A Small Colonial War (Ark Royal Book 6)

by Christopher Nuttall

  He took a breath. It went against the grain to abandon anyone, even though it had been part of the plan from the start. The brushfire wars of the Age of Unrest had been marred by countless atrocities committed against British personnel who’d been captured by the enemy; these days, the mere prospect of someone falling into enemy hands demanded a full-scale response. He’d been raised in the tradition of leaving no man behind - or, if it was already too late, recovering the body. But now ...

  “Helm,” he ordered. “Pull us back to open space.”

  “Aye, sir,” Armstrong said.

  John watched, grimly, as Warspite slowly moved away from Clarke. He sometimes wondered just how many people had been left behind on Vesy, just how many humans had been unaccounted for in the chaos. It was quite possible that a number had been captured and not handed over to the Indians. The Vesy had good reason to be angry at the human race. If they had captives, would they milk those captives for all they could get ... or would they sacrifice them to the gods? Either answer was possible.

  Particularly as building a technological civilisation is beyond any one man, he thought, darkly. No matter who they captured, they couldn’t jump from basic gunpowder to plasma cannons and orbital bombardment overnight.

  The Indian starfighters had returned to their carrier, he noted with some relief. He’d spent some time studying their formations, but it was impossible to say anything for certain. It didn't look as though the Indians expected attack, yet that was meaningless. They’d know the task force was on its way; they’d have plenty of time to prepare for battle before Admiral Fitzwilliam steered his ships through the tramlines and into Pegasus. John wondered, idly, if there was a way to sneak the fleet through, but he rather doubted it. The fleet train, at least, had no stealth mode.

  “Captain,” Armstrong said. “We are in clear space.”

  John nodded, studying the display. One Indian destroyer was making a beeline back to the carrier; another, more sedately, was heading towards the tramline to Vesy. The carrier herself was still holding position, surrounded by her flock of attendants. If they knew that Warspite was in the system, they were doing a very good job of playing dumb. They could be waiting for Warspite to leave before they altered their dispositions ...

  He sighed. It had been so much simpler fighting an alien foe.

  “Take us directly to the tramline, as planned,” he ordered. The SAS would be on their own, but that had been true since the moment they’d left. “Stealth mode is to be maintained.”

  “Aye, sir,” Armstrong said. “Seven hours until we make transit.”

  John resisted the temptation to rub his eyes. He’d been on duty for far too long, but he didn't want to leave the bridge until they were well clear of the gas giant. There was no reason to believe they’d run into an Indian starship between their current position and the tramline, but he wanted to be sure. He shook his head, mentally; Howard would be perfectly capable of handling it, if they did. They’d already agreed to avoid contact if possible ...

  And if there’s no way out, he told himself, we can engage the enemy without waiting for them to fire first.

  “Local space is clear, sir,” Tara said, as they glided further away from the planet. “There’s no evidence they saw us.”

  “Understood,” John said. It was frustrating; he would have preferred a straight-up battle to sneaking around, definitely. But there would be a battle soon, unless the Indians backed down and withdrew. He didn't expect it to happen. “Mr. Howard, you have the bridge.”

  “Aye, sir,” Howard said.

  “Inform me when we’re nearing the tramline,” John ordered. “Or if the Indians show any marked change in their posture.”

  “Aye, sir,” Howard said, again.

  John nodded and strode through the hatch, feeling tired and worn. The lack of shore leave - the chance to put the burden of command down for a few days - was taking its toll. A few nights in a hotel room in Sin City, a handsome young man to share his bed ... what more could he want? The thought of meeting someone who would take Colin’s place was tempting, but he didn't have the time. Even if he did, would he meet someone who liked him for himself or someone who merely wanted to be close to fame?

  He shook his head as he stepped into the cabin, the hatch hissing closed behind him. It wouldn't take longer than a day to survey Vesy, then another couple of days to reach Cromwell and do the same there before heading through the tramlines to Hannibal, where they were supposed to link up with the task force. The Admiral would be glad to hear from them, he was sure; John would just be glad to have a chance to return to Pegasus and attack the Indian positions ...

  We’ll have to sneak in again, he thought darkly, as he climbed into his bunk without bothering to undress. Someone will have to link into the stealthed platforms and take the report from the people on the ground.

  ***

  The odd thing about the Vesy System, Penny had decided long ago, was just how normal it was. There wasn't anything odd in the system, save for a gas giant that was unusable for a reason she didn't pretend to understand; there didn't seem to be anything that could account for the presence of an intelligent race. But then, there wasn't anything uncommon about Earth either, as far as she knew. The only odd world to produce an intelligent form of life was Tadpole Prime.

  But then, she told herself, we don’t really have enough samples to judge.

  “That’s very definitely a second supercarrier hanging between the tramlines,” Lieutenant-Commander Tara Rosenberg said. They stood together in the tactical compartment, watching the holographic display. “They probably wanted to compromise on location.”

  Penny frowned. “Why aren't they orbiting Vesy itself?”

  “There’s nothing on the planet worth protecting,” Tara explained. “If they needed to respond to trouble from the natives, they’d only really need a destroyer and a few units of armoured soldiers to turn the balance in their favour. Keeping the supercarrier in open space allows them to respond to a crisis in either Pegasus or Gandhi.”

  She shrugged. “They’d probably be happier with a third carrier, so they could have one permanently posted to Gandhi and one kept in reserve here, but they don’t have a third carrier,” she added, after a moment. “They have to make do with what they have.”

  “They might get caught out of position,” Penny speculated. She wasn't a military expert, but she had read a lot of books and watched dozens of tactical simulations. “By the time they respond to an alarm call it may already be too late.”

  “They have to make do with what they have,” Tara repeated. She shrugged. “It is a gamble, I admit, but they don’t have any choice. Putting the second carrier in Vesy lets them respond to a crisis without fatally compromising their ability to hold one of their core systems. I imagine there won’t be anything more than an escort carrier, at best, within Cromwell.”

  Penny considered it. “So we might manage to defeat one carrier and then the other?”

  “We’d certainly prefer to handle them one carrier at a time,” Tara agreed. She tapped a switch, deactivating the display. “Did you find it informative?”

  “It’s not something I can report,” Penny said. There was no way she’d be allowed to report on Warspite’s mission until the end of the war. “But it was very useful background material.”

  “No one ever looks at background material,” Tara said. She gave Penny a thin smile. “If someone wants to bury an embarrassing fact, they put it in the files of background material, safe in the knowledge no one else will ever find it.”

  “I’ll have to spend time reading it,” Penny said, dryly. “There isn't much else to do on the ship.”

  Tara gave her an odd look. “There's always something to do onboard ship,” she said. “I made the mistake of complaining about being bored when I was a midshipwoman and the lieutenant promptly found me a few million tasks that needed doing.”

  Penny blinked. “A few million tasks?”

  “They do te
nd to add up,” Tara pointed out. “There are thousands of components throughout the ship that need to be checked regularly, then the decks need to be washed on a regular basis, the tubes need to be cleaned and the life support system needs to be monitored. And then there’s the constant need to exercise regularly ...”

  “Not for me,” Penny said. “There’s nothing to do beyond writing reports that won’t get past the censors.”

  “If you think that’s true,” Tara said, “why are you even here?”

  “I can write a proper report after the war,” Penny said, after the moment. “But it wasn't quite what I was promised. Anything that will get past the censors won’t interest people back home.”

  Tara looked doubtful. “What does interest people on Earth?”

  Penny sighed. “Sex, violence, royalty, baby animals ... my editor used to say that the perfect headline included at least three of them. One of the reporters managed to sell a story entitled ‘Duke of Something shoots down mating birds on hunting trip.’ It was a hit.”

  “Some people have too much time on their hands,” Tara said. “I suppose we could get the sex and violence part, if we tried. Or would that come under the heading of bringing the navy into disrepute.”

  Penny gave her a sharp look. “Sex and violence?”

  “There was a right Casanova on my last ship,” Tara said. “I honestly don’t know how he managed to bonk two separate girls at the same time. It shouldn't have been possible, not when everyone knows everything that’s going on. But he actually made it last for over three months before they found out and ... well, they had to be dragged off him. That was after he made the crack about wanting to have a catfight, of course.”

  “I don’t think I’d be allowed to report that story,” Penny said. There were quite a few books written by spacers after they left the navy, but she couldn't recall actually reading about anything like Tara’s story. “The censors would probably complain I wasn't focusing on the meat of the matter.”

  “I’m going to write it down myself,” Tara said. “Do you think I can get a whole book out of it?”

  “I don’t know,” Penny said. She suspected her editor would run it, after the war, but filling a whole book would require a few hundred more stories. “Does it have a happy ending?”

  Tara smirked. “For whom?”

  “Good question,” Penny agreed.

  Tara cleared her throat. “You have to put in the effort before you can be anything,” she said, dryly. “Your time here might seem boring now, but you’d have the experience you needed to write a kick-ass report after the war is over. The censors wouldn't be so censorious once the shooting has stopped.

  “I have the same problem, of course. I want to be a commanding officer, one day, but I can't walk out of the Academy and straight into a command chair. No, I have to work my way up the ranks; ideally, I should be promoted to commander in a year or two and win a chance to be an XO.”

  Penny smiled. “Should?”

  “There are fewer ships than there are ambitious officers,” Tara said. “If I get to commander and there isn't a chance to serve as an XO, I might lose my opportunity to become a captain and take command of my own ship. The Admiralty would eventually note that I hadn't moved up in rank again and ship me sideways into a desk job. At that point ... I might well bend over and kiss any further advancement goodbye.”

  She shrugged. “Actual experience in fighting a war would be helpful,” she admitted. “But even then I would have to be lucky. There're always at least five or six officers competing for any given post.”

  “Ouch,” Penny said. “Is there nothing you can do to improve your chances?”

  “Work extremely hard,” Tara said. “Having political connections helps, sometimes, but I don’t have any. That said, if I do get to become a commander, the odds of getting my own command become a great deal better. Experience as an XO is vitally important.”

  Penny frowned. “Wouldn't you still have command experience?”

  “It’s not the same,” Tara said. “The XO does a great deal of the work, true, but the XO isn't the one responsible for the ship. That’s the commanding officer’s job.”

  “Like the editor is responsible for the news,” Penny mused. “You can fire a reporter if necessary, but that doesn't keep the editor from getting the blame.”

  “Pretty much,” Tara said. She glanced at her wristcom. “I’m due on the bridge in thirty minutes. Do you want to grab a cup of coffee before I go?”

  “Sure,” Penny said. She paused. “What do you do when you’re not on the bridge?”

  “I should make you wait to read my book,” Tara said. “I spend a third of my time on the bridge, as tactical officer; a third of my time supervising the tactical department and a third of my time in bed. I’m supposed to stuff meals, exercise and studying for the promotion board exams into there somehow, but I’m damned if I know how. That’s one good thing about long cruises, I suppose. You can take the time to do your duty and look to your future prospects.”

  She led the way to the hatch. “Coming?”

  “Of course,” Penny said. “I thought I wasn't supposed to stay here without an escort.”

  “You’re not,” Tara said, deadpan. “You might push the wrong button and blow up the ship.”

  Penny was sure - as sure as she could be - that Tara was joking. But, as she walked out of the compartment, she was careful not to touch anything anyway, just in case.

  ***

  “We could take her, you know.”

  John nodded, slowly. Cromwell - an Earth-type world that had been settled scant months before the First Interstellar War - hadn't been occupied, as far as they could tell. The only Indian presence in the system was a single destroyer, holding position in geostationary orbit and maintaining a direct line of sight to Cromwell City. Given that there were only a few thousand colonists on the surface, without any way of reaching orbit, the ship was very definitely overkill.

  Although they might be shipping in countless settlers soon, he thought. Who knows what will happen when the colonists become a minority on their own world?

  “Captain,” Howard urged. “We might not have a chance to take her out again.”

  “I know,” John said. A single Indian destroyer, isolated from the rest of the Indian fleet ... Warspite could take her out easily, assuming she got in the first blow. And that wouldn't be hard. The Indians weren't even sweeping space with active sensors. “But that would remove all hope of a diplomatic solution.”

  The words tasted like ashes in his mouth. He was sure there was no realistic hope of a peaceful solution, of anything other than a brief and violent conflict between Britain and India. Taking out the destroyer now might save lives in the long run. But the Rules of Engagement were inflexible. They were not to switch to an aggressive posture until the task force entered Pegasus.

  He looked at the display. “Is there any trace of Indian activity on the surface?”

  “No, sir,” Tara said. “The colonists may not even be aware they’ve been conquered.”

  John’s lips twitched at the thought. It wasn't as absurd as it sounded. Cromwell was a farming colony; it had almost nothing else, beyond a tiny spaceport. The Indians might not have bothered to announce their presence ... and if they hadn't, the locals might not even know the destroyer was there. It would just be another light in the sky.

  “Take us to the tramline,” he ordered. It would be a week before they reached Hannibal, but once they were there they could stop sneaking around. “We’ll be back.”

  “Aye, sir,” Armstrong said.

  Howard looked disappointed. John didn't blame him. Royal Navy officers were taught to be offensive and the opportunity looked too good to miss. But it would remove all hope of a diplomatic solution ...

  “Once we’re through the tramline, I’ll want your report,” John said. It would be better for Howard to have something to do, rather than brood on missed opportunities. “We’ll need to discuss optio
ns with the Admiral.”

  “Aye, sir,” Howard said. “The ships could move, of course.”

  John nodded. The Indians could move their second carrier - INS Vikramaditya, if her IFF was accurate - into Pegasus, given a few hours. MI6 believed that the Indian carriers didn't carry as many starfighters as the latest British designs, but collectively they would tip the balance against Theodore Smith ...

  Unless we come up with a way to surprise them, he thought. He'd already had a couple of ideas, but the Admiral would need to approve them. And that might be difficult.

  Chapter Seventeen