Rose glared at him. “Do you realise his death was my fault?”
Henry shrugged. Janelle hadn’t told him the full story. He’d suspected there was more, but he hadn’t wanted to put her in a position where she had to break a confidence or refuse to tell him something. If Rose blamed herself…
“Look,” he said. “Did you kill him personally?”
“They took him and he died and I could do nothing,” Rose snapped. “It was my fault he died.”
“I thought the same too, once,” Henry said. But it hadn’t been quite the same. Losing a dog, even a mutt that was effectively a member of the family, wasn’t anything like losing a lover. “Commander — Rose — when we get back to Earth, you can mourn him in any way you see fit. But now, we need you in the cockpit, ready to kick some alien ass.”
He slapped her on the back, hard enough to sting. “And besides, I think I crossed a line when I threatened to undress you,” he added. “You’ll need to assume your rank again just to hand out something sufficiently awful as punishment.”
Rose smirked. “Booting your ass out the airlock seems about right,” she said. Her smile faded quickly. “I’ve been a fool, Henry.”
“You should have seen me as a child,” Henry said. “I couldn’t get away with nothing.”
“A Royal Brat?” Rose asked.
“Worse than that,” Henry said. “When I was restrained they said I was a prig; when I threw tantrums, they talked about me being badly brought up. When I did something stupid they made fun of me; when I did something clever they said I must have been coached. When my father let me run wild he was spoiling me rotten; when he gave me a clip around the ear they screamed that he was abusing me. I’m sure there are worse things in life than being a prisoner of the media, but I haven’t met them.”
Rose smirked, again. “Being an alien prisoner?”
“Oh, no,” Henry assured her. “Being an alien prisoner was quite relaxing, actually. They didn’t have the slightest idea who I actually was.”
“Neither did I, until it was too late,” Rose said. She smiled, reluctantly. “Janelle Lopez is a very lucky girl.”
“I like to think so,” Henry said. He sobered. “We won’t be launching any starfighters because the Admiral wants to remain in hiding, but we do have simulations to run. Will you join us in twenty minutes?”
Rose sighed, then nodded. “I’ll get a cup of coffee and something to eat,” she said. “And…”
She broke off. But Henry understood the unspoken apology.
“If you need anything, afterwards, ask me,” he said. “There are places you can go where the media can’t follow, if you’re careful.”
“I may face a Board of Inquiry,” Rose said, as she stood. “No, I will have to face a Board of Inquiry. But I will have to come to terms with my involvement in the whole affair. There’s no point in trying to run.”
“I understand, I think,” Henry said. He rose, then walked towards the hatch. “I’ll see you in twenty minutes.”
“We’ve been trying to find ways to board alien ships,” Parnell said, as Ted toured Marine Country. “But I don’t think they’ll let us do it again.”
Ted nodded in agreement. The first — and so far the last — successful boarding operation in outer space had been carried out by the marines attached to Ark Royal during her first mission. It had only worked, he suspected, because the aliens had never seriously considered the possibility. Normally, boarding a starship without the crew’s consent was tricky as hell — and the crew could blow their own ship, if they thought they were in serious danger of losing control. The aliens hadn’t rigged their own battlecruiser to self-destruct before it was too late.
But they won’t make the same mistake twice, Ted thought. They’d certainly tried to board Ark Royal, during Operation Nelson, but it hadn’t worked. They hadn’t tried again, which suggested they’d decided it was futile and given up. We’d just be sending Marines to their deaths.
“We are looking at ways to rig plasma cannons to assault shuttles and using them as a last line of defence, or even ramming units, but they won’t be a match for starfighters,” Parnell added. “They just don’t carry enough armour.”
“Something to work on in the future,” Ted said. Marine Assault Shuttles were tough, but nowhere near as tough as Ark Royal. “But set them on automatic. They might soak up some alien fire.”
“Aye, sir,” Parnell said. “I’ve assigned the rest of the Bootnecks to damage control duties, for the moment. They’ll armour up when the aliens arrive, then be ready to repel borders.”
“Just in case,” Ted agreed. They couldn’t take the alien reluctance to board human ships — in the wake of their failure — for granted. It was quite likely the aliens would consider the ancient carrier a prize worth taking. “And I think…”
He paused as his wristcom bleeped. “Admiral, this is Farley,” a voice said. “The probe is picking up starships crossing the tramline — multiple starships.”
Ted nodded. “Understood,” he said. It would be an hour, at the very least, before they could engage the enemy. “Get me a detailed breakdown of enemy forces as soon as you have it, Commander. I’ll be on the bridge in five minutes.”
He closed the channel, then looked up at Parnell. “It’s been a honour,” he said. “And thank you for everything.”
“It could be harder,” Parnell observed. “There are no friendly aliens mixed in with the hostiles here, are there?”
“No,” Ted said. The War Faction had splintered, according to the aliens, until the only ones left were the true fanatics. None of them would have second thoughts now. “Just aliens who want to kill us all.”
He nodded to the Marine, then strode out of Marine Country and walked — there was no point in running — up to the command deck. The crewmen he passed nodded to him — salutes were forbidden when the ship was at alert — and smiled, looking confident. Ted knew they’d inherited a tradition of victory, a tradition that had been earned after the Battle of New Russia. Spacers were superstitious and they knew Old Lady had never been defeated, not once. Ted hoped that would hold true one final time.
The bridge was a hive of activity when he stepped through the hatch and paused, studying the red icons on the display. Most of them were standard alien ships, including three carriers, but one of them was unknown… and larger than Ark Royal. It seemed to be slower too, he noted, as more and more data scrolled up on the display. The ship’s mass had to be comparable to the ancient carrier’s immense bulk.
“I think that’s a battleship,” Commander Williams said, quietly. “They must have decided to rush one into service after they ran into us.”
“Or maybe they had plans to turn on the other factions,” Ted offered. An armoured battleship… no, a dreadnaught, perhaps even a superdreadnaught, would be a formidable opponent against the other alien factions, even now the aliens had put bomb-pumped lasers into service. “If they’d known about the Old Lady, they wouldn’t have launched the war without some way to deal with her.”
“They could have started work on her after the first battle,” Commander Williams offered.
Ted shook his head. It had taken five years to build Ark Royal; even now, with the aliens breathing down their necks, the best the designers had managed to do was slim it down to three years. Perhaps a battleship would take less time, but he had his doubts. They’d have started with a completely new design and completed it impossibly quickly, if that was the case.