A Small Colonial War (Ark Royal Book 6)

by Christopher Nuttall

  And if that happens, he thought, it won’t be so easy to keep an eye on them.

  ***

  By the time she was allowed to re-enter the colony, Lillian was tired, sweaty, cross and sick of the endless grumbling about the pointless task. The colony had plenty of digging equipment, designed to make it easier to emplace the prefabricated buildings in the frozen ground; there was no need to make them dig the trenches manually. She couldn't decide if it was a deliberate attempt to keep them from thinking about the Royal Navy or simple sadism, but either way it was unpleasant, frustrating and largely useless. The Indians ignored her as she made her way back to her tiny compartment, closed and locked the door behind her and fell on the bed. She was aching everywhere.

  And you’ll probably have to do it again tomorrow, she thought, as she forced herself to sit up and start undressing. Her pale skin was bruised badly; she wondered absently if one of the Indians had beaten her so hard she'd forgotten it, before remembering similar bruises from basic training. The unaccustomed hard work had made her sore. Unless they decide to put someone else to work.

  She wrapped a dressing grown around herself, then keyed her terminal. A message popped up in front of her eyes, reminding her that she would still be driving the transport to one of the mass drivers in two days. Until then, she was still on trench-digging duty. The Indians, it seemed, intended to keep the colonists busy. By the time the Royal Navy attacked, the colony would be at the centre of an impossibly-large network of defences.

  At least I’ll be outside the colony for a while, she told herself. She wanted a shower, but she was really too tired. And I can meet them.

  She touched the pen in her pocket, then smiled to herself as she lay back on the bed. Majors could have his transmitter, if he had time; she’d pass his words on to the SAS before destroying it. And they would go to the Royal Navy ...

  And then they can come get us, she thought. We’ll be safe at last.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Clarke III, Pegasus System

  “You understand how to make it work?”

  “I was a starship crewwoman,” Lillian said, gently. “I’m not a complete dunce when it comes to modern technology.”

  “You point this part at the stars,” Majors said, ignoring her. “Once you lock into the target, you push this button to trigger the pre-recorded message. It repeats ten times, then the system automatically wipes itself. You throw the transmitter out of the vehicle and try to crush it beneath the treads.”

  “Understood,” Lillian said. It might be better to throw it into the ocean, but she'd prefer not to take the risk. Falling through the ice would be bad enough even with the Indians willing and able to help rescue her. “I’ll see that it gets destroyed.”

  “Good luck,” Majors said. He gave her a brief hug. “If they do catch you, tell them it was my fault and you didn't have the slightest idea what I was asking you to do.”

  Lillian snorted. There was no shortage of war movies from the Age of Unrest where women - regarded as little better than animals by the bad guys - ran rings around the terrorists, just because the terrorists didn't take them seriously. One of the spies had been blindingly obvious to anyone who hadn't been blinded themselves by their own preconceptions. The movies had always struck her as funny - she particularly liked the one where a topless spy had hypnotised the enemy merely by waving her breasts in their faces - but the Indians weren't anything like that stupid. They wouldn’t dismiss her simply because she happened to be born without a penis.

  “I think they’ll shoot us both,” she said. Some of the other war movies had lingered too much on precisely what kind of fates certain spies had endured for her comfort, but at least the Indians weren't that unpleasant. “Are you sure you want me to do this?”

  “Yes,” Majors said, flatly. “Go.”

  Lillian nodded, then took the transmitter, stuffed it into her bag and headed up the corridor towards the vehicle bay. Sweat trickled down her back as she approached the two guards on duty - the Indians hadn’t bothered to search her bag before, but they might change their minds now the Royal Navy was actually investing the system - and then breathed a sigh of relief as they waved her past. Neither of the young men looked particularly nasty, she noted; they seemed more inclined to worry about the conflict than her presence. She walked up to the vehicle, slipped through the hatch and carefully hid the transmitter in the engineering compartment. Someone would have to search the transport thoroughly to find it, if they wanted ...

  Pity it wasn't small enough to be hidden under my clothes, she thought, as she walked back into the cab and checked the rota. She would be driving to Outpost Seven, it seemed; a six-day round trip. It wasn't as long as she could have preferred, but still ... six days away from the colony and digging trenches was something to be enjoyed. I could have forced them to strip search me if they’d wanted to make sure I wasn't carrying anything dangerous.

  The engine hummed to life as she checked in with the control room; the entire vehicle shuddered slightly as the hatch opened, allowing her to drive out of the colony and past the growing network of trenches. Someone had noticed - unfortunately too soon for the Indians to trap themselves - that they needed to leave an open path for the transports; the Indians had cut a gap through the defences for the vehicles and then expanding the surrounding fortifications. She silently bade the colony goodbye as she drove onwards, silently grateful for the modified caterpillar tracks. There was no such thing as a road on Clarke.

  “Good thing too,” she told herself, as she kept a wary eye on the timer. “The transport would probably wreck it within hours.”

  She smiled at the thought. She'd been told that tanks and other heavy military vehicles weren't allowed to travel on motorways, unless it was genuinely urgent. They were simply too heavy and smashed up the roads when they drove down them. The transport, if anything, was heavier. She checked the timer again, decided she was far enough from the colony and carefully removed the pen from her pocket. She’d looked at it before, time and time again, but as far as she could tell it was a perfectly normal pen. It even wrote normally.

  Let’s just hope you’re listening, she thought, as she clicked on the transmitter. Because if you’re not, I may be in some trouble.

  It was an hour before the sound of the hatch opening made her jump. She braced herself, careful to remain quiet, as the door behind her opened; she turned, slowly, and smiled as she saw Percy Schneider. He tapped his lips as he produced a bug detector from his pocket and swept the compartment, then the rest of the vehicle. Lillian almost didn't dare to breathe until he returned, smiling openly. This time, she noted, he was alone.

  “It should be safe to talk,” he said. “How are you?”

  “They know about the fleet,” Lillian said. “They’ve been making us dig trenches for them.”

  “Wankers,” Percy said. He sat down facing her. “I’ve got quite a few questions, I'm afraid.”

  “So do I,” Lillian said. She went on before he could say a word. “A friend of mine built a transmitter to send a signal to the navy. I said I’d take it and transmit ...”

  Percy cut her off. “You’d never be able to send the signal without being caught,” he said. “Is he mad?”

  “Desperate,” Lillian said. “He wants to do something.”

  “And then leave you with the transmitter,” Percy pointed out. “Did you intend to destroy it?”

  “I planned to give it to you,” Lillian said. “If you take the message, you can forward it to the fleet, can’t you?”

  “Probably,” Percy said. “Unless this is an elaborate trap for us.”

  He shrugged. “I’ll take a look at the transmitter in a moment,” he said. “Now ... my questions.”

  Lillian sighed and braced herself for another interrogation.

  ***

  Percy had to admit, when he finally looked at the transmitter, that David Majors was actually a very capable technician. The Indians had presumably confiscated
any purpose-built transmitters that might have been able to get a signal out, but Majors had strung together a dozen different components to produce the same effect. Percy carefully removed the datachip storing the message itself - Majors hadn't rigged a proper self-destruct system, which was a dangerous oversight - and then broke the transmitter back into its component pieces, which he dumped into his bag. They could be hidden somewhere or dumped under the waves if necessary.

  He put the bag out of sight and walked back into the driving compartment. “You’re on your way to one of their bases, correct?”

  “Correct,” Lillian said. “I don't know what I’m carrying, but they consider it important.”

  “It could be anything,” Percy agreed. He took a breath. “I brought a set of tools this time, Lillian. If I tried, I could open the boxes.”

  He winced at her expression. Taking him onboard and chatting to him was reasonably safe - she was practically unmonitored until she reached the outpost - but opening the boxes, which might reveal signs of tampering, was a whole other matter. If someone took a careful look and discovered what he’d done, she would probably get the blame. The Indians would be unlikely to accept her curiosity as an excuse.

  She swallowed, hard. “Do it.”

  Percy frowned. There was something about her that spurred his protective instincts. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” Lillian said. She reminded him, just for a moment, of the same determination Penny showed. “Do it, before I have an attack of brains to the head and realise just how dangerous it is.”

  “All right,” Percy said.

  He gave her a reassuring smile - if necessary, they could arrange an accident for the vehicle and smuggle her back to the tents - and walked through the hatch, into the hold. It was suddenly very cold, but the atmosphere was breathable. The Indians, he was amused to note, had largely copied the Royal Navy’s standardised transportation containers, although that might have been caused by the global push towards standardizing as much as possible. He moved from container to container, looking for one that could be used to fake an accident if necessary and finally chose one near the rear. If the vehicle happened to hit something big enough to make it shake, he decided, it was just possible that the container would be damaged in transit.

  “Let’s see,” he muttered to himself. Burglary skills had been part of his basic training, although he’d never quite understood why until he’d been seconded to the SAS. A burglar needed to think about ways to bypass locks and security protections, as well as developing the nerve to proceed with something that could get him in deep shit if he were caught. “At least they used the standard duct tape.”

  The thought made him smile - he’d had a sergeant who rhapsodised about the power of duct tape - as he carefully cut his way into the container. It would be simple enough to replace, once he was through. Inside, he found a set of smaller boxes, clearly marked as ration bars and sealed bottles of water. He puzzled over the latter for a long moment - Clarke III wasn't short of water, even though it did need to be purified - and then dismissed the thought. It wouldn't be the first time some bureaucrat back home had decided it would be better to ship supplies to the front rather than let the troops source it for themselves.

  At least this time someone else has the barmy bureaucrats, he thought, coldly. Good to know they learned more than just tactics from us.

  “Now,” he mused, pushing the thought to the back of his mind. “How many soldiers are based on the outpost?”

  There was no way to be sure, he knew, but it couldn't be more than a few dozen at most. The Indians weren’t crazy enough to stick an entire regiment on top of each of the outposts, even if they were going to be defending the mass drivers. There were enough ration bars in the crate he’d opened to feed a company of Royal Marines for several months, at least. If the rest of the containers were all crammed with ration bars ...

  He did the math, slowly. The Indians would need at least a couple of thousand men on the outpost to make the expenditure worthwhile. Either that, or they were establishing a supply dump for later expansion. But with the task force bearing down on them, why bother? They could do it afterwards, if they won the war. He sealed up the container and went looking for a second that could be opened, gingerly. This time, he found a stockpile of railgun pellets.

  Shit, he swore. Lillian was transporting ammunition. If that wasn't a breach of the laws of war, he wasn't sure what was. And she didn't even know she was transporting ammunition; hell, food and drink alone was skirting the edge of the rules. She could wind up being hung for this.

  He sealed up the box, then opened a third. It held more railgun pellets. The Indians, clearly, were anticipating KEW strikes on their positions. It wouldn't be a bad bet, either; the task force would need to clear the mass drivers before they could get into orbit and KEW strikes would work, given half a chance. But the Indians had clearly taken precautions of their own ...

  But they don’t know about us, he thought, as he sealed the box carefully. If they did, they would have made different choices.

  There didn’t seem to be any boxes left that could be opened and still maintain plausible deniability, so he repacked his tools - taking extreme care that none of them were left behind - and walked back into the cab. Outside, the snowfall was growing stronger; Lillian had already slowed the vehicle as visibility had dropped to zero. It would be too dangerous to try to make his way back to the team until it cleared.

  “You took your time,” Lillian observed. She sounded quieter now, as if she knew the die was cast. “What did you find?”

  Percy hesitated, then decided to be honest. “I found railgun pellets and ration bars,” he said, bluntly. “You’re supporting their war effort.”

  “I could just crash this vehicle into the mass driver,” Lillian said, after a second. “I ...”

  Her hands were starting to shake. “I ... I’m going to be killed, aren't I?”

  “Probably not,” Percy said. He wasn’t sure how to be reassuring. Penny had always thrown a fit when he’d slipped into over-protective mode, even during the floods. “You didn't know what you were shipping, did you?”

  “No,” Lillian said. “But I do now.”

  “You’re helping us,” Percy said. He understood what she was going through, but he honestly didn't know quite what to say. “You will be forgiven, really.”

  Lillian looked at him. “With my record? Can you swear to that?”

  Percy hesitated. He understood her concerns far too well. She had blotted her copybook once and anyone who wanted to throw the book at her would have ample excuse, now she’d been duped into assisting the enemy war effort. But, at the same time, she had redeemed herself.

  “I can contact the fleet and ask the Admiral,” he said. He neglected to mention that the Admiral was effectively his adopted father. He’d tried not to use the influence that brought him for himself, but Lillian deserved some kind of reassurance. “And I will testify in your favour if you wish.”

  He peered out of the window. The snowstorm was only growing stronger. Lillian pulled the vehicle to a stop, then tapped her console, sending a quick message to the colony. Given the weather, he knew she could only wait until the snow had stopped falling before resuming her journey. Trying to steer a path when she could no longer see clearly was asking for trouble.

  “I’ll hold you to that,” Lillian said. She was shaking as she spoke. “Percy, I ... I really wish I was braver.”

  “You’re doing fine,” Percy said. “I’m not sure I would have been able to cope so coolly with enemy occupation.”

  “You’d probably have chased them off the planet by now,” Lillian said.

  Percy shook his head. Neither Lillian nor their quiet probing had been able to determine just what had happened to the Governor and the handful of military personnel on the colony. His own theory was that they’d been hurried off-world and probably shipped straight to Gandhi or Vesy - the latter, in particular, presenting a whole set of challen
ges to any rescuers. But it wouldn't have mattered. Mounting a full-fledged resistance on Clarke - with the Indians firmly in control of the colony’s life support systems - was impossible.

  “I think I would be in the same boat as you,” he said, finally.

  “Yeah,” Lillian said. She smiled, bitterly. “The Titanic.”

  She glanced at her console as it bleeped. “Weather control says the storm is not going to go away for at least two hours,” she warned. Percy read the message over her shoulder and sighed inwardly. “Maybe longer.”

  “I’ll just have to wait here,” Percy said. He threw her an embarrassed look. “If that’s alright with you.”