“Open fire,” he ordered. “Take the platforms out.”
He watched, grimly, as the first set of projectiles were hurled out of the mass drivers and launched down towards the orbiting platforms. Unlike starships, or even some of the more advanced stations, the platforms were completely immobile; they couldn’t hope to evade the incoming projectiles. He half-expected them to reveal hidden defences, but instead the projectiles just slammed into their targets and smashed them into rubble. Chunks of debris fell through space, mostly falling towards the gas giant below. Its gravity would eventually pull in all of the pieces of rubble.
“Targets destroyed,” the tactical officer said. “I say again, all targets destroyed.”
“Stand down from Red Alert, then take us back to Target One,” Tom ordered. They’d spent the last day destroying most of the alien installations in the outer reaches of the solar system, although several of them had been placed off-limits by the Admiral. Tom wasn’t sure if that was a good idea or not, but storming a complex on an uninhabitable world was always dangerous. “Launch an additional shell of recon platforms as we go. We may see something crawling out of the woodwork.”
He felt another quiver running through his ship as the helmsman took her away from the planet, muttering curses just loudly enough for Tom to hear. It was hard to blame him, really; Primrose made Ark Royal look elegant when it came to manoeuvring in space. Her designers had never anticipated that she might have to do anything more complex than dock at an orbital station, let alone evade incoming fire. Unlike most warships, she would be in deep trouble if anyone fired a mass driver at her from long-range.
“Captain,” the tactical officer said suddenly, “I’m picking up a starship on approach vector.”
Tom leaned forward, snapped awake. “Alien?”
“I believe so,” the tactical officer said. “Trajectory suggests she entered the system from Tramline Four.”
“Not that that proves anything,” the helmsman said.
“No,” Tom agreed. “Sound Red Alert, then launch a probe towards the incoming ship.”
He watched, grimly, as the data started to appear on his display. One alien starship, midway in size between a frigate and a battlecruiser, heading directly towards Primrose. It looked like an attack, yet there was something about the alien trajectory that he found oddly reassuring. He couldn’t help thinking that the aliens looked as if they were trying to sneak up to the small carrier, rather than make their approach obvious. But they had to know they couldn’t get within plasma weapons range without being detected.
“Contact the Admiral,” he ordered, although he knew it was futile. It would take around forty minutes for their message to reach Target One, then another forty minutes for the Admiral’s reply to reach them. By then, the whole situation would probably be resolved. “Inform him that we intend to engage the enemy, if possible.”
He hesitated, looking down at the display and silently calculating odds. A ship-to-ship engagement would be fatal for Primrose; she’d never been designed to be anything more than a carrier, even if she did have additional layers of armour bolted onto her hull. No, the only way he could fight was to have his starfighters take the alien craft out before she got into engagement range… or force her to go pick on someone else. Given the known capabilities of the alien drives, it was unlikely that he could avoid engagement if the aliens chose to home in on his ship.
“Prepare all starfighters for launch,” he said. “Standard attack profile; the fighters are to cover the bombers.”
There was a bleep from the tactical console. “Picking up a second starship, Captain,” the tactical officer said. “She’s following the first starship, trying to catch up with her.”
Tom gave him a puzzled look. The alien tactics made no sense. They had to know that sending one ship after another was asking for trouble, even against little Primrose. Had something gone wrong with their timing? Or was something else going on?
“Show me,” he ordered. The display changed. By his calculation, Enemy One would overrun Primrose in thirty minutes, but Enemy Two would catch up with her in twenty… maybe the aliens hadn’t blundered after all. But then Enemy One started to pick up speed, narrowing the time between her and Primrose. “What are they doing?”
The tactical officer looked blank. “Maybe they’re competing for the honour of taking us out?”
Tom rather doubted it. The Royal Navy worked hard to have glory-seekers excluded from the upper ranks, although an alarming number of them ended up flying starfighters or commanding small frigates. Surely the aliens took similar precautions? Or was he looking at something else, something he didn’t yet understand? Or were the aliens feeling safe enough facing Primrose to allow themselves the luxury of a competition?
“No,” the helmsman said. “Enemy Two is trying to overrun Enemy One.”
“What?” Tom demanded. He looked at the display… and realised the helmsman was probably right. Enemy One was on approach vector to Primrose, but Enemy Two was definitely on an attack vector to Enemy One. They weren’t racing to get to Primrose, he saw in astonishment; Enemy Two was trying to head Enemy One off before she reached Primrose. “What the hell are they doing?”
His intercom buzzed. “Sir,” the CAG said, “all fighters are ready to launch.”
“Launch fighters,” Tom said, gritting his teeth. A modern carrier would have had all of its fighters out in space by now. “Order them to cover the carrier.”
He stared down at the display, torn between several conflicting problems. If there had only been one enemy starship, he had to send his starfighters to attack it before it entered engagement range and blew his ship into plasma. But with two enemy ships, one seemingly interested in attacking the other, he wasn’t sure what to do. It might be the first real chance to actually talk to the aliens… or it might be a trick, one intended to lure the humans into a false sense of security. There was no way to know without taking a chance… and if he happened to be wrong, he and his entire crew would die.
“Update the Admiral,” he ordered, although he knew it was pointless. There was no time to kick the issue upstairs in hopes of receiving orders. Besides, as a Captain in the Royal Navy, it was his job to be decisive. “Launch a stealth platform. I want a full recording available to the Admiral, even if we are killed.”
“Aye, sir,” the tactical officer said. There was a long pause. “Captain, I’m picking up a message from Enemy One.”
Tom stared in disbelief. “What are they saying to us?”
“I think it’s the start of a First Contact Protocol,” the tactical officer said, after a long moment. “Either they don’t understand English or they’re trying to build up a new protocol for talking to us.”
“I… see,” Tom said.
He recalled, vaguely, one of the courses he’d had to take at the Academy. The lecturer had pointed out that English had evolved over the years, not least by stealing ideas and concepts from other languages. It was the sheer flexibility of English, she’d said, that made it so useful for human development. But, at the same time, it was so flexible that certain phrases or figures of speech might be different from one place to the next. A British officer might as well be speaking German at times, when addressing an American officer. Having a more formal language barrier, she’d concluded, might have made it simpler to realise that there might well be errors in translation.