A Savage War Of Peace (Ark Royal Book 5) (29 page)

“We will provide more weapons and training,” Ambassador Richardson said.  “However, there are other things we can offer.”

None of which will matter a damn if Ivan’s people gets overrun by Indian-backed factions
, Percy thought.

“We will consider the matter at our next meeting,” Ivan said.  He bowed.  “I thank you for agreeing to our terms.”

Alien sarcasm
, Percy thought.  He’d never seen it before, but he was certain he’d seen it now. 
Just like our sarcasm
.

Ivan bowed again, then retreated back to his fellows.  Percy watched him go, feeling oddly perplexed.  Something was badly wrong, but what?

“Return to Fort Knight,” Colonel Boone ordered.  “You will be debriefed when you arrive.”

“Understood, sir,” Percy said, still puzzled.  “We’re on our way ...”

It struck him as the aliens walked back to their city, leaving the humans alone.  Ivan had
known
that Percy didn't have the authority to make anything more than local agreements, not when he’d been in sole command of Fort Knight.  Indeed, he’d wondered over the demand for his presence, speculating that it was a test of some kind.  Instead, the alien had listened to him without even questioning his authority, let alone his ability to make agreements. And that was strikingly out of character for them.

He tongued the implant in his mouth.  “Colonel,” he said slowly.  “We may have a problem.”

“Explain,” Boone ordered.

“They never questioned my authority to make deals,” he said.  “Not at all.”

“Interesting,” Boone said.  “They might assume you had the authority when we sent you out ...”

“That’s not what they do,” Ambassador Richardson said.  She sounded perturbed.  “They were careful to question my credentials when I arrived.”

“They don’t assume anything,” Percy said.  “I think they would have checked my authority first, normally.”

“I see,” the Ambassador said.  “Could they have overhead the radio?  How good is their hearing?”

“It isn't much better than ours,” Boone said.  He cleared his throat.  “Return to base, Lieutenant.  I’ll see you when you arrive.”

“Yes, sir,” Percy said.

***

“That’s an odd development,” Joelle said, once the link was broken.  “What does it mean?”

“They may have adapted to our way of doing things,” Grace suggested.  “We sent the person they wanted, armed with the authority to make deals.”

Joelle shook her head.  “There was no suggestion he should check with me, no suggestion he wasn't anything but the one in charge,” she said.  The more she looked at it, the more it puzzled her.  Schneider was right.  Ivan had acted strikingly out of character.  “They
knew
he didn't have the authority, on the face of it, to make deals.”

Mortimer leaned forward.  “It’s possible their hearing is better than we thought,” he said.  “Or they may have deduced the presence of subvocal transmitters.”

“Or been told,” Captain Naiser added, from the communicator.  “The Indians might have cheerfully warned them about implants and microscopic trackers.”

Joelle frowned.  Whatever the Indians were playing at, it would be unwise of them to reveal too many tricks to the aliens.  If they hinted that Britain might be deploying nanotech spies into Vesy cities, it would suggest to even a mildly paranoid mind that the Indians could do the same.  The more she thought about it, the more she suspected the Indians would have kept their mouths firmly closed.  Why give up a potential advantage for nothing?

Unless they are trying to curry favour
, she thought. 
Or have an interest in proving us unfaithful.

“They want us to provide them with more weapons and training,” Mortimer said.  “That leads to an interesting problem - we simply don't have that much on hand, now.”

“And we will not be cutting our own supplies,” Captain Naiser added.  “That would risk leaving the base defenceless.”

“We have orbital weapons,” Grace said.  “Don’t we?”

“I’d hate to have to fire on troops attacking Fort Knight,” Captain Naiser said.  “They’d be too closely intermingled with our people.”

“You did that when the God-King attacked the Russian base,” Mortimer pointed out.

“And we were damn lucky to avoid a blue-on-blue,” Captain Naiser said.  “As it happened, we concentrated fire on the rear of the enemy columns.  We would have probably hit our own people if we’d fired closer to the walls.”

Joelle held up a hand.  “I think we need to request more weapons from Earth,” she said.  “If we’re in a bidding war ...”

“We also need more ammunition,” Mortimer said, firmly.  “That may make the difference between success or failure.”

The PM will love that
, Joelle thought.  It was bad enough that she was morbidly certain that she was already getting bad press at home.  The media would go wild if they thought Britain was fuelling an arms race. 
And we may need to set up factories of our own
.

She pushed the thought aside.  “Debrief Lieutenant Schneider thoroughly, then consider assigning him to the alien training squads as an embedded observer,” she ordered.  “If that is acceptable to you, Colonel.”

“I’d prefer to keep him attached to the QRF for the moment, if we’re sending our people out again,” Boone said.  “The training crews have considerably more experience in teaching young people how to use guns.”

“Understood,” Joelle said.

Captain Naiser coughed.  “Do you intend to release the lockdown?”

“I don’t think we have a choice,” Joelle said.  She would have preferred to keep it in place for longer, but pressure was already growing.  “The media already wants to get out there and start seeing what’s going on, Captain, and the NGOs will not be far behind.”

“Shit,” Captain Naiser said.  “And the missionaries?”

“They’ll have the new agreement,” Joelle said.  “If they refuse to honour it, they can be kicked out - I’ll make that clear to them.”

“Allowing the aliens to arrest them will not please their governments,” Boone noted, coolly.

“Better than dead missionaries,” Joelle said.  It would probably cause more problems, but at least the missionaries would be alive.  “These are not the days when we would go to war to avenge the deaths of a few missionaries, particularly ones who knew the danger.”

And, on that note, the meeting ended.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“Perhaps you would like to explain to me,” John said, “
precisely
what you were thinking?”

Crewman Ryan Bjorklund and Crewman Francis Turner looked at each other, nervously.  It was rare for crewmen to be called in to face the Captain; normally, disciplinary matters on the lower decks were handled by the Senior Chief.  But Philip Richards had hauled them up to Officer Country as soon as they’d returned from the surface, without giving them a chance to agree on a story.  He now stood behind them, glowering at their backs.

“Don’t look at each other,” John snapped.  “I’m waiting for an explanation.”

“Captain,” Turner said.  “I ... we were down on the surface ...”

John sighed, inwardly.  He’d hoped to avoid shore leave problems - it wasn't as if there was much to do at Fort Knight, beyond walking around the perimeter and trying to chat up civilians - but he'd underestimated the ability of young men to get into trouble.  Both Bjorklund and Turner had good records, yet they'd seemingly thrown away all common sense.  It wasn't going to look good when they were considered for promotion.

Assuming it doesn’t get them straight into a court martial
, he thought. 
That might be a very real possibility
.

“Let me read to you from the report,” he said.  “You went outside the walls and chatted to a number of Vesy.  Somewhere along the line, you got into a gambling game with them.  You won a couple of times, then you lost heavily.  The Vesy you were playing with offered to forgive the debt in exchange for a couple of small items you happened to be carrying, correct?”

“Yes, sir,” Turner said.

“You handed those items over to them,” John continued.  “They then offered to pay you for bringing more items out of the base, offering you small gold coins in exchange.  You took those coins to the base, where they set off alarms and the Paras grabbed you.  The missing items were noted during your search and they asked a number of pointed questions, correct?”

“Yes, sir,” Turner said, again.

“So tell me,” John ordered.  “Just what were you thinking?”

“We allowed ourselves to be suckered, sir,” Bjorklund said.  “We haven't played a game since leaving Earth ...”

“There isn't a day without a semi-legal game underway somewhere on the ship,” Richards growled.  “You play for sweets or leave-tokens or chores.”

“They’re not so exciting,” Bjorklund confessed.  “We gambled with the Vesy because we thought it would be different.”

“And they took you for a ride,” John said.  The Paras had made it clear that the Marines had introduced poker to the Vesy, months ago.  “They allowed you to believe you could clean them out, then wiped you out and demanded what you were carrying to pay the debt.  What
were
you carrying?”

“A music player and a video player,” Turner said.  “They wanted the wristcoms as well, but we explained they weren't ours.”

“You’d be staring down the barrels of a firing squad now if you’d handed
those
over,” Richards said.  “They really
don’t
need our wristcoms.”

John looked from one to the other.  “And then they offered to pay you to bring them more,” he added.  “What did they want?”

“Anything,” Turner confessed.  “Anything, as long as it wasn’t something we were passing to them already.  They said they’d pay us in gold.”

“I see,” John said.  “Just out of idle curiosity, how were you planning to explain the gold when you got home?”

Turner swallowed.  It was clear he hadn't thought that far ahead.

“We could have traded it on the market,” Bjorklund said.  “We would probably have made a tidy profit on the deal ...”

“And then been arrested, for selling something you shouldn't have had,” John snapped.  “I suppose one could say you’ve been very lucky.  You might have infringed the rules on trading with the Vesy, but at least you didn't resort to outright theft.”

He considered it for a long moment.  Legally, he could throw them both in the brig - they could keep Kun company - until
Warspite
returned to Earth.  But the Vesy would simply start looking for someone else who could be bribed into selling technology to them ... and John had a feeling it wouldn't be long before harmless requests were replaced by demands for something dangerous.  It might be better to use the two crewmen to keep the Vesy distracted, while they felt out which Vesy faction might be behind it.  Or was it the Indians?  Wristcoms would be useless to the Vesy, but the Indians could do some real mischief if they obtained the devices and used them against their owners.

“I will consult with Colonel Boone about your future,” he said, finally.  “You
may
have a chance to make up for your idiocy.  Until then, the Senior Chief will find work for you to do ...”

His intercom pinged.  “Captain to the bridge,” Howard said.  “I say again, Captain to the bridge.”

“Deal with them,” John ordered Richards, who nodded and motioned for the two crewmen to follow him.  There was no shortage of unpleasant jobs on a starship; they’d be kept busy and out of the way long enough to give John a chance to handle the situation.  “I’ll talk to you later.”

He rose, then hurried through the hatch and onto the bridge.  A new cloud of yellow icons had appeared on the display, heading away from the tramline and straight towards one of the few asteroid clusters in the system.  Behind them, a second batch of ships was heading for Vesy.

“Captain,” Howard said, rising from the command chair.  “Group One came out of the tramline and headed directly for Asteroid Cluster B.”

John sucked in his breath as he took his chair.  It had been agreed, at least among the Great Powers, to leave the system’s asteroids strictly alone.  Vesy had been lucky in so many ways, but the system had relatively few rocky asteroids, barely enough to sustain a space-based industry.  They belonged to the Vesy, the diplomats had ruled; now,
someone
was actively defying their judgement.

“Bring up our drives,” John ordered.  “Do we have an authenticated IFF yet?”

“Negative, sir,” Gillian said.  “They didn't transmit anything to either us or System Command.”

“I see,” John said.  They weren't British, then;
Indian
?  It was a possibility.  “Helm, take us out of orbit on an intercept course.”

“Aye, sir,” Armstrong said.

John glanced at the tactical display, hastily calculating trajectories in his head as
Warspite
headed out of orbit.  The newcomers, whoever they were, would definitely reach the asteroids first, unless he decided to push the drives to full power.  But he had orders to try to conceal
Warspite’s
top speed as long as possible ... shaking his head, he silently calculated they’d reach the asteroid an hour after the newcomers.  It would have to do.

He recorded a quick message to the Ambassador, then checked the other ships.  One of them was British, thankfully; the others were mainly Indian or Italian.  The Italians were relative newcomers to space - they’d been hit badly during the Age of Unrest - and he wasn't sure what they were doing on Vesy, but they were unlikely to pose a problem.  Maybe their ships had been chartered by other powers.  The Indians, on the other hand ...

They keep bringing in more and more gear
, he thought.  Monitoring the Indians was absorbing more and more of his staff’s resources; they just kept expanding, with little concern for Vesy society.  John had the uneasy feeling that Britain would eventually drop out of the race, rather than try to keep pace. 
But what do they want
?

“Captain,” Gillian said.  “The Ambassador sends an acknowledgement, but nothing else.”

John nodded, unsurprised.  There was nothing the Ambassador could say or do now, not when so much remained unknown.  All she could do was wait and see what happened when
Warspite
reached the asteroids.  Pushing the thought aside, he pulled up the latest readiness reports and skimmed through them.  The crew really needed shore leave somewhere more congenial than Vesy.

Maybe head to Cromwell
, he thought.  Cromwell had almost no facilities for shore leave, but there was no shortage of lakes to turn into swimming pools and mountains to climb; hell, merely being able to leave the ship would be a good thing. 
We’d be only a week or so from Vesy if all hell broke loose
...

“Captain,” Gillian said, two hours later.  “I’m picking up a commercial transponder signal from the newcomers.  They’re Turks.”

John blinked.  Turkish ships? 

“Send back a standard challenge,” he ordered.  They were still too far from the asteroids for a proper conversation, but at least they’d be able to exchange messages.  “Ask them to state their business here.”

There was a long pause.  Finally, a dark-skinned face appeared in the display.

“Captain Naiser,” he said, in accented English.  “I am Director Nedim Demir, Director of the Vesy System Mining Facility.  I have claimed these asteroids in the name of the Turkish Government.”

The image froze, waiting for a second message.  John cursed under his breath, then keyed his console.  The message would have to be recorded, then transmitted.

“This is Captain Naiser of HMS
Warspite
,” John said.  “Your mining facility is illegal, Director.  It was decided by the World Court that the asteroids and planets within this system belong to the native sentient race.  I must ask you to withdraw your ships.”

He tapped a switch, sending the message.  There was another pause before the frozen image came back to life.

“Captain Naiser,” the Turk said.  “I must inform you that my government was not consulted about the decision, thus it is our considered opinion that it does not apply to us.  Furthermore, the decision stands in conflict with other decisions regarding the Terra Nova System, all of which ruled that a disunited planet could not exercise control over a star system.  The natives did not stake their claims in any meaningful manner, ergo they have no claims.”

John gritted his teeth as the image froze again.  The hell of it was that the Turks had a point -and probably thousands of allies, if the whole matter went to court.  God alone knew how many corporations had stakes in Terra Nova, stakes that would be at risk if the local government took control of the system.  They’d back the Turks to the hilt, once the implications struck them.  They wouldn't give a damn about the Vesy.

We cannot bar them from claiming the asteroids in a system that belongs to a native race,
he thought bitterly,
because that would set a dangerous precedent elsewhere
.

He keyed his console.  “Director, such matters should be discussed by the World Court,” he said, flatly.  He doubted it would get him anywhere.  The World Court was no longer the power it had been, now that the Great Powers had been badly weakened.  “I would
ask
you to stop your operation until the question of ownership has been decided.”

There was another pause.  “Legally, the asteroids belong to the person who first stakes a claim,” the Turk said, once John’s message reached him and he sent his reply.  “That has been the
status quo
since the return to the moon.  There is no unified government in this system, so there is no authority that can deny us the chance to exercise our rights.  I cannot shut down my facility without instructions from my government to do so.”

John glanced at his tactical officer.  “Commander Rosenberg,” he said.  “Do you have a tactical analysis?”

“Yes, sir,” Tara said.  She keyed her console as she spoke.  “There are twelve ships in all, five long-range miners, four standard freighters presumably carrying the mining crews and three destroyers, all pre-war ex-American Navy.”