Ark Royal (14 page)

***

Ted sat in his cabin, eying the bottle on his desk.  It was finest Scotch, a present from an old friend upon his promotion to Commodore; Ted had been saving it for a special occasion.  Now, with an alien fleet in full retreat and his ship thoroughly vindicated, it seemed as good an occasion as any.  But he wasn't sure he could ensure that he stuck to just one glass ...

He’d won, he knew.  The Royal Navy might call him a drunkard, the other commanding officers might question his qualifications, but none of them could deny that he’d won a battle against a powerful and seemingly overwhelming foe.  Everyone had seen the recordings of New Russia by now, everyone knew that humanity’s very future hung in the balance.  But he’d pulled off a victory and, in doing so, altered the course of the war.  Or so he hoped.

It was worthy of a drink.  Wasn't it?

He should know better, he told himself.  Hundreds of thousands of naval crewmen experimented with drink ... and, as a general rule, most of them learned to control the impulse or simply give it up.  But Ted hadn't really learned, which was why he’d been assigned to
Ark Royal
as a mere Lieutenant-Commander.  The Royal Navy had preferred to move him to a dead-end assignment rather than have him dishonourably dismissed from the service – or even quietly retire him when his first enlistment ended.  There were days when he’d wondered just what his superior officers had been thinking.  Had they been too lazy to do the paperwork for early retirement or had they questioned the wisdom of forcibly retiring someone who’d earned a knighthood through saving lives as a young Lieutenant?

The bottle glimmered faintly under the cabin light.  It was worth over three hundred pounds, he knew; his friend had been making a point as well as presenting Ted with a gift.  Part of him wanted to tear the bottle’s cap off and take a swig, part of him knew that he didn't dare indulge. 
Ark Royal
was no longer orbiting a beacon in the Earth-Moon system, but facing a dangerous alien threat.  The bastards could be back at any moment.

And he could lose his command.  No one really cared if a reservist commander drank, not when there was no real danger to his crew.  But now ... his XO wanted his post and had friends in high places.  Fitzwilliam hadn't done anything overt to stab Ted in the back, yet Ted knew the younger man was ambitious ... and all of the arguments he'd used to convince the First Space Lord to let Ted remain in command had become less and less effective as Fitzwilliam learned more about the ancient carrier.  Hell, he
would
be a good commander, Ted knew.  The younger man had an optimism about him that Ted had long since lost.

But Ted had no intention of surrendering his command.  It would be the first step towards early – enforced – retirement.  There was no way he would be allowed to take command of a modern carrier, even an escort ship.  He'd be lucky if he was assigned to an asteroid mining facility in the middle of nowhere.  Humanity’s only winner or not, he would be lucky to be allowed to keep his rank.  The Royal Navy would have its doubts about giving a modern starship to a known drunkard.

Angrily, he lashed out.  The bottle plummeted from the desk and struck the deck, shattering on impact.  Glass and alcohol splashed everywhere.  Ted swore out loud, then stood upright and reached for a towel.  There was no point in ordering Midshipwomen Lopez or another junior crewman to clear up the mess.  Besides, he was more than a little ashamed of his own weakness.  It was something he had to tackle on his own.  Once the mess was cleared, he dumped the towel into the recycler, glass and all.  It would at least serve a useful purpose when it was broken down for raw material.

His intercom buzzed.  “Captain,” Fitzwilliam said.  For an absurd moment, Ted wondered if someone outside the cabin had heard the bottle break, or smelled the Scotch through the airlock.  “The Marines are ready to start sifting through the debris, while
Primrose
is ready to return to Earth.”

Ted grunted.  “Tell them to make best possible speed,” he ordered.  The frigate would carry the news of the victory to Earth.  “And tell them that we will return to Earth within four days unless they have other orders for us.”

He scowled up at the star chart.  The aliens definitely had a more advanced FTL drive than humanity’s.  That was a given, now.  If they used it aggressively, they might even be able to jump directly to Earth.  And there wouldn't be any real warning before they arrived.  Once
Ark Royal
returned to Earth, they might not be allowed to leave, even though they were ideally suited to raiding behind enemy lines.

Damn it
, he thought, as he turned on the air conditioning to get rid of the smell. 
We’ve won one battle, but not the war.  Not yet
.

Chapter Eleven

The remains of the alien craft were almost invisible in the darkness of interplanetary space.

“I'm not picking up very much, beyond chunks of molten metal,” Corporal Henderson reported.  “I don’t think we’re going to find anything we can reverse-engineer.”

“At least not immediately,” Charles said.  The Royal Marines had a multitude of roles when they weren't actually serving as ground or space troopers.  One of them was conducting the preliminary post-battle search for intelligence.  Marines, in theory, were trained to recognise danger, something that couldn't always be said of civilian researchers.  “The ship was smashed to rubble.”

He shrugged.  There were no shortage of stories where a piece of alien technology was captured the first day, reverse-engineered the second and then used to produce a vastly-improved human version the third.  It had never struck him as particularly realistic.  He knew it could take months to reverse-engineer something produced by the Russians or Chinese – and
they
were human.  How long might it take to deduce the operating principles of a piece of completely alien technology?

Maybe not that long
, he told himself. 
Their technology can't be that different from ours.  The laws of science will work the same for them, won’t they?

He glanced down at the scanner as the tiny shuttle nosed its way through the debris cloud.  Automated systems were already picking up samples of alien metal, although the first sweeps suggested that alien hullmetal wasn't anything uncommon.  The researchers might speculate endlessly on new elements or previously undiscovered composites, but that was rather less than likely.  Or so Charles assumed.  If they started believing that there was something about alien technology that would be forever beyond humanity’s reach, they would always accept their own inferiority.

There was a ping from the console.  “Picking up traces of biological matter,” Henderson said.  “Sir?”

“Get it swept up by the drones,” Charles ordered, forcing down the surge of excitement he felt.  Despite himself, he desperately wanted to know what the aliens
looked
like – and what they called themselves.  Humanity had no name for them.  But while he had seen bodies survive seemingly devastating explosions, he didn't want to raise false hopes.  They might have found nothing more than blood and ashes.  “Then send them into quarantine.”

“Yes, sir,” Henderson said.  He looked up, suddenly.  “Will they catch colds and die?”

Charles shrugged.  The human race had discovered thirty Earth-like worlds – and seventy worlds that could be terraformed, although it was such a colossal investment that few were prepared to make the effort – but none of them had possessed a viral life form that was actually dangerous to humanity.  As far as anyone knew, Earth was the only world that had produced an intelligent race ... well, as far as anyone had known.  Unless the aliens were actually humans from a prehistoric space-based civilisation – and that seemed absurd – it was clear that there was more than one world that had given birth to an intelligent race.

“I doubt it,” he said, finally.  “Chances are that their biology will be so different from ours that our diseases will do little to them – and vice versa.”

Unless someone deliberately engineers a killing disease
, he thought, grimly.  The Royal Marines had been involved in the suppression of genetically-engineered diseases – there had been several attempts to commit genocide using tailored viruses – and, despite all the international treaties, the world had come alarmingly close to disaster more than once. 
Maybe we will take the gloves off when the aliens push us to the wall
.

He looked down at Henderson, realising – not for the first time – just how young the Corporal actually was.  Charles had fifteen years in the Royal Marines, Henderson was barely out of training.  He’d never seen any real action, not down on the ground.  And Royal Marines rarely won plaudits for serving on starships that went into combat.  They were tasked to serve as groundpounders or space troopers, not starship officers.

The console pinged again.  “Got something else, sir,” Henderson said.  “This one’s a bit bigger.”

Charles nodded.  “Send the drones after it,” he ordered.  “Then run the live feed through the screens here.”

He looked over at the console as the drones closed in on their target, reporting a steady increase in the density of biological material as they made their way through space.  Slowly, something humanoid came into view, illuminated by the lights mounted on the drones.  It was damaged, perhaps badly, but it was definitely far from human.  Charles felt a chill running down his spine as he gazed into the face of an alien. 

There had been no shortage of speculation, he knew, about what the aliens might actually be like.  The general assumption had been that the aliens were too alien to realise that war was unnecessary; after all, everyone in academia knew that cooperation was the way forward, not wasteful war.  Charles had read speculation that ranged from giant spiders, complete with insect mentalities, to robots that had killed their creators and gone on a rampage across the universe, but the academics had been wrong.  The proof was drifting right in front of him.

The alien was humanoid, as far as he could tell, although it – he, perhaps – had clearly lost a leg.  His skin was thick and leathery, almost like a humanoid elephant; his eyes were dark and shadowy.  There were no clothes, although with skin like that, he realised, the alien wouldn't really need protection from the elements.  The remainder of the alien body was damaged, broken and bleeding in a dozen places.  It was very clearly dead.

Charles swallowed, then spoke.  “Contact the ship,” he ordered.  “We’ve found a body.”

He watched as the drones pulled back, waiting for the EVA specialists to arrive.  The body would be bagged up, then transported back to the carrier and placed on ice.  No one would be allowed to see it, let alone touch it, until they’d taken it safely back to Earth, where it would be examined in a sealed facility.  He was fairly sure that alien bugs wouldn't be lethal to humanity, but there was no point in taking chances.  Besides, everyone and his aunt would want to see the body.

“It doesn't look friendly,” Henderson commented.  The normally bouncy young man – there were a handful of sharp remarks about the need for discipline in his file – sounded subdued, almost terrified.  “Do you think they’re all helplessly evil?”

Charles looked down at the screen.  The alien
did
look unfriendly, he had to admit; his jaws were filled with sharp teeth, set in a permanent grimace.  But that meant nothing, he knew; the alien might easily be smiling instead, or merely screaming in agony as his body froze to death.  Besides, he’d seen plenty of humans who had looked dangerous – or merely unpleasant – only to discover that looks could be deceiving.

“I think you shouldn’t judge someone by their looks,” he said, dryly.  “Unless they’re pointing a gun at you, of course.”

He wondered, briefly, what the various human-alien friendship protest groups would make of it.  There had been no shortage of idiots willing to believe that the human race had started the war, perhaps by settling a world the aliens had already claimed ... although, if that was the case, why hadn't they made contact rather than simply opened fire?  Somehow, he doubted the human race would have been stubborn if the aliens explained that they’d gotten to Vera Cruz first.  And, even if they had removed the humans by force, why carry on to attack New Russia?  And then start an advance on Earth?

There was no way to know.  Human morality might mean nothing to the aliens – and there were dozens of human groups with their own versions of morality.  Maybe the aliens thought that exterminating every other form of life was a holy duty or maybe they considered themselves the masters of the universe, with everyone else battered into slavery.  Charles could imagine a dozen motives for the attack that were heartless and cruel, but not unprecedented.  Hell, maybe there was an alien emperor who wanted to start a war in the hopes it would distract attention from problems at home.

He watched, grimly, as the alien was bagged up, then returned his attention to sweeping through the remainder of the debris field.  Any hopes he might have had for recovering alien technology seemed as unlikely as ever; the largest chunk of debris they found was nothing more than a piece of alien hull.  Several of the other searchers picked up alien bodies, including one that seemed almost completely intact.  They were bagged up and returned to the carrier too.

The intercom buzzed.  “Return to the Old Lady,” the XO ordered, flatly.  “We’re going back to Earth.”

***

“I had a preliminary look at the pieces of debris,” Anderson reported, “but most of them are too badly battered to be understandable.”