“The XO had a few words with them all,” Fitzwilliam said. “And I’ve made arrangements for their families too.”
He shrugged. “Most of them have families on the asteroids,” he added. “The remainder are being offered safer places to live.”
“Good thinking,” Ted said. “And the crew?”
“The old sweats are doing fine,” Fitzwilliam said. “But I do worry about the starfighter pilots, sir. They’re nowhere near as trained as the last batch — and they took terrifying losses.”
“I know,” Ted said. He shook his head, bitterly. “But what else can we do?”
“I also think the CAG is on the verge of burning out,” Fitzwilliam added. “I had a briefing with him two hours ago and… he seemed monumentally distracted. He’s seen far too many pilots die under his command.”
Ted couldn’t disagree. Fifty years of relative peace had ensured that the Royal Navy’s greatest losses came from accidents, not enemy action. A single death would have been cause for a full-scale enquiry into everyone involved, with careers suspended until the truth had been wrung out of them and new procedures had been put into place to prevent a repeat. But now… two carriers had been lost in the opening months of the war and it had only grown worse from then onwards. The Royal Navy alone had lost over thirty thousand personnel in just under a year.
He sighed. There had never been any shortage of volunteers for naval service, quite the opposite. Even a junior crewman could jump ahead of a civilian spacer if he did his ten years and then went into the private sector. But the Royal Navy had always been picky about who it selected to train as starfighter pilots, until now. The floodgates were opening, yet pilot training facilities had not been prepared for the sudden influx. It would be years before the situation changed.
“Keep an eye on him,” he ordered, finally. “And the rest of the crew?”
“Stressed, but determined,” Fitzwilliam said. “Moving their families helped, sir.”
“Good thinking on your part,” Ted reminded him. “And so we’re ready to leave.”
He keyed a switch, activating the starchart. Their planned route was far too close to the previous route they’d used to get into alien-held space, but there was no choice. The analysts had argued — and, for once, Ted agreed with them — that there was nowhere else they might have a reasonable hope of encountering Faction Two. Given the ambush the aliens had tried to spring, they’d concluded that Faction Two lay down one of the unexplored tramlines. Ted had privately noted that it was equally possible that Faction Two didn’t have the firepower to keep Faction One out of its space… if, of course, they weren’t misreading the data completely.
“We think there’s a life-bearing world here,” he said, pointing to one of the stars two jumps from Target One. “It’s as good a place as any to start.”
Fitzwilliam frowned. “It’s still chancy as hell,” he said, doubtfully. “But it has to be done.”
Ted understood his feelings. The alien navigational data might be completely unsecured, for all the humans knew, yet it was hard to pull any sense out of it. Certain points — the tramlines in particular — were easy to verify, others were much harder to comprehend. Did the aliens really mean life-bearing world by that particular icon or was it a warning to stay the hell away from that particular star system? The only way to find out was to go look.
“Yes,” he agreed. “It has to be done.”
He tapped a switch, altering the display to show the flotilla. Six warships — two escort carriers, four frigates — kept station with Ark Royal, while a colossal Fleet Auxiliary hung behind them, crammed with everything from missile warheads to boxed starfighters. The transport would remain under cloak at all times, Ted knew. They couldn’t risk losing her to alien fire, not when it would cost them far too much.
“They’re ready to go too,” he said. “We can leave on schedule.”
“And just keep the repairs going while we’re underway,” Fitzwilliam said. He rose. “With your permission, Admiral, I will prepare my ship for departure.”
“Please do,” Ted said. The words caused him a pang. He would never be commander of the Old Lady — or any other starship — again, no matter how long his career lasted. An Admiral had no business occupying a command deck. “I’ll be in the CIC in twenty minutes.”
He watched Fitzwilliam leave, then sighed. What would he do after the war? He wouldn’t be allowed to stay on Ark Royal, that was for sure; the carrier would still be a vital part of the Royal Navy. It was possible he could parley his military record into a high rank at the Admiralty, maybe even First Space Lord, although the thought of kissing political buttocks was repulsive to him. Or he could resign and write his memoirs.
It wouldn’t happen, he knew. Nothing would ever be the same again.
Shaking his head sadly, he finished his tea, rose to his feet and walked through the hatch.
There had been a time, James Fitzwilliam conceded, when he’d thought of Ark Royal’s bridge as crude, a memento of a bygone age. The Old Lady simply lacked the elegance of modern carriers, let alone the sheer consideration that had gone into designing her to look smart as well as efficient. But he’d come to love it over the months since he’d assumed, to feel that there could be no other command deck for him. It had a reassuring solidity that more modern carriers lacked.
But that could be because modern carriers can’t stand up to the aliens, he thought. They looked good, alright, but the aliens could blow them into flaming debris within seconds. We won’t be building carriers like that again.
He sighed inwardly as he took his seat and surveyed the main display. There were plans to build a whole new generation of armoured carriers and battleships, but it would still be years before the first ship left the shipyard and went to the front lines. Until then, Ark Royal was unique, utterly irreplaceable. And, if the Admiralty hadn’t been willing to gamble, she would probably have remained tied to Earth, defending humanity’s homeworld against the scum of the universe.
And would it have made a difference, he asked himself, if we had stayed in orbit around Earth?
He’d reviewed the records of the Battle of Earth. The main thrust of the alien attack had fallen on the planet’s fixed defences, but they’d managed to find time to devastate the unified carrier fleet in passing. Ark Royal might have made a difference — or she might just have been blown apart by alien laser warheads too. There was no way to know what would have happened if she’d been there. But he knew he would always ask himself if they’d made a mistake in haring off to attack Target One.
Angrily, he pushed the thought aside. Endlessly dwelling on the past was pointless. What was done was done. It could not be changed. All that mattered was adapting to the world as it was and then moving forward. There was no point in thinking otherwise.
“Commander Lightbridge,” he said. “Are we ready to depart?”
“Yes, Captain,” Lightbridge said. As always, he seemed remarkably cheerful. “Drives are online; all systems read nominal. We can depart on your command.”
Anderson needs a reward, James thought. And so do the people who designed the ship before she was built. All that damage and she’s still operational.