09- We Lead

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Lieutenant, we killed the rat,” O’Brien said. “Fitzwilliam was killed too.”

  “Metaphorically speaking, one hopes,” the lieutenant said. “Report back to barracks and grab a shower. There’ll be a post-exercise chat afterwards.”

  “Understood,” O’Brien said.

  He glanced at George. “Well,” he said. “That could have gone better.”

  George nodded, stiffly. Technically, she’d been killed ... it would look very embarrassing, afterwards. And while they had caught the rat ... she looked at the rat, an older marine. He’d stayed ahead of them for hours, even though he’d been caught. That was more than long enough to do some real damage, if he knew what he was doing. The thought of someone managing to set off a missile warhead inside the hull was terrifying.

  It’s supposed to be impossible, she reminded herself. There are dozens of safety systems built into the command modules.

  She scowled as she followed O’Brien back down the corridor and onwards to Marine Country. The rat bid them both farewell as they passed Point Beta, stopping to speak to a couple of his comrades. George had a nasty suspicion they were about to hear a detailed report of just how he’d stayed ahead of them ... she sighed under her breath, knowing there was no way to avoid it. They needed to know what had gone wrong before they tried it for real.

  Her uniform felt damp and icky, soaked with sweat and urine. She was hardly the first person to lose control of her bladder when she thought she was in danger - the briefing notes she’d read at the academy had made it clear that it happened there too - but it was still embarrassing. The marines might tease her, if they noticed. She undressed as soon as they entered the shower cubicle, putting her equipment to one side and tossing the filthy uniform into the basket. The marines did their own washing - she wasn't looking forward to her turn on that rota - but none of them would bat an eyelid. Filthy uniforms were alarmingly common.

  “Five minutes,” Sergeant Tosco shouted, as she stepped into the shower. O’Brien followed her at a more sedate pace. “Then come join us in the briefing room!”

  George groaned. She would have sold her soul for a long shower - or a bath. Instead, she washed herself down hastily, then dried herself as the water cut off. Her pale body was married with scars and red marks, including a nasty-looking bruise on her face. The body armour had taken its toll too, sadly. She supposed she should consider herself lucky. She’d seen far worse scars, scars that refused to heal, on older marines.

  She stepped out of the shower and dressed rapidly, donning clean clothes and picking up her equipment. Someone might make a fuss about her leaving it out, even though she was fairly sure O’Brien wouldn't have tried to steal it. Losing her rifle, even one loaded with practice ammunition, would definitely have landed her in hot water. She returned the body armour to the rack, then joined O’Brien as they walked into the briefing room. A dozen marines were already there, studying a hologram of the exercise zone. The rat was standing beside them, his fingers tracing out his path on the diagram. George took a hard seat and forced herself to relax. She’d screwed up and she knew it, but she would learn from it.

  “An interesting exercise,” Sergeant Tosco said, once they were all assembled. “What went wrong?”

  “Insufficient manpower,” the rat said. “As you can see” - he traced out a line on the map - “I was able to move from place to place without being detected. You did have the tubes fairly well guarded, but I got through one sweep by hiding in a spacesuit. No one thought to check it.”

  “Or to ram a bayonet into it,” someone said, from the rear.

  “A kick would have sufficed,” the rat said, dryly. “I didn't run into trouble until I got into Subsection C, whereupon I found I was too close to a pair of determined searchers.”

  “Heh,” Andy said.

  “Silence,” Sergeant Tosco ordered. “Continue.”

  The rat shrugged. “I got through the next hatch, only to run into another pair of searchers,” he said. “At that point, I decided I was fucked anyway, so I tried to take a hostage. It failed.”

  George felt herself flush as several of the marines laughed. “We killed you.”

  “Yes, but I killed you,” the rat said. “It wasn't a good trade.”

  “Probably not,” Sergeant Tosco agreed. He raised his voice. “We took forty minutes to find and kill the rat. Forty minutes! Do you know how much damage he could have done in that amount of time?”

  Too much, George said.

  “Manpower was a problem,” the rat said, again. “You just didn't have the numbers you needed to flood the exercise zone. I could and did double back from time to time. You couldn’t even secure your rear.”

  “We trapped you,” O’Brien said.

  “Only because I couldn't leave the exercise zone,” the rat said. “If this had been real, I would have sneaked out and left you wasting your time.”

  Bill held up a hand. “We were also deliberately limiting ourselves,” he said. “I know we weren't meant to use shipboard sensors, but we didn't use our own portable devices too. Next time, we should sow sensors networks through the corridors and track everyone within the zone. At best” - he nodded to the rat - “our quarry wouldn’t be able to move, allowing us to systematically search the area until we caught him. At worse, a single motion would be enough to betray his location and allow us to steer troops to him.”

  “Advanced sensors can fail,” Sergeant Tosco pointed out.

  “Yes, Sergeant,” Bill said. “but we wouldn't be limiting ourselves if we were hunting for a genuine intruder.”

  “True,” Sergeant Tosco agreed. He cleared his throat. “We’ll be carrying out more exercises tomorrow, so I want you to get something to eat and then swap bunks. Expect some fun tomorrow.”

  “Great,” O’Brien said. He sounded as though he meant it. “Thank you, Sarge.”

  “Dismissed,” Sergeant Tosco said. “Except you, Fitzwilliam.”

  George gritted her teeth, but waited until everyone else had left the room. “Sergeant?”

  “You got taken prisoner,” Sergeant Tosco said. His eyes bored into hers. “What went wrong?”

  “I heard the hatch opening outside,” George said. She’d had a moment to think about it, thankfully. “It never occurred to me that it might not be Bill and Andy. In hindsight ...”

  “You should have been careful,” Sergeant Tosco said. “And you should have fought harder, when you were captured.”

  “I had a knife at my throat,” George protested. A twinge of pain reminded her that the knife had been real. “Sergeant ...!”

  “You were also a valuable hostage,” Sergeant Tosco reminded her. “Hostage-takers have to be careful not to kill the golden goose, as it were.”

  His lips curved up into something that could - charitably - be called a smile, if she used her imagination. “Apart from that, how did you cope?”

  “Well enough, sir,” George said. She was damned if she was admitting weakness. To lose because she couldn't hack it was one thing, to lose because she simply gave up was quite another. “I could do it again.”

  “And you will,” Sergeant Tosco said. “Get some sleep. Tomorrow, you’ll be doing it all over again.”

  And everything else too, George thought. She shivered as she saluted, then headed for the hatch. If this is what it’s like for the Royal Marines, what is it like for the SAS?

  Chapter Sixteen

  “As you can see,” Doctor Jane Lewis said, “the alien computer tech is actually roughly comparable to ours.”

  Henry allowed himself a thin smile as he studied his guests. Admiral Naiser was a friend, of sorts. Henry had certainly spent a great deal of time working with Naiser over the last couple of months, after Vanguard had returned from Operation Unity. But Commodore Solange Leclère was a newcomer, while Penny Schneider was a reporter. The former, at least, had a solid record in the French Navy. He still wasn't quite sure what to make of Penny Schneider.

  “They do have
their own quirks,” Jane added, after a moment, “but they are far more comprehensible than Tadpole tech. I think we can be reasonably sure we are pulling intact datafiles from captured computers.”

  “Those that survived long enough to be captured,” Henry added. “The Foxes were careful to destroy a number of cores that might have fallen into our hands.”

  “Previsible,” Solange said.

  “Maybe not,” Penny pointed out. “Didn’t we have considerable trouble drawing anything from captured Tadpole computers?”

  “We drew enough to plan Operation Nelson,” Admiral Naiser said. “A wise opponent would assume that the encryption protocols would be insufficient to protect their data, particularly if people with security clearances were captured too.”

  Henry nodded in agreement. “All of our cores are designed for self-destruct if there’s a serious prospect of them being captured,” he said. “Most of their computers seem to have been designed along the same lines.”

  He leaned forward. “We still don’t know how they send messages at FTL speeds.”

  Solange frowned. “There are no theories?”

  “There are a dozen theories,” Admiral Naiser said. “But we haven’t been able to determine which one of them is true, yet. Capturing an intact sample of the technology is an obvious priority.”

  “Of course,” Solange agreed. “Can we use their technology?”

  “Oddly, we shouldn't have any difficulty turning their technology against them,” Henry said, dryly. “Most of their devices are quite simple, rather like a child’s first computer toy. It puzzled us until we remembered that there are actually two races involved. They design their kit to be usable by both races. There’s no reason why we shouldn't be able to use their kit ourselves.”

  He shrugged. “Of course, the more complex the device, the less likely we will be able to use it in a hurry.”

  Naiser met his eyes. “Because we don’t speak the lingo?”

  “And quite a few other issues,” Henry said. “The Foxes and Cows seem to simplify everything to a remarkable degree, but we don't understand their cultural references and everything else they use to get along. We’ve been teaching a few contact specialists their language, yet there will be ... issues ... that will only become clear upon actual discussions.”

  “Hacking their systems is out, then,” Solange said, wryly.

  “For the moment,” Henry said. He shrugged. “In theory, we could hack their systems; in practice, it probably couldn't be done under battlefield conditions.”

  He leaned forward. “I’d suggest having the marines start on exploring alien tech and how it works, but really ... it’s quite easy to understand.”

  “A more practical issue, of course, is their space-based weapons,” Solange put in. “We know some of their weapons, but are there others?”

  “We’re not sure,” Henry admitted. “Much of their tech appears to be equal to ours, but we know their starfighters are cruder than ours and their stealth systems effectively superior. I suspect that’s a cultural trend, rather than a technological limitation - we expect to see them introduce superior starfighters fairly quickly.”

  “If they haven't already been seen along the war front,” Naiser said.

  Penny leaned forward. “How long would it take us to design and produce a completely new starfighter?”

  “It would depend,” Henry said, honestly. “If we were modifying a current design, we could probably iron out the bugs and get it into production within six months. Something completely new, perhaps something involving alien tech, would take longer. We might need upwards of two years to get it into production.”

  “We worked faster during the war,” Solange said. “The last war, I mean.”

  Henry shook his head. “We bolted plasma cannons to Spitfires and Hurricanes,” he said, shortly. “It boosted their firepower, but it didn't give them any other advantages.”

  He shivered, remembering the moment he’d ejected into space. A few microseconds either way and he would have died, vaporised by his own starfighter or killed by the enemy. It haunted his nightmares, sometimes. Janelle held him ... he told himself to forget it as sharply as he could. There was nothing he could do about it now.

  “There weren't any new starfighter designs until the end of the war,” he said. “Those took longer to put together and deploy.”

  “And we know nothing about their tech base,” Naiser said, coldly.

  “Or what they think of innovation,” Henry added. “For all we know, they have real problems in upgrading their technology. Or that they think they’ve already reached the top and don’t need to go any further. Or ...”

  He shrugged, expressing his lack of actionable intelligence. It was hard to imagine any human power thinking it had reached the limits of the possible, but human nations had stagnated before. They’d lost the habit of innovation, of constantly questioning everything ... eventually, it had weakened them to the point they’d been beaten by barbarians who knew they didn't know everything. Perhaps the Foxes were the same.

  Unlikely, he told himself. Their culture is a constant struggle for dominance.

  “So we expect the unexpected,” Naiser said.

  “They may well improve their missiles still further, just as we have,” Henry said. “They’re probably looking for ways to burn through armour too. And to upgrade their own armour.”

  “And put more battleships into space,” Naiser said. “We really need to know more about their industrial base.”

  “Those details weren't recorded in their computer cores,” Jane said. “They may well have believed we’d capture them.”

  Henry nodded in agreement. Vanguard’s computer cores might be designed for self-destruct, if there was a realistic prospect of them falling into enemy hands, but that wasn't true of any private terminals or computers owned by her crew. MI5 had warned, constantly, of the dangers, yet Henry knew crewmen sometimes sneaked their own gear onboard. A basic encyclopaedia, something that the average crewman might never touch, would be terrifyingly revealing to alien eyes. And then there were books and movies and plenty of other items that would tell aliens far too much about humanity.

  “Of course they weren’t,” Naiser said.

  He looked at Henry. “Are you sure we can force the aliens to surrender?”

  “I believe so,” Henry said. “Our interviews with POWs make it clear. If we can prove our superiority, they’ll show us their necks and surrender. I suspect they think we’re cheating by continuing the fight.”

  “They’re not interested in total war, then,” Solange mused. “More like ... more like the states that skirmished before the First World War.”

  “I think so,” Henry said. “They don’t seem interested in crushing their enemies, merely in assimilating them. Culturally, they’re more like Rome than Dixie. Successful slaves earn their freedom, while their descendants rise to power. I suspect there’s even a degree of honour given to those who rise out of slavery. They’ve overcome great challenges.”

  He scowled. “On one hand, they’re probably not intent on exterminating us,” he added, slowly. “But on the other hand, they’re also probably determined to find a way to make us submit.”

  “And to stay submitted,” Naiser said. “How will they react if we pretend to surrender?”

  “Poorly,” Henry said. “We need to watch for that, Admiral. They might be fooled the first time, but afterwards ... they may see it as foul treachery.”

  “Joy,” Naiser said. He smiled, rather dryly. “But at least we have a chance to hurt them.”

  Henry nodded. He’d seen the plans - or, at least, the basic outline, drawn up by planners in the MOD. They’d gone over the details again and again. If the aliens could be forced to surrender, well and good; if not, at least their home system would be stripped of its industrial base. And then ...

  “Let us hope so,” he said. “Now ...”

  ***

  George stepped into the observation bliste
r, closed the hatch and sank down on the bench, feeling too exhausted to move. Giving her an hour or two off was a joke, a cruel joke ... except Sergeant Tosco had been quite serious. She was meant to go on guard duty in a couple of hours, yet ... she didn't dare try to sleep. She’d either oversleep or wake up with a throbbing headache. Neither one sounded very pleasant.

  The stars outside blazed down on Vanguard, mocking her. George looked back at them, wondering which of the points of light were actually starships. Probably none of them, she told herself. The task force was operating under stealth protocols, sneaking around along the edges of inhabited star systems rather than blazing through and announcing their presence to all and sundry. They were too far from the system’s primary star for the task force’s ships to reflect light.