“Continue firing,” he ordered, as the Russians lanced around again. They had to be pushing their drives to the limit to pull off such stunts, repeatedly, but the Russians had always favoured the brute force approach to starship construction. Their carriers and frigates carried enough fusion reactors for ships several times their size. And their compensators seemed to be built along the same lines. “Aim for their drives.”
“They’re launching missiles, sir,” Howard snapped. “Point defence is primed to engage.”
“Good,” John said. The Russians grew closer, spitting deadly fire towards Warspite. If they’d faced a pre-war cruiser, John suspected, they might well have won. But Warspite’s armour was enough to take the laser hits without significant damage to her inner hull. “Fire at will.”
“Gotcha!” Howard said. He cleared his throat, embarrassed. “Sir; we have disabled their drive section.”
“Put some distance between them and us,” John snapped. He wanted to launch the Marines, but he knew better than to take the risk. If the Russians wanted to go down fighting, they could just self-destruct once the Marines were onboard. “Lieutenant Forbes; hail them. Inform them that if they surrender without further ado, they will not be returned to Moscow.”
“Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Forbes said.
John waited, studying the Russian ship on the display. Her drive section had been badly damaged; at a guess, she’d lost two of her fusion reactors and most of her internal power. It was unlikely, though, that she'd lost everything. She hadn't had a profiteering engineer sabotaging her drives. But then, he had to admit, her components were likely to need replacing in any case. There was no way they could beg, borrow or steal what they needed from Cromwell or Boston.
“They’re responding,” Lieutenant Forbes said. “They want to know what will happen to them?”
Good question, John thought.
“Tell them they won’t be shot,” he said. “If they surrender without further ado, they will be transferred to Cromwell, where they can serve as indents for a few years and then blend into the planetary population.”
“Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Forbes said.
Richards leaned close to John and whispered in his ear, too quietly for anyone else to hear. “The Admiralty won’t like you offering such terms, sir.”
“I know,” John said. There was no tolerance for pirates on Earth, certainly not after the resurgence following the alien bombardment. “But we need that ship intact, along with her databases. It may be the only way to find the missing women and children.”
He sighed. Governor Brown wouldn't be happy either. Indents were always blamed for anything that went wrong on colony worlds, which was at least partly why so few of them were dispatched from Earth in the first place. And it would be worse for the Russians, because they had kidnapped the colony’s women and children.
And if they get murdered by the colonists, he asked himself, should we really care?
“They’re responding, sir,” Forbes said. “They want to be treated as prisoners of war.”
John snorted. “And ask them where they want to be sent, when we get them home?”
The Geneva Conventions had been a joke long before the Troubles, but the major powers still attempted to honour them, at least when dealing with their peers. But the Russians wouldn't want to be returned to Russia, which would be their fate once the war came to an end. And, as there wasn't a war, they would be returned almost at once. Unless, of course, they were found guilty of war crimes. In that case, they could be shot out of hand. It was unlikely the Russians would do more than lodge a muted protest.
We could send them home, he thought, with a flicker of dark humour. They would be put in front of a wall and shot for desertion.
“They say they’re willing to accept your first terms,” Forbes said, after a moment.
“Good,” John said. “Inform them that any resistance to my Marines will result in the immediate destruction of their vessel.”
He keyed his terminal. “Major Hadfield, you may launch your shuttles at will,” he said. “Good hunting.”
“Aye, sir,” Hadfield said.
“Marines away, sir,” Howard said.
John nodded. “Keep missiles locked on their hull,” he ordered. He tapped his console, opening a link to Main Engineering. “Damage report?”
“Minor damage to our sensor blisters, sir,” Johnston reported. “Our armour was scorched and pitted, but held. I’m drawing up a repair plan now.”
“Good,” John said. He looked at his bridge crew. “You all performed splendidly, all of you. This will be noted in my log.”
“Thank you, sir,” Richards said.
And Thank God I managed to steer Commander Watson out of her position, John thought. Who knows what would have happened then?
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Good God,” Hardesty said. “What a fucking mess.”
“As you were,” Percy snapped, as the Russian ship came into view. Her hull showed the patchwork signs of too many makeshift repairs, even before Warspite’s lasers had sliced her drive section into ribbons. “Remain alert at all times. They could be planning an ambush.”
A dull clunk ran through the shuttle as it docked with the Russian ship. Percy picked up his rifle, ran a quick check on his light armour, then stepped up to the airlock. It hissed open, allowing a gust of foul-smelling air to billow into the shuttle. The Russians would know to replace their atmospheric filters regularly, he was sure, but they would be running short of supplies. He stepped through the hatch and into an airlock, which opened into a long corridor. If anything, the air was fouler inside the ship itself.
He looked up as a tall man stepped into view, his face lined and rugged, his hair starting to turn white. “Welcome onboard Petrov,” he said, as if the Marines were just visiting. His English was oddly accented, as if he'd learned it in adulthood. “I am Captain Aleksandr Sergeyevich Nekrasov.”
Percy was in no mood for games. “Assemble your men,” he ordered, curtly. “I am obliged to warn you that, while provisional POW status has been granted to you prior to your arrival on Cromwell, any attempt to escape, harm or mislead my men will result in severe penalties.”
Nekrasov gave him a long look, then keyed an outdated wristcom and issued orders in Russian. Slowly, a handful of crewmen appeared at one end of the corridor and walked towards the Marines, looking alternatively relieved and terrified. They were all male, Percy noted, save for a pair of pale-faced women at the back. The Russians had always been less willing to allow women to serve on their warships, he recalled, although he couldn't recall why. Not, in the end, that it mattered.
“If you are carrying any weapons, get rid of them,” he ordered. “You will be searched, bound, then transferred to our ship.”
He nodded to the Marines, who beckoned the first crewman forward and searched him, quickly and efficiently. Once he was clean, they bound his hands and pushed him into the shuttle, then moved to the next crewman. He was carrying a pair of knives, both of which were confiscated. Percy kept a sharp eye on proceedings, making a mental note to arrange for both of the women to be kept separate from the men. If their ship had been away from any bases for at least five years, chances were they would have been in danger from their male comrades if the Captain had lost his grip.
“Captain,” he said. “Is this your entire crew?”
“The survivors,” Captain Nekrasov said. “Seven of my crew are dead.”
Percy ordered the Captain bound, then led his Marines on a quick search of the Russian starship. He’d never had the chance to visit Ark Royal, but he couldn't help wondering if the aging carrier had felt quite as old as the Russian vessel. It was clear, far too clear, that the Russians had been on their last legs, even before they’d run into Warspite. Their sensors were failing, their weapons decaying ... even their life support was starting to collapse, despite the colossal over-engineering. In some ways, the captured crew were lucky. It wouldn't have taken more th
an a single catastrophic failure to leave them breathing vacuum, light years from any prospect of help.
“We’ve located the remaining bodies,” he said, once they picked their way through the shattered drive section. “They’re all here, sir.”
“Very good,” Hadfield said. He’d wanted to lead the mission in person, but Peerce had talked him out of it. Percy was more expendable. “And the ship’s computers?”
“Powered down,” Percy said, after a quick check. “I think the engineers will have to have a look at her, sir.”
“I’ll have them called, once we sweep the ship again,” Hadfield said. “Good work, Percy.”
“Thank you, sir,” Percy said.
***
“I’ve had the male prisoners moved into Hold Two,” Richards said, an hour later. “The Captain and the female prisoners have been placed in the brig, for the moment. They should be fairly secure.”
“Good,” John said. He turned to Doctor Stewart. “What can you tell us about our guests?”
“Very little,” Stewart said. “I’ve taken DNA samples and compared them to our database, but none of the prisoners were included in any of the files the Russians shared with us, during the war. I suspect the Russians believe them to have been killed during the First Battle of New Russia.”
“So they wouldn't have bothered to share any details,” John mused.
“No, sir,” Stewart said. “Health-wise, they’re not in good shape. Their diet must have been pretty poor, because at least two of them are at risk of scurvy.”
John shook his head in disbelief. “These aren't the days of Lord Nelson,” he protested. “Their commander must have known the dangers.”
“I imagine they had problems obtaining the foodstuffs they required,” Stewart said. “I don’t believe that ship was intended to operate alone, certainly not for five years.”
“It didn't,” Johnston said. The Chief Engineer looked grim. “There were at least two other ships with her, when she fled New Russia.”
John looked at him. “I thought they’d purged their computer cores.”
“They did,” Johnston said. “But they didn't actually destroy them, Captain, and they underestimated our skill at recovering data. I think there are huge tracts of data still missing, well beyond recovery, but we managed to pull out quite a bit.”
He took a breath. “As we surmised, sir, this ship and two of her consorts fled New Russia after the carriers were lost,” he explained. “They must have believed the war to be utterly hopeless ... which wasn't really a bad guess. I don’t think they knew about Ark Royal. They spent the next six months working their way through the tramlines to Boston, and then up into unexplored space. I think they saw this whole sector as being least likely to attract the Tadpoles.”
“They might have been right,” John mused. “And then?”
“Good question,” Johnston said. “The log entries get sparse after their arrival in this sector, Captain. There’s some reference to a habitable world, a place to set up a new home, but nothing very clear. At some point, they must have realised that the war was over and the human race had won, which would have been a nasty shock. They couldn’t hope to return home without being shot.”
“They probably decided to set up a secret colony of their own,” Hadfield put in. “Taking the women and children would allow them to make their colony self-sustaining.”
John nodded, sickened. There had been two women on the ship, out of a thirty-strong crew. The Russians wouldn't have had a hope of setting up a long-term colony, not without more women or medical technology they didn't have. But by stumbling across Vesper, they’d found everything they wanted dropped into their lap. Had they known, he asked himself, just what Vesper was carrying? Or had it been a stroke of immensely good luck?
They could have made a link with someone in Boston, he thought. Vesper’s manifest might have been shared with the Americans before she went through the system.
“And that leads to a different question,” he said. “Where is Vesper now?”
“I think they took her through the human-grade tramline,” Johnston said. “They didn't have any modifications to their drive, Captain. The alien tramlines would be inaccessible to them.”
“We could ask,” Hadfield pointed out. “They’re effectively pirates. We owe them nothing, certainly not a chance to live the rest of their lives in relative safety. Enhanced interrogation is legally permitted.”
John considered it, then shook his head. He’d always thought of himself as a pragmatist, and there was an argument in favour of using drugs, lie detectors or even torture, but he’d accepted their surrender on the promise of good treatment. The Russians could hardly do anything to stop him, if he decided to force them to talk, yet it would be disastrous in the long run. No one would surrender to the Royal Navy if they thought they would be tortured to death, then shoved out of the nearest airlock.
“No,” he said. “We can search the next system without forcing them to tell us anything.”
“I don’t want to be the voice of caution, sir,” Richards said, “but shouldn't we consider reporting back to Boston?”
“That would leave women and children in enemy hands,” Hadfield snapped.
John held up a hand. It was Richards’s job to point out the dangers in proceeding onwards, deeper into the unknown. Two more Russian frigates wouldn't be much more of a threat, not if they were in no better shape than Petrov, but a single mistake could cost them everything, including the evidence they’d gathered so far. Richards was right; there were advantages in turning and returning to Boston ...
But Hadfield was also right. Turning back would mean leaving women and children in enemy hands. He hated to think of what the Russians must have done, to make the women submit to them, or what might have been done to the children. The Russians might even have started planning to raise them as their own, using them as the next generation of settlers. But how could they hope to set up a technological colony with only three frigates?
“We have to proceed,” he said. “Mr. Johnston, is there any hope of learning much more from the hulk?”
“I don't believe so, sir,” Johnston said. “The Russian crewmen do not seem to have written any journals or anything else we can use as a source of intelligence. We didn't even find any private terminals or datapads in their quarters and the only datachips we found were either games or porn.”
“The Russians value information security,” Hadfield commented. “Any of their officers who kept a private journal would be in deep shit when the FSB caught him. They’d string him up as a warning to the next fool who thought he could get away with it.”
“We only allow them on the main datanet too,” John said. Private terminals were permitted, grudgingly, but anyone who put classified material on them would be in trouble. “They would be purged along with the rest of the computer cores, if necessary.”
He looked at Johnston. “Can the Russian ship be salvaged?”
“It would be cheaper to build a modern frigate from scratch, sir,” Johnston said. “Right now, she is utterly incapable of generating a drive field, energising a beam or travelling down a tramline. We could tow her to Cromwell and use her as an orbiting base, sir, but I can't imagine any other use for her. She wouldn't even be worth more than a few thousand pounds if we tried to collect prize money for her.”
John had to smile. The Royal Navy handed out prize money for ‘interesting’ captures, yet there simply weren't that many that qualified. He’d heard that half the crew of Ark Royal had become millionaires after they’d brought home an alien ship, but they’d been the exception.
“Then carry out one final sweep of her hull, then power her down and mark her location carefully,” he ordered. “We can arrange for her to be towed back to Cromwell later.”
“Aye, sir,” Johnston said.
There wouldn't be much disappointment, John knew. A few thousand pounds shared among the crew, even if he refused his ten percent, wouldn't
go very far. Salvaging Vesper and her passengers would be much more lucrative, once they managed to get the colonists to Cromwell. But it was better not to plan for what he would do with the money until he actually earned it.
“Good work, all of you,” John said. He looked at Richards. “Can we sustain the prisoners?”
“There shouldn't be any problems feeding them on ration bars for the next few months,” Richards said. “We might consider giving them ration bars to be cruel and unusual punishment, but based on what they were eating on the ship I dare say they’ll be glad to get them. Their food processor had major problems. I think it was actually rejecting elements they needed to live.”
“Ouch,” John said. He’d never met anyone who liked the bland ration bars, even before they learned just what was reprocessed and used to produce them, but they did provide everything a human needed to live. If the Russians had been accidentally poisoning themselves, they might have very good reason to be grateful they’d been caught. “And security?”
[Ark Royal 04] - Warspite Page 29