Ark Royal 3: The Trafalgar Gambit

by Christopher Nuttall

  “We believe so,” Doctor Russell said, flatly. “I’ll spare you the details. Suffice it to say that we uncovered alien germs and viruses within the alien bodies and cultivated them ourselves, then modified their genetic codes to make them more dangerous. The aliens should have no natural resistance to the newly-created disease.”

  Ted shuddered. Humanity had managed – barely – to prevent the genetically-engineered disease genie from getting out of its bottle. God knew there had been several terrorist plans to build tailored diseases to wipe out everyone they didn't like, with the diseases targeting physical features like black skin. But there was so much intermingling these days that such a disease would almost certainly spread out of control.

  On one hand, he had to admit, a virus targeted on the aliens would be unlikely to infect humans. But, on the other hand, the aliens would definitely retaliate in kind.

  “This is madness,” the Leader of the Opposition snapped. “You’re talking genocide.”

  “I’m talking survival,” Doctor Russell said. “The aliens started this damn war. They haven’t told us what they want; hell, we can't even surrender to the bastards. If it’s a choice between them or us, who do you want to survive?”

  General Stewart looked grim. “Can you guarantee the aliens will be affected by your disease?”

  “I believe it will work,” Doctor Russell said. “But ...”

  The General held up a hand. “I am not qualified to discuss the morality of using biological weapons tailored to exterminate an entire race,” he said. “Perhaps the Archbishop of Canterbury would be better placed to give us a ruling. However, there are a number of practical problems. For a start, we give our military personnel tailored boosters to make it harder for them to get ill. How do we know the aliens don’t do the same?”

  He went onwards before Doctor Russell could interrupt. “And then we would have to infect one of their settled worlds,” he added. “How do we do that, practically?”

  Doctor Russell glared. “I was planning to infect one of the POWs and return him to an alien world ...”

  “Hell, no,” Ted said. “You’re talking about abusing a prisoner in our custody ...”

  “I’m talking about survival,” Doctor Russell snapped. “What do our moralities matter when we’re staring at the end of the line?”

  Ted met his eyes. “The situation isn't disastrous,” he said. “Not yet.”

  “It will be,” Doctor Russell predicted.

  The Prime Minister cleared his throat, loudly. “The deployment of biological weapons – and strikes against the alien civilian populations – will be held as an absolute last resort,” he said, firmly. “However, we will need to continue to research such weapons, just in case.”

  He turned to face Ted. “Admiral, you will be assigned a new task force and a diplomatic mission,” he said. “I expect you to depart within the week.”

  “Ark Royal requires at least a month of heavy repair work,” Ted said, evenly. The aliens had proved disconcertingly adaptable. Having discovered their weapons didn't damage the Old Lady’s hull they’d copied a human weapon that did and deployed it with great effect. “And her crew will need time to rest, recuperate and come to terms with everything that’s happened since their return to Earth.”

  “Time is not exactly on our side,” the First Space Lord said. “I suggest you expedite matters as much as possible.”

  Ted sighed. Ark Royal was heavily armoured, her saving grace when the aliens had attacked her with plasma weapons that had ripped modern carriers to shreds. They could blow weapons and sensor blisters off her hull, but not harm her innards. And yet, the heavy armour that had protected the carrier was also a weakness when it came to repairing the ship after the battle. The armour had to be cut off and then replaced piece by piece.

  “We’ll do our best, sir,” he said.

  “You can have first call on yard services and engineering crewmen,” the First Space Lord promised. “And whatever else you need.”

  A few hundred more carriers just like her, Ted thought. It was clear the aliens had chosen their weapons carefully, intending to slice through human naval fleets like a knife through butter. And it would have worked, too, if Ark Royal hadn't remained in service. The aliens had evidently missed her when they'd done their survey of human space. But it would be years before another heavy carrier joined the fleet.

  “Doctor Russell and his team will accompany you,” the Prime Minister said. “If negotiations fail, or simply don’t get off the ground, you may need them.”

  Ted felt sick. The whole concept of biological weapons was obscene. It was the sort of nightmare the Royal Navy was meant to stop, not seriously consider deploying. And yet, even putting morality aside, was there any guarantee the weapons would spread to the entire alien population? Ted rather doubted it. Humanity had dozens of settled worlds; the aliens, if their records were to be believed, had more. They’d slaughter one planet’s population, but the remainder of the alien race would survive ... and know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that humanity had tried to exterminate them.

  “Yes, Prime Minister,” he said. If nothing else, he could make sure that Russell and his team didn't do anything stupid – or anything likely to make the war worse than it already was. “I won’t let you down.”

  The Prime Minister nodded. “You have another appointment, Admiral,” he said. He rose to his feet, signalling the end of the meeting. “The King wishes to speak with you – both of you.”

  Ted winced, feeling Janelle’s sudden apprehension. Some bastard in the crew – and Ted intended to keelhaul the blighter when he figured out who – had leaked the news of her relationship with Prince Henry to the media. And some other bastard in the media had spread it far and wide, perhaps calculating the British public needed a diversion after the alien attack had devastated large parts of the country. It was thoroughly absurd, all the more so with millions dead and millions more lost without trace, but the media had still tried to lay siege to Ark Royal anyway. The only explanation that made at least some sense was that the reporters were trying to pretend that everything was normal.

  Idiots, he thought, as the room rapidly emptied. Nothing will ever be normal again.

  “Yes, Prime Minister,” he said. It wasn't as if they could decline an invitation from the King, no matter how much his young aide would have preferred to avoid it. “It will be our pleasure.”

  The Prime Minister smiled tiredly, perhaps recognising the lie. “Good luck, Admiral,” he said. His voice was utterly tired, tired and depressed. He’d been in charge during the greatest disaster to hit Britain, ever. No matter how many decisions he made, the ultimate resolution wouldn't come from his office. “We need to end this, as quickly as possible. Whatever we have to do ...”

  Ted nodded, understanding the Prime Minister’s dilemma. Peace with the aliens would come at a price, of that he was sure. And the aliens – or Faction One, at least – had never shown any interest in talking. Biological warheads might be the only way to force the aliens to the peace table ... or at least ensure that humanity remained alive to mourn the genocide that had been wrought in its name. He knew that to be true ...

  But he didn't like it. And he hoped he never would.

  Chapter Four

  One of the curses of being born into the Royal Family, Prince Henry had decided long ago, was that one was expected to visit other countries and pretend to like them. It wasn't so bad when visiting a modern country like America or France, but a less-developed or traditionalist country could be an uncomfortable place to visit. He still had nightmares about the water houses in Malaysia, where there had been no air conditioning, or the tents in Southern Arabia where his staff had been strictly segregated by sex. And complaining hadn't been allowed, no matter how uncomfortable or unpleasant it became. It had been one of the many things he’d hated about his life.

  But he had to admit it was also good practice for being an alien prisoner.

  He lay naked on the
uncomfortable bed, staring up at the transparent canopy. Outside, thousands of brightly-coloured fish swam through the water, showing no fear of the aliens or – for that matter – the human in the cell. And it was a cell, he knew, even if there were no locked doors or handcuffs. The only exit involved swimming through murky water and somehow getting up to the surface before he drowned. Henry knew he was a good swimmer, but he would never be as good as the aliens. They drew oxygen directly from the water through their gills.

  The cell wasn't exactly uncomfortable, although the aliens didn't seem to understand what humans needed to survive and prosper. They hadn't provided him with any clothes, either out of a misplaced paranoia over what he would do with them or through a simple lack of awareness that humans needed clothes. The aliens never wore clothes, as far as he could tell, at least outside combat situations. Given their biology, it was quite likely they had never developed any form of nudity taboo. Henry had rapidly grown used to being naked in front of his visitors. It helped that they were very definitely not human.

  He sat up as water splashed around the entrance, then swung his legs over the side of the bed as an alien clambered up into the compartment. As always, the alien seemed largely uncomfortable in the cell, even though the atmosphere was warm and moist enough to pass for Malaysia. He couldn't help comparing its movements to a strange mixture of wet dog and wetter seal, before it turned to peer at him with bulging, utterly inhuman eyes. Henry had the feeling that bright light would disorientate the alien – its eyes were designed to see underwater – but there was no way to be sure. He didn’t have anything, apart from his wits.

  “Greetings,” the alien said.

  Henry rose to his feet and affected a bow. “Greetings,” he replied. “Have we seen each other before?”

  “Yes,” the alien said.

  There were humans, Henry knew, who would have been offended by the suggestion that every member of a particular ethnic group looked alike. And it was stupid; it was quite easy to tell the difference between two different humans. The only exception to that rule, at least in Henry’s experience, was an asteroid where every single person was a clone of the asteroid’s founder or his wife. But the aliens didn't seem to care. They all looked alike to him and, no matter what he did, he had never been able to even tell the difference between male and female aliens.

  They might have the same problems with us, he told himself.

  The alien seemed to flow into a sitting position. “Sit,” it ordered. “Please sit.”

  Henry nodded, wondering just where the aliens had learned their English. His best guess was that they had recovered a tutoring console, perhaps from Vera Cruz or one of the other smaller colonies out along the rim of known space. They seemed to have a good grasp on the basic structure of the language, but they had real problems with understanding the differences between requests, commands and warnings. And that, he suspected, was just scratching the surface. It was possible that humans and aliens would never come to understand one another.

  He sat cross-legged and faced the alien, wondering just what the alien saw when it looked at a human. A faceless monster, an animal ... or another intelligent being? Humans saw monsters when they looked at aliens, Henry knew, although he wasn't sure how much of that sensation had been dictated by experience. He was looking at a representative of a race that had devastated several worlds, occupied more and taken countless humans as prisoners.

  “You will explain your government, please,” the alien said. “How do they come into power?”

  Henry hesitated. It was hard enough explaining democracy, let alone the strange combination of meritocracy and aristocracy that made up the British Government. He rather doubted he could make it comprehensible to the aliens. But he had to try.

  “When we want to select new leaders,” he said, “we ask people to support them. The person with the most votes wins the election and becomes the leader for the next few years.”

  There was a long pause. He wondered, suddenly, how the aliens handled their government.

  “Explain your government,” he ordered. It had taken him some time to realise that the aliens responded better to bluntness than politeness. He wasn't sure if they didn’t need the social lubricant politeness provided for humanity or if words like ‘please’ or ‘thank you’ confused them. They’d certainly never punished him for asking questions or being rude. “How does it work?”

  “All talk,” the alien said. “All decide. All do.”

  Henry frowned, puzzled. Was the alien being deliberately evasive or was it unable to express its true meaning in English? Or was he simply not understanding what he was being told?

  He took a breath. Weeks – he thought it was weeks, although it was hard to be sure – of captivity had left him uncertain of anything. It was growing harder to recall that there had ever been a world outside the cell, where he’d struggled to be a starfighter pilot and achieved his dream, only to be captured by the aliens. And the aliens didn't have the slightest idea who they’d caught. He’d been careful not to say anything that might suggest his true identity to them.

  “I understand,” he said. If the alien was feeling talkative, he could at least try to learn something from it. “Why did you decide on war?”

  The alien moved, oddly. Henry wished, not for the first time, that he knew how to read their body language. A human might have been laughing at him or preparing to throw a punch, but the aliens were completely inscrutable. He braced himself and pressed onwards.

  “Your people attacked us,” he said. “Why?”

  “Attacked. Us,” the alien said. As always, the computer-generated voice was completely atonal. “You. Attacked. Us. Faction for war won.”

  Henry felt his eyes narrow. There was certainly evidence the aliens had more than one faction; he’d been at Target One when the aliens had fired on one of their own ships. But what had the War Faction won? And why did they think humanity had attacked them first?

  “We didn't even know you existed until you attacked us,” he said. “Why didn't you talk to us?”

  “Faction for war won,” the alien repeated.

  It – or he – spoke as though it explained everything. And perhaps it did, Henry realised. It was far from uncommon for humans to be rushed into war against another group of humans without sober reflection. If the aliens had some reason to think that humanity had started the war, it might explain their reluctance to actually talk to human representatives. They’d see the human race as aggressive, as needing to be pruned back before opening discussions. But how had the aliens come to that conclusion in the first place?

  “We don’t have to fight,” Henry pointed out. “We could have the land; you could have the sea. There’d be nothing to fight over.”

  “Faction for peace ... uncertain,” the alien stated. “Aliens. Started. War.”

  Aliens, Henry thought. They must mean us.

  “But what happened?” He asked. “And why?”

  The alien said nothing. It rose to its feet, inched back towards the entrance and dropped into the hole. There was a splash as it hit the water and then vanished, somewhere within the murky depths. Henry stared after it, wondering just what had happened, then stood and walked back to the bed. There was little else to do, but sleep and dream of Janelle. He couldn't help wondering just what had happened to her ...

  And Ark Royal, he thought, numbly. Did she make it back to Earth or did the aliens kill her?

  His thoughts were interrupted by splashing from the entrance. One alien – a new one, if he were any judge – clambered into the room, then knelt down and held out a leathery hand. It was so odd that Henry stared in disbelief. He’d never seen the aliens needing assistance to climb out of the water and into the room. But, as the next person came out of the water and removed the mask covering her face, he understood. The newcomer was human. And female.

  He looked at her, then flushed and looked away as he realised she was naked. She was probably a handful of years younger than h
im, he decided, probably just pushing eighteen rather than twenty-two. Her long brown hair clung to her body as she wiped her skin, trying to get the water off her flesh. Henry understood the feeling all too well. The faint smell from the ocean water suggested it was far from clean.

  “There's a shower over there,” he said, pointing to the corner of the room. “It's clean water.”

  “They never supply towels,” the girl said. She sounded rather amused. “I should complain to the management.”

  Henry snorted, then looked back at the alien. It looked back at him, then stepped into the water and vanished from sight. Henry shook his head in disbelief, then tried not to look at the girl as she washed the ocean water from her body and hair. His body was insisting on reminding him just how long it had been since he’d slept with anyone.

  And are you going to betray Janelle so quickly? His thoughts mocked him. Or are you going to try to excuse your behaviour?