“No,” the Admiral agreed. “But that, I suspect, will be up to the diplomats.”
He stood. “I’d advise you to sleep, Captain,” he said. His face twitched into a grin, clearly remember James urging him to rest. “You may have to go home the express route.”
James looked down at his chest and shuddered. “I hope not, sir,” he said, although he knew it wouldn’t be the Admiral’s decision. “I can’t leave the ship.”
“She’s in good hands,” the Admiral assured him. “Rest now.”
He strode out of the room. James sighed and lay back on the bed, trying not to give in to the wave of bitterness and anger that threatened to overcome him. He’d need months, if not years, to recover from his wounds and there was no way the Admiralty would leave Ark Royal without a formal commanding officer for that long. They’d probably promote Commander Williams to Captain when the ship returned to Earth. There might be another carrier command in his future, he knew, but it wouldn’t be Ark Royal.
Maybe it will be one of the new carriers, he thought. Uncle Winchester had offered him a post on the design crews, pointing out that they needed officers with genuine experience to help them avoid old mistakes. No one had built a carrier like Ark Royal for sixty years. But he’d refused the offer at the time, intending to remain in command of the Old Lady. Now… now he might not have a choice. He wouldn’t be seeing action again anytime soon.
“Lie still, Captain,” the Doctor advised.
James started. He hadn’t even heard her walking up to the bed.
“I need a status report,” James said. “Can you ask Anderson to send someone to brief me…”
The doctor pushed something against his neck. James had barely a moment to recognise it as an injector before his head started to spin. Moments later, he was completely unconscious.
“She’s a normal human, for a given value of normal,” Parnell said, as Ted entered the brig. Doctor Galina Bezukladnikov sat on a chair in the cell, her arms cuffed behind her back. “But her companions were all augmented cyborgs.”
Ted cursed. No wonder they had caused so much havoc.
“And we missed it,” he said. “How did we miss it?”
“We didn’t do any deep scans,” Parnell said. “They didn’t look like normal cyborgs, not like the ones we landed on New Russia. As long as we didn’t scan them thoroughly, they could pass for normal without fear of detection. The implants must have been completely stepped down until they went active, sir. We didn’t have a clue they might have any form of enhanced abilities.”
“Clearly our security precautions need to be revised,” Ted muttered. The Admiralty would probably have a great many scathing things to say about the whole affair. He had a feeling the post-battle assessment would be unfriendly, if only to ensure that other commanding officers didn’t repeat their mistakes. “Next time, we’d better take the liner with us instead of housing the diplomats on the ship.”
“Yes, sir,” Parnell said. He nodded towards the girl in the cell. “Someone did some fiddling with her brain, Admiral. Doctor Bezukladnikov may not be completely human.”
“Shit,” Ted said. “Has she said anything?”
“Nothing,” Parnell said. We scanned her body thoroughly, Admiral, once we took her into custody. There were a handful of oddities, but nothing that would allow her to break out of the cell and cause havoc. Her ultimate disposition might depend on what happens when we return home.”
Ted nodded. The Russians would probably claim their agents had gone rogue. In their place, he would have had a contingency plan for outright failure. The agents had had families on New Russia, they’d planned their operation without consulting their superiors, no one on Earth had known what they’d had in mind, etc, etc. They wouldn’t be believed, Ted was sure, but it was quite possible the government would snatch at their excuses as a fig leaf to justify taking no direct action. The human race couldn’t afford an internal struggle, not now.
But they attempted to commit genocide on a terrifying scale, he thought, bitterly. The Holocaust was nothing compared to what the Russians had in mind.
He shuddered. As far as anyone could tell, the bioweapon had been completely vaporised when the two starfighters died. It certainly should have been vaporised, Ted knew, although the remaining researchers had been unwilling to commit themselves to any definite statements. They’d hemmed and hawed before admitting that they’d designed the bioweapon for maximum survivability. In the end, Ted knew, they’d just have to pray the bioweapon had been destroyed and no tiny fragments would make it through the planet’s atmosphere and down to the ground. If they did…
They must have been out of their minds, he thought. Humans tracked disease outbreaks with suspicious eyes, knowing just what an unscrupulous medical researcher could do with a lab and bad intentions. There’s no way such an outbreak could be regarded as anything natural, not when it was targeted on the entire biosphere. They’d know we intended to commit genocide…
… And if the war continues, we might have to do it again.
Parnell coughed. “Admiral?”
Ted hesitated, replaying their conversation in his mind. “Keep her here, for the moment,” he ordered. “We’ll take her back to Earth and hand her over to the intelligence officers there. I doubt the Russians will complain about us holding her, under the circumstances.”
“Others will complain,” Parnell said. He snorted. “I don’t think the remaining researchers have quite realised that she betrayed them. They want her back.”
“Ignore them,” Ted ordered. “Keep her in the cell.”
Parnell saluted. Ted nodded, then turned and walked out of the brig, heading down towards Pilot Country. The pilots, according to Commander Williams, had been badly shocked to lose Kurt Schneider, even though he’d died heroically. Ted understood. Whatever his faults, and he’d had many, Kurt Schneider had been a good commanding officer, very much a father to the young men under his command. There had been older units, built from officers and men over years, that hadn’t survived the loss of a beloved commanding officer. Or even any commanding officer.
And how, he asked himself, would Ark Royal react to losing a Captain?
He pushed the thought aside as he stopped in front of the CAG’s office, then keyed the switch to open the hatch. Inside, Commander Rose Labara sat at her former lover’s desk, staring down at the latest readiness reports. Doctor Hastings had warned that Commander Labara was physically healthy, after the Marines had recovered her from the office, but mentally unstable. She should have been placed on medical leave — and would have been, Ted knew, if he’d had any replacement for her. The only person who could take her place was Prince Henry and he didn’t have anything like as much experience.
“Commander,” he said.
Rose Labara started, then rose to her feet. “Admiral,” she said. Her face was stained with tears. The uniform she wore was crumpled, making her look sloppy or — worse — careless. “I’m sorry, I…”
“Don’t worry about it,” Ted said. He’d never been one for military formalities. “Everyone needs time to mourn.”
She would have been discharged after the return to Earth, he knew, and spent the rest of her life with her lover, if fate hadn’t intervened. Ted couldn’t help wondering just how long their relationship would have lasted when one of the partners was far older than the other one. It was no solid basis for a relationship. And they would have given up their careers for each other…