The Right of the Line

(Ark Royal, Book XIV)

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
Book Eleven: The Cruel Stars
Book Twelve: Invincible
Book Thirteen: Para Bellum
Book Fourteen: The Right of the Line

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Cover by Justin Adams

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Cover Blurb

The war is on the verge of being lost.

The alien virus has begun its offensive, punching through the human defences and sending advance elements to threaten Earth itself.  HMS Invincible and her crew, having barely returned from their last mission, are thrown into a desperate mission to strengthen the inner line of defences before the virus can smash them too and destroy the human race.  The stakes have never been so high.  Defeat means the end of everything.

But when the virus continues its offensive, brushing through all opposition, Invincible must mount a desperate raid deep into enemy space to win time for the human race ...

... Or watch, helplessly, as humanity faces a fate worse than death ... 

Dear Reader

There were a couple of times, over the last six months, that I was starting to wonder if this series was cursed.  I start to write Para Bellum ... and, as you might recall, I ended up spending six weeks in hospital.  I start to write this book, The Right of the Line, and ... well, the effects of radiotherapy stop me from writing for several weeks.  In any case, this book has been delayed, for which I am truly sorry.  I’m rather nervous to even start plotting the final trilogy of the overall series.  <grin>.

I’m hoping that things will get better, from now on, but I cannot guarantee it.

Thanks for reading - and for your patience.

Christopher G. Nuttall
Edinburgh, 2019

Prologue

From: Admiral Tony Mulhouse, Strategic Planning Division
To: Admiral Sir John Naiser, First Space Lord
Classification: Top Secret, Eyes-Only FSL

Admiral.

I must confess that I was following the discussions concerning Amalgamation with a somewhat jaundiced eye.  Any student of history knows that attempts to unite radically different countries is doomed to produce either an oppressive empire, or civil war and eventual fragmentation.  The eventual downfall of the European Union - a well-meaning attempt to ensure peace, harmony and prosperity - stands as a warning to us all.  We do not need to go far to see the remnants of the brutal ethnic conflicts that tore the continent apart and threatened to send us crashing back to a new Dark Age.  I believed that Amalgamation will be utterly disastrous.

And yet, I have been forced to change my opinion.

My staff is still working on what little data we received from Second Falkirk before the flicker link went dead, but a number of issues have already become apparent.  First and foremost, the virus is clearly not hampered by what we would call economic reality.  We would love to be able to produce hundreds of thousands of long-range missiles, of course, but any proposal to do so would cause the Treasury to have a collective heart attack.  They would say - and rightly so - that it would be a massive expenditure for very little immediate return, particularly given both their military limitations and the eternal political reality that health and education are generally regarded as more conductive to winning votes than defence.  It was growing harder to secure the ring-fenced military budget before the new threat showed up and, sir, the simple truth is that too many MPs believe that we somehow provoked this conflict.  They may understand that we cannot simply pick up our toys and go home - it only takes one to start a war, but two to end it - yet the discontent in Parliament will make it harder to secure an ever-growing military budget.

Second, and perhaps more serious, we may be unable to out-produce the virus even if we were granted an unlimited military budget.  Our most extreme plans for war mobilisation may not be enough to stave off defeat, even if we are lucky enough to avoid serious problems with both civilian and military morale.  It hasn’t been that long since industrial action in a number of manufacturing nodes caused a major slowdown and we must be aware of the prospect of other strikes if ill-feeling should happen to spread.  While strikes are technically illegal during wartime, the strikers may feel that they have nothing to lose - and that we cannot bring pressure to bear against them, as we would need them to go back to work as quickly as possible.  A work slowdown would be harder to stop ... and, once they got into the habit of demanding and receiving concessions, would be easy to repeat.

In short, we may have no choice but to push for a completely unprecedented Amalgamation.

I cannot say how this will work out in practice.  We have worked closely with the Americans and the French over the past hundred years - and exercised regularly with Russia, China and the lesser spacefaring powers - but there is a vast difference between working together and actually sharing starships, bases and secrets.  At heart, we are different nations.  Can we unite in the face of a common foe?  Or will our half-baked stumbling towards Amalgamation sow the seeds for yet another conflict?

I don’t know, sir.  But I know we must push forward now, before time runs out.  We are facing an existential threat on an unimaginable scale.  The long-term implications of Amalgamation will be of no concern if we don’t have a long-term.  There is no way we can guarantee the survival of humanity, even if we surrender.  We literally cannot surrender without giving up everything.  There will be things that walk and talk and look human, but they will not be human.  The aliens Invincible discovered on Alien-3 are stark proof of the fate awaiting us if we lose this war.

I understand why so many people are opposed to Amalgamation.  I would oppose it myself - I did oppose it myself.  But right now, sir, those of us who are military men need to understand that our backs are firmly pressed against the wall.  We have no choice but to proceed towards Amalgamation.

Thankfully, our counterparts should have the same understanding.

Tony.

Prologue II

Private Colin Shepherd rubbed his hands together as he stood in front of the gates, watching the steady stream of cars and buses as they passed through the outer security barrier and into the Permanent Joint Headquarters.  He’d thought himself lucky to win the duty when Sergeant Rudbek had been handing out assignments, but he was starting to suspect it was a poisoned chalice.  On one hand, all he really had to do was stand by the gates and look intimidating; on the other, it was cold, boring and hardly likely to look good on his resume.  But then, he hadn’t joined the Home Guard because he’d wanted to be a hero.

He allowed himself a tight smile as he swept his eyes over the cars.  He’d barely scraped through school, ensuring he would almost certainly be conscripted into the army.  The career counsellor had made it clear that the navy would probably not be interested in him, particularly as he didn’t have any real qualifications, and there was very little hope of winning a coveted place at a technical college.  Colin had cursed his luck - he had no particular inclination to get his arse shot off for king and country - and volunteered for the Home Guard.  It had been a surprise when he’d been accepted without question, but the Home Guard was desperate for volunteers.  They normally had to rely on conscription to fill the ranks.

And it isn’t that bad being out here, he thought.  The country had been on low-level alert since Invincible’s first return from Alien-One, but nothing had actually happened.  Colin found it hard to believe some of the wilder stories, even if they had government imprimaturs.  Everyone knew the government lied.  There are some definite advantages to being in the Home Guard.

He felt his smile grow wider as the line of cars slowly dwindled away.  Guard duty on the outskirts of London was relatively safe, even if there was a war on.  The bombardment was a thing of the past.  Colin was entirely sure the Royal Navy would keep the new threat well away from the Solar System.  He wouldn’t have a chance to prove himself a hero, but it hardly mattered.  Colin didn’t want to be a hero.  He just wanted to impress the girls with his uniform while waiting for his discharge.  It was astonishing how many girls couldn’t tell the difference between a combat infantryman and a guardsman.  Or maybe they just didn’t care.

A low rumble echoed through the air as a giant garbage truck drove down the street, followed by a pair of vans.  Colin blinked in surprise, puzzled and alarmed.  He’d been on guard duty outside PJHQ long enough to know that the garbage men never came on a Monday, certainly not to the military base.  They shouldn’t even have been allowed to get so close.  The automated highways control system would have automatically barred any vehicle from entering the street unless it had permission ... ice ran down his spine as he realised that something was badly wrong.  A drill?  Or a real emergency?  He raised his rifle, shouting for the driver to stop.  Instead, the driver gunned the engine and drove straight at the gates.  Colin fired twice, but the truck kept moving.  Colin had to throw himself out of the way - and straight into a trench - before the truck could knock him down.  A moment later, there was a thunderous sound.  Colin rolled over, his ears ringing.  He couldn’t hear anything.

He forced himself to stand, cursing himself under his breath.  His rifle was missing ... it took him a moment to realise that he must have dropped it when he’d dived into the trench.  He drew his pistol from the holster as he forced himself to stand on wobbly legs, peering over the edge of the trench.  The gates were gone, shattered beyond repair.  And the other vans were moving forward, their doors already snapping open.  Colin stared in horror, only slowly realising that this was no mere drill.  PJHQ was under attack!  His legs threatened to buckle as a stream of dogs, of all things, ran out of the vans and raced into the compound.  Colin had only a moment to see the pouches the dogs were carrying before it was too late.

Fuck, he thought, numbly.

A man jumped out of the van, weapon already raised.  Colin shot him twice, both bullets passing through the target’s head.  The man staggered, but didn’t fall.  Colin stared in disbelief.  He’d hit the man twice!  His brains were leaking out of his skull and yet he was still coming.  Another man followed, then another ... weapons flashing fire.  Colin felt a sharp pain in his chest, despite the body armour.  He’d been shot ...

He fell back, crashing to the bottom of the trench.  His pistol clattered to the concrete floor.  Dogs leapt over his head, moving with an eerie silence that horrified him.  Colin realised, in horror, that the stories he’d heard hadn’t been exaggerated after all.  It wasn’t just humans who could be infected by the virus.  The dogs could carry bombs - or worse - into the compound.  They’d do a great deal of damage before they were shot down.

Colin looked up as a shadow fell over him.  A man stood there, levelling a weapon at Colin’s face.  His expression was utterly blank, as if he had no feelings at all.  Colin couldn’t shake the impression that he was looking at something inhuman.  The force animating the body was very far from human.  

“No,” he whispered.  “I ...”

But it was already too late.

Chapter One

Captain Sir Stephen Shields felt out of place as he followed his brother into the COBRA conference room.

It wasn’t the first time he’d been in a conference that was, technically, well above his pay grade.  He was the youngest scion of an important family, related - directly or indirectly - to a great many important people.  The Old Boys Network had seen to it that his rise through the ranks to starship command was smooth, without any of the bumps and bruises that would have destroyed a lesser career.  Everyone expected him to - eventually - take his place amongst the leaders of his country.  People opened doors for him even when - on the face of it - he was far beneath them.

But this ... this was different.

He took his place amongst the wallflowers, the secretaries and aides who supported the cabinet ministers, and looked around the room.  The bunker was miles below London, but it looked like a normal cabinet office, complete with a framed portrait of the king and his children hanging on the wooden walls.  A small drinks cabinet sat in one corner, utterly untouched.  The wallflowers were providing tea and coffee for their principals - Stephen was amused to note that he didn’t rate coffee - but no alcohol.  Stephen wondered, as the Prime Minister strode into the room, if there genuinely was anything in the cabinet.  The government officials should know better than to drink on the job.

Although they’ve had a terrible shock, he thought, grimly.  The first reports had arrived while they’d been driving to Whitehall.  A few hours later, neither Stephen nor his brother would have been able to get through the streets without a police escort.  And there’s little they can do but issue orders and wait for them to be carried out.

He frowned, inwardly, as he met the First Space Lord’s eyes.  Admiral Sir John Naiser didn’t look pleased to see Stephen, although the Admiral’s staff would presumably have informed him Stephen had been invited to accompany his brother.  Naiser had worked his way up the ranks without having a powerful family, although - as a legitimate war hero - he hadn’t entirely been without assets of his own.  Stephen wouldn’t have blamed the older man for resenting his presence.  It was a grim reminder that class and accidents of birth still counted in society.  Naiser would never be amongst the greatest of the great and he knew it.

And he deserves better, Stephen thought.  He led the navy to victory in the last interstellar war.

The Prime Minister sat down at the head of the table.  “Gentlemen, be seated,” he said.  “This meeting is now in session.”

Stephen took a breath.  The Prime Minister looked to have aged twenty years in the space of a day.  It was one thing to hear about disaster hundreds of light years away, but quite another to know that the war had come home with a vengeance.  Bombings and shootings on the streets ... it sounded as if hell itself had come to Britain.  Stephen had hoped that the first reports had been exaggerated - they always were, in his experience - but the grim look on the Prime Minister’s face suggested otherwise.  The war had very definitely come home.

“Chief Constable,” the Prime Minister said.  “Please update us on the current ... situation.”

The Chief Constable didn’t look pleased, Stephen noted.  Andrew Middlebrow was a tall man, with a distinguished record, but he wouldn’t have reached the very highest levels without a number of political connections.  It would be easy for the poor man’s patrons to drop him like a hot rock if they happened to need a scapegoat for the disaster.  Middlebrow should be in his office, helping to coordinate the civil and military response, not briefing government officials deep under London.  Stephen understood, though.  A senior officer could issue orders, but he’d never be able to do anything for himself.  All he could do was watch and wait while his subordinates dealt with the crisis on their own.

No wonder so many higher officers turn into micromanagers, Stephen thought, with a flicker of empathy.  It’s the only way they can feel in control.

Middlebrow stood at parade rest, clasping his beefy hands behind his back.  “Yes, Prime Minister,” he said.  His voice was under tight control, suggesting that he was more than a little agitated.  Normally, the briefing would be given by a junior officer.  “Over the last two hours, there have been a series of attacks on military, police and government installations across the country.  Preliminary reports from America and France suggest that they, too, have come under attack, although details are sparse.  The attacks were closely-coordinated, almost all of them launched before our alert status could be raised.”

He tapped a control, bringing up a holographic map of the country.  Stephen leaned forward, feeling cold.  A handful of red icons - mostly in or around London - glared at him.  He knew very little about urban combat - he preferred to leave such operations to the groundpounders - but the display looked intimidating.  London appeared to be surrounded by red icons.  It was hard to recall that each of the attacks - individually - were nothing more than pinpricks.  The country had barely been scratched.

“In almost all cases, the attackers were caught and killed before they could inflict major damage,” Middlebrow said.  “The most serious damage was done to a recruiting barracks in Slough, where a truck bomb was rammed through the gates and detonated on the parade ground.  Other installations were barely damaged, although casualties were quite high.  The attackers showed no concern for their own lives and managed to take out a number of defenders before they were killed.  In some cases, they were reported as continuing to fight until they were literally shot to pieces.”

They were infected, Stephen thought.  He shivered, inwardly.  The virus has reached Earth.

“Our preliminary examinations of the dead bodies revealed the presence of the virus,” Middlebrow said, echoing Stephen’s thoughts.  “Right now, we are attempting to trace them back to their point of infection and ...”

“This isn’t good enough,” the Home Secretary snapped.  “I thought we had defences in place to stop this ... this kind of infection!”

“We took all rational precautions,” Middlebrow said.  “However, sir, the plain truth is that there are simply too many ways to smuggle something down to Earth that bypass most of our security checks.  We have tightened things up as much as possible, but gaps remain.  We may discover, for example, that a lone starship crewman was infected and ... induced ... to carry the virus through security.  We’ll have to backtrack the infected to figure it out.”

“Fucking careless,” the Home Secretary growled.  “Prime Minister, I insist on an official inquiry ...”

“After we have handled the current crisis, we will have time to reassess our safety precautions,” the Prime Minister said.  “Chief Constable, what are the odds of tracking down any surviving infected?”

Middlebrow winced.  “Poor,” he said.  “We believed our testing regime was sufficient, but clearly we were wrong.  The combination of blood tests and biological warfare sniffers needs to be reassessed.  If they pass through a checkpoint, we’ll catch them; if they don’t ... they may be able to hide out for quite some time.  There are large swathes of the country with very limited security.”

“So they could be ... breeding ... somewhere in Wales or Scotland or wherever,” the Home Secretary said.  “Is there no way we can find them?”

“We have deployed an extensive array of sensors,” Middlebrow said.  “And we have ordered civilians to return home and stay there.  Anyone still moving at the end of the cut-off period will draw attention.  The police force will investigate any signs of trouble.”

“But we can’t keep people inside forever,” the Foreign Secretary said quietly.  “They’ll start to starve.”

“And the economy will tumble,” the Prime Minister added.  “We can’t keep the country in a state of emergency indefinitely.”

“This is going to be worse than the Troubles,” the Home Secretary predicted.  “Anyone could be an enemy.”

Stephen nodded in agreement.  Anyone could be infected.  Anyone ... or anything.  The police checkpoints were looking for humans, not dogs or cats or even mice.  The xenospecialists had warned that the virus might be able to infect dogs and cats, although they had suggested that the animals couldn’t host enough of the virus to make it a viable threat.  Stephen hoped that was true, but it struck him as a classic example of wishful thinking.  The virus could hardly be blind to the prospect of using smaller animals to spread itself.  The only upside, as far as anyone could tell, was that insects couldn’t become hosts.  That would have made the virus unstoppable.

“And where did they get the weapons?”  The Home Secretary glared around the room.  “And the bombs?”

“Our preliminary assessment suggests that some of the weapons were legal, their owners presumably infected and turned against us.”  There was a hint of irritation in Middlebrow’s voice.  “And the bombs were all jury-rigged devices, the explosives put together from freely-available compounds.  I have no doubt we’ll eventually discover that shopkeepers and suppliers were infected and, again, forced to work against us.”

“And the virus can turn our people against us so easily?”  The Home Secretary sounded sceptical.  “There’s no way to resist?”

The Prime Minister glanced at the First Space Lord, who nodded.  “There is considerable evidence, Home Secretary, that the virus is capable of both accessing and using the memories of its host.  The host, to all intents and purposes, no longer exists.  They are not held at gunpoint, they are not reconditioned ... they are no longer who or what they were.  They do not choose to betray us.  They are not us any longer.”

“Crap,” the Home Secretary said.  “There’s nothing we can do about it?”

“We have taken precautions to prevent infection,” the First Space Lord said, quietly.  “But once the virus gets firmly established ...”

It becomes impossible to stop, Stephen thought.  He knew how infiltrations worked.  The virus, he suspected, understood it intimately.  Infiltrations and infections followed the same basic idea.  The first thing an infection did was weaken the host’s ability to fight, either by attacking the immune system or trying to gain control of the security services.  If we don’t know that something is wrong, how can we stop it?

“They’re not good enough,” the Home Secretary growled.

“There is little else we can do,” the Chief Constable said.  “We can expand the blood testing program - we have no choice, now we know the virus is loose on Earth.  We can limit public transport in hopes of slowing any major outbreak ...”

And that won’t be easy, Stephen thought.  We shouldn’t be thinking of this as a viral outbreak.  We should be treating this as a biological attack.  The virus is far more intelligent than we realised.

He shivered.  The Age of Unrest had seen a handful of biological attacks, all carried out by terrorists who had very little to lose.  They’d taken advantage of advances in genetic bioengineering technology to attack their enemies ... thankfully, the science hadn’t been advanced enough for the engineered viruses to spread before they were detected and countered.  A little more good luck for the attackers - and bad luck for the entire human race - and the entire planet might have been turned into a graveyard.  And now ... the virus was intelligent, combining a deep understanding of its own nature with a complete disregard for the lives of its hosts.  It was easy to imagine it evading checkpoints and spreading itself over the entire planet.

“I’m sure the police have the matter well in hand,” the Secretary of Defence said. “The question now is why ... why now?  Why launch the attacks now?”

“The attacks started shortly after the Battle of Falkirk,” the First Space Lord said.  “That cannot be a coincidence.”

“And that means they have access to the flicker network,” the Home Secretary said.  “Or even the media.”

And if the media is infected, Stephen mused, could we tell the difference?

“We told the media not to report on the battle,” the Prime Minister said.

“But rumours would have spread anyway,” the Home Secretary countered.  “And ...”

He took a breath.  “How do we know that we were told the truth?”

The Prime Minister frowned.  “What do you mean?”

“The virus can pose as a host, right?”  The Home Secretary looked from face to face.  “It wears a host’s face, speaks with a host’s voice ... there’s no way to tell if someone has been infected without a blood test.  Prime Minister ... how do we know that the entire MNF hasn’t been infected?”

“The MNF understood the dangers,” the First Space Lord said, quietly.  “The virus did attempt to board a handful of ships, but ... none of them were infected.  Their crews took prompt action to remove the boarding parties before it was too late.”

“And if they failed?”

“There were contingency plans,” the First Space Lord said.  “It would be difficult to subvert them.”

“For someone from the outside, yes.”  The Home Secretary didn’t sound convinced.  “But what about someone on the inside?  A single corrupt clerk in an office can do more damage - and hide it - than an entire team of burglars!”

“They would have to get inside first,” the First Space Lord reminded him.  “And, like I said, the MNF understood the dangers.  They took precautions.”

Stephen kept his face impassive.  It was true that Admiral Weisskopf would have taken precautions, but it was also true that there was no way to know if the precautions had been completely successful.  The Home Secretary was right, damn him.  Sneaking onto a planet was far easier than boarding a starship - and Admiral Weisskopf had ordered regular blood tests - but there was no way to be entirely certain.  They lived in an era when almost anything could be faked.  There were talking heads on the nightly news that were almost certainly nothing more than computer-generated composites.  Why couldn’t the virus have taken control of the flicker network and sent them misleading reports?

They managed to take control of Dezhnev and send her against us, he thought.  Why couldn't they do the same with an American battleship or two?

He shook his head.  Dezhnev and her crew hadn’t known the dangers.  They’d thought they were facing a conventional opponent ... his lips twitched in grim amusement.  The crew might not have realised they were facing an opponent at all.  They’d had strict orders not to do anything that might be construed as hostile, anything that might spark off a third interstellar war with a mysterious alien race ... they had very clear orders not to open fire unless there was a clear and present danger.  It would be easy for the virus to take control of Dezhnev before the crew realised it was under attack.  Stephen could imagine a dozen ways to do it.

It may not matter, he reminded himself.  The virus punched us right out of Falkirk.  And now, it’s on Earth.

Stephen allowed none of his feelings to show as he surveyed the room.  The First Space Lord looked calm and composed - he understood the realities of the situation - but the politicians seemed badly worried.  They looked as if they were on the verge of panic.  Stephen knew how hard it would be for the virus to work its way into the very heart of government or take control of the orbital defence systems, but the politicians didn’t.  They feared the worst.  And they were all old enough to remember the Bombardment.

The Prime Minister’s voice echoed in the silence.  “There is no way we can talk to the virus,” he said.  “We have no choice but to press on.”

“There has to be some way to make ourselves understood,” the Foreign Secretary objected.

“The virus doesn’t seem to think like us,” the First Space Lord said.  “And even if it did ... why should it talk to us?  It doesn’t want to come to terms, it doesn’t want surrender ... it doesn’t even want submission.  We are locked in a war for survival, a war that has just come home.  If we lose, we lose everything.”

And that’s the nub, Stephen thought.  There had been no prospect of complete extermination during the First and Second World Wars.  Humanity as a whole would not be wiped out by the conflict.  But any war with an alien power put the survival of humanity itself at risk.  The Tadpoles had killed millions of people during the Bombardment.  God alone knew how many people would have died if they’d won the war.  The virus won’t just defeat us, if it wins the war.  It will destroy us.

“So we keep fighting,” the Prime Minister said.  “And we tighten our precautions, once again.”

“And then the virus will get around them, once again,” the Home Secretary said.  “Whatever we do, it will find a way to circumvent.  We need to find a way to take the war into enemy space and finish it.”

“The virus is a unique threat,” the First Space Lord said.  “And one that requires us to work closely with other nations to defeat.  But it is not all-powerful.  It has its limits.  It can be beaten.  We have not lost this war.”

No, Stephen thought.  He remembered the fleet of warships gathering in Alien-One.  But it may be too powerful for us to handle.

“We lost a battle,” the Prime Minister agreed.  “But we have not lost the war.”

“And our allies are coming,” the Foreign Secretary said.  “We are not alone.”

“No,” the Prime Minister said.  “And that makes all the difference.”

Chapter Two

“I trust you found the meeting to be interesting,” the First Space Lord said.  “It should have been an educational experience.”

Stephen took a moment to organise his thoughts.  The First Space Lord had caught his attention as soon as the COBRA meeting had come to an end, summoning him to the Admiralty once the roads were clear.  Stephen had known better than to argue, even when his brother had demanded his attention.  There was little to be gained by picking a fight with his uniformed superior.  Besides, he could catch up with his brother later.  The latest update from the BBC had made it clear that all non-essential flights to orbit had been suspended as long as the state of emergency remained in effect.

“It was ... interesting,” he said, finally.  “I ... permission to speak freely?”

“Granted,” the First Space Lord said.

“I thought the politicians had to have military experience,” Stephen said.  “Or at least some kind of experience.”

“The Secretary of Defence does have to have military experience,” the First Space Lord said, calmly.  “Everyone else ... they don’t have to have any relevant experience in the field to serve as a cabinet minister.  They have staff to handle the practical details.”

He looked as if he wanted to say something more, but stopped himself.  Stephen understood, more than he cared to admit.  The cabinet ministers were selected for political reasons, not because they were the best candidates for the job.  They didn’t always know how their departments worked, let alone what the people who were nominally under their command actually did.  They tended to get blindsided by procedures and polices laid down by their predecessors they didn’t realise hadn’t been changed simply because there’d been a change in government.  It wasn’t easy for them to change anything, particularly when the civil service was opposed to change.  The governing system made sure of it.

“They understand that the war needs to be fought,” the First Space Lord said, briskly.  “Right now, Captain, that is all that matters.”

“Yes, sir,” Stephen said.

“And the situation has become dire,” the First Space Lord added.  He pointed to a seat.  “We have to decide how to proceed.”

He took his seat behind the desk and keyed a switch.  A holographic star chart appeared above his desk, the handful of alien-occupied systems glowing red against the green and blue of humanity’s stars.  Stephen felt his heart sink as he realised just how deeply the virus had sliced into the human sphere.  Twelve colony worlds now lay within its grasp, just waiting to be infected.  The colonists knew what to expect, but ... Stephen doubted they could save themselves.  Only a handful had any real defences, none of which were capable of standing off a major fleet.  Their only hope was the virus deciding not to mop up the colonies while Earth and the major worlds were still untouched.

And it doesn’t have to detach entire battle squadrons to bring most of those worlds to heel, Stephen thought.  A lone destroyer would be more than sufficient to smash the defences and infect the population.

“We were able to re-establish contact with the MNF when it withdrew to UAS-4823,” the First Space Lord said.  “The virus was apparently able to take out the flicker station in Honshu, breaking our lines of communication.  Admiral Weisskopf - or the person we think is Admiral Weisskopf - has sent a full report.”

His lips twisted.  Stephen understood.  The odds of the virus being able to capture USS Texas and her crew intact were very low - it was far more likely that the ship would be destroyed in combat - but there was no way to be sure.  The Home Secretary had had a point, when he’d raised concerns about just who was on the far end of the line.  Maybe the man was being paranoid or ... maybe he was right to be concerned.  If the virus had managed to infect Admiral Weisskopf ... Stephen shuddered.  It didn’t bear thinking about.

“We lost a third of the MNF outright,” the First Space Lord said.  “Another third is heavily damaged.  Admiral Weisskopf made it clear that a number of ships were under tow. The remainder are low on ammunition.  They will not be able to make a stand if the virus gives chase.”

“And it probably absorbed navigational data from Dezhnev and her crew,” Stephen said.  “It won’t have to waste time surveying the tramlines to pick out the route to Earth.”

“Probably,” the First Space Lord said.  “We would certainly have drawn navigational data from a captured ship, if we had that level of access.”

We wouldn’t have risked sending her into battle, Stephen thought.  A captured starship - a captured alien starship - was a prize beyond price.  The Royal Navy was prepared to pay millions in prize money to the crew who brought home an intact alien ship, knowing that the value of the intelligence bonanza would be in the billions.  It would take years, perhaps, to finish stripping the hull of valuable information.  Why did the virus risk us recapturing or destroying Dezhnev?

He shook his head, dismissively.  It wouldn’t have taken long for the captured ship’s datanodes to be downloaded into an alien datacore, not if the virus had access to the ship’s command codes.  There was no reason to assume the virus hadn’t copied everything from Dezhnev before using her as a modified Trojan Horse.  Anything else ... he cursed the security nightmare under his breath.  Anything else was just whistling in the dark.  The virus owned and operated starships, for God’s sake!  It might be alien, but it couldn’t be that alien.

The First Space Lord nodded to the hologram.  “The remainder of the fleet is currently falling back on Zheng He, a Chinese colony and fleet base.  The Chinese didn’t have that long to turn the base into a fortress, but they’ve done enough to give us a reasonable chance of stalling the virus long enough for us to bring new weapons and starships online.  We may not be able to win this war by outproducing the virus, Captain, but we may be able to develop new weapons and suchlike to tip the balance in our favour.”

“Yes, sir,” Stephen said.  “I saw the projections.”

“And absolutely none of them are remotely cheerful.”  The First Space Lord grimaced, as if he had bitten into something rotten.   “The best-case projections give the virus a major production advantage over us - over all of us, British and Americans and everyone else put together.  Their sheer willingness to deploy vast numbers of long-range missiles alone ... well, let’s just say we may be heavily outgunned.  Our only real advantage is, I think, a certain degree of tactical flexibility and we may lose that if it absorbs more of our people.”

“Perhaps, sir,” Stephen said.  “It’s difficult to predict how their starships will react to any given situation.   Sometimes they’ll come boiling after us, the moment they catch a sniff of us; sometimes they’ll just ignore us until we make ourselves impossible to ignore.”

“And there’s no way to know which choice they’ll make until they do,” the First Space Lord agreed.  “They may also believe that they don’t need to make any changes to their tactical doctrine.”

Stephen nodded in grim agreement.  He’d studied decision-making during his time at the academy and his instructors had pointed out hundreds of examples of human commanders making the same mistakes, time and time again, because they didn’t face any personal consequences for their failure.  They cared more about public relations - and the opinions of their superiors - than about the men under their command.  It was easier and safer to send the men into the meatgrinder, time and time again, than to suggest ways to outflank the enemy and save lives.  The virus might feel the same way.  It might care as little for the loss of a single starship as Stephen cared for a single strand of hair.

And if what they’re doing worked in every previous war they’ve fought, he told himself, they may see no reason to change.

“On the other hand, we can be reasonably sure they’ll throw everything they have at Zheng He as soon as they realise that the MNF has stopped running,” the First Space Lord said.  “They already know the fleet has been badly weakened.”

Stephen nodded.  “They must know.”

“Quite.”  The First Space Lord tapped a switch.  “There have been a number of high-level discussions between senior military officers over the past few days.  We were contemplating reinforcements for the MNF even before the virus launched its second offensive against Falkirk.  Invincible and a number of other starships will be dispatched to Zheng He to back up the fleet and hold the line.”

“Sir.”  Stephen took a breath and started again.  “Sir, Invincible is in no condition to return to the front.  Our hull plating has been badly damaged, our starfighter squadrons have been shot to ribbons ...”

The First Space Lord held up a hand.  “Captain, under normal circumstances, I’d be happy to give you, your ship and your crew a long period to recuperate.  I’d even push for two-thirds of your crew to be reassigned to other ships while Invincible is put back together.  But now ... we are short on starships that can be rushed to the front.  The politicians are unlikely to allow us to draw more ships from the home defence formations, particularly not now.  We can only throw a handful of starships into the front line.  Invincible is one of them.”

Stephen swallowed, hard.  “How long do we have?”

“The discussions are still underway, but I think you’ll receive your formal orders by the end of the day.”  The First Space Lord frowned.  “And I think you’ll be told to depart within a week - ten days, at the most.  Can your ship be readied in time?”

“There is no way we can return to full fighting trim in ten days,” Stephen said, flatly.  He forced himself to remember the last report from the engineers, after they’d surveyed the damage and planned the repairs.  “If we had emergency priority, with repair work going on around the clock, we might be able to get up to eighty, perhaps ninety, percent of readiness.  But that might be dangerously optimistic.”

“Probably too optimistic,” the First Space Lord said.  He’d served a term in the shipyards, if Stephen recalled correctly.  The Vanguard and Invincible classes had practically been his brainchildren.  “But you will have emergency priority.  I’ll make sure you’re assigned all the workers and supplies you need.”

“That will be difficult,” Stephen predicted.  “Home Fleet will want ...”

“Home Fleet will have to put up with it,” the First Space Lord said.  “We must keep the virus away from Earth, at all costs.  If that means sending half-repaired ships into battle ...”

He studied the holographic chart for a long moment.  “Our allies are redeploying their ships to support us, Captain, but it will be several months before they can arrive in force.  If we can hold the line that long, we should be able to get the remainder of our industrial base into full war production and start churning out new weapons.  The boffins are sure they can come up with something to even the odds.”

Stephen didn’t bother to hide his scepticism.  The boffins had been promising all kinds of technological advances for years, from long-range energy weapons that could slice through a starship like a hot knife through butter to forcefields that could protect a starship from a direct nuclear strike, but so far none of the advances had ever materialised.  They’d inched forward slowly, only jumping forward when they had a piece of alien technology to reverse-engineer and put into mass production.  There was no point in holding one’s breath for a technological silver bullet.  The virus would have to be stopped the old-fashioned way.

And we know it doesn’t have access to super-advanced technology, either, he thought.  It wasn’t a particularly reassuring thought.  It just has more than enough starships to crush us by sheer weight of numbers.

“There are some promising ideas,” the First Space Lord said, calmly.  “Quite a few technological advances seemed impossible until they became reality.”

“Yes, sir,” Stephen said.

“But there is a second concern,” the First Space Lord added.  “It is quite likely that the officer in command of the reinforcements will be a Russian.”

Stephen blinked.  “What?  But ...”

The First Space Lord nodded, curtly.  “Believe me, I am aware of the political implications.  There are too many unanswered questions surrounding Dezhnev and whatever orders she might have been given for me to feel happy about any of this.  However, the Russians will be making the largest contribution.  They practically have to be given the command.”

“Sir.”  Stephen forced himself to calm down.  “Can we trust them?”

“I trust them to know where their own best interests lie,” the First Space Lord said.  “They have nothing to gain and a great deal to lose by betraying humanity to any alien foe, particularly the virus.  They’re not going to be playing Vichy Russia when the virus doesn’t need collaborators.  The risks of working with them, Captain, are far exceeded by the dangers of not working with them.  We need to leave the past in the past and work together to save humanity from destruction.”

Stephen lowered his eyes.  “Yes, sir.”

“That said, you are to keep an eye out for trouble,” the First Space Lord added.  “And report to me if you sense anything out of kilter.”

“Yes, sir.”  Stephen cursed under his breath.  The orders would be difficult, if not impossible, to follow.  “I’ll keep an eye on them.”

The First Space Lord smiled, briefly.  “Do your best,” he said.  “Admiral Svetlana Zadornov is known for being competent, as well as a patriot.  You can work with her.”

“Yes, sir,” Stephen said, again.  “Shouldn’t it be Zadornova?”

“I believe that Admiral Zadornov prefers the masculine form of her name,” the First Space Lord said.  “She is certainly never called Zadornova in official dispatches.  And, given where she is, you can assume she’s more than merely competent.”

“She wouldn’t have reached high rank without being extremely capable,” Stephen agreed, calmly.  It was unusual to encounter a woman in the Russian military, let alone one who held such a high rank.  “And she was in the Battle of Earth.”

“And received medals from all of the Great Powers,” the First Space Lord said.  “She was one of the first officers to receive the Star of Terra.  There aren’t many other officers, male or female, who have been honoured by the entire planet.”

“Yes, sir,” Stephen said.  “I won’t take her lightly.”

“No,” the First Space Lord agreed.  “If nothing else, bear in mind she will be commanding a bigger ship.”

Stephen had to smile.  “Yes, sir.”

“You will also be playing host to a starfighter squadron - perhaps more than one - from another nation,” the First Space Lord added.  “We’re still smoothing out the details.  The Germans have offered a starfighter squadron or two, but the French and Poles are throwing out objections and the Germans might wind up being reassigned to home defence duties instead.   I’d hoped for an American squadron, but it looks like they’re being reserved for their own ships.  The Japanese are the only other prospects and they have colony worlds to defend, too.”

“And there’s little prospect of those worlds being ignored,” Stephen mused.  He studied the starchart for a moment, thinking fast.  “Have we managed to draw anything from the captured datacores yet?”

“The boffins are still working on it.”  The First Space Lord looked displeased.  “The current theory is that the virus stored astrographic information within its cells, rather than ... well, anything we would recognise as a datacore.  They haven’t managed to pull anything legible from the captured ships.  On the other hand” - he shrugged - “they might simply not have figured out how to work the system yet.  Alien technology is always difficult to crack.”

Stephen nodded.  The Tadpoles might not have been human, but they’d been reasonably humanoid.  Their computers had been different, yet they hadn’t been that different.  The virus, on the other hand, was completely alien.  Who knew how a living virus thought?  The boffins had been sure they’d crack the datacores, but how long would it take?  And how would the boffins even know they’d succeeded?

Starcharts are understandable, he told himself firmly.  And we can pick them out by matching the data against our files.

“I wish we didn’t have to send you back into action so quickly,” the First Space Lord said, grimly.  “The exigencies of war demand it ...”

“I understand,” Stephen said.  “There will be ... issues ... of course, but we will cope.”

“And I’m sorry about the lack of shore leave for your crew,” the First Space Lord added.  “It won’t do wonders for morale.”

“No,” Stephen agreed.  “We knew what we were doing when we took the oath, sir.  We’ll cope.”

He winced, inwardly.  He didn’t fear a mutiny - the Royal Navy hadn’t suffered a mutiny for hundreds of years - but he knew what a lack of shore leave could do to a crew.  They would start to suffer, start to slow down ... too many experienced men and women would decline to re-enlist when their original terms of service came to an end.  Better civvy street, they’d say, than the military.  Civvy street wouldn’t jerk them around and force them to remain on duty indefinitely ... he shook his head.  No one would be discharged during the war, not when trained officers and crew were desperately needed.  They’d just have to suck it up.

And I’ll just have to hope that they can cope, he told himself.  And that we can cope with any problems that might arise.

“Very good, Captain,” the First Space Lord said.  “And good luck.”

“Yes, sir.”

Chapter Three

“There isn’t anything on the datanet,” Corporal Glen Hammersmith said.  “The whole planet has gone quiet.”

“Maybe they’re all dead,” Corporal Roger Tindal offered.  “Or infected.”

Captain Alice Campbell rubbed her eyes as she forced herself to throw off the last vestiges of sleep and get up.  The shuttle flight shouldn’t have been more than a couple of hours, but the emergency on Earth - whatever the hell it was - had forced the pilot to take a long detour before resuming his original course.  Alice was no stranger to being told to hurry up and wait - or being ordered to fill out hundreds of forms, only to be told afterwards that half of them weren’t necessary - but she had to admit there was something odd about this order.  They were a long way from Earth.  Whatever was happening on the surface couldn’t have much to do with them.

Unless the virus really has infected the entire planet, she thought.  She stood, gritting her teeth.  Her body felt ... strange, as if it wasn’t completely hers.  It might have reached the homeworld before we knew what we were facing.

She glanced at the displays, keeping her face under tight control.  One showed an actress running from a monster, screaming her head off; the second was the live feed from the BBC, probably already hours out of date.  She wondered, idly, which one was more realistic.  The girl was wearing a dress that should have tripped her up a dozen times in the last few minutes, but the BBC wasn’t known for detailed investigative reporting these days.  It was probably repeating the government’s talking points, whatever the hell they were.  The crisis, whatever it was, had only just started.  The government itself probably didn't know what its talking points were, yet.  It would take hours, at least, for an official statement to emerge.

“The entire planet couldn’t be infected,” she said, finally.  “Did they sound the system-wide alert?”

“No, Captain,” Hammersmith said.  “There doesn’t seem to be any alert off Earth.”

So far, Alice thought.  They were two light-hours from Earth.  The BBC’s talking head had finished his babbling two hours ago.  They might have already sounded the alert for the rest of the solar system.

She keyed a switch, bringing up the long-range sensors.  The solar system looked normal.  There were no vast fleets of alien starships crashing through the tramlines, no sudden silence as asteroid bases and industrial nodes shut down hastily to avoid being detected ... she shook her head at the thought.  The virus probably knew everything its unwilling hosts had known.  It probably knew precisely where to find humanity’s industrial nodes.  A conventional foe would set out to destroy them, as Alice and her team had destroyed an alien shipyard months ago, but the virus might think it could take the shipyards intact instead.  Alice had a terrible feeling that the virus might be right.

The intercom bleeped.  “We’ve just received permission to approach the base,” the pilot said, calmly.  “We’ll be docking in thirty minutes.”

“He probably means thirty hours,” Hammersmith stage-whispered.

“I heard that,” the pilot said.  He sounded more amused than indignant.  He probably hadn’t enjoyed the long flight either.  “And they’re very insistent on us docking as soon as possible.”

“I’ll go freshen up,” Alice said.  “You two ... get ready.”

She turned and made her way down to the washroom.  It felt weird to have only three passengers in a shuttle designed for an entire company of marines, but there were some definite advantages.  She splashed water on her face, then peered at herself in the mirror.  The tired-looking woman staring back at her was almost a stranger.  She touched her close-cropped hair, silently wondering why she hadn’t had it permanently shaved after she’d been told she could return to active duty.  The marks on her pale skin were a grim reminder of how hard she’d worked to rebuild muscle mass over the last couple of weeks.  No one would have blamed her for giving up, she’d been told, but she knew that wasn’t true.  She would have blamed herself.

And then they summon me here, she thought, grimly.  She’d thought she was free of the doctors, free of their prodding as they tried to figure out why she’d survived being infected; she’d thought she had her own life back ... although, she conceded with a wry smile, she’d chosen the wrong career if she wanted freedom.  What on Earth do they want?

She took a long breath, gathering herself.  The orders had been clear.  She was to report to the asteroid base, bringing with her two men to serve as an escort.  Alice hadn’t been sure what to make of it.  She was hardly a high-value target, hardly the sort of person to draw attention from would-be kidnappers; she wasn’t even a high-ranking military officer who might have reasonably expected bodyguards.  Who was going to threaten her?  And, if she was under arrest, they would have sent a platoon of redcaps to escort her to jail.  They wouldn’t have asked her to pick her own guards ...

A quiver ran through the shuttle.  She put her thoughts aside as she opened the hatch and made her way back to her seat.  The display showed a pair of starfighters falling into escort position, ready to engage if the shuttle turned hostile.  Alice rather suspected that the precaution was designed to calm civilian nerves, rather than do anything effective.  If someone had sneaked a nuke onto the shuttle, there would be no way to detect it before the shuttle docked and - by then - it would be too late.  Alice had no doubt of it.

Tindal glanced at her as she sat down.  “What do you think they want, Captain?”

“Buggered if I know,” Alice said.  The BBC talking head was still blathering about something that had happened in London.  “I guess we’ll find out in a moment or two.”

The shuttle rocked again, a low thump echoing through the craft as it docked.  Alice was mildly surprised they hadn’t landed in a proper shuttlebay, where it would be a great deal easier to unload the shuttle, but she supposed security was paramount.  She stood as the gravity flickered, the shuttle’s onboard field giving way to the base’s, and made her way to the airlock.  It was already hissing open.  Alice wasn’t too surprised to see that the hatch on the far side was firmly closed.  An Earther could get sloppy if she wished, but someone who lived in space couldn’t afford to play games.  Space rarely gave anyone a second chance if they fucked up.

She walked down the tube, barely aware of the two men following.  There was a long pause as the rear hatch closed - she heard it shut behind her - before the forward hatch hissed open.  She wasn’t remotely surprised to see a pair of armoured men, their weapons not quite pointing at the newcomers, in the featureless room beyond.  They tested Hammersmith and Tindal quickly, then waved a pair of scanners over Alice before allowing the three of them through the next airlock.  Alice doubted they were happy about simply allowing her to enter the base.  She tested positive for the virus, even though it was dead.

Or, more accurately, it can’t control me, she thought.  She had nightmares, sometimes, when she thought it might still be able to influence her.  If her mentality was changing, and all the standards she used to measure it were changing too, how would she know her mentality was changing?  It’s still inside me.

She looked around, interested, as they passed through the airlock.  The room on the far side was a simple reception chamber, with everything from comfortable chairs and a drinks dispenser to a large display showing the latest updates from Earth.  The tickertape was talking about bombings in Washington, New York and San Francisco.  Two men were waiting for her, both wearing dark blue uniforms.  She didn’t know either of them, but she guessed they were xenospecialists.  Who else would be interested in meeting her?

“Thank you for coming,” the lead xenospecialist said.  “I am Doctor Percival Adamson and this is Doctor Bendix.”

“Charmed,” Alice lied.  The two doctors had the air of medical researchers, rather than real doctors or headshrinkers.  They showed no reluctance to shake her hand as she introduced the two corporals.  She guessed they knew they didn’t have to be concerned about being infected, at least from her.  “You do appreciate that you called me away from my duties ...?”

“We do,” Adamson said.  “But we also feel that your duties are actually here.”

Alice felt her heart sink.  “You want me to join you here?  I don’t even know where here is!”

“This is Base Zero Alpha,” Bendix said.  He was a tall bald man, with pale skin that suggested he’d spent his entire life amongst the asteroids.  “And we think you are uniquely placed to assist us.”

And the rest of your crew, who are no doubt watching us from a distance, Alice thought, coldly.  There would be limits to just how far they’d trust anyone.  The black-ops community rarely showed its hand openly.  What do you want from me?

“We have much to talk about,” Adamson said.  He gestured to the chairs.  “Please, be seated.  Can I fetch you a cup of tea?  Or coffee?”

“Coffee would be good, thanks,” Alice said.  She glanced at her escort.  “For you?”

“Tea, please,” Hammersmith said, following her lead.  “Roger?”

“Tea, please,” Tindal said.

Alice sat down and watched as Adamson prepared the drinks with practiced ease.  Whatever they wanted was going to be bad.  She was morbidly certain of it.  They wouldn’t be plying her with tea and coffee if they just wanted to ask her a few questions.  Hell, they could have just sent her an email if they’d thought of something that wasn’t covered in her reports.  Alice found it hard to imagine that there was anything she hadn’t mentioned.  She’d spent weeks putting together an outline of everything that had happened to her since the first infection.

She took the coffee from Adamson and sipped thoughtfully.  The drink was milky, nowhere near as strong as she preferred.  She opened her mouth to ask for something darker, then changed her mind.  There was no point in pushing matters too far.  Better to answer their questions and get out, before her superiors ordered her to stay.  She cursed under her breath as Adamson sat down, balancing a mug of tea on his knee.  She’d thought she was done with being a medical research subject.

“As you know, you and you alone are the only person to have endured a full-fledged infection and survived,” Adamson said.  “It was a remarkable achievement.”

And, if we both know it, why are you taking us through it again?  Alice sat up, straighter.  I know what happened.  I was there.

“So far, no one else has survived,” Adamson continued.  “A handful of minor infections were stopped in their tracks by prompt treatment, before the virus could make any permanent changes to their bodies, but otherwise ... once the virus gets a solid foothold, it is only a matter of time before it overwhelms the brain and takes control.  And then the only real solution is euthanasia.”

Hammersmith leaned forward.  “But you did save Captain Campbell, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but the virus had not yet reached her brain,” Adamson said.  “We were able to kill it before it took complete control.  The treatments ... there is no way they could be used to kill the viral particles in a host’s brain without killing the host, too.”

“The operation would be a success, but the patient would die,” Alice said.  She took a sip of her coffee.  “None of this is actually new to me.”

“No,” Adamson agreed.  “But it does provide necessary context.”

He paused, his eyes fixed on his teacup.  “We were ... intrigued by your report from Alien-3,” he said.  “You stated, specifically, that the infected aliens simply ignored you, even as they chased your comrades back to the shuttle.  They took no notice of you.”

“I recall,” Alice said.

“We believe that your scent, for want of a better term, was permanently altered by the virus,” Adamson said.  “You were ignored because you smelled right to them.  I think that, judging from our work here, you might have been ignored even if you were shooting and throwing grenades at them.  It would take them some time to realise that you were a possible threat.”

“Are you sure?”  Alice didn’t believe it.  “I would be shooting at them, not ... walking past with my hands by my sides.  They would have to realise I was hostile.”

“We think it depends on just how much of the virus’s ... ah, brainpower is involved,” Adamson said.  “If it isn’t focused on the scene, it may not be able to realise - at least at first - that it has a problem.”

“Like an elephant,” Bendix said.  “If you stamp on an elephant’s foot, it takes the elephant some time to realise that it needs to say ouch.”

“And then it stomps you into the ground,” Alice muttered.  She still didn’t believe it.  “I wouldn’t care to try it.”

“Our research here has been focused on finding ways to disrupt the virus’s internal communications,” Adamson explained.  “We know - now - that it communicates through more than just scent.  Each individual host breathes out one set of particles and breathes in another ... in effect, the virus is a giant decentralised network.”

“Just like the old internet,” Tindal said.

“Exactly.”  Bendix sounded surprised.  Alice reflected, rather sourly, that he’d probably thought that a soldier couldn’t count to eleven without taking off his pants.  “And, just like the old internet, we think it can be disrupted.  We might even be able to infiltrate the network and turn the virus against itself.  That, too, was a problem with the old internet.”

“And you think you can take down the virus’s communications.”  Alice met Adamson’s eyes, evenly.  “What does this have to do with me?”

Adamson looked embarrassed.  “The changes in your scent are a limited form of inter-viral communication,” he said.  “You’re basically telling the virus that you’re friendly.”

Alice’s lips twitched.  “I’m lying.”

“Yeah, but we think the virus doesn’t really have a concept of lying,” Adamson said.  He dropped his eyes.  “I mean ... not in the sense it can’t lie to us, but in the sense it can’t lie to itself.  It doesn’t seem to be able to realise that you’re lying to it, at least as long as you don’t force it to look at you directly ... basically, you come across as truthful because it can’t comprehend that you’re lying.”

“Until the penny drops,” Alice said, coolly.  “And then it will start getting paranoid about itself.  It won’t know if smaller subunits are telling the truth or lying.”

“Not without a great deal more verification,” Adamson agreed.  “It would have to delay operations to verify that it is still in control before it resumed its advance.”

“You still haven’t explained why you want me here,” Alice said.  Her patience was nearly at an end.  “What do you want?”

“We think we can expand upon your ... scent,” Adamson said.  He looked at his hands.  “You would be able to ... ah, do more than merely assure your fellow infected that you’re one of them.  You would be able to issue commands.  You could take control of some of the infected and turn them against the virus ...”

Hammersmith snorted.  “Just like Stellar Star in Stellar Star and the Robotic Menace ...”

“Be quiet,” Alice growled.  The back of her neck felt hot as she turned back to the scientists.  “Are you serious?”

“We think it should be possible,” Adamson said.  He sounded uncomfortable.  “We have attempted to synthesise scent particles, but - so far - unsuccessfully.  The pheromones are simply beyond our ability to produce, certainly not the subtle smells we require to influence the virus.  It’s a field of study that has not really been developed, for various reasons.  The only people who took it seriously were perfumers, and they ran into legal trouble.”

“I can imagine,” Alice said, dryly.  She’d heard about perfumes that were supposed to make the opposite sex attracted to you, but she’d never seen one.  The claims had always struck her as typical advertiser bullshit.  A pheromone-based perfume that actually worked would be classed as a date-rape drug.  “And what do you think I should tell them to do?”

“First, we should see if you can issue orders,” Bendix said.  “We think you should be able to trigger the pheromones, although we don’t know for sure.  We’ll have to experiment.  And then we can try and figure out how to issue more complex orders.”

“I see,” Alice said.  The whole idea struck her as insane, but it was worth trying.  Who knew?  Perhaps she could find a way to infiltrate the virus and tear its communications network to shreds.  Perhaps.  “And when do you expect me to try?  We can’t go back to Alien-3 yet ...”

“No.”  Adamson cut her off.  “But we do have a number of infected humans here, the ones rescued from Alien-One.  We thought you could try to command them, under controlled conditions.”

And that’s why you wanted me to have an escort, Alice thought.  You needed someone who could tell if it wasn’t me who came back.

Hammersmith blinked.  “You have infected people here?”

“Under very tight security,” Bendix assured him.  “There’s no way they can get to Earth.”

“Hah,” Tindal muttered.

“We’d blow up the base, rather than let them escape.”  Adamson stood.  “Shall we go see them?”

“Yeah.”  Alice finished her coffee, wishing for something stronger.  “I think we should.”

Chapter Four

“It’s like a zoo in here,” Hammersmith muttered, as they were led through a series of airlocks and into a darkened observation chamber.  “But I’ve never seen a zoo so ... secure.”

Alice nodded, feeling uncomfortable as she peered around the chamber.  The light was so low she could barely see, even though her eyesight was as perfect as genetic engineering and surgical enhancement could make it.  The chamber was completely empty, the bulkheads utterly bare.  There was nothing for the prisoners to use, if they somehow managed to smash through the walls and break into the chamber.  She couldn’t help thinking that the observers were just as much prisoners as the people in the next chamber.  If the virus broke loose, it was quite possible that none of them would be permitted to leave.

“We keep biohazard protocols in place at all times,” Adamson explained.  “This entire subsection is completely isolated from the remainder of the base, save for a handful of datanet links that feed through a secure firewall and into an observation lounge on the far side of the walls.  Everyone who goes into the inner section will go through a careful series of tests, just to prove their identity and verify that they’re not infected.  They have to wear protective gear as long as they’re anywhere near the virus itself.  If it is broken ...”

His voice trailed off.  Alice looked at him.

“And does it ever break?”

“They tore the protective garb off one unwary visitor,” Adamson said.  “I would have believed it impossible, if I had not seen it with my own eyes.  We were fortunate to be able to yank him out and kill the infection before it was too late.”

He indicated the far side of the chamber.  The bulkhead was lightening ... no, it was turning translucent.  Alice leaned forward, feeling a shiver run down her spine as a cluster of humanoid figures came into view.  They were human, as naked as she’d been on the day she was born, but ... there was nothing human about them.  They paced around the cage, heedless of their nakedness ... she’d seen POWs in detention cages, yet they’d been human.  The infected were ... different.

That could have been me, she thought.  I could have ended up in a cage like this.

A woman strode past the bulkhead, her bare breasts bobbling as she walked.  None of the men paid any attention.  Alice felt cold.  The scene was utterly wrong.  The men weren’t ogling, or sneaking glances whenever they felt they could get away with it ... they weren’t even making a show of ignoring the women.  They were just ... she swallowed, hard.  The virus had stripped everything from its victims.  They didn’t feel anything any longer.

Hammersmith sounded shaken.  “What ... what are you doing to them?”

“Right now, we’re trying to learn from them.”  Bendix sounded cold, but Alice was sure she could hear a quiver.  “The virus doesn’t seem to quite understand the hosts.  They are exercising constantly, and eating the food we give them, but they defecate wherever they wish and show no inclination to get dressed or take care of themselves in other respects.  We think they’re just waiting for orders.”

“Orders which are never going to come,” Adamson said.  He looked at Alice.  “Unless they come from you.”

Alice swallowed, hard.  “What do you want me to do?”

“Come with me,” Adamson said.  “Your companions can wait here.”

“Captain?”  Hammersmith turned away.  “Should I ...?”

“Stay here,” Alice said.  “And be ready to check that I’m me.”

Adamson nodded as he led the way out the airlock and down a solid metal passageway.  “I ... after the last incident, it was decided that everyone who needed to go into the chamber would be wearing protective gear.  We actually had to draw supplies from the biological warfare stockpiles, simply because” - he glanced back at her, a scowl on his face - “it never occurred to us that the virus would try to tear off our clothes.  In hindsight, it should have done.”

“Yes,” Alice said, dryly.  Desperate people could do desperate things.  “I went through the biowarfare drills during training.”

“Quite.”  Adamson stopped as they entered a sideroom.  “You’ll be going into the chamber alone, and naked.  We think that, if you issue orders, they will be obeyed.”

Alice stopped, dead.  “You think?”

“You have been constantly monitored since you were infected,” Adamson said.  “We noticed that your local pheromones changed whenever you issued commands, something that rarely happened during the cruise.”

“The deployment,” Alice corrected, sharply.  “You make it sound like I was taking an expensive vacation.”

“In hindsight, it would have been better to put you in a command role.”  Adamson sounded irked.  “We might have realised this earlier.”

Alice shook her head, unsure of how she should be feeling.  It seemed terribly speculative ... and yet, she had the feeling they’d stumbled onto something.  She just didn’t know if it was anything they could actually use.  The history of military research and development was strewn with brilliant pieces of kit that worked perfectly in the labs, but failed spectacularly when deployed in the field.  Alice had no trouble thinking of a dozen things that could go wrong, all of which might end badly for her.  She was skilled at unarmed combat, but the virus’s hosts wouldn’t care if they were hurt.  She’d have to cripple or kill them to survive.

“We can try,” she said.  She looked at the other door.  “Through there?”

“Yes,” Adamson said.  “Go through the door, get undressed, put your clothes in the cupboard and walk through the final door.  You’ll find an earpiece in the cabinet, one you can slot into your ear.  Follow the instructions as you go.”

Alice nodded, tersely.  “Understood,” she said.  “I’m on my way.”

She opened the door and walked into a small changing room.  The walls were bare, save for a handful of cabinets, but she was sure there would be microscopic cameras everywhere.  It wasn’t the first time she’d been on a black-ops base.  She would have been surprised if there weren’t cameras in the toilets as well as the bedrooms.  There were prisoners who were kept under less tight security.  She scowled at the thought, then started to undress.  She’d lost any sense of modesty when she’d joined the marines.  It was hard to care about the watching eyes.

Time to move on, she thought, when she was naked.  Now ...

She stepped through the door, closing it firmly behind her.  A recorded voice ordered her to keep moving, even as warm liquid splashed down from high above.  Alice closed her eyes as she tasted something sharp and unpleasant in the water, something designed to cleanse her body of germs and pheromones.  She wondered, grimly, if the water would kill her scent.  It would be hard to issue any commands to the infected humans if they couldn’t smell her.  She kept walking, passing through a torrent of hot air.  Her skin itched uncomfortably as it dried.  It looked as though they didn’t dare give her a towel.

The final door opened, revealing the confinement chamber.  A gust of warm air brushed against her, bringing with it the indefinable scent of the infected.  Alice braced herself as she stepped inside, half-expecting to be attacked on sight.  The infected humans stopped their constant walking and turned to face her, their unblinking eyes staring at her ... Alice couldn’t keep from shuddering.  She’d met Tadpoles and Vesy, both of whom were very alien, but the infected humans were utterly inhuman.  It was hard to understand alien mentalities sometimes - she’d once heard that the Tadpoles cared nothing for their own children, something that bothered her more than she cared to admit - yet ... the virus was just too different to be easily understood.  It was alien ...

It wants to survive, she thought.  It wasn’t a comforting thought.  The virus was too dangerous to let live.  How could it be trusted?  How could anyone talk to it, let alone dictate terms?  And its survival comes at the cost of our survival.

A flicker of ... something ran through the air.  The infected were moving closer.  Alice tensed, readying herself to fight.  Her mind raced, considering tactics.  It would be easy to hit the male infected in their groins, but would they even notice?  She didn’t know.  She’d have to aim to cripple or kill and hope for the best.  She stood straighter, bracing herself.  What would happen if they managed to infect her?

“Stop,” she ordered.

Another ripple ran through the warm air.  The infected stopped, as if they’d run into a brick wall.  Alice stared, suddenly realising that she hadn’t expected the idea to work at all.  The infected stared back at her, waiting for orders.  She opened her mouth, her mind racing as she tried to figure out what was going on.  Perhaps, just perhaps, the virus had never realised that someone could subvert its infection.  It was like a mother leaving the house unlocked because she believed a child couldn’t work the handle and open the door.

She closed her eyes, gathering herself.  What should she tell them to do?  What orders should she issue?  What orders would they understand?  Logically, she was encoding the orders within her altered pheromones ... she shuddered, cursing the virus once again.  She didn’t understand what she was doing and that, she knew from bitter experience, could lead to something blowing up in her face.  The virus presumably understood precisely how to issue orders.  She was making it up as she went along.

“Turn your backs,” she ordered.  “And walk away.”

The infected obeyed, turning slowly and walking until they hit the far bulkhead.  They kept moving, as if they were trying to push their way through the bulkhead.  Alice walked after them, feeling ... something moving through the warm air.  She stopped and closed her eyes again, trying to concentrate on the sensation.  There was something there, alright; something warm and welcoming, something calling to her ... she jerked back, hard.  The virus was calling to her.  It would have been easy, so easy, to just let go.

Adamson’s voice echoed through the earpiece.  “Alice?  Are you alright?”

That’s Captain to you, Alice thought, snidely.  Captain Campbell, not Alice.

She felt a flicker of resentment.  There were probably dozens, if not hundreds, of sensors turned on the confinement chamber.  The watchers could probably monitor her emotional state from a distance, if they wished ... she pushed the resentment down, hard.  It was their bloody duty to monitor her emotional state and she knew it.  Besides, she was probably the only person in the chamber with an emotional state.  The infected were little more than robots.  Or zombies.

“Alice?”  Adamson sounded alarmed.  “Should I send the team into the chamber?”

“No,” Alice said.  “I’m sorry.  I think I was taken a little by surprise.”

“I can send someone in if you want,” Adamson said.  “Or suit up myself ...”

“I can handle it,” Alice said, a little sharper than she’d intended.  “Just give me a moment to consider.”

She closed her eyes again, concentrating on a single command.  Come here.  The air seemed to shift around her - she felt, just for a second, as if she was in a swimming pool - as the infected stopped trying to walk through the bulkhead and turned towards her.  She opened her eyes and shuddered.  Their faces showed no trace of individuality.  She thought she recognised a couple of them, but ... she pushed that thought aside too.  The men and women she’d known from the mission to the alien ship were dead.  Their bodies were no longer theirs.

“The pheromone levels are rising,” Adamson warned.  “Are you coping?”

“I think so,” Alice managed.  

She bit her lip, tasting blood in her mouth.  It was hard, harder than she’d realised, to send out silent commands.  She’d always been good at multitasking, but the virus was clearly far superior ... or, perhaps, not limited by being trapped in a human body.  She wondered, idly, how such an entity could think.  It had to be spread across thousands - no, billions - of bodies.  How could such a mentality even exist?  She thought she understood, now, why the virus was so unconcerned about spending its bodies so casually.  It had no reason to be concerned.  It wasn’t likely to run out of bodies in a hurry.

“It feels as though they’re part of me, I think,” she said.  The infected started to walk around her.  “But ... I don’t think this is an active group.”

Adamson sounded worried.  “How do you mean?”

“I mean there isn’t enough of the virus to take control.”  Alice remembered the blobs she’d seen on the alien starship and scowled.  “They’re capable of following basic instructions, the commands encoded in the viral particles, but not of rising to sentience.  My guess is that they were never intended to operate independently.  They can spread themselves, and replicate, but not come up with their own plans.”

“It might be harder to give orders to an active group.”  Adamson paused.  “You’d better come out, if you don’t mind.”

Alice nodded, although part of her wanted to stay in the chamber.  She wasn’t sure why.  The virus had abandoned its attempt to suck her into the groupmind ... she had no reason to stay in the chamber.  And yet ... she had to fight to turn and walk through the airlock.  Her legs felt stiff, as if she’d been in bed for weeks.  There was a bit of her that really didn’t want to leave.

It was trying to tempt me, she thought.  It couldn’t absorb me by force, so it tried to convince me to surrender instead.

She wasn’t sure if it was deliberate or not - the virus hadn’t shown any inclination to try to tempt anyone to allow themselves to be absorbed - but it hardly mattered.  It had been tempting, for all the wrong reasons.  She could have surrendered her individuality and found peace within the groupmind ... she shook her head, sharply.  It wouldn’t have been peace.  It would have been a living death.  And yet, she’d found it tempting.  She wondered, sourly, just how many people would have accepted if the virus had come in peace.

“If someone bioengineered you,” she muttered as she passed through a shower of detergent, “they didn’t miss a trick.”

Adamson was waiting for her outside the changing room.  “That was amazing,” he said, as she emerged.  “You gave us more raw data in two hours than we collected in months!”

“Great,” Alice said.  Had it really been two hours?  She’d thought it had only been half an hour at most.  “Are you sure I haven’t been infected again?”

“Your blood chemistry hasn’t changed,” Adamson said.  “And you won’t be leaving here for another few hours, at the very least.”

“Good, I suppose,” Alice said.  “What did you learn?”

“A little more about how the virus communicates,” Adamson said.  “And how we can use UV lights to disrupt it.”

Alice felt a hot flash of anger.  “We already knew that!”

“And how we might be able to mess it up by inserting pheromones of our own into the mix,” Adamson said.  “And how we might be able to get you into the mix ...”

“Really?”  Alice stopped and glared at him.  “Do you realise just how limited I am, compared to the virus?  How limited any of us are?  These” - she held up her fingers - “are where my awareness stops.  The virus is more aware of its surroundings than any of us.  I can no more issue detailed commands than ... than I can control someone with the force of my mind.”

“But you can issue orders,” Adamson said.  “And the person who took the orders would know what to do, wouldn’t they?”

“Yes,” Alice said.  It wasn’t as if officers provided detailed orders when commanding their troops to attack.  She’d met a handful of micromanagers in high office, but none of them had been quite that bad.  “What good does that do?”

“Perhaps more than you might think,” Adamson said.  “For one thing, the viral pheromones must be universal.  The virus has absorbed members of at least four alien species into its gestalt and it has been able to issue orders across the differing species’ lines.  I think the pheromones themselves must act as a form of universal translator, linked into the viral cells ...”

“You think,” Alice said.

“If it couldn’t understand the hosts, it couldn’t use their knowledge.”  Adamson let out a heavy sigh.  “We haven’t been able to design a neural link that allows ... well, mind-reading, for want of a better term.  Even what we have done - and we intend to use some of them to assist you - is not suitable for Tadpole use.  What works for us would fry their brains.  But the virus has somehow devised an organic solution to the problem.  It has built an organic computer network.  And we should be able to hack the network and tear it apart.”

“If we can get inside,” Alice said.  She jerked a finger at the sealed airlock as her temper began to rise.  “That isn’t easy, mate.  Those poor bastards back there?  They’re running on automatic, cut off from the mainstream and prevented from forming a groupmind of their own.  We can do anything to them, if we want.  But the main body of the virus?  That’s on starships and heavily defended worlds and ... it’s practically untouchable.”

“I know,” Adamson said.  He sounded earnest.  “But we believe it can be done.  What you did today has opened up a whole series of possible approaches ... it can be done.  Given time, we can do anything.”

“Hah,” Alice said.  She wasn’t convinced.  Every time she thought she’d beaten the virus, it managed to sneak its way back into her life.  “We will see.”

Chapter Five

“You’d better get out of bed,” a female voice said.  “You’ve got a priority message.”

Wing Commander Richard Redbird opened his eyes, unsure - just for a moment - where he was.  It wasn’t his cabin, and it wasn’t the tiny little hotel room they’d found before being unceremoniously summoned back to the ship, it was ... it was his new cabin, the one he’d been given when the former CAG had been hastily reassigned to another ship.  He’d barely had a moment to move his carryall from his former cabin to the new one before he’d been plunged back into the maelstrom of rebuilding Invincible’s squadrons - again.

“Fuck,” he grumbled, as he pushed himself upright.  Monica sat in his bed, her bare breasts bobbling invitingly.  There was barely enough room for both of them.  She looked on the verge of falling out and landing on the cold metal deck.  “Who is it?”

“I don’t know,” Monica said, a little waspishly.  “I don’t have your fingerprints, do I?”

Richard scowled, then reached for the terminal.  It was probably a good thing she hadn’t tried to open the message.  Her fingerprints might not have triggered alarms - depending on the message priority - but they would have been noticed.  Some jobsworth who didn’t have something better to do would realise that she’d been in his cabin and wonder why.  It wouldn’t take much imagination to draw the right conclusion.  People made allowances for starfighter pilots, but he doubted they’d make one for Monica and himself.  They were senior officers.  They were meant to set a good example.

The message unlocked itself as soon as his fingers touched the terminal.  It was short, straight and to the point.  There would be a staff meeting at 1000 and he was invited.  Richard let out a sigh as he glanced at the chronometer.  Invited to attend?  More like ordered to attend.  Life had been a great deal simpler when he’d been a lowly starfighter pilot, rather than a squadron commander and CAG.  He wished, sometimes, that he’d had the wit to decline the promotion when it had been offered.  It wasn’t as if starfighter pilots often climbed to the top of the ladder.

But the First Space Lord started his career as a fighter pilot, he reminded himself, as he sent a quick acknowledgement.  And now he’s the master of the Royal Navy.

Monica rubbed her eyes.  “Good news?”

“A staff meeting,” Richard grumbled.  He was a CAG without starfighters or pilots to fly them.  Most of Invincible’s surviving pilots had been hastily reassigned when the carrier had limped back to Earth.  Richard understood the need to share their experience as widely as possible, but it still galled him.  He’d been lucky to keep Monica.  “Perhaps they’ll have something important to say.”

“Perhaps,” Monica agreed.  “It might be good news.”

Richard shrugged, watching as she stood and hurried towards the washroom.  He couldn’t believe it would be good news.  There hadn’t been any good news since they’d left Earth and that had been months ago.  In theory, he was due to receive new starfighters and pilots at any time; in practice, every announcement of a new starfighter wing had been cancelled within the day.  He understood the problem facing the Royal Navy - and the sudden need for experienced starfighter pilots to be deployed to the front lines - but it was still irritating as hell.  How was he supposed to plan for their next deployment if they kept changing the rules?

And I might be reassigned at any moment, too, he thought.  Truthfully, he was surprised he hadn’t already been reassigned.  He was a starfighter pilot first and foremost, a flyer with a string of kills to his credit.  He wouldn’t have minded if he’d been slotted into some junior flying officer’s slot.  The demotion wouldn’t have bothered him in the slightest.  He would have been more annoyed by the cut in pay.  Maybe they’re just trying to decide where to send me.

He stood, resisting the urge to walk to the washroom and join her under the shower.  Whoever had designed the starship had given the CAG a private cabin, rather than forcing him to bed down with his pilots, but the washroom was barely large enough for a grown adult.  There was no way they could share it, not without getting stuck in the tiny cubicle.  His lips twitched at the thought - that would be hard to explain - before he felt a bitter pang of regret.  No one, not even Monica, knew how tempted he’d been to simply walk off instead of returning to the ship.  He knew he would be called a deserter, he knew he might well spend the rest of his life in prison, but ... it might have been better than deploying once again.  He’d watched helplessly as two separate wings of starfighters were blown away by the aliens.  He didn’t want to go through that again.

Then request reassignment somewhere else, he told himself.  You could push paper for a living instead.

Monica emerged, wrapping a towel around herself.  Richard felt another pang, a mixture of guilt and ... and something he didn’t care to look at too closely.  They’d fallen into bed together six days ago, when they’d been on Earth.  He still wasn’t quite sure why he’d done it.  Monica was pretty - she was striking, certainly - but she was his subordinate.  They shouldn’t have been anything more than friends, if that.  People might make allowances for starfighter pilots on leave, but not pilots on duty.  He knew he should have ended the affair as soon as they returned to the ship.  But he hadn’t.  He’d needed her too much.

“I’ll see you this afternoon,” he said.  “Hopefully, we should have some new figures to play with.”

“Understood,” Monica said.  She didn’t have many duties at the moment, either, leaving her at something of a loose end.  “Good luck with the meeting.”

Richard nodded as he walked past her and stepped into the shower.  There were no water restrictions for senior officers, something that amused and annoyed him in equal measure.  There was no need for water restrictions, even for the lowliest crewmen.  But it was tradition and the Royal Navy was all about tradition.  His lips curved into a thin smile as he turned on the water.  He didn’t mind the tradition about putting his body between his homeworld and an alien threat, but he drew the line at water conservation measures.  It wasn’t as if Invincible couldn’t capture a comet!

He basked under the water as long as he dared, then grabbed a towel and dried himself before stepping back into the cabin.  Monica was gone, for better or worse.  He hoped she hadn’t been seen as she left the compartment.  Nothing moved faster than scuttlebutt, even on a giant assault carrier.  If someone had seen her leave, it would be all around the ship by the end of the day.  And then ... it would only be a matter of time before the senior officers heard the news.

Although they might not pay any attention to the babble, he thought, as he pulled on his tunic and inspected himself in the mirror.  His uniform looked impeccable, but his eyes were dark and shadowed through lack of sleep.  By the time the rumour reaches their ears, it will have grown out of all proportion.

Richard smiled at the thought as he picked up his terminal and opened his inbox.  There was a whole string of emails, none of which seemed particularly urgent.  A couple looked to have already been superseded before he’d even had a chance to read them.  He swallowed a curse as he slipped his terminal onto his belt and headed for the hatch.  His life would be a great deal easier if the strategic planning officers on Nelson Base would make up their minds before sending him advance orders.  He simply didn’t have the time to constantly prepare to receive new starfighters and their pilots who didn’t even make it to the hangar deck before they were reassigned.

He stepped through the hatch and strode up the long corridor towards the conference room, passing a trio of jogging marines and a handful of dockyard workers on the way.  The ship was still being patched together after the last encounter with the aliens, something that made him fairly certain that he would be reassigned sooner or later.  Invincible was a powerful ship - and the Royal Navy wasn’t about to scrap her - but it would be months before she could return to the front line.  There was no point in assigning starfighters to a ship that couldn’t even serve as a glorified hangar.  He scowled at the thought.  Clearly, some idiot on Nelson Base hadn’t got the memo.  They were still moving starfighters around the system like pieces on a chessboard.

“Ah, Commander Redbird,” Commander Daniel Newcomb said, as Richard entered the conference room.  “Take a seat, please.  And wait.”

“Yes, sir,” Richard said.  

He stepped past Newcomb and took a seat, trying to relax.  The XO was clearly worried about something.  Rumour had it that the XO had been offered - and refused - command of his own starship, although Richard didn’t believe it.  Very few officers would refuse a command, particularly when doing so practically guaranteed that the Royal Navy wouldn’t offer him another one.  Better to command a garbage scow than be permanently denied a shot at the captain’s chair.  No, the XO wasn’t being reassigned.  He would be gone by now if someone had offered him his own ship.

Richard leaned back in his chair, accepted a cup of coffee from the steward and forced himself to watch as the room steadily filled with officers.   Lieutenant-Commander David Arthur, the tactical officer; Chief Engineer Theodore Rutgers, looking as if he hadn’t slept a wink for the last week; Major Henry Parkinson, Royal Marines ... the XO had summoned every departmental head on the ship.  Richard took a sip of his coffee, gritting his teeth against the sudden feeling of acid in his stomach.  This was no mere meeting, he decided; this was serious.  They hadn’t held a formal conference since ... since Invincible had left the shipyard for the first time.

“Captain on deck,” Newcomb said, sharply.

“Remain seated,” Captain Shields said.  He strode into the room, waving Major Parkinson back into his chair.  “We have much to discuss.”

Richard nodded, tersely.  Captain Shields looked as if he hadn’t slept either ... where had he been?  The last Richard had heard, Captain Shields had been recalled to Earth to brief the First Space Lord personally.  Richard didn’t envy him.  Captain Shields was very well connected - something Richard envied - but that wouldn’t always work in his favour.  An aristocratic officer could expect more surveillance than someone who’d worked his way up from midshipman to captain or even admiral.  His family would drop him like a hot rock if he let the side down.

Captain Shields sat down.  “You may not have heard yet - the government has been trying to keep word from spreading - but, twenty-four hours ago, there were a series of terrorist attacks on Earth.  A number of military and civil locations were attacked by armed insurgents.  So far, the investigations have barely begun” - he held up a hand to forestall questions - “but it is clear that the virus was directly involved.  The attackers were all infected and, presumably, no longer in control of themselves.”

Shit, Richard thought.

“There’s no presumably about it,” Major Parkinson rumbled.  “They were enslaved from the moment they were infected.”

“How the hell did they get down to Earth?”  Newcomb sounded as if he didn’t want to believe it.  “We have all the orbital towers and spaceports locked down tight.”

“We don’t know,” Captain Shields said.  “And we don’t have time for speculation.  The worse news is, practically simultaneously, there was another attack on Falkirk.  This one was successful.”

Richard felt his stomach twist as he realised the implications.  If the MNF had been defeated - or destroyed - the virus would have a clear path to Earth.  Even if it hadn’t been destroyed, the virus would have access to dozens of lightly-defended colony worlds ... they wouldn’t stand a chance when the virus took control of the high orbitals.  There were contingency plans, he was sure, for the colonists to go underground, but ... how could they hope to hold out when the virus could twist their own people against them?  The entire population might as well be composed of traitors.

“They couldn’t have taken out the entire fleet,” Arthur said.  “The MNF is - was - the most powerful fleet short of Earth itself.”

“The fleet is falling back,” Captain Shields said.  “And we’re going to meet them.”

“Captain ...”  Chief Engineer Theodore Rutgers swallowed hard and started again.  “Captain, with all due respect, we are not remotely ready to leave spacedock, let alone return to the front lines.  It will take months to carry out even the most essential of repairs.”

Newcomb smiled, humourlessly.  “And how long will it really take you?”

Rutgers was too tired to dissemble.  “Commander, months is an optimistic estimate.  We took one hell of a beating and ...”

Captain Shields held up a hand.  “I’m aware of our condition,” he said.  “And so is the Admiralty.  They are, however, determined to put us back on the front lines.”

Richard felt his heart sink.  They hate us.

“We will have first call on everything,” the captain added.  “Everything the shipyard has is ours, if we need it.  We can take whatever we need, from supplies to dockyard workers.  We have a blank cheque, as long as we are ready for deployment in a week or so.”

“Fuck.”  Rutgers looked at the table.  “Captain ... it won’t be easy.”

“I know.”  Captain Shields scowled.  “But we have to do it.”

Rutgers shook his head slowly.  “Give me an hour and I can draw up a basic plan of attack,” he said.  “The most important issues can be tackled fairly quickly, if they let us cannibalise a couple of half-built ships.  But ... we won’t be at full fighting trim.  At best, we’ll be at eighty percent ...”

“Which means we’ll all be flogged if the Adjutant General’s Corps bothers to carry out an inspection,” Newcomb said.  “Or are all the petty little safety regulations being put aside in times of war?”

“Yes,” Captain Shields said, flatly.  His voice was utterly toneless.  “No one is expecting miracles, Commander.  They just want us on the front lines as quickly as possible.”

They are expecting miracles, Richard thought.  

Captain Shields met Richard’s eyes.  “We’re going to be assigned new starfighters and pilots,” he said, curtly.  “You’ll get a fuller breakdown within the hour, once they’ve finalised the deployments, but it looks as if you’ll be getting pilots from Europe as well as Britain and the Commonwealth.  I trust that won’t be a problem?”

“It shouldn’t be a problem, sir,” Richard said.  He kept his face impassive.  There would be all sorts of minor problems, the kind of issues that were normally sorted out during the shakedown cruise.  This time, they’d be going to war without working the kinks out first.  “I think we can handle it.”

“Good,” Captain Shields said.  “Let me know if there are any major issues that need to be smoothed out.”

Just me, Richard thought.  “Yes, sir.”

“Major Parkinson, you’ll be keeping most of your detachment,” Captain Shields said.  “I want you and your men to run security at all access points.  No one is to get onto this ship without having their blood tested, repeatedly.  I don’t know how the virus managed to get to Earth without being detected, but I don’t want it repeating the same feat here.”

“Yes, sir,” Parkinson said.

“Captain, we cannot afford to have our work impeded,” Rutgers said.  “There will be a lot of engineers coming in and out of the ship at all times.”

“We’ll just have to cope,” Captain Shields said.  “We have to assume the worst, at least until we know how the virus got to Earth.”

And we might never know, Richard thought.  The virus couldn’t have slipped through the orbital checkpoints, could it?  He thought the checks were infallible, but ... what if he was wrong?  The virus might have found a way to get through without setting off all kinds of alarms.

“We’ll do our best, Captain,” Rutgers said.  The engineer looked worried.  “But I caution you that any disruption is going to have the most disruptive effects.”

“Deal with it,” Newcomb growled.  The XO crossed his arms over his chest.  “There’s more at stake here than us.”

“True, Mr. XO,” Captain Shields agreed.  He looked from officer to officer.  “I know it won’t be easy.  I know we will not be departing with a full load.  I know we may take grievous damage in our next engagement because repairs weren’t carried out properly.  But we have no choice.  If the virus can’t be stopped ...”

Richard nodded, shortly.  He’d seen the projections, both civil and military.  They were uncomfortable viewing.  The virus might be unstoppable if it gained a solid foothold in human space.  And then ... he shuddered.  There would be no resistance, no insurgency against alien masters.  Independent thought wouldn’t even be a memory.  Humanity would simply cease to exist.  It would be the end.

And that means we have to fight, he thought, numbly.  No wonder the Admiralty was so keen to get Invincible back to the front lines.  There was no other choice.  Better to die fighting than to be infected and absorbed.

“I expect each and every one of you to do your utmost to prepare for departure on schedule,” the captain said.  “We’ll get some rest when we’re on the way.  Dismissed.”

Chapter Six

“I thought you said you couldn’t read my mind,” Alice grumbled.

She glared at herself in the mirror.  It wasn’t the first time she’d had an EEG scan - she’d had her brainwaves monitored during advanced training - but she had to admit that Doctor Bendix’s scanner was hellishly intimidating.  It felt oddly heavy against her bare scalp.  The sensors attached to her chest and the handful of holographic displays, blinking constantly, made it worse.  She couldn’t escape the feeling that they were probing her very thoughts themselves.

“Technically, we can’t,” Doctor Bendix said.  He was examining one of the displays, stroking his chin thoughtfully.  “But we can make some educated guesses about what you’re thinking and feeling at any given time.”

Alice glanced at him.  “Right now, I’m feeling homicidal,” she said.  “Does that show up on your monitors?”

“I can see your irritation, even anger,” Bendix said.  “But you’re not about to lose control.”

“If you say so,” Alice said.  She resisted the urge to unleash her anger.  “What are you trying to do?”

Bendix gave her a faint smile.  “Right now, we’re attempting to determine how you alter your scent,” he said.  “If we can figure out how you’re doing it, we should be able to duplicate it.  Or trigger it in the other infected ...”

“Eat curried eggs,” Hammersmith said.  He was standing by the hatch, looking terribly out of place.  “Or go out on the town for a night of kebabs and curry.  That always changes my scent.”

“I know.”  Alice snorted at the weak joke.  “Believe me, I know.”

“I don’t think that will be much help,” Bendix said, stiffly.  “We have to figure out how you release command pheromones.”

“You want to devise a stink bomb,” Alice said.  “Or something along those lines.”

“Quite,” Bendix agreed.  “It might make it impossible for the virus to coordinate its efforts if the pheromone channel is completely jammed up.”

“I won’t shower for a week,” Hammersmith offered.  “And then you can throw me into the arms of the enemy.”

“That would be everyone, if you don’t shower for a day,” Tindal jibed.  “Just imagine the scene.  Where is the stink bomb?  He got strangled by his own bleeping side!”

“It has to be the right kind of stench,” Bendix said.  He took one last look at the displays and stepped back.  “Alice?  If you’d like to issue a command ...?”

Alice gathered herself.  “Stop!”

There was a pause.  “Interesting,” Bendix said.  “There was relatively little brainwave activity, but the pheromones spiked anyway.”

“Are you saying she’s stupid?”  Hammersmith said.  “Or that she just doesn’t think ...”

Alice scowled at him.  “Just you wait.”

Bendix ignored the byplay.  “When you walk and talk, you do it without thinking.”

“Definitely,” Tindal said.  “We had noticed Hammersmith says things without thinking.”

“You may think about what you’re doing,” Bendix said, “but you’re not thinking about how you’re doing it.  You don’t have to tell your legs how to move when you walk, for example, and you don’t have to concentrate on how you talk to talk.  Your body does it for you.”

“And we don’t know how we do it,” Alice said.  She tried to put it into words.  “Like ... like you don’t have any trouble breathing when you’re not thinking about breathing, but if you start thinking about it you have to force yourself to take breaths.”

“Pretty much, yes,” Bendix said.  “The virus has modified your body.  You seem to have acquired new organs and a control system, but you don’t know how you use it.”

“I didn’t even know I had it until I came here,” Alice said.  “All I knew was that it had altered my scent in some way.”

“Yeah.”  Bendix returned his attention to the displays.  “Give us another command.”

“Walk forward,” Alice barked.

“A little more activity on that one, I fancy,” Bendix said.  “We may be able to duplicate it.”

“And then what?”  Alice’s head was itching.  It was all she could do to keep from lifting the helmet and scratching her scalp.  “What can you do with it?”

“Simulate the unconscious reaction,” Bendix said.  “And then we can use it to turn the other infected into pheromone factories.”

“I see,” Alice said.  “How?  In small words, please.”

Bendix waved a hand at the displays.  “Basically, we copy what you do and transfer it to one of the other infected,” he said.  “And then we simulate the reaction in their bodies.”

“That sounds a little ominous,” Alice said.

“It is.”  Bendix didn’t look at her.  “We can use the technology to trigger someone’s pain receptors, for example, or make them aroused beyond all restraint.  It has been done, from time to time.  The technology is kept under very close control.”

Alice frowned.  “Do you use this to torture people?”

“Not in the sense you mean,” Bendix said.  “But we have used the technology, at times, to inspect someone’s nerves.  Tiny jolts of pain can show us what, if anything, is wrong with the victim’s nervous system.  And ... we have had some success with other applications.”

“I don’t think I want to know,” Alice said.  She’d been taught to respect the rules of war, if only out of simple pragmatism.  It would be hard to blame the enemy for mistreating prisoners if enemy personnel were mistreated when they were taken captive.  “And I hope this will help you find a way to defeat the virus.”

Bendix nodded.  “We think it will,” he said.  “Now ...”

It felt like hours before he finally consented to allow Alice to remove the helmet and change back into her uniform.  Alice felt as if she’d been put through the wringer, even though she hadn’t really done very much.  Basic commands, it seemed, were stronger - and produced more pheromones - than more complex commands.  Indeed, the more complex the command, the harder it was for her to produce any pheromones.  She was starting to suspect that there were layers to inter-viral communication that were completely beyond her ability to perceive.

“Or maybe there are subtle points we are unable to detect, yet,” Bendix said.  “The virus was never allowed to take full control of you.”

Alice nodded, shortly.  “I used to own a terminal that wasn’t ... well, it wasn’t mine.  My grandmother had bought it for me, but she locked out the higher command functions before handing it over.  I couldn’t access the higher levels until I was older.  There was no way I could customise it for me.”

“An interesting comparison,” Bendix said.  “And quite a good one.”

He shrugged.  “We will manage to unlock the higher levels eventually,” he said.  “It’s just a matter of time.”

“Yes.”  Alice felt her stomach rumble.  “Is there something to eat around here?”

“I’ll show you to the cafe,” Bendix said.  “And then we can decide what to do next.”

“I have to report back to my ship,” Alice said.  “Do you need anything else from me?”

Bendix said nothing for a long moment.  “I don’t know,” he admitted.  He opened the hatch and led them down the corridor.  “We’re in uncharted territory here.”

Alice winced, inwardly.  She wanted to go back to the ship, to rejoin the marines and ... she’d earned it, damn it.  She’d earned it twice.  But she also knew her duty.  If she was best suited to play the role of experimental animal, she needed to play it.  She caught herself before letting out a heavy sigh.  She didn’t want to be an experimental animal.  She wanted to get out of the asteroid base before someone could suggest she stayed.

“Hey, Doc,” Tindal said.  “Do you think you could stimulate arousal in men and women alike?”

“It’s fairly easy.”  Bendix didn’t seem surprised by the question.  “Arousal is one of the simplest emotions to simulate.”

Tindal grinned.  “So you could ensure that I stayed hard all night long?”

Alice rolled her eyes.  There were times when she thought that none of the marines had really grown up, although she supposed it shouldn’t have surprised her.  Every time they deployed, they knew there was a risk they wouldn’t be coming back.  It was rare for a marine to marry, let alone form permanent attachments outside the squad.  A certain degree of horseplay was expected, even encouraged.  It helped blow off steam.

“I didn’t know that was a problem,” Hammersmith teased.

“It could be done,” Bendix said.  “Genital stimulators have been used in various ... ah, clinics for the last few decades.  However, you would rapidly start to suffer from physical side effects.  You don’t want to know the details.”

“None of us want to hear the details,” Alice said, sharply.  “And no, you don’t want one for yourself.”

“Not until you’re old and gray,” Hammersmith chimed in.

Bendix led them into a small compartment and nodded towards the vending machines.  “Take what you want,” he said.  “Doctor Adamson should join us in a moment or two.”

“Glad to hear it,” Alice said.  She understood why the base was largely empty, but it was starting to creep her out.  “And then ... what?”

“We’ll see,” Bendix said, vaguely.

Alice eyed him, then turned to the vending machine and ordered a mug of coffee.  It tasted foul, but she’d had worse.  Another machine offered everything from ration bars to cheeseburgers.  They would probably be reconstituted, she decided as she ordered one, but it didn’t matter.  She’d learnt, long ago, not to worry about where food came from, particularly in space.  It was safe to eat.  That was all that mattered.

And Granddad ensured I wasn’t too squeamish, Alice recalled.  Growing up on a farm had left her with no illusions.  The roast beef she’d eaten the night before she’d gone to boarding school had come from a cow, not the supermarket.  He never let me get too prissy about what I ate.

Her lips twitched.  She honestly didn’t understand how some of her fellow boarders had managed to tie their shoelaces in the morning.  How could they not know where food came from?  Mankind needed food to live.  Even if someone managed to eat a strictly vegetarian diet, they still had to kill plants to get their food.  The poor girls had been so ignorant of the realities of life, they’d practically needed minders.  Alice hadn’t envied the tutors at all.

She looked up as Doctor Adamson entered the compartment.  “We’ve learnt a great deal from you,” he said.  “And we could learn a great deal more.”

“I don’t know how,” Alice said, feeling her heart sink.  “I’ve done everything I can, but ... the virus didn’t give me an operations manual.”

“We know,” Doctor Adamson said.  “The problem, I suspect, is that the virus normally builds up command structures within the victim’s body.  Yours were smashed during treatment and, so far, they haven’t managed to reconstitute themselves.”

Alice tensed.  “I thought the infection was dead.  Dead and gone.”

“We think so, too,” Doctor Adamson said.  “And you were tested regularly, just in case.  There’s no sign of the structures trying to rebuild themselves.  However ... we have to be careful.”

“I know,” Alice said.

“They’re probably capable of manipulating pheromones to a far greater extent than you,” Adamson added.  “You simply lack the control systems to really make use of your new organs.”

“That could be a problem,” Alice said, dryly.  “Do you think you can convince the poor bastards down there” - she jabbed a finger at the bulkhead - “to emit the kind of pheromones you need?”

“We don’t know,” Adamson said.

“We can use implants to control someone’s body,” Bendix said.  “But it is hard to do it convincingly.  Outside remote control is practically impossible, unless we have a breakthrough.  I don’t think we can turn one of the infected into anything more than a basic pheromone factory.”

You’re talking about living people, Alice thought.  Humans.

She shuddered.  She couldn’t allow herself to start thinking of the infected as human.  Once the infection took control, they were dead.  Dead ... yet alive.  She knew just how lucky she’d been to escape the virus’s control.  Everyone else ... euthanasia might be the only logical response.  No, it was the only logical response.  She had to clasp her hands to keep them from shaking.  It was monstrous.  And yet, it was the only choice.  What good was a Conduct After Capture course if the POWs could simply be infected, then restrained until the infection took control of their bodies?

We can’t even trust ourselves to keep secrets, she thought.  Anyone can be turned into a traitor once they’ve been infected.

“We will find out,” Bendix said.  “And then we will know.”

“For the moment, we don’t think you have anything further to offer us,” Adamson said.  “And your ... ability to issue commands might be useful elsewhere.”

“If I happen to stumble across an isolated group of infected,” Alice said.   It was clever of the scientists to concede the possibility, but she had no illusions about how hard it would be to turn the concept into reality.  Once she started issuing orders, the virus would notice her.  “I might end up being killed out of hand.”

“You’re welcome to stay,” Bendix said.  “We don’t have many guests here.”

Alice made a face.  “How many people are watching us through the sensor nodes?”

“Thousands,” Adamson said.  He didn’t seem too worried, even though he had to know that the entire base would be under observation.  There would be no privacy anywhere within the rocky shell.  “They won’t be in any danger if something goes badly wrong.”

“True.”  Alice allowed herself a moment of respect.  If something went wrong - if the virus got loose - the base would be nuked.  Adamson and Bendix would be dead before the virus could take over their bodies.  She wondered, suddenly, just how many layers of security she hadn’t been allowed to see.  “I’d sooner go back to the ship.”

“Just try not to get killed,” Bendix said.  “We might have a use for you later.”

If they let me go back to the ship, Alice thought.  They might decide I’d be better off elsewhere.

“We won’t let her get killed,” Tindal said.  He munched his burger thoughtfully.  “And she won’t let us get killed either.”

“We have been working on a few modified stinkers,” Adamson said.  “Given a few days, we should be able to produce enough pheromones to stop the infected in their tracks.  But we don’t think it will last very long.”

“No,” Bendix agreed.  “Not on a planetary surface, anyway.  The pheromones appear quite sensitive to local weather conditions.”

“Then perhaps we should concentrate on plunging a planet into a new ice age,” Hammersmith said.  “Wasn’t there that concept of ... ah, terraforming Venus by blocking out the sun?”

“It was a little more complex than that,” Adamson said.  “And merely reducing the planet’s temperature wouldn’t be enough to stop the virus.  We’d need to find a counter-virus, something that can drive the virus out of its hosts.”

“And then the hosts die, because they don’t have brains any longer,” Alice said.  She’d seen the autopsies.  The infected weren’t under mind control.  They literally didn’t have minds.  If the virus were to be removed, if its control structures were to be smashed, the host would collapse and die.  “We would be committing genocide.”

She took a breath.  “And the hell of it is that we might not have a choice.”

“No,” Bendix agreed.  “We might not.”

Alice took a sip of her coffee.  Years ago, back when humanity had known it was the only intelligent race in the universe, people had speculated that aliens might be so alien that they were literally incomprehensible.  There would be war, simply because the galaxy wasn’t big enough for humanity and a completely unpredictable alien race.  How could it be otherwise when there was no hope of communications, of finding common ground?  And yet, when humanity had encountered aliens, they had found ways to talk ...

She shook her head.  The virus was different.  It wasn’t interested in political power, it wasn’t interested in trade ... it merely wanted to absorb every other life form into its gestalt.  How did one talk to it?  How could one convince the virus that it needed to talk?  She’d been as close as anyone to touching the virus’s mind and she didn’t have any idea how it could be brought to the negotiating table.  Hell, she didn’t even know if the virus had any concept of diplomacy.  It was simply too inhuman, too alien, to understand.

It can infect our bodies and puppet them well enough to fool people long enough to carry out attacks, she thought.  And yet, it can’t talk to us ...

“We’ll keep in touch,” Adamson said.  “And if you have any ideas, feel free to forward them to us.”

“I will,” Alice said.  “And you let us know if you come up with anything useful.”

“It may not be possible,” Bendix said.  “Security, you know.”

Alice nodded, tartly.  She’d seen the BBC’s broadcasts.  They hadn’t lied, not exactly, but they’d certainly kept some of the more disturbing facts from the public at large.  Alice wasn’t sure how she felt about that.  She’d met more than a few civilians who panicked at nothing - her sister was a prime example - but others were far more capable.  Besides, it might be good for the civilians to be a little concerned, to keep their eyes out for signs of infection.  The virus wasn’t going to be beaten by the military alone.

And the Home Guard might start shooting people on suspicion of infection, she thought, grimly.  She’d trained alongside the Home Guard.  They were enthusiastic, but inexperienced.  And then all hell will break loose.

“I know,” she said, putting the thought aside.  “Just get it to us as quickly as you can.”

Chapter Seven

“Well, they’re finally on their way,” Richard said, as he and Monica walked down to the flight deck.  “They should be landing in ten minutes.”

Monica nodded.  “I’ve got the bunks ready for them,” she said.  “Germans and Italians and Americans ... oh, my.”

“We should count ourselves lucky to get the Americans,” Richard said.  The Royal Navy and the United States Navy regularly exchanged starfighter squadrons.  They used the same equipment, spoke the same language ... the Germans and the Italians used the same starfighters, but would they speak the same language?  The last thing he needed was a communications breakdown in the middle of an engagement.  “I don’t know the first thing about the Germans and Italians ...”

“Well, Germans come from Germany and Italians come from Italy,” Monica said.  She grinned as he gave her a sharp look.  “Beyond that, I don’t know.  They do meet the basic requirements, don’t they?”

“Yeah.”  Richard had read the files carefully.  “They’re qualified, but beyond that ... I don’t know how they’ll fit in.”

“We’ll see,” Monica said.  She paused as they stepped through a hatch into the observation dome.  “And they’ll be just as eager to make this work, won’t they?”

Richard nodded.  Germany and Italy had been hit hard during the Age of Unrest, hard enough to completely discredit their pre-war governments and do a lot of economic and structural damage.  They’d been lucky their neighbours hadn’t been willing to exert the effort to keep them down, although it had been a close-run thing.  Eastern Europe had historical reasons to be nervous of a strong Germany.  If they hadn’t been equally worried about the Russians, they might have allied with the French to keep the Germans down.  Even so, it had taken both Germany and Italy a long time to build up a presence in space and they were still far behind the Great Powers.

Although that may be about to change, Richard mused.  The Great Powers are the ones who bear the brunt of the interstellar wars.

He leaned forward as the first starfighter flew into the flight deck and landed neatly on the metal surface.  The Americans weren’t trying to show off, something that suggested a reassuring degree of experience.  Only an idiot would try to show off when he was landing on a carrier, particularly an unfamiliar carrier.  The Americans hadn’t built anything like Invincible for themselves.

And they may not have to build any, if the Amalgamation goes as planned, Richard thought, wryly.  We’ll all be part of the same space navy.

“Interesting,” Monica mused.  “They’re definitely an experienced bunch of pilots, but I’d say they were a little rusty.”

“Reservists, according to their files,” Richard said.  “The Yanks didn’t recall them until the first Battle of Falkirk.”

“Surprising,” Monica said.  Her voice hardened.  “Or perhaps it isn’t so surprising.”

Richard winced.  Rumour had it that Invincible and the remainder of the task force - a task force that only existed on paper, so far - was going to be thrown to the lions to buy time for Earth to assemble its defences.  It was hard to argue with that assessment, particularly as they were receiving pilots who were either reservists or inexperienced graduates.  He scowled as the next set of starfighters settled on the landing pad.  If they were being sent to sell their lives dearly, more experienced officers and pilots would make the battle a more costly encounter for the enemy.  If ...

“Go tell the Yanks to assemble in the briefing compartment,” he ordered.  “I’ll join you when the rest of the pilots have landed.”

“Yes, sir,” Monica said.

Richard barely heard her.  He was watching the Germans as they landed with a smooth confidence that belied Germany’s lack of a dedicated fleet carrier.  The Germans had hastily turned a handful of freighters into escort carriers, if the files were to be believed, but Richard knew through bitter experience that escort carrier operations had very little in common with fleet carrier deployments.  He wondered, idly, if the Germans had borrowed a French carrier before the war had broken out.  The French were the only ones who might help the Germans, in exchange for later considerations ...

Or maybe they just did it in simulators, he mused, as the Italian and British starfighters landed.  They looked wobbly, but resolute.  This might be their first time on a real carrier.

He put the thought aside for later consideration as he turned and walked back through the hatch, down towards the briefing room.  It wasn’t going to be easy dealing with starfighter pilots from three different nations, even though ... he shook his head, dismissively.  He didn’t have a choice.  He’d hoped to get three British squadrons instead of just two, but they simply weren’t available.  The shortage of trained personnel was so acute that he couldn’t even dig up a spare squadron leader or CAG from somewhere.  It would have been nice to lose one of his two hats.

The briefing compartment was full to bursting when he walked in the door, the newly-graduated pilots bullshitting about how many hours they’d flown and how many enemy starfighters they’d blown out of space while the older pilots indulgently listened.  Richard studied the latter for a long moment, wondering how many of them would be trouble.  It was never easy to call up the reserves, if only because they had to leave their jobs at a moment’s notice.  The Americans had more reservists, he’d been told, than the Royal Navy, but he would be surprised if they didn’t have similar problems.  It was astonishing how many businesses were held together by combat vets.

Monica whistled, loudly.  “Commander on deck!”

Silence fell.  The pilots hastily scrambled to their feet.  Richard allowed his eyes to wander over them, silently noting who wore their uniforms properly and who had allowed themselves to be a little slapdash.  The latter was often a sign of a lack of attention to detail, suggesting the pilot might be careless in combat.  Richard winced, inwardly, to note how many of those that there were.  It wasn’t going to be easy to iron out the kinks before they had to go into combat.

“Be seated,” he ordered, curtly.

He took a moment to allow them to sit, then continued.  “First, welcome onboard HMS Invincible.  For those of you who don’t know me” - as far as he knew, none of the newcomers knew him - “I am Wing Commander Richard Redbird, currently serving as both Commander Air Group and Squadron Leader A.  This will be somewhat unwieldy in combat, but we seem to have no choice.  We will therefore learn to cope.”

“Damn right,” someone muttered.

Richard ignored the interjection.  “We have orders to leave this system and deploy to the front lines in a week, ten days at the most.  The ship is currently crammed with shipyard workers who have been drafted in from all over the system to get us ready to leave on time.  You, fortunately, will not be involved with repairing the ship.  Instead” - he allowed the word to hang in the air for a few seconds - “you will be training extensively, training as you have never done before.  By the time we leave, I want us to be ready to work together to kick enemy arse.  I want you to make them sorry they ever heard of us.

“Those of you who have previous experience, before you left your respective services, are going to help the maggots learn.  We don’t have time to hold your hands.  Yes, I know; hardly any of you have experience on a ship like this.  Deal with it.  If you have problems, I expect you to cope with them like mature adults.  If not ... believe me, I will be your worst fucking nightmare.  We simply don’t have time to mess around.  We don’t have time.”

Richard made a show of checking his watch.  “It is now 1345.  I want you - all of you - in the simulators at 1445.  Get your bunks, get some coffee, have a shower, take a shit ... do whatever you have to do, as long as you are in your simulators by 1445.  Any questions?”

He waited, but there were none.  “Very good,” he said.  “One other thing.  If you have anything - and I mean anything - that happens to be forbidden by Royal Navy regulations, which you can download on your terminals if you aren’t already familiar with them, get rid of it.  Put it in the bins or sell it to the yard dogs, no questions asked.  I don’t care, as long as it isn’t with you when we depart.  Whatever it is, get rid of it.

“Squadron leaders, stay behind.  Everyone else, dismissed.”

“Follow the blue lines to your bunks,” Monica said, as the pilots rose.  “First come, first served.”

Richard allowed himself to relax as the pilots filed out of the compartment.  They looked a little subdued, now that he’d made his speech.  He hoped that would last, at least until they went through the first set of training simulations.  Richard had designed them himself, carefully crafting the engagement to give the enemy a set of unexpected advantages.  Anyone who went into battle with a cocky faith that they couldn’t lose was in for an awful shock.

Better they die a thousand simulated deaths than die once, for real, he told himself.  It was hard not to escape the sense of déjà vu.  Hadn’t he given the same lecture before?  How many of those pilots who’d listened to him, back then, had died?  No matter what I tell them, no matter what I say, some of them are going to die.

He gritted his teeth, then turned to face the squadron leaders.  He hadn’t had anything like enough time to do more than skim their files, but he’d learnt enough.  Lieutenant-Colonel Darren Vargas and Lieutenant-Colonel Tyrone Leif commanded the two American squadrons, one USMC rather than USN.  Richard hoped that wouldn’t be a problem.  The British Army and the Royal Marines worked closely together, but the United States Marine Corps was practically a second army in its own right.  Beside them, Lieutenant-Colonel Johannes Fritsch represented the Germans and Colonel Francesca Bernardello represented the Italians.  She looked surprisingly young, for someone who was a full colonel, although Richard knew better than to assume that meant she’d had an unfair advantage over her peers.  Most starfighter pilots were young.  

“Thank you for staying,” he said, shortly.  “I don’t have much time, so we’ll have a more formal gathering later ... perhaps when we’re halfway to our destination.  Until then ... do any of you have any real concerns over our current plan?”

“Train, train and train again,” Vargas said.  He was a big black man, so dark that Richard found it hard to look him in the eye.  “I like the way you think.”

“Our pilots will not,” Leif predicted, cheerfully.  “But they have to be ready to go at a moment’s notice.”

“If we’re attacked here, we’re fucked anyway,” Vargas pointed out.

“We can still fight,” Francesca said.  She met Richard’s eyes.  “My only concern is that it was a long flight from Luna Base Thirty to Invincible.  My crews need a chance to stretch their legs.”

“They’ll have it.”  Richard nodded in understanding.  Four hours in a starfighter cockpit wasn’t fun, even if the pilots weren’t being shot at.  “And your planes will be ready to fly again shortly.”

“I assume we will be carrying out live-fire exercises,” Fritsch said.  His accent was so thick that Richard could barely understand him.  “We brought drones for target practice.”

“We may have to wait,” Richard said.  He nodded towards the display.  “We’re in the middle of the shipyard complex.  I doubt they’d let us launch starfighters here.”

“Then we fly out of the shipyard complex and exercise there,” Fritsch growled.  “There’s no substitute for live-fire exercises.  Sir.”

“No,” Richard agreed.  He promised himself, silently, that he’d hunt down whoever had assigned Fritsch to Invincible and make him very sorry.  Fritsch had the makings of a good officer - Richard could hardly disagree with his assessment of life-fire exercises - but his accent was too thick.  He’d have to lose it.  “But right now, we may not be able to do more than a handful of launches.”

“Cheer up,” Vargas said.  “In all of our emergency drills, they always leave out the emergency.  We’ll learn the hard way.”

“We will certainly be running scramble exercises,” Richard agreed.  “But, right now, actually launching our starfighters will have to wait.”

“Bah,” Fritsch muttered.

“We don’t have a choice, do we?”  Francesca’s voice was firm.  “And besides, we will have time to practice during the voyage.”

“I certainly hope so,” Richard said.  The captain might want the ship to remain unnoticed as she passed through Terra Nova and headed to Falkirk - or wherever the unified command authority intended for humanity to make her stand - but it was unlikely.  It would do nothing for morale if they sneaked through a star system that had been human right from the day it had been discovered.  “If nothing else, we can run a few drills before we jump through the first tramline.”

“That would be good.”  Fritsch sounded relieved.  “My pilots do not have enough experience in carrier operations.”

“They’ll be ready in a few weeks,” Leif said.

“Yeah,” Vargas said.  “Do you know where we’re going yet?”

“No.”  Richard shook his head.  “Captain Shields may know, but he hasn’t bothered to confide in me.”

“Odd,” Francesca said.  “Is it a state secret or something?”

“It may be,” Monica pointed out.  “In the last two alien wars, we didn’t have to worry about spies.  Here ... a handful of infected people in the right place would let the virus keep track of us.  We might even have an infected bastard on our ship.”

“You checked our blood.”  Francesca rubbed her wrist.  “But I take your point.”

“We go where we’re sent,” Richard said.  He took a moment to check their reactions, then continued.  “I won’t - I don’t - have time to handle all the CAG duties.  Ideally, one or more of you would be training to take my place, just in case something happened, but we don’t have time for that either.  I need you to handle your squadrons without reference to me.  If there are any minor issues, I expect you to handle them yourselves.”

Vargas grinned.  “Excellent.  A blank cheque for mayhem!”

“You’ll be too tired for mayhem,” Leif predicted.  “My pilots, on the other hand, are used to sleeping uncomfortably.”

“Just because you jarheads think that it isn’t a proper bed unless you’re lying in a muddy trench with some bastard dropping rocks on you ...”

Richard cleared his throat.  “Jokes aside, behave yourselves.  Or we will all be for the high jump.”

“Yes, sir,” Leif said.

“And now that’s settled, you can get your carryalls to your bunks,” Richard said.  “I’ll see you all in the simulators.”

“Where we will whoop ET’s ass,” Vargas said.

Richard smiled.  He doubted it.  The programming he’d done would teach them all a lesson about being cocky.  “We’ll see,” he said.  “Dismissed.”

Monica stayed behind as the others left.  “Interesting bunch,” she commented.  “You read their files?”

“Just the highlights,” Richard said.  “You?”

“Fritsch has a chip on his shoulder, I’m not sure why,” Monica said.  “But he’s extremely competent, so his government gave him squadron command and sent him to us.  Francesca is the daughter of a powerful Italian businessman, but ... she was a test pilot and an aerobatic flyer before she was called up.  She wouldn’t have been in the aerobatic team unless she was extremely good.”

Richard nodded.  The Red Arrows - the greatest aerobatic display team in the solar system - were perfectionists.  No one, regardless of their connections, was allowed to join the team unless they were brilliant flyers.  He couldn’t imagine that it would be any different in Italy.  If nothing else, anyone who wasn’t extremely good trying to perform the stunts would probably wind up dead.  Francesca might look good on a recruiting poster - Richard had a feeling she probably was on a recruiting poster somewhere - but she wouldn’t have survived the aerobatic stunts if she wasn’t a good pilot too.

Which doesn’t mean she’s a good squadron commander, he reminded himself.  I’ll have to keep an eye on them.

“We’ll see,” he said.  He felt a sudden wave of tiredness and groaned, inwardly.  He’d been running himself ragged since they’d been told they would be deploying in a week.  “Any other thoughts?”

“You should probably groom either Wallace or O’Brian as a replacement squadron leader, just in case you have to take on more of the CAG duties,” Monica said.  “Wallace is the better flyer, if the files are to be believed, but O’Brian has better people skills.  And family connections in Northern Ireland.”

“We’ll see how they perform in the simulators,” Richard said.  He resisted the urge to sit down, if only because he wasn’t sure he could stand up again.  “You go get ready.  I’ll see you in thirty minutes.”

“Yes, sir,” Monica said.

She left, the hatch hissing closed behind her.  Richard felt himself sag, as if he simply didn’t have the energy to carry on.  1410?  It felt like 2400, time he really should be in bed.  How long had it been since he’d slept properly?  He honestly wasn’t sure.  Months, perhaps.  Too many people had died under his watch for him to feel anything but a numb tiredness that threatened to overcome him.  Too many ...

He opened his belt pouch and removed the injector tab.  It wasn’t a good idea to use stims, not really.  He knew, all too well, just how easy it was to become dependent on them.  And yet, he didn’t have a choice.  The next week was going to be frantic.  He couldn’t afford to rest.  

I’ll stop when we’re on our way, he thought.  And that will be the end.

Quite calmly, he pushed the tab against his skin and pressed the trigger.

Chapter Eight

“Russian command, sir?”

Stephen winced at Newcomb’s tone.  It was very far from diplomatic, the sort of comment that should - that could - only be made in private.  The Admiralty and the Foreign Office would be outraged to hear that it had been made at all.  And yet, he didn’t disagree with his XO.  There were too many question marks over Russia, dating back all the way to the First Interstellar War, for anyone to be happy under Russian command.

“So it would seem,” he said, finally.  The message had been brutally clear.  Admiral Svetlana Zadornov, former commanding officer of RFS Brezhnev - the first Brezhnev - had been assigned to command Task Force Resolute.  “And I doubt the Admiralty is interested in hearing any complaints.”

“No, sir,” Newcomb said.  “But can we trust the Russians to behave themselves?”

Stephen shrugged.  “There are issues I’m not at liberty to discuss,” he said, grimly.  “But, right now, I think we can trust the Russians to know where their best interests lie.”

He looked up at the holographic starchart.  The latest set of updates from the MNF had warned that the virus was steadily advancing towards Zheng He, detaching a handful of smaller formations to deal with the colony worlds on either side of the main advance.  Stephen liked to think that the colonies would delay the virus, at least for a few weeks, but he had to admit it was unlikely.  The colonies had almost no military significance.  They wouldn’t delay the virus any longer than it took for the virus to land troops and begin the infection.

Or they might simply blow the orbital facilities into dust and then leave the colony for later attention, he thought.  The virus might be alien, but he dared not assume that it wouldn’t understand military logic.  There was nothing to be gained by absorbing the colonies when the remainder of the human sphere was hastily girding itself for war.  No, it will come straight at us until it runs into a force powerful enough to stop it.

He frowned.  The updates had made it clear that Task Force Resolute was a task force in name only.  On paper, it was powerful enough to overwhelm a well-defended system; in practice, only three carriers and one battleship had been assigned to the fleet.  The remaining forty starships were a mixture of cruisers, destroyers, and a couple of experimental units that had never been put into mass production.  Stephen had his doubts about how well the fleet could function as a single unit.  Their communications networks and datanets were designed to be compatible - the First Interstellar War had taught humanity the importance of ensuring that they could link their datanets across national boundaries - but only a handful of captains had operated in a multinational formation before the war.  There wouldn’t need to be malice to cause problems.

Of course not, he told himself, sourly.  Who needs malice when you have simple inexperience paired with a desperate need for haste?

“It doesn’t matter right now,” he said.  He sat back in his chair, silently dismissing the issue with a wave of his hand.  “Where do we stand for meeting our departure date?”

“Better than I expected,” Newcomb said.  “The engineers are confident that they can replace the damaged components and weld the armour back into place before the deadline.  We’ve made a bunch of enemies, sir, but we should be ready to depart on time.”

Stephen had to smile.  “I received a whole string of complaints from Commander Davis,” he said.  “He’ll just have to cope.”

“Yes, sir,” Newcomb said.  “How badly did we impact on his deadline?”

“A couple of months, at least,” Stephen said.  He sobered.  “Let’s just hope the virus doesn’t reach Earth before Commander Davis is ready to launch his ship.”

He looked down at his hands, feeling a pang of guilt.  They’d had no choice, but to cannibalise fusion cores, heavy weapons and datanet processors from the half-completed HMS Furious.  They hadn’t had a choice ... which hadn’t stopped the shipyard crews from bitching and moaning about what it had done to their schedules.  Stephen didn’t blame them for being pissed.  Starships weren’t thrown together like Lego models.  Commander Davis and his crews would have to revise their production plans on the fly, pushing ahead with some aspects of the work while delaying others until replacement fusion cores could arrive.  There was no way they’d meet their deadline.

And some asshole in Nelson Base will probably make snide comments about their competence when they fail to meet their deadline, Stephen thought, coldly.  Furious had already been delayed once, while the designers absorbed the lessons from Invincible’s shakedown cruise and made adjustments to Furious.  They’ll say the delay came from incompetence rather than military necessity.

“I’m sure they’ll have the ship ready to fly and fight,” Newcomb said.  “Overall, we should meet the deadline.  Our real problem, however, is that our rear ablative armour will be weakened.  There isn’t anything we can do about that without replacing the entire section and that would take weeks.”

“And a handful of lucky hits there would cripple us,” Stephen mused.  “Even one, if it hit the weakest point.”

“Yes, sir,” Newcomb said.  “Theo thinks he can bolt on extra armour, but it won’t stand up to more than one or two shots at most.  And it would attract attention.”

Stephen winced.  “And then the enemy would know where to aim.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If they didn’t already know,” Stephen added, after a moment.  “Who doesn’t know to aim for the drive section if they want to cripple the ship?”

He shook his head in irritation.  The designers had done their work well, but they’d run up against a number of practical limits.  Every critical system on the ship was heavily protected, save for the drive section.  It was as strongly armoured as human ingenuity could devise, but the rear section couldn’t be covered in armour without rendering the drive field useless.  And, unlike the forward drive nodes, there was no way to hide the drive section either.  The structure would draw fire as soon as the enemy drew within engagement range.

“We don’t have a choice, sir,” Newcomb said.  “If we want to meet our deadline, we have to accept that we’ll be flying with weakened armour.”

“I know,” Stephen said, tiredly.  He’d worked the problem dozens of times, trying to figure out a solution that satisfied everyone, but there wasn’t one.  No one had managed to devise more than a temporary solution.  “Order the engineers to install the extra armour.  We’ll take the risk of drawing fire.”

“Yes, sir,” Newcomb said.

He didn’t sound happy.  Stephen didn’t blame him for that either.  No one in their right mind would take a poorly-armoured ship into combat, not unless there was no other choice.  The lessons of the First Interstellar War, where lightly-armoured fleet carriers had been chopped apart by plasma weapons with casual ease, were sealed into the Royal Navy’s collective memory.  There had been great advances since then - Invincible and her sisters could have won the Battle of New Russia effortlessly, if they’d somehow fallen back in time - but it would be a long time before the scars faded.  What good was heavy armour if there was no time to install it?

Stephen changed the subject.  “And the remainder of the ship?”

“We’ve managed to repair most of the internal damage,” Newcomb assured him.  “We did hit some snags because of the need to keep the internal security locks in place, but ... the engineers assure me we should have everything ready before we meet the deadline.  There may be some issues, once we set out ...”

He shrugged.  “We can probably fix those during the voyage.”

“Good,” Stephen said.  “And the crew?”

“Morale is low, but I’m keeping them too busy to grumble.”  Newcomb smiled, rather thinly.  “There’s a lot of worried people on the ship, crewmen concerned about their families and friends on Earth.  The BBC isn’t helping, I think.”

“Probably not,” Stephen agreed.  The BBC’s updates were long on scaremongering and short on actual news.  It was easy to lose trust in reporters and the media when one didn’t have it in the first place.  God knew the military updates weren’t very informative either.  “Is there anyone we should be concerned about?”

“Everyone,” Newcomb said, flatly.  “There aren’t many crewmen who don’t have families on Earth.”

“No,” Stephen agreed.  “And there isn’t much we can do about it either.”

He scowled.  The government, in its wisdom, had ordered large chunks of the national datanet to be shut down.  He could see the logic - the infected might be using the datanet to communicate - but he could also see the downside.  In the absence of proper information, rumours would spread rapidly ... and panic would follow in their wake.  There were already reports of innocent people being shot on suspicion of being infected.  God alone knew how that would work out.

“No, sir,” Newcomb said.  “Have you been privy to any ... private updates?”

“Nothing particularly detailed,” Stephen said.  Duncan had sent him an email, but Stephen hadn’t had the time to read it.  It hadn’t been marked urgent.  “They still don’t know how the virus got down to the surface.”

“They probably captured a RockRat miner and worked from there,” Newcomb said.  “A RockRat could lead them to a smuggler crew and eventually a passage down to Earth without any of those pesky security checks.”

“Perhaps,” Stephen said.  “But ...”

He shook his head.  It was possible, although he found it hard to believe.  RockRats might be anarchists, unwilling or unable to subordinate themselves to the Belt Alliance - let alone the Great Powers - but they were also extremely competent.  They had to be.  Space was an unforgiving environment, a place where the slightest mistake could spell disaster.  A RockRat was about the least likely person to neglect basic safety precautions.

“Or maybe they managed a suborbital insertion without being noticed,” he said, after a moment.  “There’s enough debris in orbit that they might have been able to make a stealth insertion without triggering the alarms.”

“There’s a lot of sensor platforms in orbit,” Newcomb pointed out.  “It’s hard to imagine them managing to land without being detected and blown out of space.”

“True.”  Stephen nodded.  If the orbital platforms detected an illicit landing, they’d fire first and ask questions later.  “We may never know.”

But we have to know, he thought.  Or else we might never feel safe again.

“I’ll push the Admiralty for permission to update the crew,” he said, instead.  “But, right now, very few people know anything.”

“Yes, sir,” Newcomb said.  “Hopefully, things will get better when we’re underway.”

Stephen nodded, grimly.  It had been a long time - nearly two hundred years - since the Troubles, when terrorists and wreckers had targeted military families in a desperate bid to destroy morale.  They’d paid a steep price for their crimes - and so had a vast number of innocents, he acknowledged grimly - but the damage had lingered.  This war was going to be worse.  There was no point in retaliatory killings when the targets wouldn’t even notice.

“Let us hope so,” he said.  “What about the foreigners?”

“No troubles as yet, but the CAG informs me that they have yet to do anything more than eat, sleep and run simulations,” Newcomb said.  “Poor Redbird has had them in the simulators from dawn till dusk.”

“Ouch,” Stephen said.  “And how are they getting along?”

“They’re doing about as well as can be expected, he says.”  Newcomb shrugged.  “But the shipyard CO refused permission to carry out live-fire drills.”

“And we can’t override him,” Stephen mused.  “We’ll just have to make up for them during transit.”

“Yes, sir.”  Newcomb consulted his datapad.  “Thankfully, they fly the same basic starfighters as us.  Their logistic requirements are practically identical to ours.  We shouldn’t have any problems supporting them.  The only real problem is that a couple of pilots don’t speak perfect English, but we’re working on that.”

“Ouch,” Stephen said.  It was rare to encounter a spacer who didn’t speak English.  “Is it likely to cause problems in combat?”

“The CAG is confident that most of the issues can be worked out,” Newcomb said.  “And if they’re not ... we can probably cope with any problems, as long as the pilots stay in their national formations.”

“Good,” Stephen said.  He rubbed his eyes.  “Are there any other issues?”

“Nothing serious enough to bring to your attention,” Newcomb said.  “There was some minor grumbling over shore leave being cancelled, but the senior chiefs took care of it.”

“We might have to do something about that,” Stephen said.  He considered it for a moment, but nothing came to mind.  There wasn’t anything he could do, short of sending the crew on shore leave ... and that was obviously impossible.  “Maybe we should send for a NAAFI ship.”

“They want to get out of the hull and stretch their legs, sir,” Newcomb said.  “A NAAFI ship won’t cut it.”

“I know,” Stephen said.  “Particularly as a NAAFI ship won’t bring them what they want.”

“They also know what’s at stake,” Newcomb added.  “It won’t be that hard to keep them focused.”

“They’re not machines,” Stephen pointed out.  “And even machines wear out if you work them too hard.”

He studied his desk for a long moment, trying to think of something.  A military force couldn’t remain on alert forever, no matter what the politicians and media claimed.  A constant state of alert - of high activity with no end in sight - would wear them down as surely as a steady series of engagements.  Tiredness would start to seep in, leading to a constant stream of mistakes ... some which would be life-threatening.  It would only take one mistake to lead to utter disaster ... he shook his head.  He’d just have to make sure that the crew had a chance to rest during transit.  But it wouldn’t be good enough.

Of course not, he thought, dryly.  How can they relax properly when they might be called to action at any moment?

“Keep me informed,” he said.  Another update blinked up in front of him.  Two starships had been withdrawn from the task force roster, with only one - so far - earmarked as a replacement.  “And keep an eye on crew morale.  If we can do something about it ...”

“Yes, sir,” Newcomb said.  “You could push for the prize money to be paid out now.”

“I could,” Stephen said.  The Admiralty hadn’t quibbled over the prize money, but the Treasury was balking.  He had been preparing himself to lodge an official protest when the virus had started its terrorist campaign.  “But where would they spend it?”

“It would give them hope for the future,” Newcomb said.  “And that might be just what they need.”

“True,” Stephen agreed.  “Very true.”

He smiled, thinly.  “Dismissed.”

Newcomb saluted, then left the ready room.  Stephen watched him go, then tapped a command into his terminal.  His steward entered a moment later, carrying a mug of coffee and a plate of sandwiches.  Stephen frowned - he didn’t feel like eating - but there was no point in arguing.  The poor woman had orders to make sure her captain ate properly at all times.

“Thank you,” he said, as she put the plate on his desk and withdrew as silently as she’d come.  “I’ll eat them soon.”

He glanced at the sandwiches, picked one at random and started to eat while studying the readiness reports.  Invincible was slowly coming to life, although his departmental heads hadn’t hesitated to point out issues that might - might - turn into serious problems during the voyage.  Stephen scowled, cursing the virus under his breath.  He’d known commanding officers who’d objected to reading anything that smacked of negativity, but he’d never seen the point of it himself.  Better to plan for the worst and hope for the best than ignore a problem in the hope it would go away.  If his officers were concerned about something, he needed to be concerned about it, too ...

Even if I have to ignore it, he thought, sourly.  He hated to leave a potential problem alone - it was the sort of thing that led to disaster, under normal circumstances - but there was no choice.  We simply don’t have the time to fix everything.

He reached for another sandwich, tapping a switch to bring up the live feed from the starfighter simulators.  Commander Redbird had outdone himself, Stephen noted; he’d crafted simulations designed to knock the fighter pilot arrogance out of anyone who hadn’t realised that they were not invincible.  The early engagements looked to have been utterly disastrous, with the entire wing being practically wiped out time and time again.  It was only now that the stats were steadily starting to improve.

“And the virus isn’t that good,” Stephen muttered.  The simulated enemy starfighters were impossibly fast, flown by pilots with improbable aiming skills.  “Unless they’ve been hiding some real high-tech from us ...”

He gritted his teeth.  It was quite possible that the virus was hiding something from them, intentionally or otherwise.  Stephen had seen it deploy starships that would have been outdated fifty years ago, alongside ships that could match the best warships humanity could produce.  Who knew what it had yet to send into battle?  It might have overwhelmed a far more advanced race on the other side of its territory ... hell, humanity didn’t even know just how much space it actually controlled.  There were so many unanswered questions that Stephen couldn’t help feeling that they were jumping into the unknown ...

“But we don’t have a choice,” he told himself.  He forced himself to put his concerns aside and concentrate on preparing his ship for war.  “We have to fight.”

Chapter Nine

“You folks had better get comfortable,” the pilot called.  “There’s a line of shuttles and shit waiting to dock.”

Alice blinked in surprise.  “On Invincible?”

“That’s right,” the pilot confirmed.  “And the line is moving pretty damn slowly.”

“They’re probably testing everyone for the virus, again,” Hammersmith muttered.  He looked disgustingly fresh for someone who had only managed to catch a few hours of sleep during the flight.  Beside him, Tindal was snoring gently.  “Or ... something.”

“Probably,” Alice said.  “We’ll just have to wait.”

She leaned back in her uncomfortable seat and brought up the live feed from the shuttle’s external sensors.  The shipyard was, as always, a teeming hive of activity ... but, this time, the activity seemed to be concentrated on Invincible.  Hundreds of shuttles, worker bees and mobile shipyard modules hovered around the giant carrier, while thousands of dockyard workers in suits crawled over her hull.  A giant metal hexagon was steadily being steered towards the rear of the starship.  It took her a moment to realise it was a piece of armour.  The captain was clearly determined to get his ship ready to deploy as quickly as possible.

“There’s a convoy being assembled,” Hammersmith pointed out.  “Perhaps we’re going to be escorting her.”

“Perhaps,” Alice said.  The freighters looked as if they’d been designed in the belt, rather than one of the national or corporate shipyards, but that hardly mattered during wartime.  The Belters were in danger too.  Her lips thinned in cold dislike.  Her wretched father had joined the Belters, after he’d been unfrozen.  The Belters either didn’t know about his past or simply didn’t care.  “But they wouldn’t assign a damaged assault carrier to protect a convoy.”

“She can still fight,” Hammersmith said.  “We can still fight.”

“Not in a real engagement,” Alice said, firmly.  “And how would we be able to bring our strength to bear?”

The shuttle quivered, slightly.  “We’ve just moved up in line,” the pilot said.  “We’ll be docking in twenty minutes or thereabouts.”

“Hurry up and wait,” Hammersmith said.  The shuttle quivered again.  “Do you think we’ll be reassigned?”

Alice shrugged.  It hadn’t been that long since they’d returned from their last deployment.  It wasn’t uncommon for marine units to be reassigned if their mothership had to return to the shipyards, but they would normally receive a period of shore leave first.  She sighed, inwardly, at the thought.  There was little point in her being given shore leave.  Where would she go?  God knew she probably wouldn’t be allowed to enter the orbital towers or take a shuttle down to Earth.  She wouldn’t even be allowed to visit Sin City.

Not that I’d want to go in any case, she told herself, firmly.  I’d sooner take a tour of the lunar surface then waste a few hours in Sin City.

She forced herself to wait as the shuttle inched towards the starship, trying to control her impatience.  Hammersmith was right.  “Hurry up and wait” had been part of the military life for thousands of years.  There was nothing she could do to speed things up, so she might as well take advantage of the time to relax.  There would be another challenge soon enough.

And I still don’t know what’s going to happen to me afterwards, she thought, as she keyed her terminal.  There still weren’t any updates from Earth, just bland platitudes that probably spread panic.  She hadn’t even heard anything from her sister!  They’ve probably put a block on outgoing messages from Earth.

“Here we are,” the pilot said.  The shuttle hummed to life.  “We’ve just been assigned a docking port.”

“Goody,” Alice said.  She put her terminal in her carryall, then poked Tindal.  “Wake up!”

Tindal jerked awake.  “Fire!  Plague!  Martians!”

“We’re only docking,” Hammersmith said.  “Quit messing around.”

“Oh,” Tindal said.  The gravity field flickered, just for a moment.  “That’s worse.”

“Yeah,” Hammersmith said.  “I’m sure the Major will have kept careful note of all the press-ups you didn’t do.”

“I knew it.”  Tindal stood and grabbed his carryall as a low thud echoed through the shuttlecraft.  “The Major hates my guts.”

“I doubt it,” Alice said.  She took a long breath.  “And if you say that in front of him, you’ll be for the high jump.”

She turned towards the hatch as it hissed open, revealing a decontamination chamber.  Alice sighed, then motioned for the two men to go ahead of her.  They wouldn’t have any problem with the blood tests, while she ... she shook her head in irritation.  The virus in her bloodstream was dead, but it would still set off alarms.  She supposed she should be grateful she hadn’t been reassigned.  Invincible’s crew might understand what had happened to her, but hardly anyone else would give her the benefit of the doubt.  They’d shoot her the moment they saw the blood results, convinced they were doing the right thing.  The hell of it was that they might well be doing the right thing.

A pair of doctors in full protective gear materialised as she stepped through the hatch, one pressing a sensor against her neck while the other waved a device she didn’t recognise over her chest.  Alice gritted her teeth as the pressure intensified, but said nothing.  The doctors were only doing their jobs.  She covered her eyes as the light grew brighter, killing any free-floating viral particles that might have accompanied her through the hatch.  The doctors shrugged, then dismissed her with a wave.  Alice told herself, firmly, she should be glad they weren’t carrying out a full decontamination procedure.  That wouldn’t be fun.

Major Parkinson met her as she stepped through the inner hatch.  “Alice?  Welcome home.”

“Thank you, sir,” Alice said, feeling her heart sink.  He outranked her.  She should go to him, not him to her.  That he’d come to welcome her personally was probably bad news.  She wondered, sourly, what it would be.  Was she being reassigned?  Or simply being benched until the doctors performed more checks?  Or medically discharged?  “What’s the bad news?”

The major didn’t smile.  “Come with me.”

Alice slung her carryall over her shoulder and followed him through a maze of metal corridors.  She knew the ship like the back of her hand, but the constant stream of strangers performing repair works practically everywhere she looked confused her.  She’d been led to expect that Invincible would be repaired over the next six months, not ... she frowned, feeling cold.  It looked as if the entire dockyard workforce was working desperately to ready Invincible for deployment.  Her eyes narrowed as she spotted a pair of starfighter pilots who clearly weren’t British.  It definitely looked as if they were going back to the war.

Major Parkinson led her through the hatch into Marine Country and right down the corridor into his office.  Alice felt the cold sensation in her chest steadily growing worse.  Normally, she would have a chance to reclaim her bunk and stow her carryall in her locker before taking her place in the duty roster.  Unless, of course, she was in trouble ... she shook her head, mentally.  Major Parkinson was hardly the sort of man to let the grass grow under his feet.  If she was in trouble, she’d know about it.  She certainly hadn’t done anything to merit a chewing out before she’d left the ship.

“Take a seat,” Parkinson ordered.  He took a pair of mugs from the dispenser and passed one to her.  “Cheers.”

“Cheers,” Alice echoed.  The coffee was military-grade, strong enough to keep her awake for hours.  It tasted vile, but she didn’t care.  “Major ... what is going on?”

“I received an interesting set of orders concerning you,” Parkinson said.  “Can you really control the infected?”

Alice resisted the urge to threaten Adamson and Bendix with grievous bodily harm, if she ever saw them again.  It was their duty, damn them, to report what they’d found.  She was mildly surprised they’d even let her go.  But then ...

“In a manner of speaking,” she said.  She briefly ran through what had happened during her absence.  “I can give orders, sir, but not very complex orders.”

“So you’re perfectly qualified for command rank.”  Parkinson didn’t smile at his weak joke.  “And you actually have to be there to give orders?”

“They have to be able to smell me,” Alice said.  “And they can’t be allowed a chance to actually think about their orders.”

“A Downing Street Drill,” Parkinson mused.

Alice nodded.  It wasn’t uncommon for Special Forces soldiers to be tested just to see how far they’d go before they questioned their orders, if only to keep them from following instructions that ended with the assassination of the Prime Minister.  A rogue officer in the right place could do a great deal of damage if his men followed orders without question.  It still galled MI5 and the other investigative agencies that they hadn’t figured out just who had ordered Sir Charles Hanover assassinated, let alone who’d done the deed.  Alice rather suspected that his cabinet had been involved.  An authoritarian leader tended to become a liability long before he realised he had to go ...

She was woolgathering.  She cursed her lack of discipline and dragged her attention back to her superior.  Parkinson was waiting patiently, his expression unreadable.  She winced, inwardly.  He should be chewing her out for not paying attention to him.  She would have preferred a lecture to forbearance.  Forbearance almost certainly meant she wasn’t going to like what he had to say.

“For the moment, you are being held in reserve,” Parkinson said.  “I’ve been told that you’re unique.  If we get a chance to put you in a place where you can issue orders, we’ll take it ... but otherwise, your life will be preserved.”

“Sir,” Alice said.  “I ... with all due respect, I understand the dangers ...”

“I know,” Parkinson said.  “And if you weren’t so unique, I’d put you back on the duty roster without a second thought.  You’ve earned your place here.  But you’re suddenly more than just a Royal Marine.  You’re a unique asset that has to be held in reserve until we have a chance to inflict maximum damage on the enemy.”

“Yes, sir,” Alice said, stiffly.  There was nothing to be gained by arguing.  Parkinson was only following orders.  “What do you want me to do?”

“For the moment, you’ll effectively be on detached duty,” Parkinson said.  “I’ve had the guest cabin prepared for you.  You can stay there with a close-protection detail ...”

“Sir,” Alice protested.  “I don’t need protection.”

“You might,” Parkinson said.  “First, if the virus realises what you can do, you’ll be targeted at once.  It cannot be that alien.  It will see you as a threat and try to remove you.  Second ... there are people who will also see you as a threat.  You may find yourself targeted by humans too.”

“On this ship?”  Alice met his eyes.  “Am I in real danger?”

“You could be.”  Parkinson looked back at her, evenly.  “People don’t need much of an excuse to panic, do they?  They won’t look at the evidence, they won’t give a damn about the doctors clearing you, they won’t even take your record into account.  And if they start to blame you for something ... you’re fucked.”

“Yes, sir,” Alice said, reluctantly.  “I take your point.”

She fought to keep the disappointment and anger off her face.  Being wounded was one thing - she could fight her way back onto active duty if she was badly wounded in combat - but this?  How was she supposed to recover from this?  How could she ever serve in combat again after being nothing more than a helpless principal, the person who had to be protected at all costs?  She felt a moment of grim amusement at the irony.  How often had she complained about the principal when she’d been on close-protection duty?  And now, she was the principal.  

At least I know how to handle myself, she thought.  And I know not to do things that will put lives at risk.

“I know it isn’t where you want to be,” Parkinson said.  “But it is where we need you to be.”

And would you say that to a male trooper?  Alice knew she was being unfair, but she couldn’t help herself.  How many times had she had to assert herself because her fellow recruits hadn’t taken her seriously?  God!  It was harder to assert herself against the ones who wanted to help her, rather than the sexist bastards.  At least the latter didn’t try to hide their dislike.  Or would you let him go straight back to active duty?  And tell him to shut the fuck up if he bitched about his condition?

She put her emotions under tight control.  “I understand, sir.  I will do my duty.”

“That’s all we ask,” Parkinson said.  “And you may make the difference between life and death.”

“Yes, sir,” Alice said.  “And ... are we deploying somewhere?”

Parkinson looked vaguely surprised by the question.  “Yes.  You can get the full details from the datanet, but the long and short of it is that we’re being redeployed within the week.  The virus has begun its offensive.”

“... Shit,” Alice said.  That explained why the scientists had been so accommodating.  “I didn’t know.”

“Most of the civvies don’t know, not yet,” Parkinson said.  “Be careful what you tell them.”

“Yes, sir,” Alice said.  It was an odd thing for him to say.  When would she get to meet a civilian?  “I’ll watch my tongue.”

“Dismissed,” Parkinson said.  “We’ll catch up tomorrow.”

Alice saluted and left the room, walking down to the guest cabin.  It was small, probably too small for anyone who hadn’t served in the military, but it was luxury incarnate to her.  The bed was hers.  She didn’t have to hot bunk with someone who had filthy night habits or worse ... she sighed as she dropped her carryall on the bed.  The cabin was also very secure, with only one hatch and no access to the tubes.  She couldn’t help thinking that it could easily be turned into a cell - or a trap.  Only one way in meant there was only one way out.

You’re being paranoid, she told herself, stiffly.  There’s no reason to fear attack.

She sat down on the bunk and pressed her fingers against the terminal.  It came to life, displaying a handful of priority messages.  She skimmed through them quickly, noting that the attacks on Earth had clearly been coordinated with the Battle of Falkirk.  It seemed unlikely that the timing was a coincidence.  She shook her head in bitter despair.  No wonder her superiors were keen to put her to work as ... as an alien controller, rather than a marine.  They were desperate.  She didn’t have access to fleet deployments - she didn’t have anything like that level of clearance - but she could make some educated guesses.  There was very little between Falkirk and the inner worlds.  If the virus managed to gain a secure foothold, it might be difficult - if not impossible - to stop it from overrunning the remainder of the Human Sphere.

And no messages from Jeanette, she mused.  She would have been more concerned if one of the updates hadn’t noted that all messages from Earth were being held in a buffer until the state of emergency was lifted.  I wonder ...

She frowned as a new message appeared in her inbox.  A personal message ... her eyes narrowed, concerned.  There was no one who might send her a personal message, except for Jeanette.  But her sister was on the other side of the datanet buffer.  The header insisted that it had come from the task force ... she frowned.  Who in the task force would send her a personal message?

Maybe it’s spam, she thought, as she opened the message.  And someone is looking at fines and jail time ...

Her mouth dropped open as she saw the sender.  Alan Campbell.  It couldn’t be ...  She swallowed hard, all the bitter resentments and hatreds bubbling up from the back of her mind as she checked the message details.  There was no mistake.  Alan Campbell, Master of the Flying Cuttlefish ... Alan Campbell, father of Jeanette and Alice Campbell ... Alan Campbell, the murderer of his wife, the man who’d left his daughters without either a father or a mother ...

No, she thought.  What’s he doing here?

Her fingers were suddenly numb.  She forced them to work, flicking through the message header to check the details.  The Flying Cuttlefish had been assigned to the task force, apparently ... she wanted to scream in rage.  Her father was a murderer, her father was a monster, her father was ... she knew, she had to admit, that he was also a legitimate war hero, but ...

“Fuck it,” she said.  Jeanette might be able to forgive their father, but Alice never could.  The bastard had killed their mother.  “Just ...”

She caught herself, a moment before she slammed her fist into the keyboard.  What did the bastard sperm donor want?  She glanced at the message, realised he was asking for a meeting, and shook her head, firmly.  She was damned if she was going to meet him.  She wanted to bury a knife in his heart and ... she wondered, despite herself, if she could get away with it.  If the government needed her, the government could cover up the crime.  She could do it ...

And the Major - and everyone else - would be disappointed in me, Alice thought.  She found it hard to care, even though she knew she should.  And I wouldn’t have a place here any longer.

Pushing the thought aside, she stood.  The gym should be clear right now, unless schedules had changed.  She wanted to pound a punching bag into dust ...

... And, if she imagined she was beating her father into a pulp, that was no one’s business, but hers.