The Last Charge (The Nameless War Trilogy Book 3)

THE LAST CHARGE

Book Three of the Nameless War Trilogy

By Edmond Barrett

Kindle Edition

Copyright © 2014 Edmond Barrett

All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the author

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Kindle Version 1.1

DEDICATION

With thanks to my parents for their support, to my test readers Phil and Peter, my editor Jan, Sorcha for her encouragement and to Anne for that idea.

Content

Prologue             

Chapter 1
              Disposable Heroes

Chapter 2
              The Few

Chapter 3
              Ghost Ship

Chapter 4
              Farewell to Convention

Chapter 5
              Digging in

Chapter 6
              Day One

Chapter 7
              Tightening of the Noose

Chapter 8
              Running the Gauntlet

Chapter 9
              Breathing Space

Chapter 10
              Figures in the Landscape

Chapter 11
              Hell’s Mouth

Chapter 12
              Reconnaissance by Fire

Chapter 13
              Search for the Grail

Chapter 14
              The Forgotten Army

Chapter 15
              Drumbeat

Chapter 16
              The Fury

Chapter 17
              Retribution

Chapter 18
              Barring the Gate

Chapter 19
              Taken at a Run

Chapter 20
              Breaking Point

Chapter
21              To the Last

Epilogue

Glossary

Authors Postscript

Ladies and Gentlemen, good morning to you all and thank you, wherever you are, for joining me. Today, I do not speak to you as the President of United States or even as an American citizen. We have reached a moment, in our shared history that transcends mere nationality. So instead, I now speak to you all, as a fellow member of the human race.

Eighteen months ago the alien race we still know only as the Nameless launched a war of conquest upon us, overrunning our outer defences and seizing the colony world of Landfall. At great loss their opening offensive was halted and forced back at Alpha Centauri. Since then, the ships of Battle Fleet have been engaged in combat against the Nameless along a series of fortified systems known as The Junction Line. Their efforts were aimed at buying us time to rebuild and replace that which was lost in those first terrible weeks.

A few hours ago, I was informed that the Line has been breached. The Nameless are now advancing upon Earth. While our fleet is contesting each solar system in turn, its commanders believe there is no prospect of forming a new defensive line. Direct assault upon Earth is now at most only a few weeks away.

The days ahead will without question be both dark and difficult. But I believe no matter how dark those days are; if we stand ready with our strengths, our skills, our hopes and our prayers, we can emerge victorious. God Bless you all.

Chapter One

Disposable Heroes

10th November 2067

On their star charts the solar system went by the catchy name of two eight three dash two seven three dash four zero three. The captain of the Spanish ship, which had performed the first and only survey of the system, had attempted to give it a name, but with nothing of any great interest or value in the system, it hadn’t stuck. The three Predator class destroyers coasted along in a vertical triangle formation, with fifty kilometres of separation between them. In the centre of the triangle, formed into a loose circle, were ten A class missile boats – vessels that were little more than a standard courier ship, with a launch rack of anti-ship missiles welded onto the dorsal hull. Finally, out twenty kilometres ahead, were two gunboats – another variant of the A class that had swapped the missiles for a quad point defence battery. Usually they would be their missile-armed brethren’s only support. Consequently, and not without good cause, they were often referred to as the Forlorn Hope.

Since the collapse of the Junction Line the missile boats had been assaulting the advancing Nameless forces – some times against the space gates their supply ships relied on, sometimes against the enemy fighting ships. On their own, there was no prospect that they would stop the Nameless, but if they delayed them for even a single hour, then that was another hour for Earth to prepare. The Nameless had responded with ships and fighters and while losses had not yet been severe, they were creeping towards unsustainable. So this raid would go in supported by what for the strike boat crews was the reassuring bulk of supporting destroyers.

Reassuring for the boat crews, Commander Carol Berg thought to herself as she looked around the bridge of the
Mantis
, but not so reassuring for her or the rest of the men and women crewing the destroyers. There were too many things out there that could turn
Mantis
into chaff with a single hit – and they were heading towards three of them. The formation of ships had been approaching the space gate and its defenders for three days. Relative to the target, they’d dropped back into real space behind the planet’s smallest moon. Before they came out from behind the moon’s shadow, they’d made several discrete course corrections, then cut power and gone ballistic. Since then it had been a waiting and watching game. With missiles that outranged the weapons of any human ship by a wide margin, encounters with the Nameless were always about getting close enough to fire, without being crippled or destroyed on the approach. But if a human ship did get to gun range, then the advantage shifted decisively in their favour. Compared to the heavy plasma cannons of a battleship,
Mantis
’s four guns were peashooters. But if a Nameless ship was to find itself within fifty thousand kilometres of the destroyer, then there was nothing the aliens had yet fielded that
Mantis
couldn’t shoot full of holes. The trick was getting there. Using their jump drive to drop in on top of the target was a high-risk tactic that both sides had occasionally used, but since ships spent most of their time close to planets where the gravitational effect known as the mass shadow prevented a ship from jumping in or out, that option wasn’t available very often. Again the Nameless had an advantage; their drives allowed them to jump about a third closer than their human counterparts. So that left the raiders with only the discrete insertion and a slow, nerve-wracking approach.

Berg suddenly yawned and her helmet visor fogged up for a moment before her survival suit’s environmental control kicked in and compensated. Standard doctrine called for most of a ship’s compartments to be depressurised before combat to reduce secondary damage if they were hit, so survival suits were a necessary evil. The fleet’s suits were in theory able to keep a person alive for three continuous days, twice that if their electrical systems were plugged into the ship’s power grid and assuming you’d had time to put in place the necessary plumbing. Still it wasn’t many people’s first choice and after a few hours, personal performance would tend to degrade. Looking at her watch Berg realised she’d been on the bridge for nearly six hours, enough time for fatigue to become a factor.

“Lieutenant Mintz, I’m going below for a while.” She didn’t bother adding: ‘call me if anything happens.’

“Yes, Captain.”

Popping the seat restraints she floated out of her chair and pushed off towards the rear hatch. Moving down the passageway she noted that at least one off duty crewmember had opted to sleep in his bunk, in his survival suit rather than one of the few crew compartments that still had pressure – probably one of those occasional oddballs who claimed survival suits were comfortable. After waiting for the airlock to cycle, Berg pulled herself through into the sickbay.

“Hello, Skipper. Is it business or pleasure that brings you to my door?” asked Surgeon Lieutenant Norrett.

“Just stretching out, Doctor,” Berg replied as she opened her visor. “Just before I hit the bunk for a few hours.”

“Of course. Do you need anything?”

“No, if I took pills to go to sleep I’d need pills to wake up again,” she replied with a slight frown. “Are many people using them?”

“No not really,” the Doctor replied mildly. “Although modern pills don’t have those kinds of side effects, not if the dosage is worked out with sufficient care.”

“Any other problems I should be aware of?”

“Nothing unusual, although from my point of view things would be a good deal easier if we could spin up the centrifuge. Certain operations are tricky enough without worrying about having to stop bits from floating out,” he replied.

“I’m sure it does, but having a spun up centrifuge would also make it more likely you’d have casualties to treat. We’ll be entering their missile range in another four hours, the attack goes in another hundred minutes after that.”

“I’m all ready for it here, Captain,” Norrett replied with a nod.

Privilege of rank meant Berg’s cabin still had pressure. Operational realities meant the temperature was set below the point of comfort. But after six hours on the bridge, it was still a relief to be able to take off her helmet and neck dam. Peeling away the top half of her suit, she strapped herself into the bunk.
Mantis
had been home for nearly two years and by now Berg should have been expecting to take the next step in her career, probably a six months tour as second-in-command on board a cruiser or battleship, before being offered the captaincy of her own cruiser. However, that was a peacetime promotion track. Wartime was different and Berg had been fighting this war longer than most.

As second-in-command on board the cruiser
Mississippi
, she’d been there when they first encountered the Nameless. Her career survived the subsequent enquiry and she’d then been appointed to
Mantis
and dispatched to the frontier base of Baden – just in time for the Nameless assault that no one had seen coming.
Mantis
came out of those first desperate battles with barely a scratch and since then had served on the Junction Line right up to the day the Nameless cracked it open. Some of the crew had taken to calling their destroyer ‘Magic-Man’, but to Berg that seemed like tempting fate. One should never call attention to luck when she shows favour, just in case she took offence. If Earth made it to the end of the spring, she probably would get her captaincy. The odds were though that she’d be staying in
Mantis
unless filling a dead man’s boots somewhere else.

They were six and a half hours from contact, assuming their arrival in the system hadn’t been detected. If that assumption was wrong, then the Nameless could well be waiting for them and that was why this strike group was composed of small, relatively expendable ships. It was also why there probably wasn’t a single commanding officer present that had slept properly in days. Berg settled for cleaning her face with a wet wipe, brushing her teeth and trying to force a brush through her dirty and matted hair, before pulling a blanket around herself and attempting to sleep. She managed to doze for a few hours – enough to feel sharper. On the bridge nothing much had changed except that the countdown had dropped to two hours.

“Any movement at all?” she asked Mintz as she buckled herself in.

“None, Captain,” he replied with a quick shake of his head.

On the main holo, stationed around the space gate, were three Nameless escorts. All sitting at rest relative to the planet, they were the reason for the strike group’s slow approach. If the gate had been left unattended, then a quick flyby would have been enough to destroy it or force its self-destruct systems to fire.

But the presence of the escorts offered both threat and opportunity. Three of them were enough to stand off the missile boats, but by throwing
Mantis
and her two squadron mates into the mix, they might be able to take out both the gate and the escorts. Of course the Nameless would replace both within a day, but if they had to leave more ships behind to protect the gates, then they would have that many fewer ships available to assault Earth.

“Any ideas on the new design features?” she asked, nodding towards the holo.

“None,” Mintz replied

About a day earlier they’d noticed that two of the Nameless escorts appeared to be slightly different from the standard pattern. There was a blister on the side of the hulls facing them and they assumed there was a matching one of the other side.

“It’s not a question of resolution,” Mintz continued. “We’re getting good quality visuals but there isn’t much to see.”

He tapped a control and brought up a close-up of one of the escorts.

“We can see some welds but there isn’t much more. A retrofit of some sort, but it could be anything from a mounting for a death ray to more space for the captain’s drinks cabinet.”

Berg smiled slightly at his heavy attempt at humour

“Anything from the
Scorpion
?”

“No. I guess Captain Liv doesn’t believe he has anything to add.”

Berg made no comment. There wasn’t really much to say. Any news about the Nameless tended to be bad, but without some kind of information there wasn’t much that could be said or done. Quite certainly, they couldn’t break off an attack just because they saw something that might be unknown. In fact, quite the opposite – if they did, then they had to try to find out what it was. If that meant the hard way, well, that was just the way it had to be. At least she was on a destroyer – a real ship – and not one of those poor suckers on the missile boats.

“We’ve started running a firing solution plot,” Mintz said after a long silence. “I know it’s a little early but…”

“It doesn’t do any harm,” Berg cut him off, “just as long as we keep an eye out for anything else.”

An hour and half later, Berg was starting to nod off again when a report came in on the command channel.

“Bridge, Sensors. Power spike! The gate is going active!”

In an instant Berg was fully alert. With a quick sweep of her eyes she covered the main holo and the countdown display. At current velocity they were still twenty-five minutes away from gun range and closer to forty for missiles. By going full power on the engines those figures would drop to ten and twenty. But the cap ship missiles of the three Nameless ships, would easily reach out this far. The
Mantis
’s four light plasma cannons were better at shooting down missiles than the larger versions mounted on cruisers and battleships, but they were still a poor alternative to the flak guns which were steadily superseding the heavy calibre railguns carried by the battle line ships. If the Nameless started shooting now, they might still push through to firing range, but it would likely cost them.

“The escorts?” she demanded.

“Negative movement. Missile ports are still closed.”

“Bridge, Sensors. New contacts. Ship jumping in, bearing zero, zero, one, dash zero, one, one…”

Another voice cut across the first.

“Bridge, Sensors. Ships are coming through the gate!”

Berg felt adrenalin sizzle through her blood, blowing away her fatigue. On the holo, a dozen plus new contacts appeared, some around the gate and others filing through it. Berg flicked her intercom to ship wide.

“All hands! Close on stations!” she called. “Engines and Fire Control stand ready.”

Then she switched back to the command channel.

“Tactical, give me a count and classifications. Now!”

“Confirmed, Captain. Working.”

Berg clenched and unclenched her fists as she waited for the Tactical and Sensors Sections to work their way through a mass of new readings.

“Tactical, Bridge. Provisional count – thirteen new contacts, two cruisers, three escorts, eight gateship transports.”

“Oh, hell,” someone muttered across the command channel. They were right to curse. They had just gone from facing three cap ship missile launchers and twelve light launchers, to ten and thirty-two respectively. In terms of firepower, things had just decisively shifted against them.

“Must be a supply convoy coming through,” Berg said through gritted teeth. “God damn their timing!”