Ark Royal

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  He nodded to Commander Fitzwilliam as he entered the shuttlebay, just in time to watch as the shuttle came into land. Fitzwilliam wasn't doing too badly, as far as Ted could tell, although he was clearly unprepared for the carrier’s idiosyncrasies. But then, that would be true of almost everyone in the Royal Navy. The only way to prepare for the carrier was to serve on the carrier. Thankfully, Fitzwilliam was smart enough to listen to his subordinates, rather than lord himself over them. He understood the limitations of his own knowledge.

  “Mainly starfighter pilots,” Fitzwilliam said, as the shuttle’s hatch opened. “They seem to think we need them more than engineers and other workers.”

  Ted wasn't surprised. Years of experience with the Royal Navy’s bureaucracy had left him convinced that the bureaucrats knew absolutely nothing about commanding a starship. A bureaucrat had determined that Ark Royal needed starfighter pilots and starfighter pilots had been sent, even though there were no starfighters for them to fly. It probably helped that the starfighter pilots were almost all reservists, who really should have been called up later, once the ship was ready for them.

  He waited until the pilots were lined up, then stepped forward. “Welcome aboard,” he said. “I will be blunt. There are no starfighters, so we’re adding you to the personnel pool right now. You will start by cleaning out your living space, then helping to prepare the launch tubes for the starfighters, once they finally arrive.”

  None of the pilots looked very happy at his words. Ted concealed his amusement with an effort. Pilots were often prima donnas, demanding everything from the very best of rations to having their starfighters prioritised for repair. It was a form of compensation, he had been told, for the simple fact that one hit would destroy their starfighters and kill them. But it was still incredibly annoying.

  “As yet, we have no word on when we will actually deploy,” he continued. “However, I will inform you as soon as we get the word.”

  He nodded to Fitzwilliam, who stepped forward and led the starfighter pilots towards their living quarters. Their quarters had been largely untouched since Ark Royal had gone into the reserves, leaving the pilots with the task of cleaning them up. It was irritating — Ted would have preferred more time to prepare — but the bureaucrats hadn't given him a choice. They’d already caused the pilots to waste two days at Cochrane.

  Shaking his head, he turned and headed back towards his office. The paperwork wouldn't do itself, sadly. And besides, he needed to requisition some other equipment personally. The bureaucrats hadn't listened to Anderson when he’d made the request. But they’d listen to him.

  Or so he hoped.

  * * *

  It had been nearly ten years since Kurt Schneider had set foot on a carrier — and that had been a modern carrier, for its time. Ark Royal, by contrast, seemed to have come out of a museum, complete with pieces of outdated equipment that should have been discarded years ago. The air smelled faintly musty as he followed the XO through a series of airlocks and into the quarters set aside for starfighter pilots. When he saw them, he couldn't help swearing out loud.

  “Crap,” one of the younger pilots said. She wasn't a reservist; Kurt had no idea what she’d done to be assigned to Ark Royal. “Dust. Dust everywhere.”

  “You’ll have to deal with it,” the XO said. “I’m afraid we don’t have time to handle everything ourselves.”

  Kurt sighed, but nodded. Their enforced break on Cochrane had allowed him a chance to download the files on Ark Royal — at least the ones available to a reservist without an active clearance — and one thing had been clear. With only forty crewmen assigned to the crew, there was no way the ship could be kept in tip-top condition. It was unfortunate that they would have to clear their own living quarters first, but there was no alternative.

  “A word with you, Schneider,” the XO continued. “If you’ll join me outside…?”

  It wasn't a request, Kurt knew. He followed the XO back out of the compartment, then into a smaller compartment that was probably intended to be the CAG’s office. All of the equipment that would once have been held there had been stripped out, leaving the compartment thoroughly bare. It was a minor miracle, Kurt decided, that there was even a light. The entire compartment resembled a dim cave, rather than a place to work.

  “We are unlikely to receive many active duty starfighter pilots,” the XO said, without preamble. “The ones we do have are the ones with… disciplinary problems. Accordingly, you are appointed Commander Air Group, at least for the moment. Is that acceptable?”

  Kurt swallowed. “It's been eight years since I served in a regular unit,” he said, finally. “And I was never more than squadron XO…”

  “You’re the best we have,” the XO said. “We may get someone else, someone preferable, later on, but for the moment we have you. Suck it up and deal with it.”

  “Yes, sir,” Kurt said. He scowled to himself. How could he be a CAG when there were no starfighters for his pilots to fly? “When are we likely to receive fighters?”

  “Hopefully, within the week,” the XO assured him. “But we have to prepare the launch tubes first, you see.”

  Kurt nodded, then turned and walked back into his quarters. He knew a couple of the other pilots from his previous service, but it seemed that the bureaucrats — in their infinite wisdom — hadn’t seen fit to keep reserve units together. It wasn't too surprising, he knew; his reserve unit had been scattered over interplanetary space, with a handful of the pilots even based on Britannia rather than Earth. But it still meant that they would have to build up a working relationship faster than anyone would have preferred.

  He pursed his lips, then blew a single note. The pilots looked up at him, expectantly. He looked back, wondering which of them were going to be problems. The active duty pilots might have expected to be promoted — maybe that was why some of them had transferred — despite whatever problems were concealed within their files. Normally, they would have been right too. Active duty pilots were considered one grade senior to their reserve counterparts.

  “I have been appointed CAG, pro tem,” he said, shortly. If anyone was disappointed, they’d just have to deal with it. “We should receive our starfighters within the week. However, until then, we will have to prepare the fighter tubes for launch.”

  There was some grumbling, but no actual dissent. Kurt allowed himself a moment of relief. They were all adults, thankfully, not little children. Or even big children like Penny and Percy, he added, in the privacy of his own thoughts.

  “I know this isn't what we expected when we signed on the dotted line,” he added, “but it has to be done. I’ll speak privately to each of you over the coming week, so we get to know each other a little better. Once we receive our fighters, we will begin regular training. We may be able to cannibalise a simulator from Luna Base, but it won’t be as good as reality.”

  He smiled at their expressions. Simulators were good, he had to admit, and much safer than actual training missions, but they didn't quite do everything. Pilots could replay the infamous trench scene in a simulator, or go buzzing through an asteroid field that didn't exist, at least outside the imaginations of science-fiction writers, yet the sense of danger was missing. A crash in a simulator was embarrassing, a crash in a real starfighter was lethal.

  “Now,” he said, looking around the compartment. “Time to get this mess cleared up.”

  He watched the other pilots as they swept up the dust, removed the protective covers from the bunks and cleaned out the showers. Most of them seemed to accept their task willingly, but a handful were grumbling under their breath as they worked. One — a girl who would have been pretty, if she hadn't been scowling all the time — looked particularly annoyed. Kurt wondered, absently, if she had a reason to be annoyed, then dismissed the thought. If she hadn't wanted to go where she was sent, she shouldn't have joined the military.

  You weren't much better when you were on active duty, he reminded himself. It was an uncomfortable
thought. Were you?

  Once the room was clean — or at least cleaner — he reached for his terminal and checked the duty roster. Neither he nor his pilots had been added to it — the XO presumably hadn't gotten around to it — so he told his pilots to get a few hours of sleep before time ran out. It wouldn't be long, he was sure, before they were put back to work. But it would be just long enough to write out a message for Molly and then work out what needed to be done to get the fighter tubes ready for their new craft.

  * * *

  James watched the newly-appointed CAG returned to his quarters — there was no hope of a separate set of quarters for the CAG, at least not yet — then pulled his terminal off his belt and glanced down at the list of tasks. The next flight of crewmen — engineering crew this time, thankfully — were due to arrive in an hour, giving him time to inspect the tactical section before they arrived. There was already a long list of improvements and modifications that had to be made, but he knew they were nowhere near the end.

  He strode back through the network of corridors — Ark Royal was even more internally complex than the more modern carriers — and into the tactical section. Lieutenant Commander Keith Farley was already there, issuing orders to a handful of crewmen while watching a tactical simulation on the display. There was little data on the enemy forces — at least, not yet — but Ark Royal had quite a few surprises for any human starship that got too close. The rail guns and mass drivers might be outdated, yet they packed one hell of a wallop.

  “We’re going to need a regular supply of projectiles,” Farley informed him. “I’d like to obtain a compressor — perhaps from an asteroid mining crew — and then use that to produce new projectiles upon demand. We may be operating some distance from regular supply services.”

  James nodded, impressed. Mass drivers were powerful, but they burned through ammunition at a terrifying rate. It wasn't as if they were firing expensive missiles — the projectiles were nothing more than pieces of rock — yet even a carrier as large as Ark Royal couldn't carry an infinite supply. But a compressor would allow them to produce their own projectiles from asteroid materials, if they had time to pause to reload.

  “Put in the request and I’ll countersign it,” he said. There shouldn’t be any problem arranging for a compressor, not when no one else would have a use for it. The only other ships that carried mass drivers were older ships from the lesser powers. “What about missiles and pulse cannons?”

  “Missiles may be delayed,” Farley admitted, reaching for his terminal. “Everyone and their dog wants missiles right now and we’re down at the bottom of the priority list. The pulse cannons are on their way — thankfully, the other carriers already had theirs installed — and we should have them set up within the week. The real problem, of course, is going to be coordinating everything.”

  James winced. Modern carriers were built to avoid friendly fire… but Ark Royal’s systems were less capable of separating friend from foe. Even with computers — no human mind could hope to handle the speeds involved — it was still difficult to be absolutely sure that a foe was being targeted before the opportunity vanished into nothingness. The engineering crew had promised that more modern sensors would be arranged, but they had problems interacting with the other systems. Given enough time, he suspected that Anderson would have preferred to rip everything out and start again with more modern technology. But that would have taken years.

  “I’m currently working out ways to manipulate active sensor probes and passive sensor arrays to make it easier to provide full coverage,” Farley added. “However, if we were flying with more modern carriers, I would suggest tapping down our own sensors and relying on theirs.”

  “Dangerous,” James observed. “I don’t think the Captain would approve.”

  “Me neither,” Farley agreed. “It depends on just how the Admiralty intends to employ us.”

  James sighed. After the first briefing, there had been nothing from the Admiralty — at least nothing concerning Ark Royal directly. There had been security alerts, warnings that peaceniks were already starting to protest against the war, and a handful of speculative papers on just what the aliens might have in mind, but nothing more specific. The media had been crammed with even more baseless speculation, ranging from horror stories about alien atrocities to suggestions that the human race had somehow provoked the war. But no one knew anything for sure.

  “I believe that depends on how quickly we get ready for active service,” James said. He sighed, then looked up at the simulation. “Keep me informed of progress.”

  Farley nodded, then returned to his work.

  James’s terminal buzzed. “Sir,” Midshipwomen Lopez said, “the Royal Marine shuttle is requesting permission to land.”

  “Oh,” James said. He glanced at his chronometer, then swore. The planned schedule had called for the Marines to arrive the following day, when Ark Royal was ready for them. If the Marines came onboard now… they would have to help set up their own gear. The crewmen didn't have the time to handle it. “Tell them to dock, then inform the Captain. I’ll meet them in the shuttlebay.”

  * * *

  “Someone seems to like us, sir,” Captain Reginald Jackson said, once the XO had shown them to the barracks and departed. “Only a little dust, smelly sheets… good god, they even gave us a shower!”

  Charles snorted, unable to conceal his amusement completely. Compared to some of the places his commando had slept over the years, Ark Royal was paradise incarnate. Marine Country was always cramped, forcing the commandos to share beds from time to time, but that wouldn't be a problem on Ark Royal. Only 120 Royal Marine Commandos had been assigned to the ship under his command, which meant there was plenty of room for them to spread out in the vast barracks.

  “It doesn't look like they set out to welcome us,” he agreed. Normally, Royal Marines and naval crewmen hazed one another mercilessly. Ark Royal’s crew clearly hadn't had the time, even if they’d had the inclination, to prepare an unpleasant welcome for the marines. But then, there was a war on. Even the pettiest of naval crewmen would have thought better of continuing the rivalry when they might have to rely on the marines to save their lives. “Get the bags unpacked, then we can inspect the training facilities.”

  He watched his men preparing themselves, feeling a twinge of pride. The Royal Marines prided themselves on being the roughest and toughest British fighting men — a claim that was hotly disputed by other units that considered themselves equally tough — and no marine was ever allowed to wear an armoured combat suit without proving himself on the ground first. Training was harsh, unrelenting and sometimes lethal, but those who emerged from the experience were ready for anything. But they’d never seriously prepared for alien contact.

  The RSM saluted, once the final bags were stowed away. “All present and correct, sir,” he said. “We’re ready for deployment.”

  Charles smiled. “Good,” he said. Royal Marines served as everything from boarding parties to onboard security. If nothing else, they could be sure of doing something new every few days. Just because there was a war on there was no good reason to neglect endless training and exercises. “Let us go prepare for the war.”

  Chapter Five

  “Enemy fighters at three o’clock,” Kurt said.

  “Roger,” Rose answered. “What should I do until then?”

  Kurt rolled his eyes. The joke had been outdated when the military had started experimenting with jet fighters, let alone starfighters in interplanetary space. But it was good to realise that the squadrons were coming together, even if it did mean some cheek and backtalk from his subordinates. He settled back into his chair, then watched as the enemy fighters closed in rapidly on the flight of Spitfires.

  “On my mark, jink and engage,” he ordered, curtly. “I don’t want them anywhere near the carrier.”

  The enemy starfighters looked as if they weren't even bothering to try to hold a formation. A civilian pair of eyes would have thought
the pilots were drunk or incompetent, but experienced starfighter pilots knew better. Predicable flight paths meant certain death for the pilots; the enemy were jinking around like mad, even as they approached Ark Royal’s defenders. Long-range shots would almost certainly do nothing more than alarm them — and accomplish that much only if they were not experienced enough to know that the odds of being hit were almost non-existent.

  Spitfires didn't look anything like their famous namesakes from the Battle of Britain. They were spherical craft, bristling with weapons and drive thrusters that could push them in any direction. Spacecraft didn't have to be bound by the laws governing jet aircraft in planetary atmospheres, after all. It was impossible to build a starfighter that also functioned as a jet fighter to engage targets on the ground.

  “Mark,” he ordered. “Now!”

  The starfighters jinked, then opened fire as the enemy came into range. Kurt watched grimly as the enemy concentrated on blowing through the defending formation, instead of trying to hunt them down one by one. It suggested, part of his mind noted, that they were armed with anti-carrier missiles rather than being configured to sweep space clean of hostile starfighters. But they still carried chain guns of their own, ready to take shots at any starfighter that presented itself as a target. Kurt cursed under his breath as two of his pilots died, followed by five enemy fighters. The remainder accelerated towards Ark Royal, forcing the defenders to give chase.

  We’re rusty, he thought, sourly. Two weeks of intensive practice had allowed the pilots to recover their skills, but none of them had worked together before being assigned to Ark Royal. It didn't help that some of the reservists hadn't set foot on a carrier for years, let alone flown a starfighter. If they were being graded, Kurt suspected, the entire unit would have been relieved of duty and probably broken up completely. But instead they might have to face a mysterious alien foe…