A Small Colonial War (Ark Royal Book 6)

by Christopher Nuttall

  The Prime Minister’s face popped up in front of him, looking grim. “General,” he said, without preamble. “The British have flatly refused to accept our terms. They will not recognise our conquests and will not consider our other demands until we withdraw from the occupied star systems. There is, in short, no reason to assume they will concede some points in exchange for our submission.”

  Of course not, Anjeet thought, wryly. If we backed down, they’d take it as a sign of weakness.

  “Instead, the British are assembling a task force to recapture the occupied systems,” the Prime Minister continued. “Details are attached; intelligence believes there will be at least one fleet carrier, two escort carriers and at least a dozen smaller ships. The British have been quite successful in concealing precisely which ships have been assigned to where; we believe there will be several more ships added to the task force, but we don't know for sure. There will be talks and more talks, no doubt, none of which will get anywhere. There are no reasonable grounds for compromise.

  “Accordingly, you are ordered to move to phase two. Defend the occupied territories; prevent, if possible, the British from gaining a foothold in either Pegasus or Cromwell. The ROE have been updated, allowing you to fire first if you believe the British threaten your positions. However, we do not want any atrocities. The war is to be conducted in as civilised a manner as possible.”

  Anjeet nodded, curtly. He had no interest in any atrocities either.

  “I don’t think I have to remind you that the world is watching like an elderly relative who knows you did something rude, even if she isn't quite sure,” the Prime Minister warned. “Do everything you can to protect the British civilians; keep the POWs separate, if you don’t want to spare the shipping to return them home, and treat them in line with the standard conventions. The other interstellar powers may become involved if we do otherwise.”

  He paused for a long moment. “We need to slap the British back as hard as possible, once their task force arrives,” he concluded. “Should open shooting commence, the gloves are to come off completely; you are to switch to ROE-3. At that point, General, you may take the offensive down the tramlines.”

  “Brilliant,” Anjeet muttered, sarcastically.

  “I’ll keep you updated to the best of my ability,” the Prime Minister said. “Good luck.”

  His image vanished, revealing a handful of encrypted files. Anjeet cursed under his breath as he opened them, one by one, and skimmed through. He’d wanted to place pickets in Hannibal and the other systems between Terra Nova and Pegasus, in hopes of attacking the British Fleet Train, but the Prime Minister had vetoed the plan. As long as there was hope of a peaceful solution, he’d be reluctant to take the gloves off ahead of time.

  “Which will give the British time to mass their forces and take the offensive,” he said. “They’ll get to choose the time and place of the first engagement.”

  He finished skimming the files and sighed again. There was a second carrier in Vesy, but he didn't dare bring her through to Pegasus for fear the British would take the offensive towards Cromwell instead. It wouldn't change the balance of power, he was sure, yet it would be embarrassing. He needed to keep his forces in place to react quickly to any British moves.

  And they may be capable of jumping one of our carriers, he thought. That would even the odds quite sharply.

  He keyed his terminal, sending the files to the intelligence staff. They’d go through them, teasing out all the nuggets of information and making educated guesses about which ships the British would add to their task force. Not, he knew, that it would matter. They’d probably be able to track the British once they entered Hannibal ... unless, of course, the British decided to take the war to the Indian worlds instead. It was quite possible.

  Shaking his head, he looked down at the display. The troops were still landing on Clarke, setting up a whole network of defences. If the British took the offensive, they’d get a bloody nose; it was possible, quite possible, that they wouldn't even realise the danger until they got too close to avoid the mass drivers. Civilised nations disliked them, but the war had removed all taboos concerning their use. A single hit would be enough to cripple a carrier beyond repair.

  “And if they do recognise the trap,” he mused to himself, “they will still have to spring it if they wish to recover their territory.”

  He rose to his feet. The command staff would have to be briefed, now they knew there would be war. They’d have to dust off the contingency plans, update them as best as they could and then place their forces in the best position to repel attack. And earmark ships for later raiding, if the British took the offensive. Knocking out the British supply lines would make winning the war easier.

  Of course, he reflected as the hatch hissed open in front of him, they will feel the same way too.

  ***

  “I think this compartment is safe,” David Majors said. “They certainly haven’t bothered to look into it.”

  “You think this compartment is safe,” Doctor Sharon Henderson echoed. “Are you sure?”

  “There’s no such thing as surety,” Lillian said. She’d been surprised to be invited to the covert meeting, but she supposed there weren't many others with genuine naval experience on the colony. “If the bug sweep turned up nothing ...?”

  “It didn't,” Majors confirmed. He wasn’t an electronics expert, but he’d admitted to serving a term in the Royal Signals during the war. “However, the Indians may have developed something new.”

  “They could be listening through the datanet,” Sharon said, nervously. “We’re not spies.”

  “I took the precaution of isolating this sector,” Majors reassured her. “The Indians have installed monitors in the datanet, true, but they won’t actually be able to peer into this compartment without actually reconnecting the system. We’d know if they did.”

  “And what will happen,” Sharon asked, “if they catch us?”

  “They said it themselves,” Lillian said. “We’ll be treated as insurgents, who can be shot on sight - perfectly legally.”

  “So we keep our heads down and wait for the navy,” Sharon said. “Getting involved now might be pointless.”

  “The problem is that the navy will need intelligence,” Majors said, tartly. “Like ... what are the Indians doing on the surface?”

  “They’re building defences,” Lillian said. She scowled in bitter memory. “I’m not sure what they are, but I overheard two of the guards talking about being able to hit ships in orbit.”

  “That would make them mass drivers,” Majors said. “Unless they have managed to solve the problem of creating a plasma containment field that lasts for more than a few seconds.”

  “Mass drivers seem more logical,” Lillian said. “Combined with an orbiting sensor network, they could seriously upset anyone trying to approach the planet.”

  “Right,” Majors said. “Is there anything we can do about them?”

  “Not now,” Lillian said, after a moment’s thought. “They don’t seem to care about us going outside, but they sure as hell object to us going anywhere near their fortifications without permission.”

  “They had you driving a vehicle for them,” Majors said. “Are they going to keep expanding the colony?”

  “I believe so, but it’s still nowhere near their positions,” Lillian said, flatly. “And they may be planning to wait until the end of the war.”

  Sharon leaned forward. “Can’t you sneak a signal into the communications net?”

  “I doubt it,” Lillian said. “They took over the entire command network the day they arrived.”

  “We’d find it very hard to insert a signal without the new command codes,” Majors agreed, softly. “One of you could try to seduce the local commander ...”

  Sharon bunched a fist. “Are you serious? I’m a doctor, not Mata Hari.”

  “I don’t think the Indians would be seduced,” Lillian said, quickly. “They rarely spend time with
any of us, save for when they’re issuing orders.”

  “True,” Majors agreed. “Could one of us sneak out of the colony?”

  “You’d have to survive on your own,” Lillian said. “I don’t see how you could do it ...”

  “Take a tractor,” Sharon suggested. “Strip the life support system, then destroy the rest of it so they find nothing, but wreckage. It wouldn't be the first time there’s been an accident that caused an explosion.”

  “And even if you did,” Lillian added, “what then?”

  Majors shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just ... I just hate being helpless!”

  Lillian understood, but she also knew that the Indians were firmly in control. The colonists had no weapons, no secure access to the datanet and no control over the life support. And even if they did manage to throw the Indians out, the orbiting starships could simply bombard the moon from orbit, flattening the colony into rubble. It might be neat to get someone outside the colony, to fake his death so the Indians had no idea he was on the loose, but what would be the point? None of them were soldiers!

  “I think the only thing we can do is gather information and hope there will be a chance to use it,” she said, finally. She wished, suddenly, that she’d paid more attention in the brief Conduct After Capture course, although it hadn't been designed for living under enemy occupation. They had a moral duty to resist, if they could, but how? “The Royal Navy will be coming, I’m sure.”

  Sharon snorted. “And what if it doesn’t?”

  “Then we get to decide if we want to stay here under their rule or go somewhere else,” Lillian said. She rose to her feet as her watch beeped an alert. “I have to go.”

  “We’ll meet up tomorrow; same time and place,” Majors said. “See what you can glean from their supplies.”

  Lillian nodded and hurried from the room, heading through a maze of stone corridors and up a flight of stairs into the engineering section. The Indians had searched it thoroughly, then placed a guard at the hatch; the guard eyed her coldly before stepping aside to allow her to pass through and into the giant compartment. She picked her environment suit off the wall, pulled it on over her shipsuit and checked the telltales before heading out to where the tractors were waiting. A pair of Indian officers stood next to one, waiting for her.

  Shit, Lillian thought. Did they know she’d been talking with others, discussing ways and means to resist? She felt a cold pit in her stomach, yawning wider as she approached the Indians. No one had been executed - yet - for insurgency, or even passive resistance, but the Indians would have every right to kill her if they knew what she’d done. No one was tolerant of insurgents these days. What do they want?

  “You’ll be transporting pallets from the shuttles today,” one of them said. “Get them over to the dumping ground and leave them there.”

  “Understood,” Lillian said. She was tempted to offer to take them further, but they might have smelled a rat. So far, no one had done more than the bare minimum to help, despite quite a few inducements. “I’ll get on my way.”

  She climbed into the tractor, allowing herself a moment of relief as the hatch slammed down and the engine hummed to life. The Indians hurried backwards as she turned the tractor around and headed for the airlock, which opened at her approach. She linked into the outside communications grid, informing the command centre that she was leaving the colony, then smiled as the airlock closed behind her. The second hatch opened a moment later, revealing the frozen terrain beyond. No matter what was happening behind her, it still took her breath away.

  Clarke, an immense blue-green orb, hung in the sky, utterly dominating the surrounding landscape. She’d heard that some people had problems living on Io or another of Jupiter’s moons because of the Great Red Spot, but she’d never really believed it until living on Clarke III. Clarke was an awe-inspiring sight; the Great Red Spot, however, would look like an enormous red eye glowering down on anyone below it and reminding them of just how tiny they were, against the vastness of the universe. She smiled at the thought, then forced herself to look at the ground as she gunned the tractor forward. The vehicle hummed to itself as it crawled over the snow towards the Indian shuttles.

  They looked very like British designs, she noted, although there were quite a few more of them than she’d expected. She parked the tractor next to the closest and waited for orders, then watched as a handful of suited men transferred pallets from the shuttle to the rear of the tractor. None of the pallets were marked by anything apart from a number; the Indians, she assumed, had decided not to take the risk of labelling them in English or Hindi. The tractor lurched back to life as soon as the Indians were ready, transporting the goods towards one of their new installations. They’d set up something quite close to the colony, yet several of their other installations were much further away. She tried to see what it was as the tractor drew closer, but no matter how she stared it was impossible to be sure.

  Maybe it is a mass driver, she thought. She’d seen the giant mass drivers on the moon, the ones that kicked buckets of raw materials to Earth, but there was no reason why a mass driver on Clarke had to be so large. Technology had advanced since the moon had been settled in 2050. And if it is, they could hit anything they can see.

  She pushed the thought aside as she stopped the tractor and waited for the Indians to unload her cargo. They didn’t seem too interested in chatting with her, something that surprised her more than she cared to admit. The marines on Warspite had always flirted with her and any other attractive female crew. But then, none of the Indians seemed interested in socialising with the British colonists. She had a feeling they’d been warned to keep themselves strictly to themselves.

  Her radio buzzed. “Thank you,” an Indian voice said. “You may now return to the shuttles.”

  Lillian sighed, but did as she was told. There was no escaping the fact that it was collaboration, at least in some form. It was quite likely she’d be in trouble if she ever returned home ... apart, of course, for whatever consequences there were for breaking her parole. And yet, she was spying on them ... if, of course, she had any way to get the information to anyone who needed it. She looked up, tracking the lights in the sky; one of them was an Indian carrier, but the others? Might one of them be a British ship?

  Probably not, she thought, as a new flight of shuttles swooped overhead and landed near the colony. The Indians chased the tin-cans out of the system.

  It was nearly two hours before she was finally told to go back to the colony and pass the tractor to someone else. Lillian headed back and headed towards the communal showers, where she washed herself as quickly as possible. Water wasn't exactly scarce on Clarke, but the plumbing was nowhere near complete. And besides ...

  She looked up as Sharon entered the shower compartment, a towel wrapped around her. The doctor tapped her lips before Lillian could say a word, then lifted her eyebrows. Lillian shrugged, expressively. She’d learned nothing of any use.

  “There have been a handful of new patients in sickbay,” Sharon said, as she started to wash herself thoroughly. “Indian workers with minor injuries.”

  They’re moving fast, Lillian thought. She knew from experience that working fast tended to lead to more accidents, although Clarke’s atmosphere tended to make them worse. They must be expecting trouble.

  Oddly, the thought made her feel a great deal better.

  Chapter Eleven

  HMS Warspite, In Transit

  “This,” Lewis said, “would be a very bad time to tell me you’re agoraphobic.”

  Percy gave him an odd look as they donned their spacesuits. “I’m a Royal Marine,” he said, crossly. “You’ve seen my service record.”

  “And you do have experience in deep space work,” Lewis agreed. “But not everyone likes crawling around on the hull.”

  “I do,” Percy said, truthfully. “There’s just something about the vastness of space that appeals to me.”

  Lewis gave him a s
harp look, obviously suspecting that Percy was taking the piss. Percy fought to keep his expression as bland as possible. He was getting more than a little annoyed of the constant testing. There was no way he could have been cleared for shipboard duty if he hadn't been able to go out on the hull without a panic attack and Lewis would know it. But then, he was far too aware that his responses to the probing would be held against him, if he snapped back at the Sergeant. He’d undergone enough tests during basic training to know the score.