Christopher Nuttall - The Trafalgar Gambit

“You will explain your government, please,” the alien said. “How do they come into power?”

Henry hesitated. It was hard enough explaining democracy, let alone the strange combination of meritocracy and aristocracy that made up the British Government. He rather doubted he could make it comprehensible to the aliens. But he had to try.

“When we want to select new leaders,” he said, “we ask people to support them. The person with the most votes wins the election and becomes the leader for the next few years.”

There was a long pause. He wondered, suddenly, how the aliens handled their government.

“Explain your government,” he ordered. It had taken him some time to realise that the aliens responded better to bluntness than politeness. He wasn’t sure if they didn’t need the social lubricant politeness provided for humanity or if words like ‘please’ or ‘thank you’ confused them. They’d certainly never punished him for asking questions or being rude. “How does it work?”

“All talk,” the alien said. “All decide. All do.”

Henry frowned, puzzled. Was the alien being deliberately evasive or was it unable to express its true meaning in English? Or was he simply not understanding what he was being told?

He took a breath. Weeks — he thought it was weeks, although it was hard to be sure — of captivity had left him uncertain of anything. It was growing harder to recall that there had ever been a world outside the cell, where he’d struggled to be a starfighter pilot and achieved his dream, only to be captured by the aliens. And the aliens didn’t have the slightest idea who they’d caught. He’d been careful not to say anything that might suggest his true identity to them.

“I understand,” he said. If the alien was feeling talkative, he could at least try to learn something from it. “Why did you decide on war?”

The alien moved, oddly. Henry wished, not for the first time, that he knew how to read their body language. A human might have been laughing at him or preparing to throw a punch, but the aliens were completely inscrutable. He braced himself and pressed onwards.

“Your people attacked us,” he said. “Why?”

“Attacked. Us,” the alien said. As always, the computer-generated voice was completely atonal. “You. Attacked. Us. Faction for war won.”

Henry felt his eyes narrow. There was certainly evidence the aliens had more than one faction; he’d been at Target One when the aliens had fired on one of their own ships. But what had the War Faction won? And why did they think humanity had attacked them first?

“We didn’t even know you existed until you attacked us,” he said. “Why didn’t you talk to us?”

“Faction for war won,” the alien repeated.

It — or he — spoke as though it explained everything. And perhaps it did, Henry realised. It was far from uncommon for humans to be rushed into war against another group of humans without sober reflection. If the aliens had some reason to think that humanity had started the war, it might explain their reluctance to actually talk to human representatives. They’d see the human race as aggressive, as needing to be pruned back before opening discussions. But how had the aliens come to that conclusion in the first place?

“We don’t have to fight,” Henry pointed out. “We could have the land; you could have the sea. There’d be nothing to fight over.”

“Faction for peace… uncertain ,” the alien stated. “Aliens. Started. War.”

Aliens , Henry thought. They must mean us .

“But what happened?” He asked. “And why?”

The alien said nothing. It rose to its feet, inched back towards the entrance and dropped into the hole. There was a splash as it hit the water and then vanished, somewhere within the murky depths. Henry stared after it, wondering just what had happened, then stood and walked back to the bed. There was little else to do, but sleep and dream of Janelle. He couldn’t help wondering just what had happened to her…

And Ark Royal , he thought, numbly. Did she make it back to Earth or did the aliens kill her ?

His thoughts were interrupted by splashing from the entrance. One alien — a new one, if he were any judge — clambered into the room, then knelt down and held out a leathery hand. It was so odd that Henry stared in disbelief. He’d never seen the aliens needing assistance to climb out of the water and into the room. But, as the next person came out of the water and removed the mask covering her face, he understood. The newcomer was human. And female.

He looked at her, then flushed and looked away as he realised she was naked. She was probably a handful of years younger than him, he decided, probably just pushing eighteen rather than twenty-two. Her long brown hair clung to her body as she wiped her skin, trying to get the water off her flesh. Henry understood the feeling all too well. The faint smell from the ocean water suggested it was far from clean.

“There’s a shower over there,” he said, pointing to the corner of the room. “It’s clean water.”

“They never supply towels,” the girl said. She sounded rather amused. “I should complain to the management.”

Henry snorted, then looked back at the alien. It looked back at him, then stepped into the water and vanished from sight. Henry shook his head in disbelief, then tried not to look at the girl as she washed the ocean water from her body and hair. His body was insisting on reminding him just how long it had been since he’d slept with anyone.

And are you going to betray Janelle so quickly ? His thoughts mocked him. Or are you going to try to excuse your behaviour ?

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I see,” he said. “What happened?”

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