There Ain't Gonna Be No World War Three, Chapter 20

20. Halt Befehl

"Uh, it's true there", said Glenn Bob. "I done found that out in my first week here. There's a whole bunch of military tunnels goin north under the lichee fields, an whenever you guys ain't here, big ships take off an land like it's Discount Big Ship Landin Day. Though we couldn't tell you nothin. Alastair Drague had to think you thought Gondolin was only defended by the one cruiser there."

"The ships I saw on the way back from New Salem last year", said Ant.

"Yeah", smirked Glenn Bob. "I heard a Laputan Super Skunk Force Commander caught a whuppin for that one."

"You used us", said Cleo. "That's why you wouldn't let Ant stay on Gondolin when he asked you last year. You needed us on Earth. You knew I'd find out where Gondolin was, and you expected me to go to Alastair with the information as soon as I had it."

"Not true", said the Commodore. "I expected you to go through any agony of indecision. I expected Alastair to need to turn the screws on your loved ones. I expected, in short, that you would put on a very good and satisfying performance. What went wrong was that you were far stronger than I anticipated. I virtually had to stand next to all of Alastair's microphones and talk you through giving away our position."

"And you let me think I'd done that", said Cleo. "You let me think I'd betrayed everyone on Gondolin."

"I had to. Alastair was certain to have a voice stress analyzer plugged in to the conversation. He would have spotted a lie."

"Alastair", said Cleo, "doesn't need a voice stress analyzer to spot a lie. He is a human voice stress analyzer."

The clouds still howled with hurtling firepower. Saucers as large as any vessel Ant or Cleo had ever seen in space, ships so big that low-lying cumulus wasn't big enough to hide them.

"That there's a Morgan class flag carrier", said Glenn Bob. "Matter of fact, I think it's the old Levi herself. And that's a Zapata class escort carrier right there...four Reveres...four Thermopylae class strike ships...hey, ain't that the old Uriel come all the way from New Salem?"

"From anywhere in the USZ", said the Commodore, "ships can be called to defend Gondolin and get here within the day."

The entire planet, from horizon to horizon, was rumbling with the impact of the USZ fleet's passage.

"The British fleet", said Cleo. "It's going to be annihilated. People are going to die. Commodore, Alastair's report listed two Revere class cruisers. One of them could be Black Prince. Jervis Bay's sister ship."

The Commodore frowned sourly. "Not could be, in fact. Is. The British fleet only runs to two Revere class cruisers. The Black Prince and the Iron Duke."

"The men on board that ship saved Richard Turpin's life, sir."

"And now they're coming here to kill us. Men who speak our language and laugh at the same jokes we do. And if we don't kill them first, they will be successful. Such is war, Cleopatra. A pointless, idiotic, horrible thing. But they have their orders, and we have ours."

Cleo, her face quivering with rage, turned on the spot and stomped back off down the gravel path, her hands bunched into fists.

"I'm only glad that the Shadow Ministry were obviously so eager to pounce on Gondolin themselves and make sure the Americans didn't get their hands on it that they sent their fleet out here alone without backup", continued the Commodore. "If the Americans had sent a fleet as well we'd have been outclassed completely. As it is, the positions are reversed. The sad thing is", he said, looking down at the mobile phone screen sadly, "that the man who warned us of the attack is almost certainly on one of those vessels, or we'd never have received this signal. He thought he was warning us so we could cut and run. He probably never imagined he was warning a fleet larger than his own that was lying in wait for him. Poor, poor Alastair."

Ant looked long and hard at the Commodore. "If that's true, he risked his life to get us the message, sir."

The Commodore looked away, up to the skyful of naval superiority floating high above them. He seemed to find it comforting.

"Could be a trick there", said Glenn Bob.

"I doubt it", said the Commodore. "An immediate attack is exactly the way the Ministry would react. It fits all our predictions."

"There is a thing called mercy, sir", said Ant.

The Commodore looked long and hard back at Ant. "Hitler showed mercy at Dunkirk", he said. "For twenty-four hours he halted his troops outside the town, while the British evacuated. Hitler's famous Order to Halt; the Halt Befehl. And where did that get him? Defeated by the British five years later. When your enemy turns his back to run, you strike him, and strike him hard. That is the way, young man, that battles are won."

"And I thought", said Ant, shaking with emotion, "that we were going to win this war because we were gentlemen."

"Wenigstens, bessere gentlemen als Hitler", said Jochen darkly.

The Commandant scowled, turned, and stomped off in the opposite direction to the one Cleo had taken.

"You need to get below ground", he said over his shoulder. "It may be about to get thermonuclear. Mr. Linklater - show these gentlemen down the tunnels to central control. They deserve to see this from ringside seats."

***

Central Control contained bank upon bank upon bank of workstations bearing massive keyboards that in no way resembled 104-key Windows standard. Each keyboard had a tiny, tiny black-and-green screen. Ant, despite having tried extra specially hard in IT this year on the assumption that being good with computers might make him better with spaceships, was lost. There was not a window, a button or an optical mouse in sight. A matrix of teeny tiny television screens was mounted in the middle of the wall. Some showed starship bridges, with men in USZ flight suits doing USZ flighty things. Some showed fuzzy, distant images of ships seen against black space. In front of the television screens was a holotank the size of Ant's grandad's greenhouse. The holotank showed Gondolin as a dull grey three-dimensional blur, and two clusters of blue dots bracketing it. The flight suits the crewmen were wearing were made of heavy, ribbed rubber, with massive, pressurised helmets. The visors of the helmets were open.

"They're wearing suits", said Ant. "Inside their ships. But there's air inside the ships. Are they going outside the ships?"

The Control crewmen all wore massive headphones the size of rubber-flanged landmines. Each man and woman spoke into a silver microphone projecting from his or her desk. They were talking gibberish.

"Lichee carrier Demeter, this is Gondolin control; you're straying off glide path, could you go back on beam."

"Personal transport Pegasus, please maintain parking orbit and await instructions to burn."

"Domestic waste tender Hephaestus, you're coming in hot. Please slow your orbital velocity by point ten klicks per second or you'll undershoot."

Every time they talked gibberish into their microphones, they listened to their headphones briefly, flicked through a massive book on their desktop, and read through the page they arrived at very carefully.

"None of those ships is personal transports", said Glenn Bob, looking at the bank of screens. "They're all cruisers and carriers."

"Lichee carrier Demeter is the Levi Morgan", whispered a crewman. "It's all in code. Keep your voices down."

Ant bent down to the crewman's desk and lowered his voice. "Why aren't you using encryption? Haven't you guys heard of scramblers?"

"We're using a code we know the enemy's broken", hissed the crewman. "So they think they're listening in on us, when we're actually feeding them a false impression that they're heading into a big swarm of heavy civilian transports. Now be quiet!"

Approaching it from trailing orbit was a third cluster of dots. This one was red. It represented the enemy.

"The redcoats are coming", breathed Ant.

"Jesus H. Willickers", muttered Glenn Bob. "Those British ships is stickin their heads in Hell's mouth an ringin the dinner bell." He looked at his feet. "An the head weren't the first body part I thought of there."

"Our ships are forming up at the Lagrange points", said Ant. "Usually you can't maintain a formation of ships in orbit, unless your formation is a line of ships travelling round the planet. But at the Lagrange points -"

Glenn Bob nodded. "The Lagrange points is the only points on an orbit where you can put stuff down and it stays put. Where the gravitational fields balance. And Gondolin's Lagrange 1 and Lagrange 2 points are just inside and outside Gondolin's orbit, on either side of the planet. And that British fleet is coming at us almost dead on our orbit, between Lagrange 1 and 2. Which means it's put itself in a crossfire."

"Their commander has to be a world class idiot."

"Oh, he is", said Drummond's voice. Ant, Glenn Bob and Jochen turned. Commodore Drummond was still wearing his USZ Commodore's uniform, but seemed to have put on a special Christmas jumper for the occasion. "The Right Honourable Sir Oswulf Jasper, K.C.M.G. Promoted to Admiral largely because his uncle is First Shadow Lord. Not officer material." He leaned in close to Ant and whispered one single word:

"Eton."

As if this explained all Admiral Jasper's shortcomings, he wandered off on his battle legs, softly so as not to disturb the command room crew. Ant noticed that his legs appeared to have been furnished with crepe-soled feet specially for the occasion.

A woman in a major's uniform walked up to Drummond. She asked a question, most of which was said in too low a voice for Ant to hear. The Commodore shook his head and muttered:

"I am not countenancing Plan Cherry Blossom. Things are not that desperate. That is final."

The woman clearly didn't like the answer, but couldn't argue; she turned on her heel and left. The Gondolier sitting in the end desk turned to Drummond and mouthed a question at him. Drummond nodded.

The Gondolier turned back to his microphone.

"Ahhh...unidentified vessel closing on our trailing vector...your IFF transponder seems to be damaged, you're only showing on target acquisition radar. Please identify yourself soonest."

He sat and waited. The red swarm continued to advance.

The Gondolier left his microphone open on TRANSMIT, turned to an invisible man next to him and murmured loudly:

"I've got more than one of them closing. And they're not responding to hailing. Oh, whoops." He closed the TRANSMIT button again.

Then the firing began. It could be seen in the holotank, as spheres of expanding debris started to spread out around the red dots.

"We opened fire first", said Ant.

"Of course we did", said Drummond proudly. "'Oh whoops' was our code to attack. What", he said, sensing Ant's disapproval, "you want us to wait till the heavily-armed force of unidentified vessels opens fire on us? You can't possibly be feeling bad about us taking them by surprise? What did you think they were planning to do to us?"

Ant felt foolish, and at the same time hopeful that none of the expanding red dots were the Black Prince. "I suppose not."

The firing could be seen on the TV screens now. One of the USZ ships had exploded and was turning in space, venting gas. Her bridge, or what Ant assumed to be her bridge, still looked as if it was functioning. Her crew were still sitting at their workstations. The only differences were that the visors on their helmets were now closed, and that an irregular silvery line was now dividing their TV screen in two.

"They're sittin in vacuum", said Glenn Bob. "Explosive decompression done cracked the camera lens."

"That's why they were wearing suits indoors", said Ant.

"An if they hadn't bin wearin seat restraints, they'd have bin sucked out into the big black, most likely", said Glenn Bob.

"We're winning", said Ant. More of the red dots in the holotank were surrounded by halos of debris than were the blue ones. Many of the red dots were moving erratically. As Ant watched, one popped like a soap bubble, and was there no longer.

"Ooh, that's going to hurt", said the Commodore. "That was the Warspite. Loss of coolant, at a guess; serious in a starship. In a ground-based nuclear power station, if the reactor melts down, it burns through the base of the power station and into the ground, and dissipates, and cools, causing wildlife to grow a few extra legs and eyes, and possibly grow to gigantic size and attack Tokyo. In a spaceship, though, the molten mass just stays in place until it goes critical."

"You have to stop this, Commodore", said Ant.

Drummond turned a blistering glare on Ant.

"They're beaten. They know they are." It was impossible not to look at the holotank now; the red dots were scattering, trying to get away, being corralled by the blue dots like a sphere of fish being gathered into a bait ball by merciless predators, falsely believing that by packing themselves in ever more tightly and hurtling ever more quickly they would be stronger. "This isn't a battle. It's a massacre."

"They would have massacred us." Drummond, however, did not sound quite so drunk on victory now.

"The men on Black Prince wouldn't. And we're going to need them, Commodore. We're going to need all of them. We have other enemies out there now. All of us."

Drummond stared into the holotank for a long, long time, like a gypsy woman trying to divine the future through tea leaves.

Then, almost silently, he said, under his breath:-

"Halt Befehl."

- like a beaten man.

Aloud, he said: "ALL UNITS BREAK OFF. REPEAT, ALL UNITS BREAK OFF AND REGROUP. OPEN ME A BROADCAST CHANNEL, IN THE CLEAR, WITH VIDEO."

Men at the telemetry stations turned to look at him, startled.

"YOU HEARD ME", he snapped. "JUMP TO IT."

Drummond walked up to a TV eye mounted in the wall. Almost immediately, his face blinked into existence on the entire bank of TV screens.

"ATTENTION, BRITISH FLEET", said Drummond's face. "THIS IS BREVET ADMIRAL BENTLEY DRUMMOND OF THE USZ NAVY. YOU HAVE BEEN ENGAGED AND BEATEN, AND WE HAVE DESTROYED ONE OF YOUR WARSHIPS WITH QUITE TERRIBLE LOSS OF LIFE. WE HAVE NO DESIRE FOR FURTHER BLOODSHED. LEAVE THIS PLACE, AND NEVER COME BACK, UNLESS IT IS IN PEACE. YOU HAVE MY WORD THAT WE WILL ATTEMPT TO RECOVER ALL WRECKAGE, SAVE ANY LIVES THAT CAN BE SAVED, AND RETURN ALL PRISONERS OF WAR. I AM DELIVERING THIS MESSAGE OUT OF A CONVICTION THAT WE MAY SOON NEED ONE ANOTHER AS ALLIES, RATHER THAN ENEMIES. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN INTELLIGENCE STRONGLY INDICATE THIS."

An appalled crewmember stood up in his seat and hissed: "You can't do that, sir -"

"- we've got 'em on the run -"

"- we got to press our advantage -"

"IF YOU ACCEPT THESE TERMS, PLEASE REPLY", continued Admiral Drummond, casting a warning eye over the complainants, "AND YOU HAVE MY WORD THAT ANY MAN BREAKING THE CEASEFIRE WILL BE SUBJECT TO ADMINISTRATIVE PUNISHMENT. IF YOU DO NOT REPLY, I'M AFRAID WE WILL HAVE TO CONTINUE OUR ATTACK, AND THAT WOULD BE SOMETHING I WOULD DEEPLY REGRET."

Ant looked at Glenn Bob in amazement. "Commodore Drummond's in charge?"

Glenn Bob nodded. "Right here and now he is. He's in command of this temporary flotilla we got together here. He's got hisself given a temporary brevet field promotion to Admiral there."

One of the crewmen at the desks clapped his hand to his ear. "Sir, we're getting a response through from one of the enemy cruisers."

Drummond nodded. "Put it on the screens."

The TV screens changed. Every screen now showed the same burned and blackened face of the same man standing in the same wrecked control room, looking out of a cracked suit visor. A cracked suit visor, Ant knew, would mean death in the event of decompression. Maybe there was air in the bridge of that other ship; maybe there was not.

The worst thing of all was the fact that he recognized the face of the other man.

"TH-THIS IS C-CAPTAIN JENKINS OF HER MAJESTY'S DEEP SPACE C-CRUISER BLACK PRINCE. OUR FLAGSHIP D-DREADNOUGHT HAS BEEN S-SLIGHTLY DAMAGED, AND HER C-COMMUNICATIONS SEEM TO HAVE BEEN D-DISABLED. I AM ACCORDINGLY T-TAKING IT UPON MYSELF TO R-RESPOND."

Members of the control room crew were smaning at Jenkins' stutter; Ant felt like walking up to them and banging their heads together. Jenkins was a good man, a capable captain; Ant had known him since he had been a lieutenant. His fleet had been led into a trap by a fool of an admiral, and he was now doing the excruciating, humiliating only thing possible to ensure he and his crew and the crews of the other vessels in his fleet came back alive. In the background, Ant could see two space-suited crewmen carrying a third. The third crewman looked like Godrevy, Black Prince's helmsman. Ant could not see whether he was alive or dead.

"I S-SEE NO ALTERNATIVE B-BUT TO TAKE YOU UP ON YOUR G-GENEROUS OFFER, ADMIRAL. WE WILL BE L-LEAVING UNDER A F-FLAG OF TRUCE."

The Gondolin control room filled with cheers. Ant felt like he had his head stuck in a church bell on Christmas morning. All around the room, crewmen were slapping one another on the back. All Ant could see, however, was the bare fizzing wires and smashed TV screens on the bridge of the Black Prince. A Revere class cruiser, sister ship to the Jervis Bay. Ant might as well have been looking at Jervis Bay's own control room. And behind all the wreckage and chaos, a fifth face, staring venomously out of another space suit visor at the camera. Alastair Drague.

Drummond leaned forward to the microphone.

"GET THE OLD GIRL HOME, MR. JENKINS. GOD SPEED TO ALL OF YOU."

He turned away from the TV screen, and clasped his hands behind him. He looked up at Ant.

Jenkins' face disappeared from the screen. Other faces began flickering back onto it - the faces of angry grey-haired men in USZ officers' uniforms, all talking at once.

"Now", said Drummond to Ant, "the recriminations begin."

"You probably just saved the lives of over a thousand men, sir", said Ant. "On our side and theirs."

Drummond nodded. "I will be able to sleep soundly, I think."

In the background, over the intercom, Ant could hear captains' and commodores' voices gabbling over one another.

"- had them! We had them, and he let them go!"

"- could have wiped out their entire fleet -"

"- had a Battle of Cannae situation in the palm of his hand, and he lost it -"

"- if that limey ain't capable of firing on an enemy just because they know the rules of cricket -"

" - cowardice in the face of the enemy -"

"- unfit to command -"

"The Battle of Cannae", sighed Drummond. "Always, in the military, it comes down to the Battle of Cannae." He turned to Glenn Bob. "What do you know about the Battle of Cannae, Mr. Linklater?"

Glenn Bob snapped to attention. "SIR! Confrontation between superior Roman force of legionaries and inferior force of Carthaginians, two hundred sixteen Before Christ, SIR. Carthaginians under Hannibal invade Italy on elephants there sir, and are opposed by Romans. Romans advance on a deliberately weakened Carthaginian line, which folds in around em an envelopes em on all sides there sir. Romans cannot escape."

"Casualties?" said Drummond.

"Over half the Roman army SIR."

"Almost wiping them out. Destroying them as a credible military force. Leaving Hannibal unopposed in Italy", said Drummond, tightening his grip behind him so hard that the skin on his hands squeaked. "And what happened in two hundred and two B.C., cadet?"

Glenn Bob blinked. He stood dumb for several seconds.

"Uh - cadet does not know, sir."

"That's all right, cadet. At ease. They always teach Cannae to cadets, you see, because they believe destroying the enemy utterly is the goal of all military endeavour. But you see, it so is not." He looked at Jochen. "Do you know what the Romans did after they lost their army at Cannae, Herr von Spitzenburg?"

Surprised by the sudden attention, Jochen shook his head.

"Most of the south of Italy fell to the Carthaginians. Macedonia and Syracuse also scented blood and joined in the fight against Rome. But Cannae had been such a bloody battle that the Carthaginian army was also badly weakened - Hannibal actually sent representatives to Rome to negotiate a peace treaty. The Romans, meanwhile, prohibited any public mention of the word 'Peace', forbade any of their women to weep in public over their dead soldiers, and mobilized another army composed of peasants and slaves, who had formerly not been part of the army. They began to listen more to their old, wise general, Fabius Maximus, who advised them not to fight Hannibal out in the open in big, set-piece battles, but to wear him down by striking him in a hundred small engagements, harassing his supply lines. And fourteen years later, another Roman general, Scipio Africanus, pushed Hannibal all the way back to Africa and defeated him at the battle of Zama. And what does this teach us, cadet?"

"Er - what goes around comes around?" said Ant.

"Indeed. And that if your final goal is not to make peace, there is no point in making war. A very wise old Chinese gentleman named Sun Tzu once wrote a book called The Art of War. In it, he said that, in order to win a battle, you should always leave a way for your enemy to escape. Never, ever surround an enemy and give him no choice but to stand and fight to the death, because then he will fight like a cornered rat, and I have never seen a cornered rat, but I am informed that they fight like lions, which I believe are considerably bigger than rats. Mr. Stevens, can you confirm my suspicions on the relative sizes of lions vis-à-vis rats?"

"I can confirm", said Ant solemnly, "that lions are larger than rats."

"Excellent. Excellent. This is the sort of information we employ local sources of intelligence for. Battles are won, you see, when one side realizes it is beaten and flees the field before the enemy can totally destroy it. Always try to gain ground without having to kill any of the enemy, because for every one of the enemy you kill, the chances are you will also lose one of your own. A very, very capable team of military experts taught me this, and I was fortunate enough to learn it just before I could do irreparable harm to the men and women under my command."

"Who taught it to you, sir?" said Ant.

"Their names were Anthony Stevens, Cleopatra Shakespeare, Jochen von Spitzenburg, and Glenn Bob Linklater", smiled the Commodore sadly. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to face the music; and given that that music is coming from USZ military headquarters, it may well be Smooth Jazz, which will require earplugs."

He strode forward to the TV camera again, and, in his ship-commanding voice, said: "ON SCREEN."

"I think we'd better leave", said Ant. "This isn't a fight we can help the Commodore with."

"I wish that we could", said Jochen feelingly.

"But we kin't", agreed Glenn Bob. He punched Ant in the shoulder. "Hey, come on there, I got your trainin ship to show you to."

***

The training ship was barely the size of a car, and resembled a squashed and bug-eyed version of a Hawker Harridan hiding under larger, more important vessels in a corner of the vast military hangar, but to Ant, it was the most beautiful piece of hardware he had ever seen.

"That's your Miles Magus M.106 right there", said Glenn Bob. "Sloweren death by starvation an handles like a thing that don't handle none too good, but she's a ship an she flies. You do forty hours in that nasty-assed vinyl toilet seat an then you kin move on to Harridans."

"She's gorgeous", said Ant, running his hand over the rough, ray-scored metal. The little ship had been repaired many, many times. Her outer hull seemed to be made more of patches than of original skin.

The hangar was filled with battle-damaged fighters, mostly of a type Ant had never seen before - slender and spearhead-shaped, marked with Zodiac wheels, terminating in twin spikes at the bow. Like all USZ fighters, they had double cockpits, one for the pilot, one for the navigator.

"Lockheed Super Skunks", said Glenn Bob. "D variant of. Copies of an American design made by Ecliptic Interstellar, the USZ's one and only spaceship factory. USZ call em the Gladiator, on account of how gladiators was slaves as rose up agin their tyrannical Roman overlords."

"Wow", said Ant. The lines of fighters stretched away far into the distance. Technicians were swarming around the more mangled ones.

"An American Aurora would've took em to pieces", said Glenn Bob, not without a hint of misplaced national pride. "These designs dates back to the Sixties. It's only cause the British are still usin the old Harridan A3 that these old birds ever stood a chance. If the USA gets involved in the fight, we're toast an waffles with hominy grits. An they will get involved. It's only a matter of time for the US Zee."

"So why do you stick around here?" said Ant.

"Find my folks", said Glenn Bob. "The Commodore believes in the Blue Goop, no-one in the British or American command does. The Blue Goop took my parents off of New Dixie, an you done proven that folks who's bin taken by the Goop can be cured with microwaves. I fight with the Commodore, Anthony."

A small line of fighters were Harridan A1s, stubbier and smaller, marked with the Zodiac wheel and tiny Union Jack that identified Gondolin ships. Several were damaged. One was damaged so badly that its canopy was completely missing. A stencil on the discoloured paintwork could just be read: PENNY FARTHING.

"My god. That's Lieutenant Farthing's ship. She's -"

"A-OK", said Glenn Bob. "Canopy come clean off, but she was suited up. Coulda been worse", he said. "If the Commodore hadn't stopped the fight."

Ant stared up at the ship. The whole of its dorsal surface was blackened and scarred by debris.

"How can a ship take that much damage", he said, "and still move?"

"Good ole bus, the Harridan A1", said Glenn Bob. "That much damage woulda split a Super Skunk clean down the middle. Harridans is sloweren Auroras an Fantasms, but by Jesus lord do they take punishment. Like some big ole dumb prizefighter just standin there askin the other guy if that was supposed to hurt."

"People you know", said Ant. "Brings it home to you."

"Sure does right enough. You got yourself a call sign yet?"

Ant was wrong-footed. He hadn't thought of it.

"Have I got to have a call sign?" he said.

"Sure do. It's traditional."

Ant's imagination ran riot. "How about", he thought, "DEATHLORD. No", he said, trying to concentrate on the creative process, "THUNDERSTRIKE. No, no, no - STEELTIGER. SHARKWEASEL. DAGGERWOLF. STARSQUID. VIPERTHRUST -"

Glenn Bob had taken out a small printed booklet and was thumbing through it, the stub of a pencil in his other hand. "Reckon a lotta those are already taken", he said.

"I already have mine", said Jochen.

Ant and Glenn turned to look at Jochen.

"I am going to be in flying training too, yes?" said Jochen.

Ant looked at Glenn Bob, who shrugged. "All Gondoliers gotta know how to fly sure enough. You wanna tell me what your call sign is, an I'll check it?"

Jochen took Glenn Bob's pencil and scribbled in the margin of the booklet. Glenn Bob's eyebrows raised, but he said nothing apart from:

"Don't reckon we got that one in the fleet yet."

He looked up at Ant. "You decided?"

Ant frowned. "No", he said. "No, I can't make up my mind."

"Tell me before tomorrow. Cleo too. We got to get your name stencilled on the side of your ride."

"What's that ship over there?" said Ant.

"What ship", said Glenn Bob, "over where?"

"The one under that blanket there, with the armed guard standing next to it."

"There ain't no such ship", said Glenn Bob sharply. "You got yourself an eye malfunction there, cadet."

"But I can see it too", said Jochen. "It is just covered by a big sheet."

"It's covered by a big TOP SECRET sheet labelled TOP SECRET", said Glenn Bob. "Cause it's TOP SECRET", he added.

"I can keep a secret", said Ant.

"You remember that Russkie fighter we brung back home with Lootenant Turpin in it two years back?" said Glenn Bob happily, now that the matter of top secrecy had all been cleared up. "You didn't imagine the US Zee was gonna to do nothin with it, did you?"

Ant's heart began beating faster. "It's a new fighter design", he said. "A copy of the Fantasm."

"The United States of the Zodiac Navy does not copy", said Glenn Bob, evidently enormously miffed. "It adapts an reverse engineers. They bin makin some last minute adjustments to it too", said Glenn Bob, "since you guys done brung back that Nazi cigar there."

"It does look a lot like a Fantasm's Forellen turbine assembly shoved inside a Super Skunk hull, though", said Ant.

"Take another look", said Glenn Bob. "Where she's piled up round the aft fin."

Ant squinted at the shape under the sheet. His eyes widened.

"It's a Harridan", he said. "They used a Harridan."

"Skunk body weren't robust enough to take the bigger turbine", gloated Glenn Bob nodded. "They had to requisition theirselves one of our A1's. Got a Skunk tail fin and avionics nose on her, though. The Fantasm weren't such an all-fired new design after all - all the Soviets done was to take the bigger size of Forellen turbine that we use in Astromokes, the Gamma size, an build a fighter round it."

Jochen looked meekly at Ant, seeking help.

"The Forellen turbine is the part of a ship that allows it to fly faster than light", explained Ant. "It's directly connected to the Spatchcock Flange. There are a limited number of types of Forellen turbine, and no-one's quite sure why, because no-one quite knows how they really work. Don't forget, the very first ones were all exact copies of the one from the ship that first crashed at Hunnenfeld. Engineers have tried many times to create new designs, but it's still all basically trial and error. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the new design shivers itself into ten-dimensional dust as soon as power's put through it. There are still only five stable designs we know of. The first is called Alpha; it's used in big ships, cruiser size and up. Then you have Beta, used for corvettes, frigates and small transports; Gamma, used for the smallest types of ship that can go faster than light; and Delta, used for fighters that can't travel faster than light."

"Is there anything bigger than Alpha?" said Jochen.

"The Americans an Soviets got a drive size they call Omega", said Glenn Bob. "They use it on their real big stuff, the super heavy carriers and cruisers. But we don't got no specifications for buildin it, so all our ships got to be small."

Jochen thought quietly for several seconds. Then he opened his mouth to speak.

"You was gonna say the Soviets was tryin to build theirselves a fasteren light fighter when they made the Fantasm", said Glenn Bob, interrupting Jochen. "We done thought that too. That was what you was gonna say, weren't it?"

"More or less", said Jochen.

"The Fantasm won't go FTL, no matter how hard Lootenant Turpin pushes it", said Glenn Bob. "It's fastern lightnin with a firecracker up its butt there, but lightnin's still way sublight. But we figure that's what the Soviets was fixin to do when they designed it. A fighter that could break lightspeed. It wouldn't need no carrier vessel. It could go anywhere."

He looked at the ship under the sheet, breathing heavily, misty-eyed.

Comprehension crept into Ant's brain.

"Oh my god", he said. "You don't mean to say we've built one."

Glenn Bob threw his hands up in anguish. "HECK DANG IT! You wasn't sposed to KNOW!"

"I didn't", said Ant. "Not till you just confirmed it. I suspect you may just have been Alastaired", he added.

"I don't know for sure that's what it can do", said Glenn Bob, "on account of it bein Top Secret. But that's what everyone says it can."

The lights on the klaxon speakers on every wall were flashing, indicating that someone was trying to speak through them. As usual on Gondolin, it was difficult to make out what that someone was trying to say through the speaker static.

"- cccccchTENTION ALL HANDSccccccch C-IN-C ON DECKwheeeoooooh -"

"What's a C-in-C?" said Ant in confusion.

Glenn Bob's eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.

"Uh, that's a Commander In Chief there", he said.

"I thought Commodore Drummond was the Commander in Chief", said Ant.

"Uh, no", said Glenn Bob. "The C-in-C is the President."

"I see", said Ant, watching the lines of ground crewmen and pilots lining up, sticking their chests out and throwing their shoulders back proudly, on the other side of the hangar. Hoping against hope, he said: "Randolph Lefkowitz?"

Glenn Bob shook his head. "Elizabeth Ortega."

Ant made a face. It was not a nice face.

"Is Elizabeth Ortega bad?" said Jochen.

"Elizabeth Ortega", said Ant, trying to come up with the worst word he could think of, "is a politician."

"And Randolph Lefkowitz is not a politician."

"More of one of your highly educated idiots there", said Glenn Bob.

"He would have been a better president than Elizabeth Ortega", said Ant.

"Uh, that's an affirmative", said Glenn Bob. "President Ortega's an idiot that ain't had no education at all. News feeds say she kin't even hardly master non-Euclidean geometry."

"Haha", said Ant. "What a fool she must be. Non-Euclidean geometry, we start off with that in Year One, right after Rocket Science."

"Rocket Science", repeated Glenn Bob. "Must be nice to get to learn dead subjects there. Anyways, spit on your hands smooth down your hair and be on your best there boys, she's comin."

Elizabeth Ortega somehow managed to click into the hangar on three-inch heels as if she were floating on a cushion of air. She had a smile like the chrome grille of a Cadillac, and was managing to wear a business suit as if she were walking down a runway. Crewmen wolf-whistled and cameras flashed as she walked into the hangar. The camera flashes were coming from a crowd of her own staff, who were making sure the president's visit to her troops was recorded. Other members of her own staff, big and ugly, were pointedly standing between her and any members of the USZ navy who might actually want to touch her.

Men all around the hangar were cheering in their battle-blackened jumpsuits. President Ortega was basking in the glow of her public's love, clenched fists raised above her head in triumph.

"Just a goddamned minute here", said Ant hotly, aware that only Glenn Bob and Jochen could hear him. "Who's just been risking their life out there so who can slink about in a posh frock for the news cameras? She should be cheering them!"

"Reckon you got that one just about on the nail there", said Glenn Bob sadly.

"She's going to be untouchable now", said Ant. "The public's going to think she won a war all by herself. She'll be president till she's dead. Possibly even after."

"I done seen her makin speeches on the newsfeeds", said Glenn Bob. "I think she might have died from the neck up some time back."

President Ortega clicked across the hangar, waving at people she knew, and possibly, Ant suspected, at the occasional person she didn't.

"Oh my god", he said. "There's a podium. There's a microphone." There were also film cameras - massive, heavy USZ film cameras, moving around on their own electric motors, and fed by power cables thicker than Ant's arm.

President Ortega dipped her glittering lipsticked mouth down towards the microphone.

"HELLO GONDOLIN!!! I DO BELIEVE GONDOLIN IS MY FAVOURITE PLACE IN THE WHOLE US OF ZEE!!!!"

That got her even more cheers, despite the fact that Ant knew Elizabeth Ortega had received a lower vote on Gondolin than on any world in the USZ apart from New Salem and Novaya Alyaska. Ant had played a personal part in the New Salem vote.

"I WANT YOU ALL TO KNOW THAT GONDOLIN IS AT THE TOP OF MY AGENDA!! A STRONG DEFENCE OF THIS GREAT NATION OF OURS REQUIRES US TO MAINTAIN THIS STRATEGICALLY VITAL LYNCHPIN IN OUR TACTICAL SUPERIORITY OVER OUR ENEMIES! I AM AWARE OF YOUR FLUSH TOILET SHORTAGE AND WILL BE TAKING STEPS TO CORRECT IT IN MY VERY NEXT BUDGET!!"

"I bet her ship's got a flush toilet there", said Glenn Bob feelingly. "We still all got to use M382118 Personal Evacuation Cubicles, an they ain't much better than death traps for the ass."

Ant patted Glenn Bob on the shoulder with comradely fellow feeling. Cleo had had personal experience of the M382117, a shipboard model prone to sucking an unwary crewmember's intestines out into space without warning. The M382118 was unlikely to be much better.

"THE US ZEE HAS WON ITSELF A GREAT VICTORY TODAY OVER THE EVIL COLONIALIST MINIONS OF PLANET EARTH! THE BRITISH AND US AEROSPACE NAVIES HAVE BEEN FINALLY AND IRREVOCABLY DEFEATED! THEY WILL NEVER DARE VIOLATE OUR SPACE AGAIN!"

Glenn Bob's eyes blazed in outrage. "There weren't no American ships in the attack! Iffen there had been, there wouldn't have been a US Zee ship left in the sky!"

"And it wasn't final", said Ant. "They'll be back, and in greater numbers. If she had half a brain she'd know that."

But the men were still cheering, and the cameras were still rolling. They were actually lifting her up onto their charred and bloodstained shoulders.

"Why are they doing that", said Jochen, "if she was nothing to do with the victory?"

"Because she takes a good picture", said Ant sourly. "Let's get out of here. This is leaving a bad taste in my mouth."

As he turned to leave, part of the tarpaulin covering the new experimental fighter that didn't exist was thrown back, and a head poked through. The head had jet-black, floppy hair and a grin whose teeth were slightly out of alignment.

"Is that Anthony Stevens?" said a voice coming out of the head. "It IS! Anthony, it's so good to see you!"

"Did you say Anthony Stevens?" said another voice from inside the tarpaulin. "I can't get this cockpit coaming unbolted for the life of me - OW!"

"Hit his thumb again", said the head. "He's always doing that."

"Steve Dawkins", said Ant. "Is that Rich Gould inside the canvas?"

"Certainly is", said the canvas. "Ooh, my poor thummy-wummy. In the absence of my mummy, I will have to kiss it better myself." There was a sound of smooching from under the tarpaulin.

The head became all of Steven Dawkins, hung with so many bandoliers of tools that he looked like a Mexican guerilla. There were screwdrivers, pliers, soldering irons, and bizarre clawed things that Ant would have been frightened of if they'd been shown him by a torturer. Dawkins extended a grimy hand. Ant shook it.

"Do you like our top secret device?" said Dawkins. "It doesn't exist, you know. I'm going to have to kill you now. How would you prefer to be killed?"

Knowing that Gould and Dawkins had invented the Orgonizer, which on maximum setting could kill a man with sheer physical ecstasy, Ant said: "Painfully."

"That's the spirit. Would you like a look at her? I won't be breaking any rules, you see, because she doesn't actually exist." He threw back one corner of the tarpaulin. "RICHARD, ANTHONY WANTS A LOOK AT THE ORTEGA."

"If he wanted a look at that, he should have been looking across the hangar a couple of minutes back", grumbled the canvas.

"NO, I DON'T MEAN THE HIDEOUS OLD BARGE, I MEAN THE THING OF BEAUTY THAT WE HAVE MADE TOGETHER." He lowered his voice again to a stage whisper as Gould, bearded and blond, struggled out from under the covering. "He wants a look at the highly classified space fighter."

"The Ortega?" said Ant in horror.

Dawkins nodded in dismay. "Yes, I'm afraid they do plan to name it after our beloved El Presidente. I believe a bunch of Ortega toadies up at Void Command came up with the idea, and nobody could think of a reason for disagreeing with them. After all, most of the other suggestions weren't much better. All based on it being a sort of cross between a Super Skunk / Gladiator and a Fantasm, you see. Skunktasm, Fantasmiator and so forth." He pulled back the tarpaulin, exposing the nose of the vessel, and tutted. "Actually, I think we have made quite an ugly baby, Richard."

"Speak for yourself. I rather feel the parts I made have the grace and beauty of a bounding gazelle."

"Well, you did the avionics and the bow guns, so it's got your nose."

The nose sloped down into two wedge-shaped leading edges, resembling the spikes on the nose of a Super Skunk, but clearly different. It reminded Ant of something, but he couldn't quite put his finger on what.

A small group of naval officers was approaching from the hubbub of applause and cheering surrounding President Ortega. One man, punting himself from artificial foot to artificial foot, was clearly Commodore Drummond. Ant also instantly recognized a second man, tall and black and wearing the uniform of a Major.

"Major Yancy", said Ant. He stood to attention and saluted. To his great satisfaction, Yancy returned the salute.

"At ease, cadet", said Yancy. "I see you're getting a good look at what you shouldn't." He turned a sharp expression on Gould and Dawkins, who rapidly found far more interesting things to look at than Major Yancy.

"It's a beautiful ship", said Ant.

"Shame about the name", added Glenn Bob.

Major Yancy dropped into a squat next to the Ortega. He extended a hand to touch the metal. "Yeah. Shame about that. I would have wanted to call her after an animal, you know? Something stealthy that attacks without warning. Beautiful but deadly with it. Like, you know...Jaguar, or Eagle, or Goat."

Ant thought back several minutes. "I think those names have already been taken", he said.

"Goats also do not attack without warning", said Jochen helpfully.

"Oh?" said Major Yancy. "I thought a goat was a sort of huge thing with the ass end of a whale that lived in the depths of the ocean."

"I feel you may be thinking of the astrological symbol for Capricorn, Ben", said Drummond. "As I recall, goats are quite small and live in fields."

"Well, you know", shrugged Major Yancy. "Jaguar, or Eagle."

"Or Aboriginal Megafauna", suggested Glenn Bob.

"Or Gladiasm", said Dawkins.

Ant frowned at the twin chisels sticking out of the front end of the fighter.

"Or rat", he said. "It should have been called the Rat." He looked up at Commodore Drummond. "The Cornered Rat." He slapped the ship's bow. "Don't these pieces here look like a rat's teeth?"

"Wow", said Major Yancy, whistling. "Are rats' teeth really that big?"

"Rats are really quite small", said Ant. "But they fight like devils when cornered. Just like the US Zed."

"The Cornered Rat." Ant had lit a fire in Yancy's eyes. "I like that. It's kind of catchy."

"But of course, we are under orders to use the name Ortega", put in Steven Dawkins.

"Of course", nodded Yancy vigorously.

"It would be terribly wrong of us to give a ship a name we thought of ourselves, when it already has an official one", agreed Commodore Drummond.

"So it's settled, then", said Yancy.

"We won't do anything about it", said Drummond. "It's as if the matter never came up."

"We'll stay with the official name", said Yancy.

"Skunktasmiator", nodded Dawkins solemnly.

"Sir, if you don't mind me saying", said Gould, wiping grease off his hands with a rag, "the two of you look a bit out of sorts. Is anything wrong?"

Yancy looked sidelong at Drummond; Drummond nodded.

"Bentley here has just not been busted to Commodore", growled Major Yancy.

"It has been explained very politely and at great length by the Chief of Operations that I was only ever made an admiral temporarily", said Drummond. "Out of courtesy towards Gondolin, as the enemy fleet was attacking this planet."

"I was in the room at the time. Admiral Spoonbender congratulated Bentley for a masterly victory achieved with minimal losses to both our own side and the enemy's", said Major Yancy. "The sarcasm was so thick you could have spread it on toast."

Glenn Bob was outraged. "They done demoted you back to Commodore, sir?"

"I am quite happy being a Commodore, Mr. Linklater. You may have no concerns in that regard. No, my primary concern", said Drummond, looking around himself and lowering his voice, "is that control of the defence of Gondolin no longer comes under me. A new High Void Command has been formed, reporting directly to the President, and consisting only of five senior admirals from the big worlds - Laputa, Zion, Arcadia, Elysium, and King. All military units stationed on this planet now come under Admiral Schweinwerfer, who just so happens to be Elizabeth Ortega's brother-in-law."

Ant's jaw dropped. "But what about Jervis Bay?"

"I have just received notification that, as of tomorrow, Jervis Bay is to be taken off the active list. The President believes she is too old to maintain effectively. The new generation of Elizabeth class light cruisers, designed for simplicity and cheapness of maintenance, will fulfil the same function, and those will be coming into service in the next five years."

"The next five years?" Ant was spitting blood. "But the US and British navies might be here inside a month!"

"You know that. I know that. Our President, meanwhile, informs us that they have received a jolly good punch on the nose here today and will not dare try to invade us again." The Commodore looked across the hangar at the President, still being held aloft in a disco strobe of flash bulbs. "So it now seems that I, rather like the commander of the Uriel, no longer have a command."

"She scrapped the Uriel as well?"

Drummond nodded. "Uriel has also gone off the active list. Another ship due to be replaced by one of the Elizabeth class, to be built in five years, six years, ten? We all know how military shipbuilding programmes stretch out. And another ship that defended a world that didn't vote for Mizz Ortega. The message to our voting public seems to be clear. Vote for Ortega or leave your home planet defenceless."

Yancy frowned. "Come on, Bentley, it's not that bad. Gondolin has the whole fleet defending it."

Drummond scowled at Yancy. "Gondolin only had one ship defending it against Elizabeth Ortega. We were an independent world, and Jervis Bay was our guarantee of independence. Now we'll have to go cap in hand to this new High Void Command every time we want to patrol our own space."

"You've still got Gondolin's flight of Harridans."

"And its flight of Maguses", said Ant quickly.

Drummond peered curiously at Ant, as if seeing him for the first time. "Quite so, Mr. Stevens. Quite so. The cadet flight. One should always count one's many blessings." He clapped Ant on the shoulder. "Capital fellow, Stevens. Capital fellow. Though strictly speaking, the plural of Magus is Magi. Second declension, you know."

"We're your men, Commodore Drummond, sir", said Glenn Bob loyally. "Cept for those of us as are women there. Lootenant Farthing is a woman", he explained. "An Cadet Shakespeare will be pretty soon", he added.

"As ever, you are a mine of information, Mr. Linklater. I genuinely have no idea what I would do without you."

"You've got two Cadet Shakespeares", said a voice from behind Glenn Bob. He whirled, caught completely unawares, and blinked at the new arrival in shock.

"It's - it's like Cleo", he said. "But - like - not Cleo."

"I'm Tamora", said Tamora. She was already wearing a battered Gondolin flight jacket that didn't fit properly. "Cleo's sister." She looked Glenn Bob up and down. "And you'll be Glenn Bob Linklater, I think."

Glenn Bob went crimson. "Cleo told you bout me?"

Tamora nodded. "She says you're really good at geometry."

"Gee H. Willickers." Glenn Bob's face went beyond crimson and into the deep infrared; Ant could have warmed his hands on it. "She said that?"

Ant put a hand on Glenn Bob's shoulder. "Easy, tiger. Our Earth mating rituals are different from yours."

Glenn Bob was breathing heavily. "Sure. Sure. I knew that." He patted Ant's shoulder in return. "I'll be fine there. Just gimme a minute." He pulled out his clipboard and looked up at Tamora. "Uh, you got a call sign for your ride there, cadet?"

Tamora thought one half second, then said:

“Aunt Nancy.”

"Uh, that's real good there", said Glenn Bob, positioning his pen but suddenly realizing he had no idea what he was going to write. “How you spellin that now?”

“Aunt Nancy is a goddess of my people”, said Tamora.

“Tamora”, said Ant. “You come from the East Midlands.”

“Aunt Nancy is cunning”, said Tamora. “She is a trickster. She may appear as a spider, as a man, or as a woman. At times she has stored up all the world’s wisdom in one pot. It is from Aunt Nancy that all the world’s stories come. In Africa she was called Anansi, in Jamaica Annancy, and in Carolina, Aunt Nancy. She is the daughter of the sky.”

“Gosh”, said Glenn Bob.

Tamora turned to Commodore Drummond. "On behalf of my sister, who is still being a prize dingus, I would like to tell you that our entire family are one hundred per cent behind you, sir."

"A dingus", said Drummond. "Goodness gracious me."

"Yes. At first she was refusing to talk to you on account of you being the physical embodiment of all the evil in the entire universe. Now that you let all those British ships escape, she's changed her opinion and now believes that she is the physical-embodiment-of-evil thing, and is refusing to see anybody at all. Probably in case she, you know, infects them. With evil."

"I see", said Drummond. "And the rest of your family?"

"My father is already helping weld one of your damaged fighters back together", said Tamora. "I have never seen him so happy. And my mother has been holding a tray of scalpels in the emergency surgery for the last two hours. Her hand is shaking a bit, and she's looking in the wrong direction with her eyes shut most of the time, but she hasn't dropped so much as a forcep since she started."

Drummond beamed. "Splendid. Splendid. Knew you all had it in you. I do hope you will be joining us for tomorrow's official unveiling of Special Prototype X-1." He rolled his eyes mysteriously towards the tarpaulin covering the new space fighter.

"What, the Ortega?" said Tamora. "It sounds really exciting. Everyone's talking about it."

Major Yancy sighed and raised his eyes to the ceiling.