His Majesty's Starship (7 page)

“Do names have significance to the First Breed, Arm Wild?” he asked.

“No more than yours, Captain. In our mythologies, as in yours, many people received appellations with meaning which passed into the language as general designations. For example, I believe that the name Michael translates from the Hebrew language as ‘Who is like God?’, and that according to at least one religious belief system, Michael was the archangel who led the winning side in a war in Heaven.”

“Was he?” Gilmore was impressed. He thought it might be polite, and in the interest of diplomatic relations, to study Rustie mythology in return.

“As a diplomat, it is wise to study the customs and cultures of those with whom you deal,” Arm Wild said. “With your authorisation, when on board I would like to interview all your crew members at times convenient to them.”

“Of course.”

“Countdown begins, sir,” Nichol called back. “Ten, nine-”

Eight seconds later
Sharman
was spaceborn.

*

His Majesty’s Starship
Ark Royal
was a long, sleek ferro-polymer spindle three hundred feet long, its lines broken by the engine block at one end and the bulge of the centrifuge ring a third of the way down. At the far front of the ship was the anti-debris laser turret – the only armament that
Ark Royal
possessed. Aft of the laser was the forward airlock and then a stretch of hull, studded with the sockets that had held cargo containers in the ship’s previous life as a freighter, that swept back to the wide disc of the ring compartment, ribbed by heat-dispersal fins. To Gilmore on the approaching
Sharman
, with the remaining two thirds of the hull hidden by the centrifuge,
Ark Royal
looked like a giant metal mushroom. The centrifuge ring held the crew quarters, the wardroom, the gym ...

The landing boat began to brake and slowly moved along the ship, and the remaining two thirds came into view. First came the boathouse –
Sharman
would fit snugly into its recess in the hull behind the ring, with only the wings of the arrowhead-shaped vessel protruding out into space. The boat, its reserve fuel tanks and
Ark Royal
’s engineering section accounted for all of the space between the ring and the engine block.

Finally came the engines themselves – a triangle of liquid oxygen rockets around the central core of the fusion pulse engine.

Good girl, Gilmore thought, looking out of the port. Then he remembered his guest. “She must look very quaint to you, Arm Wild,” he said, wondering if the translator would pick up his slightly bitter tone.

“We still have similar craft, Captain.” Arm Wild sounded quite neutral. “We are not that much ahead of you.”

“A lot can happen in a century,” Gilmore said. “On our world, steam completely replaced sail, then suddenly even steam was out of date.”

“Our experience was akin to yours, Captain.”

Everything that was said to this creature, Gilmore realised, came bouncing back neatly as “we are the same.” Maybe the two races really were similar. Maybe they were destined to act together. Maybe they could, despite all the sceptics, be friends.

*

Sharman
settled into the boathouse with barely a jar, drawn in by
Ark Royal
’s docking arm. Gilmore turned to Arm Wild to assist but the alien was already out of its couch.

Arm Wild’s bodily contortions were eye-watering to watch as he airswam through the airlock and into
Ark Royal
. He was no longer a stumpy, bulky quadruped; with four limbs, each with three digits, and two grasping tentacles he was perfect for zero-gee. He could reach out at almost any angle and grab a handhold, while a human emulating him would have needed arms and legs dislocated. Once you remembered that this was an alien behaving naturally and not a terrestrial creature undergoing torture, it was almost beautiful to watch.

Two of the ship’s company were waiting as Gilmore and Arm Wild emerged from the boat: Hannah Dereshev and
Ark Royal
’s systems officer, Julia Coyne. They saluted. “Welcome on board, sir,” Hannah said formally.

“Thank you, Number One. May I introduce Arm Wild of the First Breed. Arm Wild, Lieutenant Commander Hannah Dereshev.”

“Very pleased,” Arm Wild said. “Is that Hannah, as in the mother of the prophet Samuel?”

Hannah was nonplussed. “Um, yes, that’s right,” she said, with a surprised look at Gilmore, who put on the poker face he only ever wore when trying not to smile.

“Show Arm Wild to his cabin, please, Ms Coyne,” he said. “What’s our status, Number One?”

“Ready to go, sir. The main engine is tested and calibrated; we have provisions to last us all for three months; the tanks are full; watches are posted ... all we need is the prince. Oh, and Peter Kirton brought the prince’s personal AI on board. Apparently you’ve met Plantagenet?”

“I have,” Gilmore said. He touched the nearest comms panel. “How are you, Plantagenet? Keeping busy?”

“I am very well, thank you.” The AI sounded calm and unhurried. “Though there is not much for me to do until the Prince of Wales is on board, and I have to say the ship’s network is very cramped compared to UK-1 and there are no other AIs of my class with whom to converse-”

“Delighted,” Gilmore said and quickly broke contact. He and Hannah looked at each other, and Gilmore hoped Plantagenet hadn’t learned his social mannerisms from anyone close to him.

*

With the countdown to leaving L3 in its last half hour, the crew were assembled on the flight deck around the lozenge shaped central console. The main desk and the officer of the watch’s desk were at either end and two auxiliary desks faced each other along the short axis. Space watch was about to start and there would be someone at the main desk every second of the day until the ship reached the Roving.

“So, here we are,” Gilmore said. He smiled as he looked around them. Hannah and Samad he knew well: the others, though they had all served under him, not so well.

Peter Kirton: there because Samad had felt he owed the man. And, Gilmore reminded himself, because he was good at his job. When the Martian let his reserve down, Gilmore had noticed people liked him.

Julia Coyne. Gilmore knew she had turned down a chance to represent UK-1 in the All-System Choir Festival to come on this voyage. Yet, she hadn’t been forced to come. Her sense of adventure outweighed her love for music.

Adrian Nichol, ever puppy-keen, willing to please and convinced of his own ability, even though Gilmore thought his habit of wearing his gold pilot’s wings in deep space, to show he was qualified for atmospheric landing craft too, was downright immature. It was good to see young people with ambition and drive: the sad thing was, life often knocked it out of them before their prime. What awaited Nichol, only time would tell.

His crew.

“As of 14:00 ship time, in about two minutes, we will be on space watch,” he said. “Port watch will commence: that is, myself, Ms Coyne and Mr Kirton. I’m sorry the crew is on such short order, but I know we’ll manage. Content yourself with the thought that when we get back you’ll probably never have to work again.” There was a chuckle; they certainly would all work again, but the fact that their upward mobility would be lubricated by having served on a ship of the delegation fleet was nice to know. “Two final points, one is Arm Wild. Be polite, be courteous, be honest and do remember, even though he knows we can’t be entirely representative of the whole human race, a month of close confinement with us could well colour his views. He wants to interview each one of us: we will all cooperate. And when the prince comes on board, we might all be on first name terms, but to us he is Sir, Your Highness or Prince James.” Gilmore checked his watch. “And from now on, I am Sir too. Port watch, stations.”

It was only when the off-watch crew had left the flight deck that Gilmore realised Arm Wild had been waiting just beyond the hatch. He scanned mentally through the instructions he had been giving while ignorant of the alien’s presence and wondered if anything in them may have given offence.

“May I compliment you on your crew?” the Rustie said.

“Why, thank you, Arm Wild,” Gilmore said. The Rustie seemed in no hurry to move on.

“I understand they all chose to follow you?”

“They all volunteered, yes. I’ve served with all of them before.”

“Then they accept you as their captain.”

Gilmore shrugged. “Apparently.”

“We have a matching ceremony with our own ship seniors,” said Arm Wild. “The whole pride must confirm them in their position.”

Gilmore paled inwardly at the thought of having to win over a crew not of five but of something like a hundred. He could never do it, he was sure.

“That ... must make their authority something very special,” he said.

“I felt highly confident you would understand,” Arm Wild replied, with what sounded through the translator like satisfaction.

Twenty minutes later the Saab/Messerschmidt 300 main engine so beloved of
Ark Royal
’s engineering officer fired and the ship pushed itself out of lunar orbit.

*

James Windsor took one last look around
Britannia
’s drawing room. If you ignored the curving floor, the starkness of the metal ceiling and the fact that most of the paintings were holograms, it could almost pass for a room back home. He had never really appreciated the comforts of
Britannia
until there had come a time when he knew he was going to spend at least a month on board
Ark Royal
; suddenly – and more and more so, as that time drew nearer and nearer – all of the royal yacht’s home comforts became a lot more apparent.

The ship was a spinner, a rotating cylinder in space; you got the feel of gravity just about anywhere on board, as compared to
Ark Royal
which just had its one spinning ring.
Britannia
was larger than
Ark Royal
; the cabins weren’t exactly big but James had seen the plans for
Ark Royal
and knew the size of its cubby holes.
Britannia
was just more comfortable, and he wished she was going on the delegation instead of Gilmore’s toy ship. He knew there were good reasons why she wasn’t but that didn’t stop him wishing.

The display showed
Ark Royal
, a thousand miles away and closing. A spinning top with an extended shaft: home, for the foreseeable future. Ugh. Looking on the bright side, it meant he would enjoy the occasional break away from her all the more. He already had a couple of invitations to attend functions on other delegation ships during the voyage to the Roving and he meant to accept them. Mix business and pleasure.

There was a cough behind him: the ship’s doctor, waiting patiently with a case in his hand. James sighed and rolled up his sleeve.

“This probably isn’t necessary,” he said as the doctor put an infusor together. “Free fall usually makes me chuck anyway.”

The doctor pressed the infusor to James’s skin and the drug hissed its way into the prince’s bloodstream. “It’s your decision,” he said, with a hint of disapproval at abused medication which James ignored. The doctor wasn’t the first to show disapproval of James’s intentions:
Britannia
’s captain, too, had expressed reservations about what he and the ship were to do in the near future. The spray hissed and James winced, both at that and at a pang of prescience. If disapproval was all he got before this business was over, he would be lucky. He suspected he was going to make a lot of enemies.

*

“Sir, a message from
Britannia
.” Julia Coyne spoke from the command desk. “Please dock-”

“Dock?” Gilmore said. He looked through the port at
Britannia
, a quarter of a mile off. “Why can’t the prince spacewalk like any normal human being?”

“-because the prince is terribly spacesick, sir,” Julia said apologetically. “
Britannia
’s captain is afraid he will vomit in his helmet.”

“He can’t be spacesick.” Gilmore looked at
Britannia
again. “She’s spinning! How can he be-”

As if to contradict him
Britannia
’s rotation was slowing down, as it would have to if the two ships were to make physical contact. But she had been spinning – her crew had made the trip from UK-1 to this pickup point in one gee, and it still didn’t answer the question of why the prince was struck with spacesickness, an affliction that usually only hit lubbers in free fall.

Suddenly the old ghost was back. Failure. He couldn’t manage this, his plans were falling to bits, everyone was going to see he was no good-

Gilmore swatted it away with irritation and waited for a moment. Crises were like this: the initial confusion and disorientation but then, if he shut his eyes, he could normally see what needed doing. It was as if someone had laid out a plan of action for him to follow in stages, one, two, three.

But that wasn’t happening either. Grow up, Gilmore, he thought angrily. If you can’t handle something as simple as a docking manoeuvre-

“Very well,” he said calmly. “Ask
Britannia
to extend a docking tube. Plot manoeuvres to bring the lateral lock up to-”

Julia was already looking even more apologetic. “What?” he said.

“
Britannia
’s docking tube is non-operational, sir. They request that we dock bodily at the forward lock.”

So,
Ark Royal
was going to have to stick its first ten metres of length into a hole in the front of
Britannia
. The manoeuvre would be complicated, fuel expensive and time consuming ... but his master commanded.

“Very well,” Gilmore said again, with heavy irony as though the whole affair was of no consequence. “Sound the manoeuvring bell, all loose objects to be secured-”

It took half an hour for
Ark Royal
to position herself properly. Five thousand ton spaceships didn’t respond to gentle spurts of the thrusters quite as well as personnel transport capsules – something
Britannia
’s captain knew but presumably (unbelievably) Prince James did not.

Eventually the two ships were poised nose-to-nose, only metres between them. A burst on the thrusters moved
Ark Royal
forward, followed at once by another burst to slow her down and stop her, just as
Britannia
’s grabs took hold.