Bracing himself, he keyed a switch to call the Admiral. “Admiral,” he said. “The fighters are returning to the ship.”
“Good,” Admiral Smith said. “Order them to rearm, then prepare for redeployment. We have a planet to target.”
“Aye, sir,” James said.
Henry had always been raised to think of carriers as the queens of space. They were immense warships, even the smallest carrying over two thousand officers and men, seemingly invincible as they prowled through space. Even hearing about the first Battle of New Russia hadn’t really convinced him otherwise, particularly after tactics were adapted and Ark Royal gave the aliens a series of bloody noses. But now… an American carrier, the largest in the fleet, had simply been blown into dust. He couldn’t help feeling subdued as he slotted his starfighter into the landing deck and waited for the techs to go to work.
“We’ll get the bastards,” North said, softly. Even he sounded subdued by the sudden evidence that even a fleet carrier was not invincible. They’d known about the two British carriers lost at New Russia, but it hadn’t been quite real. It was now. “For Roosevelt… and for the others.”
“Yes,” Henry muttered. “For them all.”
He braced himself as the fighter was dragged through the landing tube, hastily reloaded with new weapons and fuel cells, then slotted into the launch tube. It didn’t look as though they would be shot back out into space at once, much to his relief, but there would be no time to relax. They’d be going back out soon enough. Absently, he keyed his way into the datanet and looked through the information gathered by the drones. Target One supported a vast alien population, perhaps one numbered in the billions. In fact, one of the analysts had noted, if the aliens had cities that were completely underneath the waves, the population could be a great deal higher than any human world.
It was an odd thought, but Henry had to admit it made a certain kind of sense. Target One’s oceans covered three-fourths of the planet. There was no shortage of food in the seas, as he’d learned on one of the few holidays he’d actually had a few days to relax before the reporters showed up to spoil his holiday by writing long articles about how the Prince was shaming himself by fishing in the sea. If the aliens lived underwater, it was quite possible that they never had to worry about food shortages. Hell, the oceans still helped feed millions of humans on Earth. What sort of society would that produce?
“We launch in twenty minutes, unless the aliens attack earlier,” the CAG informed them. “I suggest you try to relax.”
Easier said than done, Henry thought. I couldn’t relax right now if you paid me.
“We pulled thirty-two crewmen out of the lifepods,” Lopez reported. “None of the others were recovered.”
Ted nodded, fighting to keep the emotion off his face. Five thousand men and women had just died on his watch, including a large number of experienced officers. He hadn’t been able to do anything to prevent it from happening, but he had a feeling the board of inquiry would feel differently. There were just too many civilians who believed they had the right to pass judgement on the military, even though they knew nothing about it. Ted was a firm believer in civilian control of the military — military-ruled states rarely worked very well — but there was a difference between civilian control and searching for a scapegoat.
“Make sure they’re returned to the American ships, if they don’t want to stay on the Old Lady,” he ordered. At least Admiral Shallcross hadn’t called him for the express purpose of accusing him of deliberately losing an American carrier. He’d known British officers who would be less understanding. “Have the fighters rearmed?”
“Yes, sir,” Lopez said. “They’re currently held at two minutes to complete launch and dispersal.”
Ted nodded. If they had to suddenly launch their fighters within seconds, they could do it… if, of course, nothing went wrong. The Demon Murphy was still alive and well in space, he knew; something always went wrong. But the trick was to adapt, react and keep going, no matter what happened to impede progress. Stopping long enough to remove all the element of risk — if possible — invited disaster.
He keyed the display, looking up at Target One. It hung in front of him, surrounded by a small galaxy of tactical icons. Some orbital stations were obvious problems, armed to the teeth and protected by starfighters, others were of uncertain capabilities. He had a feeling that some of the seemingly innocent stations were civilian, rather than military, but it was impossible to be sure. The problem nagged at his mind as he worked his way through the data the drones had assembled, wishing he could just talk to the aliens. He could issue warnings, threats and demands for surrender to humans, but how could he say anything to the aliens?
“Call the Marines,” he ordered, as the remaining alien ships kept heading towards Tramline Two, heading — he assumed — towards reinforcements. “They have some targets to occupy.”
He paused, wondering if the aliens could understand English. They’d captured a number of teaching machines from Vera Cruz, he knew; they should be able to use them to put together the basics of English, even if they hadn’t pulled it from the Heinlein colony. And yet they seemed completely unable — or unwilling — to talk to humanity. He found it impossible to believe that the aliens were truly unaware that humanity could talk, or that they couldn’t overcome the language barrier. There hadn’t been any attempt to classify the bare bones of English on Vera Cruz.
“Record a message,” he ordered. “This is the human commander. We intend to secure the orbital space surrounding your world. Any station that fires on our forces will be destroyed. Any station that does not fire on our forces will be occupied, but not destroyed. We suggest that you remove the civilian population from your orbital facilities.”
“They may not understand, even if they speak English,” Lopez pointed out. It was her job to point out when he might be making a mistake — or, in this case, dubious assumptions. “Or they may think we’re asking them to show us which stations are safe to occupy.”
Ted shrugged. If he’d been facing a human opponent, a standard warning to evacuate the facilities would have been demanded by the ROE. And, if the enemy hadn’t heeded the warning, any deaths would be on their heads, not on his. But no one really knew if the aliens could speak English.
He smiled, rather coldly. If the aliens started abandoning their facilities, he knew, it would be evidence that they did understand English. It would prove that they were ignoring humanity’s attempts at communication. And that meant… what? That they were determined to fight the war to the bitter end anyway or that there was something else going on?
And besides, he was not going to commit any atrocities if they could be avoided.
“Send the message,” he ordered. He wished, not for the first time, that someone had managed to get the alien POWs to talk. They’d shown a fortitude human prisoners would have a hard time matching. Trapped hundreds of light years from their homeworld, captives of a strange alien race, they still said nothing. It would have been impressive if he’d hadn’t been so desperate to actually talk to their superiors. “Let’s see what happens.”
There was no response for nearly ten minutes, then shuttles started to break away from some of the asteroids, heading down towards the planet’s surface. Ted stared, feeling an odd mixture of relief and fear; there didn’t seem to be enough of them to convey everyone down to the surface. If they’d been human… he shook his head. Humans showed enough different patterns of behaviour that it was often difficult to tell what a single human would do in a given situation, yet along a handful of aliens.