“Good luck,” the CAG said, quietly.
Charles gave the older man an odd look. Marines might bitch and moan about starfighter pilots having a comfortable seat while they fought — and all the women when they went on leave — but Charles knew the average life expectancy of a starfighter pilot facing the aliens. Even Marines might last longer… when the time came to finally hit a defended alien world.
“Thank you,” he said.
Ted waited until the other men had left the compartment, then sagged back in his chair, feeling an odd tiredness fall over him. He knew, despite his show of confidence, just how many things could go wrong with the operation… and just how easily it could cost them everything. Every time he thought about it, he wondered if he’d trusted too much in the alcohol. Surely, if he hadn't touched the bottle, he would have thought of something better…
But he hadn't, he knew, and nor had anyone else. He was hardly the type of commanding officer to reject an idea, purely because it wasn't his. The Royal Navy discouraged the Darth Vader style of command, believing it to be dangerously inefficient. But Ted could understand why commanding officers worried about accepting outside ideas. Theirs was the authority — and the responsibility. The person who had proposed the idea wouldn't be blamed if it failed.
But this is my idea, he told himself. I will be blamed if it fails.
He wanted a drink. God, how he wanted a drink. But he knew he didn't dare touch a drop, not now. Instead, he pulled himself to his feet, took a moment to compose himself and then strode through the hatch and onto the bridge. It was time to brief the bridge crew on the planned operation.
“We’ve come a long way,” he concluded. “Everyone believed that Ark Royal would head to the scrapheap, one day. Instead, we have devastated the alien fleets and scored victories that have knocked them back on their heels. Whatever happens today, they will know that we will never surrender, never give in.”
He looked down at the console. The Marines were reporting in, ready to go. They’d be on their way within minutes, then Ted would have to wait for them to reach the first waypoint before he could launch his starfighters. But then…
There was no longer any time to fret, he told himself, firmly.
“Launch the Marines,” he ordered.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
There was no need for silence in the shuttlecraft. Sound didn't travel in space; there was no way the aliens could hear a spoken word. But the Marines said nothing as the pilot guided them though space towards the first waypoint, each one of them locked in his own thoughts and feelings. They'd all made wills before they’d departed Earth, Charles knew, but it was unlikely their final messages would ever get back to their families. Unless, of course, they did manage to escape the alien trap.
He accessed the live feed from the shuttle’s passive sensors and nodded to himself. The aliens still weren't moving, but they were sweeping space with their active sensors. Marine shuttles were stealthy, yet Charles knew better than to assume they were stealthy enough to creep through an active sensor sweep. They needed one of the alien stealth systems, he told himself, and wondered if the boffins on Earth had unlocked their secrets since Ark Royal had set out on deployment. If not… the answers to their questions about the system might be dead ahead of them, waiting to be taken.
A faint quiver ran through the shuttle as it slowed to a halt, relative to the alien battlecruiser. Behind them, the other shuttles held their position and waited, linked to the command ship through pinpoint laser beams. Charles sucked in his breath and studied the alien craft through the passive sensors, recalling what little had been gleaned from sensor sweeps during the Battle of Alien-One. The ship was half the size of Ark Royal, its gleaming hull seemingly untouched by weapons and sensor blisters. But, given the alien capabilities, that meant nothing.
She was more elegant than a human ship, he had to admit. Unlike the boxy Ark Royal or the newer carriers, the alien craft was a black triangle, hovering against the darkness of interplanetary space. Twin engine nodes glowed at the rear of the ship — their in-system drives were definitely a step or two above humanity’s technology — while the faint bulge of a Puller Drive was easily detectable. The aliens, it seemed, were ready to nip back through the tramline if the shit hit the fan.
The only rupture in her otherwise seamless hull, he noted, came at the very prow of the ship. It looked like her hull should taper down to a fine point, but instead there was a large aperture big enough to take the shuttlecraft or a couple of starfighters. He wondered, vaguely, if the aliens had actually outfitted the battlecruiser with a starfighter launch tube — there had been early human designs that had been nothing more than engines wrapped around a starfighter launching system — but it was grossly inefficient. Besides, the passive sensors were picking up faint traces of radiation from the opening.
That must be their plasma cannon, he thought, as he eyed the alien ship. It was a curious design, all the more so after witnessing what EMP pulses did to plasma containment systems. I wonder what they would do if the ship was attacked by a nuke…
He pushed the thought out of his mind as the shuttle sent back an automated acknowledgement to Ark Royal. The Marines were in position. All they could do now, he told himself, was wait.
And hope that the aliens took the bait.
“The Marines are in position, sir.”
Ted nodded. The aliens hadn't reacted at all to the shuttles, which was a colossal relief. It was impossible to forget that their technology was often more advanced than humanity’s… and equally impossible to gauge the ways it might be more advanced without actually seeing it in operation. He’d been dreading a sensor field or some other trick that would allow the aliens to track the shuttles, but nothing had shown itself. Or were the aliens merely holding their fire for their own inscrutable reasons?
He pushed his doubts aside, then looked over at Farley. “Bring us to full alert,” he ordered, refusing to allow any of his trepidations to show on his face. “And then launch starfighters.”
The aliens would notice, of course, the moment Ark Royal’s active sensors came online. There was no way they could hide, which should puzzle the aliens… perhaps they’d jump back into the previous system, leaving him with a terrible dilemma. Or maybe they would see it as one last desperate attempt to escape the tightening noose.
“Starfighters away,” Farley reported. “The aliens are powering up their drives.”
“Lock full active sensors on them,” Ted ordered. At such a distance, targeting data would be imprecise, to say the least. But it would keep the aliens firmly aware of their location — and not, he devoutly hoped, looking anywhere else. “And prepare to engage with the mass driver.”
Gladys and Tom were fucking, Kurt had noted, as soon as he’d returned to the pilot ready room. They were trying to hide it, but his experienced eyes had picked out the signs. Thankfully, they were in different squadrons or he would have been forced to say something to them at once, which could have turned unpleasant if they’d found out about Rose and himself. The resulting shouting match, he was sure, would have ended with them all standing in front of the Captain, trying to excuse the inexcusable.