“No, it isn’t,” he said, quietly. “We have to proceed.”
He looked from face to face for a long moment, then back at the display. “The aliens will, I hope, assume that we don’t know which tramline leads to Target One,” he said. “I want to dispatch one squadron of frigates to head directly to Tramline Two, escorted by a number of drones that will pretend to be our ships. The aliens were fooled by drones before; we can test them again, should the enemy enter this system in force. In the meantime, the remainder of the fleet will head towards Tramline Three, following a slightly elliptical course. We can at least try to hide our course as much as possible.”
“Too many unknowns,” Fitzwilliam muttered, too quietly for anyone but Ted to hear.
“Once we enter Target One,” Ted continued, “we can draw up a plan of attack.”
He paused. “I understand the risk we’re taking here,” he added. He wasn’t surprised that at least one of his subordinates had doubts about the wisdom of their planned course. “But we are short of options. There is no time to probe Target One long enough to sniff out every last trace of enemy presence. We have to move fast.”
“Yes, sir,” Shallcross said. “We have enough firepower to make the aliens regret tangling with us.”
Ted nodded. “Good luck to us all,” he said. “Dismissed.”
He watched until all the images had vanished, then turned to look at Fitzwilliam. “Too many unknowns?”
“Yes, sir,” Fitzwilliam said. “Did the aliens track us leaving the last system? If so, they know roughly where we arrived in this system. What are they going to do about it? Are they going to be fooled by our diversionary operation or are they going to refuse to take the bait, if they suspect it is bait? Or will they just refuse to take it anyway?”
Ted nodded. If the aliens knew that humanity knew that Target One was a very important system, they were unlikely to move any defences away from it. But even if they didn’t know that the humans knew, they were still unlikely to weaken the system’s defences, not when the humans could easily take it into their heads to explore Tramline Three as well as Tramline Two. Far too much depended on just too many unknowns. What sort of reinforcements, he asked himself, could the aliens expect and from where? They might have an idea, now, of how the tramlines bound alien-ruled space together, but they still knew almost nothing about the alien society itself. Where did they consider important enough to be defended at all costs?
“We have little choice,” he admitted. “We need to proceed now.”
“We’re as ready as we will ever be,” Fitzwilliam confirmed. “All we have to do is get across the system and through the tramline before they send reinforcements after us.”
“Yes,” Ted agreed. A thought struck him and he looked over at Lopez. “Detach two frigates with orders to move ahead and probe the tramline. I want as much intelligence as possible before the main body of the fleet arrives.”
“Aye, sir,” Lopez said.
“With your permission, Admiral, I will get back to supervising my crew,” Fitzwilliam said.
Ted nodded, never taking his eyes off the display. The aliens were still apparently unaware of the human presence, although it would take time for them to notice the decoy fleet. But if someone in the previous system had sent a warning… he shook his head, bitterly. Fitzwilliam was right, he knew. There were just too many unknowns.
“We found a few chunks of debris, but not much,” Anderson said. “Our best guess is that the alien overloaded his plasma cannons before ramming the hull.”
James nodded. Ark Royal’s solid state armour was a bitch to remove if repair work was necessary, he knew; it was one of the reasons why modern carriers were much more lightly armoured. It might have saved the carrier’s life — and the lives of all her crew — but it was also a major problem to repair.
Beside him, Commander Amelia Williams looked annoyed. “I assume it can’t be repaired without a spacedock?”
“Not completely, no,” Anderson said. “We’d really need to take off the entire segment of armour, which would mean cutting a large chunk of the hull loose, then replacing it with another piece of armour. Until very recently, they didn’t make it like that anymore.”
James gave him a sharp look. “But what can you do now?”
“We’re rigging up additional armour — lighter armour — to seal the gash and provide a limited amount of protection,” Anderson said. “However, I’d prefer to abandon this section of the ship altogether, sir; I couldn’t offer any guarantees about how well the replacement would hold when the ship comes under attack. The wankers might know where the hull is weak and target it directly.”
“Or simply ram a few more ships into our hull,” James muttered. It was a recurring nightmare, although he’d figured the aliens would prefer to ram the landing bays or launch tubes, rather than the armour itself. On the other hand, he couldn’t deny that it had been effective. “Do whatever you can do in the time we have left.”
“Yes, sir,” Anderson said.
Amelia walked with him as they left Anderson and his repair crews to get on with it. “We’ve replaced most of the damaged blisters from our spares,” Amelia said. “But they’ll do it again, won’t they?”
“Blow them off the hull?” James asked. “They’ve discovered the tactic works, so they’ll do it again and again. We don’t really have many other options.”
He smiled. At least the techs had finally managed to replace most of Ark Royal’s older sensor systems with newer ones. There were far fewer problems in integrating their systems with the rest of the Royal Navy’s, let alone foreign systems. But it was still a minor headache for the engineers.
Given time, we’ll have everything standardised, he thought. He’d seen some of the five year plans for humanity’s next few generations of combat starships. And something interesting and unique will go out of the universe forever.
“I suppose not,” the XO said. She said nothing else until they entered Officer Country. “And our… guest?”
“Our pilot,” James said, flatly. “He appears to be doing fine. Other than that, I’m not paying close attention. He doesn’t need the scrutiny.”
She looked surprised. James understood; if something happened to Prince Henry, the fact he was serving under a false name wouldn’t be taken into account by the inevitable enquiry. The senior crew of Ark Royal could expect to spend years answering questions on Earth, no matter what had happened. He couldn’t blame the XO for being worried about her career, all the more so as she hadn’t known what was going on until Admiral Smith had briefed her personally. She’d been walking on a political minefield without ever knowing it.
Which was the point, James thought, morbidly. Who would treat him normally if they knew the truth?
“Take the bridge,” he said, before she could ask any more questions. “I have to tour the ship.”
“Aye, sir,” Amelia said. She still didn’t sound happy. “And make sure you get some rest too.”
James snorted. “We’re in a system with dozens of alien freighters moving from tramline to tramline,” he said. “The next one, unless intelligence has really dropped the ball, will lead us right into a major alien system. I doubt there will be any rest for me.”
Ted sat in his command chair, watching the display as the probes slowly signalled their findings back to the fleet. The aliens didn’t seem to have anything in the system, certainly nothing large enough to show up on the sensors, apart from a steady stream of freighters. It was humbling — and worrying — to realise that few human systems had quite the same level of activity. He couldn’t help wondering if the aliens truly did have a far larger industrial base than humanity,