A Small Colonial War (Ark Royal Book 6) (22 page)

He shook his head.  The SAS had divided up and started to probe the Indian defences, slowly putting together a picture of just what they were doing on Clarke III, but he’d been left behind with the transmitter.  He had a feeling, in fact, that his expertise was now useless.  The SAS knew everything he did and more.  And, as he hadn't trained with them, they probably considered him something of a third wheel.  Putting him at the transmitter was a good way to get some use out of him without putting themselves at risk.

It was a galling thought.  Percy knew, without false modesty, that he’d done well on Cromwell and Vesy.  His promotion, he’d thought, was a recognition that he'd done very well; he’d honestly expected to be thanked for his service and told to return to his old rank and duty station.  But the SAS were something different.  Even the couple who’d been drawn from the Royal Marines - not that they’d admitted so; Percy had had to deduce it from the handful of mannerisms they’d been unable to hide - fitted into the troop perfectly.  Their casual, almost jocular manner and their disdain for hierarchy hid a staggering level of competence and experience.  He wanted to be one of them and yet he was scared he might not be able to live up to it.

He’d read about SAS Selection, once when he’d completed basic training and again when he’d been seconded to the SAS.  It was made as hard as possible - on purpose - and soldiers who were binned were sometimes placed on suicide watch.  Percy hadn’t believed it at the time, but he thought he did now.  To fail the ultimate test of soldiering, when one had the self-confidence to try, would sting.  How could one go back to one’s original unit as a failure?

But there is no shame in trying and failing
, he told himself. 
Only in not having the guts to try ...

The transmitter lit up.  Percy blinked in surprise and tapped the keyboard.  It wasn't easy in his suit, but he’d had a great deal of practice.  Drake had uploaded his reports to the transmitter regularly, just waiting for
Warspite
to return to collect them.  Now, Percy watched the first set of messages downloading before transmitting Drake’s reports in return.  He wondered, briefly, if Penny was still onboard the cruiser, before dismissing the thought as absurd.  No matter how he felt about it, or the danger of death if the cruiser was detected, Penny wasn't likely to walk away from her scoop.  How could she?

There was no message for him in the bundle, he noted.  It wasn't really a surprise.  He’d been warned, more than once, that the SAS were completely detached from the rest of the world while on covert deployment.  There would be no personal messages for any of them; hell, he’d been told he couldn't even keep a personal log!  It felt weird not to be jotting down a brief account of the day’s events and his personal observations - he’d had to do it as a Royal Marine - but the risks were just too high.  The enemy would certainly read his notes with great interest if they were captured.

He watched the transmitter deactivate itself, once the last of the messages were gone, and sighed to himself.  There was no point in trying to read the messages. 
He
hadn't been given any of the codes to decrypt them.  Percy found it more than a little irritating, but he understood the logic.  The troopers had been prepared for interrogation on a scale he couldn't hope to match.  If
they
were pushed too hard, they’d die rather than give up anything, even something as minor as their wife’s bra size.  He knew he couldn't say the same for himself.

Good luck
, he thought, glancing upwards.  The sky was clear, for once; it had been hours since the last poisonous snowfall. 
Come back soon
.

***

“Download complete, sir,” Tara reported.

John nodded.  “Deactivate the link to the platform,” he ordered.  “Helm, back us out of here, quietly.”

“Aye, sir,” Armstrong said.

“Captain,” Tara said.  “Two Indian starfighters were just launched.”

John felt his eyes narrow.  “Just two?”

“Yes, sir,” Tara said.  “They could be a long-range recon patrol ...”

“Perhaps,” John said.  It made sense ... unless, of course, the Indians were running more exercises. 
He
would have preferred to stick to the simulators if there was a prospect of actually having to
fight
, but the Indians might disagree.  “Helm, keep us well away from their projected flight path.”

“Aye, sir,” Armstrong said.

Howard frowned.  “Two starfighters against us?”

John shrugged.  Two starfighters weren't much of a threat ... but then, the Royal Navy had thought the same about starfighters in general before the Battle of New Russia. 
Warspite
was far tougher than either of the British carriers that had been ripped apart in the battle, yet the Indians could easily launch enough starfighters to overwhelm her defences if they wished ...

“Better to be careful,” he said.  He took a long breath.  “Besides, we don’t want to be detected yet.  We need to get our intelligence back to the Admiral.”

He glanced at the stream of reports from the SAS.  One of them was marked urgent.  He hesitated, then keyed in his command code and opened it as
Warspite
picked up speed, angling away from the Indian ships orbiting the gas giant.  The message unfolded in front of him, a grim warning that things weren't quite what they seemed.

Mass drivers
, he thought. 
That
changed everything.  All of a sudden, the asteroid made a great deal of sense. 
Shit
.

Chapter Twenty-One

Theodore Smith
, J-35

“Bugger,” James said, mildly.

He concealed his amusement at Sally’s astonishment with an effort.  No doubt she’d expected a rather more ...
deafening
response.  It was frustrating to discover that the Indians had done something that put them one step ahead of him, but at least he’d found out before it was far too late.  A projectile slamming into one of his ships would have been disastrous.  As it was, he had time to alter his plans to compensate.

“They’ll have near-complete coverage of the space around the moon,” Lieutenant-Colonel Wilson Boone said.  3 Para’s commanding officer - and the overall commander of the groundpounders - leaned forward.  “Their accuracy will be shit beyond a certain point, but it will be enough to force us to keep our distance.”

James nodded.  The SAS - and their contact on the ground - had been able to identify several mass driver installations, while the stealthed satellites had been able to locate the rest.  It looked, very much, as though the Indians could hit starships approaching from any angle to the moon, even if they tried to keep the moon’s mass between themselves and the colony.  In fact, assuming the Indian mass drivers were at least as capable as
British
designs, they could probably throw enough buckshot into space to make approaching the moon thoroughly hazardous.  Boone was right - their accuracy would be appallingly bad - but it hardly mattered.  He couldn’t risk taking a carrier close to the moon.

“Then they will have to be knocked out on the ground,” he mused.  There were overlapping fields of fire; knocking out one mass driver wouldn't be enough to provide a zone of clear space.  The analysts would need to work through it, but at a guess they’d need to take out at least two or three mass drivers to clear the way.  It was going to be a major headache, even with the SAS already on the ground.  “What level of defences do they have?”

“Back-up plasma cannons and railguns, according to the reports,” Boone said.  “Their ground-based defences are quite weak.”

That’s something, at least
, James thought.  Mass drivers on Earth were heavily protected - but then, there were more crazies on Earth, willing to risk everything to strike a blow for their cause.  Clarke III had a tiny population, most of which was firmly under enemy control.  The SAS probably couldn't support a resistance movement, if one existed. 
We could slip more troops down to the surface, then take out the mass drivers ...

“Start looking at ways to deploy more troops to the surface,” he ordered, curtly.  They
did
have a second SAS troop - and four more stealth shuttles - but they really needed more troops on the ground.  “I wonder ... could you get down without a stealth shuttle?”

“Not if you want to remain undetected,” Boone told him, bluntly.  “The SAS had real problems getting down to the surface, Admiral.  A normal shuttle would definitely be detected in transit and blown out of the sky.”

“I see,” James said. 

He shifted his gaze to the system display.  The task force had established a perimeter around its location, but the foreign ships were right on the edge ... and, beyond them, a pair of Indian warships were holding position on the tramline.  He was surprised they weren't trying to hide, but it was quite possible that they were trying to be intimidating.  Besides, if he sent ships to intercept them, they’d have plenty of time to jump back down the tramline and vanish.

Or they could be in contact with the foreign ships
, he thought, coldly. 
That would explain why they’re not in stealth mode
.

It was possible, he supposed, that the Indians simply didn't
trust
their stealth systems, but he didn't dare take it for granted.  They’d had access to Tadpole technology reports too.  James had had his captains drill their crews relentlessly, training them to watch for signs that a stealthed starship was trying to slip into firing range, but it was extremely tricky.  A skilled crew might be able to get within a bare kilometre of the target’s hull without being detected.  He couldn’t take the risk of assuming that the Indians weren't at least that good.

He cleared his throat.  “See what you can come up with,” he said.  “Is there anything else I ought to take into account?”

“Pretty much all of the moon’s population has been concentrated in the main colony,” Boone observed.  “Indiscriminate bombardment isn't an option.”

“It never was,” James pointed out.

“But in this case, the Indians have dug in
around
the main colony,” Boone said.  “We might have to winkle them out,
without
the heavy weapons we would normally bring to bear on their locations.”

James sucked in his breath.  “You think they’re using the settlers as hostages?”

He was genuinely shocked at the concept.  The world was far too used to atrocities committed by rogue states, insurgents and outright terrorists, but the more civilised nations tended to try to avoid such measures.  They tended to provoke counter-atrocities.  Hell, it had been agreed since the Age of Unrest that retaliation in kind was the only way to keep a lid on atrocities ...

“It doesn't matter what they intend to do, sir,” Boone said calmly, cutting off his train of thought.  “That
is
what they’re doing.  We cannot bombard their positions from orbit without risking the lives of our people.”

James sucked in his breath.  A
sane
commander would surrender the moment the high orbitals were taken, knowing his forces were hopelessly exposed to orbital bombardment - and doomed, if they tried to continue the fight.  But the Indians, between the mass drivers and their positions, had safeguarded themselves.  The British would need to fight it out on the ground.

“Draw up plans for an assault,” he ordered, softly.  “It will be some time before we’re ready to proceed, anyway.  We’ll just have to take steps to weaken them until we’re ready to engage the enemy in a decisive battle.”

“Yes, sir,” Boone said.

James glanced at Sally.  “Sally, organise a conference for one hour,” he said.  “Every commanding officer is invited to attend via hologram.”

“Aye, sir,” Sally said.

Boone frowned.  “Sir,” he said.  “There may be no way to avoid massive civilian casualties.”

“We could always offer to evacuate the colony first,” James said.  He had a feeling the Indians would decline, which might not be a bad thing.  If they
were
intentionally using the colonists as human shields, the offer to pull them out before the forces started fighting in earnest would expose their conduct to the universe.  “It might benefit us to try.”

He cursed under his breath.  Civilians had died in the First Interstellar War - the Tadpoles had killed more humans than Adolf Hitler - but that had been different.  They hadn't precisely
intended
to kill countless humans, although Earth First and other radical groups insisted they had.  This time, British civilians were being used as human shields by a government desperate enough to take the risk of harming them ... and creating a whole new precedent for trouble. 

“It might,” Boone said.  “But if the Indians have already rejected the offer to withdraw peacefully, sir, they’re unlikely to show weakness elsewhere.”

James sighed.  Back at the Academy, he’d been told that once a military build-up reached a specific level, war was inevitable.  Human nature simply didn't allow such forces to go unused, the lecturer had insisted; the war had to be fought to make the gathering of such immense firepower worthwhile.  It hadn't made sense to him at the time and, in many ways, it still didn't.  The cost of dispatching the task force was immense, true, but replacing the ships and men that were bound to be lost would be a great deal higher.  Surely, it would be better for the Indians to back down before the shooting started.

But they’ve made a colossal investment in the system
, he thought, darkly. 
To back down would throw all that into jeopardy
.

He thought, briefly, about trying to negotiate, but it would be futile.  His orders didn't allow him to offer the Indians anything they could use as a fig leaf to reclaim the system later.  The best he could do was offer to compensate the Indians for their investment, but Parliament would be unlikely to approve it.  They’d see the Indians as having made an investment at their own risk.  There would
certainly
be no agreement that the Indians deserved to be repaid when no deal had been struck.

“I’ll speak to you after the conference,” he said.  “Good luck.”

“Thank you, sir,” Boone said, dryly.  “I’ll see what my planning staff can come up with.”

***

John disliked holographic communications, although he had to admit their value.  The military-grade transmitters and projectors were so good that it was easy, too easy, to forget that he wasn't actually on the giant carrier in person.  People had been known to fall into holographic realities and never emerge, the illusions reinforced by sensory feeds that blurred the line between fiction and reality.  He'd even heard stories about people who’d entered fantasy worlds in Sin City and never emerged, right up until the day Sin City had been destroyed by the Tadpoles.  He rather doubted that any of the VR addicts had survived. 

They probably found reality too hard to handle
, he thought, as his hologram took its place among the throng.  He’d always found the holographic system a little hard to handle - his mind rebelled at the thought of thirty men crammed into a space intended for ten - but he’d never seen the point of dismissing reality. 
But then, my life is better than most. 

It was an odd thought.  As a starfighter pilot, he'd been as flirty as the rest of the breed; he’d laughed, he’d joked, he’d been careful to wear his uniform in a manner that would have upset his instructors ... he’d known, of course, that the odds of survival were very low.  So had their commanding officers; starfighter pilots had to eat, drink and be merry, because they might be dead by the end of the day.  But now, as a Captain, he was more driven than he cared to admit, even though he was at the very pinnacle of his career.   He had something to live for ...

“Ladies and gentlemen, be seated,” Admiral Fitzwilliam said.  If
he
found being surrounded by holograms a disconcerting experience he didn't show it.  “As you can see, the situation has changed” - his lips twisted - “in a manner not entirely to our advantage.”

He tapped a switch, allowing the assembled commanding officers to see the report from the surface.  The mass drivers - and their fields of fire - were clearly marked.  Behind them, intelligence’s best guess on their
accurate
range was underlined.  It was chillingly clear that taking the fleet to Clarke III without doing something about the mass drivers would result in catastrophe. 

“The Indians have made it considerably harder for us to land on Clarke III,” Admiral Fitzwilliam said.  “Accordingly, I am modifying the plan.  We will proceed with Gamma-Sigma instead of Alpha-Beta.  The main body of the task force will move into the Pegasus System and hold position here” - he tapped a location on the display - “well out of the effective range of the mass drivers.  We will threaten the Indian control of the system without risking our ships to their fire.”

And they won’t be able to bring the second carrier into the system without being detected
, John thought, coldly. 
They’ll run the risk of us sneaking past them and raiding their possessions beyond Vesy
.

“In the meantime, we will harass the Indian presence with smaller ships,” Fitzwilliam continued.  “We know they’ve been running supply convoys into the system.  Those convoys will no longer be allowed to travel unmolested.  Two flotillas - Bulldog Beta and Bulldog Charlie - will be responsible for destroying or capturing those convoys.  Their mining installations will also come under heavy attack.”

He paused.  “It is quite likely that the Indians intend to use that asteroid as a source of raw material for the mass drivers,” he warned.  “They could dump it into the atmosphere and mine it on the surface, if they’re willing to take the risk.”