The starship quivered again as the main drives came to life, pushing her forward towards the jump point. Ark Royal handled badly, compared to a frigate or a starfighters, but there was a reassuring firmness around her actions that more modern carriers lacked. Or was that just his imagination, after seeing so many powerful ships torn apart with terrifying speed? No wonder the civilians were panicking — along with quite a few politicians. The Battle of New Russia had lasted barely ten minutes, most of which had been spent getting into position.
“Power curves remain nominal,” Anderson said. “The main drive system is functional, sir.”
“Glad to hear it,” Ted said, dryly. If the drive had failed, they'd know about it already. “Repeat the standard tests on the Puller Drive, if you please.”
“Yes, sir,” Anderson said.
Ted tapped his console, accessing the data package as Ark Royal continued to move towards the jump point. Every analyst in space had been working over the recordings from New Russia, drawing what conclusions they could. Much of the data wasn't new, not entirely to Ted’s surprise, but there were some interesting suggestions. One of them suggested that the alien ships could be tracked with a little careful effort. Another insisted that the alien starfighters weren't really effective dogfighters at all.
Not that it matters, Ted thought. They’re designed to break through to our carriers and rip them apart.
There was relatively little data on the alien capital ships, he noted, mostly consisting of uninformed speculation. No one was even sure where the carriers launched their fighters; unlike human craft, the fighter launch tubes appeared to be worked solidly into their hulls. It was an interesting design, he had to admit, suggesting that they weren't too worried about having their carriers targeted. Did they have a good reason to be confident?
They have energy weapons on their starfighters, he thought, sourly. Their hulls might be bristling with energy weapons too.
“Sir,” Lightbridge said, breaking into his thoughts, “we have reached the jump point.”
“Power up the Puller Drive,” Ted ordered. He couldn't help feeling the old thrill of jumping out of the Sol System, even though it had been years since he’d been on an interstellar starship. “And then sound the alert.”
Another quiver ran through the ship, followed by a low hooting that warned all non-essential crew to brace themselves for the jump. Most spacers grew used to it fairly quickly, but there were always a handful who couldn't take the jump without throwing up or even being rendered comatose. Over a hundred years of FTL travel hadn't yielded any way to identify such people before they took their first jump, although it manifested very quickly. Back at the Academy, British spacers were taken through a jump within the first six months of their training. If they reacted badly, they were assigned to in-system positions only.
Like Ark Royal, he thought, grimly. His crew included a few people who couldn't take the jump, but were desperately needed to keep the starship functional. It was something the Admiralty had overlooked at the time. Ted and Commander Fitzwilliam had dealt with the problem by ordering all such personnel to sickbay before the jump, but they knew it was only a temporary solution. The crewmen would have to be relieved of duty sooner rather than later.
“Puller drive online,” Lightbridge said.
“All systems check out properly,” Anderson added. “The drive is in full working order.”
And thank god for that, Ted thought. The Puller Drive had never seemed very important, not compared to all the other systems that had to be kept operational for Ark Royal to remain on the books. And it couldn't really be replaced without chopping open the hull, which would take months. He keyed his console, checking the power curves for himself. For something that was surprisingly simple, the Puller Drive was a colossal power hog.
“Good,” Ted said. He looked around the bridge, feeling a hint of pride in his crew. They’d practiced endlessly over the last two weeks, but this was real. “Jump!”
The Puller Drive wasn’t — technically — a drive at all. Over a century ago, Professor Wang had discovered the existence of gravitational tramlines running between stars and planets — and then worked out a system for exploiting them. If the Puller Drive was triggered at the right place along the tramline, the ship would jump instantly from one star system to the next… providing the tramline was strong enough to allow it. There were stars it was possible to jump to, but not possible to jump back along the same tramline. A black hole, Wang had warned, might be impossible to escape. Its sheer mass would bend the tramlines out of shape. Fortunately, there were none within human space.
For a long moment, the universe seemed to darken… and then snap back to normal. Ted let out a breath he hadn't realised he was holding, then glanced down at his console. The Puller Drive was cycling down, all power curves still nominal. Ted allowed himself a tight smile. His ship might be old, but she was still fully functional and ready for action.
“Jump completed, sir,” Lightbridge reported. “No problems detected.”
“Take us to the next tramline,” Ted ordered.
Jumping along a tramline was instantaneous — or close enough to instant to make it impossible to provide a precise estimate of how long it took. Moving from tramline to tramline, on the other hand, could take hours. Ted wasn't blind to the implications of the aliens having a Puller Drive that allowed longer jumps; they might easily outflank humanity’s defenders and then attack Earth, just as the First Space Lord had predicted. They might need to spend a few years mopping up afterwards, but the loss of Earth would cost humanity the war.
“Picking up a signal from Terra Nova,” Annie said. “They’re requesting our IFF. And they sound a little jumpy.”
“I’m not surprised,” Ted said. Ark Royal looked different enough from a modern carrier to be alarmingly unfamiliar to long-range sensors. They might well mistake her for an alien ship. “Shoot them a copy of our IFF, then inform them that we are proceeding to the next tramline.”
He sighed. Terra Nova had been the first planet humanity had settled, with each and every ethnic, racial or religious group being offered an enclave. It hadn't worked out very well; none of the interstellar powers felt inclined to invest in it, while the smaller powers didn't have the resources to turn the planet into a success. Ironically, it turned out that human groups were perfectly capable of getting along provided there was some distance between them. Several light years seemed about perfect.
And Terra Nova is practically defenceless, he thought, grimly. None of the bigger powers would risk political unrest by devoting starships to defending a world many civilians regarded as a barbarous backwater. There were only a handful of starships in the system, none of which were modern and several of which were older than Ark Royal. It wouldn't take the aliens long to overwhelm them and take the system. If, of course, they were inclined to bother.
Just how much did the aliens know about humanity? There was no way to know what they might have recovered from Vera Cruz — an intact navigational database would have told them the location of each and every settled planet in human space — but there could be no doubt about what they could have recovered from New Russia. It was unlikely in the extreme that the Russians would have managed to destroy all of their files before the aliens landed… no, they had to assume the worst. The aliens knew where to find their targets.