Ark Royal (49 page)

“They didn't lose the big gun,” Gladys exclaimed.  “It's still charging up.”

“Then we’ll deal with it,” Kurt said.  He yanked his starfighter back, then powered down towards the alien hull.  Most of the plasma cannon was embedded into the alien ship, but enough of the containment system was exposed to make it an easy target.  “Fire at will.”

The alien cannon buckled under the spray of pellets from his railgun.  Kurt watched a sudden surge of energy spike, then fade back into nothingness.  He thought, for a brief chilling moment, that they’d actually succeeded in starting a chain reaction that would take out the entire ship.  Normally, that would have let them paint an alien silhouette on their starfighters, but now it would be a disaster.  Thankfully, the aliens merely altered course as they powered down their weapons.

“They’re rebuilding their sensors,” Tom reported.  “I ...”

His voice disappeared with a sudden, terrible finality.  Kurt risked a glance at the datanet and saw that Tom had been hit, blotted out of existence in a split second.  He heard Gladys gasp in shock, then bring herself back under control.  She wanted revenge, but at least she could hold it back enough to keep flying in unison with the remaining pilots.

This
, a voice said at the back of his head,
is why starfighter pilots should not develop relationships with one another
.

“Damn it,” he muttered.  Out loud, he barked orders.  “Regroup and attack; I say again, regroup and attack.”

***

“The launch tube is going to need a complete refurbishment,” Anderson reported.  “I’ve given orders to evacuate the section, sir; there’s no point in leaving anyone there.”

“Understood,” Ted said, absently.  On the display, the alien ship was slowly turning back towards the tramline.  They couldn't be allowed to run, but he didn't have any way to stop them without destroying the systems he needed to capture.  “Keep me informed.”

He closed the channel, then looked over at the display.  The Marines were drawing closer to their target.  Close enough to board ... and to be detected.

***

Charles braced himself as the alien craft came closer, its hull shining faintly with scars from the EMP strike.  They must have suffered local power overloads and explosions, he guessed, which had damaged the superconductor hull.  It was funny, he thought, just how a strength could so easily become a weakness, under the right circumstances.  But there was no longer any time to think ...

An alarm sounded.  “They have us,” the pilot snapped.  “Launching flares, now!”

Charles braced himself as the shuttle jerked, then accelerated towards the alien hull.  The aliens might have mistaken them for missiles, or they might have realised what the humans actually had in mind, but it was too late.  Between the shuttle’s erratic courses and the disruptive flares – actually, tiny drones intended to create false sensor readings – the aliens would have real difficulty tracking them properly.

A red icon flared on the display briefly, then faded.  Charles felt a wrench as Shuttle Three vanished from the display, picked off by the alien blast.  Fifteen Marines vaporised in a split second, he told himself, then pushed the grief and rage out of his mind.  There was no time to mourn the dead now.  Afterwards, if they survived, they would hold a proper funeral for the lost men.

The alien hull loomed up in front of them, then glowed white as the shuttle’s drives flared, burning through the alien metal.  Charles allowed himself a tight smile, imagining the carnage inside the alien ship. 
Ark Royal’s
armour would have melted under a fusion light, he knew; the alien hull, whatever it was, didn't seem to be anything like as resistant.  The Marines braced themselves, ran one final check on their armour, and then scrambled to their feet as the shuttle came to rest.  Outside, the alien ship was waiting ...

And how much
, he asked himself suddenly,
will the ship be worth in prize money?

“Deploy probes,” he ordered.  It had been a long time since he’d plunged into the unknown – even terrorist or insurgent bases were scoped out carefully before the Marines moved in - but he was looking forward to the challenge.  “And then follow me.”

***

“Four of the shuttles made it, sir,” Farley reported.

Ted grimaced.  Two shuttles were gone, then; one lost to point defence, one lost to unknown causes.  They’d have to replay the sensor records piece by piece to find out what had actually happened, he knew, which would take hours.  He wouldn't know until after the battle.

“Good,” he said.  He looked over at the helmsman.  “Pull us back.”

“Aye, sir,” Lightbridge said. 
Ark Royal
felt uncomfortably sluggish as she moved, slowly, away from the alien craft.  On the display, the starfighters pulled back too.  There was nothing further they could do to help the Marines.  “Two minutes to minimum safe range.”

If they’re right about the weapon’s range
, Ted thought.

He looked down at the final damage reports, then resigned himself to waiting – again.  They thought they’d taken out the alien cannon, but if they were wrong ... the bastards wouldn’t get another shot at his ship.  But they were almost defenceless now ... quite apart from the damage to the sensor network, their missiles were completely expended.

Pushing his thoughts aside, he forced himself to watch ...

... And wait.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Charles hadn't been sure what to expect when they plunged into the alien ship.  There had been no way to train for the mission, nor had they had any data to use in training simulations, not when the ships they’d examined after the first battle had been shattered by
Ark Royal
.  All they could do was improvise – and pray that the aliens didn't manage to blow the ship before they were wiped out or captured.

Tiny nanoprobes raced ahead of the Marines, rapidly sending back data to the shared combat datanet.  Charles expected to see hunter-killer probes deployed in response – it was the standard human procedure – but none of the nanoprobes vanished from the display.  Instead, they rapidly started to map out the interior of the ship, updating the HUD with notes on alien positions and internal environment.  The atmosphere was breathable, they noted, but hot and moist enough to make most humans sweaty and uncomfortable.  Charles noted it in passing – the Marines wore battlesuits, allowing them to ignore the local environment – as they slipped through a gash in the hull.  A scene from hell greeted them.

Atmosphere – the water droplets already freezing to ice – streamed past the Marines as they entered the alien ship.  The fusion flame had melted metal into molten streams of liquid, which were cooling rapidly now the flame was gone.  Even so, the interior of the alien ship looked like a melted honeycomb, with decks destroyed or warped into something unusable by human or alien.  The gravity field caught them as they pressed onwards, the stream of atmosphere coming to an end.  Their safety precautions must have finally taken effect, Charles noted inwardly.  The aliens designers, like humanity’s designers, clearly believed in devising hulls so compromised sections could be sealed off at a moment’s notice.

They saw their first alien body as they made their way down towards the closest airlock the nanoprobes could identify.  Charles was no stranger to horror – nothing the aliens had done matched the horrors humans had inflicted on other humans – but he couldn't help feeling uncomfortable at the sight of an alien torso permanently separated from the lower half of its body.  A human would probably have been killed instantly through shock, Charles knew, but would an alien be just as fragile?  There was no way to know.

Two Marines attached an atmospheric bubble to the airlock, then went to work with cutting torches.  If anything, the alien hull was
less
resistant than
Ark Royal’s
armour – although, to be fair, it
was
an internal airlock.  Charles watched the airlock come loose, then motioned for the first Marines to step into the interior of the ship.  A swarm of nanoprobes shot past them, racing deeper and deeper into the alien ship.  His HUD constantly updated as they mapped out the alien interior.

Inside, the atmosphere was misty.  Visibility was poor, something that puzzled him.  Surely the aliens would have wanted to see clearly onboard a starship?  But he recalled the sheer size of their eyes – and the speculation that they normally lived in water – and guessed that the aliens probably had far better eyesight than humans.  Besides, their helmet sensors could peer through the muck, although the IR sensors kept sounding false alarms.  The environment was hot enough to confuse them. 

He took a glance at the updating map, then issued orders.  One team would advance towards where they thought the alien bridge was, another would head down to engineering.  The remaining Marines would expand through the ship, capturing or killing any aliens they encountered.  Charles had given serious thought to declining to take prisoners at all, but he’d eventually dismissed that thought.  No matter the dangers, he wasn't about to start committing atrocities against an alien race.  Particularly, as he’d pointed out to his subordinates, one that might still win the war.

The interior of the alien ship looked faintly distorted, oddly disconcerting to the eye.  Some of the passageways seemed normal, as if they could easily have been found on a human ship, others were oddly proportioned.  It took him a long moment to realise that the aliens didn't seem to have designed their interior to resemble something on the ground, with a definite floor and ceiling.  Indeed, were it not for the gravity field holding them down, he would have thought the aliens didn't bother to maintain an artificial gravity field at all.  He puzzled over it for a long moment, then realised that the aliens were born in water.  They would have an instinctive understanding of zero-gravity environments that only asteroid-born humans would be able to match.

“Curious wall decorations,” Sergeant Patterson noted.  He sounded faintly jumpy, clearly worried about what might spring up ahead of them.  “Do you think they can see at all?”

Charles followed his gaze.  The aliens had decorated their passageways with artworks, but there was no recognisable pattern at all.  It looked as though a child had taken a paint box and splashed its contents randomly over the bulkheads.  Charles suspected his five-year-old nephew could have done a better job, then he touched the bulkhead and realised that the texture changed from colour to colour.  Could the aliens be colour-blind?  It might explain their choice of artwork ... and, for that matter, the apparent shifts in their own skin colours.

Or maybe they just have a different set of aesthetics
, he told himself. 
If humans can’t agree on what makes a good painting and what doesn't, why should they
?

The explosion caught them by surprise, despite the drones.  An entire bulkhead blasted out at them, forcing the Marines to duck and dive for cover, despite their armour.  Behind it, a squad of aliens lunged forward, firing plasma bolts towards the human intruders.  The Marines returned fire, blasting the aliens to the ground.  Their tactics made no sense, Charles noted absently, part of his mind analysing the brief engagement.  Or perhaps they did make sense, he realised, as the second group of aliens appeared. 
This
group seemed far more professional, sniping at the humans from cover rather than merely charging at the intruders and being gunned down.

There was no time to pick out an alternate path through the rabbit warren.  Instead, Charles barked orders, commanding his men to launch grenades into the alien position.  The deck shook violently as the grenades detonated, followed rapidly by a sudden reduction in enemy fire.  A small group of Marines ran forward, crouching low, and finished off the remaining aliens before they could escape or recover from the blasts.  But a second set of aliens had taken up position behind the first ...

Charles sighed, resigning himself to heavy fighting.  The HUD kept updating rapidly, showing more and more concentrations of alien crewmen.  It was impossible to tell which of them were trained soldiers – alien Marines, he guessed – and which ones were merely crewmen who barely knew which end of a weapon to point at the enemy.  The Royal Navy was often careless about ensuring that its starship crewmen kept up with their personal weapons; he couldn't help feeling a flicker of amusement at the thought of the aliens hadn't the same problem.  Making a mental note to suggest to the Captain that weapons practice should be made mandatory – the aliens might be the next ones to board a crippled starship – he barked orders, leading his Marines further and further into the alien ship.

His HUD bleeped as it signalled an alert.  Charles puzzled over the sudden detection of poison gas, then realised that one of their shots – or an alien plasma burst – had burned into a coolant conduit.  The Marines ignored it, even though the aliens retreated hastily.  Most of them had no armour.  Charles briefly rethought his decision not to blow the ship’s integrity and release its atmosphere, allowing the aliens to suffocate, then reminded himself that all the arguments against it were still valid.  But the aliens weren't even
trying
to surrender ...

Get real
, he told himself, as he snapped off a burst at an alien soldier.  The alien tactics seemed haphazard, even random ... but with their weapons, they made a great deal of sense.  They didn't have to worry about reloading their weapons, so why not spray at random like a primitive machine gun?  The worst that could happen was that they forced the advancing enemy to keep their heads down. 
We don’t even know how to ask them to surrender
.