Less than zero (RN: Book 1) Read online

  “I find myself lost for words as I truly had no idea as to the demands The Koll place on the, what from outside this room appear to be limitless resources. I’m beginning to understand the problems faced by men and materials, but surely there has to be some median. Can’t The Koll be made aware of our need for more resources in this regard?”

  “The Koll rarely respond to our requests for mediation. They normally only show up to punish us for breaking some point of the capitulation agreement, and even then they rarely say anything.”

  “Have you ever seen one? A Koll?”

  “Not as such, no, as I’m told by those who are more familiar that they always wear some form of life support suit. I’ve seen many of their minions, as have most people, but an actual in the flesh Koll? No, never. I did attend a discourse once where a Koll was present, but it was in the distance and I could only make out what looked like a prostrated suit of armour. It lay behind a series of sentry drones and no one was permitted to talk to it, or even approach it. I don’t think anyone has actually seen a living Koll.”

  “Getting back to the materials situation. Can’t the other EDP members do something to help? Reassign ships and personnel to ease the load? It is a pact after all.”

  “There are many EDP members who claim to be doing all they can to assist with the current unrest, people whose claims are not exactly correct in the truth sense. The core members, Britannia, the Americas, the German consortium, the European defense initiative, The Greater Asian union and so on, all pull more than their fair share. Yet, despite the speeches in great halls about all the members working together, many of the smaller members, and one or two not so small, are just coasting along and enjoying the subsidies without any real payback or involvement with the greater issues. In a recent members’ meeting, one of the less than helpful members asked, ‘What can we do in the efforts to defeat the bandits, as we only have twenty-two vessels?’ Not enough, or so they claimed, to offer any extra advantage to the current efforts.”

  “You talk about the EDP like it has hundreds of vessels. Surely another twenty-two would make little difference? Why are you laughing?”

  “Let me tell you about making an effort. Do you know how many ships Britannia currently has operational? Nineteen! And eight of them are gunboats. Our crews are run ragged by what’s required of them, but you don’t hear us crying in the half circle about our inability to make a difference.”

  “Nineteen! I never knew it was so few. But surely this is due to the material limitations placed on you by The Koll.”

  “That’s what’s so frustrating. The Koll allow us twenty-five ships per fifty million of population, and the population is currently 102 million, so we’re well under our allotted quota. As usual, the real problem is money. Last year someone somewhere thought it would be a good idea to upgrade the blue water fleet on some ridiculous nostalgia-driven tripe, even though they haven’t fired a shot in anger in over eighty years. Yet, despite the pressures the RNO are facing to do more with less, they’ve cut the orbital fleet to the bone to pay for new sails and bell-bottom trousers. The Royal Navy simply cannot afford two fleets, and up until recently there was even talk of mothballing our only FTL-capable carrier. But the Americans insisted she remain operational so they could get their money’s worth. It is half theirs after all. So they got their wish, the carrier remains and we continue to play second fiddle to the Americans and Russians by putting out brush fires whilst their fleets continue to do The Koll’s bidding in distant places.“

  “So why gunboats?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Why would the RNO need so many gunboats?”

  “Oh, that was never a military choice. After the unification, The Koll put the accountants in charge of acquisitions and they insisted we get the best bang for our buck. It was our original intention to place an option for ten of the new Bismarck class light destroyers that the German Consortium developed. They were only a concept at the time we considered them, but their blueprints made them look like some ridiculous super-weapon from a video game. They are compact, light, fast and manoeuvrable. Very expensive for their class, but with one hell of a sting for their weight. They ran rings around us during manoeuvres, but we spotted a few weaknesses, especially with the hull.”

  “What was the problem with their hulls? Were they too heavy?”

  “No. In fact quite the opposite. They were far too light.”

  “Too light! So they couldn’t take the punishment?”

  “Oh, they could take the hits alright, but we based our purchase decision on an unapparent weakness. Did you ever see the footage from the Grey Day war manoeuvres?”

  “Only those released to the news service. But I believe the censored recordings were something to see.”

  “Huh, you have no idea. I commanded the Bristol at the time, and we were acting as official observers for the games when we witnessed the first Chinese brigade jump in on a German staging area. The speed with which the Chinese disabled the German light escorts had to be seen to be believed. It was truly remarkable. The first even moderately heavy German ship to respond was the Bad Nauheim, a Bismarck class, but she literally kicked down the door on her arrival. The seven Chinese ships lit her up from stem to stern so that her hull was completely lost amongst the energy splashes. The Chinese were only a mixture of light with some medium vessels, true, but they had over a hundred guns pointed at the Bad Nauheim, and she just shrugged it off with her screens deflecting everything they could throw at her. An incredible sight, I can assure you. She disabled three of theirs and would have gotten away, too, if a single 140mm training round hadn’t slipped by her screens and marked the hull over a magazine. This shot resulted in an instant destruction point awarded to the Chinese, and she had to retire from the games.”

  “So... you never bought the destroyers because they dismissed the Bad Nauheim from the war games?”

  “No, you’re missing the point. The round that penetrated her screens was only a dummy round with nothing more than fluorescent paint. Yet it still managed to bypass her fully active predictive armour and put a dent in the pressure hull.”

  “I don’t see the significance.”

  “Let me try to make this a little easier to follow. Do you know the doctrines that the different militaries use when designing weapons?”

  “No, I’m sorry. I don’t know what that is.”

  “Every military has to balance three crucial factors when designing combat vehicles of any sort. The Three P’s: protection, projection and performance. This basically boils down to armour, fire power and speed. Each nation has their preferences – for example, the Americans and Germans prefer projection and performance over protection, as armour adds weight and weight limits performance. But we British, however, we believe protection and projection to be the key. We always have. Right back to when we had a real military and not this stupid tin-pot mix of super-suits and automated fighting machines. We may take a little longer getting there, but we like to know we can take what’s offered when we arrive.”

  “So because of what happened to the Bad Nauheim, you considered the German ships to be too weak?”

  “Too weak in the metal hull, yes. In this instance we believe the Germans relied on energy screens to the point that they had sacrificed hull integrity to reduce weight for manoeuvrability. This is the reason we never followed our option to buy. They were simply too advanced.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “Yes, I can see how my explanation can be confusing to the uninitiated, so let me try again. The Germans are a bit unhappy about our knowing this, so not a word. Those energy screens rely on something called predictive banding, which has its limitations.”

  “I’m sorry. Predictive ...what?”

  “Predictive banding. They use a line of generators along the ship’s length to project donut-like fields, or bands, around the hull. Computers predict where a shot will strike and a band is formed to protect that area. Several generators
can combine to reinforce one another, and together they generate enough power to defuse most energy weapons or shrug off practically any known projectile. However, they can only do this for about half an hour at maximum projection, as that’s how long the generators can run at full capacity without bleeding heat. If they don’t subdue or withdraw within this half-hour window, the generators can overheat and the screens can fail, exposing that weak hull. D’you see?”

  “Sort of.”

  “We believe this is what happened to the ...to the Bad Nauheim. She couldn’t withdraw as the Chinese had her surrounded, and she couldn’t lower a section of the screen to bleed the heat.”

  “Soooo... how does this affect the British decision to –“

  “Oh, yes. I was getting to that. Do you remember what happened at Devon?”

  “The RN lost the battle and the planet fell to The Koll.”

  “Yes, but the truth’s not as simple as that.”

  “It never is.”

  “Quite. Bar their reputation for ruthlessness, we knew little of The Koll, who arrived at Devon with thirteen ships: five colony and eight combat. Now we had known for some time that they were coming our way, but only had rough information as to their expected destination and ETA. We assigned our resources as thought best, but unfortunately we guessed wrong and The Koll fleet was met by the only three vessels we could stage to screen the Devonian colonists. They were the heavy cruiser, Manchester, and two gunboats: the Isle of Skye and the Bristol.”

  “So you were...”

  “Yes, I had the Bristol at the time. The Koll arrived two days earlier than expected, as they’re known to do, and demanded we surrender the planet immediately. They had their version of a carrier and three old heavies of the, eh! I think they’re known as Zee-zaza class. These things are essentially repurposed asteroids, and far larger than anything we have, with their turrets looking like parasites attached to a rocky host. Now, with the numbers and weight of metal so stacked against us, we had little choice but to concede the planet, remove the colonists and abandon the equipment. Though we did plan to return later with a few friends.”

  “I’ve always believed The Koll had eighteen ships and we had eight.”

  “That was just hype fed to the media to incentivise the public. We didn’t want them to know we were spread so thin as to not be able to fully protect our own people. Your lot painted us sufficiently incompetent when we lost with eight ships, so I hate to imagine what you would have printed if you’d known we only had three.”

  “Air marshal you have to be jok -“

  “Now - please! The Koll basically ignored our pleas for concessions and attacked as our colonists were leaving. So we were forced to step forward and do what was required until the civilians could break away. And you have to believe me when I tell you it was one hell of an engagement.”

  “I can see it in your face.”

  “With all the battle spirit in the world, the Skye and the Bristol couldn’t hope to stand against The Koll heavy guns, but we had to hold the line. Fortunately, all three of ours were built before the cost limitations and that extra armour certainly paid for itself that day. Yet even with the thicker armour the gunboats had no hope of a protracted one-on-one with The Koll heavies, so the Manchester advanced alone to act as a focus point.”

  “Focus point?”

  “A kind of shot magnet, or hit sink if you will. If a lion and two bobcats run into your house, you’re more likely to point your guns at the larger animal. We use the same principle in combat to draw the biggest guns from the less well-protected ships.”

  “With so many enemies focused on her, how did the Manchester survive? That was a big chance to take.”

  “The Manchester was a sturdy old bucket and Captain Moore believed she could take it. Where was I? The Skye and Bristol straddled the Manchester to draw some of the lighter fire and help defend her from the fighters. The Koll formed a sphere around us with their heavy ships to the centre-rear, and their colony ships far behind them. They poured such a rate of fire onto the Manchester that we literally couldn’t see her for the dissipation waves. But we worked a plan, split the fire and gradually made ourselves felt. Those missiles of ours that made it through picked at their fringe ships, which must have worried them as they stopped advancing and fell back on their long-range weapons to batter us from a distance. The Manchester took a hell of a beating, and at one point she had seven ships bearing on her. Seven! One hundred and fifty six guns to her sixteen and almost nineteen times her tonnage. I’ve never seen a ship take so much punishment and keep firing. But these were pre-limitation days and our ships were built from sterner stuff. However, none of us could continue to take such abuse for long, so when their fighters destroyed the last colonist ship, we broke away.”

  “This is when they destroyed the Manchester.”

  “Not at this point, no.”

  “Her destruction was all over the media.”

  “No losses, I’m telling you.”

  “But how can this –“

  “Three of their ships we took before leaving. Three! Two light and one heavy. The Manchester absorbed more than seven hundred large bore hits and countless lesser shots and missiles, and she still left under her own power. Did you hear me? Under her own power! The Skye took one hundred and twelve hits to the Bristol’s ninety-two. But the Bristol’s engines were disabled and she had to be towed out by the Skye in the wake of the Manchester. So you heard wrong. The destruction of the Manchester was unrelated to this battle. Security restrictions limit what I can tell you about it, but let’s just say certain of those Red Moon types were involved. The common media stories were a smoke screen to prevent the people from becoming downhearted by the cowardly destruction of another military vessel by terrorists who sabotaged her magazines whilst she lay compromised with much of her crew dead or dying. The news read better when she died a heroine’s death.”

  “I would hardly believe this information if it came from anyone else.”

  “Indeed. No other ship in service could have done what the Manchester did that day. Her remaining guns were still firing right up until she gated out. Did you know that? A quarter of her crew dead! So much out-gassing that you didn’t know if she was coming or going. But two of her turrets were still serviceable and she held them back until we could leave. What a piece of work she was. One of only three in her class. And If we would have had the others with us, the Belfast and the Newcastle, I believe we could have reversed the situation and it would have been they who left. This engagement was the reason we lost interest in the Bismarck class. If they had accompanied the Manchester instead of the Skye and the Bristol, they would never have survived as they would have had nowhere to bleed the heat without exposing that weak hull.”

  “I can only imagine witnessing such an event. The battle of a lifetime! A true David v Goliath.”

  “Not quite as David limped away that day. However, one thing we couldn’t know at the time was that the incident at Devon held far more significance than we could possibly imagine. Their encounters with EDP forces, the whole episode at Devon, and especially what the Russians and Americans did at Amarak, caused The Koll to stop dead in their advance for eight months as they reconsidered Earth’s ability to defend herself. There were some probing skirmishes that had our ships running here and there, but these were to see if we would respond as we did at Devon, which we did on every occasion. Even if it meant borrowing vessels from allied navies or recommissioning the mothballed fleet. However, The Koll learnt their own lessons and they massed more and more of their forces with every engagement. The culmination of this massing was the invasion of Chinese space. I suspect you have heard of the action at what the western fleets refer to as LN-0R?”

  “The Battle of Eleanor. Where The Koll slaughtered the Chinese fleet. Who hasn’t heard of that. The Chinese let The Koll walk in and make mincemeat of them.”

  “It’s so simple to be critical, isn’t it? Everyone condemns the Chinese for
how they handled the situation at LN-0R. People always speak of how the European or American navies could have dealt with The Koll so much more effectively. Of how The Koll threat would have been removed if anyone other than the Chinese had engaged them. If a real navy had gotten involved. But none of them were there. Neither was I for that matter, but I saw the live feeds that leaked through their jamming firsthand. I saw blow-by-blow actions of both sides. And believe me when I tell you that given the circumstances, the Chinese acquitted themselves far better than anyone thought possible for any navy. Their actions may not have stopped The Koll, but it was a slap in the face that certainly worried them.”

  “So the information fed to the public was inaccurate?”

  “While it’s true that The Koll did defeat the Chinese fleet, the information commonly released regarding the run-up to, and the actual battle of LN-0R, was ...was …well, for the lack of something more imaginative on my part, it was creative writing. Almost as good as what you people do. After engagements such as Devon, the Earth Defence Pact forces had gained a little breathing room, a short time in which to reinforce, resupply and prepare our fleets for the deluge we knew to be coming. And no one’s better at preparing for such events than the Chinese.”