The Longest Day (Ark Royal X) Read online

  The Longest Day

  (Ark Royal X)

  Christopher G. Nuttall

  Book One: Ark Royal

  Book Two: The Nelson Touch

  Book Three: The Trafalgar Gambit

  Book Four: Warspite

  Book Five: A Savage War of Peace

  Book Six: A Small Colonial War

  Book Seven: Vanguard

  Book Eight: Fear God And Dread Naught

  Book Nine: We Lead

  Book Ten: The Longest Day

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  Cover by Justin Adams

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  Cover Blurb

  A Stand-Alone Novel Set In The Ark Royal Universe!

  The first major alien offensive against Earth has been blunted, winning humanity time to deploy new weapons and prepare new tactics as Earth’s space navies prepare to take the offensive. But the enigmatic aliens have plans of their own - a full-scale attack on Earth that will either win the war in a single stroke or lose it.

  The stakes have never been so high. The fate of humanity itself is in the balance. And, as battle rages across the solar system, as humanity finds its back pushed firmly against the war, millions of people - military and civilian - struggle for survival, knowing that victory will come with a very high price ...

  ... And defeat will be the end of everything humanity holds dear.

  Historian’s Note

  The Longest Day is set during the Earth-Tadpole War, at roughly the same time as the latter half of The Nelson Touch. However, it is designed to stand alone.

  Prologue

  Tadpole Prime

  No human had ever visited the Heart of the Song. No human ever would.

  The Tadpoles - as their human opponents had termed them - didn't really believe in cities. It wasn't necessary, under the waters, to live in a compound, let alone sacrifice some of their freedoms to convenience. Even the giant factories they’d built, first on the surface and then in orbit around Tadpole Prime, felt profoundly unnatural to them. Something was lost, they thought, even as their race advanced into space. Ideas - the currency of their society - were slowly giving way to a bland uniformity that was as unnatural as the cities themselves.

  It was something that disturbed them, although they would never have admitted it. Their whole society was based on freedom of movement and association. The disparate factions lived or died, stood alone or amalgamated, based on their ability to attract new voices and adapt to new circumstances. Being trapped in an echo chamber, where no new ideas could germinate and grow, was their racial nightmare. And yet, as they clawed their way into space, it seemed to be on the verge of coming true. They knew it ...

  ... And yet, they didn't know how to deal with it.

  The Heart of the Song was the closest thing their race had to a genuine capital city, hundreds of metres below the waves. It was holy ground, sacred to a race that had never really developed anything resembling a religion. A human would have wondered at the lack of opulence, but the Tadpoles cared little for grandeur. All that mattered was that the area possessed excellent acoustics. All the factions could send representatives, if they wished, and be heard. And then a consensus would be reached.

  Hundreds of thousands of Tadpoles floated in the water, adding their voices to the song as it rose and fell. Millions of seedlings rushed through the liquid, unnoticed by their older brethren. The Tadpoles knew - and accepted - that most of those seedlings would never grow to maturity, never claim the intelligence that was their birthright. It was the way of things, as unquestioned as the laws of physics themselves. Children only had value when they reached an age to join their voices to the song.

  The war had not gone as planned, the Tadpoles acknowledged. It was ... frustrating. They’d spent a great deal of time studying their enemy, since First Contact, yet they clearly hadn't learnt everything they needed to know. The song - the consensus - admitted those points, then moved on. There would be time for recriminations and improvements later, after the war. Their enemies had proven themselves adaptive, alarmingly adaptive. It was not a pleasant thought.

  The original plan has failed, the voices urged. Let us take the offensive directly to their homeworld.

  The song echoed backwards and forwards for hours. There were advantages to taking the offensive, but there were also disadvantages. And yet, did they dare wait? They’d determined that they shared a region of space with an aggressive, ever-expanding race. Much of the material they’d captured had been incomprehensible - and their alien prisoners very alien - but it was clear that humanity had practically exploded into space. It was sheer luck, the song acknowledged, that they’d encountered humanity when the Tadpoles held a tech advantage. A decade or two later and it might well have been the other way round.

  They are already learning to adapt our technology to serve themselves, the voices insisted, grimly. Time is not on our side.

  Then we should speak to them, other voices injected. Try to convince them to share the universe with us.

  The song wavered for a long moment. Not all the factions had been keen on war. Wars were risky, they’d insisted. There was no way to know if humanity would fight like the Tadpoles of old or something different, something not bound by the song. But human history seemed to be one continuous liturgy of war. The Tadpoles didn't understand the reason humans had put so much energy into warring amongst themselves - the captured files were readable, yet incomprehensible - but they were frightened. It was impossible to avoid the belief that the galaxy, the utterly immense galaxy, might not be big enough for both races, even though they could have shared a hundred worlds without problems.

  They are inventive, the war factions said. Let us dictate terms to them after we have won the war and removed all danger to ourselves.

  They are too dangerous to exist, another faction added. We must destroy them before they destroy us.

  The song hissed with indignation. Humans were an intelligent race, the only other intelligent race known to exist. They did not deserve to be exterminated. And yet, the risk of leaving them alive had to be admitted. The Tadpoles were creative, but far - far - less innovative than their opponents. It was all too easy to believe that the humans might come up with something that would tip the scales decisively against them. And then ... human history was full of examples of what winners did to losers. If they were prepared to crush people who were their biological identicals, the Tadpoles asked, what would they do to aliens?

  Let us win the war, the song said. We can worry about the aftermath afterwards.

  New ideas flooded through the gathering. An offensive, targeted directly on the human homeworld. It might not succeed in occupying the system - the Tadpoles admitted that the system was heavily defended, even if the human factions didn't work very well together - but it would devastate the human industrial base. Follow-up raids could target their remaining colony worlds, crippling their space navies for lack of spare parts and maintenance. And then the war would be over, bar the shouting.

  And then we can dictate peace terms, the factions said.

  It would be risky, the song agreed. But there was always an element of risk in war. They’d thought they’d prepared for everything, but the humans had surprised them. Losing so many carriers to a single ancient ship - a ship so old it had never registered with them as a potential threat - was galling. It was also a grim reminder that, for all of their technological prowess, they could still lose the war. The song was unanimous. They had to win. They didn't dare lose.

  And if the offens
ive fails? A lone faction asked. What then?

  It will not fail, the war factions sang. The fleet will be strong enough to retreat, if necessary.

  The lone faction was unimpressed. And what if you’re wrong?

  Then we will deal with it, the song insisted. The decision had been made. A thrill of anticipation ran through the gathering. Until then ... we must win this war.

  Chapter One

  RFS Brezhnev, Deep Space

  Captain Svetlana Zadornov slept with a gun under her pillow and a knife hidden by the side of her bunk.

  It was, she felt, a reasonable precaution. Mother Russia expected her womenfolk to be mothers, not starship officers and commanders. There were only a handful of women in the Russian Space Navy and almost all of them had been harassed - or worse - during their careers, even though they’d all been officers. Svetlana’s uncle, Sasha Zadornov, was a high-ranking member of the Politburo and even his name wasn't enough to deter the troglodytes who resented a woman intruding into what they saw as a purely male sphere. It was sad, but true - she’d discovered as her career progressed - that her skills in starship command and maintenance were less impressive than the ability to injure or kill someone who thought a mere woman couldn't possibly offer any resistance to him. Knifing two officers and one rating had done more for her reputation than winning a coveted gunnery award.

  And then they sent me to Brezhnev anyway, she thought, coldly. Her lips quirked into a nasty smile as she lay in her bunk, half-asleep. And didn't that come back to haunt them?

  It wasn't a pleasant thought. Everyone conceded - officially, at least - that Svetlana was qualified to command one of the Rodina’s starships. But there had been no question of giving her a carrier command, let alone one of the modern destroyers or survey ships. She was a woman, after all. They’d given her Brezhnev, a destroyer so old that she'd only been refitted with artificial gravity two years ago. Giving the ship to anyone would have been a calculated insult, but giving Brezhnev to her ... it galled her, sometimes. She knew her scores were higher than those of half her classmates at the academy.

  But if I’d been on one of the modern ships, she reminded herself, I might have died at New Russia.

  Her intercom pinged. “Captain?”

  Svetlana snapped into full wakefulness. One hand gripped her pistol, automatically. It wasn't likely that the message presaged an assassination attempt - or worse - but she hadn't survived so long without taking a few basic precautions. “Commander Ignatyev?”

  “Please can you come to the bridge, Captain,” Commander Misha Ignatyev said. “Long-range sensors have detected something you need to see.”

  “Understood,” Svetlana said. Ignatyev was nearly thirty years her senior and bitterly resentful at having been passed over for command, again. He wouldn’t call her to the bridge unless he had a very good reason. “I’m on my way.”

  She swung her legs over the side of the bunk and stood, feeling the gravity field wobbling around her. Brezhnev hadn't been designed for artificial gravity and it showed. Her cabin, so tiny she could barely swing a cat, looked oddly slanted to her eyes. Half the lockers were embedded in the bulkhead, high enough to make retrieving anything on the top shelves very difficult. But the design would have made perfect sense, she knew, if the ship hadn't had a gravity field of its own. There were times when she seriously considered turning the gravity generator off and keeping the crew in zero-g.

  Which wouldn’t please the engineers, she thought. The engineering crew weren't much better than the rest of her crew, although they’d fallen in line after she’d proved she knew what she was talking about. She pitied the poor butterflies who concentrated on acing the political reliability courses at the academy rather than learning how starships actually worked. A hint of technobabble and they’d be drowning helplessly, unable to make a decision. And the engineers would take ruthless advantage of them.

  She reached for her jacket and pulled it on, then inspected herself in the mirror. Her blonde hair was cut short, a mannish hairstyle that gave some of her aunts fits of the vapours every time they looked at her. They twittered endlessly about how poor Svetlana would never get a man, let alone fulfil her duties to Mother Russia. She pursued her lips in annoyance, silently cursing the old biddies under her breath. They knew she was sterile, damn them. Children were simply not a possibility.

  And it isn't as if we are still facing a demographic crisis, she thought, as she strapped her pistol into place. We don’t need every woman turning out four kids before she turns thirty.

  She glared at her own reflection. Her face wasn't as sharp as she would have liked, but she was mannish enough not to seem automatically female in male eyes. Most men, she’d come to realise, looked past hints of femininity as long as the woman in question behaved like a man. Sharing crude jokes and defending her territory - with a gun, a knife or her bare hands - wasn't pleasant, but it was the only way to get respect. And while she doubted she would ever see a carrier command, she knew she’d done well. That was all that mattered.

  Opening the hatch, she stepped into the command corridor and walked down to the bridge. A pair of armed spacers stood guard - no naval infantry on Brezhnev - and saluted her as the hatch hissed open. Svetlana made no response. Instead, she stepped through the hatch and onto the cramped bridge. It felt uncomfortably warm. The temperature regulators were probably on the fritz, again.

  “Captain,” Ignatyev said. He was a short, dumpy man with a white beard, easily old enough to be her father. His competence was unquestioned, but he lacked the connections to rise any higher. “Long-range sensors picked up hints of turbulence in the distance.”

  Svetlana sucked in her breath, sharply. The Earth Defence Organisation had been holding an exercise designed to get the various national navies used to working together, but - as far as she knew - none of the planned operations were taking place anywhere near Brezhnev’s patrol route. Her ship hadn't been invited to take part, of course. The Russian Navy considered the ninety-year-old destroyer an embarrassment, even though she was a near-contemporary to the British Ark Royal and she’d been kept in active service all that time. But most of Brezhnev’s systems were still outdated ...

  Her armour isn't outdated, Svetlana thought, coldly. Brezhnev and her sisters had been designed for a very different environment. And that might give us a fighting chance.

  There were no holographic projectors on Brezhnev, of course. She bent over the tactical officer’s console, examining the very vague readings. They were faint, faint enough to make her wonder if Brezhnev was seeing things. Space wasn't quite as dark and silent as civilians believed and her sensors were old enough, despite the refit, to pick up on something that wasn't actually there. But she had heard about the alien tramlines. The mysterious contact - if it was a contact - was on a vector that suggested it might have come from the closest tramline ...

  “Keep us in stealth,” she ordered. “Helm, inch us towards the contact.”

  “Aye, Captain,” the helmsman said.

  Svetlana glanced at Ignatyev. “Send a FLASH message to Putin Station and Pournelle Base,” she ordered. “Inform them that we have detected a contact and are moving out of position to attempt to pin it down. Attach a full copy of our sensor log too.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Ignatyev said. He lowered his voice. “The Kremlin may not be pleased if we abandon our patrol route. Or if we alert Pournelle Base.”

  “We have standing orders to investigate all sensor contacts,” Svetlana reminded him, fighting down a flicker of annoyance. She didn't mind having a lively debate with her XO, but not where her crew could hear. “And the Kremlin ordered us to copy all alerts to Pournelle Base.”

  She sat down in her command chair and strapped herself in, then keyed her console to bring up the latest set of standing orders. Ignatyev might well have a point. The Kremlin might be unhappy if Pournelle Base was alerted ahead of time, even though she had standing orders to do just that. But she also understood the reasoning
behind the standing orders. The human race was at war and, like it or not, the defence of the solar system and Earth herself was being coordinated through Pournelle Base. They had to be informed of any prospective threat to humanity’s homeworld.

  A low rumble ran through her ship as the drives picked up speed. Svetlana glanced at the readouts, hoping and praying that the sensors hadn't decided to start seeing things. She had enemies back home - her family had enemies. Moving out of position to investigate a sensor contact that turned out to be nothing more than a random energy flicker could be made to look bad, if the wrong people got hold of her sensor logs. And, in the constant battle for patronage that defined modern Russia, it was a given that they would get hold of it.

  We don’t need an external enemy, she thought, sourly. We’re perfectly capable of fucking things up for ourselves.

  But we do have an external enemy, her thoughts reminded her. And so does the rest of the human race.

  She sighed, inwardly. Eighteen months ago, alien forces had attacked Vera Cruz and a handful of other colonies along the rim of explored space. Aliens! Svetlana hadn't believed it at first, not until her uncle had confirmed it. The entire human race was under threat! She’d been concerned, when it finally sank in, but everyone had believed that the space navies could handle the threat. The Multinational Force assembled to cover New Russia, the largest and most powerful formation assembled by the human race, was invincible. Twelve fleet carriers and over fifty smaller ships, as well as New Russia’s formidable defences. The aliens should have hit the defence and bounced ...