He smiled, openly. “I’ll talk to the tactical crews and get them to see how many changes they can make to the programming package,” he said. “You handle the resupply, then get some rest. You’ll need it by then.”
Amelia gave him a droll smile. She’d organised the resupply – at least the Old Lady’s share – with terrifying efficiency. James had been an XO on two different ships, but he had to admit that Amelia had mastered the required skills far more than he’d ever done. But then, her file showed no trace of aristocratic connections. She'd cut her way to the top through sheer guts, determination and unquestionable competence. James had never seen her push herself so far that she was falling asleep in her chair. But then, she’d had enough experience of hair-raising deployments to remain calm.
“Yes, sir,” she said. “And you will need to rest too.”
James sighed. The Admiral would be having a rest – or at least he damn well should be having a rest – leaving command of the overall fleet in Shallcross’s hands. But James wasn't inclined to rest while his commanding officer was sleeping, knowing that an experienced officer might have to take command at any moment. And yet ... the Admiral was no longer the starship’s commander. Amelia was right to argue that James should rest in a moment of relative peace. It might come to an end sooner than any of them wished to believe.
“Very well,” he said. He turned and started to make his way towards Officer Country, then stopped and turned back to face her. “You’re doing well, Commander.”
“Thank you, sir,” Amelia said. Her face showed no trace of emotion. “And so are you, if you will permit me to say so.”
James nodded, then walked away from her. They hadn't started out very well, he had to admit; he'd been feeling his way into the command chair, while the Admiral had come alarmingly close to treating him as if he was still the Admiral’s XO. Not that he blamed the Admiral for that, he had to admit. There was a reason why crewmen who were promoted into command slots were generally transferred to new ships, even though it meant they’d have to grapple with the complexities of a whole new starship as well as ultimate command. They didn't have to endure the memories and habits of being a subordinate on their starship.
But there was no one else qualified to take over as Ark Royal’s CO, James thought, ruefully. There was me ... and no one else. No wonder the Admiralty wanted to expand their officer base a little.
He shook his head. Admiral Smith had forced him to come to terms with Ark Royal’s oddities as soon as possible. He, by contrast, had handled too much himself, purely because he was used to doing it. Silently, he promised himself that he would do better. Amelia would have her chance to prove herself ... and, to be fair, she was doing an excellent job. But she still had to deal with the disapproval of some of the crew.
They liked Farley, James thought, sourly. And who could blame them? The tactical officer was likeable ... and he'd been first in line for the XO posting. He’d got the promotion, but not the posting, creating some tensions within the crew. If Farley hadn't handled the matter professionally, someone might have done something stupid, like playing pranks on the XO.
He shook his head, wondering – yet again – just how Admiral Smith had done it. He’d kept the crew functional, despite spending half of his time in a bottle. Somehow, he’d managed to convince the crew to give James a fair chance and redeem himself at the same time. Maybe he was still feeling his way towards fleet command. He was still one of the better commanding officers James had known personally.
The Marine at the hatch to Officer Country saluted. James saluted back, stepped through the hatch and walked towards his cabin. Amelia was right, he knew. He did need a rest.
Besides, the aliens might be back at any moment.
***
The pilots assembled in the exercise chamber, looking rather nervous. Kurt ran his eyes over them, noting the telltale signs of exhaustion that many of them showed. Even the older pilots looked tired, unsurprisingly. They'd all been pushed to the limit by the battle for Target One.
And they'd lost friends in the battle. He looked towards where the dead pilots should have been, where their friends had closed ranks as if they wanted to deny the simple fact of the missing or dead pilots. How could he blame them for wanting to pretend that they hadn't lost anyone? But he knew it was something they would have to come to terms with, sooner rather than later. The loss of a handful of comrades stung worse than the loss of an entire American carrier.
“You did well,” he said. He looked towards the bomber pilots, who looked as if they were expecting a lecture on the need to work with their fellows. “All of you did very well.”
His gaze passed over Charles Augustus, who looked back evenly. Quite a few mysteries had been solved, Kurt had realised, when he’d learnt the pilot’s true identity. Prince Henry would be used to facing people with far more power and authority than a mere CAG. And he’d have a strange mixture of entitlement and an urge to prove himself. Kurt moved on to the next pilot, noting how North and Prince Henry seemed to have become friends. Nothing like shared danger to make personal issues meaningless.
Good, he thought, until one of them dies.
He sighed in sympathy. Pilots were permanently trapped between forming close relationships with their comrades and trying to maintain an emotional distance, knowing that they could lose their comrades at any time. It was one of the reasons pilots burned out early, why the Royal Navy only allowed them to sign up for three-year hitches, once they’d passed their training course. Kurt himself had chosen to return to civilian life; others, he knew, had never quite managed to find somewhere to belong. A distressingly high percentage of former pilots got into trouble very quickly.
It would probably do the Prince good to have a real friend or two. But it would also be disastrous when North found out the truth.
“The squadrons have already been restructured,” Kurt said. The pilots didn't quite glare at him, but it looked as though they wanted to do so. “No, I don't have time for arguments; you’ll go into the new squadrons and love them. And you will be joined by a handful of American pilots.”
His gaze swept the room. “Alpha and Beta are to go to the sleep machines and get an hour of sleep,” he ordered. “The remainder are to wait in the squadron rooms, catching more normal naps if you can, apart from Gamma. You” – he looked at the Gamma pilots – “will relieve the CSP for an hour. Any questions?”
North raised a hand. “Why don’t we all go into the sleep machines?”
Kurt glowered at him. “As was explained to you at the Academy, and I was there so I know it was explained to you, sleep machines can have unpleasant effects if the user is yanked out of them early,” he said. “Blinding headaches are among the more pleasant side effects. If you don’t believe me, you can try yourself when we’re heading back to Earth. Until then, do as I bloody tell you.”
He caught his breath, annoyed at himself. He was tired and stressed, but that as no excuse for shouting at his subordinates. It just made him sound like Captain Bligh.
“The sleep machines may keep the pilots out of combat,” he added, lowering his tone. “I would prefer not to lose more pilots to sleep than strictly necessary.”
He looked from face to face, then sighed again. “Dismissed!”
Rose waited for the room to empty, then walked up and gave him a hug, more of compassion than lust. Kurt relaxed into it for a long moment ... and then remembered where they were.
“We can't hug here,” he said, pulling himself away from her. “Not here!”
“Pity,” Rose said. She gave him a daredevil smile. “You want to do it on that sofa over there?”
“Rose!”
Rose giggled. “You should have seen your face,” she said, as she stepped backwards. “I was very insulted at your refusal.”
Kurt blinked, then realised he was being teased. “I don’t think it’s funny, particularly now,” he said. “They’re going to have to come to terms with reconfiguring the squa
drons sooner or later, sadly. They don’t need more shocks.”
“We are not quite within the forbidden zone any longer,” Rose pointed out. “And it isn't as if you treat me any differently when others are around.”
“Not quite,” Kurt said. He wondered, absently just how well that argument would hold up in front of a court martial board, then decided he didn’t want to find out. “Besides, we both need to sleep. And I do mean sleep.”
Rose nodded, then slipped out of the compartment.
After a long moment, Kurt followed her.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“You know,” Henry said, “we could go for shore leave.”
North gave him the finger. “On an alien world?”
Henry had to admit it sounded stupid, but there was something about the idea of an alien world that drew him to it. As Prince Henry, he had travelled the world, but never as a true tourist. He’d always had to make speeches, impress the locals and generally sell Britain to them as a prospective partner for ... well, whatever. Not that it had been a fun job, he remembered, bitterly. Very few nationalistic world leaders or hard-headed corporate CEOs would be flattered by the arrival of a member of the Royal Family. But if he’d gone down to Target One, it would have been a visit to somewhere new in his own right.
North snorted. “I dare you to suggest that to the CAG,” he said. “He’ll probably boot you out the airlock and tell the Captain that you were too dumb to make sure it was rigged as a decompression chamber before you stepped inside.”
Henry shuddered, remembering decompression training. It hadn't been a pleasant experience – and it had all hedged on being close to emergency equipment. “If you don’t have equipment within reach,” the instructors had said, “take one last gasp for breath, then bend over and kiss your ass goodbye.”
“Maybe they’d start using it as a punishment again,” Tammie said. The dark-skinned pilot rolled over on the sofa and looked up at them. “You’re certainly stupid enough to deserve it.”
“Nah, too much effort,” North said. “He’d just boot Charlie-Boy out the nearest airlock. It’s tradition.”
Henry snorted, remembering his history lessons. Some of the first independent settlers, either on the moon or on various asteroids, had used near-fatal decompression as a punishment for anything they thought didn't merit the death sentence. It was banned under British Law, but half of the lunar settlements and most of the independent asteroids hadn't signed any of the international conventions. Henry couldn't help wondering why anyone would want to live in such a regime, yet he had to admit it had its advantages. Reporters who probed into private asteroids – where people could live completely anonymously – were stripped naked, drugged and forced to surrender their secrets. He knew it should horrify him, but reporters were the lowest form of life in the known universe.
“I hate the pair of you,” he said. Two days of switching between sleep, combat space patrol and waiting in the ready room for something to happen had left scars on all of them. But at least they’d managed to catch up with their sleep. “It was just a thought.”
“Sure,” Tammie said. She sat upright and stretched. Henry hastily looked away from her unbuttoned jacket. “It was a stupid thought. S-T-U-P-I-D.”
“I generally leave spelling to witches,” Henry said. “No wonder you’re so good at it.”
“There's a squadron in Russia called the Night Witches,” Tammie reminded him, without taking offence. “They’re all women.”
“Yeah,” North said. “Weren’t they the ones that released that porn movie?”
“That was a fake,” Tammie sneered. “And if it hadn't come out of Sin City, I'm sure the Russians would have sued for every penny they could get.”
Henry nodded. A lot of things, mostly thoroughly illegal, came out of Sin City. A video showing twelve beautiful girls cavorting in a fake starfighter cockpit was surprisingly tame, compared to some of their other exports. And it had probably done wonders for recruitment; he’d watched it himself, long before he'd set his heart on flying a starfighter. Plenty of other would-be pilots had done the same thing.
North smirked. “I’m sure the Russians loved the publicity ...”
“I’m going for a walk,” Henry said, before their argument could get out of hand. He’d sometimes wondered if North and Tammie were attracted to one another, despite regulations forbidding any form of intimate relationship between pilots. “You two have fun, now.”
“Take your communicator,” Tammie called after him. “You don't want to be caught without it.”
Henry nodded and checked he was still carrying the device on his wrist. If there was an emergency order to scramble – which seemed unlikely, but one never knew – he’d be in deep shit if he was caught without it. If he had to run back to the launching tubes ... well, if the aliens didn't kill him the Wing Commander would have a damn good try. He stepped through a pair of closed hatches – with the entire ship on alert, airlocks had been closed throughout the ship – and walked up towards the observation blister. Somehow, he wasn't surprised when he stepped through the hatch and saw Janelle sitting inside the blister, staring at the blue-green orb of Target One.
“We’re going to have to come up with a better name for the world,” he said, as he closed the hatch. The welcoming smile Janelle gave him made his heart spin in his chest. “Target One sounds so ... awkward.”
“Most worlds have a name in their own language,” Janelle pointed out, as she rose to her feet and gave him a quick hug. It was a gesture of true physical affection, Henry realised. In a way, he knew he would treasure it more than any of the more intimate activities he’d indulged in over the years, because it was honest and freely offered. “We just stick with the English versions for interstellar communications.”
“True,” Henry said, sitting down facing her. He’d been to France once and offended his hosts by calling New France New France. It was called something different in French, but his language skills were marginal and he could barely speak a handful of words in other languages. “What do you think the aliens call it?”
“Wet, perhaps,” Janelle said. “Maybe they call their homeworld Water.”
It took Henry a moment to understand the joke. “Like we call our homeworld Earth?”
“Exactly,” Janelle said. She nodded towards the orb overhead. “It’s a pretty world, isn't it? I was looking at the reports from the biologists. There are plants from three different worlds there already, they think, but human crops could be added quite easily. We could live there.”
“As long as the aliens didn't kill us,” Henry pointed out. “Do they really understand English?”
“We don’t know,” Janelle said. She looked down at the deck, embarrassed. “No one is quite sure if they understood the Admiral’s warning or if it was just a coincidence. The Admiral had to speak quite sharply to one of the scientists, with a threat to throw him in the brig if he tried to put any of his ideas into practice.”
Henry looked over at her. “His ideas?”
“He wanted to force the aliens to talk by making them uncomfortable,” Janelle said. “His theory was that making them suffer would teach them to talk to us, just so they could tell us to stop. It isn't the first such proposal, sadly.”
“I heard rumours,” Henry said. There had been great expectations when the first alien prisoners had been brought back to the solar system. Everyone had assumed that the communications barrier would soon be broken. But as time wore on, nothing seemed to have been developed at all. The aliens had kept their mouths firmly closed. “But I heard nothing concrete.”
Janelle shook her head, running her hands through her long dark hair. “The Russians have been pressing for sterner measures since New Russia was invaded,” she said. “I heard that they even threatened to take the POWs by force and start interrogating them in a Russian complex.”
Henry stared at her. “Really?”
“It’s hard to tell,” Janelle admitted. “The Russians ar
e quite fond of issuing threats, but there are times when they’re just making noise and times when they actually mean them.”
“Doing that, now, would destroy the alliance,” Henry pointed out. “Surely they wouldn't be so damn insane ...”
“I think they’re desperate,” Janelle said. She looked up at him. “Much of their space-based industry and investment was concentrated in New Russia. The losses they took were staggering; we lost a couple of carriers, but they lost a great deal of investment. I suspect that they’d have had a major financial collapse if the other powers hadn't stepped in to help.”
“I recall,” Henry said. “I read it on the datanet.”
He felt a twinge of guilt at the lie, even though he had had no choice. The information hadn't been on the datanet. It had been one of the many pointless briefings he’d been given, back when they’d been trying to talk him out of joining the Royal Navy as a starfighter pilot. The Earth's economy was odd, now that there were out-system colonies, but a major financial crash in Russia would probably have done serious damage to everyone else. Just what the PR staff had expected him to do about it was beyond him. Dress up in sackcloth and wait for people to start hurling tomatoes? It wouldn't have been the stupidest idea they came up with either. Hell, they seemed to believe that a grovelling apology from a royal would turn away wrath.
Ark Royal 2: The Nelson Touch Page 25
