A Small Colonial War (Ark Royal Book 6)

by Christopher Nuttall

  She saluted and withdrew, leaving James alone. He shook his head tiredly; civilians might expect spacers to study tactics, but the blunt truth was that he spent most of his time studying logistics. The old saying still held true, even in the twenty-third century; there was no point in coming up with cunning battle plans if one couldn't get the ships out and support them. It had seemed so much easier when he’d served on Ark Royal.

  And it was still a pain keeping the task force supplied, he thought, ruefully. We had real problems during Operation Nelson.

  He pushed the thought aside as he checked the latest set of updates. The task force was taking shape, the ships slowly assembling in orbit near Nelson Base. He’d considered various ways to try to hide a ship or two, but he rather doubted they could prevent the Indians from making some very good guesses about the task force’s size and composition. Beyond the warships, a dozen freighters waited, crammed with the supplies they’d need to fight the war. Losing them, in some ways, would be just as bad as losing the carrier.

  But if we do lose the carrier, we lose the ability to take the offensive, he thought, sourly. The Indians will know that as well as we do.

  It was a galling thought. Seven years ago - when aliens were nothing more than a figment of human imagination - the Indians wouldn't have had a chance. The Royal Navy could have squashed their entire military in a single battle and that would be that. But now, between the losses caused by the war and the advancements in military technology, the odds would be far more even. The Indians, if they took out the carrier, might win by default.

  Five years from now, we’ll have a whole fleet of modern carriers, he thought. They picked their time very well.

  His intercom buzzed. “Admiral,” Sally said. “Admiral Soskice has arrived. He’s requesting an immediate meeting.”

  Tell him to go away, James thought. He wasn't sure he wanted to speak to Admiral Soskice, not now. Tell him to make an appointment ...

  He pushed temptation aside. “Send him in,” he said. He had at least half an hour before the next scheduled meeting, unless something came up beforehand. “I’ll speak to him now.”

  The hatch opened, revealing Admiral Soskice. James had always cordially disliked him - Admiral Soskice had never commanded a ship at war, which made all of his experience theoretical at best - and they’d been rivals over the past two years. Soskice’s position as head of the Next Generation Weapons program had given him a yen for developing new technology and pushing it into active service, often before it had been properly tested. James would be the first to admit that some of Soskice’s ideas had worked well - the starfighter-mounted plasma cannons, for example - but others had been asking for trouble.

  “Admiral,” Soskice said. With his balding dome and unshaven face, he didn't even manage to look like a naval officer. James couldn't help thinking of him as an academic who was somewhat out of his depth. The horn-rimmed spectacles only added to that impression. “Thank you for seeing me.”

  “I wasn’t aware you had an appointment,” James said, dryly. “Doubtless my aide made a terrible mistake.”

  “You’re going to be in command of the task force,” Soskice said, sitting down without being invited. “Do you intend to fight a conventional war?”

  “I believe we have little choice,” James said. “This isn't a war against an alien foe.”

  “The balance of technology has shifted,” Soskice said. “You know that as well as I do.”

  “It has changed,” James conceded, reluctantly. He'd been a mere commander when the Tadpoles had obliterated a multinational naval force - including two British carriers - at New Russia, but he still remembered the shock that had run through the entire navy. It had been the most one-sided battle since kinetic weapons had been dropped on Argentina during the Third Falklands War. “But the essentials remain the same.”

  “The Indians have been learning from our troubles,” Soskice pointed out. “Their carriers are armoured with modern plating ...”

  “So is the Teddy,” James countered.

  “And their fleet mix isn't so dependent on starfighters,” Soskice added, ignoring the interruption. “You know as well as I do, James, that starfighters are no longer the queens of the battlefield.”

  “That’s debatable,” James said.

  “We’ve run countless simulations that prove it beyond all doubt,” Soskice snapped. It was an old argument, one they’d had many times before. “You know that as well as I do.”

  James felt his temper flare. Somehow, he put firm controls on it.

  “You know as well as I do that those simulations depend on what assumptions are programmed into the machines,” he said. “Your assumptions are always hopelessly pessimistic.”

  “And yours are hopelessly optimistic,” Soskice said. “Are you truly that wedded to the concept of the carrier and her flocks of starfighters?”

  “I’m a carrier officer,” James said, curtly.

  He glanced at the picture he’d hung on the bulkhead - Ark Royal’s command crew on the eve of her departure for Alien-Prime - and felt a stab of guilt. He’d tried to ease Commodore Smith out of his command in the hopes it would allow James to claim to have commanded a carrier at a very early age. Perhaps it would have worked, too, if Smith hadn't cleaned up his act. There were moments when James wanted to go back in time and punch his younger self in the nose.

  “The carrier is a dying breed,” Soskice said. “There are limits to how much we can protect them against the new developments in weaponry.”

  “Defensive technology has also advanced,” James pointed out.

  “And starfighters themselves are easy targets for plasma cannons,” Soskice said. “Their aim may not be perfect, but they can pump out a hell of a lot of fire. The Indians have crammed their ships with plasma cannons.”

  “So have we,” James snapped.

  “But they’re the ones on the defensive,” Soskice said. “They have other advantages too.”

  James looked him in the eye. “Do you have a wonder weapon that will blow the enemy ships out of space with the push of a button?”

  “No,” Soskice said. “The closest we have to it is the heavy plasma cannon.”

  “Which you mounted on Warspite,” James said. He had to admit that it had proved its value, but only against a target that hadn’t been expecting it. “We may be able to use it against one of the Indian ships.”

  Soskice tapped his knee, impatiently. “James, the blunt truth is that the pre-war fleet mix is no longer suitable,” he said. “We had a number of massive carriers and hundreds of tiny frigates and destroyers. Now ... we need to start work on middling ships.”

  It was, James knew, an old problem. The Royal Navy needed carriers to serve as command ships and starfighter platforms, but the huge carriers were extremely big targets. Smaller ships - the frigates - were tiny, small enough that they could be built in vast numbers without breaking the budget. But they too had relied on the carriers for logistics support. Now, with the war exposing weaknesses in humanity’s concepts, there was a need for a whole new class of mid-sized ships, starships that combined the range of a carrier with the mobility of a frigate.

  Warspite did well, he thought, as much as he hated to concede anything to Soskice. But it’s dangerous to build a whole new fleet without testing the concepts thoroughly first.

  “Right now, we are going to war,” he said, instead. “And we’re going to war with the ships we have on hand. There’s no way to avoid it. The Indians aren't going to let us wait for five years, or ten, or however long it takes to put a whole new fleet mix together.”

  “True,” Soskice said.

  “Warspite is currently on a mission,” James said. “Do you have anything else we can use now?”

  “We’ve been updating the penetrator heads on missile warheads,” Soskice said. “One of them produces a very weak EMP. It's useless against starships, of course, because they’re always hardened, but it may cause the plasma containment fiel
ds to overload.”

  “Useful,” James said. They’d killed a number of Tadpole starfighters that way. “Does it actually work in the field?”

  “It hasn't been tested,” Soskice said. “But the lab reports are very promising.”

  “They always are,” James said.

  He'd wondered why Uncle Winchester had taken early retirement, right up until the time he’d spent a year in the Ministry of Defence, London. Every corporation that produced weapons and technology for the military was determined - very determined - to convince the MOD to buy its products. A fat military contract could be worth billions of pounds over the next few years. Naturally, the salesmen went all-out to convince the MOD that the latest gadget would utterly revolutionise the face of war.

  And they’re mostly wrong, he thought. And when we say no, they start whining to the Members of Parliament.

  “We can take a handful along and give them a try,” he said. The Indians would know the dangers - it wasn't as if the use of EMP in war was a secret - but it was worth adding a couple to the missile load. “Anything else?”

  “Modified drive field launchers,” Soskice said. “And improved ECM for missile warheads.”

  “It’s the drive fields that are the real problem,” James pointed out.

  “That’s something we’re working on,” Soskice said. “We’re actually looking at plans for a battleship, rather than a carrier.”

  James’s eyes narrowed. “Wouldn't that have all the disadvantages of a carrier with none of the advantages?”

  “No, because we could scale up the drives,” Soskice said. “Given the latest improvements in power and weapons technology, we could also rig the ship with solid armour and heavy energy weapons. It would be on a very different scale to anything we currently have.”

  “I’d like to see the plans,” James said. “But for the moment, we won’t be able to deploy it against the Indians.”

  “It isn't anything more than a concept,” Soskice admitted. “The real question, of course, is just how far the Indians have advanced.”

  James sighed. There were several different intelligence assessments of just how far the Indians had advanced, all of which came to radically different conclusions. One had asserted that the Indians simply didn't have anything more advanced than the pre-war Royal Navy; another had claimed that the Indian Navy was composed entirely of modern ships and had the firepower to even the odds against the British. James was inclined to believe the truth lay somewhere between the two, but where? He knew the Indians had at least one modern carrier, and presumably a number of smaller modern ships, yet just how capable was it?

  They never trained with us, after the war came to an end, he thought. Their government must have been plotting the war as soon as they realised we were gravely weakened; they wouldn't have wanted to give us any insight into their capabilities.

  “There’s no way to know until we actually engage them,” James said. He rather doubted the Indians would withdraw, even though they had to know the task force was gearing up for war. Instead, MI6 reported that they were working on shoring up their diplomatic position and preparing to hold the territory they’d stolen. “Unless you have any insights ...?”

  “They will be looking for a silver bullet themselves,” Soskice noted. “I expect they’ll have poured more resources than us into finding ways to counter starfighters.”

  “But you don't know,” James said. He cursed the simulations under his breath. Was it not possible, really, to hold a simulation without politics becoming involved? War games made more sense ... but then, there had been war games in the past when the winning party was known in advance. “No one knows.”

  “Of course not,” Soskice said. “But we have to assume the worst.”

  “And try not to fall into the Superiority trap at the same time,” James said. “They did make you read it, didn't they?”

  “The people in the story were idiots,” Soskice said. He leaned forward as he spoke. “They already held the whip hand when they started fiddling with their weapons mix and coming up with new ideas. The story makes it clear that their victory was just a matter of time.”

  “True, I suppose,” James said. “One could make the same argument about the First World War, Admiral. It doesn't mean that sending wave after wave of men across No Man’s Land to be mowed down by machine guns was particularly bright.”

  “We are not in that situation,” Soskice continued, ignoring the comment. “You served during the war, Admiral. The Tadpoles held the whip hand and we would have been defeated, easily, if we hadn't kept an ancient carrier in service. They had more advanced weapons, more advanced ships and knew us far too well. We knew nothing about them until we recovered bodies and a semi-intact ship during the war.”

  “I was there,” James snapped.

  “That’s my point,” Soskice said. “We cannot afford to stop pushing the edges and researching newer weapons, because we cannot rest on our laurels. The Tadpoles will advance further now, as will the smaller human powers. We simply do not have enough of a margin of superiority - no margin at all - to relax. Pushing the edges is our only hope of remaining in the lead.”

  “You assume there will be future developments,” James said.

  “From a modern-day perspective, Superiority is laughable,” Soskice pointed out. “They build a colossal tactical computer so large they have to carry it in a giant space liner. We can produce something with far more computing power easily, something so small it can sit on your desktop. Clarke simply couldn't imagine some of the developments that took place during his lifetime. We didn't master the use of plasma weapons until the Tadpoles showed us the way.”

  James scowled at him. “The principle remains unchanged.”

  Soskice shrugged. “Yes, there will be new developments,” he said. “And yes, some of them will not be as useful as we might hope, at least on first blush. But we have to be ready to take advantage of them. Or the Indians will do it instead.”

  “We don’t have time,” James said. “And we are reluctant to give up the weapons mix we know works in exchange for something we don’t trust.”

  “The Indians have every incentive to innovate,” Soskice said. “It’s not easy to predict the future, James, but I ran a set of simulations.”

  “Psychohistory was discredited a long time ago,” James said.

  “With good reason,” Soskice said. “It could not predict the Tadpoles, for example, or the slow avalanche of changes caused by unpredictable human decisions. But you can predict some things reasonably well. Assuming there isn't a second war, or a series of natural disasters, our productive capability will continue to rise sharply. The Indians simply don’t have the groundwork to match us. In ten years, we’ll be well ahead of them.”

  “Good,” James said.

  “But that doesn't take into account new developments,” Soskice added. “What if the Indians develop something new? Like I said, they have every reason to innovate.”

  “Which would be inherently unpredictable,” James said. “We have to deal with things as they are.”

  He shook his head. “I understand your concerns, Admiral, but I have a great deal of work to do,” he said. “My next appointment is due at any minute.”

  “This is a serious matter,” Soskice said.

  “I know,” James said. He did understand Soskice’s position. Hell, he even agreed with it to some extent. “But there’s no way to improve our weapons within the week, is there? We have to challenge the Indian positions with what we have on hand, not what we’d like to have. The future will have to take care of itself.”

  Chapter Ten

  Clarke III, Pegasus System

  “General,” his aide said. “A courier boat just jumped into the system and made contact. There is a secure message for you.”

  General Anjeet Patel nodded, shortly. “Have it relayed to my office,” he said. “I’ll decrypt it there.”

  He stood, taking the opportunity to look around
the CIC. INS Viraat was the most modern carrier in the navy - perhaps the most modern carrier in the human sphere - but it was the first time she’d gone into a war zone. Her crew had never been truly tested, despite endless exercises; it galled him, sometimes, that the Indian Navy hadn't been a big player in the First Interstellar War. The British, whatever else could be said about them, had amassed a staggering number of experienced officers to command their ships.

  And the British had plenty of time to rebuild their starfighter arm, he thought, as he stepped through the secure hatch into his office. Viraat had more than enough space for his staff, as well as the two thousand officers and men who made up the crew. They’ll have learned a great deal from the war.

  He closed the hatch behind him and strode over to the table. The message was already blinking up on the terminal; he pressed his hand against the scanner, allowing it to read his ID implant, as he sat down on the chair. A steward appeared from the side hatch, offering coffee; Anjeet shook his head firmly and dismissed the steward as the message finished decrypting itself. It should be secure, he told himself, but there was no way to be sure. If there was one form of international warfare that had never abated, even during the Age of Unrest, it was the endless contest between intelligence agencies. The British would have been trying to crack India’s codes long before they knew there would be war.