A Savage War Of Peace (Ark Royal Book 5) (37 page)

“Stay wary,” Schneider muttered.  She wasn't sure if he was addressing her or his men, but it was clear they were in danger.  The corridors were lined with alien guardsmen, watching them with dark eyes.  “Don’t let your guard down for a second.”

Joelle felt her heartbeat suddenly speed up as they stepped into the throne room.  Ivan stood there, waiting for them, flanked by a handful of other aliens.  But, unlike last time, the rest of the room was empty.  She couldn't decide if that was a good thing or not.  Maybe Ivan didn't want any witnesses to what was about to happen.

She looked into the alien face and
knew
, with a certainty so strong it surprised her, that he already
knew
why they’d come.

The Indians must have told their allies about the betrayal
, she thought, numbly. 
And those allies passed word to Ivan - or to their friends within his city.

“I greet you,” Ivan said, in English.  “You demanded a meeting.  Speak.”

Joelle felt Schneider tense beside her.  The aliens were blunt, but they were rarely truly rude ...

She swallowed - her mouth was suddenly very dry - and then forced herself to speak.

“Our leaders back home have ruled that we may no longer give weapons to you,” she said.  She’d tried to think of a way to sugar-coat the message, but she hadn't been able to think of one.  “That none of us humans may give weapons to any of you until we have sorted out our affairs.  That ...”

Ivan cut her off.  “When you came, you assured us that you could speak for your people,” he said, flatly.  A strange scent filled the air as he leaned forward.  “We made agreements with you in good faith.  We have endured your people wandering through our cities and asking foolish questions in good faith.  We allied ourselves with you in good faith.”

Joelle felt almost as if she’d been slapped.  “We don’t have a choice,” she said.  On Earth, she would have found a way to sweeten the pill.  Here ... she doubted there was any way to make the Vesy feel better.  “Our people ...”

“The Indians have already made it clear that they are not bound by this ruling,” Ivan said, flatly.  “They are still providing weapons and ammunition to the Flowered Clan.  We will soon be badly outmatched.  You have betrayed us.  You have betrayed
me
.”

His flat tone made the accusation feel worse, somehow.  Joelle wanted to argue, but he was right.  Britain
had
made it harder for him to come to terms with the Indians, then dropped him like a hot rock.  The weapons he’d stockpiled wouldn't last against a massed attack from a foe who had effectively unlimited ammunition.  His city was doomed.  And the coalition she’d hoped Ivan could build, to counter the Flowered Clan’s claim to rule the entire surface, was lost.  The Indians had effectively won the planet without firing a single shot.

“You will be held here,” Ivan continued.  He gestured; the doors slammed open to reveal a handful of alien guards.  “You and your men will be traded back to your people, once Fort Knight has been removed from our territory.”

“This is an act of war,” Joelle said.  “I ...”

“You have betrayed us,” Ivan repeated.  “That too is an act of war.”

“Get down,” Schneider snapped.  Joelle glanced backwards and saw the marines lifting their weapons, then threw herself to the stone floor.  “Ivan, tell your people to back off!  I can't let you take us hostage ...”

A shot rang out.  Moments later, all hell broke loose.

***

Percy had run enough close-protection exercises to know that allowing his principal, and his men, to be taken hostage was among the worst thing he could do.  Hostage-takers were rarely rational; they might torture or kill the soldiers, while keeping the important hostages prisoner for years on end.  The moment one of Ivan’s guards opened fire, Percy pointed his rifle at the crowd, flicked the selector to automatic and hosed down the guards with bullets.  It would have earned him a rebuke in training, he knew, as he hastily swapped out one magazine for the next, but he hadn't seen any choice.

“Call it in,” he snapped.  Ivan was lying on the ground, bleeding heavily.  Percy took one look - the shot had gone right through his skull - and knew there was no point in trying to save the alien.  The guards were a mangled mass of flesh and blood.  “Tell the Colonel we need support, now!”

Peerce hastened forward and checked the door.  “I hear more guards on the way,” he said, sharply.  “We can't stay here.”

“Pick up the ambassador,” Percy ordered.  They’d have to get onto a rooftop and wait for the helicopters, again.  It would be embarrassing, but he wasn't proud.  “We need to get up.”

“I think the guards are above us,” Peerce said.  “We may not be able to get to the roof.”

“Shit,” Percy swore.  The Vesy weren't stupid.  They’d noted what had happened in City Seven and taken steps to make sure it couldn't happen again.  If they couldn't get up, there was no way they could be evacuated.  “This was a
planned
ambush.”

“Sir,” John Hardesty said.  “I can't get through to Fort Knight.”

Percy blinked.  “What do you mean?”

“There’s no response to my calls, sir,” Hardesty said.  “They’re off the air.”

Chapter Thirty-Six

Penny had tried to interview a handful of people after the lockdown had been announced, but none of them had any real time for her.  Ambassador Richardson was out on a hush-hush mission, according to her aide, while Colonel Boone was busy and most of his subordinates were occupied in planning the evacuation.  One of them had even gone so far as to threaten her with arrest, if she continued to interrupt their work, and leave her in the fort’s jail until she could be evacuated from the planet.  In the end, she’d given up and returned to her barracks, where she'd lain down and tried to write another article.  But it seemed pointless when there was no way to know what was going on.

Maybe we should have just interviewed each other
, she thought, sardonically. 
We could have written a set of articles about the lockdown and our reactions to it
.

She sighed as she leaned back on the bed, hearing the sound of another shuttle taking off and clawing for orbit.  Her terminal had blinked up a whole string of reminders to book a seat on a shuttle, but she’d steadfastly refused to leave the fort.  Percy would have been outraged - she had a feeling
he’d
been the one to put her on the priority list - yet she was definitely not going to leave, just because he said so.  Indeed, why would she
want
to leave when she still hadn't got her story?  Perhaps she should slip over to the Indian base and join the growing cadre of reporters there ...

The entire building shook, violently.  Seconds later, she heard the explosion, so loud it had to be far too close to her.  She rolled off the bed and hit the floor before her mind had quite caught up with her, then grabbed for her pistol as she heard the sound of pieces of wood crashing to the floor in the distance.  The barracks was a strong building, she knew, but could it stand up to a real blast?  What had happened?  She looked at the wall, just in time to see the picture of her family fall to the ground, then pulled herself to her feet.  The terminal went blank, then blinked up an emergency alert, far too late to do any good.  In the distance, she could hear the sound of shooting.

She looked up - the building was creaking alarmingly - and then opened the door, clutching her pistol in one hand.  The sound of shooting was growing louder, but she knew she didn't dare stay in the barracks.  It was evident the building was at risk of collapsing into a pile of rubble.  She gritted her teeth - there was a very real risk of being mistaken for a threat and shot by one side or the other - and forced herself to move forward as she heard the sound of more timbers crashing down.  Someone screamed in pain and she turned towards them, just in time to see yet another piece of wood falling to the ground.  She hesitated, then turned and ran towards the door.  It felt as though she was racing against time before the roof caved in on her.

“Get out,” a voice shouted at her.  “Get out and stay low!”

She ran out of the door, into a whirlwind of confusion.  A giant plume of smoke was rising up from the direction of the north wall, where the aliens had built their bazaar; she cursed under her breath as the sound of shooting, also coming from the north wall, grew louder.  Flickering lasers stabbed into the sky as mortar shells came crashing towards the fort, only to be intercepted and detonated high overhead.  She kept low as a trio of armed Paras ran past her, one of them screaming into his headset.  The ground shook as another explosion flared up in the distance, towards the helicopter pad.  Had one of the alien shells actually managed to take out a helicopter?  She had no way to know.

A hand caught her arm and she almost screamed, then spun around, ready to shoot.  A young woman stared back at her in shock, her face pale; it was clear she hadn't been on Earth during the bombardment.  It wasn’t something Penny would have chosen to live through, if she’d been offered a choice, but it
had
taught her that the world could change and all hell could break loose at any moment.  The chaos sweeping through the fort would claim hundreds of lives before the military reasserted control.

The woman gasped for breath, then spoke.  “Where do we go?”

“I don’t know,” Penny said.  Percy would have known what to do, or Hamish, but both of them were out somewhere, manning the walls.  “Just keep your fucking head down!”

She thought as fast as she could, but drew a blank.  None of the emergency plans she’d been briefed on had included a major attack on Fort Knight.  They’d always assumed the Vesy would never dare to attack the offworlder base.  She winced as she saw another spread of mortar shells wink out of existence overhead, then gritted her teeth as a single shell made it down and slammed into one of the prefabricated buildings.  It didn't punch through the armour, but it left a nasty mark and shook up whoever was inside.

A dull clattering noise echoed high overhead as one of the helicopters took off, then swooped down to unleash hell on the attackers.  It didn't look very coordinated, Penny thought, but it was hard to tell.  She cheered, inwardly, as the incoming fire slacked off, then swore out loud as a single antiaircraft missile rose from somewhere beyond the walls and slammed right into the helicopter, blowing it apart into a billowing fireball.  The Indians had given the Vesy antiaircraft weapons?  Who else could have given them such weapons?  Moments later, the incoming fire resumed, stronger than ever.

The ground shook, once again.  She heard a final creaking sound from the barracks and crawled away as fast as possible, moments before the wooden building folded up and collapsed into rubble.  A gush of water shot up from where the water tank had been hidden, then faded away as the building died.  Penny thought, wistfully, of the photographs she hadn't been able to leave behind on Earth, then pushed the thought aside as another explosion wracked the base.  Right now, she had worse problems.

She hesitated as the sound of shooting seemed to grow nearer, then made up her mind and started to crawl on her hands and knees towards the south wall.  It seemed to be the safest, although it was impossible to be sure.  A shell landed directly on top of the American barracks, blasting through the flimsy wooden roof and exploding inside, smashing the building into a hail of flying debris.  Penny hoped, desperately, that most of the inhabitants had managed to get out of the building before it was too late.  What were the Vesy
thinking
?  They had to know such an attack would provoke a heavy response ...

Unless they think the Indians will cover them
, she thought, grimly.  She was no military expert, but she could count ships. 
It makes sense
...

Gritting her teeth, she kept moving, praying they’d survive long enough to see the sunset.

***

There was always a time, Colonel Wilson Boone had learned long ago, when all hell had broken loose, the enemy were carving one’s side to ribbons and the situation looked completely irreparable, as if all he could do was cut his losses and retreat.  He’d been in them, back during the war and innumerable punitive actions, and he had learned that refusing to panic and maintaining a steady hand could help in regaining control of the situation.  But this ... he had the nasty feeling that Fort Knight was in deep shit.

“I just got a ping from Carver Outpost,” Lieutenant Parry reported.  “They’re under attack too!”

“Never mind them,” Wilson snarled at him.  “Can you get me a link to the navy?”

“Working on it,” Parry said.

Wilson cursed, vilely.  The aliens had done something so simple it wasn't remotely cunning; they’d moved gunpowder up to the walls, hiding it within one of the buildings they’d built to sell supplies and trinkets to the humans, then detonated it before anyone had realised it was there.  They’d succeeded, magnificently; the north wall was gone, a number of Paras had died before they’d even known they were under attack and their forces were storming the base.  He’d managed to put together a defence line consisting of the reserves and a handful of small detachments from the other powers, but he knew it wouldn’t hold for long.  The aliens were draining his ammunition at a terrifying rate.

Damn diplomats
, he thought.  He’d wanted to move the aliens back from the walls, or go with the original plan and move most of their facilities to an island, but the diplomats had refused, pointing out that it would have insulted the aliens.  Right now, he found it hard to care. 
They left us exposed to attack
.

He pushed the thought aside, angrily.  “Get Macintosh to round up as many armed civilians as he can, then start shuffling the rest towards the newer facilities,” he ordered.  So far, the Vesy hadn't shown any weapons capable of denting either the prefabricated buildings or armoured vehicles, but if the Indians had been mad enough to give them antiaircraft weapons who knew what
else
they might have given them?  “Throw the armed civilians together into a scratch group; they’re to form our last line of defence.”

“Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Yawper said.

“Then pull half the troops on the remaining wall back into a QRF.” Wilson added.  “I want them ready to block the aliens when they punch through the defence line.”

He cursed as another red light flared up on his display.  The attack had begun twenty minutes after Ambassador Richardson and her party had entered Ivan’s City and he doubted that was a coincidence.  He’d assumed the aliens would react badly, but he hadn't expected an all-out attack ...clearly, the Indians had had a plan to take advantage of the embargo all along.  Now, the Royal Marines were screaming for help ... and he had nothing to send.  Percy Schneider and his section were completely alone.

Shit
, he thought, bitterly.

“Captain Yates has the Bulldogs on standby, ready to go,” Lieutenant Yawper added.

“Then get them out and around to flank the bastards,” Wilson ordered.  Maybe they could drive the aliens away from the walls, giving him time to see to his defences.  “Order the powered armoured units to back them up.  Don’t try to drive them through the fort ...”

He cursed, again.  The civilians had never realised, not really, just how weak the defences actually
were
.  Fort Knight should have been built on an island, as per the original plan, not allowed to grow far too close to an alien city.  But ...

“And tell him watch his ammunition,” he added.  “We don’t know when we will be resupplied.”

***

Penny found herself hugging the ground once again as another handful of shells broke through the defences and detonated within the base.  The sound of shooting slacked sharply, then grew louder once again - and closer.  She glanced at the girl behind her, then looked up as a handful of aliens came into view.  Instinctively, she lifted her pistol and shot the first two, jamming her finger on the trigger time and time again.  And then she ran out of bullets ... she swore, hastily grabbing for the extra clips Percy had insisted she take, but it was already too late.  The aliens charged her, grabbed her, searched her so roughly they left bruises and bleeding cuts all over her body and then tied her hands so tightly behind her back that her wrists began to cramp at once.

She tried to struggle as one of the aliens picked her up, only to be smacked in the face for her pains.  Behind her, she heard the other girl cry out as she was subjected to the same treatment, then the alien twisted and started to carry Penny towards the wall.  She glanced from side to side, hoping to see Hamish or Percy - she would even have welcomed the overly-officious aide who’d threatened to arrest her - but there was nothing, save for ruined buildings and flames licking through the wreckage.  They’d driven the Paras back, she realised mutely, and swept up everyone they’d caught as they pushed forward.

Her captor ran faster as he darted through a steaming crater where the north wall had been, then ran through the ruined bazaar and down towards the jungle.  Penny heard the sound of engines in the distance and prayed for rescue, but nothing materialised.  She wanted to kick, to try to hurt her captor, but she knew it would be futile.  All she could do was wait for a chance to break free.

They ran into the jungle, then stopped.  Penny barely had a moment to realise what was happening before she was unceremoniously dumped on the ground, next to a handful of other prisoners.  Two of them wore military uniforms, but they were so badly injured that Penny rather doubted they would last longer than a few hours, unless they received prompt medical treatment.  The others looked to be civilians, including a couple of reporters and an NGO expert on farming Penny recognised.  They were all bound - their captors hastily chained their legs to make it impossible to move quickly - and some of them had been injured.  There was no hope of escape.