The Trafalgar Gambit (Ark Royal) (22 page)

“Pass me one of them,” Jill said.  She took it from him and pulled it over her face with casual ease.  She’d used the masks before, Henry recalled, although the aliens had never let her keep them.  “You put it on like this.”

Henry followed her lead, wondering just where the aliens had found the gear.  Had they taken it from Heinlein, one of the other colonies or had they simply produced it for themselves.  He pushed the questions aside seconds later as he felt the mask seal itself around his face, then heard a hiss as he started to draw air from the canisters.  The air smelt slightly moist, but it was breathable.  Or so he hoped.  It would be the height of irony if the alien attempt to keep him alive ended up killing him.

One of the aliens splashed down into the water and vanished in the murky water.  The others beckoned for Henry to move forward and enter the water himself.  Henry hesitated, but – knowing there was no choice – he made his way forward and jumped down.  The water was warmer than he’d expected, like dropping into a warm bath, but it felt faintly slimy against his skin.  Perhaps it was just his imagination, he told himself firmly, as Jill jumped down beside him.  He certainly
wanted
to believe it was his imagination.

Jill glanced at him, her face unreadable behind the mask, then lowered her head until she was under the water completely.  Henry followed, cursing mentally as his vision blurred and then cleared as the mask started to compensate.  It was hard to see much in the gloom, apart from lights in the distance, but he could at least keep sight of Jill.  Something about the water bothered him, although he couldn't place it.  Moments later, the aliens swam past and motioned for the humans to follow.  Henry braced himself – it had been years since he’d swum outside a swimming pool – and forced himself to swim after them.  It rapidly became clear that the aliens were far better swimmers than humanity.  They clearly needed to hold back just to keep the humans with them. 

The alien city slowly came into view as they swam overhead.  It reminded him of images of sunken towns and cities on Earth, except it was clearly a thriving metropolis.  Aliens were everywhere, swimming in groups of three or more, surrounded by fish that hovered near them as though they were daring the aliens to try to catch and eat them.  From time to time, an alien did just that, snapping a fish out of the water as easily as a shark would catch a minnow.  Other aliens would roll over in the water and stare at the humans, their enormous eyes tracking their alien guests with ease.  Several actually swam alongside the humans until they lost interest and turned away.

We’re being paraded
, Henry realised.  He’d been in enough parades to know they weren't always about the person in the lead car. 
But why
?

He pushed the thought aside and started to study
the alien buildings, trying to see how they worked.  Some of them were made from stone, carefully assembled below the waves; others were made of something that looked like emerald, although he suspected it wasn't
real
emerald.  It could easily have been a trick of the light.  He thought he saw hundreds of tiny crab-like creatures scuttling along the seabed, moving in and out of the houses as if they owned the place.  The sheer diversity of life below the seabed was remarkable.

A hand caught hold of his and pulled him forward.  He looked up into the eyes of an alien, who seemed more annoyed at the delay than anything else.  There were no threats, at least as far as Henry could tell, but he got the message anyway and forced himself forward.  Jill and her escort had almost vanished in the gloomy distance. 

It felt like hours, his arms and legs aching in a way they hadn't since Basic Training, before they finally reached their destination, a tiny craft sitting on the seabed.  It looked like a weird shuttle, one of the lunar buses that could only operate in low gravity, or perhaps a minisub.  Henry felt himself yawn, despite the mask, as the aliens pushed him towards the hatch and forced him into the ship.  Jill was already there, her mask discarded and lying at her feet.  Her hair was so damp that it clung to her shoulders and breasts.  But Henry was too tired to stare.

There were no aliens in the compartment, Henry realised, as the hatch slid closed beneath them.  It was a prison, just as much as the prison cell they’d been forced to leave.  A dull whining echoed through the craft as it came to life – for a moment, Henry was convinced his first impressions had been right and it
was
a shuttlecraft – and then started to move.  It shivered from side to side as it passed through the water, his ears popping within seconds.  They were clearly rising up towards the surface ...

“The bends,” he said, cursing his own ignorance.  He wasn't even sure what the bends
were
, let alone how to cope with them without a pressure chamber.  “If you feel pain ...”

Jill looked bleakly at him.  “What can we do about it?”

Henry swallowed.  “Suffer,” he said. 

His ears popped again as the craft shook violently, then started to rock steadily.  He couldn't help being reminded of a motorboat on the ocean ... had the alien craft already reached the surface?   If so, maybe they’d only been a few dozen metres below the waves, not deep enough to make the bends a serious danger.  But would the aliens have known to show their captives so much consideration?  God knew a couple of aliens humanity had taken captive had died soon afterwards, their captives utterly unable to treat them properly. 

The craft rocked one final time, then bumped against something and came to a halt.  A hatch in the side of the compartment cracked open – Henry swore inwardly; he hadn't even noticed it was there – allowing bright sunlight to stream into the craft.  Henry cringed back, covering his eyes.  It had been so long since he’d seen anything, but the dim greenish light of his prison cell.  A shadow moved in front of the hatch and he froze.  Outside, the aliens were gathering.

“Come on,” he said, trying to put a brave face on things.  He’d never wanted to be a groundpounder.  “Let’s go meet our adoring public.”

Jill took his hand and they stepped through the hatch together.  The bright sunlight revealed a tropical lagoon, not unlike the seas of Target One, but surrounded by strange white alien buildings.  Water sprayed everywhere, as if it were the midst of a swimming pool, leaving the air hot and moist, just the way the aliens liked it.  They needed it, Henry realised, as he looked at the jungle in the distance.  The sunlight suggested the world was hot enough to please the aliens, but maybe not moist.  High overhead, the sky was so brilliantly blue that he felt an ache in his heart.  Would he ever see Earth again?

The entire city was
covered
in aliens, each one lying on the rooftops like dozing seals, staring at the humans as they were gently escorted through the alien city.  Water lay everywhere, running down the floors and back into the seas ... as a child, part of his mind noted, he would probably have regarded the alien city as a giant adventure playground.  Not that he’d ever been allowed to play in any such playgrounds, of course.  The Heir to the Throne – if they ever sorted out the issue of which of his father’s children should succeed the Throne – could not be allowed to risk himself on roller coasters or theme park VR rides.  They’d been reluctant to allow him to attend the Academy as a grown man!

He was tempted to wave at the spectators as they reached the edge of the city and walked towards a shuttlecraft, sitting on a launching pad.  It was little different to a human design, he noted, although it looked to be a heavy-lifter.  The escort paused outside the hatch, as if the aliens were consulting with their fellows, then opened the hatch.  Inside, there was yet another tiny compartment suitable for human prisoners.

“They must prefer to live in the water,” Jill said, as they were pushed inside.  The hatch closed firmly behind them.  “Do you think their starships are full of water?”

Henry considered the possibility.  It was true that post-battle assessment teams had found a considerable amount of water vapour in the ruins of alien starships, but cold logic suggested the aliens
couldn't
use water throughout their ships.  They’d run the risk of shorting out entire compartments if their innards were exposed, even minutely.  He tried to imagine the response of the Royal Navy’s engineers to deliberately flooding the fleet’s starships and decided they’d probably want to strangle the idiot who suggested it with their bare hands.

But the aliens might not have a choice, any more than the Royal Navy had a choice about supplying its crewmen with oxygen.

“It’s a possibility,” Henry said.  The shuttle seemed to quiver, then launched itself into the air.  “But it would be dangerous.”

He shook his head.  He’d been told, more than once, that dolphins were smarter than they seemed, but dolphins had never attempted to grow hands and leave their marine environment for dry land.  It didn't seem possible for them to even make a start on developing their own technology.  Their environmental niche was a prison as much as anything else, with the added disadvantage they’d never know what they were missing.  Unless the Uplift Project actually received the go-ahead ...

But then we wouldn't be able to deploy cybernetic dolphins
, he told himself. 
There would be objections from vested interests
.

The gravity faded away to nothingness, leaving them drifting up into the air.  Henry blinked in surprise – the aliens definitely had the technology to produce artificial gravity – and then resolved to ignore it.  Jill looked green, though, just like some of the early starfighter trainees who had never developed their space legs.  Eventually, they’d been sent back to Earth and told to apply somewhere that didn't involve regular space travel.  The aliens might have been trying to use it to disconcert them.

“They probably don’t have any problems with zero-gravity,” he said, trying to distract Jill from her feelings.  “If they’re born under the water, they probably take to it like ...”

“A fish to water?”  Jill asked, weakly.  She swallowed, hard.  “I was asleep for the trip to Heinlein, Henry.  I never went into zero-gee properly.”

“It’s not quite what it’s made out to be,” Henry said.  There had been one zero-G parlour in Sin City where visitors were encouraged to enjoy making love in reduced or no gravity, but it wasn't as popular as he'd thought.  “It can be fun, but ...”

“You’d get sick at a delicate moment,” Jill guessed.  She floated up to the ceiling, then pushed herself back to the ground.  “It would probably be rather unromantic.”

“It was,” Henry said.  The whole experience had been a lesson in orbital mechanics, rather than something sexual.  “But there are plenty of ways to have fun in zero-gravity.”

The shuttle shuddered, then quivered gently.  Henry felt the bulkhead carefully, remembering how
Ark Royal
had quivered against his fingertips when the main drive had been active.  Unless he was very wrong, they’d just docked with a much larger starship.  But it was clear the starship didn't have a gravity field of its own.  They’d have fallen down towards the floor if the bigger ship had one.

If there is a bigger ship
, he thought.  Running two gravity fields together was asking for trouble, unless there was enough power to manipulate both fields to prevent problems.  The Royal Navy tended to forbid it unless there was no alternative. 
I could be wrong
...

The hatch clicked open.  A wave of moist air, smelling of something fishy, rolled into the shuttle.  Outside, he saw a pair of aliens, floating in the air as if they belonged there.  Henry sighed, then pulled himself through the hatch, carefully only to use tiny motions.  Jill, less practiced in zero-gravity, accidentally pushed herself right out of the shuttle and headed for the far bulkhead.  Henry winced, remembering the first few days of his own zero-gravity training, as she hit the bulkhead and bounced off.  One of the aliens caught her and half-carried her towards the hatch, using tiny handles built into the bulkheads to propel itself forward.  Henry followed, realising that he'd been right.  The aliens definitely preferred low-gravity environments.

He frowned as the first hatch led to a second hatch, which opened up into a larger compartment.  A bed was pressed against the wall, while two computers – civilian teaching machines, he realised – had been left against the spare bulkhead.  They’d probably still be working, despite the moisture in the air.  Teaching machines were designed to survive small and resentful children.  Henry had heard that one of them had been dropped from a helicopter and survived the fall.