“Keep working on them,” the Admiral ordered. “The Admiralty has been urging us to leave as soon as reasonably possible.”
Kurt swallowed. He hated to admit failure, but it might save lives. The rooks didn’t deserve to die when some of them had the makings of very good pilots. “Sir,” he said, “the rooks will not be ready for quite some time. Is there no way we can request more experienced pilots from the Earth Defence Force?”
“The Admiralty doesn’t want to give any of them up,” the Admiral said. “Under the circumstances, it’s hard to blame them.”
“I know,” Kurt said. He’d been briefed on Operation Nelson two days after the rooks had arrived. Since then, he and his Wing Commanders had worked them so hard that several of the rooks had dreamed of flying starfighters in their bunks. But if nothing else, they were just too tired to have many discipline problems away from the cockpits. “But it’s going to get a large number of pilots killed.”
“Keep working on them,” the Admiral ordered. “We don’t want to lose any time for training before we leave.”
“Understood,” Kurt said. “When do you want to leave?”
“A week, no longer,” Admiral Smith said. “After that, I have a feeling the Admiralty will order us out anyway.”
“I’ll go back to training,” Kurt said. He half-rose to his feet. “With your permission?”
Admiral Smith nodded. “Keep me informed,” he said. “And watch everyone carefully.”
Kurt stood and retreated through the hatch.
“He’s right, Admiral,” James said. “We are in a worse position, training-wise, than we were before we headed to New Russia.”
Admiral Smith nodded, suddenly looking much more tired. “It can’t be helped,” he said, bitterly. “Everything we see at New Russia suggests the aliens are trying to build up overwhelming force and then come straight at Earth. They might well win, too, and if that happens we’re in deep trouble. If we can knock them off balance, just for a few short months, it might make the difference between victory and defeat.”
James scowled. He’d made an effort to catch up on international politics after chatting with his Uncle Winchester and he’d come to the conclusion that several nations didn’t want the British to hog all the glory. Or, for that matter, they didn’t want the aliens to take the time they needed to prepare themselves and attack Earth. Or… that they merely wanted the war to end before it destroyed the economy. Striking deep behind enemy lines would hopefully scare hell out of the aliens, perhaps even bring them to the negotiation table. And maybe it would even shorten the war.
He remembered some of the classified documents he’d accessed through the fleet’s datanet and felt his scowl deepening. No one had really expected to have to move to a wartime footing and the contingency plans, such as they were, had proved largely inadequate. British industry — and American, French, Chinese and Russian — had worked miracles, yet much more was needed to keep the human race in the war. Matters weren’t helped by the urgent need to share technology, design a shared class of carriers and battleships and a hundred other problems, each one needing to be massaged carefully into submission. There were quite a few people who would prefer the war to come to an end, sooner rather than later.
I’m one of them, he thought, bitterly. But the bastards won’t even talk to us.
“If,” he said. “Admiral, there’s one hell of a lot of work to do.”
“No arguments there,” Admiral Smith said. He paused, then smiled. “How are you enjoying command?”
James hesitated. “It’s a huge responsibility,” he said. “But I will cope with it, sir.”
“I hope so,” Admiral Smith said. “And our royal passenger?”
“Seems to be among the better rooks,” James said. “I read his file, then reviewed his progress in the training simulators. He definitely has talent, Admiral; he’d probably go far if he wasn’t a prince. But, at the same time, he’s got a temper and a massive chip on his shoulder. That will get him into deep trouble one day, sir.”
“Almost certainly,” Admiral Smith agreed. “If he’d gone through the normal course, he would either have been forced to straighten up by one of the upperclassmen or would have been regretfully sent back to civilian life. Hell, his attitude would make him an ideal Marine, once the chip was hammered off his shoulder. But he’s through the course and talented enough to be worth saving. If we can save him.”
James remembered his childhood and winced, remembering precisely what sort of little boy he’d been until his father had hammered some sense into his head — and the First Space Lord had chosen to deny his manipulations. His sense of entitlement hadn’t been fully abandoned until he’d realised just how close he’d flown to absolute disaster. In hindsight, he couldn’t help wondering if his family and the aristocracy had given him enough rope so he could hang himself with it.
“I can speak to him,” he said, softly. He could certainly muster a lecture for the young man who might be King. “Or I can bring Amelia and Commander Schneider into the secret. One of them could help to keep him in line…”
“No,” the Admiral said. He sounded firm enough that James decided it wasn’t worth trying to change his mind. “We don’t want to share the secret any wider than strictly necessary, James. The more people who know, the greater the chance of rumours leaking out.”
“We should be telling everyone,” James said, tiredly. “Let them all see that Prince Henry is on the front lines.”
He shook his head. “But then the Opposition would accuse the Government of trying to create a martyr,” he added. “Or of using Prince Henry for propaganda. Or of trying to pander to the people who think aristocracies are inherently evil.”
“It would also make it impossible for the prince to have anything resembling a normal life,” Smith said, quietly. “You know how crawling some people can become, don’t you?”
James flushed, embarrassed. “Yes, sir,” he said, quietly. His career had included quite a bit of nepotism. “But Prince Henry won’t have any real power, even if he becomes the King.”
“A word in the right set of ears can be quite effective,” Admiral Smith pointed out. “And not everyone really grasps how little formal power the monarchy has, even today.”
He met James’s eyes. “If worst comes to worst,” he said, “you can have a long chat with him and make him realise that if he wants to have his career, he has to damn well live up to it. And if that fails… well, there’s always the brig.”
“Sir?”
“I read up on Prince Henry after this bombshell was dropped in our laps,” Admiral Smith said, darkly. “I have a certain amount of sympathy for his position, but not enough to overlook any major disciplinary problems. And I’m damned if I’m risking lives just to let him play at being a starfighter pilot. He had his chance to walk away and blew it.”
James nodded. Traditionally, after the first month of military training, recruits were offered the chance to leave. Prince Henry — Charles Augustus, he reminded himself sharply — had chosen to stay. He could take the consequences of his decision.
Admiral Smith stood. “I’ll discuss the remainder of the training schedule with the rest of the officers,” he said. “Thankfully, none of them seem to want to stand on ceremony. Once we’re done, I think we’ll set our departure date as one week from now, as the Admiralty wants. And pray they don’t want us to leave sooner.”