The Last Charge (The Nameless War Trilogy Book 3) (13 page)

“
Illustrious
wasn’t destroyed, Captain,” Lewis said glancing up. “But she was badly hit. Half of her hangars and most of her fighters were knocked out. Thanks to the efforts of her escort the Nameless didn’t manage to finish her off, but
Puma
was lost and
Wasp
badly damaged. So the
Illustrious
task group is off the board.”

Lewis returned to his reading.

And that was it. One ship and probably its entire crew gone and another two damaged to an extent that guaranteed heavy casualties, all condensed and diminished into a single sentence. Sheehan knew Lewis well, but had never known anyone else who could compartmentalise so ruthlessly. In the three and half years he’d served as the Admiral’s Chief of Staff, he’d rarely known him to speak on any personal matter. Now more than ever, he had apparently focused himself entirely on the job. Sheehan wondered if Lewis allowed himself to think about his family, even in the privacy of his own mind.

“We have fifteen days,” Lewis said quietly, so quietly Sheehan doubted he had intended to speak at all. He turned toward the main holo at the centre of the bridge. “We daren’t push any further – we wouldn’t have the fuel to either fight or run. The question will be whether to break for Earth, for Saturn or beyond the heliopause and meet with the carriers. A powerful and mobile gun squadron might make life difficult for the Nameless but unless they are having logistical issues we are not aware of, they can simply play safe.”

The Admiral lapsed back into silence, still staring at the holo. Sheehan waited patiently for the next order. As he did, a thought occurred to him that he had never expected to have. Could the Admiral make the decision? Two years ago he would have laughed at the suggestion that a man like Lewis could be frozen into indecision. But now – now he genuinely wondered. The Admiral was an old man and maybe a tired one. He’d given the fleet most of his life, had sent not just people, but friends to their deaths. Had he reached his limit and if so, what could be done? Finally Lewis moved, but only to put his earpiece back in place.

“Sir, perhaps some time away from the bridge would be useful,” he ventured.

The Admiral’s cold eyes turned on Sheehan.

“And go where, Captain?” he asked calmly.

“Perhaps some sleep sir, a walk around the ship or just a few hours off. There is nothing that comes in here that can’t be got to you in seconds.”

Lewis made no immediate reply.

“My cabin, Captain, is not a place I wish to spend much time,” he replied eventually. “It has four walls and a lot of old ghosts.”

Sheehan wondered how to reply to such an uncharacteristic statement. But Lewis carried on speaking.

“I will take a tour of the ship in a while. There is no need to inform the officers or crew. Having an Admiral suddenly appear among them will give them something to focus on. You are dismissed, Captain.”

Sheehan nodded and left. Although he tried to conceal it, Lewis could see his chief of staff was troubled. He wasn’t the only one. The Fast Division simply wasn’t getting the opening it needed and Lewis was starting to doubt it ever would. The lag resulting from the distance between Mars and Earth was simply too great. By the time the light speed transmissions and emissions reached
Warspite
, the Nameless were already leaving. For weeks his mind had churned, searching for an answer, but one didn’t seem to present itself. For the past few days, he’d found that all he could do was scan the civilian radio bands, listening to Earth slowly shut down.

Reaching out he touched a control and reactivated the communications console. Randomly he chose a radio channel.

Loyal Listeners, the Federal authorities have just informed us that this station will no longer be supplied with power. In a couple of hours’ time, we will be cut off and this I can tell you blows. But despair not listeners. Our management has managed to secure a backup generator. We will be on air at Six PM Eastern Central Time for as long as we can. Now that this serious business is dealt with, we have a couple of hours until shutdown. So we are going to give you the best of Alternative Rock from the past three decades! And all totally ad free – because if this is the end of the world, then we ain’t going quietly!

31st January 2068
 

Admiral Wingate wrapped his hands around the mug and waited for the heat to thaw out his fingers. Although Fleet Headquarters had its own power supply, independent of the local grid, the output had been dropped to the barest minimum to conserve fuel for as long as possible. The heating had been shut off the same day the Nameless arrived, as were the lifts and everything else now viewed as a luxury. Wingate had abandoned his office located at the top of the building and moved down to the ground floor, which was also more convenient for the main control room and the Council chamber. But as the heat leeched out of the building and Europe plunged into the worst winter in decades, even in the centre of the building it became bitingly cold. Finishing his drink, Wingate headed for the control room. The picture was the same as it had been for over a month now. A cluster of red blips hovered between Mars and Saturn like a sore. Speckled across the entire solar system were other red dots; the Nameless Fleet and its outlying scouts. With the information based on light speed sensors it was all out of date. The only green blips were around Earth and Saturn. Occasionally they caught sight of the three carriers operating from the edge of the system, but currently none were visible. With Nameless jammers online their Faster Than Light transmitters had been rendered useless most of the time and radio transmissions far too slow, so there was no way to exercise tactical control from Earth. As he always did when he came into the control room, Wingate darted his eyes to Mars and silent Phobos. Their supposed ace remained up their sleeve, yet to be played and perhaps unplayable. 

“Carol,” he said as he walked back into his office. “Is everything organised for the briefing?”

“No, sir,” his chief of staff replied.

Bundled up in a heavy jacket, with a red nose, she looked miserable.

“We’ve been informed sir, that we will have a lot of non-sitting governments listening in as observers. Some governments though are having problems making the connection. The Council have agreed to delay the start by three quarters of an hour.”

“Will that be enough?”

“Probably not sir,” she replied with a shake of her head. “The governments of Singapore, New Zealand, Finland, South Africa and Argentina currently can’t find sufficiently secure internet connections.”

The Internet, possibly one of greatest structures of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, was already starting to crumble as one server after another lost its power supply. As soon as the lifeblood of hydrogen had been cut, the governments of the world had begun to cut power to the least important parts of their electrical grids. As hydrogen supplies failed and strategic reserves ran dry, one country after another started to shut down everything judged non-critical. Even for a man like Wingate, who understood on an intellectual level how little really counted as ‘critical’, it was still shocking to see entire cities go cold and dark. Aside from a few official vehicles, little was moving on the streets outside. All economic activity had ceased as the population of planet Earth battened down the hatches.

Everyone in the room stood as the holograms of the Council chamber shimmered into life. The Presidents of the
United States and Brazil, and the Prime Ministers of China, Israel, France, Germany, India and Australia all appeared. On the military side of the Council table, General Westenlake of Planetary Defence and Admiral Fengzi were also represented in hologramatic form. On the other side of Wingate stood Secretary Daniel Callahan, the fleet’s political head, who since the start of the war had worked hard to protect the fleet from internal threats. Now he looked worn and tired.

“Please, gentlemen,” President Clifton said, waving them to be seated. “Admirals, I know you have prepared us a briefing, but I have no interest in hearing it because I can predict what you will say. The Nameless remain out there, the fleet remains here. The brave fighter pilots of the Fleet and Planetary Defence continue to beat themselves against the enemy and all the while out fuel stocks diminish.”

Clifton paused and looked around the chamber.

“Admiral, we are at crisis point. A few minutes ago I signed an executive order that will allow for the shut down of power supplies to all users, including hospitals. In essence, I have just signed the death warrants for hundreds of Americans currently lying in hospital beds across the nation. But worst of all, that’s not enough! In less than two weeks,
America will be down to the trickle of power that comes from wind and wave energy. The USA has handed over fuel to the fleet and Planetary Defence, but we are now only days away from having no fuel to give.”

“The same is true of us all,” said the Prime Minister of India. “You speak of crisis, but we are now beyond that. I am informed that my country is now only seventy-two hours from final shut down. If the fleet is to successfully defend this planet, then the window of opportunity in which to achieve this is closing.”

“Admiral Wingate, your strategy of waiting for the Nameless to make a direct assault has failed,” Clifton finished flatly.

Wingate pushed his briefing notes to one side.

“Yes Madam President, you’re correct. It has.”

The admission visibly shook some of the Council members. Wingate ploughed on before anyone could speak.

“We had estimated that to sustain a fleet of their size across such a distance would place such a logistical burden on the Nameless that they would be forced to attempt to bring the siege to a premature end. Whether because their supply system is stronger than we expected or our elements at Rosa and Hydra have been unable to inflict sufficient losses on them, this has not occurred. We have equally come to the conclusion that a more high risk approach must be considered.”

“You have a proposal, Admiral?”
Clifton asked.

“Simply charging the fleet out there is no more practical than it was a month ago. Our objective must be to lure the Nameless deep enough into a mass shadow so that they cannot jump away. The Fast Division remains our trump card.”

“How can you be sure of that, Admiral?” the German Chancellor asked. “The Nameless have entered Earth’s mass shadow several times and still Admiral Lewis has not moved!”

“And he has been right not to,” said Fengzi before Wingate could reply.

This coming from a man who had frequently and openly clashed with Lewis in the past that cut the Council off.

“Mars is currently about as far from Earth as it gets. Speed of light transmission means Admiral Lewis only sees the Nameless near Earth, nearly twenty minutes
after
they arrive. He requires a minimum of twenty minutes to heat engines, start reactors and get his ships off the surface. To get outside the Mars mass shadow and make the jump takes another twenty.”

“So, an hour’s delay between their arrival and his response,”
Clifton said heavily. “Can we improve on that?”

“No,” Wingate replied. “We can send radio transmissions, but those have no speed advantage over the readings Lewis can get from his own passive sensors. The Nameless have too many FTL transmitters that are better than ours. We can’t punch through. If we used message drones or a courier ship, it would compromise the Fast Division. No, what we believe we must do is keep the Nameless close to Earth for longer, at a time when Lewis can be alerted beforehand and be ready.”

“How?” asked the Indian Premier.

“Live bait,” said Fengzi.

“In essence that is correct,” Wingate said. “What we propose is to send a convoy to Saturn. Using six of the fastest tankers we have available, we intend to run in with a light escort. Six tankers worth of fuel will extend the endurance of the fleet by another three weeks. We are offering the Nameless a target they cannot refuse. We can make Lewis and the carriers aware of where the convoy will be, which will avoid some of the inherent delays.”

“Why haven’t we tried this before?”
Clifton asked.

“It’s a high risk. By sending out a small force, we will give the Nameless an opportunity to cut out a section of our fleet. Previously such a course would have been suspicious. Previously we wouldn’t have been in an obviously desperate enough position to risk it. The Nameless can see that Earth is shutting down. If we don’t get that fuel through we won’t have a fleet. This is our last chance to pull the Nameless in while the fleet is still operational. We are calling it Operation Gauntlet.”

Chapter Eight

Running the Gauntlet

5th February 2068 

Shattered metal work, white like bone, severed cables that bled and in her ears, the screams, the screams of the dead.

Willis woke with a start and for a moment thought she was back on the
Hood
. But the cabin was too big and the last time she’d seen hers on
Hood
, it was after a Tample laser had sliced straight through. 

The intercom above her bunk buzzed again and recollection finally kicked in. She was on board
Black Prince
and it was the intercom rather than the main alarm that had woken her.

“Willis here, what is it?” she asked.

“Officer of the Watch; I’m sorry to wake…”

“What is it?” Willis repeated, struggling to keep the snap out of her voice.

“Captain, we’ve been ordered to break formation and drop down into low orbit. You are ordered to attend a briefing at
Starforge Three
.”

“When?”

“Ninety minutes, Captain.”

Willis pushed herself upright as she rubbed her eyes and tried to think what this could mean. Her tired brain refused to cooperate.

“Manoeuvre us as ordered and prep the shuttle. I’ll be up in a few minutes.”

“Christ, Faith, you look rough,” said Commodore Dandolo as Willis came into the briefing room. A yawn had chosen the precise moment she walked through the hatch to force its way out.

“With all due respect, sir,” Willis replied as she slumped into a seat, “you’re no oil painting yourself at the moment.”

“You asked for that,” Captain Ozo of the
Cetshwayo
said from his seat, arms folded across his chest and his eyes closed as Dandolo grinned at Willis. The briefing room was one of the smaller ones. Someone had put a plate of sandwiches and a large thermos container of what was presumably coffee on a small table to one side of the room. Willis really, really wanted coffee, but she also really wanted to stay in her chair and go to sleep. Dandolo dropped himself into a seat before she could work out whether asking a superior officer to pour the drinks was pushing it.

“Our own damn fault for having a war with people who seem to have a nineteen hour cycle,” he said.

Fighter strikes were the latest move by the Nameless. One of their carriers would drop in as close to Earth as they could manage, launch thirty to forty fighters and jump away. The fighters would then make a fast run through before being recovered on the other side of the planet. The raids had achieved very little in terms of damage, but they were occurring two or three times a day, putting the entire fleet on alert each time, costing precious fuel and disrupting everyone’s sleep patterns.

“Any idea what we’ve been called for?” Ozo asked.

“My guess is we’ll be redeployed and split up for close defence of the main orbital platforms,” said Dandolo. “Well, commanding a squadron was nice while it lasted.”

“They’ve already got the starforts for that,” Willis said. “In fact, that’s what they’re there for.”

“What else could it be?” Dandolo asked as he looked towards the coffee and then at Willis, probably wondering whether he could get away with ordering her to pour.

“Hello? Are we in the right place?” said somebody in the hatchway.

Looking around Willis saw a commander standing in the hatch, with at least two more officers behind him. The rings on his sleeve were shiny and new, so a recent promotion.

“Where are you trying to be?” Dandolo asked.

“The briefing at eleven hundred.”

“I think you’ve found the right place. Since you’re on your feet Commander, could you pour the coffee?”

He took the order with good grace.

“Thank you, Commander…?” Willis asked, as he handed her a cup.

“Valance, of the
Minstrel
,” he said, glancing down at her jacket and the medals hanging there. “I recognise you, Captain. I’d like to thank you.”

“You’re welcome, but what for?” she asked.

“I have relatives out in Dryad, working in the water industry. If you hadn’t kept the Tample out, it would have gone badly for them.”

The other officers who’d come behind looked at her curiously. All junior commanders and, like Valance, recent promotions.

“We’re from the Twenty-Second Destroyer Squadron,” one of them said .

“Emergency constructions?” asked Ozo.

“That’s us, first of the new Town Class –
Olstyn
,
Obernai
and
Humaita
,” the speaker nodded to the female officer. “Jessica’s
Humaita
is the flak gun armed version.”

Willis grimaced. The Towns were the destroyer equivalent of the Warriors – emergency construction on stock hulls. A few of them had sacrificed their plasma cannons and missile launchers for just two flak guns and magazine space for ammunition. No wonder they were being called the Toothless Terrors. Willis, Ozo and Dandolo exchanged a look.

“Uh-oh,” Willis said.

“I don’t think we’re here to protect orbital platforms,” Ozo commented. Behind, another three captains were walking in. 

Guinness and Chuichi were waiting at the airlock. The faces of both men fell when they saw Willis’s expression. She nodded for them to follow.

As her cabin hatch clunked closed behind them, Willis settled into her seat with a sigh.

“Well the good news is that we’re effectively off strength for the next two days,” she said.

“And the bad news?” Chuichi asked.

“That we’ve been handed a task, which comes with a guarantee that valour medals will be handed out with a shovel, but odds are most of them will be awarded posthumously,” she replied grimly. “The fleet has decided to run a convoy to Saturn and we’re to be part of the escort.”

“Supplies?” asked Guinness

“Mostly empty tankers. We’ll be bringing back fuel for the fleet.”

“Oh, Jesus!” Guinness exclaimed.

“With respect, Captain, but who did you annoy?” Chuichi asked tersely.

“The joys of being in a cheap ship,” Willis replied with an exasperated wave of her hand. “We are more expendable. There will be heavy cover in the shape of the battleship
Fortitude
and a couple more cruisers, but they won’t be going into Saturn’s mass shadow. Based on what I’ve seen so far, we can get to Saturn. The difficult part will be to get back out of her mass shadow with loaded tankers before we get taken apart.”

Both men looked grim. They could appreciate the difficulties she was referring to. Saturn’s mass shadow was nearly five times ‘deeper’ than Earth’s. The Nameless would have hours in which to see and react to the convoy’s move towards the edge.

“However, that isn’t the important bit,” Willis added. “This is the part that will not be spoken of outside this cabin until we are on our way back from Saturn.”

That got their attention.

“The fuel is basically a red herring. Assuming we manage to get all six tankers back in one piece, they would provide enough fuel to run the fleet for three weeks or perhaps half that if we fuel the starforts as well. Our real objective is to provide a target the Nameless can’t ignore at a known time and place, so that the Fast Division can spring its ambush. Obviously we need the element of surprise. There aren’t many civilian radio transmitters left on air, but Headquarters doesn’t want some bloody journalist blabbing. God knows what, if anything, the Nameless understand of human communication, but why take risks?”

“Why indeed, but does Fleet think we’ll make it far enough for a return journey?” Chuichi asked.

“Yes. More by accident than design the Nameless haven’t seen
Minstrel
in action yet. They will most likely first attempt to stop us with light units supported by a few mediums. We should be able to stand that off. So the next time the Nameless will either have to let us through or pile in en masse.”

“I would have thought this was a job for more sophisticated ships, like a trio of Myths...” Chuichi trailed off.

Willis drummed her fingers on the desk while staring into space.

“Captain, did you…”

“Object?” Willis cut him off. “No. This is not a volunteer operation. The fine detail of this plan is still being put together, but if the price of making it work is the loss of our entire squadron, then Headquarters will pay it.”

She looked up at them, her face twisted into a bitter smile.

“It’s not as if they’re wrong.”

Chuichi and Guinness parted ways at the hatch, both seeking time to process what they had just been told. Guinness made his way out of the centrifuge and aft to his own ‘kingdom’ in the engine rooms. Only the duty shift was around and various inspection work was underway. Guinness pulled himself into the small space he called his office.

“I am getting too old for this,” he said to himself.

He caught sight of his reflection in a metal storage hatch – white hair, not too many wrinkles, but then spacers didn’t get to absorb that much UV light.

“You stupid old fart, you
are
too old for this.”

He’d been here before. More than thirty years ago in the last war, as part of a fleet with its back to the wall, staring defeat in the face. Had he been frightened back then? He didn’t think so. Too young and too stupid – well maybe not young but certainly stupid. He’d never had much taste for gambling and to his mind that was what a tactical officer had to be – pushing chips onto the table, hoping to get them back, but willing to accept some might be sacrificed for greater advantage. As an engineer he understood that things could happen in an engine room, bad things. But since then he’d witnessed events such as the
Mississippi
, Alpha Centauri and Dryad, watching good lads and girls die at their posts. Maybe it would be better to go back to the Skipper’s cabin and tell her he couldn’t do it, not again. Tell her while there was still time to replace a frightened old man.

Looking around his eyes fell on a photograph – him, her, the two boys, each with a huge ice cream in their hand, all of them beaming into the camera. For the life of him he couldn’t remember where it had been taken. It had been a family day trip somewhere, back when the lads were both wee. Wherever it was, it had been a great day, one of the best. He hadn’t been around as much as he’d wanted when they were small. But he’d been out here, protecting them all and that was what he was still doing. If he were able to leave, where would he go? Go home to an empty house? Kissing his finger he put it on her face.

“Might be seeing you soon girl,” he whispered.

___________________________

8th February 2068
 

The next few days were a whirl of activity on board
Black Prince
and the rest of the squadron. As ammunition ships and tankers queued to offload, the cruiser’s tanks and magazines were filled to the brim. Several times work was interrupted by Nameless raids, but the aliens never got close to low orbit and work quickly resumed. Willis handed responsibility for loading to Chuichi, while she spent most of her time at
Starforge Three
, helping to thrash out the fine detail of the forthcoming op.

“So we can’t actually be sure Admiral Lewis and the Fast Division will turn up?” asked Commander Valance.

“Well not a hundred percent,” said one of the Headquarters staff officers. “He’s on radio silence, but we have been sending him radio updates. We’ve been careful to keep the amount of radio traffic at a constant level so if the Nameless can hear it, then it looks like the same level of updates we’ve been sending the carriers since December.”

“Lewis is days away from breaking for Earth or Saturn,” Dandolo commented. “In his shoes, I’d rather make my move when all hell is breaking loose than when things are nice and calm.”

“Still seems a bit of a weak point to me,” said the captain of the
Humaita
.

“Not one we can fix, Jessica,” Willis replied as she flicked at the pages on her data pad. “We have to roll with what we can alter and work around what we can’t.”

With her own history of having to plan a defence largely based on guesstimates, no one would argue too hard.

“Y’know, there are already odds being given on whether we’ll make it back in one piece,” Ozo said.

“So what are the odds on us?” Dandolo asked, as he studied a chart of the solar system.

“Pretty long.”

“Put me down for fifty,” said Jessica.

“They might want cash up front,” Ozo pointed out.

“If I don’t make it sir, I won’t have much need for money,” she replied with a smile. “If I do, well then that’s the celebratory booze up paid for.”

“Mines, torpedoes and random zigzags,” said Willis.