And what does that mean for us, he asked himself, if they do?
Human history repeated the same lesson, over and over again. Victory went to the side that combined the will to win with staggering levels of firepower. When one side had the will and the other had the firepower, it tended to end badly. The aliens presumably had the will to win, so why hadn’t they produced a far larger war fleet? Or were they fighting multiple wars of conquest simultaneously? It seemed absurd, yet there were just too many things about the aliens that didn’t quite add up.
“You should sleep, Admiral,” Lieutenant Lopez said. “We won’t cross the tramline for another seven hours.”
Ted looked towards the decoy fleet, heading towards Tramline Two and making its presence very noticeable. A number of alien ships had gone dark when they’d picked it up, which Ted found oddly reassuring. At least it was a predicable reaction. But who knew what the aliens in the next system would do, when they saw the decoys coming their way? Or the aliens orbiting Target One?
Maybe we should have attacked New Russia instead, he thought. But we would still have been fighting on our territory.
“I suppose I should,” he said. “But I wouldn’t be able to sleep.”
He felt tired, he knew, almost too tired to sleep. And yet he knew she was right; he should sleep, if only to ensure that he was refreshed for the battle to come. If there were seven hours before they reached the tramline, he could sleep for six of them, shower, then return to the CIC in time to take in the data from the frigates he’d sent ahead of the fleet. He’d certainly feel a great deal better for it, he knew. It wasn’t as if he had years of experience at playing Admiral.
Maybe the Admiralty was right to have their doubts, he thought. They weren’t giving me command of a single ship, or even a squadron, but ships that belonged to several nations. A disaster would make Britain look very bad, even assuming it didn’t cost us the war.
Bracing himself, suddenly feeling very old, he rose to his feet. “Inform me the moment something changes,” he said. “No; wake me in five hours, when the first of the frigates should make its return. I’ll need to see the results as soon as possible.”
“Aye, sir,” Lopez said, quietly.
Ted nodded to her, then stepped through the hatch and walked down to his cabin. It was odd, given how large and comfortable it was, but he’d barely spent any time inside the compartment since he’d returned to his ship. No, he reminded himself sharply; James Fitzwilliam’s ship. Whatever else he was, Admiral of the Fleet, Hero of Earth, he was no longer the commanding officer of Ark Royal.
He’d never been much of a packrat — naval training discouraged any form of hording early on, before a prospective officer could claim a large cabin — but the compartment was almost completely bare. A large picture of Ark Royal, painted before she was placed into the naval reserve, hung on one bulkhead, a painting of a brown-haired girl hung on another. Ted had never bothered to figure out who the girl was — the painting had been left there by the last Admiral to fly his flag on Ark Royal, nearly sixty years ago — but he hadn’t been able to bear to take it down. Now, though, it was a reminder that his life was almost as empty as the cabin.
He settled down on the chair and looked around. There were no traces of family life, nothing to imply that he had anything apart from the carrier herself. He’d never married, of course; he’d never even had a long-term relationship. There had been a handful of books in his old cabin, but he’d taken them down to Earth when he’d been recalled and never looked at them again. And even the ship’s logbook was now placed in Fitzwilliam’s cabin. It wasn’t his any longer either.
You wanted a naval career, he told himself, firmly. And you got it too.
He knew he should get up, undress and go to bed, but he was too tired to care. Instead, he just closed his eyes and allowed sleep to take him away from the war.
It felt odd, Kurt knew, to sleep on his own. Certainly, he hadn’t been able to share a compartment with Rose at the Academy, any more than he could do it on Ark Royal, but it still felt strange to have a bed to himself onboard ship. The soundproofed compartment was utterly quiet, save for the faint hum of the starship’s drives. There were no snoring from other pilots, no grunts and gasps as his comrades fought for sleep… nothing at all. It was somehow very hard to sleep.
Gritting his teeth, he sat upright and swung his legs out of bed. There was no point in trying to sleep, not when he wasn’t sure of why he couldn’t sleep. The mischievous part of his mind hinted he could call Rose for some activities that were not technically permitted by regulations, but he knew it would be foolish and insanely stupid. Instead, he walked over to his terminal and sat down. Moments later, he had the last set of messages from the kids up in front of him. Watching them made him feel strangely guilty, as if he had abandoned them in his heart as well as physically.
There was no choice, he told himself. I had to go to the war.
It had seemed so simple, once upon a time. There was no real threat of war, certainly nothing that would force the Royal Navy to recall all of its reservists. They’d always assumed that any conflict would be restricted to a few exchanges of fire before the diplomats hammered out peace terms. He’d assumed that he could take the small salary for being in the reserve without ever having to go back to the Royal Navy.
But he’d been wrong. He had been recalled. And his relationship with his wife, already rocky, had suffered for it. How could he blame her, really, for seeking comfort elsewhere when he’d certainly done the same? But he hadn’t thought he’d ever make it home…
Shaking his head, he opened the reply function and started to record yet another message for the kids. It would go home with one of the fast frigates, after Target One was attacked and — hopefully — captured. They’d see him… and, if he was unlucky, they’d see his final message too. He’d always thought the damn things were morbid as hell, but he could see the wisdom in recording one. The kids needed him to tell them he loved them, even after he died.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered, finally. They were too young, really, to know their parents were separating. Even if they never formally separated, Kurt knew they’d parted too far to be reconciled. Maybe it would be better if he died at Target One. “I’m truly sorry.”
Chapter Twenty
“We were right,” Ted said.
He smiled — the nap had definitely done him good — as Target One appeared on the display in front of him. Even restricted to passive sensors, the frigates had picked up a considerable amount of data and visual images, revealing that Target One was definitely a heavily-developed star system. There were cloudscoops orbiting one of the two gas giants, hundreds of spacecraft making their way through the star system and endless streams of radio transmissions from a planet in the centre of the life-bearing zone. In some ways, it was just as impressive as Earth’s industrial development.
“It could be the alien homeworld,” Lopez mused. “We might be targeting the source of the war.”