And he didn’t dare risk blowing up the enemy starfighter in the planet’s atmosphere…
This is all my fault, he thought, and drove the starfighter forward. One hand reached for containment chamber controls and started to remove the safeguards, one by one. I’m sorry…
“Admiral,” he said. “Please tell my children — and everyone else — that I love them.”
He cursed under his breath as he closed the channel. There had been no time to say goodbye to Rose. She’d have to make do with the letter he’d written for her and stored in his private database. Penny and Percy would have their own letters; he hoped — prayed — that the Captain would take care of them, even after Kurt’s death. And Molly… where was Molly now? Dead… or in the arms of someone who could make her happy? Oddly, he felt no hatred or anger any longer, not now he was about to die. She deserved what happiness she could find in life.
I’m sorry, he thought, and rammed the starfighter forward.
Peter watched, grimly, as the enemy starfighter closed in. The pilot was no longer firing, which was odd… and worrying. If the starfighter had been blown to rubble, there was a possibility the bioweapon would survive. But if the pilot wasn’t shooting any longer… it suggested he knew what he was dealing with. Did he have another way to deal with the bioweapon?
He swung his starfighter around, then gasped in horror as the enemy flyer roared towards him at terrifying speed. An experienced pilot might have managed to evade, but by the time he yanked his starfighter away it was already too late.
You can ram if you like, he thought, in the last seconds. The bioweapon might survive…
Kurt timed it perfectly. The containment chambers, already overloading, exploded microseconds before his starfighter crashed into the enemy starfighter. There was a blaze of light and heat, then nothing.
And both starfighters were utterly vaporised by the blast.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“Well, Captain,” Doctor Hastings said. “How are you feeling?”
James scowled at her. “Like I’ve been shot,” he said. His palm ached terribly. “What happened to me?”
“You were shot,” Doctor Hastings said. She ignored his glare with practiced ease. “You took three bullets to the chest, Captain. Frankly, you’re damn lucky to have survived long enough to reach sickbay. You’ve got the constitution of a horse.”
“I must have bonded with them,” James muttered. He’d always enjoyed riding as a child, even though Aunt Cecilia had watched him like a hawk every time he dared to ride one of her precious horses. “And my hand?”
“They cut your ID implant right out of your hand,” the Doctor said. “And then they used it to open hatches throughout the ship. Good thing there weren’t more of them or they might have managed to overwhelm the crew and take the Old Lady for themselves.”
James swore, feeling his head threatening to explode. The Russians had clearly managed to put their plan into action, despite their best precautions. In hindsight, they should have grabbed the Russians from the start and thrown them into the brig, despite the diplomatic nightmare it would have caused. But they hadn’t and he’d been shot and…
He shook his head. “The ship,” he asked, urgently. “What happened to her?”
“Intact and operational,” Doctor Hastings said. She took a breath. “The Admiral wishes to speak with you as soon as possible. I’d prefer to put you back under, Captain, but if you feel up to talking to him…”
“Please,” James said. “Call him.”
The Admiral arrived two minutes later, looking tired and worn. James reminded himself that Admiral Smith had been the commanding officer of Ark Royal for years before his promotion, long enough to hold the ship firmly in his heart. Seeing her… violated in such a manner, through the darkest treachery, had to hurt. They hadn’t reacted so badly to the aliens who’d boarded the ship during Operation Nelson, but they’d been known enemies. The Russians, on the other hand, had pretended to be allies.
“Captain,” the Admiral said. “It’s good to see you awake.”
There had been a time, James recalled, when the Admiral would probably have been glad to have him out of the way. The older and more mature officer he’d become cringed at the memory of just what sort of fool he’d been as a young man. But now… the Admiral genuinely regretted his injuries. James felt a pang of bittersweet affection for the older man as the Admiral sat down next to the bed.
“Thank you, sir,” he said. He looked down at the bandages covering his chest. “What’s our current status?”
“I’d tell you not to worry, but it would be pointless,” the Admiral said, ruefully. “The ship is safe, for the moment. Commander Williams has taken over command and is supervising the effort to clear up the mess. Right now, we have thirty-two dead crewmen and fifty-seven injured, but no serious long-term damage to the Old Lady herself.”
James winced. Those crewmen had died under his command. He’d lost officers and crewmen before, during Operation Nelson, but it still stung. And all the worse, he reflected, for the treachery the Russians had used. Losing people to the aliens didn’t hurt so badly, somehow. He had known the aliens would do their best to kill him and his subordinates.
“What we do have is a diplomatic nightmare,” the Admiral continued. “The aliens want answers and, so far, we don’t know what to tell them.”
“The truth,” James suggested. “They have factions of their own. I think they’d understand if we explained that one of our factions tried to do something stupid.”
“The bioweapon came very close to being deployed,” the Admiral said. “If they find out what the Russians tried to do…”
James smirked. “Tell them something along the same lines, but not too horrific,” he suggested. “The Russians might have wanted to drop a dirty bomb into the planet’s atmosphere instead.”
“Or even kill our diplomats on the surface,” the Admiral said. He sighed. “The Russians killed their diplomats too. We’re working on coming up with some sort of explanation, but it’s going slowly. They’re not going to be pleased about losing their people to a faction fight among humans.”
“And killing ambassadors is practically a declaration of war,” James said.
“Merciless war,” the Admiral agreed. “We need to keep a sharp eye on the other diplomats too — the human diplomats. God knows if they have plots of their own up their sleeves.”
“True,” James agreed.
“I don’t understand it,” the Admiral confessed. “What the hell were they thinking?”
“They thought they couldn’t lose,” James speculated. He felt very tired, suddenly. His chest ached with sudden pain. “It’s the aristocratic delusion. You’re born to power, you understand power… and you don’t really think you can lose. You sport and play with your victims, convinced that — if they bit back — you could handle it. That they would suffer far worse than you.”
He sighed. “But you never really believe there might be someone more powerful than yourself out there.”
“No,” the Admiral agreed.
“We’ll have to do something in response,” James continued. “The Russians cannot be allowed to get away with attempted genocide and trying to restart the war.”