The Last Charge (The Nameless War Trilogy Book 3) (8 page)

“Yes, what is it?”

“Sir, Communications. We’re receiving a transmission from Headquarters. We’re ordered to put it up ship wide.”

“Very well. I’ll be up to the bridge in a moment.”

The grapevine must have kicked in because more of the ship’s officers were hanging around than had any legitimate reason to be there. Crowe listened to the message, then nodded to the communications officer.

“Men and women of the fleet,” Admiral Wingate’s voice echoed through
Deimos
and every other ship in the fleet. “A short time ago we received word from our reconnaissance ships that the leading elements of the Nameless fleet have now reached Alpha Centauri. We believe their arrival in this solar system is days or perhaps only hours away. I will not lie to you. The battle ahead will be the hardest we of the fleet have ever fought and the odds are now against us. But this is what we have trained for, what we have prepared for and what we have sworn to do – to stand between Earth and all that would threaten it.

“Our task has often been hard and frequently thankless, but now more than ever it is essential. Shortly your ships will be taking their final positions and I need not tell you that from here, there will be no retreat. Defeat here will mean the end of Earth history. But should the worst happen, we can draw comfort from the convoy that will leave for the Confederacy. So even if it is without Earth, the human race will go on. I wish you all good luck. Admiral Wingate out.”

Crowe looked around his bridge. Officers and ratings avoid eye contact, both with him and each other.

“Well, now we know,” he said. “I expect we will shortly be receiving orders to take our position. Commander Bhudraja, I want all officers to make final checks of their sections. I will be conducting a personal inspection of all compartments. That ought to give everyone something to think about.”

The replies to his instructions were low and mumbled.

Within an hour, led by
Warspite
, the convoy of transports had broken orbit and were heading for the Red Line, joined by the other seven ships of the Fast Division plus three of the fleet’s fighter carriers and their escorts – all en route to their own positions out beyond the heliopause. At the outer marker the personnel transports and their thousands of hibernating colonists were handed over to the Aèllr cruiser. It was something that two years previously would have been unthinkable, but now passed almost unremarked. There was too much to do. Messages of good luck were passed back and forth as ships prepared to jump. The carriers were the first to go, and then
Deimos
made her jump.

“Commencing descent,” the helmsman muttered nervously as
Deimos
completed the turn over and began to slowly drop towards the surface of Phobos.

He wasn’t the only one who looked worried, Crowe thought to himself as he surreptitiously tightened his seat restraints. At the last minute, Headquarters had sent up a landing programme for helm. Crowe had looked it over and decided that when it came to it, he would put his faith in the crew that knew
Deimos
as a real ship, rather than a sterile computer simulation. A hundred kilometres to port, the cruiser
Michael Collins
was starting to roll as the rest of the formation came in behind. A battleship and seven cruisers, slowly dropping towards the centre of the Stickney Crater, all of them hoping the hastily welded struts would take the shock of landing. As the ship with lowest mass,
Deimos
would be best able to pull away at the last moment and so would lead them in.

“All hands, this is the Bridge. No crewmembers are to move until instructed by the Bridge. Everyone brace for landing,” Crowe ordered across the main intercom channel, before adding to himself: “never thought I’d say that on a starship.”

When a couple of the bridge crew briefly looked towards him he realised he’d spoken across the bridge channel.

“Never thought we’d hear you say it, sir,” someone replied.

Crowe gave a brief grin.

“Helm, be ready with the throttle,” he ordered. “If the struts give or we don’t find firm footing, then we need to go full burn. But await my order.”

“Yes, sir.”

With Phobos’s weak gravitational pull, the approach was painfully slow. As
Deimos
took a tail down posture, range finding lasers swept the surface of the moon below and the computer compared the readings to the charts of Phobos.

“We’re slightly off course, compensating,” said the helmsman tersely.

“We are seven minutes out from landing zone,” Colwell called out. “Radar confirms landing zone is clear and level. We are clear for final approach.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Crowe replied, before switching intercom channels. “Commander Bhudraja, are your tether teams ready?”

“Confirmed, sir. Airlocks have been flushed, we are ready,” Bhudraja replied.

The bridge lapsed into silence as
Deimos
continued to slowly drop towards the surface. The occasional firing of the manoeuvring thrusters was enough to keep the descent under control as the computer ran through the landing programme. At twenty metres up, the main engines pulsed for a split second, enough to arrest their momentum completely and send dust billowing up from the surface. In the low gravity some of it had probably achieved escape velocity.

“Radar has lost the surface!” Colwell barked out. “Too much dust!”

“Steady!” Crowe shouted. “We still have it on visual!”

On the main holo the camera in the stern suddenly got a clear view of the surface – coming up fast!

“Thrusters, all full!” Crowe, shouted. “Brace, brace, brace!”

A shudder ran through the
Deimos
as she settled.

Then she shifted.

“We’re tilting!” someone shouted, but Crowe’s own senses had already told him that. The cruiser’s centrifuge had been closed down for the landing and they positioned the bridge so it had the same arbitrary ‘Up’ designation as the areas outside the centrifuge.

“Activate the jacks on Strut One!” Crowe shouted.

Deimos
seemed to hesitate for a moment, then reversed the tilt and settled.

“Lieutenant?”

“We’re … zero point seven nine degrees off the vertical.”

Colwell looked up from the computer panel. Even across the bridge and through his helmet visor, Crowe could see the relief on his face.

“We’re within tolerances, Commodore,” he announced.

“Thank God for that!” Crowe said in an explosive breath. “Coms, Bridge. Activate the beacon for the rest of the squadron. Commander Bhudraja, get your teams out there.”

Outside crewmembers went shinning down the flanks of the cruiser into the dust that was still billowing around them. Others tossed down cables and soon the radio channels were crackling with voices as the landing parties began to hammer steel tethers into Phobos’s grey surface that would keep them stable. Above them, the rest of the Fast Division lined up for their own approach.

Over the next hour Crowe watched the rest of the ships slowly descend and settle on the moon’s surface. Some came down dangerously close to one another, while others, like
Deimos
, tottered for a moment before finding firm footing. But each made it down safely, successively throwing up more and more dust. Finally
Warspite
lumbered down and once again Crowe found himself holding his breath. A brief pulse of her engines threw out more dust than had any of the previous ships and completely blotted out the landing zone. Totally blinded, Crowe could only wait until Communication reported the battleship’s beacon had activated.

With the last of the warships down, an orbiting support ship released its drop pods. Threading their way through the landed ships to put down safely and with their tethers in place, crewmembers were soon hooking their ships up to the fuel supplies within the pods.

“Sir.”

“Yes Commander?” Crowe replied without turning from the main holo.

“I’ve finished the inspection of the tethers and they are all secured,” Bhudraja reported. “We are hooked up to the extra fuel tanks and the Chief reports he’ll have the lines to the heat dumps dug in within the next three hours.”

“The reactors?”

“Number One is going into shut down and will be cold within two hours. Number Two is at minimum power.”

“So that means we have up to six weeks of endurance. That’s good, Commander, that is good. I want you to pass along to the crew that they have done very well. Do you know about the rest of the Squadron?”

“According to radio transmissions they’re okay, but the dust we’ve thrown up means we can’t get a communications laser hook up,” Bhudraja replied.

“So I see,” Crowe replied. The holo in front of him was set for visual mode, but with all the dust flying around in the moon’s low gravity environment, it was like looking into a blizzard.

“It should clear…” Bhudraja started.

“I hope it doesn’t,” Crowe interrupted. “Unless the Nameless have accurate scans of the solar system, they’ll likely assume this is natural. Ground returns will mean we’re lost to radar. Once we have the lines from the radiators dug in there won’t be a heat profile and this dust will conceal us even from visuals.

“I wonder whether the Admiral thought of this?” Bhudraja asked.

Crowe turned towards him.

“Who knows sir,” he replied. “But at least we’ve successfully completed the first step.”

20th December 2067
 

The intercom above Crowe’s bed buzzed.

“What is it?” he muttered as he rubbed his eyes.

“Sir, it’s the Nameless. They’re here.”

Chapter Six

Day One

How much do they know about us? Are we as much a mystery to them as they are to us?
Lewis thought to himself as he stood on the bridge of
Warspite
following the main holo as it played again through the readings.
I doubt it
. This, this was too potent a show of strength to be anything other than planned. To win the psychological battle before even a single shot was fired.

None of the ships of the Fast Division could see the Nameless directly. The mass of Phobos blocked direct line of sight. Instead they were getting readings from a small observation satellite orbiting Mars and transmitting a signal via laser. It introduced an extra element of risk for the Fast Division, but Lewis had to be able to see. On the holo, row after row of Nameless ships dropped into real space. Escort ships at first, then cruisers, carriers and finally capital ships, slowly, methodically dropping into real space between the orbits of Mars and Saturn. Clouds of fighters deployed outwards into a protective sphere around the fleet. For the first time in over a quarter century, an alien fleet was entering Earth’s solar system; and no Battle Fleet ships were engaging them.

Looking around the
Warspite
’s bridge, Lewis could see the effect it was having. Officers and ratings were glancing over their shoulders at the holo. Their confidence was being shaken and if they were to stand a chance, he needed them sharp.

“Tactical, what’s the count?” he asked.

“Bridge, we have one hundred and thirty-three escorts, seventy-four cruisers, thirty-one capital ships and twelve carriers. Support ships are still jumping in, sir.

“Two hundred and fifty ships,” Captain Sheehan whispered, “Sweet Jesus!”

Between them, Home and Second Fleets could come up with a combined strength of under one hundred ships of all types.

“They’re light in carriers,” Lewis grunted. “So at about sixty fighters per carrier, that gives them about seven hundred and twenty, plus perhaps another sixty flying from escorts, less whatever they lose due to serviceability issues. That’s against the four hundred or so that Planetary Defence and we can come up with, so odds of less than two to one. Unless their fighters have got a lot better than they were a few weeks ago, then we have the advantage there. Interesting.”

“What do we do now, sir?” Sheehan asked.

“We, Captain? We, Captain, do nothing. The first move belongs to our colleagues and good luck to them.” Lewis turned towards
Warspite
’s captain. “Captain Holfe, I would like to invite you and your officers to dinner this evening.”

___________________________

Prior to jump technology interstellar space had represented the final barrier to human expansion, an empty gulf of near nothingness separating Earth’s sun from its nearest neighbour. Before first contact, science fiction writers had imagined vast colony ships setting forth on centuries’ long one-way journeys, their crews either hibernating through countless centuries or entire generations living out their lives in ships that would be the only world they knew.

Those imagined futures became obsolete the day that first alien ship force landed on Earth, the day humanity seized jump drive technology and made it their own. From that point, interstellar space changed from barrier to irrelevance. As soon as a ship cleared the mass shadow of its home planet, it could jump away, free to travel without ever passing through the great emptiness. This was no place for humanity.

Yet humanity was here.

The carrier
Dauntless
and her three escorting destroyers hung silent and motionless, all but invisible in the darkness. Nearby, three support ships waited in equal silence. In front of them, so distant that it was just one speck among countless others, was Earth’s sun.

Alanna took a deep breath, adjusted her grip on the bar and made the lift in a single smooth motion. As her arms locked straight, she began to count under her breath.

“One-one thousand, two-one thousand, three-one thousand…”

She continued the count to ten, then, slowly lowered the weights back down. Sitting up from the bench she frowned to herself. To be able to lift and hold that amount was acceptable, but acceptable wasn’t the same as good. Fighter crews could expect to be subject to major G loads in combat. Raven fighters might be fly-by-wire and in theory the control column could be worked with a fingertip, but in a tight turn the pilot’s hand might weight as much as his or her torso did in Earth gravity. So muscle building wasn’t so much a choice as an occupational requirement. On top of that, there was the problem that went all the way back to the earliest days of the space age: muscular dystrophy. What with everything else happening on board, she hadn’t had a chance to do as much exercise as she would have liked.

Most of the
Dauntless
’s flight crews were in the gym along with a few other members of the crew. But aside from heavy breathing, the room was silent. The cause was in one corner of the gym, exercising on one of the rowing machines. Even as he worked the machine, Commander Dati’s eyes swept the room and stopped on Alanna. Aware of his gaze, she wiped the back of her neck and took a very slow drink of water.

“Are you done, Miss Shermer?” Dati boomed in a sarcastic tone.

Alanna glanced around the silent room.

“Yes, sir, I am,” she replied, before getting up and walking out. She could have done with more time, but equally she could see several of her own flight crew were pushing themselves too hard. If exercise was necessary, over-exercise was dangerous. But once one person left the gym, others would quickly follow. Dati’s displeasure, however, would focus on the first one out. But she could take that.

Pausing briefly to pull on her flight suit, she climbed up and out of the centrifuge, then made her way to
Dubious
’s hangar. Schurenhofer was sat in the pilot seat working her way down through the checklist. The deck crew signed off on a fighter when any maintenance work was done, but Alanna hadn’t lasted this long by relying on a signature. When you were out there on your own if something broke, it was your problem. Alanna worked her way round
Dubious
, checking control surfaces and thruster assemblies. Satisfied she pulled herself aboard.

“Hello, Skipper,” Schurenhofer said as Alanna sat in. “Nearly done.”

“Everything okay?”

“So far: perhaps the age of miracles has not yet passed,” Schurenhofer replied. “How are things upstairs?”

“Tense,” Alanna replied.

“So everything’s normal then,” Schurenhofer grunted.

“I have to say it, but this was not what I was expecting,” Alanna said as she stretched out. “I expected to find things tough here, but not like this. I have a bunch of newbie pilots that I have to shield from their own C.O.”

“Yeah.”

There had been numerous drills since
Dauntless
’s hurried commissioning, some in the simulators but most in live flight. Considering the majority of the pilots were just out of training and strangers to each other, they weren’t doing badly. In fact, they’d started out pretty well. If a hanging focused the mind, then preparing for combat tempered that focus into something that could cut steel. But that wasn’t good enough for Dati. Each debriefing turned into an hour-long torrent of abuse as every tiny imperfection was put under a microscope and scorn heaped upon some unfortunate crewmember. Not yet into combat and Alanna could see morale dropping. She’d started speaking up, countering Dati and pointing out that many of the flaws he’d highlighted were irrelevant in the context of combat operations. She’d even dropped the odd clanger in simulations just to draw Dati’s wrath away from other members of her flight. Much as he might rage, there was one factor Dati couldn’t either ignore or dismiss. Alanna had over a year in frontline service. The fact she was still alive proved she knew her job.

Dati wasn’t subjecting Udaltsov’s flight to the same treatment though. It wasn’t his fault really. With a couple of extra years of service on her, he seemed to have military obedience more thoroughly rooted in him and hadn’t yet managed to get his head round the idea that a superior officer was someone you had to work around.

“Heard something interesting about the good Commander,” Schurenhofer said as she ticked the last box on the checklist.

“Oh?”

“He was stationed on the
Yorktown
when the war started.”

“Well that’s bullshit,” Alanna said dismissively.

When the Nameless started their war on humanity it had been with a surprise attack on the Fleet base at Baden. In a day of disasters, the
Yorktown
was one that stood out. Caught at her mooring, the big carrier was destroyed without striking a single blow in her own defence. As far as Alanna had ever heard, there were no survivors.

“He supposedly wasn’t on her when the Nameless hit – away on compassionate leave,” Schurenhofer expanded.

Alanna made no reply. That story was sufficiently short on frills to be plausible. Being the only survivor of a ship, to be the only one to have come back was bad enough when you had been there, when you
knew
that you had done all that you could. How much worse could it be if you hadn’t been there? Could that anger turn outwards rather than inwards?

“Why would anyone put someone like that in charge of a squadron?”

“Why would anyone put someone like you in charge of a flight, Skipper?” Schurenhofer replied giving her a sidelong glance. “Not enough flight crews to go round.”

Before Alanna could make any reply, her intercom beeped.

“All flight crews to the briefing room, all flight crews to the briefing room,” squawked an automated message.

The entire Squadron waited. Some were still pulling on their flight suits and there was a low background murmur of conversation that even Dati’s frown couldn’t silence. When Captain Durane walked into the briefing room they came to attention. The imminence of the combat didn’t seem to worry him. If anything, it seemed to put an extra spring in his step.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” Durane began as he took his place at the head of the room. “A few minutes ago we received an FTL transmission from Earth. The Nameless have begun to jump into our solar system. As previously agreed, a fighter and strike boat attack will be put in as they deploy. This is an opportunity to put them off their stroke, make it clear that we are not about to roll over or surrender the initiative.

Given the enemy’s position and composition, Headquarters has ordered we use Plan Welcome One. Forty minutes from now, we will jump back into the solar system, approximately inside the orbit of Neptune. From there you will launch, making your own jump to reach the combat zone. Flights One and Two will be armed with a mix of anti-fighter and anti-ship missiles.”

Nodding to Alanna, Durane added: “Flight Three will carry a pure anti-fighter load out. Your objective will be firstly to draw out and engage the enemy fighters to clear the way for our strike boats. Your secondary objective will be to engage and destroy either support ships or carriers. Commander Dati will now give you your detailed briefings. Good hunting to you all and give them hell!”

With their respective weapon controllers starting up the four Ravens of Flight Three and the deck crews finishing the arming, Alanna gave her final briefing.

“Alright, whatever else happens, make sure you wingmen stick close to your leader,” she told them. “I don’t want to find myself floating around out there on my own. Remember, we’ll have a tech advantage, but they’ll definitely have a numerical one. So our first pass will be with missiles so that we can thin the herd a bit, before closing to gun range. Even so, we’ll have to be careful to avoid being mobbed. Above all else, we have to be sure we don’t get boxed in,”

“I don’t get why Planetary Defence is only putting in half of their fighters,” complained Lieutenant Ponta of the fighter
B for Bold
.

“Basic strategy,” Alanna replied. “Don’t let the enemy get a good idea of your strength unless you have to. If they’ve only seen half the fighters we have, then that should leave their force projections way off.”

Ponta nodded unhappily.

“Unless someone pulls a death ray out of their ass, we aren’t going to win this today, even if we deploy every fighter we have,” she added. “This is opening night stuff. Oh and by the way, the rest of us will be buying the drinks for the first one to make ace.”

“All hands, brace for thrust! All hands, brace for thrust!” squawked the intercom.

“Get to your planes, folks. This show is about to hit the road.”

Alanna watched them go and felt old and sad as she wondered to herself how many of them would still be alive a week from now. The first five combat sorties were statistically the most dangerous for new pilots. Trained but not experienced, if they got through those five, then their chances of survival shot up as they learned to react without conscious thought. She’d tried not to get to know them, so it wouldn’t hurt as much when they started dying. But they went and said things that made them into people rather than just names and ranks. Ponta was a devout Catholic who always wore rosary beads under his shirt. Jacka was engaged to be married to her girlfriend and had tried to arrange the ceremony before shipping out, but bureaucracy had defeated her. Finally there was Andrews, an Australian and as devoted to rugby, as Ponta was to God. These were just a few fragments from their lives, but far more than Alanna wanted to know about any of them.