high enough she probably would have had her chance, once Canopus returned from Bluebell. But now she was dead, cut down in her prime. He took a long look at her body, then resumed pulling himself towards the bridge.

  The hatch was jammed, but half-open. John forced his way through the gap, silently thanking all the gods his sister believed in that he was skinny enough to fit through, then looked around the darkened compartment. Captain Singh’s body was drifting near the ceiling, his head so lopsided it was clear he'd broken his neck. Midshipwoman Jones and Lieutenant Smyth sat at their stations, both dead. Smyth had a broken neck, like the Captain, but Jones had no obvious cause of death. John inspected her body for a long moment, then realised that the loss of the compensators had led to cracked bones for the young woman. She hadn't had a chance to grab a mask before the atmosphere was lost.

  “See if you can power up the log,” Richards advised, as he moved Jones to one side and sat down at the helm console. “There should still be battery power, if nothing else.”

  John nodded. It felt odd to sit on the Captain’s chair—he’d respected Captain Singh, even if he’d never liked the man—but there was no real choice. The captain’s logbook opened up at his touch, unsurprisingly. It was an isolated system, after all, with its own internal power sources. And it was far more than just the captain’s audio log. Every sensor system on the ship fed data into the captain’s logbook. Any board of inquiry would have access to all the data the starship gathered at the time of its destruction.

  Unless the log itself was destroyed, John thought. His ID allowed him to view data, but not to change it. The Captain might not have time to launch the safeguard drone.

  “There's only a trickle of power,” Richards said. “I don’t think we can get the drives up and running.”

  “And so we die,” John said. They’d escaped certain death from suffocation, only to face the certainty of death when Canopus finally plunged into the planet’s atmosphere. “We might be able to get a shuttle working.”

  “And be sitting ducks,” Richards sneer
ed. “I’d rather die.”

  John cursed under his breath. A shuttle would be a nice easy target for the aliens, once they got over their surprise at seeing the craft emerge from a derelict ship. And it still couldn't hope to transit the tramlines. Sooner or later, he was sure, the Royal Navy would notice it had a missing ship. But would it notice in time to save their lives?

  He looked down as the logbook opened up in front of him. Most of the data wasn’t important – there were supply shortages, crew readiness reports and the omnipresent captain’s mast proceedings – and he flicked through it impatiently. It wasn't until the last few sections that he started to see anything relevant, ending with a contact report. The captain hadn't had a chance to narrate a formal report for posterity, but he had some experience in reading the streams of data from the starship’s sensors. An alien craft had appeared out of nowhere, opened fire on the carrier and crippled her. And then–

  “They simply buggered off,” he muttered. “They didn't even bother to stick around and finish the job.”

  “Maybe they were short of time,” Richards mused. There was a sudden flare of light from the dead consoles, then half of them came to life. “Hah! Got some power!”

  John smiled. “Enough to get us out of here?”

  “Not enough for that,” Richards said. “But we can establish laser links with the stealthed recon platforms–”

  His voice broke off. “Ah.”

  John followed his gaze. “Ah, indeed.”

  On the display, glowing with angry red light, was an alien starship.

  When he spoke, Richards’s voice was hushed, as if he believed the aliens could hear them across the soundless vacuum of space.