Ark Royal 3: The Trafalgar Gambit Read online

  Shut up, he thought. He knew his father and grandfather had both had their affairs – being in the Royal Family made it impossible to keep anything quiet for long – but he was damned if he were going the same way. Honour wasn't just the name of a famous American movie heroine, after all. I’m not going to cheat on her.

  “My name is Jill, Jill Pearlman,” the girl said. Her accent was definitely American, Henry decided, although it was thicker than the last American accent he’d heard. Was she from one of the colonies? The Americans had been enthusiastic colonisers after the discovery that Terra Nova wasn't the only Earth-like world out there. “Who are you?”

  Henry hesitated. Everyone knew him as Charles Augustus. It might not have been the brightest name to pick for himself, but it had worked. And yet, here and now, he didn't really want to hide behind a mask. It wasn't as if Henry was an uncommon name.

  “Henry,” he said, simply. He studied her, trying hard to keep his eyes on her face. It was possible she was an American starfighter pilot, but he rather doubted it. She just looked too young. “Where did you come from?”

  “Heinlein,” the girl said, bitterly. “I started the war.”

  Henry stared at her. There had been a flurry of interest in the Heinlein Colony on the datanets after the discovery of artefacts from the colony on Alien-1, but he’d been struggling to get through the Academy and he hadn't been paying much attention. From what he recalled, the colonists had wanted to set up a homeworld far from the United States and its colonies, claiming they were tainted with a political disease. They’d boarded a ship, jumped through the tramlines and vanished. No one had seen anything of them until Alien-1.

  “I see,” he said. “What happened?”

  Jill looked down at the floor, then sat next to him on the bed. “We were swimming,” she said, slowly. “Ira and I ... we went to have some fun away from the adults. Ira spent all of his free time exploring, so he knew where we could go. There was this lagoon.”

  She broke off, bitterly. “We went skinny-dipping,” she admitted. “It was Ira’s idea.”

  “I’m sure it was,” Henry said. “And then?”

  “We saw this creature rise out of the water,” Jill said. “It was one of them” – she waved a hand to indicate the aliens – “but we didn't know it at the time. We thought it might be a dangerous creature. I ran to get the gun and shot it. It fell back into the water and vanished.”

  She rubbed her eyes with her bare hands. “They didn't believe us in the colony,” she said. “There hadn't been any traces of higher life forms on Heinlein, none at all. They didn't believe us until the aliens arrived and attacked in force.”

  Henry cursed under his breath. The aliens settled the seabed first and then moved onto the surface, if all the projections and observations were correct. Humans, meanwhile, settled the land and rarely paid any attention to what was lurking under the waves. It was quite possible, he decided, for two separate colony missions to occupy the same world, without ever realising the other one was there. If they’d both checked for other life forms and found nothing, would they even bother to check again?

  “And it started there,” he mused. “They must have been as astonished as you.”

  “I don’t know,” Jill said. “I hid when they attacked; my father fought desperately to protect the colony. But they overwhelmed the defences and took the survivors prisoner. They just ... took me away from the other captives one day and sent me here. I haven't seen any other humans since then.”

  Henry considered it. “What do they want from you?”

  “They just ask questions and try to master English,” Jill said. She made a face. “I was not a very good teacher.”

  “I don’t think English is an easy language for them to learn,” Henry said. How many of humanity’s words were bound up in unspoken assumptions that simply didn't apply to the aliens? “But you did very well.”

  He looked down at his hands, thinking hard. The war was an accident. The whole war, which had killed hundreds of thousands of people and presumably aliens, was an accident, the result of a disastrous First Contact. And yet ... how could he get back to Earth to report to his superiors? And even if he did ...

  They could have talked with us at any moment, he thought, bitterly. God knows Earth would have happily disowned the colonists if it would have prevented a war. Instead, they started to plan for a war that would have crushed us within months, if the Old Lady hadn't remained intact. They took a minor incident and turned it into a pretext for all-out war.

  “The war hasn't been going well,” he said, slowly. “How long have you been here?”

  “I don’t know,” Jill said. “I used to count my ... well, you know – but the aliens accidentally destroyed my markers and I lost count. Several months, at least.”

  Years, Henry thought. They would have needed time to prepare their weapons and tactics to launch the invasion.

  He looked up at the greenish light filtering down from the ceiling. It was the same as it was yesterday and the day before yesterday. The food was the same, the water was always bland and completely tasteless, there was next to nothing to do ... it was easy to lose track of just how long he’d stayed in the cell. His hair might not have grown out long enough to suggest he’d been imprisoned for months, but it was still longer than it had been.

  Jill caught his arm. “There’s a war on?”

  “They attacked Vera Cruz nearly a year ago,” Henry said. he wasn't sure of the precise timing. “Then they stabbed inwards and advanced on Earth, taking New Russia and several smaller colonies at the same time. We stopped them, then launched a deep-strike raid on the alien colonies. I was on that raid ...”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know what happened next,” he said, “but I do know some aliens tried to communicate with the fleet.”

  Jill stared. “They did?”

  Henry nodded, sourly. Humanity’s First Contact protocols had obviously failed, although if the aliens were in a warlike mood they might not have paid attention. But building up a common language was obviously going to take time, time they didn’t have.

  “it failed,” he said. “Other aliens stopped them.”

  He looked up at her. “Did they try asking you questions about Earth? Anything tactical?”

  “Of course not,” Jill said. “I don’t know anything about Earth.”

  “But it suggests they want to learn from you, rather than just suck you dry,” Henry said. The aliens had kept Jill for at least a year, perhaps longer. They could have killed her by now if they’d not thought they had a use for her. “And we have to try to convince them to talk to the rest of humanity. Get some proper diplomats and language experts here, talking to them. We might be able to come to an agreement.”

  Jill frowned. “And what if they don’t want to come to an agreement?”

  “I don’t know,” Henry said. He thought, briefly, about how the aliens had treated occupied worlds. New Russia had been occupied, but the aliens had largely left the human population alone. But it could have just been a tactical decision to avoid starting the genocide until after the humans were thoroughly defeated. “I just don’t know.”

  Chapter Five

  Ted had known, intellectually, that London had more than its fair share of underground tunnels and bunkers. Ever since the invention of flight, it had been necessary to hide large parts of the government underground, just to ensure some continuity after the country came under attack. Nothing, not even the Troubles or the development of orbital bombardment weaponry had deterred the government from protecting itself.

  But he couldn't help wondering just how safe and secure the network was, after the tidal waves and floods. Parts of the power grid seemed to have failed completely, leaving some of the tunnel sections dark and gloomy, while he could hear the sound of water dripping in the distance. No one had anticipated London being flooded, not since the tidal barriers had been put into service. And no one had anticipated alien bombardment. It was all too easy
to imagine a crack in the rock and concrete above their heads widening enough to allow a flood of water into the underground network. They’d be washed away by the water before they realised what was happening or wind up trapped in a subsection of the complex, waiting helplessly for the air to run out.

  He shook his head, angrily dismissing the thought, as they passed through a series of secure airlocks and emerged in the basement of Buckingham Palace. It was a secure complex too, he knew, although it had been centuries since the affairs of the nation were directed from any of the Royal Residencies. And now most of the Royal Family had been moved into the countryside, with only the King and Crown Princess remaining in London to share the sufferings of their population. They thought it made good press.

  Ted snorted, cynically. The Royal Family would never starve; Buckingham Palace was safe, secure and warm. There would be emergency transport out of London if the aliens returned or rioters threatened the palace itself. Somehow, he doubted that many of their subjects would be impressed.

  He looked around, interested, as the equerry led them up a flight of steps and down a long corridor, the walls lined with portraits of monarchs from a bygone age. There were countless display cases everywhere, showing off the presents given to the monarchs by foreign visitors; several of them, he couldn’t help noticing, had been stripped bare, their contents shipped to bunkers well away from the coast. The contents of the palace were a vital part of Britain’s heritage, he knew, something that had to be preserved. But it was hard to take such concerns seriously when he knew millions of people were starving.

  Janelle caught his arm as they approached a large pair of wooden doors. “Admiral,” she said, very softly, “I don't know what to say.”

  Ted nodded in agreement. There was a formal protocol for meeting the monarch, but most of it had already been put aside for the private meeting. The last time he’d met the King, it had been when he’d been awarded a whole series of medals for Ark Royal’s victories against the alien foe. Everyone who had been anyone in British society had been there. Now, they were having a private meeting ... he shook his head, gently. Under the circumstances, it seemed absurd to think of protocol.

  “Be polite,” he advised. Offhand, he knew of no naval officers who had regular private meetings with the monarch, even though they technically worked for him. “And try not to stare too much.”

  The doors swung open and the equerry stepped through. “Admiral Sir Theodore Smith,” he announced grandly, leaving out the list of letters Ted was entitled to have after his name, “and Lieutenant Janelle Lopez.”

  Ted smiled and stepped through the door. Inside, it resembled a comfortable sitting room rather than the heart of a monarch’s kingdom. There were several chairs and a sofa, drawn up around a blazing fire, and a drinks dispenser in one corner. It was, he realised with a flicker of insight, a place for the royals to be people, rather than figurehead rulers for their nation. And the man ahead of him, wearing a simple tunic and shirt, was King Charles IV of Great Britain, Emperor of Britannia and Prince of Nova Scotia.

  He had looked more impressive the first time Ted had met him, Ted mentally conceded, but he’d also looked stressed, knowing that he was permanently on camera. Even Ted, who had tried to spend the last two decades on Ark Royal shutting out the rest of the universe, had known just how intrusive the media were around the Royal Family. The King and his family had never been able to relax, never been able to do anything for fear it would reflect badly on them – and there was nothing that could not be made to look bad, given time and carefully handling by an unscrupulous reporter and team of editors. But there were no cameras here, not at the heart of Buckingham Palace. The King could be himself.

  It would have been impossible to tell he was the King, Ted decided, if he hadn't known ahead of time. He looked middle-aged, the very picture of a mature adult, but lacking the dignity offered by his formal robes and the crown he’d worn during the award ceremony. His hair was grey, slowly shading to white. He’d never bothered to have his face rejuvenated, Ted noted. Was it because he wasn't vain enough to have cosmetic surgery or was it because his protocol officers insisted it was beneath the King’s dignity to have himself redesigned to look younger? There was no way to know.

  “Admiral,” the King said. His voice was very calm, very controlled. “Please don’t stand on formality, not here.”

  He motioned Ted to a seat, then bowed to Janelle as she hastily curtseyed. “Please, relax,” he insisted. “Elizabeth and I have been waiting for you.”

  He motioned for Janelle to sit on the sofa, next to his daughter, then sat back in his chair.

  “I appreciate you coming to see us,” he continued. “We weren't sure if you’d be able to make it.”

  We weren't given a choice, Ted thought. But he understood. The political issues surrounding Prince Henry were a minefield, even if the disasters that had struck the country had pushed the Prince’s life and untimely death onto the backburner. It wasn't the King who would make the decisions, despite being the boy’s father. The Prime Minister was the one who would have to decide how best to present Prince Henry’s death to the world. Or maybe it had been some bureaucrat in the Civil Service who had made the final call.

  He looked at the two girls and felt a stab of pity. They made an odd study in contrasts; Janelle was dark-skinned, with dark hair cropped close to her scalp in accordance with naval regulations, while Elizabeth was blonde, her hair hanging all the way down to the small of her back. The Princess was several years older than her brother, he recalled, but it had been an open question which one of them would actually succeed their father. He couldn't help wondering, from the way the Princess held herself, if she’d been in two minds about taking the throne. But Henry had very definitely not wanted to become King.

  “I would like to hear about my son’s final moments,” the King said. “And about his life on your ship.”

  Ted hesitated then recollected what he could and launched into the tale. Henry had been a starfighter pilot, with all the strengths and weaknesses of men and women who had known their next mission could be their last. He’d lacked the discipline of the Royal Marines or the engineering crews, but he’d been a skilled pilot and Ark Royal had been happy to have him as part of the crew. And it wasn't a lie, he knew. Prince Henry would have gone far if he hadn’t been killed by the aliens.

  “He was a good pilot,” he concluded. It was unusual for pilots to serve more than three years in the cockpit, but Henry could have gone on to become a CAG – Commander Air Group – or aspired to frigate command, if he’d wanted to stay in the navy. “And he is deeply missed.”

  “And you were fucking him,” Elizabeth said. Her voice was icy cold. “Did you know who he was?”

  “Elizabeth,” her father snapped.

  His daughter stared at him with bright blue eyes. “It has to be asked,” she said. “You know how many ...”

  “Elizabeth,” her father repeated.

  “I didn't know who he was,” Janelle said, quietly. “As far as I knew, he was just ... Charles Augustus, a starfighter pilot.”

  The King shook his head. “Charles Augustus,” he muttered. “In hindsight, the media will make it out to be blindingly obvious.”

  “But you were screwing him,” Elizabeth insisted. “Did he never tell you the truth?”

  “No,” Janelle said. Her fists bunched for a long moment, then she forced herself to relax. “I never knew.”

  Ted eyed the girls with some concern. Janelle had been upset – more than upset – after Henry had died, even before he’d told her who her lover had been. He’d actually broken his own rule and given her compassionate leave, even though all it had meant in practice was that she got to stay in her cabin rather than carry out her duties. In hindsight, perhaps he should have kept her busy, with tasks that would keep her mind off her woes.

  There’s a reason married couples aren't allowed to serve together, he thought, morbidly. If one of them dies, the other beco
mes useless – even dangerous.

  Princess Elizabeth, on the other hand, sounded bitchy – and yet he knew she had good reason to worry. Her brother would have had no shortage of suitors, Ted suspected, and most of them would have been more interested in claiming a royal title than in Henry himself. Elizabeth herself would have the same problem, perhaps made worse by the uncertainty over which of the royal children would inherit the throne. She would never know if anyone who showed interest in her cared more for her – or for the title. Ted felt a flicker of sympathy for the girl, despite her rudeness. It was very hard to blame her.

  “The Prince never revealed his true identity to anyone,” he said, as reassuringly as he could. Princess Elizabeth was young enough to be his daughter, but he knew next to nothing about being a father. “No one knew until they caught up with the news broadcasts from Earth,”

  The King cleared his throat. “Be that as it may,” he said, “it still raises uncomfortable questions.”