“Maybe,” he said. “But we won’t be landing here, will we?”
“Probably not until after the war,” the Rhino said. His face twisted into a smile. “There’s little here to interest us.”
“What a waste,” Charles mused. There was so much unused land on the planet’s surface. A quick alliance between humans and aliens could have resulted in a shared world and perhaps even a shared culture. Or the aliens could have had the sea and the humans could have had the land. But instead both races were committed to war. “We could use this planet.”
The Rhino shrugged, expressively. “Do you remember all the worries people had after Eden?”
“No,” Charles said. There were times when the Rhino just grated on him. “I wasn’t alive at the time. And nor were you.”
“The Corps remembers,” the Rhino said, unabashed. “Eden seemed perfect until they actually landed on the surface.”
Charles nodded. Eden had been discovered shortly after Terra Nova, before the dispute over settlement rights could get violent. The world had seemed perfect, but when the shuttles had landed they’d discovered that the planet’s biochemistry was completely incompatible with human crops. Everything they tried to get to take root in the soil died, without exception. It had worried humanity when the truth had finally leaked out; the scientists might be delighted, but Terra Nova was still the only habitable world humanity had discovered. War had threatened until several more habitable worlds had been located.
The Rhino sighed. “On average, how many star systems do we know that have an Earth-like world?”
“Twenty-two, not counting the alien worlds,” Charles said. “Thirty-one if you count the worlds we plan to terraform.”
“Precisely,” the Rhino said. “And out of how many stars?”
“One hundred and seven,” Charles said. “You think there are limits, don’t you?”
“Perhaps,” the Rhino said. “But if there are relatively few habitable worlds, and we are competing for the same ones, the war might have been inevitable in any case.”
“We could share,” Charles said.
“Would you be happy with alien spacecraft passing through the defences at all hours?” The Rhino asked. “We might not be able to share a planet without coming to some agreement over political power-sharing. Or mutual defence.”
He smiled. “And we can’t come to any agreements until they actually talk to us,” he added. “So we have to punch them in the face hard enough to get them to pay attention.”
“Captain,” Commander Keith Farley said, “I’m picking up two drive signatures, directly ahead of us.”
James muttered a curse under his breath as two red icons popped into existence on the display. “Are they looking for us?”
“I don’t think so,” Farley said. “We might well have picked them up first.”
“True,” James agreed. “Warn the Admiral, then prepare for evasive manoeuvres.”
There was a long pause. “Bring the fleet to a halt,” Admiral Smith ordered. “We want to remain as stealthy as possible.”
“All stop,” James ordered. “I say again, all stop.”
A dull quiver ran through the starship as she cut her drives, reducing her emissions to almost nothing as she continued onwards on a ballistic course. James braced himself as the alien craft picked up speed, one heading almost directly towards the fleet, the other heading back towards the inner system. If the first alien craft continued on its course, it would eventually pass right through the human fleet…
He keyed his console. “Admiral,” he said. “Is this a wild coincidence or did they get a sniff of us when we passed through the tramline?”
“It shouldn’t have been possible for them to know where we would emerge,” Admiral Smith said. “But if they did pick up on us, they might have started scattering pickets along the potential courses to the other tramline.”
Cold logic, James knew, suggested it was no coincidence. The aliens might follow the human practice of holding exercises in deep space, well away from prying eyes, but the odds against their exercise interacting with the fleet’s course were staggeringly high. It was much more likely that the aliens had picked them up, perhaps in the previous system, and covertly tracked the fleet while preparing a warm reception.
He ran through the tactical situation in his mind. Unless the alien craft had a new weapons system that was a complete game-changer, the fleet could destroy it easily. Ark Royal’s mass drivers would make mincemeat out of her. But did the aliens have reinforcements on the way? If they had a solid lock on the fleet, they’d definitely prefer to engage the humans well away from any planets that might become collateral damage. In their place, James would have done the same.
“Lock mass drivers on target,” Admiral Smith ordered. There was a long pause as he issued orders to the rest of the fleet. “I want them to see Ark Royal and Ark Royal alone.”
James blinked in surprise, then understood. The Old Lady was the only known ship capable of standing up to the aliens. If they hadn’t managed to get a solid count of human starships, they might figure that Ark Royal was alone, or perhaps with only a handful of frigates as escort. There was no way to know if the deception was successful, but it might be worth the effort.
“Aye, sir,” he said. “Commander Farley?”
“Mass driver locked on target, sir,” Farley said.
James nodded. The alien craft was on a predicable course, which would probably change when — if — the aliens realised just what they were flying into. But, for the moment, she was a sitting duck.
“Fire,” James ordered.
There was nothing particularly clever about mass drivers, he knew, or anything particularly subtle. They were nothing more than chunks of rock accelerated to immensely high speeds and fired towards their targets on ballistic trajectories. If they were detected, it was easy to dodge or deflect them, which was at least partly why the weapons had gone out of fashion before the aliens had arrived. The other reason, James suspected, for keeping them sidelined simply no longer applied.
The alien icon vanished.
“Direct hit,” Farley said. “Target destroyed.”
“Good,” James said. Ark Royal might survive a single hit, but none of the other ships had a hope of avoiding destruction if they were hit with alien mass drivers. He was mildly surprised the enemy hadn’t already started to deploy their own weapons. “Admiral?”
“Take us towards the tramline, best possible stealth speed,” Admiral Smith ordered. “The cat is firmly out of the bag now.”
“Yes, sir,” James agreed. Even if the alien craft hadn’t really detected anything suspicious, even assuming that she hadn’t managed to get off a distress signal, it wouldn’t be long before the aliens realised that something was wrong. “Should we consider retreat?”
“No,” the Admiral said. “We can’t give the aliens time to fortify this approach route.”
James nodded, remembering the recovered data. There was only one more star system between the task force and her destination. The aliens would have to assume the worst and move quickly to reinforce their defences. If the mission was to succeed, they had to keep moving and hope they broke into the enemy system before it was too late.
“Understood,” he said. “Admiral…”
He broke off as another alarm sounded. “Captain,” Farley said, “three more alien starships just came into detection range. One of them is very definitely a carrier. The other two appear to be battlecruisers.”