Ark Royal 2: The Nelson Touch (20 page)

But a drunkard wouldn't make a good father
, he reminded himself. 
And who would want to marry one
?

“Looks like a disagreement over there,” Shallcross said, breaking into his thoughts.  “You want to break it up?”

Ted followed his gaze.  One of the American Captains was arm-wrestling the French Captain, with several other officers placing bets.  It didn't look as though they were in danger of actually hurting themselves, he decided, so he shook his head.  Besides, everyone needed to blow off a little steam from time to time.

“Maybe not,” he said, finally.  He wanted to run back to his quarters and hide.  “But we should go talk to others.”

Shallcross nodded.  “I’ll go speak to Captain Atsuko,” he said.  “He does seem oddly timorous for a Japanese officer.”

“Maybe he’s just careful,” Ted said.  He saw the French Captain getting up and smiled to himself.  “I’ll go speak to Captain Bellerose.”

The French officer gave him a wide smile as he approached.  “Admiral,” he said.  His voice, oddly, seemed more accented than usual.  “A glorious victory for the forces of France.”

“You won, then,” Ted said.  “Well done.”

“Could have been worse,” Bellerose said.  He grinned, suggesting he wasn't entirely serious.  “We were talking about pistols at dawn.”

Ted rolled his eyes.  “And what happened, precisely?”

“We were having a discussion about the latest sports reports,” Bellerose said.  “There were accusations of cheating.  Everything went downhill from there.”

Ted sighed.  He rarely bothered to follow sports, but he hadn't been able to avoid hearing about the scandal.  Several athletes had been accused of using illicit enhancement, manipulating a little-known loophole that forbade direct enhancement, but allowed pre-birth genetic modification.  The scandal had rapidly become a criminal investigation after it had been suggested that the parents had been paid to have the children genetically enhanced, just so they could be recruited later by sporting clubs.  He couldn't recall the outcome, but there had been a lot of bad feeling at the time.

“Maybe better to forget about it out here,” he said.  “We’re a long way from sporting matches.”

“True,” the Frenchman agreed.  He produced a small bottle from his pocket, splashed some liquid into his fruit juice, then drank with obvious relish.  “But it was a slur against our honour.”

“Stupid,” Ted said.  “How are you coping with the exercises?”

“Pretty well, all things considered,” Bellerose said.  “But we won't really
know
until we encounter the aliens.”

Ted couldn’t disagree.  They’d exercised constantly, but most of their exercises had been carried out in the simulator.  There was simply too large a chance that the aliens had developed something new, something that would upset all their planning.  Ted had worked through all the possibilities he and his crew could think of, but the aliens had invented too many surprises before for him to take the prospect lightly.

“But my ship and crew will fight in the best tradition,” Bellerose assured him.  He gave Ted a wink.  “Even if we
do
have to speak your barbaric tongue.”

Ted snorted.  “English seems to have won the battle for supremacy,” he pointed out.  “Is there a planet, apart from Earth, that doesn't have just about everyone speak English?”

“It is a matter of some concern,” Bellerose said, quietly.  “When will this cultural imperialism end?”

“Maybe we will all blur into one culture,” Ted said, after a moment.  “Or maybe we will just start to separate out once again, now we have dozens of separate settled worlds.”

He looked down at the deck, remembering aspects of a very old debate.  The troubles had resulted in the reassertion of a British identity, but how much of it was truly traditional and how much was idealised?  Britannia itself had been careful to restrict settlement rights to people who were ethnically British, yet how could such barriers work when it was hard to define what made a Briton?  How much of British society these days was actually derived from American cultural influence?

But he knew it was worse for Europe and the rest of the world.  It had been America and Britain that had led the human race into space, particularly after the brief confrontation between Japan and the United States.  English culture predominated outside Earth’s atmosphere; it was only since the first colonies had been established that different cultures had started to establish themselves away from Earth.  And yet, how many of
those
cultures were still what they’d once been?  It was impossible to give any precise answer.

Our culture works because it works
, he thought.  Poor maintenance had doomed quite a few asteroid settlements, where the cold equations of space overrode everything else. 
But other cultures might reassert themselves on a planet’s surface
.

“Some of us do worry about what will happen on Earth,” Bellerose admitted.  “When those who consider themselves true heirs go to space, what happens to the rest of the planet?”

Ted gave him a sharp look.  Was that a reference to Prince Henry?  Or was it a perfectly innocent comment that would have passed him by, if he hadn't been worried about his royal crewman?

“I don't know,” he said, carefully.  “What do you mean?”

“A third of the planet’s surface is barbaric,” Bellerose commented.  “The remainder has been forced to work together, while sending settlers to alien worlds.  Will Earth slowly merge into one planetary government – or collapse into chaos?  And, if there is one government, what happens to the colonies?”

“I think there’s no shortage of books or movies exploring that issue,” Ted said, after a moment.  He’d watched quite a few movies about interstellar rebellions while he was a child, most of which – he knew now – were only worth watching for the actresses.  Having a pretty girl lying on top of a tank while wearing nothing more than earrings made up for a lot.  “But I don’t see humanity uniting any time soon.”

Bellerose smiled.  “We’re not very good at that, are we?”

Ted shook his head.  It was ironic, he knew, that most of the interstellar powers hadn't trusted each other with mass drivers.  If they had, the Battle of New Russia might not have been such a curbstomp.  Now, of course, everyone and his grandmother was trying to build mass drivers and use them to defend Earth against the aliens.  Afterwards ... somehow, he doubted those weapons would go away.

“But we’re working on it,” he said.  He caught sight of a pair of commanding officers who seemed to be getting closer to one another than he would have expected.  “We’re working on it.”

He let Bellerose go to chat to one of the Americans, while he made his way over to the Chinese officer.  Captain Wang Lei looked about as uncomfortable as Ted felt, standing in one corner of the room and holding a glass of clear water as though it was a weapon.  Ted smiled at him and received a nod in return, then leaned against the bulkhead tiredly, trying to decide how best to open the discussion.  Of all of the officers assigned to the task force, he knew least about Wang Lei.  The Chinese Government hadn't been very forthcoming about any of its officers.

“Your crews did well in the last exercise,” he said, figuring it was as good a way as any to start.  “You saved two carriers from certain destruction.”

“At the cost of four of our ships,” Wang Lei said.  His voice was flat, utterly emotionless.  “I don’t count that a victory.”

Ted had to admit he agreed.  Standard tactical doctrine insisted that frigates, which could be built in vast numbers relatively quickly, were expendable, certainly when compared to the expensive carriers.  Indeed, given the existence of mass drivers, tacticians had been questioning the viability of carriers long before the aliens had arrived to hammer the point home.  But frigates couldn't handle every mission themselves, while starfighters simply couldn't operate far from their bases.  The carriers were both desperately needed and white elephants.

“But you did well,” he said, softly.  “If you do as well as that when the time comes to fight, I will be pleased.”

Wang Lei, for the first time, showed a hint of emotion.  “The government will disagree,” he said.  “Losing ships in combat is not considered a good thing.”

Ted winced.  The Chinese Government was completely impenetrable to outsiders – the précis he’d read hadn't been able to decide if it was a dictatorship, a single-party state or a semi-democracy – but it definitely had one thing in common with the British Government.  Losing a starship, no matter the situation, was something that had to be investigated thoroughly, just to make sure the commanding officer wasn't at fault.  He'd answered quite enough questions about the lost frigates during their last mission to know that such an experience could be unendurable.

“Losing the whole fleet would be worse,” Ted said.  “But governments can be very unreasonable at times.”

The thought made him roll his eyes.  He hadn't been involved in the negotiations, but he’d heard there had been some real disagreements over the rules of engagement as well as the fleet’s command structure.  If the Royal Navy had been bigger – much bigger – it would have been very tempting to insist that only British ships were dispatched to attack the aliens.  But then, he understood the other problem too.  Losing ships was bad enough, but losing them under someone else’s command was worse.  No wonder the Chinese had been reluctant to commit a carrier to the fleet.

“They can,” the Chinese officer agreed.  He smiled, suddenly.  “But what do you think of the war?”

Ted hesitated, then did his best to answer.  “I think we have to win, or at least force them to talk to us,” he said.  “They certainly
should
be able to talk to us.”

Wang Lei shrugged.  “I once had to spend time in Bahrain as part of a liaison mission,” he said.  “They were dependent on us for their protection, yet their treatment of us seemed unaccountably rude until we realised that they were honouring their customs, rather than our own.  Holding long dinners, never raising serious topics, seeking consensus on how best to proceed ... it was how they acted, rather than us.  Sometimes they lied to our faces because they wanted to save their own face.”

He smiled, rather dryly.  “Perhaps, for all we know, the aliens
need
to be hammered before they will talk to us.”

“Perhaps,” Ted agreed.

Wang Lei nodded towards the Japanese officer.  “In both of the wars between Japan and America, the Japanese had to have their faces ground in their defeat before they surrendered,” he said.  “They had to have their defeat made very clear to them.  The aliens might be the same.”

It sounded possible, Ted had to admit.  But, at the same time, how could a race reach interstellar space with an attitude that made it impossible to accept defeat until it was pushed right to the brink of extinction?  Japan’s casualties towards the end of the Second World War, both civilian and military, had been horrific, utterly beyond his comprehension.  If the Americans had had to invade, as well as dropping additional nukes and perhaps even bioweapons, the survival of the Japanese as a people would have been in doubt.  Their entire culture would have been destroyed beyond repair.

The Chinese officer leaned forward.  “Humanity has several different ways of looking at warfare,” he added.  “For all we know, a starship commanded by a rogue officer fired on an alien ship and started the war.”

“
Babylon 5
,” Ted recognised.  British intelligence officers had dug through countless novels, movies and television programs, looking for ideas.  Some of them had even proved workable in real life.  “Or perhaps it was
Doctor Who
.”

“It doesn't matter,” Wang Lei said.  “The aliens might well be so completely alien that we cannot understand why they’re so angry at us.  In that case, all we can do is fight until the threat has been destroyed.  And everything else simply doesn't matter.”

“I know,” Ted said. 

He nodded politely to Wang Lei, then stepped away from him, feeling an odd moment of pity as another Chinese officer made a beeline towards Wang Lei.  The woman was pretty enough, in an odd kind of way, but it was clear she was his supervisor, even though she was formally his subordinate.  A political commissioner ... Ted shook his head, tiredly.  Even during the worst of the troubles, when the very survival of Britain had been called into question, there had never been any political commissioners.  But the Chinese had kept the very old custom.

How
, he asked himself,
can anyone command when someone else is looking over his shoulder
?

He could see, he supposed, the need to keep an eye on the officer’s political leanings.  But how could they trust an untrained officer with the authority to override the Captain’s decision at the worst possible time?  It was madness!

“Admiral,” Captain Fitzwilliam said.  “I trust you are enjoying the party?”

Ted glowered at him.  Fitzwilliam seemed to be handling himself perfectly, chatting to everyone and trying to make sure that no one was left out.  It was part and parcel of growing up as an aristocrat ... he sighed, then shook his head, wishing for a drink.  He wasn't cut out to be a sociable commander.

“I wonder if it’s too late to rule by fear,” he muttered, just loudly enough for Fitzwilliam to hear.  “I am no good at these events.”