“It looks that way,” Fitzwilliam confirmed. “There’s nothing to be detected from orbit, but we flew a couple of drones over the ocean and picked up low-level emissions from below the waves. We don’t have any suitable probes to drop into the water…”
“We could put one together,” the Chief Engineer suggested. “It wouldn’t take too long, if we recycle a number of spare parts.”
“We can't stay in this system for much longer,” Ted said. He considered it for a long moment, then shook his head. “We’ll come back, one day, and uncover the aliens then.”
“There is another possibility,” Farley pointed out. “We could drop rocks on the alien city from orbit.”
Ted was revolted at the idea, although he had the uneasy feeling that suggestions like that were going to become more and more common as the war raged on. The aliens had depopulated Vera Cruz and invaded New Russia. God alone knew what was happening on the surface… and, by now, they could easily have found other targets. There was no shortage of tramlines within two or three jumps from New Russia that would take them to more populated worlds.
“No,” he said, firmly. “As long as we believe the aliens aren't committing mass slaughter, we will refrain from committing it ourselves.”
“The Admiralty might disagree,” Farley pointed out, mulishly.
Ted swallowed the urge to bite the young man’s head off. Tired as they were, stressed as they were, that was pushing the limits for addressing one’s commanding officer.
“Yes, they might,” he said. He kept his voice very cold. “But we have received no specific orders to bombard alien civilian settlements and we will not act without them.”
And such an order would be illegal, he knew. Killing enemy soldiers was one thing, butchering civilians was quite another. If he gave such an order, his crew would be quite within their rights to refuse to carry it out. And if they did carry it out, the Admiralty would charge them as being accomplices to genocide. The entire crew might go on trial…
Would it ever be legal? The thought was terrifying. Even the most heavily-militarised human society hadn't managed to turn everyone into a warrior. But what if the aliens had actually succeeded in producing a completely militarised society? Would there come a time when genocide was the only way to end the war? He shuddered, remembering the debates and moral quandaries they'd been forced to study at the Academy. The Bug Scenario, they'd called it, a situation where humanity waged a war with a completely alien race, one bent on exterminating humanity. Should the bugs be exterminated to save mankind?
Angrily, he changed the subject. “Do we know where the prisoners came from?”
“Most of them are clearly Latin American in origin,” Fitzwilliam said. “We assume they came from Vera Cruz, although in that case several hundred more remain unaccounted for. The remainder… we don’t know yet. None of the DNA samples we drew matched with any of our records.”
Ted wasn't surprised. The Mexican Government hadn't been in the habit of sharing its files with anyone, least of all the major interstellar powers. They would have to ask the Mexicans once they got back to Earth, maybe sharing the other DNA codes with everyone else and seeing who got a match. Perhaps the aliens had jumped more than one colony mission before the attack on Vera Cruz.
“See to their care and feeding,” he ordered. He looked over at Parnell. “And the alien prisoners?”
“I have a squad of Marines stationed in position to provide security for the aliens,” Parnell reported. Left unspoken was the very real possibility that the aliens could be threatened by Ark Royal’s crew. “As far as we can tell, the aliens themselves don't pose a threat, but we’re taking every precaution regardless.”
“Good,” Ted said, silently blessing his ship’s paranoid designers. The quarantine ward was completely self-contained, to the point where the prisoners and their monitors could be completely isolated from the rest of the ship. If they had any viruses that could spread to humanity, they wouldn't get very far. “Make sure the guards are rotated regularly. I don't want to take any chances.”
“Lots of curious crewmen,” Parnell added. “We might want to place recordings of the aliens on the datanet.”
Ted hesitated, then shook his head. He could understand the crew being curious about their alien captives, but he had no way of knowing how the aliens or their superiors would react to such treatment. Humans wouldn’t be happy when they found out about the nude prison camp, even if cold logic suggested the aliens hadn't meant any harm.
“No,” he said. He looked around the compartment. “Have we pulled everything useful from the penal camp and the alien base?”
“We pulled a few samples of alien technology from their base,” Parnell said.
“Aye,” Anderson growled. “I’m looking forward to studying it, I am.”
“As soon as we’re on our way,” Ted assured him. “And the camp itself?”
“There's nothing apart from the prefabricated buildings,” Parnell said. “We searched thoroughly and found nothing else from the Heinlein. I was hoping for a flight recorder, but…”
He shrugged. “I suspect the full story of their colony mission won’t be known until we actually manage to talk to the aliens,” he admitted. “Overall, if the prisoners hadn't been drugged, they would have been bored out of their minds.”
Ted nodded. Even when he'd been commander of a starship permanently stuck in the reserves, he'd had something to do. Ark Royal had had no shortage of repair or modification jobs… and when those palled, he'd had access to a vast entertainment library and the ship’s own production of rotgut. But staying in a prison camp for weeks, perhaps months, with nothing to do would have driven him out of his mind.
“Unless anyone sees a strong reason to remain in this system,” he said, “we will proceed to Tramline Two within the hour. That should take us back on a course towards human space.”
There was no disagreement. Everyone knew that the aliens had signalled for help — and no one knew how long it would take for help to arrive. If there was a large alien colony under the waves, help might well come sooner than later. Ted couldn't imagine the Royal Navy abandoning Britannia as long as there was a hope of saving it, or even Nova Scotia. No, the aliens would be on their way. The only question was how long they had before the shit hit the fan.
“Good,” Ted said. He rose to his feet. “Dismissed.”
“It must have been horrifically dangerous down there,” Barbie said.
“It was,” Markus said, dramatically. “And the worst of it was jumping out of the shuttle in a combat suit.”
The Marines had gone out of their way to tell him how horrific the whole experience was — and, if anything, they'd understated. Maybe there were people who skydived for fun, but Markus had already decided he wasn't one of them. He’d taken one look at the ground coming closer, his sense of perspective so badly screwed up that he’d been unsure if he was falling or rising, then closed his eyes tightly. The whole experience had left him trembling in his suit, permanently hovering on the verge of throwing up until he’d finally hit the ground.
But there hadn't been any real danger, he knew, once they'd actually reached the ground. The aliens hadn't tried to prevent them from landing or even reinforce the guards on the penal camp. It was almost as if they wanted the POWs to be rescued. But why?
He thought back through the recordings he’d taken — or borrowed from the Marines. Was the whole world a subtle trap? Or had the aliens simply decided not to risk more than a token attempt to defend the camp with Ark Royal hovering high overhead, ready to pour fire down onto alien defensive stations? But if it was a trap, the aliens would have had to know that Ark Royal had survived Russia…