His Majesty's Starship Read online

The big moon came out again and Adrian yelled.

  “Aaagh!” He hauled on the stick and increased throttle, and Sharman almost stood on its tail as it raced skywards. The radar was showing the stone that surrounded him and Adrian had put the slight fuzziness of the echo down to a poor display rather than the suddenly visible trees on the ground that added at least another hundred feet to the contours. If he had kept his previous course he would have cleared the ridge itself but smashed in a glorious, blazing mess right through the trees that ran along it.

  In a moment he was well above the skyline and burning fuel brightly. He cut the burn and put the nose down but already in the moonlight he could see the sleek, triangular shapes of his attackers turning towards him. Two of them – he hadn’t realised.

  He checked the display: only twenty miles to go.

  “Sod it,” he muttered, and dived back into a valley. Julia and Peter had been going to some Rustie concert. There would be witnesses, influential ones. No one would dare attack him there. He just had to be the first to arrive ...

  *

  The boat was directly overhead: they could see its running lights and a dim, delta-winged outline behind them. It had shot over the treeline and circled round in a fast bend that must have crushed the pilot into his seat. It landed on full retro, facing them, and the lights on the leading edge of the wings shone straight into their eyes. They raised hands to ward off the glare.

  “Cut it out, Ade,” Julia muttered. “Come on, Pete, Arm Wild. And thank you again, Leaf Ruby.”

  “It says it awaits your next meeting with eagerness,” Arm Wild said as they walked forward.

  And stopped. There was shouting ahead and figures, human figures, were running towards them out of the white glow of the lights. Strangers, carrying things in their hands that Julia’s brain slowly registered as automatic weapons.

  “What the-” she said. Before they could react the men were surrounding them, their guns raised.

  “Which one of you is Kirton?” the leading man said. They were wearing military helmets and uniforms.

  “Uh, me ...” said Peter.

  The leader nodded at a large, burly man who stepped up and grabbed Peter. Peter struggled but the man was bigger and stronger.

  “Hey-”

  “Move!” The man twisted Peter’s arm behind his back and a gun barrel was jammed into his spine. “Now!”

  “Her too,” said the leader. None of the newcomers had paid the least attention to any of the Rusties. Julia hardly had time to take a breath before she had been caught up the same way and was being frogmarched back to the ship. The lights had dimmed and now she could see it wasn’t Sharman – it was larger, sleeker.

  “Stop!” Arm Wild bellowed. Their abductors paused and looked back. “This is outrageous! How dare you? I shall register my strongest objection with your superiors. Put your guns down at once!”

  “I’m sorry, Mr First Breed, but I have my orders,” the leader said. He was Indian: the badge on his breast in Standard and Hindi said his name was Rajan. “We have no quarrel with you.”

  “These two are under my protection. Release them.”

  “I regret, sir, I cannot.” Several of the Rusties were poised on their toes and for a moment, a wildly hopeful moment, Julia thought the Rusties were going to charge. They outnumbered the soldiers and surely the men wouldn’t be so stupid as to open fire on their hosts?

  Rajan thought an attack was imminent too. “This is a human matter, sirs,” he said more loudly. “Please do not provoke my men.”

  Arm Wild said something and the crowd of Rusties relaxed. So much for the great warrior race, Julia thought bitterly.

  “We will not,” said Arm Wild. “Nevertheless, I demand to know who you are.”

  “Major Rajan, Confederation Defence Force.”

  “Your superiors will regret this incident, Major Rajan. They may be disqualified from the Convocation altogether.”

  “I’m just obeying their orders, sir. I meant it when I said we have no quarrel- get your hand away from that!”

  Julia’s hand had been inching towards her aide. Now she was looking directly down the barrel of a gun for the first time ever and she decided heroism wasn’t worth it. “They’ll hear about this back at the Dome, you know,” she said, and she was proud that her voice didn’t break.

  Rajan grinned as though she had just promised him a good time. “They have troubles of their own. Now, for the last time, move.”

  *

  The coup was over quickly. At 19:00 coastal time, around sunset, landing boats from Shivaji and the North Chinese ship Long March came in from over the ocean and fell on Capital. The one landing boat of marines from the Enterprise, sitting patiently on the ground at the spaceport, suddenly found itself outnumbered and outgunned as three times its military force fell out of the sky around it. The rest of the attack fell on the Dome, the boats ploughing into the gardens and disgorging their contents while the delegates scurried around in a panic.

  The marines at the Dome put up more of a defence as the attackers tried to gain entry; and the refrain, repeated over and over again, shouted by the troops on both sides and crackling over their comm units, was: “Don’t shoot the Rusties!”

  *

  Samad and Hannah threw themselves to the ground as a stray cluster of plasma blasts sliced through their cubicle. A haze of smoke filled the room and there was a smell of burning. They tried to make themselves even flatter on the floor as more blasts passed through the thin partitions.

  “This place wasn’t designed as a fortress, was it?” Hannah muttered to herself as she picked singed bits of partition out of her hair and dusted them off Samad’s back

  The fighting went on and all they could do was lie there and hope no blasts came through the floor too.

  “Has anyone told the ships?” Hannah wondered out loud.

  Samad looked at her as if she were mad. “The ships, love? They’ve got the best of it.”

  “Dear, if they’re fighting down here you can bet the ships are involved too.” The battle seemed to have moved away from their own area of the Dome, though sporadic bursts of gunfire kept popping up here and there. A sharp smell of plasma propellant hung in the air and her ears still rang.

  She climbed cautiously to her knees and groped for their aides on the table. Hers was intact, Samad’s shattered. He yelped when he saw it.

  “Is it anything you didn’t have backed up?” Hannah said.

  “No, but-”

  “Quiet then.” Hannah realised she was still kneeling, a convenient target for any more incoming fire that might pass their way. She lay down flat again and flipped the aide open. “Get me Ark Royal.”

  “This unit is unable to contact Ark Royal,” said the aide.

  “Damn. Can you reach any ship in orbit?”

  “Attempting.” Pause. “Negative.”

  “Why not?”

  “All microwave signals from this area are being jammed.”

  “Listen,” said Samad, interrupting Hannah in mid-curse. The fighting had stopped and there was only silence. She could hear her heart beat.

  Then an amplified voice spoke out, echoing around the building.

  “This is Brigadier Rao, commander of Confederation operations on the ground. The Dome and its vicinity are now under the control of the Confederation. All humans in the vicinity are instructed to make their way to the central area of the Dome.”

  Samad had gone pale: Hannah put an arm around her husband and squeezed in sympathy. Samad’s father had fled persecution in the Punjab and settled in Bangladesh, in vain: as a child, after his native Bangladesh was overrun, Samad had sailed in a crowded and rickety boat across the Bay of Bengal and grown up in the refugee camps in Thailand. Samad had always lived with the knowledge that his own country was occupied by the forces of the Confederation and whenever things had got hard he had comforted himself that it could be worse – he could be back in Bangladesh. Now the Confederation had caught up with him. />
  “We’d better go,” she said. He looked at her without comprehension. “Downstairs,” she said. “Like the man said. Before they come looking for us.”

  “Yes ... yes, you’re right ...” he murmured. He only seemed half there and Hannah had to guide him out of the door and into the corridor.

  A party of soldiers was coming the other way, kicking open each door as they passed it and checking inside. Hannah felt their gaze on her back as she and Samad walked along the corridor round the edge of the Dome, then down the staircase and into the open space that was the Dome’s core. Other humans were arriving slowly, walking reluctantly into who knew what fate. Soldiers were everywhere, guns raised, eyes darting suspiciously over the captives. The Dome’s lounge had been converted into an ad hoc field hospital.

  They joined a queue to walk between two soldiers and Samad’s hand in hers tightened its grip when they saw the uniforms – pale green, in contrast to the more usual Defence Force camouflage. Samad was reacting as Hannah’s forebears had once reacted to black uniforms with silver lacing and deathsheads. These were NVN, the elite, the mainstay of their captors’ military power, and their reputation was legendary.

  Each person ahead of them had to produce identification: some nationalities were then herded into the middle, some were not. One of the NVN would wave an instrument over each individual, confiscating aides and investigating anything else that the machine discovered with an alarmed beep. Hannah was first: she surrendered her aide and produced her id-chip, which an NVN man scanned. Then she turned to wait for Samad.

  The NVN man was looking from Samad, to his id-chip, to Samad again.

  “Your name is Samad Loonat?” he said.

  “Yes,” Samad said.

  The man half-smiled. “Your nationality?”

  “I am a citizen of the United Kingdom.” Samad was holding the man’s gaze but his voice trembled.

  Now the man grinned. “It says here you were born in Sylhet, East Bengal Prefecture, in 2115.”

  “It’s incorrect,” Samad said. “I was born that year in Sylhet, Bangladesh.”

  The man’s grin vanished and Hannah felt as though someone had stabbed her through the heart. But Samad held his head high, proud and noble. Hannah had never known he had it in him and she loved him for it.

  “There is no Bangladesh,” the NVN man said, but he handed Samad’s id-chip back. “You would be advised to get used to it. Move along.”

  Hannah grabbed Samad’s hand and pulled him away into the centre space where everyone else milled nervously around under the gaze of the guns. “Do something like that again,” she hissed, “and I’ll kill you myself.”

  A tall NVN man with a moustache and a lean, ruthless face came to stand among the prisoners, flanked by alert soldiers. “Your attention, please. I am Brigadier Rao and you are being held provisionally by the forces of the Confederation. For the moment, pending the formal acquiescence of your superiors and the surrender of your ships, you will be kept here. Food and drink will be served shortly.

  “Excellency Krishnamurthy has been in contact with the First Breed leader Iron Run to explain his actions. I am authorised to play you the message that was sent and I trust that no further explanation will be needed.” He nodded at a couple of his men, who while he spoke had been setting up a playback unit with military speed and efficiency. A larger-than-life image of a beaming Krishnamurthy appeared and started to speak.

  “Greetings to Iron Run, Senior of the First Breed nation. By the time you receive this message, I will be in charge of all human affairs in this system. You are probably wondering at my reasoning for this apparently impetuous action and at the various minor infractions of your laws that my people have committed at my command.”

  Mild curiosity, yes, thought Hannah. She glanced at Samad, who scowled at the image with undisguised loathing.

  “Ever since your arrival in our home system, I have studied your ways. I have spent many, many fascinating hours, days, going through your information pack and talking to your representative on Shivaji. I have read about your wars and conflicts here on the Roving.

  “On Earth, during a legal case, the counsels for prosecution and defence are obliged to reveal all their evidence to each other. If there is something in the evidence that one side does not want the other to have, often their tactic is to submit everything, every single datum, however irrelevant, to cloud the important data. Of course, this signals to the opposition that there is important data to be had: the problem is to find it. To deduce it.”

  Krishnamurthy’s beam increased in intensity. Hannah found it almost amusing, this proud little man lecturing the Rusties on their own thought processes.

  “That, Iron Run, is why you have bombarded us with so much information about your race. You have deliberately scattered clues in our path; you want us to work out the true facts and prove ourselves worthy partners. Well, that is what we have done.” Despite herself, Hannah was finding this fascinating.

  “Your race has had wars, Iron Run. You are no stranger to conflict. When you first appeared to us you know we tried to hide our own history of combat. We need not have worried because your ancestors have certainly matched ours in aggression.

  “And your ancestors have followed an invariable pattern in victory. To impose their will on another nation that has been defeated in combat, they executed the Seniors and imposed their own. Invariably! It is the First Breed way. Do you see the parallel, Iron Run? By imposing my power on these people, I have made their nations my nation. That is what has happened on this world, is it not? Once, there were many nations; now, there is one and it is led by you, Iron Run. And why is this? Clearly, because all others have been subjugated. My action today should have convinced you that we of the Confederation understand your ways. We can work with you.

  “I apologise that, to get my men on the ground, I was forced to disobey orders from your Traffic Control. I apologise that in a couple of instances my men were obliged to discharge air-to-air missiles in your airspace. I stress that no one was hurt in these cases and that these were purely to expedite my chosen course of action: that course of action being, to pass the test that you set us.

  “Let me also assure you that my intentions towards the human hostages I am forced to take are purely benign. I wish them no harm and their fate is out of my hands. I have planned measures to convince their leaders of my resolve and it is my hope that I will not be forced to implement them.

  “Let me repeat, worthy Iron Run, that this conflict is purely internal to the humans in this system. The Convocation may proceed tomorrow as planned, but with a reduced number of attendees. Instead of the original number there will be the Confederation and as many of our allies as have joined us by then. That is the matter to which I must now attend.” For the first time, Krishnamurthy actually grinned. “I look forward to seeing you tomorrow.”

  The image froze, then cleared. Rao looked about him.

  “That is the situation,” he said. “His Excellency will now interview each of the leaders of the delegations individually. We trust that they will see reason and that we will not have to take-”

  He slapped the holster at his belt and his gaze roamed over the prisoners. It distinctly lingered on Samad, and Rao smiled without mirth when it did so.

  “-further persuasive measures,” he said.

  - 18 -

  21 May 2149

  “... in, please. Ark Royal, come in please. Ark Royal, can you hear me? Come in, please, oh shit, Ark Royal, come in-”

  Michael Gilmore quickly blanked the letter that he had been composing for Joel and answered the call.

  “This is Ark Royal. What’s the problem?” Gilmore was already drawing up a list in his mind. With that degree of alarm in Nichol’s voice, someone must be hurt. Get the medbay out of storage. Alert one of the bigger ships with a proper hospital on board to stand by-

  “They’ve been kidnapped! They just swooped down, and they shot at me, and they told me to pull o
ut, and they’ve been kidnapped, and-”

  “Mr Nichol!” The gabble from the radio stopped in mid-flow. “Now, in words of one syllable, what’s happened?”

  There was a pause at the other end while Nichol collected his thoughts together. Then he spoke, more slowly but still frightened. “I was on my way to the RV, to collect Julia and Peter, and suddenly there was this voice telling me to pull up, and they shot a missile to show they meant it-”

  “Who?” said Gilmore in disbelief.

  “Um, two landing boats, sir. Didn’t show up on radar. They just appeared behind me-”

  “Did you get a look at these boats?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Any insignia on them? Any identification?” A ghastly thought occurred to Gilmore. “Were they human?”

  “They were human, sir. They had that whirly wheel thing on them. I think they were the Confederation, sir.”

  Whirly wheel. The wheel of law. But at least the Rusties hadn’t turned nasty.

  “Go on,” Gilmore said.

  “Well, I tried to shake them off but while I was doing that one of them just went on and picked them up anyway. By the time I got to the rendezvous it was too late ... the others tried to nail me on the way back up, too, sir, only Arm Wild had words with them and then they backed off sharpish.”

  “You’ve got Arm Wild there?” Having one of the First Breed on board, Gilmore thought, was probably Nichol’s go-anywhere card.

  “Yes, sir. I tried to fly him to Capital but they said they couldn’t guarantee their automatic defences wouldn’t shoot us down, so we’re coming up.”

  Go-anywhere safe, rather, Gilmore thought.

  “All right, Lieutenant, I’ll expect you both.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “Comms,” said Gilmore. “Get me Julia Coyne or Peter Kirton.”

  “I am unable to establish contact with their aides,” said the comms AI. Gilmore swore. He had wanted to help Kirton snap out of himself and all he had done was make him available to those who wanted what was in Kirton’s head. They had probably tracked Sharman’s outward journey from orbit. Good work, Michael Gilmore. One of your better decisions.