Read Ark Royal 2: The Nelson Touch for Free Online

to Earth.  He felt guilty, sometimes, yet he couldn't stop himself from touching her.  His wife’s face had faded in his memory.
     
    Rose seemed unaware of his thoughts, thankfully.  “Do you think we’ll be assigned to the next training cycle?”
     
    “I hope not,” Kurt said.  He’d split their time between training prospective pilots and training other instructors from the major interstellar powers, sharing the lessons of war with them.  They’d improved remarkably over the last two months.  “I’ve applied to go back to war.”
     
    The thought caused him another pang of guilt.  He’d accepted the assignment to the Luna Academy without a fight because it would have brought him closer to his family.  But his wife had declined to move to the moon, citing the dangers of alien bombardment, leaving him as isolated as he’d been in deep space.  He’d barely been able to see them once or twice since his assignment had begun.  The only advantage was that he could record messages for them and receive replies within the same day.
     
    “Me too,” Rose admitted.  She paused.  “Was I as bad as some of these trainees?”
     
    Kurt shrugged as he led her away from the hall and headed down towards Officer Country, where they slept when they weren't supervising the barracks.  “I haven't seen your training records,” he reminded her.  “Were you as bad as the idiot who managed to block the toilet and force us to have it fixed?  Or the one who decided to play pranks on the occupants of the other barracks?  Or the one who ...”
     
    Rose giggled.  “I was just an overachiever,” she said.  “But I had six months to straighten out and fly right.”
     
    “Good for you,” Kurt said.  By the time Rose had entered the Academy, he remembered with yet another pang of guilt, he'd already left active service.  She wasn't quite young enough to be his daughter, but she was alarmingly close to it.  “And you did well with the trainees too.”
     
    “Thank you,” Rose said.  “I don’t think I was quite that hard to handle when I was a trainee.”
     
    Kurt laughed as he stopped outside the hatch leading into his quarters.  “When I was eighteen,” he quoted, “my dad was a moron who knew nothing.  But when I was twenty-one ... golly!  It was astonishing how smart the old man had become.”
     
    He sobered as he led her into the chamber.  Life in barracks was never easy, but it was often worse for female trainees.  There was almost no privacy at all, while the shared washing facilities took some getting used to.  Indeed, a quarter of the trainees who had been evicted in the first week had been booted out for ogling their female comrades.  It was a regular shock to politicians, when they found out that men and women were living together, but there was no choice.  Quarters on starships, even the mighty fleet carriers, were no larger.  Rose had done well in helping new trainees to grow used to their surroundings.  By now, most of the trainees were thoroughly professional.
     
    It’s that stupid movie’s fault , he thought, rolling his eyes.  They just couldn't make a realistic movie, could they?  No, the main character had to have muscles on his muscles ... and his female co-lead had to wear a uniform so tight she couldn't breathe.
     
    His terminal bleeped as he sat down, so he pulled it over as Rose poured them both a glass of wine.  He’d expected a message from his daughter – she was actually doing better in school, now they’d hired a nanny – but instead it was his orders.  He hesitated, unsure if he wanted to read them, then cursed his own stupidity as he opened the file and read through the brief message.
     
    “I’m being sent back to Ark Royal as Commander Air Group,” he said, relieved.  Requesting a change of assignment was always hazardous, even though he was one of the few officers with experience at fighting the aliens.  The Royal Navy had plenty of places to