The Last Charge (The Nameless War Trilogy Book 3) (5 page)

Alanna wanted to look to see what Udaltsov made of the bizarre welcome, but forced herself to keep her gaze front and centre.

“I expect you are both aware this ship is newly commissioned. However, the Headquarters has informed the Captain that we are expected to report ourselves as combat worthy within the next two weeks.”

Alanna heard a sharp intake of breath beside her. Dati flicked towards Udaltsov with all the precision and warmth of a weapons fire control system.

“You have something to say, Lieutenant?” he asked.

“That will be a very tough schedule to meet, sir,” Udaltsov carefully ventured.

“Yes, it is,” Dati replied almost mildly, before frowning. “However if
Dauntless
is not ready it will not be because my fighters have come up short. Are we entirely clear on that?”

“Yes sir,” Alanna and Udaltsov chorused.

“Good,” Dati said. “The rest of the squadron will arrive in six hours. They are all newly trained pilots, from the training carrier Kiev Flyer.”

“I’m sorry, sir? New pilots?” Alanna interrupted. “I thought I was joining an established squadron.”

“What on earth made you think that, Lieutenant?” Dati replied coldly. “The fleet does not have enough fighters or crews. Headquarters is not willing to strip half a dozen cruisers of their integrated fighter complement to fill
Dauntless
’s hangars. It is as much as I have been able to achieve to get you two to serve as flight leaders. The rest of the squadron are new pilots and they will be looking to you for leadership. You are both temporarily promoted to Lieutenant Commanders, effective immediately. But be certain that if you come up short I will make sure you regret it.” Dati looked at his watch. “You have a few hours of liberty before the rest of the squadron arrives. I suggest you use them to familiarise yourself with the ship. You are both dismissed.”

“Lord mother,” Udaltsov muttered as Dati’s door closed behind them. “When they commissioned the
Yorktown
Class carriers, it was a year before they were considered combat worthy.”

Alanna shrugged as she started to walk down the passageway.

“I was just wondering,” Udaltsov continued as he followed behind. “At the end of the Great Patriotic War, when the Red Army closed in on Berlin, is this what it felt like for the defenders?”

Alanna looked up at him. His tone wasn’t defeatist, more one of honest curiosity.

“Alanna Shermer,” he then said, half to himself. “Where do I know that name from?”

“I’m the only survivor from the last
Dauntless
,” she replied.

Udaltsov gave her a blank look for a moment – then started to look deeply uncomfortable. “Oh I see.”

“You’d have heard about it soon unless the grapevine suffered one hell of a breakdown. More recently I’ve been on the
Deimos
. You?”

“I’m formerly of the
Cerberus
. We only arrived back from Rosa Station three days ago. It is fair to say my captain was not pleased at my removal.”

“I think mine wasn’t sure whether to be pissed off or relieved. I was senior pilot on
Deimos
. How about you?”

“I’ve been senior for the last four months.”

Alanna nodded – a dead man’s boots promotion like so many.

“So we’re supposed to be leading flights of four, but both of us are only used to flying flights of two.” Alanna paused and sighed. “I guess we might as well see what we have to work with,” she said, opening a hatch into the ships galley. “Err… I think we’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere.”

___________________________

During the night
Dauntless
broke lunar orbit and set course down into Earth’s gravity well. By midday the carrier was settled into a high Earth orbit waiting for its new fighter complement to arrive.

Alanna, Udaltsov and Dati were all on the bridge, watching the new squadron arrive. It was the first time Alanna had been up on the bridge or met Captain Philippe Durane. A reservist, Alanna guessed. An elderly man with a round friendly face, he looked more like a favourite grandfather than a military officer. Alanna had caught Dati give him a look of pure contempt and wondered what that was about.

The fighters formed up and landed, it was all pretty smooth but then a pilot who couldn’t land on a carrier that was neither manoeuvring nor accelerating, had no place in a Raven. In turn, each fighter docked with an armature and was drawn into the hangar.

“Too slow, too damn slow,” Dati snarled. “We could have been hit by a dozen missiles in the time it has taken to get them in.”

“Early days, Commander,” Durane replied calmly. “Nothing is perfect from the first.”

“Yes sir,” Dati replied coldly before turning to Alanna and Udaltsov. “You have your assignments, now get down there and take command.”

Schurenhofer had corralled the three newly arrived crews and herded them to a briefing room. Alanna paused on the threshold, remembering the day she had arrived on the old
Dauntless
in the last days of peace. New pilots on their first starship, they’d been like children on a school trip and she’d dreaded seeing that again. But as she walked into the briefing room, that dread, along with any sense of familiarity, faded away. These weren’t pilots expecting to serve in a fleet at peace. They knew exactly what they were getting into. The atmosphere was funereal and she felt herself relax.

Alanna nodded to Schurenhofer.

“Attention on deck!” Schurenhofer barked. Everyone snapped sharply to attention as Alanna walked slowly to the head of the room and looked around.

“My name is Lieutenant Commander Alanna Shermer. I am the only survivor of the last
Dauntless
and I am your new flight leader. My job here is to keep you alive long enough for you to learn how to do yours.”

Chapter Four

Farwell to Convention

20th November 2067
 

Ship Senior Oadra paced slowly around the bridge of the Aèllr cruiser. The normally busy corridors of the great ship were almost deserted. With all non-essential crewmembers landed, now all that remained on the ship was a small diplomatic detail, those needed to navigate, to maintain and if it came to it – fight. That last part was what frightened Oadra and if she was any judge, also most of her crew. She turned back towards the main command display. There was little to see, just an ancient star, three worthless planets… and a human starship. No, not a starship, a
warship
, and not just any ship. Oadra recognised it immediately. Decades previously, during the war between Earth and the Aèllr, that very vessel had hunted the space lanes of the Confederacy. Now it was silent, dark and, like Oadra, waiting.

On the display another indicator appeared, a starship jumping in. Alarm rippled around the bridge. 

“Senior, a vessel has transited inwards. It is human, a diplomatic vessel.”

“Senior,” a communication operative said quietly behind Oadra, “the diplomatic vessel has signalled us.”

The operative passed over a computer pad.

“Senior, the human warship, it is activating its engines,” called out a sensor operative. “It is moving away.”

The warship had accomplished its role, demarking a border that had now, perhaps, ceased to be.

Oadra read the signal. It was as she had expected and dreaded. She reread the last line, irrationally hoping it would somehow change. But no, it continued to read ‘follow me.’

“Helm, bring us in astern of the diplomatic ship.”

Oadra looked around her bridge and smiled weakly.

“Communications, dispatch a drone to Laibris Base, inform them we are en route to Earth.”

___________________________

27th November 2067
 

The magnetic surface in the heels of Admiral Lewis’s boots made a tap-tap sound as he strode down the hospital corridor. His brow was furrowed as his mind worked. Turning into one of the wards, he nodded to the duty nurse. By unwritten rule, rank was largely in abeyance here on wards. While none of the patients in the corridor saluted, those who saw him still straightened into as close to attention as they could manage. Lewis nodded to individual men and women but didn’t pause. The ward wasn’t large – it didn’t need to be. The reality was that in space combat, it was easier to get killed than it was to get wounded. Those who ended up here were in many ways the lucky ones. Lewis paused at the door to remove his cap and knocked before entering. Stepping around the door, he sighed.

“You’re supposed to be in bed,” he said in a mild tone that might have surprised some of his subordinates.

“I was uncomfortable,” his wife replied, looking up from her reader. “Of course I’m not comfortable in this bloody chair either. Did you get everything?”

“Believe it or not I can manage the odd task without my staff officers,” he replied, passing over the bag. “How are you feeling?”

“Better. Over of the worse of it the doctors say,” Laura replied as she rummaged through the bag, while Lewis pulled up the room’s other chair.  “But then in the next breath they say God forbid I insist on acting healthily.”

Until its destruction, Admiral Laura Lewis had been the commanding officer of Junction Station. During its evacuation she’d been subject to smoke inhalation and on return trip to Earth, a predatory infection had taken advantage of the damage to her lungs. By the time they reached their home world, she’d had to be stretchered off the ship.

“While I don’t object to a visit,” Laura commented, “I do understand you have other things on your plate at the moment.”

“The understatement of the century,” Lewis replied dryly. “Admiral Fengzi and his staff are testing a number of new tactical deployments and, frankly, I needed to get out for a while.”

“You don’t have much faith in Fengzi?”

“Not at the best of times and this is far from the best of times. I thought things were bad eighteen months ago. Now though – the problem appears intractable,” Lewis admitted. “We can assume they don’t have the strength to make a direct assault – if they did it wouldn’t have taken them a year to break through the Junction Line. But they don’t need to. They can cut us off from Saturn and once they do, then it is just a matter of time.”

Lewis shrugged to emphasise his point.

“The media is claiming that fuel convoys will be run in,” Laura said.

“Which proves again why journalism is reserved for people without the skills to make it in the fast food industry,” he replied sourly. “With their Faster Than Light sensors and FTL transmitters, they’ll only have put out a picket around Earth and Saturn to be aware of any move we make in virtual real time. We on the other hand will be dealing with the lags inherent to light speed transmissions. So sending out anything less than the entire fleet to escort one of those convoy’s guarantees that the convoy will be intercepted and we will suffer defeat in detail…”

“And if you send out the entire fleet, that will leave Earth exposed,” Laura finished.

“General Westenlake of Planetary Defence has admitted that without the fleet, the best they can hope to achieve is to slow them a little, bleed them a bit, but not stop them.”

Lewis stopped as he stared into space. Long used to him, his wife let the silence stretch out.

“Has any progress been made?” she eventually asked.

“A little. The lighter units operating out of Rosa and Hydra are continuing to strike at the enemy supply lines. So far the Nameless don’t appear to be willing to take the time to destroy either of those bases. Not that they need to.”

“This is no time for defeatism, Paul!” she exclaimed. “God knows there’s enough of that going around already!”

The intensity of Laura’s statement was offset by a sudden fit of coughing. He hurriedly passed her a glass of water.

“The problem and solution are what they always have been,” Lewis said after a long silence. “The Nameless can engage with missiles from far beyond plasma cannon range. Plus, given that they can jump a good deal deeper into a Mass Shadow than we can, it’s difficult to see how we can close the range without a degree of co-operation from them. If however, our ships do succeed in getting into gun range, then the advantage switches decisively to us. The question always has been – how to get there.”

“Fighters?”

“Possibly; depending on serviceability, between us and Planetary Defence we can field maybe thirty five squadrons, but getting them on target is still difficult,” Lewis replied staring into the middle distance. “Although now that the Nameless have fighters – even primitive ones – that means a portion of any strike will have to carry anti-fighter rather than anti-ship missiles. Right now, I am sorry to say, our best hope hinges on them making a serious mistake. And that isn’t much of a plan.”

The room once again lapsed into silence.

I shouldn’t be here
, Lewis thought to himself.
I shouldn’t have to do this, not again
. The day before Lewis had made one of his infrequent visits to his assigned office in Headquarters. Mostly he preferred to run his command from
Warspite
, even when she was in for refit. But in the office, pinned to a wall, was a calendar, one which some unknown individual had continued to flip the pages. On yesterday’s day’s page was a note that Lewis had himself scribbled more than a year before. It had been the day scheduled for him to hand over command of the Home Fleet and end his time as space-going officer. All that remained would have been a two-year ground posting, in which he would provide oversight for weapons development and figure out what to do in retirement. He glanced at Laura. He could remember those days after the last war, when any trip out of port was a journey into the unknown. The universe back then had seemed like a bright and wonderful place. How had it come to this?

Finally Laura spoke. “Unless I’m dead I will discharge myself by the end of the week.”

“Are you sure that’s…”

“I’m going to Brian’s,” Laura cut him off. “I sometimes think we didn’t spend enough time with him when he was growing up. If the worst comes to pass, that’s where I want to be.”

“His house is well away from anywhere that’s likely to be the target of any first strike,” Lewis said distantly.

“Paul!” Laura said sharply before continuing more softly, “if you get a chance, please speak to him.”

“If I possibly can I will, but if I can’t… tell him…”

“I will. You’d better go. Your mind isn’t here. Either get some sleep or get back to work.”

Lewis’s return to
Warspite
was subject to a detour to one of Earth’s smaller orbital dockyards, to view yet another weapon system being frantically rushed into service. He’d already seen several that were at such a technologically immature state that they were probably more dangerous to the user than enemy. Still, the presence of Commodore Tsukioka, the fleet’s intelligence chief, indicated this one at least might be of some use. Looking down into the enclosed space of the yard, Lewis saw what appeared to be rows of the fleet’s standard emergency message drone. Some had been joined together in groups of three by a central housing.

“Alright Commodore, give me the run down,” Lewis said

“This, sir, started out as a planetary defence project,” Tsukioka said, nodding to General Westenlake. “It was designed to give a stand-off strike capacity to the defence grid and to support to the fighters on sorties beyond Earth’s orbit.”

“The fruits of our labours,” said Westenlake. “Unfortunately it could have done with more time to be ripened.”

“We’re calling them torpedoes,” Tsukioka continued. “The drones use what is basically a cut down starship engine. Such an engine doesn’t have the high-end performance of a missile drive, but unlike a missile engine, these can run for several days. The original plan was for something more ambitious, but as an expedient to allow us to use existing production lines, the engineers have modified the basic Mk Thirteen Emergency Message Drone. The jump drives have been removed and space used for a basic sensor package and a warhead. The navigation software had to be completely replaced – the original package was designed to avoid running into things as its first priority.”

“And the role they are intended for?” Lewis replied, turning back to the two men. “The profile I’m looking at doesn’t seem fast enough for anti-ship purposes.”

“Sir,” the Commodore said. “These torpedoes aren’t intended to function as a standard missile. They haven’t the acceleration to close like a missile, but they are capable of accelerating for hours.”

“Endurance rather than sprint capacity,” Lewis said.

“The role envisioned by Planetary Defence was to fire off several hundred torpedoes in the opening stages of an engagement, to flank and hem in an opposing force.”

“A blocker, rather than a striker,” Lewis murmured. “A semi-mobile minefield.”

“Yes, sir,” Tsukioka replied. “The ones with the extra casings, that’s primarily fuel. They can accelerate for up to three days. The torpedoes probably won’t land many hits, but they carry too much punch to be ignored. However, the rushed development has caused problems.”

“Oh?”

“A thirty percent failure rate is projected. We have three hundred torpedoes, which are tied into the Planetary Defence Grid. Production means we’re adding another four a day to the available units.”

“Could they be tied into our ships?”

“Sir?”

“These torpedoes, they match the physical dimensions of the Mk Thirteen. The next battle will be fought inside this solar system. We will have no requirement for message drones.”

Tsukioka glanced towards one of the developers.

“Yes, sir, I believe so.”

“It gives us another card to play,” Lewis said as mentally he started to slot the new weapons into his plans.

30th November 2067
 

Lewis lay on his bunk on
Warspite
staring up at the deckhead, his mind drifting from one possible deployment to another. The great battleship was now out of dock and holding in a high Earth orbit with the rest of the fleet. Nothing new was coming to mind and nothing they’d already considered would stand even the smallest chance of success. All options were on the table, from fielding untested weapon systems to using untried tactics that would have seen a first year cadet kicked out of officer training for even suggesting during peacetime. None of it would work – the Nameless simply possessed all the advantages. If there was an answer to their dilemma, Lewis couldn’t see it. His eyes started to flicker shut as he drifted off.

The main alarm went off with a banshee like scream. Lewis was up and out of the bunk instantly, simultaneously trying to ram his intercom earpiece into place.

“Bridge, report!” he shouted.

“Sir, an alien ship has just jumped in!”