[Ark Royal 04] - Warspite Read online

  “I will,” Commander Watson said. Her voice showed no hint of any emotion, not even concern for the future. “If we do that now, I can return to work at once.”

  John nodded, then tapped his terminal and opened the ship’s log. In theory, he was supposed to make a comprehensive entry every day, but in practice he rarely had the time. There would hopefully be more time in the future, as Richards could handle the XO’s duties without needing to be supervised. He tapped out a brief entry, then swung the terminal around for Commander Watson to see. The former XO thumb-printed it without hesitation.

  She needs a minder, John thought, shocked. Everyone was taught, during the first week of basic training, to read documents before they signed them. There had been no shortage of horror stories about loan sharks who had made loans to military personnel, knowing that the military would serve as their collection agent. And maybe even a declaration that she isn't even competent to tie her shoelaces together without help.

  “Thank you,” he said, instead. He’d have to speak to Johnston. The Chief Engineer could mind Commander Watson, when - if - she went on shore leave. There were few people who would cross him and none would do it twice. “And I’m sorry.”

  Commander Watson regarded him blankly. “For what?”

  “Never mind,” John said.

  He watched her leave his office, then added a note into the log that she was still to receive Commander’s wages. The beancounters would probably complain loudly, but he found it hard to care. Besides, someone like Commander Watson had to be treated properly, if only so she could remain productive. A mind like that didn't come along very often.

  And if Richards and Howard refrain from killing each other, he thought, as he rose, this ship might just run perfectly after all.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  John had hoped - against all hope - that they would stumble across something in Spire, but the single-planet system seemed as deserted as Troyon. Reluctantly, he’d launched a handful of probes towards the planet, then ordered Warspite to proceed to Boston. The American-settled world had hailed them as soon as they'd approached, requesting permission to send an officer onboard. John had agreed, then fired off a request of his own.

  “I’m afraid we saw your ship passing through,” Commodore Andrew Sivula said, in a thick southern accent. “She looked fine to us, but she didn't stop.”

  “I’m not surprised,” John said. They sat together in his cabin, drinking from a bottle Sivula had brought with him. “The crew was in something of a hurry.”

  “But they never made it to their destination,” Sivula mused. “I do recall a report from a survey crew of a starship being detected in Troyon, but it wasn't very clear. It might well have been a sensor glitch.”

  John frowned, studying the American closely. Like every other intelligence service in the human sphere, MI6 had collected files on foreign military officers, both friendly and potential enemies. Sivula had served in the war, first as XO of USS Enterprise and then CO of USS George Bush during the Battle of Earth. After the end of the fighting, he’d been reassigned to Boston as the USN’s local CO. John had the feeling it was actually something of a demotion. Boston didn't have any naval ships assigned to her, apart from a handful of cutters and shuttles. They couldn't hope to stand off any determined attack.

  “I’ll need the records, if possible,” he said. “When was this?”

  “A couple of months before your ship passed through,” Sivula drawled. “I forwarded the records to Washington, but the Pentagon never got back to me. They might just have dismissed the reports as glitches and thought no more about them.”

  “Maybe,” John said. “But the report will have to be checked.”

  “I’ll have copies sent to you,” Sivula promised. “And I understand you had problems on Cromwell?”

  “Flooding,” John said. “The Governor was asking if you had anything you could spare - he sent along a wishlist, just in case. If you can, the CDC will pay for it, once the accounts are presented on Earth.”

  “I’ll see what we have,” Sivula said. “I can't promise anything, though. We got cut off from Earth by the war and the local settlers aren't too fond of Washington right now. There’s been quite a lot of angry muttering recently.”

  “Just like Cromwell,” John said.

  “Yeah, but the settlers here elect their government,” Sivula said. “The next election may see them either demanding rights as a US state or outright independence. It won't be easy to resolve the crisis, if they choose to demand independence. There’s a vast amount of money invested into the colony.”

  “George III didn't manage to square that circle,” John observed. “I hope you can.”

  “Me too,” Sivula said. “You’d also have to arrange transport for whatever we offered, Captain. We don’t have a freighter to spare.”

  “I can call one from Pegasus, if necessary,” John said. He sighed under his breath. It looked as though they would have to return to Pegasus, then Cromwell, then Troyon to commence the search for the missing ship. It would take nearly a week at best possible speed. “But let me know what you can offer first.”

  “Give us a couple of hours, once I return to the planet,” Sivula said. “I’ll let you know by then.”

  He cleared his throat. “This is a wonderful little ship you have here, Captain.”

  “Thank you,” John said, blandly. He wasn't blind to Sivula’s reasons for demanding a visit. The American would be missing life on a starship, but he would also want to evaluate the Royal Navy’s latest designs. “We’re quite proud of her.”

  “You must be,” Sivula said. “Being out here, all alone, with no one to give you orders ... it sounds like heaven.”

  “And also being the sole person to take the blame,” John said, dryly. But he knew Sivula was right. There was something exhilarating about being in sole command, about operating far from the Admiralty. Warspite and her sisters had practically been designed for operating on their own. “We also have to solve a great many problems.”

  “I know,” Sivula said. “Here, all I really have to do is sort out mining disputes. They didn't want a Commodore out here, Captain. The Department of Colonisation wanted a caretaker out here, with enough authority that starship commanders would listen to him.”

  “It may get more exciting soon,” John mused.

  “If the vote goes through,” Sivula said. He shook his head, slowly. “They’ve been talking about shipping more colonists out here, refugees from the East Coast. But the first wave of settlers and their families are objecting to it. They don’t want newcomers who will subsume them, not when they worked so hard to build a new world.”

  “Problems, problems,” John said. “Is it a very real concern?”

  “I think so,” Sivula said. “There's only ten thousand settlers on the surface, Captain. It was meant to be more by now, but the war cut us off from our supplies. They’ve developed a culture of their own, based on an ideal of the American Wild West. A handful of newcomers can be assimilated, but a few hundred thousand will overwhelm the local population. They’re not happy.”

  “The end of the war didn't bring peace,” John said.

  “No, it didn't,” Sivula said. “And you know what else has been happening? The Indians and Turks have been visiting this system, just passing through. But they’re not doing anything apart from passing through and that bugs the hell out of me. What are they doing?”

  “Evading transit fees,” John guessed.

  “Maybe, but we’re not in any state to collect them,” Sivula said. “I know they have colonies not too far from here, yet there's no logical reason to visit Boston. There's something funny about it, Captain. I’ve tried to report it to the Pentagon, but they haven’t bothered to reply.”

  John frowned. “They could be trying to create a precedent for free passage,” he said. “Or ... maybe they’re aware of the tramlines from Pegasus to Earth.”

  He activated his terminal and called up a starc
hart. “They could cut two weeks off their passage if they went via Pegasus,” he said, “but that would require an advanced Puller Drive. If they have one” - he knew they would have to assume the worst - “they could be trying to create a precedent now, which would force us to honour their rights even after the systems were fully developed.”

  “Bastards,” Sivula said.

  “Yeah,” John said.

  He cursed under his breath as he started to mentally compose another report to the Admiralty. The various treaties governing possession of star systems agreed that the owner of the system had the right to levy transit fees, but only if the fees were levelled consistently. If they had a precedent for free passage, the Turks and Indians - and anyone else, for that matter - could legally refuse to pay, even after the Royal Navy and the USN deployed warships to protect the system and enforce the rules. And the World Court might well decide in their favour.

  It wouldn't have, five years ago. The major interstellar powers would have backed each other against the upstarts. Even the Russians or Chinese would have supported the British and Americans, while the French would probably have tried to stay out of it. But now, with the major interstellar powers badly weakened by the war, the decision could go either way. In the long term, wasting fuel by sending freighters through the newly-settled systems could pay off in a big way.

  “I will bring this to the attention of the Admiralty,” he said, firmly. “And I will be happy to forward your report too.”

  “Thank you,” Sivula said, rising. “And thank you, also, for your hospitality. You can keep the rest of the bottle.”

  “It tastes better than moonshine,” John said.

  “That’s probably because your crew are trying for quantity over quality,” Sivula observed, snidely. “The moonshiners down on the planet below are trying to produce their own wines to compete with supplies from Earth.”

  “Typical,” John said.

  Sivula snorted.

  John escorted him back to his shuttle, then returned to the bridge. Boston was a considerably more active star system than either Pegasus or Cromwell, with dozens of tiny asteroid colonies floating in the asteroid belt. Most of them would have only one or two inhabitants - asteroid miners tended to be an odd bunch - but given time they would provide a considerable supply of raw materials to the planet below. One ship, a converted freighter, was beaming transmissions all over the system, mainly VR programs ranging from historically inaccurate romances to outright porn. Another was moving from asteroid to asteroid, picking up rock ore and resupplying the miners with food and drink.

  “I’ve been tracking the ships, sir,” Howard said. “Most of them are primitive tech.”

  “Easier to fix,” John reminded him. “They can build their own miners in a machine shop, if necessary, instead of shipping something all the way from Earth.”

  He smiled, remembering his first history classes. The real bottleneck had been getting large numbers of men and women out of Earth’s gravity well. Once in orbit, they’d been halfway to anywhere within the Solar System. Asteroid miners could use technology that would be comprehensible to Stevenson or Brunel and never be any the worse for it.

  And many of those miners were British, he thought, with a flicker of pride. Space turned a decaying country into a powerhouse once again.

  “Yes, sir,” Howard said. “But they would also be sitting ducks if the shit hit the fan.”

  “Not so,” Richards said. “New Russia’s asteroid miners largely managed to avoid detection from the system’s fall to the end of the war. So did many others.”

  Forbes cleared her throat. “Captain, Commodore Sivula has just sent us a set of sensor records,” she said. “They’re dated three months ago.”

  “Copy them to tactical,” John ordered. “Paul, see what you make of them.”

  There was a long pause as Howard examined the records. “They’re vague, sir,” he said, finally. “If we take them as read, the American freighter picked up a frigate-sized starship in Troyon at very long range. But there's little else and it could easily be a case of automated software trying to put together a picture and drawing the wrong one.”

  John stepped up to the console and peered over Howard’s shoulder. “I see,” he said, finally. “Do you think it was nothing more than a sensor glitch?”

  “Impossible to be sure, sir,” Howard said. “Commercial ships simply don’t have military-grade sensors. The contact was so brief there was no time to firm up the sensor lock, if one could have been held at such range. But I don’t think it was a glitch. Glitches don’t tend to produce such perfect images.”

  “They’re not perfect,” Richards objected.

  “They’re perfect, sir, given the sheer range and poor quality of the sensors,” Howard countered. “But that leaves us with a different question. Assuming the contact was real, sir, what was it?”

  John felt a shiver running down his spine. “An alien ship?”

  Richards blinked. “Sir?”

  It was possible, John knew. There shouldn't have been any warships running through the region, not so soon after the war. As far as he knew, Warspite was the first warship to visit Troyon and Cromwell for months. None of the other interstellar powers had reasons to send warships so far from home either, unless the Indians and Turks were definitely up to something. But even if they were, why show themselves to a freighter?

  But an alien ship? There was that unexplored tramline ...

  “I don’t think so,” Howard said, “although it would be impossible to be sure. The ship looked to have been built with human tech. Even the smallest Tadpole ship looks quite different to one of ours, even on long-range sensors.”

  “Which leaves us with another problem,” John mused. “If that ship was real, what was it doing there? And if it was real, was it responsible for Vesper’s disappearance?”

  He puzzled over it for a long moment. No matter what the Turks and the Indians wanted, they would have to be insane to actually hijack or destroy a freighter crammed with colonists on their way to their new home. It would mean war, pitting the culprit against the might of Britain and America - and probably France and China too. There was no other word for it, but utter madness.

  But if they captured the ship, then steered her into the sun, there would be nothing left for anyone to find, he thought. They might consider it worth the risk ...

  And yet, that didn't make sense either. There was nothing to be gained by destroying the ship, not when it brought so many risks in its wake. The best course of action would be to do nothing, unless they wanted to cripple Cromwell’s development. But the colony world wouldn't be allowed to die ...

  “Captain,” Forbes said. “A second message has just arrived for you.”

  John nodded, then walked back to the command chair and sat down, pulling his console towards him. Commodore Sivula had checked his records, then offered a small quantity of emergency supplies. They would be enough, John decided, to help Cromwell through the coming winter, before more help could arrive from Earth. He thanked the Commodore, then promised to send one of the freighters from Pegasus as quickly as possible. No doubt one of the captains would be delighted to leave Pegasus behind.

  “Lieutenant Armstrong, plot us a course for Pegasus, best possible speed,” John ordered. “Lieutenant Forbes, inform the locals that we intend to leave orbit in thirty minutes.”

  He rose. “Mr. Richards, you have the bridge.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Richards said.

  John stepped back into his cabin, then sat down and hastily started to draw up a report for the Admiralty, attaching the American sensor logs as evidence. The Admiralty would probably approve of making a search for Vesper, although the beancounters would also wonder if it was an effective use of the Royal Navy’s time and resources. John contemplated their reaction for a moment, then shrugged in dismissal. Quite apart from the moral responsibility to do the right damned thing, it would be several weeks before they could order him not to do
anything of the sort.

  He smiled at the thought, then finished writing the report, ran an encryption program and transmitted it to the planet below. The Americans would forward it to the Admiralty, when a suitable ship arrived in the system to play messenger, without attempting to open it. Hopefully, the Admiralty would feel compelled to send additional ships out to Cromwell, while encouraging the Americans to do the same. Unless, of course, the Foreign Office managed to scupper the whole idea ...

  Bloody typical, he thought, sourly. The Foreign Office would be more concerned about offending someone than helping us out.

  His intercom bleeped. “Captain,” Richards said. “We have a course laid in for Pegasus.”