Ark Royal (28 page)

That
had been hair-raising for the naval personal, although he’d been fairly sure that few of the reporters had understood just how much the danger was increasing.  The aliens wouldn't launch an attack while the flotilla was nesting within the tramline, if only because the humans ships would simply trigger their drives and jump out.  No, he knew, they’d wait until the humans were well away from any means of escape before attacking.  But no attack had materialised.  Had the aliens thought
Ark Royal
wasn't going to New Russia after all?  Or was the main body of their fleet off trashing Britannia, Washington ... or Earth?

It was one of his private nightmares. 
Ark Royal
might attack New Russia, she might even drive the aliens
away
from New Russia ... and then return home to discover that the aliens had torn Earth apart.  Maybe the human race knew, now, that the aliens weren't invincible.  They still packed one hell of a punch.

Barbie caught his arm.  “It's so
slow
,” she protested.  “Why didn't you go closer before opening fire?”

James swallowed the response that came to mind.  “The aliens might have detected us,” he said, instead.  The problem with modern depictions of space combat, he knew, was that they were
fast
.  Instead of long hours of boredom, there were hours of constant excitement.  “We decided to fire from extreme range instead.”

“But they could move,” Barbie said, slowly.  “They might not be there when your shots arrive.”

“That’s true,” James said, in some surprise.  He wouldn't have expected Barbie to reason
that
much out; hell, he was mildly surprised she could even tie her own shoelaces.  “But it’s a risk we have to take.”

He sighed, inwardly, as the reporters turned back to look at the display.  Civilian politicians wanted to minimise risk as much as possible, but military officers knew that some risks just had to be accepted.  Besides, it wasn't as if the projectiles cost anything.  A few hours alongside an asteroid and the carrier could replenish its stockpiles without particular difficulty. 

None of the reporters looked very good, he noted, with a certain amount of malice.  They'd been up since
Ark Royal
had entered the system, remaining awake out of fear of missing something interesting.  Hell, even James and the Captain had made time for catnaps, while the starfighter pilots had each spent an hour in the sleep machines.  They’d regret it later, James suspected, but it would keep them alert for the moment.  But the reporters ... it didn't even seem to have occurred to them that they
all
had access to the datanet.  If they missed something personally, they could review it before
Ark Royal
returned to Earth.

A chime sounded.  He looked up at the display, worried.  Four new red icons had entered the system from an unexpected direction.

“Four ships, unknown class,” Farley reported.  “Temporary designation; Alien-Six.  All ships are heading towards the planet.”

James nodded, studying the alien vessels.  They were larger than frigates, but smaller than
Ark Royal
or any other known carrier design, human or alien.  Humanity hadn’t been too keen on the idea of producing giant starships, apart from the carriers, believing them to be easy targets.  But now ... humanity was working on its battleship design and the aliens, it seemed, had larger warships of their own.  Judging from the power curves, the ships might be battlecruisers or something similar.

Barbie coughed.  “Are they hunting us?”

“I don’t think so,” James said, as reassuringly as he could.  Personally, he suspected the aliens were readying themselves to launch an attack on another human world. 
Ark Royal
might have closed one backdoor, but there were plenty of others.  An attack on another major colony world – even if it wasn't Earth – would place the human alliance under considerable strain.  “I think they’re preparing the invasion.”

He concealed his amusement at her expression, then glanced at the timer again.  The minutes were ticking away, but there was still another hour before the projectiles passed through the alien position.  If the aliens moved, they would have fired all of those projectiles for nothing.  And the Russians were still drifting through space, heading towards New Russia ... they’d be dead before they even knew they were under attack.

Poor bastards
, he thought.

***

“Hurry up and wait,” Rose chanted.  “Hurry up and wait.”

Kurt sighed.  They'd had the opportunity for a shower, as well as a quick nap in the sleep machine, but none of them felt very good.  Spending hours in the cockpit out in space was one thing – it was easy to forget that they
were
in a tiny starfighter when surrounded by the vastness of interstellar space – yet spending them in the cockpit while in the launch tubes was quite another.  He couldn't really blame Rose for being antsy.  The tension of their first combat jump had faded away, replaced by a tedium that gnawed at their combat readiness.

He clicked onto the private channel and called her.  “Behave yourself,” he said, sternly.  Had
he
been such a handful when he’d been a mere pilot?  Rose was supposed to be setting a good example for her new subordinates.  “There is a war on, even if we are not allowed to fight it just yet.”

Rose snorted, rudely.  “At this rate,” she pointed out, “we will be in no condition to fight when the shit hits the fan.”

“Hey, you want to complain, go join the reporters,” Kurt said.  “Failing that, shut up and put up.”

There was no reply, leaving him alone with his thoughts.  Rose was right, unfortunately; the longer they remained psyched up to launch, the less ready they’d be to fight when they actually blasted out of the launch tubes and faced the aliens.  But there was no way to avoid it, unless they gambled on remaining in the ready rooms ... but, given how quickly a situation could move from controlled to a desperate battle for survival, they couldn't rely on being able to launch in time.

“Sorry,” Rose said, finally.

Kurt understood.  She
was
young, without the maturity that came with age and greater experience.  But then, few of the Royal Navy’s starfighter pilots had any real combat experience ... not until now.  Kurt suspected that a few years of heavy fighting would rapidly separate the true pilots from the men and women who had signed up merely to wear the uniform.  Rose, he decided, would be a true pilot with a little more seasoning.

But, for the moment, she just had to learn to ... hurry up and wait.

“Don't worry about it,” he said, kindly.  He checked the timer.  Twenty minutes until the shower of rocks cascaded through where the aliens were ... or had been.  Twenty minutes until the aliens knew that they were under attack. 
Ark Royal
and her flotilla had changed position, of course, but the aliens would still have a rough idea of where they were.  “Just stay alert.”

He sighed.  It was definitely easier said than done.

***

Ted looked up at the display, mentally ticking off the last few minutes before the projectiles flashed through the alien-occupied position.  Behind them, a handful of recon platforms and drones were already manoeuvring closer, hoping to provide an accurate record of just what happened when the projectiles hit home.  It would be risky – the aliens would start looking for the platforms as soon as they knew what had hit them – but he needed to know just how badly hammered the aliens had been.

“One minute,” Farley said.

Ted braced himself.  If they’d had more ships, with more projectiles, they could have swept more of space for alien targets.  But they had to work with what they had.  He cautioned himself not to get too optimistic; the projectiles and the alien carriers were tiny, in the grand scheme of things.  It was entirely possible that all they’d do was alert the aliens that they were being watched, without hitting a single target.

“Thirty seconds,” Farley added.  He counted down the last few seconds.  “Ten ... five ... contact!”

Chapter Twenty-Two

The recon platform had no name, nor did it want one.  It was nothing more than a cluster of passive sensors, a handful of gas jets and a single laser communicator, governed by the most advanced automated systems the human race had been able to produce.  There was no such thing as a true AI, at least not yet, but the controlling systems were capable of reacting to almost anything.  Now, it opened its passive sensors to their full extent – taking the risk of having them blinded – and watched as the invisible projectiles smashed into the alien fleet.

Four smaller alien craft and a carrier were hit at once, all four damaged beyond repair.  The remaining carriers brought up their active sensors and started sweeping space for threats, then opened fire with their point defence.  Lacking any armour or means to evade incoming fire, the remaining projectiles started to vanish, one by one.  The recon platform noted that the aliens took several shots to destroy each projectile, but they were definitely capable of putting out enough firepower to do it.  Unbothered by human emotional reactions, the recon platform observed the destruction of another alien carrier, followed by the loss of dozens of other projectiles.  Hundreds of alien starfighters swarmed free, advancing rapidly outwards to locate and destroy other projectiles.  Behind them, the starships brought up their drives and started to fan out rapidly.

Faithfully, unaware of its impending destruction, the recon platform reported everything to its mothership.

***

Ivan had no doubts.  Like the rest of his team, their emotional reactions had been minimised by the surgeons who had turned them into cyborg commandos.  It was a must, he’d been told when he no longer had the emotional capability to react to what they'd done to him; they didn't dare allow their cyborgs to keep the full range of human emotions.  The horror ordinary humans would feel at losing their genitals and being turned into inhuman monsters was nothing more than a minor notion to the cyborgs.

Hours of drifting through space in an unpowered shuttlecraft didn't bother him either.  Yes, he knew – intellectually – that the alien sensor grids might locate his shuttlecraft and blow it out of space, vaporising it so completely that they wouldn't have a chance to test their capabilities for operating in space without a spacesuit.  But it was merely an abstract concept to him.  They had a mission and they would complete it or die trying.

There was no need to talk.  All six cyborgs were linked together through low-power radio signals, allowing them to share thoughts and concepts without needing to open their mouths.  Indeed, as they’d grown closer and closer together, they had stopped talking to others, apart from when it was strictly necessary.  Ordinary humans, even Russians, feared the cyborgs, they knew.  It wasn't something that bothered them.  The cyborgs existed to serve as front-line commandos, nothing else.  If ordinary humans were scared of them, so much the better.

Now, they prepared themselves as the unpowered missiles went active, coming online and lancing after the alien craft.  The alien frigates didn't seem surprised to come under attack; they merely altered course and started to open fire with their point defence.  Half of the missiles kept targeting the frigates anyway, the remainder altered course and headed down towards the planet.  Assuming the odd radio signals were actually alien settlements, the cyborgs had decided when they were planning the operation, the aliens would have to concentrate on preventing the missiles from punching through the atmosphere.  Unless they had radically good sensors, they would have no way to tell that the missiles carried no warheads.  They’d be forced to assume nukes – or worse.

The concept of unleashing nuclear fire on alien civilians didn't bother the cyborgs.  They’d had emotional reactions engineered out of them.  Ivan had watched, dispassionately, as his fellow cyborgs had waged murderous war on the enemies of Mother Russia.  The fact that those enemies included subversives who were, technically speaking, Russian themselves didn't bother him either.  If they chose to defy the government’s orders, they deserved all they got.  It had been programmed into him on the day of his rebirth.

There were times when he wondered who he’d been before he'd entered the cyborg program and turned into a monstrous amalgamation of flesh and metal.  Memories of another life sometimes flickered through his dreams, suggesting that once he’d been something other than a cyborg.  But the dreams were nothing more than illusions, he’d been told.  It wasn't something to concern himself with, not when there was no shortage of work to do.

At precisely the right moment, the cyborgs uploaded the final set of commands into the shuttle, triggering a series of explosive bolts.  Wrapped in protective orbs, they plunged out of the shuttle and rocked down towards the planet’s atmosphere, surrounded by the pieces of the shuttle.  To human sensors, at least, it would look as through the shuttle had broken up in flight, perhaps after launching the missiles that had bedevilled the alien frigates.  But if it failed ...

Ivan had no doubts.  He’d done all he could.  Now, all he could do was wait and drop through the planet’s atmosphere.  And if they failed, they failed.

It was all the same to the cyborgs.

***

“Two alien carriers destroyed, nine smaller ships picked off,” Farley reported.  He nodded to the display, which was swarming with red icons.  “I think we made them mad.”