“Recall all starfighters,” Ted ordered. It would be several hours before the alien craft entered engagement range. Until then, there was no point in running his pilots ragged. “And then concentrate on getting us towards Tramline Two.”
“Aye, sir,” Lightbridge said.
He didn't ask the question Ted saw on his face. What would they do if Tramline Two proved to have no link to human territory? The tramlines should lead back in the direction of human space, but what if their projections were wrong? Ted knew the answer, even if he was reluctant to say it out loud. They would have to keep going and hope they found a way to escape. If, of course, they even made it to Tramline Two.
The drones were sending back clear visuals of the alien starships now. Ted found himself grimacing as he mentally calculated the number of starfighters the alien carriers could launch, then studying the power curves of the alien battlecruiser. Despite its size, it was faster than any human frigate… and presumably armed to the teeth. Humanity hadn’t bothered to build large military starships, apart from carriers, but the alien point defence gave them the ability to make the ships workable. He wondered, absently, just how badly the aliens had scaled up their plasma cannons before mounting them on the battlecruiser.
He smiled, remembering the handful of alien weapons that had been scooped up by the Marines as they retreated from Alien-One. Perhaps the engineering crew would be able to deduce their operating principles, which would allow the alien weapons to be duplicated. Or perhaps they would expose a weakness which made the aliens vulnerable… if EMP could be used to disrupt ship-mounted weapons, what could it do to handheld pistols and rifles?
Humanity had experimented with EMP weapons — and EMP protections — for over two centuries. The weapons had been quite successful in tests, but so had the protections worked into military technology. Ark Royal’s sensor network wouldn't be badly dented if an EMP warhead went off too close to the hull, let alone her weapons and drives. But the aliens…
They mount their plasma weapons on their hulls, he thought. They cannot protect them without rendering the weapons completely useless.
Shaking his head, he settled back to watch as the alien ships drew closer.
“I’m picking up a stream of signals from the planet,” Annie reported. The communications officer looked surprised. “They’re beamed towards the alien ships, but our drones are picking them up.”
“Probably reporting in,” Fitzwilliam said. “And telling them that we took prisoners.”
Ted tended to agree… which raised the question of precisely what the alien ships would do, now they knew that Ark Royal carried nine aliens as well as the liberated POWs. Would they give chase anyway… or would they pull back, refusing to kill their own kind? Ted had studied such moral dilemmas at the Academy and had been left with the feeling that they depended on circumstances. Would it be wise to fire on a starship carrying prisoners if that starship was also carrying information that could not be allowed to reach enemy territory?
He leaned forward. “Can you decipher it?”
“No, sir, not with the technology we have,” Annie said. “My computers are still analysing the signal, but we don't have an understanding of the alien language, let alone whatever encryption programs they might be using.”
Ted sighed. Once, years ago, he'd taken part in an exercise where one side had been forced to send messages in the clear. Most such exercises had the leaders devising codes to pass messages without being understood by anyone who might want to listen in, but this particular leader had taken advantage of having a handful of Gaelic speakers in his company by using them as code-talkers. His opponents had claimed he was cheating, afterwards, yet the umpires had ruled in his favour. If someone wasn't making the best use of his personnel, they’d pointed out, he was failing.
But it was unlikely that combat decryption would ever be a viable tactic in its own right, he knew, even without adding the complexities of an alien language and alien encryption programs. It just took too long to decrypt even a short message, by which time the window of opportunity for using the message might have already closed…
“The alien ships sent a short reply,” Annie said. “Nothing else.”
Somehow, Ted wasn't surprised when the aliens just kept coming.
“Enemy carriers are launching starfighters,” Farley reported, four hours later. “Alien frigates are spreading out, but otherwise keeping their distance.”
At least we taught them respect, Ted thought. It was still another hour to Tramline Two, he calculated, by which time the aliens might well have overwhelmed them completely. If nothing else, he privately resolved, the aliens were going to know they’d been kissed. Hell, trading two of their modern carriers for Ark Royal would cost them dearly.
“Launch starfighters,” he ordered. “And then prepare to engage with mass drivers and unpowered missiles.”
The aliens would know their tricks by now, he knew. But they’d still have to be careful. One hit from a mass driver would shatter their carriers .., maybe even their battlecruiser. It might just allow him time to get his ship to the tramline…
“First enemy attack force inbound,” Farley added. “Targets; our frigates.”
Ted nodded, unsurprised. Strip the carrier of her escorts first, then close in and wipe her weapons and sensors off her hull. It made sense, he knew, which didn't make it any less irritating. The alien weapons, combined with their speed and agility, would ensure that that the following hour was going to be very unpleasant. He wished, suddenly, that he’d spent more time talking with the other commanders, rather than just issuing orders through his subordinates. But he had never commanded a multinational force before…
Hell, he thought. There has never been a multinational space force until the aliens arrived.
“Keep one squadron of starfighters to cover our hull, then direct the remaining craft to cover the frigates,” he ordered. “And then target the mass drivers on the alien carriers and open fire.”
On the display, the cloud of alien starfighters split up into several smaller formations as they entered engagement range, screeching down on the human frigates like a pack of wolves on helpless sheep. Ted noted, absently, that they were clearly taking precautions against nukes or EMP-weapons, although there were limits to how much space the alien pilots could put between themselves and their fellows. The frigates opened fire, picking off a handful of alien fighters as they closed in, then shuddered under the weight of alien plasma fire.
Ted silently thanked God for the armoured warships. Old they might be, primitive and slow they might be, but they were tough enough to stand up to the aliens. But damage was mounting rapidly on their hulls as their weapons and sensors were stripped away. One frigate stumbled out of formation as her drive failed, another vanished in a ball of fire when a lucky alien shot slipped through a gash in the hull and triggered an explosion. Ted noted lifepods launching from the stricken ship, knowing that they were futile. Unless the aliens saw fit to recover the human survivors, they were going to die in the vastness of interstellar space.
Poor bastards, he thought. He could launch shuttles to recover them — and there would definitely be volunteers to mount SAR missions — but the aliens would simply fire on the shuttles, assuming them to be warships. There were protocols among human powers for recovering stranded personnel, yet the aliens had probably never even heard of them. Besides, why would they allow humanity to recover personnel who could be turned around and sent right back to the war?