Chapter 27

Windsor, Berkshire. April the following year.

“Ma’am, there’s a Major General Thurgood to see you.”

Beatrice looked up from the document she was reading. “Is he expected?” she asked her personal assistant with a frown. She didn’t remember any appointments for the next couple of hours, and wasn’t sure she knew the name.

“No ma’am. He has a letter of introduction from Brigadier General John Maggor, and says he has some news of your children.”

Beatrice quickly scanned the letter that was passed to her, and nodded. She stood, her heart beating faster. “Send him in,” she told her P.A., “and hold all calls,” she paused for a moment, her voice trailing off as she tried to decide whether there were any exceptions. She decided against it, and nodded at the young man to carry on.

She moved around her desk and stood waiting in front of it.

Moments later the door opened again.

“Major General Owen Thurgood Ma’am.”

“Thank you Paul.”

“Your Majesty,” Major General Thurgood bowed his head in respect. “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.” Beatrice noticed the faint hint of a Scottish accent in the voice, overlaying a stronger hint of a North American accent. The fact that he had news of her children suggested strongly that he was a Confederacy officer. His size certainly seemed to confirm that, though he was wearing a smart double breasted suit and tie, not a uniform.

“The last time I saw John Maggor, he was a Lieutenant Colonel. Now he’s a Brigadier General?”

“Yes ma’am.”

She smiled. “When you see him, please pass on my congratulations.”

“Yes ma’am. I’m sure he’ll appreciate that.”

Beatrice nodded. “You have news of Andrew and Elizabeth?” she asked, her voice calmer than she felt.

“Some Your Majesty, but I’m afraid I used that as a pretext to get in to see you.”

Beatrice frowned, she had half expected it, but was still a touch disappointed. “Go on.”

“I can tell you that Albion is prospering well. There are now elements from many of the former common-wealth nations, and about ten Earth months ago, the first cricket world cup was held. The eventual winner was an Indian team, the runner up an Australian team.” His voice turned a touch regretful. “I’m afraid the Canadian team went out in the first round to the Welsh team of St.David.”

Beatrice smiled slightly. She was a huge cricket fan, but she didn’t get much chance to actually watch these days, and could only follow it in the press. It also told her that Thurgood was originally a Canadian.

“My family?”

“Andrew now has seven children: five boys and two girls, ranging in ages from about one year to about five years old. Elizabeth has three children, all boys, all under four.”

Thurgood held out his hand, holding a small memory stick. “I have some photographs.”

“Thank you General.” She took it from him and pushed it into a socket on the side of a small tablet on her desk. She spent a minute quickly looking through them, smiling at the sight of her grand children. Chances were she would never see them in the flesh, she realised, and for a moment felt her emotions welling up.

Closing the tablet gently, and firmly quelling her emotions, she looked up at the man in front of her. “Thank you very much,” she said softly. “I have had news of them, and even a couple of messages, but so far no actual pictures or videos.” She took a deep breath. “Now. If you had to use that as a pretext, I can only assume that what you really wanted to see me about is both important and sensitive?”

Thurgood nodded slowly. He had never met Queen Beatrice and knew little about her. In her teens and twenties she had been known as a Party Girl, but since her marriage she had calmed down considerably, and since her ascension to the throne she had rapidly matured into a responsible woman who took a close interest in what her government was doing, and what was happening in the country. She had fully endorsed and embraced the mantra of service to people and country that the previous queen had had, and in better circumstances might have been a great queen. He also knew that she and Thorn were implacably opposed, and it was primarily for this reason he had believed she could be approached.

“Ma’am. I know you are aware of the coming invasion.”

“I am,” she waved at a settee. “Please, sit.” She herself sat opposite him in a comfortable looking arm-chair.

“Thank you ma’am. What you may not be aware of, is that it is already about two years late. They were originally estimated to arrive just two years ago this month. Give or take a month. The Confederacy, by which I really mean Humanity, has already delayed them that long. We now believe them to be less than six months away. When they do first arrive, if we are really lucky, we may be able to kill all the initial scouts, which may delay them even longer. However they are hard to spot, and almost as hard to kill in the time, so that is unlikely.”

“And if a scout does manage to get away to bring in the full invasion, how much further behind will that be?”

“Weeks Your Majesty. A few months at best. Maybe as much as a year if we’re very lucky, one week if we’re very unlucky.”

“That’s a big margin of error,” Beatrice observed wryly.

“Yes ma’am. I’m sorry. The Sa’arm are hard to pin down in any way. Even now we have had little luck in predicting their actions and re-actions. We are getting better at killing them without getting ourselves killed, but at present rates of attrition, we are still on the losing end of that equation.”

Beatrice’s eyebrows went up rapidly. “Oh?”

“It takes a minimum of fifteen years, from conception, to breed a new human being ready for the front line. And that assumes just three months training. In reality it takes a lot longer than that. The Sa’arm on the other hand appear to be ready to fight in just three years or so. We think they are asexual so don’t actually mate as such, but at semi-regular intervals any of them can just lay eggs. One or more, we’re again not certain. We do not know for certain that they actually have a gestation time as we might know it, but once laid the new laid eggs hatch in about four months. Again this is an estimate, but we now believe it to be a fairly good estimate. Once hatched the new unit is full sized in just over two years, and ready to fight, and breed, in less than three. It is also fully efficient immediately, whereas human troops are still learning.”

“That is scary,” she murmured.

“Yes ma’am. The very oldest of the children born off Earth, are still a few years away from being ready to fight, even if they could fight at just fifteen, and in general we prefer to wait a few years even beyond that to allow for full maturity. The Sa’arm on the other hand will have had three generations in the same time.”

“So what you’re telling me is that we’re losing badly?”

“Badly? No ma’am. I am telling you that we are still on the wrong side of the curve, but from a pure numbers perspective, that should start to change in about five years, and after that, we should very quickly start to get ahead of the curve. There are a number of caveats to that though.”

“Go on.”

“First, that Earth defends itself and doesn’t just rely on those people who have already been extracted: the Confederacy forces; second that no new and unsuspected swarm fleet is discovered heading our way; third that we can defend, maintain, and even grow the number of systems humanity now lives on...”

“How many systems?” interrupted Beatrice.

“To be honest ma’am I don’t know. I’m not sure anyone knows for certain.” He paused for a moment, looking up, his eyes unfocused, and Beatrice knew he was accessing his AI implant.

A moment later he re-focused his eyes and looked at her. “According to the AI, there are currently over one hundred known, human inhabited, systems. A few systems have more than one planet inhabited, and for a few the habitation is space borne only.” At Beatrice’s look of enquiry he expanded on that. “There are at least three systems that have no planets suitable for habitation, but that we have colonised anyway. They have either only gas giants, with no suitable moon, or they are only big discs of rubble. Imagine a system that has only the asteroid belt, but bigger. In those cases we have big space stations.”

“Why do you say ‘known’ systems?”

“Because we know that there’s at least three, and probably more human inhabited systems that are not part of the Confederacy. Some we know where they are, some we don’t. I’m sure we’ll eventually identify them all.”

Beatrice frowned. “How did they get out there without being part of the...” she broke off. “Ah. I remember hearing about an Arab space ship. Is that one of them?”

Thurgood nodded. “Yes ma’am. Then there’s The Cosca.” He quickly sketched out what was known of the Cosca.

“The Mafia have systems?” asked Beatrice, shocked?

Thurgood nodded. “Essentially. We know they have three, but some estimates put that as high as six. We only know the location of one of them, but we also know that it is not the most important one, the central Cosca system.” He shrugged. “That’s how we know they have more than one: simply because we know the one we do know the location of isn’t their main system. We believe they have at least one and as many as four more.” he shrugged again, “so far we haven’t spent any time investigating what or where, it’s not important enough at present.”

“And are they all fighting the Sa’arm?”

“No Ma’am. The Arabs are not. Not yet. We are slowly starting to trade with them. For reasons which should be fairly obvious they are highly suspicious of us. They don’t allow us on their planet, but they have allowed us to set up a space station in their system, and we trade through there. The Cosca are fighting in their own way, but I personally am not sure I like their way of fighting.”

“Which is?”

“They have invented, created,” he paused for a moment, obviously trying to decide the right word, “adapted,” he said eventually, “though I’m not sure that even that is quite the right description, a planet buster bomb. As its name suggests, it literally tears a planet apart, killing everything on it.”

Beatrice’s mouth dropped open in horror, but she allowed Thurgood to continue.

“They have used it twice to my knowledge, and attempted to use it a third. The first time they used one, they succeeded and destroyed a planet that was just about ready for the Sa’arm to evacuate, to swarm, to send out huge colonisation ships. They were all destroyed. But so was the planet. The second time was a failure, though my understanding is that that was because they were intercepted and had to detonate early. They killed a few Sa’arm ships, but the weapon is not designed to work in a vacuum, so the effect was limited. The third was detonated on a moon orbiting a swarm controlled planet. I don’t know why they did it that way, but the effect was to devastate the planet without totally destroying it, or the Sa’arm.”

“Was it considered a failure?”

“I don’t know ma’am. The Sa’arm actually on the planet were most probably all killed, as were many in space, but many also escaped. That planet is uninhabitable now of course, and will probably remain that way for many many years to come, maybe even centuries. Whether that counts as a success or a failure I don’t know.”

“When you said the first planet was destroyed, by that I take it the surface wiped clean for many years? Centuries?”

“No ma’am. I mean turned into so much rubble in space. A new asteroid belt. Totally, utterly, destroyed beyond any possibility of ever hosting life ever again.”

Beatrice blanched. She closed her eyes and took a deep, shivery, breath. Opening them again, she breathed out slowly. She nodded. “This is all very interesting. I have some knowledge of what is happening out there as I get some documents from other heads of government. In theory they send them to Mister Thorn, and some of them may well do, but I get a separate copy, rather than because my ministers are passing them on. My government is trying to keep me in the dark, both about what is happening in my country, as well as what is happening in the world at large.”

Thurgood nodded. The queen no longer hosted the Prime Minister for their weekly meeting, and had not presided at an official opening of parliament since Thorn had become PM. Thorn hadn’t even bothered with a formal opening in the last three years; and in the past fifteen months or so he had all but ignored parliament anyway. It had become a rubber-stamping body for his pronouncements. Beatrice did however have a lot of ‘spies’ in many aspects of British life, and believed she knew rather more than Thorn did on what was really happening out there.

She looked at him squarely. “I’m quite sure however you didn’t come here just to give me news.”

“No Ma’am. We want your help, we want your leadership. We want you to start to speak out, to mobilise your people to get ready to fight.”

Beatrice looked at him steadily, her face expressionless.

Thurgood blanched very slightly. “There are now over one hundred and twenty thousand people in the UK, who are all but ready to rise up against Thorn. These are the people we know about, people we have helped, though for the most part they did it all themselves, and all we did was to put them in touch with each other and help them to coordinate. We also believe that there are many more we don’t know about. We are still coming across groups, large and small, almost daily. Many of them led by ex forces personnel, and are integrating them into the,” he paused and smiled grimly, “an organisation that has no official name, but is known by many as the Maquis after the French resistance organisation during the second World War.”

“I am aware of some of this. I am also aware that some of the more recent military redundancies were staged, and that those people are somehow involved. I am a little unclear, however, just who the leaders on the ground are? Or indeed how these redundancies are staged?”

“Yes Ma’am. That is one of the reasons for my presence now. To give you some of that information.”

“Some?”

“For everybody’s security, I cannot tell you how the redundancies are staged, the leadership I will come on to shortly, though for technical reasons you actually don’t need to know.”

Beatrice’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “I don’t?”

“No ma’am. They are doing an excellent job in extremely trying circumstances, and while I can and will tell you who they are, there’s no real need simply because you cannot, and for now should not, contact them directly. That will be done through liaison officers, both to protect you and to protect them. Also, if you wish, and I would advise it, we can arrange for you to be put through a Confederacy medical device which can fix the slight limp you have. It will also give you an embedded method of contacting both us and your liaison officers, thereby adding an additional level of safety and protection.”

Beatrice nodded. “I think I can go for that,” she said slowly, thinking of other things, such as her hair, which she had dyed weekly to ensure no one knew she had gone grey. It was her only real vanity.

“Why do you need me now?” She asked curiously.

“Because the current leaders are entirely military. For political and social reasons it would be better to have a politician or senior civil servant at the top of the command structure, and, if you’ll forgive me the impertinence Your Majesty, in effect you are the most senior civil servant in the nation.”

Beatrice laughed. “I suppose I am,” she said softly. “I never quite looked at it that way before. May I take it that the current crop of opposition politicians are not suitable?”

“Many of them are either too close to the current government for whatever reason, or are in hiding and too afraid to come out, or killed, or...” he shook his head. “There’s no politician we trust. There’s no one I think your military men would trust, and there’s certainly no one your people would truly trust. And that’s just as true of the current crop of senior civil servants as well, despite the fact that a number of them are our people, feeding us very useful intel.”

Beatrice nodded slowly, it was roughly what she expected.

“Virtually all of Prince Charles’ descendants had military training,” she observed slowly. “George, as William’s putative successor, would have done as well once he was old enough. I haven’t. My father served with distinction in the Falklands war, but neither I nor my late sister were expected to serve. We were too far down the,” she paused and gave a slight smile, “too far down the pecking order.”

“Yes ma’am. I wouldn’t worry about that. You would not be expected to actually serve. Just give moral leadership and then support and advice. You have some of your most senior, and brilliant, military men to lead and control the actual fight, but they have to have political direction. You are the only person who can do that.”

“Why now?”

Thurgood spoke more slowly now. “There are now some two dozen areas in the mainland UK where there have been uprisings in some form or another.” Her face sombre, the queen nodded but didn’t interrupt. “In some places it was quelled very quickly. High Wycombe is an example. In others Earth First in all its various guises have been kicked out, but those areas have been surrounded by the Earth First para-militaries. Chorley is a good example there. In Leicester, for example, the uprising started, but is now confined to the north-east of the city. For the most part though, only smaller rural villages and towns have rejected and stayed free of Earth First.”

Beatrice nodded her understanding. “By Earth First, General, I assume you are referring to the so called Truth And Freedom party and its associated organisations?”

“Er, yes.”

She nodded, and Thurgood continued. “Since the failed ‘mutiny’ attempt by a Royal Marine Brigadier last February, after the patrol’s attack and destruction of...” he paused a moment. “You know what happened to First Battalion The Regiment of Rifles?”

Beatrice nodded. “I’m aware that one of the companies was attacked and destroyed in Northern England. I know that the remainder of the Battalion managed not to take direct reprisals beyond some relatively minor injuries, but that they were then surrounded and isolated.” She laughed softly. “I am also aware that apart from a few people who deliberately stayed behind to make it look like the base was still fully operational, all the others escaped. I’m not aware of where they went though. That I’ve been unable to find out.”

Thurgood smiled slightly. “They are now spread around the UK. ‘A’ Company is in North Wales, ‘C’ company in Northern England, while HQ et-cetera is in the Midlands. Since then though, most military bases have been surrounded and in theory at least the people inside are constrained to base, with Thorn’s people trying to starve them out.” The Queen nodded her understanding. “In practice all but the very smallest of those bases have all the supplies they need, and are fully armed, equipped and ready to go. All they need is someone to fire the starting gun and they are,” he paused, “well,” he shrugged, “ready to go.”

“How on Earth have they managed that?” asked the queen in surprise.

“Confederacy replicators,” replied Thurgood. “All bases were given at least one many years ago. Obviously Thorn had them confiscated not long afterwards, but those men are not stupid, and they had already created others, or have since acquired them elsewhere. Since then they have built up their stocks slowly and carefully. The only thing they needed that they were unable to supply themselves is electric power, and since Thorn has cut off the mains electricity to most bases, we have supplied all but the smaller bases with a Confederacy power supply that will keep going for years yet.”

“Only most bases General?”

“Ma’am?”

“You said he had not cut off the electricity to all bases?”

“No ma’am. But those few bases are either controlled by, or heavily infiltrated by, his own men. We will do our own cutting off at the appropriate moment, when we’re ready.”

“You can do that?”

“Well, there are people in place in various electricity supply companies. They are not Confederacy, they are your citizens who just happen to be part of the fight. Who are members of local organisations set up to oppose Thorn.”

Beatrice sat looking at the general for a long moment, deep in thought. “What you are basically saying is that we have to go now, because everyone is ready, and if we wait much longer, it might be too late for us?”

The general nodded. “Yes ma’am. Realistically, no more than a few months. The people under our control, er, supervision, are restraining themselves until everyone is ready, but more and more of the smaller groups outside our organisation are starting to take matters into their own hands. Generally just small things, but if there are enough, the security services under Thorn’s control will start to investigate properly. Also, if they start going off half cocked, those same people may cause us problems, even accidentally. The biggest and most complex job the Maquis is currently doing, is policing all the hot heads who are wanting to fight now.”

“I need to think this through,” she raised a hand to stop Thurgood interrupting. “I won’t take long, but I need to ask you some more questions.”

Thurgood nodded. “Yes ma’am. I’ll help in any way I can.”

“What happened to the men who were left behind in, er, Chepstow was it?”

“Beachley Barracks, a couple of miles from Chepstow, yes. All seven were arrested by the Patrol after about two weeks. In that time they had managed to destroy anything that the patrol could possibly have made use of. All weapons, vehicles, everything.”

“Seven? Are they still alive?”

“Two we know for certain are dead, Lieutenant-Colonel Wardle and a rifleman. The remaining five, a lieutenant from the HQ company, the Regimental Quarter Master Serjeant, a corporal and two more riflemen, are all missing.” Thurgood had seen the autopsy report of the damage done to Wardle’s body. He had been tortured and systematically flayed and butchered. The report suggested Wardle had actually been alive for quite a long time, which also meant he must have been in a huge amount of pain and suffering. He swallowed hard as he remembered, trying to restrain the nausea he suddenly felt.

Beatrice bowed her head in grief.

“They were all brave men.”

“Yes ma’am. They absolutely knew what was likely to happen to them.”

“And the Royal Marine mutiny?”

“Again not much is known. Nearly fifty Patrollers died in the fighting, along with about fifteen Royal Marines and others. A lot more escaped into Plymouth and were picked up by the local Maquis; and just under one hundred were taken into custody by the Security Patrol. Some managed to fight their way free again, but at the last count there were still over sixty missing. The ones the Maquis collected have now been spirited to Poole, and are in hiding in and around there.”

“Why Poole?”

“Um. Convenience. We are using them to help patrol and secure the New Forest. Prevent the TaF from dumping their murder victims.”

“Oh. Okay.” Beatrice guessed she was only being told half a truth, but didn’t see the need at this point to push it. She paused once more, then began again slowly. “I was aware of that first uprising in High Wycombe not long after it started, but I’m not clear on how it started, or why it got crushed so quickly. Do you know?”

“The exact reason for starting I’m not certain, and most if not all of the people involved are now dead, so I suspect it’s impossible to ever find out for certain. It started at the central police station, and after getting all of Thorn’s men kicked out or arrested, they tried to go after the local party headquarters. Some of the local citizens joined them, but it was spontaneous and unplanned, and there was no armed support available quickly. With the proximity of High Wycombe to both Chequers and London, Thorn’s supporters were there within less than two hours, and within forty eight hours the uprising was very brutally crushed. Any coppers who did escape have been hiding out and keeping their heads down.

“Chorley happened a few days later, but there it was more planned. After High Wycombe, Thorn basically panicked and assumed every policeman was against him. I believe he was pretty much correct in that, but I doubt what happened in High Wycombe was likely to happen anywhere else. Anyway, he sacked every policeman, well, you know what happened there. Chorley for some as yet unexplained reason was one of a handful to ignore Thorn’s demands. The police station was surrounded by the patrol and ordered to come out, but then they in their turn were surrounded by the locals. It looked like it was going to be a repeat of High Wycombe, but a couple of ex SAS troopers had been training some locals for the better part of four years, and between them they defeated the, er, the Truth And Freedom people.”

Beatrice looked at the General in puzzlement, frowning. “General, why you?”

Thurgood frowned. “Ma’am?”

“You don’t seem to be quite as well briefed as I would have expected. The Truth And Freedom ‘People’ you just mentioned, they would have been the Safety and Security Patrols.”

“Oh. Yes. I’m sorry ma’am. A Brigadier Telford was intended to be coming to see you, but he was seriously injured in a freak accident this morning. As his immediate superior, I picked up the ball as it were. He knows everything. I’m afraid I’ve had just two hours to get briefed on the bits I wasn’t already aware of, and I’m still not one hundred percent certain I know everything I need to know.”

Beatrice nodded. “What assistance will you, the Confederacy, provide?”

“Overall, very little in physical materiel aid I’m afraid. All we can really provide is Intelligence plus some command and control functions. We can give advice when necessary, though I don’t believe that will be needed. We can give you replicator patterns that you don’t have, or help to propagate some you do. We have thirty-three people tasked to this, but some are concentrating on Australia, California, and other areas where the Confederacy is banned. For the UK we have just five people.”

“Including you?”

“No ma’am. Brigadier Telford, ex British army, will be your official Confederacy liaison, while the man in command of the operation is a Welshman by the name of Carter. Colonel Carter.”

“Also British army?”

Thurgood smiled slightly. “No ma’am. Sheep farmer.”

Beatrice laughed. “A Welsh sheep farmer?” That tickled her, and for a few moments she just let the laughter flow, Thurgood chuckling along with her.

“Sorry,” she said when she’d managed to control her mirth.

“The Colonel is in overall day-to-day command of the entire office, and therefore the entire world, with a Major, I think, looking after UK operations. If life were fair,” Thurgood continued, “Carter would now be at least a Brigadier.”

He paused for a moment. “Telford’s primary role is to liaise with you, your Chiefs-of-staff and the Confederacy in general but Carter’s office in particular. He can give you advice if you need it, but I would suggest that you find yourself an assistant.” He smiled slightly. “I don’t mean a P.A. such as your man outside, I mean someone who can advise and assist you. A deputy if you like. Do not get family,” he gave a slight grimace at his unfortunate choice of words. “Sorry ma’am, but I think you know what I mean. Maybe a friend, someone you haven’t seen for a long time and is no longer associated with you. Someone you were at school or college with? Someone you worked with? Probably older than you, but that’s not particularly important. They should have good leadership or organisational skills. Pick someone you like, but who doesn’t necessarily agree with you all the time. And who will oppose you, or at least argue honestly with you.”

“I’ll have to think about that.”

“When you have, give us a name or two and we’ll do a thorough background check, just to make sure.”

“Hmm.” Beatrice turned her attention back to more immediate matters. “What about Thorn and his cronies? What about Brigadier Sheard? Can you help us there?” The queen couldn’t quite disguise her disgust as she spoke.

“Don’t worry about Sheard. Believe it or not, that is all under control. Thorn on the other hand, I’m afraid I have to leave to you, or at least to the British people to deal with.”

“You have Sheard under control?” Beatrice’s voice was sceptical.

“Russell Sheard is a very brave man. He deserves all the medals you can pin on his chest, and more.”

Beatrice stared at him in astonishment. “You mean he’s one of ours?” She asked after a long pause.

Thurgood nodded.

“Phew,” muttered Beatrice to herself. “How on earth did I miss that one?” She nodded slowly, thinking, then looked up at Thurgood with an odd smile on her face. “You know, a number of funny little things make a lot of sense now.” She paused, and then asked slowly, “how soon could you put me in this medical device, and how long will it take?”