Chapter 31

Somewhere in Rural Britain. August, two days after the Swarm arrive.

“Well gentlemen, it’s happened.” Ian Coulter walked into the small room and looked around at the four other men present. “Good evening gentlemen. Thank you for coming, and my apologies for the urgency and lateness of the meeting. I’ve just got the official confirmation. The Swarm have arrived in-system. The rumours we’ve been hearing for the last twenty four hours or so are, as we all suspected, true. It seems a large ship arrived, along with some smaller escorts. The information I have is that all except one of the craft were destroyed out near Saturn, but that a possibly damaged escort ship did manage to escape.”

“That probably gives us at most a year, but more likely four to six months,” George Wiggin noted. “Has the information been given to the press?”

Coulter shook his head. “Not in the UK yet, but in any case I can’t see what’s left of the British press publishing it. Not even to try and ridicule it. President Hernandez is having a press conference to announce it to the American public about ten PM our time,” he glanced at his watch, “in about an hour and a bit. So it’s just possible we may see something in tomorrow’s press.” He shrugged, giving a wry smile. “I’m not holding my breath though.”

The others all nodded.

“Where did this info come from?” asked George Wiggin.

“From the Pentagon, though I’m quite sure that it originally came from the Confederacy. Quite why our own Confederacy contacts haven’t given us this information yet I’d like to know.” He shook his head slowly. “Not happy about that. It’s only the fact that I have a personal friendship with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs that got me this information now. Luckily President Hernandez has allowed him to let me have the information through back channels.”

“Oh well, we know now and that’s what’s important. We have to get it out though, and we do have a number of journo’s in the organisation,” noted Anthony Watts. “Pass all the information to them, and get it out anyway. We need something out there to wake the public up, to get them to do something.”

“Let’s see what, if anything, happens after the president’s speech,” agreed Coulter.

Simon McCall nodded. “Beatrice has been holding us back, but I think she’s been waiting for something like this. All those public pronouncements she’s made in the last couple of months have been leading somewhere. I’m certain it must be for something like this.”

Amjad Hussein, the last person at the table, had the distracted air of someone communing with his AI implant. Eventually his eyes re-focussed and he looked around the table.

“Her majesty asks that we make this information public, then start, in a small way, a campaign against Thorn. She still believes that the military must not be the ones to topple Thorn directly, but should be used in support of a civilian uprising which we are to try and help foment. Her suggestion, and I’ll admit I’m inclined to agree, is that there should be lots of small uprisings that will have the patrols running all over the place.”

“Hmm,” Wiggin frowned. “Small uprisings are not exactly what we had planned for, but I think we can make it work.” He looked at Amjad. “Did Her Majesty offer any suggestions?”

Amjad shook his head, smiling slightly. “She left it to our discretion, but asked that we let her know before hand so that she can make public pronouncements that turn out to be fantastically true.”

“Politician!” muttered Wiggin.

All the men in the room disliked politicians, but the other four also knew that General Sir George Wiggin, the former Chief of the General Staff, the most senior professional soldier in the British Army, had a particular hatred for the breed, and for the current crop in particular. At the same time though, they also knew he had a soft spot for Beatrice as he had served alongside her father, and had known her as a small child.

“I think,” Air Chief Marshal Sir Simon McCall, the former Chief of the Air Staff, the professional head of the RAF, said, “in one way it’s not such a bad idea. We just have to give her a couple of hours notice, or at least, ask her to only release stuff a couple of hours before something happens. A good bet would be to also ask her to deliberately get a few things slightly wrong, simply to confuse Thorn’s goons.” He shrugged. “I’d far rather just go in all guns blazing though.” He put up his hands to forestall any arguments, smiling slightly. “Yes I know we all agreed this was inappropriate, but that doesn’t mean I can’t wish for it.”

“First thing, get the information out. Pass it down your various staffs, to all the known journalists in the organisation. They should still have contacts, and in any case they will know how to get the message out.” Coulter looked at his notes. The senior officers only got together like this about once every five weeks, most of the time they were well separated for safety and security, but once a month or so they wanted to sit face to face.

“Next. Materiel. How are we doing with that. Simon? How’s the RAF doing?”

Simon McCall grunted. Even though these men had all vanished and, as far as the general public knew were in one of Thorn’s prison camps, in practice they were still in effective charge of their respective service. “No real change from last month. We’ve now stopped producing any more aircraft. As of yesterday there were still three F35E’s and a Typhoon F5 in production, but once they’re completed, we’re not producing more fixed wing aircraft. Even though most of what we’ve been producing for the last ten months have been crated to both reduce size and to make them more inconspicuous, we have run out of space to store them secretly and securely. In any case we now have almost three aircraft for every fully trained and qualified pilot currently available, both in and out of the RAF, so for the time being we don’t need any more. It’s the pilots themselves I’m now more concerned with. We’re now working on training systems, along with both army and navy aviation, to try and train more pilots, and to keep all our current pilots up to scratch. For the last couple of months we’ve been producing small arms, and that’s now been stepped up. There are now almost enough personal weapons for every man woman and child over the age of fourteen within a one mile radius of every RAF base, plus at least four hundred rounds for each of them. We have probably enough PPE, body armour, helmets and boots for the same. We’ve not been producing food rations to any great extent, though there are some. We are however short of trucks and cars, but we’ve been liasing with George’s people for that. Fuel is still a problem, but the Canadians have come up with a neat dodge, so for larger vehicles at least, that may be less of a problem than it was.”

“Dodge?” asked Amjad.

“For the last few months at least, and probably a hell of a lot longer, they’ve been fitting Confederacy fusion motors. They’re a bit bulkier than a standard engine, so don’t fit so easily into a standard sized car. The larger size of trucks and buses, also some four by four’s, give us the room to play with this. We’ve only been doing this for just over a month, so we’re way behind the curve here.”

McCall shook his head in rueful exasperation. “We’ve been sneaking all sorts of Confederacy technology into the combat stuff, but we never even thought to consider it for the more mundane stuff like ordinary cars and trucks.”

There was a general trickle of laughter around the table.

“Anything else?” smiled Coulter.

McCall shook his head. “No sir. No change in any of the larger aircraft. They are pretty much all grounded though I can occasionally get an AWACS plane into the air. Just occasionally we get Sheard to tell those political dwarves that there’s some ‘enemy’ aircraft approaching Britain and it needs to be ‘escorted’ away.”

“Does it work?”

“Yeah. We occasionally manage to get a couple of Typhoons into the air as well. The pilots all know it’s just an exercise, but it’s good for both training and morale.”

Coulter nodded. “Good. George?” he asked, turning to Wiggin.

“Again, no real change. Most bases have been producing STEN guns, L85A3’s and ammunition for both. I was told just this morning that someone has come up with yet another change for the L85 that is sufficiently ‘large’ enough to call it an A4, but I have no more information on that. We’ve got just about enough sniper rifles to have one per platoon, but I’d like to get more people trained up on those. Most army bases are currently stockpiling ammunition but for obvious reasons we’re not letting too much of that out at the moment. We’ve had to stop building choppers as we’re running out of the right raw materials, but there’s now twenty-nine Chinooks, twenty-one Apaches, thirty-three Wildcats and thirty-six Merlin’s built, with four more Merlin’s and a Wildcat in production. We are disguising them as air-ambulances for the time being. People are still used to seeing them about, so having a chopper fly over that looks like an air-ambulance doesn’t excite any comment.” He shrugged. “That shouldn’t work for the Chinooks but apparently it does.”

“Surely even you can’t persuade people an Apache or Wildcat is an air-ambulance?” Chuckled Coulter.

George Wiggin laughed and shook his head. “No. Don’t even try. Wildcat maybe, but no, not an Apache. We’re very careful about where we fly anything. Even the Merlin’s and Wildcats,” he paused and said slowly. “You know, if we were very careful, we could actually use those two a bit more, to aid the civilian side, the ‘Maquis’, but we would have to be careful.”

“How?” asked Coulter. The others all looked interested, Amjad Hussein particularly so.

“Well in the first instance, why just disguise them as air ambulances? Some Merlins are used as air-sea-rescue anyway, so already have the capability· So why not actually use them. As air ambulances I mean. Won’t take much to convert a couple of Wildcats as well, they’re already being used for emergency casevac off the 45’s. It’ll make people more comfortable with having them around. Make the patrol less jumpy when they are. That in turn will make them more careless, hopefully, when they come in to land carrying troops instead of medics.”

There was a pause as everyone digested this. “I like this idea,” Hussein said slowly. As a Royal Navy pilot he had actually flown Merlin mark 2’s off the flight deck of HMS Queen Elizabeth during her initial workups, when they were still testing out all the systems prior to it formally becoming operational.

“Okay,” said Coulter slowly, looking at Hussein. “Try and contact some of the air ambulance controllers. See what you can come up with.”

“Yes sir.” Hussein made a note on his jotter.

“Good. George?” Coulter asked.

Wiggin nodded. “Okay, well, carrying on then. For the last month we’ve been converting all military owned trucks and buses that the patrol haven’t confiscated to use a fusion engine. It’s slow going as we have to be careful, and very discreet when we use them: they sound very different to a heavy diesel engine. I’ve got a note here that twice now bases have had to spike a couple of vehicles at the last minute as it was about to be confiscated by the patrol.”

“How did you do that?” asked Watts.

George shook his head. “Don’t know. If you’re interested I’ll try and find out for you.”

Anthony shook his head. “Don’t worry, I’ll pass it down my staff. They may already know, but if they don’t, it’s worth them getting in touch to find out.”

“One of my guys,” interrupted McCall, “has designed a noise generator to make the vehicle sound like a standard diesel. I’ll find out the details and pass them on.”

Wiggin nodded. “Cheers. We’ve scrapped about eighty five percent of all our heavy AFV’s, we can’t really use tanks in this fight, and from what Colonel Carter and his people have passed on, I strongly believe they’ll not be of much use against the Swarm either. As such they’re a waste of space and resources. I’ve kept a few dozen Challenger 2’s, and even improved on them as much as I can, but I’ve got rid of the rest to produce APC’s and mobile artillery pieces. I’d really like a lot more of those, but again we’ve had to halt through lack of raw materials, as well as space to store them.

“Now, this is new. I’ve had the Security Patrol come on to bases twice since April to confiscate tanks. In one case we’d already got rid of all our tanks, and all they could find was a huge pile of what we told them was scrap metal, in the second case the sergeant on the ground had the presence of mind to spike the guns. I’m sure you’ve all heard of the incident last month when they tried to fire on those rioters in Sunderland? And the tank all but exploding on them? Well that’s what that was. Unfortunately they do have four Challenger 2’s and a number of other older AFV’s and APC’s in full working condition. They got those before my people had the chance to pass the word to try and ensure anything the patrol do get is spiked.”

“Has anything been done about those tanks?” asked Amjad, writing rapidly on a notepad.

“Not at this time. We know where they all are, and we’re keeping a close eye on them. At the moment they’re all in Catterick, so if they do decide to move them, we should have ample warning.”

“Good. Thanks George. Anthony?” Coulter looked at Admiral Sir Anthony Watts, ex-chief of the naval staff.

“No real change in large materiel, we’ve just been maintaining what ships I’ve kept. Before I go on though, I got a note, yesterday, day before, from the Americans. A note of thanks.”

“Oh?” asked Coulter.

“Not been made public yet, but one of our type 23’s, HMS Sunderland I think, helped the US Coast Guard with a large drugs bust. Now we’ve worked with the USCG before on drug busts, but this one was almost accidental. Sunderland was on a general patrol in the Caribbean, it’s hurricane season so we usually have a ship or two out there in case there’s a need for humanitarian aid and disaster relief et cetera. Anyway, a Coast Guard helicopter chasing a drug boat gets engine trouble and rather than ditch asks permission to land on Sunderland. Her captain gives it, obviously, but in the meantime Sunderland sends its Wildcat after the drugs boat instead, and because Sunderland is closer than the USCG cutters, also give chase. The Royal Navy brings the drug boat to a halt under the arms of a few Royal Marines, and the USCG comes in, does the formal arrest, and takes them off our hands. It was accidental in the sense that if their chopper hadn’t had a minor malfunction we wouldn’t have got involved, but it was good work all round. Good exercise for Sunderlands people, good morale booster all around, and good PR with the Americans. Plus, the Americans say that because we were there and closer, the chase actually finished a good quicker.” He grinned. “My personal opinion? The drug runners were more scared of the Royal Marines than they were of the US Coast Guard.”

The others laughed. “Well,” smiled Coulter. “It’s good to know we can still work together with the US.”

Watts nodded. “Their Coast Guard are good people. We’ve worked with them before. A few years ago HMS Argyle, another 23, had a couple of busts while formally working with the US Coast Guard. I’m just pleased that relationship is still there, even if a bit more informally.”

“You’ve passed on congrats and so on to the Sunderland’s Captain and crew?”

He nodded. “Of course. I’ve also told Sheard so that if, somehow, Thorn or his cabinet get to hear of it, he won’t be surprised.”

Coulter nodded. “Good call.”

Watts sighed and checked his notes. “Okay, well, the last of my type 45’s is now in Brest in France. All six are now berthed there. They’re all fully equipped, stocked, crewed and ready. Six of my 23’s are also now in Brest. Unusually, the French are being very good to us here. Of the remaining six, two are on patrol in the South Atlantic, one in the North Atlantic and Sutherland ... oh! Sorry. Sutherland, not Sunderland. It was HMS Sutherland in the drugs bust, that’s still in the Caribbean.” He gave a deep sigh. “HMS Richmond, is just finishing a refit on the sly by using a replicator and stripping out a couple of decommissioned vessels for raw material. That is still expected to complete by the end of next month, when I’ll probably send it to Brest. HMS Lancaster was due to be decommissioned anyway, but is now currently berthed and being allowed to decay.

“Subs. Still no change on the Vanguards. All still in service. Thorn seems to like the idea of having nuclear missiles. He just hasn’t cottoned on to the fact that he doesn’t control them, and they are no longer in Britain. I’ve finally been forced to scrap the last two Astutes. They’re all supposed to be being scrapped, but the two that are, are being done in such a way that it should look like all seven have been scrapped. That’s the plan anyway. Of the other five, three are in Canada, but last week I directed two to the South Atlantic. Not sure they’re needed there, but the local commander, Rear-Admiral Spelman, requested them, and it was as convenient as anywhere else. The two retired Trafalgar’s are still in dry dock. Not managed to do anything with those, and now don’t intend to. I’m quite happy to lose them after all. I’m pretty certain Thorn and his new defence minister think they are Astutes.

“Of the Type 26 frigates, I’ve finally managed to get a third fully operational and into service. The remaining three were all scrapped by Thorn while still under construction. I’m sure you all saw the televised destruction of the hulls recently.” There was a general nodding of heads. “Those hulks are still sitting where they were destroyed. They are blocking the dry docks, which is a pain, but on the other hand, I’m damn sure that once Thorn has gone, if I wanted, I could turn at least one of those, possibly two, back into useable vessels in relatively short order. Of the three 26’s that did enter service, the oldest is berthed in Portsmouth, it’s not in a good state, but is actually in far better condition than it appears. I’m allowing it to be used as a diversion so that Thorn thinks the navy is down to scrap; the second is now berthed in the Falklands, having arrived two days ago, the other is on its way there. All are short crewed though.”

Wiggin interrupted. “Have you heard any more rumblings from the Argentines?”

Watts shook his head. “No. I think they’ve finally realised that the islands are now a far more heavily armed place than they realised.”

Coulter intervened. “I spoke to General Ronaldo Vierra last week. I think they know that the reason we’ve moved so many men to the Falkland Islands is nothing to do with them, and while they’re unhappy that we have put so many armed men on what they still consider their territory, they also recognise why we’re doing it, and are keeping their politicians in check. Just. There are some benefits to Thorn’s censorship of the press. What noises the Argentines are putting out are not being reported, so our politicians are either ignoring them, or simply not seeing.”

Hussein frowned. “That’s arse backwards. You would have thought he would have played it up. Deflect people from local problems.” He shrugged. “Oh well. It’s to our advantage in a way, yet also wouldn’t hurt us if he did play it up.”

All five men looked at each other, realisation dawning.

“We don’t want to allow him to play it up at all,” Watts spoke slowly. “If we allow him to play it up, it’ll play into his hands. We want his attention focussed elsewhere, but we want the general population’s attention focussed here, at the things he’s doing wrong.”

“If he’s allowed to...” McCall broke off, thinking deeply.

“Right!” Coulter said firmly. “Let’s get back to the agenda. Such as it is, and we’ll tag this on at the end. Anthony. You were saying?”

“Um. Yes. Where had I got up to?” He frowned briefly. “Oh yes,” he smiled slightly. “Appropriate, I was about to talk about diversions. As diversions, the two old Trafalgar fast attack subs, the type 82 destroyer, and a type 23 frigate are all slowly rotting, with another 23 and a type 26 looking like they are. I’m not bothered about the Trafalgars or the 82, apart from the fact that they look horrible. I don’t think Thorn doesn’t realise they aren’t in service anyway.” He stopped as he realised the convoluted nature of what he’d just said, frowned momentarily, then shook his head slightly and continued. “The 23’s, and in particular the 26, grates though. The 26 can definitely be brought back into service, and if there’s time, maybe one of the the 23’s can as well.” He shrugged. “Moving on. All my shoreside bases are still producing small arms and ammunition, and like George and Simon I now have an abundance of L85’s and ammunition, as well as body armour and helmets. Nearly all the Royal Navy Police now have confederacy stingers. The plan is that by the end of next week they’ll all have them, and so far it’s looking do-able.”

“Wouldn’t you want to bring those other ships back into service?” interrpted George Wiggin with a slightly surprised look on his face.

“No point. There was only ever one 82 and it’s just a static training vessel, really not much more than a floating barracks in Portsmouth. For well over a decade it is, or was anyway, used as much, if not more, by the Sea Cadets and Sea Scouts and other civilian organisations as anyone else. The point is though, to an ignorant civilian, it still looks like a warship. Thorn and his cronys are not only ignorant, we’ve kept them that way. As for the trafalgars, the rest are long since gone.” He shrugged. “I don’t need extra types, I need more of existing types. I don’t think there’s time, but using those as scrap to build more 26’s or 45’s would be acceptable. The new 31 never got beyond design stage, no steel was even cut, I don’t think, so I don’t care about those. I don’t know how to use subs in the coming fights, so I may not rebuild the Astutes anyway, but I’ll see what the Swarm does before that decision is made.” He made a wry expression with his mouth, and sighed. “Sadly the damage to the type 26 in Portsmouth is more than just cosmetic: it is reparable, but it really will need a couple of months to get ready.”

Wiggin nodded his understanding.