The Trafalgar Gambit (Ark Royal) by Christopher Nuttall Read Free Book Online Page B

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.”
     
    She broke off, bitterly.  “We went skinny-dipping,” she admitted.  “It was Ira’s idea.”
     
    “I’m sure it was,” Henry said.  “And then?”
     
    “We saw this creature rise out of the water,” Jill said.  “It was one of them” – she waved a hand to indicate the aliens – “but we didn't know it at the time.  We thought it might be a dangerous creature.  I ran to get the gun and shot it.  It fell back into the water and vanished.”
     
    She rubbed her eyes with her bare hands.  “They didn't believe us in the colony,” she said.  “There hadn't been any traces of higher life forms on Heinlein, none at all.  They didn't believe us until the aliens arrived and attacked in force.”
     
    Henry cursed under his breath.  The aliens settled the seabed first and then moved onto the surface, if all the projections and observations were correct.  Humans, meanwhile, settled the land and rarely paid any attention to what was lurking under the waves.  It was quite possible, he decided, for two separate colony missions to occupy the same world, without ever realising the other one was there.  If they’d both checked for other life forms