[Ark Royal 04] - Warspite

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Captain,” the Governor said. “ How can I thank you?”

  “You can sign off on the agreement,” John said, bluntly. The Deputy Governor couldn't override his superior, even if he did work directly for the CDC. Somehow, he doubted the British Government would overrule one of its own Governors. “And then you can make sure it is implemented.”

  “Of course,” the Governor said, once John had outlined it for him. “It should solve the problem neatly.”

  John shrugged. “You should have done it just after the floods,” he said. “I understand why you didn't, but you should have done. It would have saved a great deal of trouble.”

  He recovered his wristcom, then called Hadfield. The Marines would know about the agreement already, thanks to the bugs, but he knew Hadfield wouldn't move without orders. Once the vast majority of the hostage-takers were out of the dumpster, the Marines could move in and secure the building, then tend to the former hostages.

  “Keep Gamble at the CP,” he finished. The last thing he needed, right now, was for Gamble to start threatening to repudiate the agreement. It would only provoke another uprising at the worst possible time. “I’ll wait for the medics here.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Absolutely out of the question!”

  John sighed as the Deputy Governor spun around to face his superior. “Governor, we are not obliged to accept agreements made under duress,” he snapped. The Governor’s office echoed with his voice. “There is no way this ... agreement will be accepted by the consortium!”

  “It will be,” the Governor said. “I do not believe there is any other solution to our problem.”

  “They signed the contracts,” the Deputy Governor thundered. He turned to glare at John. “Use force! Make the rabble obey!”

  John somehow managed to keep his voice calm. “I have twenty-two Marines under my command,” he said. “That is nowhere near enough Marines to keep control over a small town, let alone an entire colony. All I could do would be to apply punitive strikes, which would be of only limited value when the colonists could simply vanish into the undergrowth and hide indefinitely. The exercise would be pointless.”

  “You have other crew on your ship,” the Deputy Governor insisted.

  “If I stripped out every man who was qualified to fire a heavy weapon,” John said evenly, “I would have only the bare-bones of a skeleton crew, while I still wouldn't have enough men on the ground to hold the colony. The only way to force them to go back to work, as you put it, would be to ship in a large garrison and, I assure you, there would be no political enthusiasm for such a deployment. There are too many calls on the army’s manpower back home on Earth.”

  “Be reasonable,” the Governor said. “Or do you want another riot just after the warship leaves?”

  “This wouldn't have happened if you’d clamped down at the start,” the Deputy Governor insisted. “I ...”

  John cut him off. “If the survey team had done a better job, the flooding could have been avoided,” he said. “If the war hadn't broken out, their wives and children could have been shipped to them before they started to feel cheated and alone. If ... but there’s no point in focusing on what might have been. All we can do is deal with the situation as it stands.”

  He came to a decision and sighed, then looked at the Governor. “With your permission, sir, I would like to take Deputy Governor Gamble with me when I depart,” he said. “I do not feel the peace of the colony would be enhanced by his presence.”

  The Deputy Governor stared at him. “You’re ... arresting me?”

  “If you want to look at it like that,” John said, evenly.

  “This is outrageous,” the Deputy Governor snapped. “You do not have the authority to drag me off this world!”

  “But I have the authority to expel you,” the Governor said. “I know, I know, you have stock options and interests that force you to take a hard line. You want that seat on the board and it will only come if you make Cromwell a success. But you’ve threatened any real chance of actual success, Murray, and I can't risk you doing any further damage.”

  He looked at John. “Captain, I would be pleased if you would take him with you when you go.”

  “Of course,” John said.

  He called one of the Marines and ordered him to escort the Deputy Governor to pack a small bag, then take him to the spaceport. If Gamble refrained from causing trouble, he could have one of the small cabins set aside for guests; if not, there was always the brig. John considered putting him in the brig anyway, without waiting for problems, but dismissed the thought. It was going to be hard enough convincing the Admiralty to support him without adding mistreatment of a semi-prisoner to the list of problems.

  “Well,” the Governor said, when they were alone. “It seems I have good reason to thank you.”

  “It's all in a day’s work,” John said. “And besides, we sorted out a problem that could have grown into a nightmare.”

  “So you did,” the Governor agreed. “Is there anything we can do for you?”

  “No, thank you,” John said. Normally, they would have asked for fresh food and drink, but Cromwell was in no condition to provide anything. The Marines had shot some examples of the local wildlife for the mess and that would have to do. “Just make sure you support us when the CDC starts making a fuss.”

  “Of course,” the Governor said. He smirked. “I’ve been thinking about retirement anyway.”

  They shook hands, then John walked back to the spaceport, followed by a couple of Marines. It might have been his imagination, he thought, but the city seemed more ... optimistic somehow, now that the agreement between the Governor and the farmers was public knowledge. John only hoped it would last, once the hard work of repairing the damage began. Even without their old debts, the farmers were still having to redo their work ... and their wives and children were still missing.

  It might be time to start searching for replacements, John thought. There was no shortage of unmarried women who might accept passage to Cromwell, on the understanding that they would marry a farmer at the far end. Some of them wanted to be farmers themselves, others thought they had no hope of finding a proper job. But they have their hearts set on the women they married.

  He laughed at himself, bitterly. And if Colin was still alive, his own thoughts mocked him, would you want Colin or some random bloke off the street?

  Hadfield met him by the remains of the CP. “Everyone is either here or in orbit, sir,” he said, with brisk efficiency. “No one seems to have deserted.”

  “Good,” John said. Desertion was rare, but it did happen. “I don’t think anyone would want to desert here.”

  “I don't know, sir,” Hadfield said. “Several crewwomen got propositioned pretty damn badly while they were on duty. This place is very short of single women.”

  “As long as they don’t try to leave before their contracts expire, I don’t mind,” John said, dryly. “I assume they all made it back without incident?”

  “Yes, sir,” Hadfield said. “There were no problems.”

  John nodded, then turned towards the shuttle. “Then let’s go,” he said. “And see if we can find the missing women and children.”

  He sobered as they walked into the shuttle. No matter how he looked at it, he knew the odds of actually finding the missing ship were terrifyingly low. Ships had vanished before, even warships; there was a whole string of missing ship reports that had never been satisfactorily explained. Some ships might have been jumped by the Tadpoles, in the opening days of the war, but others had vanished a long way from alien space. Maybe it had been a life support crash, he thought, or maybe something more sinister. But there was no way to know.

  “Take us back to the ship,” he ordered. He keyed his wristcom as the shuttle powered up its drives. “Mr. Richards, assemble the senior officers in the briefing room once I arrive. We have a search to plan.”

  ***

  “I can't say it is going to be ve
ry easy,” Armstrong said, once Midshipwoman Powell had finished distributing mugs of tea and coffee. “We know Vesper passed through the Terra Nova System - we have it logged by the naval base - but after that, nothing. There are seven separate systems where something could have happened to her.”

  John nodded, studying the holographic starchart. In some ways, the task looked simple; Vesper, unable to transit alien-grade tramlines, couldn't have altered her planned course. But any spacer knew that each of the icons on the display marked an unimaginably huge area of space, with even the largest fleet carrier smaller than a needle in a haystack. If Vesper had drifted off her planned route, there was little hope of finding her.

  We have to try, he thought, grimly. I am damned if I am not making an effort, even if it is foredoomed to failure.

  “With that in mind,” he said, “how do you propose we proceed?”

  Armstrong swallowed, then looked at the chart. “I propose we attempt to hail her in both Troyon and Spire,” he said, “but continue towards Boston. The Americans will be able to tell us if Vesper passed through their system. If so, we know that whatever happened had to have happened in either of the empty systems.”

  “Good thinking,” John said. He focused the display on Troyon and Spire. “Troyon has at least one tramline that has never been properly explored, while Spire has an unclaimed Mars-like world. There might well be a hidden colony there, one that snatched Vesper for breeding stock.”

  Hadfield looked doubtful. “Do you think that's possible, sir?”

  “There were several attempts to set up hidden colonies during the war,” John reminded him. “Spire might be a good candidate, if the colonists thought they were desperate. There's even less there to attract the Tadpoles than a human power.”

  “Dry and cold,” Richards mused. “They would probably simply ignore the world, if they thought it was valueless.”

  John shrugged. Hadfield was right to doubt. It was unlikely that any survivalist colony would risk its privacy by snatching an entire freighter. But if they thought there was a desperate need for breeding stock - and there had been over two thousand women and children on Vesper - they might have taken the gamble. Given enough time and preparation, it wouldn't have been that hard to keep the captives under control.

  But it was the most optimistic scenario, he knew. The worst was never knowing what had happened to the freighter and her crew, let alone her passengers. There would never be any closure for their husbands and fathers, just ... an endless barren emptiness. John had known that Colin was dead; he’d come to terms with it, somehow. None of the fathers on Cromwell would ever be able to say the same.

  We have to try, he reminded himself.

  He looked at Hadfield. “I assume our unwelcome guest is stowed away?”

  “He was complaining about the cabin when we left him, sir,” Hadfield said. “Apparently, there isn't enough room to swing a cat.”

  John smiled. The only officer on the ship who had a larger cabin was himself. “Tell him that they’re the best we can provide,” he said. “And that he will be expected to take meals with the officers. Or starve.”

  “Aye, sir,” Hadfield said.

  “We will depart in two hours,” John said, rising. “Mr. Armstrong, plot out a least-time course from here to Boston. We will transmit hails in both Troyon and Spire, but we need to check with Boston ASAP. You can also plot out a search pattern for both systems, as well as the unexplored tramline. If Vesper passed through Boston, we will need to double-back to Spire and start our search.”

  “The Americans may be able to help,” Richards observed. “Do they have a ship on station?”

  “Not according to the last intelligence report,” Howard warned. “They’re as concerned as we are with fortifying all the systems between Earth and Tadpole space. Smaller colonies like Boston will have been largely left to their own devices.”

  He shrugged. “It’s a larger colony than Cromwell, sir, but it isn't that much larger,” he added. “I don’t think they have anything tramline-capable on permanent station.”

  “Wait until we have a miniature Puller Drive,” Commander Watson said, suddenly. “It will allow us to deploy more courier boats in each settled system.”

  John blinked. Commander Watson was normally content to keep her mouth shut in staff briefings. Unlike almost any other officer he knew, she hadn't said a word about losing most of her responsibilities to Richards. He wished he knew if she was grateful someone else had taken them, which was possible, or if she hadn't realised she had them in the first place. Neither option was particularly reassuring ...

  “Dismissed,” he said. “Commander Watson, remain behind.”

  He clicked off the holographic display as the compartment emptied, then swung round to face her. “I meant to ask,” he said. “How are you coping with your current workload?”

  “I am designing the next set of modified drive units,” Commander Watson said. “The calibration shock we experienced the first time we used the drive can be prevented by creating a modified drive matrix that automatically adjusts itself to the tramline ...”

  “English, please,” John said, hastily.

  Commander Watson didn't smile. “Imagine each tramline as a lock,” she said. “The pre-war drives used brute force to break through the lock, allowing access. But the alien drives have to be adapted to actually fit the lock or they have unpleasant side effects. My modified drive matrix will allow the key to automatically fit the lock, without the need for long calibration and recalibration.”

  “A skeleton key,” John said, slowly.

  “Basically, yes,” Commander Watson said. “Indeed, I may have cracked the math that would allow us to form the key without the lock.”

  John stared at her, feeling his mouth hanging open. “Genuine FTL?”

  “Yes,” Commander Watson said. “However, the power requirements are staggering. I believe that even the Theodore Smith-class of carriers would be unable to handle the demands. We would probably need a carrier-sized starship that was almost all engine, rather than ... well, everything else.”

  Starfighter launch bays, weapons, crew quarters, everything else, John thought. “We could always use it as a carrier, just scaled up,” he said. “Use it as a carrier for smaller starships, rather than starfighters. Even attach a fleet carrier to the giant ship ...”

  “There would be issues,” Commander Watson said. “Both kinds of Puller Drive rely on the tramlines to provide most of the motive force. Using a drive without a tramline would send the power requirements rising up to infinity - and the more mass one added, the greater the power requirements would be.”

  “So it’s useless,” John said.

  “The first tramline-capable ships were huge brutes,” Commander Watson reminded him. “It took ten years of careful experimentation to redesign the drives so smaller ships could use them. I dare say the more we poke around with the drive matrix, the more we will understand what we are doing, which will allow us to work out how to minimise the power requirements.”

  That, John knew, was all too true. Terra Nova might not have become such a disaster zone if the first tramline ships hadn't been so expensive. The world had thought there would only be one accessible planet and everyone had rushed to stake a claim to the surface. But instead, there had been hundreds of accessible worlds, once the drive had been improved. Terra Nova had largely been forgotten in the excitement.

  “I hope you succeed in finding a way to jump without the tramlines,” he said. Every naval officer born would share that hope. “Do the Tadpoles have a lead on us?”

  “They developed the original theory, so I would assume so,” Commander Watson said, thoughtfully. “But if they have actually cracked the problem, they haven't told us about it.”

  They wouldn't, John thought. The war might be over, but there was always the possibility of a rematch. Both sides would concentrate on building up their fleets and weapons technology as much as possible, hoping to have a few
surprises to throw at the enemy if the war resumed. If they could jump without the tramlines, the war would be over within a couple of weeks, before we even knew we were fighting once again.

  “I feel this is important,” he added. “Would you like to hand the remainder of your duties to Mr. Richards and concentrate on your work?”

  He couldn't help feeling a little embarrassed at his own words. Very few officers would willingly surrender any duties, no matter how overworked they were, if only to avoid suggesting they were incapable of handling them. The Royal Navy could be merciless to officers who didn't feel they were worthy of promotion. After all, if they had no faith in themselves, why should the Navy?