A Small Colonial War (Ark Royal Book 6)

by Christopher Nuttall

  Lillian smiled wanly and then rose. “It is,” she said. She reached for him as he stood and pulled him into a long desperate kiss. He stared at her as their lips parted, feeling shocked; she kissed him again, hard enough to make him lose all sense of propriety. “I ... just don’t say anything, ok?”

  Percy’s last thought for quite some time, as their hands struggled to undo their clothes, was that Drake was going to kill him.

  ***

  Afterwards, with the storm fading away, Lillian watched him go, feeling oddly torn. She’d wanted to feel human again, just for a while; she’d wanted to feel as if someone cared. It had been hard to make any sort of real connection on the colony - everyone knew she was in exile, even the ones who were prepared to be friendly - and harder still after the Indians had taken over the colony. She was part of the resistance and yet she still needed to keep secrets from her fellows.

  She looked down at herself as she started to dress. Percy hadn't mocked her, or taken advantage of her, or treated her as anyone other than someone who needed comfort. It said too much about her life, she reasoned, that she’d allowed too many people to walk all over her because of her desperate need to belong. But now ... she had no illusions about Percy, yet he hadn't lied to her. And he hadn't promised her anything either.

  And he was good in bed, part of her mind noted. She wasn't very experienced, but she’d enjoyed just being able to throw away caution and concern and throw herself headfirst into making love. Somehow, that had made it better. And ...

  She shook her head as she restarted the engine. The Indians would be defeated, sooner or later ... and, if Percy spoke for her, maybe there would be a life afterwards. And, if not, at least she would have her revenge. The Indians would rue the day they’d turned her into an ammunition carrier.

  Maybe I can spike their guns, next time, she thought. She’d have to be ready to run for it afterwards, but somehow the thought was no longer intimidating. And give them a nasty surprise when they start to open fire.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  HMS Warspite, Pegasus System

  “Thank you for allowing me this interview, Captain,” Penny said.

  “The Admiral cleared it,” Captain Naiser said. She was sure she could detect a hint of irritation in his tone. Did he know she’d been effectively adopted by Vice Admiral Fitzwilliam? It was probably in her file. “And you may be feeling as if you’re missing out.”

  Penny nodded as she sat down and crossed her legs. Captain Naiser’s profile had made it clear he was homosexual, so there was probably no point in trying to use her wiles to make him say more than he ought. Even if he’d been straight, he was too annoyed at the whole situation to be manipulated easily. Besides, a week of constant skirmishing had taken a toll on everyone. She’d seen officers being sharper than usual, while she’d heard rumours that two crewmen had come to blows and beaten each other bloody. No one had said anything to confirm it, at least not to her.

  “The media ships are sending back constant reports,” she said. They were also broadcasting them over the system, although she wasn't sure who they thought was receiving them. The colonists? The Indians? “They’re full of speculation and nearly devoid of facts.”

  The captain’s lips twitched. One report had confidently claimed that the two sides were secretly in alliance and the reason neither one had sought a decisive battle was that they were planning a joint attack on the Americans or the Chinese. It was absurd, given the amount of blood that had already been spilt, and Penny was sure the reporter who’d come up with the theory would be hastily recalled to Earth and promoted into upper management, where he could do less harm. She would have preferred to see him fired, but it was very hard to fire a reporter for anything less than outright lying. Their union was very powerful.

  “I don’t have much time,” the captain said. “What would you like to ask?”

  “Several questions,” Penny said. She knew the answers wouldn't pass the censors, at least until the end of the war, but she’d use them for her tell-all book afterwards. “Why aren’t we confronting the Indians directly?”

  “The Admiral prefers a policy of gradually weakening the Indian position, rather than a frontal attack,” the captain said. It had the air of an answer carefully prepared for the interview. “The longer we cut their supply lines, the weaker they will become; the more ships they have to cut loose to guard their convoys, the harder they will find it to hold onto the system.”

  Penny nodded. One of the more experienced reporters on Theodore Smith had already produced a tactical analysis that largely agreed with the captain. She was surprised the censors had allowed it to slip out, although they might have decided that it actually worked in the Royal Navy’s favour. It certainly made it sound as though the whole affair was under control and the Indians were dancing to the British tune. The Indians were probably doing their damndest to keep it from their people, if it had reached Earth yet.

  “And they have that second carrier,” she mused. “You don’t want to encourage the Indians to bring it into play.”

  “No,” the captain agreed. “It would tip the local balance of power in their favour.”

  Penny nodded, shortly. “I’ve been given to understand that the Indians have emplaced mass drivers on Clarke III,” she said. “Why can't they be simply taken out from long range?”

  The captain’s eyes narrowed, clearly wondering where she’d learned about the mass drivers. So far, none of the media reports had referred to the weapons; Penny had only heard about them through listening carefully to a pair of tactical officers in the mess. She knew the censors would never let her tell the universe they existed, but she could at least ask why they hadn't been smashed from orbit. The answer would be written in her book.

  “Accurately targeting the mass drivers from outside the gas giant’s gravity well would be tricky,” the captain said. “In theory, it would be a simple exercise in orbital mechanics, but in practice it would be incredibly complex. The slightest error could put the projectile thousands of miles off course. We only really deploy KEWs from low orbit because accuracy is paramount. They do not have the ability to adjust course while in flight.”

  “Because they’re just rocks,” Penny said.

  “Correct,” the captain agreed. “However, there is another problem. The Indians have surrounded the mass driver emplacements with railguns and plasma cannons. They would see a projectile coming and open fire, blasting it off course before it could strike the target.”

  Penny frowned. “I was under the impression that intercepting a KEW strike was impossible.”

  “It is, if you don’t have the right tools,” the captain said. “The Indians do have the tools. We could keep firing projectiles until one finally got through, but it would be immensely costly and give the Indians plenty of time to respond.”

  “By bringing in the other carrier,” Penny guessed.

  “Or coming up with something new,” the captain offered. “And there would be an unacceptable risk of accidentally harming the colonists.”

  “Which would be inconvenient,” Penny said. “And embarrassing.”

  She sighed, inwardly. She’d been warned, on Vesy, that hostages might well find themselves on their own. The only way to deal with hostage-takers, humanity had learned during the Age of Unrest, was to make it clear that the mere presence of hostages wouldn't be enough to deter a military assault. Everyone would be pleased if the hostages were recovered alive, but if they weren't the blame would be placed firmly on the terrorists. There would certainly be no attempt to ransom the hostages. Who knew how many others would wind up dead because the terrorists had a sudden cash windfall?

  But the Indians aren’t terrorists, she thought. They wouldn't harm the colonists just to make a point.

  “Very embarrassing,” the captain said. “Hit the moon hard enough and it would shatter.”

  Penny had to smile. “I don’t want to think of the government’s reaction if you went home and told th
em you accidentally blew up the moon.”

  “They’d blame it on the French,” the captain predicted. He shook his head. “We’d need a very big KEW to actually destroy the moon, but it could be done.”

  “Or a mercury bomb,” Penny said. “Were any actually built?”

  “It’s a simple matter of engineering,” the captain said. “But emplacing them would be a major pain if you were trying to do it without being detected.”

  Penny nodded, thoughtfully. Back in the early days of space exploration, the Belt Alliance - a rough confederation of independent asteroid miners and settlements - had seriously proposed blowing up Mercury to make it easier to mine. They’d talked about emplacing a number of nuclear bombs under the surface, then detonating them in unison, shattering the planet and creating a whole new asteroid belt. The idea hadn’t gotten very far - the tramlines had been discovered shortly afterwards, opening up whole new vistas for human exploration - but no one had forgotten. Blowing up an entire planet was now well within humanity’s capabilities.

  And there are people who believe we will one day abandon planets completely, she thought, dully. They’d see them as nothing more than sources of raw material.

  “The Indians wouldn't consider threatening to blow up the whole moon themselves, if they were losing the war,” she mused. “They’d become pariahs overnight.”

  “They have to understand that crossing the line would only make it harder for them to return to the family of nations,” the captain said. He gave her a long considering look. “I hope you’re not planning to mention that possibility in your reports.”

  “I wasn't inclined to suggest it,” Penny said. She had a feeling the Indians could have thought of it for themselves, if they’d wanted to. “If I can ask, sir, has there been any news from the ground?”

  “From your brother, you mean,” the captain said. He gave her a sympathetic look. “I’m afraid all such reports are highly classified. The only thing I can tell you is that they’re alive, down on the ground and undetected.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Penny said. She took a breath. “Do you think we’re winning the war?”

  The captain hesitated. “So far, honours have been about even,” he said. “But they’re going to have to tip the balance themselves or risk wasting away to irrelevance.”

  Penny considered it. “How long will that take?” She asked. “Things are built to last these days.”

  “Some things last longer than others,” the captain said. “Yeah, a lot of our technology is built to last for years; there’s no longer any such thing as planned obsolescence. But some of the more advanced military systems cannot be run at full power indefinitely without causing considerable wear and tear. Cutting the Indians off from their supply lines and forcing them to push their equipment to the limit will wear them down savagely. Keeping their crews on alert will also take its toll.”

  “But it will take a toll on our crews too,” Penny pointed out.

  “Yes, it will,” the captain agreed. “But we have more crewmen than they do. We also have the option of pulling back into J-35 for a rest, if necessary. They don’t have that option.”

  “Because you’ve been buzzing their installations with drones,” Penny said. “They have to take each contact report seriously.”

  The captain smirked. At a distance, it was very hard to tell the difference between a warship and a drone playing at being a warship. The Indians would suspect, perhaps, that some of the ships violating their defence perimeter weren't real, but they wouldn't be able to let the contacts just go past. Instead, they had to respond to each and every contact, placing further wear and tear on their crews.

  “They do,” he confirmed. “And as long as they’re tied to Clarke, they can't pull away and relax.”

  Penny nodded. “Why don’t they just give in?”

  “Pride, I imagine,” the captain said. “It’s like gambling, in a sense. You keep raising the stakes ... and at some point, you’ll find it hard to back down even though cold logic tells you that you can't possibly win.”

  “I suppose,” Penny said.

  She understood, better than she cared to admit. Years ago, when she’d been barely twelve, she’d played a game of Monopoly with Percy and a couple of his friends. One of them had offered to sell Mayfair to whoever made the highest bid and Penny had found herself in a contest with Percy, constantly raising her offer even though they’d both long since passed the point where the purchase would be worthwhile. And she’d kept bidding because she’d wanted to spit in Percy’s eye ...

  And I won the bidding war, she thought, but I lost the game because I gave away too much ready cash.

  “You’d think a world leader would know better,” she commented. “They could gamble so hard they lose everything.”

  The captain shrugged. “Most world leaders are isolated from the world,” he said. “They don’t serve on the front lines, nor are they really threatened by terrorists. Government offices are hardened targets, surrounded by security guards and equipped with escape tunnels. The death and suffering of both their soldiers and civilians is alien to their experience. They rarely see the consequences of their decisions until the war is completely lost - and even then, they can go into exile rather than surrender to the enemy.”

  Like I was playing with Monopoly money, Penny mused. I might have wound up embarrassed by losing, I might have been teased by my older brother, but I wouldn't have lost anything significant. My life didn't rest on the outcome.

  “That makes sense,” she said. A thought struck her. “But wouldn't it be true of the British Government too?”

  “On the record, of course not,” the captain said. He smiled. “Off the record, the British Government cannot afford to back down. If it does, it conveys an impression of weakness that other enemies will be quick to capitalise upon. The more times the government backs down, the harder it will be to convince the next set of aggressors that the government is serious about fighting this time. The Indians have basically forced us into a position where we have to fight or surrender - and they gambled we would surrender.”

  “But we haven’t,” Penny said.

  “That flips the problem into their lap,” the captain said. “If they back down now, they look weak; they’d have problems convincing others that they would fight, if pushed. India has more natural enemies we do too; both China and Russia have reason to fear Indian influence in East and Central Asia. They’ve gambled their way into a position where their only real hope is to win the war on the cheap, to do it without losing one or both of their carriers.”

  “Because the Chinese might stab them in the back, even if they beat us,” Penny muttered.

  “Of course,” the captain agreed. “The Chinese would even be able to claim that they were enforcing the Great Power system.”

  “And so all we can do is carry on the war,” Penny said. She shook her head in amused disbelief. “There’s no room for a compromise, is there?”

  “There's nothing to compromise with,” the captain pointed out. “Anything we could reasonably offer them would be seen as a sign of weakness, a sign that being aggressive gets you rewards. Either we win or they win with no middle ground.”

  “We could offer them Vesy,” Penny suggested. “There isn't anything there we want.”

  The captain shook his head. “That’s arguable,” he said. “The Indians would certainly be able to gain a great deal, simply by controlling access to the natives. They’d also be able to take advantage of their insights into our technology, if the Indians start training them in human methods ...”

  “They’re primitives,” Penny snapped. She knew that wasn't entirely fair, but they’d taken her prisoner and would have eaten her, perhaps, if the Indians hadn't ransomed her. It was hard to consider them anything other than barbarians. “They’re not going to open the doorway to tramline-free FTL.”

  “How do you know?” The captain asked. “The Tadpoles introduced us to plasma cannons - we had the theor
y, we could just never get them to work. Now, we’ve actually improved on the design; the latest generation of human-built plasma weapons are an order of magnitude more powerful than anything the Tadpoles deployed.”

  “That you know about,” Penny said, tartly. She couldn't imagine the Tadpoles declining to improve their own technology while humanity developed its own. “They will have advanced themselves, won’t they?”

  “Probably,” the captain agreed. “They did design their fleet mix to overwhelm ours - or so they thought. New Russia proved they certainly had the advantage against our modern warships. In that case, we inspired them; hell, the concepts the Vesy learned from human contact were already causing innovation amongst their city-states when we had to leave the planet for good. I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the suggestion that we couldn't learn anything from them.”

  Penny scowled. “But the Tadpoles ... the Tadpoles know that solid matter is composed of atoms,” she said, searching for something simple. “They understand the universe around them on a level the Vesy can’t match. The Vesy still think that chanting loudly brings the favour of the gods.”