The Last Charge (The Nameless War Trilogy Book 3) (19 page)

“Confirmed.”

Black Prince
slid out from in front of the tankers onto the starboard side, while the battered
Minstrel
rolled round and into the gap between
Black Prince
and
Cetshwayo
, her undamaged battery facing the enemy. On the holo, the red blips of Nameless ships solidified as they completed their jump in. Tactical’s analysis settled on one hundred and eighty three ships, all of them only marginally inside the Red Line. Immediately two-dozen torpedoes broke the orbit they’d been holding for days and began to home in on the alien ships.

“Contact separation, we have incoming,” intoned the sensor operator as a swarm of fresh red blips appeared on the screen.

“Point Defence, commence, commence, commence!” Willis ordered.

Space erupted in flame and light as
Minstrel
attempted to fill the area ahead of the incoming missiles with shrapnel, but this time there were so many missiles that they lapped around the barrage. For its part,
Black Prince
began to launch chaff and its flak guns started to pick off missiles.

“Fire Control, concentrate on cap ship missiles!” Willis ordered as their fire lingered for a moment on a group of dual-purpose missiles, ripping them apart. Missiles burned through the formation, but with so much chaff laid down, most only locked on their targets as they passed, but
Black Prince
still jolted as smaller missiles found her. The dorsal wing was carried away and for a moment the upper radar shut down before the Lazarus systems rerouted through a working command line. On the holo a swarm of Nameless fighters came curving around
Minstrel
’s barrage, then behind the alien fleet, a further two-dozen fighters made their jump in from Saturn. The enemy turned away and within minutes the fighters were engaged in their own vicious private battle. The rest of the Nameless fleet started to follow, picking up speed and moving closer to the Blue Line.

Twenty minutes after their jump in and twelve frantic minutes into the fighting,
Black Prince
and
Minstrel
still fought to hold back swarms of missiles. Torpedoes were still closing on and attacking the Nameless fleet, never in sufficient numbers to penetrate the counter fire, but enough to force the aliens to stay close for mutual protection. Two tankers had taken missile hits. Neither strike was crippling, but one of the vessels had to vent much of its fuel to avoid exploding.
Minstrel
’s wall of fire was one the enemy missiles simply couldn’t get through, wiping away much of their numerical superiority but all too soon the barrage ship started to show her Achilles heel. Her rate of fire slowed, then became spasmodic as Commander Valance conserved his dwindling ammunition to deal with the greatest threats. The three austerities were left to pick up the slack.

___________________________

Lunar
dust cascaded down the flanks of
Warspite
as the battleship lifted away from the surface. Around her, the other seven ships of the Fast Division blasted off. As the dust cleared from the passive arrays, Lewis got his first clear look at the wider solar system. Had he committed too late or too soon? A few FTL transmissions from Earth had got through, but the quality of the data was poor. More detailed information was arriving via the passive sensors, but based on light speed transmission that was fifteen minutes out of date. From this, they knew the convoy escort was heavily engaged. But that had been fifteen minutes ago, so were they still standing now? There was no real way to know, but one way or another, the Fast Division was now committed.

“Navigator, how long until we can jump?” Lewis asked.

“Sir, at current acceleration, twelve more minutes.”

“We need another minute for the jump and several more to reach firing range,” said Sheehan. “Those ships have to hang on for another quarter of an hour.”

“Captain, if any of them are still alive when we arrive, issue them instructions to take a blocking position on the left.”

“You really think they’ll still be there, sir?” Sheehan asked as he looked at the distant blips on the holo.

“I’ll look upon it as a useful bonus if they are,” Lewis replied coldly. “But if they are destroyed in the next few minutes or the Nameless choose to disengage...” Lewis momentarily trailed off before resuming. “We’ll only know once we make jump in. But there can be no hesitation; we go in as hard as we can.”

___________________________

Guinness let out a grunt of pain as he slammed into a bulkhead. Then
Black Prince
jolted the opposite way and he was thrown against a wall of electrical cables. A junction box jabbed him hard in the ribs as his flailing hand closed on a handhold and he managed to avoid being thrown again. Through the metal, Guinness could feel the vibrations of the hull. If there had been atmosphere in the engine room he would likely have heard the hull keening and groaning.

“Jesus, Skipper, take it easy,” he half muttered before stopping. If she was throwing the ship around like this, it was because it was required.

Pulling himself from handhold to handhold, Guinness dragged himself into the starboard side generator room and stopped. The compartment was flooding. Blobs of bluish cooling fluid were floating around the compartment.

“What the hell?” Guinness began.

The engines went all astern and, in compliance with the laws of physics, the floating liquid suddenly came rushing towards him. He only had time to either brace himself or slam the hatch shut. He chose the latter.

The fluid hit him with hammer-like force, hurling him backward. Guinness lost all concept of direction. Everywhere he looked was just distorted blue. Then something grabbed him by the arm and dragged him to the ‘surface.’

“Chief! Are you all right?” the generator room petty officer demanded.

“Thought I was drowning,” Guinness muttered vaguely, before pulling himself together. “Where the hell’s this coming from?”

“We’ve been holed somewhere and an entire radiator’s worth of fluid has vented
inward
. We’re trying to keep it out of the generator…”

“Too late!” Guinness shouted.

Behind the petty officer, Electrical Generator Number Two violently shorted out. Shoving him aside, Guinness pulled himself to the control board. More in hope than optimism, he pressed a button on the blackened panel, following which a warning icon appeared on his helmet display alerting him that electricity was shorting across his survival suit. The generator itself might be recoverable in the long run, but its control systems were toast – no one had thought a control panel on a starship would need to be waterproof!
Black Prince
could run on one generator but... Guinness pulled out his computer pad and brought up the latest reading from across engineering.

“Oh, Christ,” he muttered.

“Engine Room, Bridge,” Willis’s voice came across the intercom. “Chief, one of the generators has just gone down.”

“I know, Skipper,” Guinness replied. “It’s not repairable, not now. But that’s not our biggest problem. We are bleeding radiator fluid on the starboard side
into
the ship. Radiator efficiency is dropping fast. The ship is already dumping heat into the heat sinks. At full military output it won’t be long before we either power down or melt!”

“The radiators on the port side are mostly gone, can you transfer fluid?”

“Yes, but unless we find where it’s getting in, it will simply bleed into the engineering spaces. We are already losing systems to short circuits!”

“Do what you can, Chief. I’ll have Damage Control send down extra hands.” Her voice was calmer than he expected. The ship had perhaps ten or twelve minutes to live, yet Willis sounded as if she was merely discussing dinner being late.

“How are we doing?” he asked before he could stop himself, so that just once he would know what was happening beyond the bulkheads.

“We’ve just lost
Minstrel
, Chief. Bridge out.”

Now he understood. Why worry about ten minutes from now if it was unlikely they’d get that far?

“Alright, find me a fucking sealant gun and let’s find that leak!”

___________________________

Even with her engines at one hundred percent, the cruiser
Deimos
shook as she struggled to match the pace of the rest of the Fast Division.
Warspite
was out in front, the heavy cruisers in an arrow head formation and the fighters out on the flanks, with the
Deimos
labouring in the rear.

“Chief, have we anything extra?” Crowe asked across the intercom.

“Sir, short of our armour suddenly falling off, this is the best we can do! In fact, we are damaging the engines right now!”

“Understood,” Crowe replied before turning, “Coms, inform flag we’re giving it everything.”

“Sir.”

With no more orders to give Crowe lapsed into silence. The main holo had zoomed in on the fighting around Earth. The readings were fifteen minutes out of date but they showed the convoy escort frantically trying the hold back the Nameless juggernaut. The FTL transmissions from Earth said the Nameless were still in a position that would put them within firing range of the Fast Division within minutes of jump in. But if the Nameless started jumping out, they’d be clear before the trap could be sprung. It was all Crowe could manage not to fidget as the minutes crept past. 

“Sir, signal from
Warspite
. It’s a conference call from the Admiral.”

“Put it up,” Crowe ordered.

The face that appeared on his screen was shocking. The Admiral’s skin was almost grey with heavy bags under the eyes that suggested sleep had become a mere memory.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “in five minutes we will jump as a single formation. Running order will be as it is now.”

“Sir, my ship can better engage…” Crowe began.

“I know, Commodore, but if the Nameless react fast enough to put missiles out as we jump in,
Deimos
could be crippled or destroyed. Every other ship here can take a hit better. As soon as we clear the jump portal, your ship will take the lead as we close on the enemy. I’m downloading instructions for your torpedoes, which must be used to seal the flanks.”

Lewis glanced away from the screen at something on his own bridge, then he turned back.

“Gentlemen we are about to jump, so I have one final order. We cannot be sure of the tactical situation, but one thing we can be certain of is that this is our last chance to inflict defeat on the enemy. Therefore, in the event that either
Warspite
or myself are lost, I leave you with one standing order: for as long as you can fight or manoeuvre, you are to close upon and engage the enemy.”

Lewis glimpsed away from the screen again then looked back and attempted to smile.

“Good luck to you all,” he concluded.

The screen went blank.

“Engage the enemy more closely,” Crowe said to the blank screen before looking around the bridge. “All hands, prepare to jump.”

Ahead of the Fast Division the fabric of space opened and they plunged down the jump conduit towards God only knew what.

___________________________

Willis watched grimly as the barrage ship broke up. Even as she did so, more missiles slammed in. A few escape pods burst away, but not many. Only one of the destroyers,
Humaita
, remained, while
Cetshwayo
was now an air bleeding wreck, wobbling back and forth, her few remaining point defence guns still defiantly popping away. As
Minstrel
died,
Fortitude
pulled into her place, soaking up the abuse. While the escort slowed, the surviving tankers began to pull away. Then human fighters began to arrive from Earth. Most threw themselves at their opposite numbers, while others interposed themselves between the Nameless and the convoy, whittling down the salvoes. With
Humaita
’s magazines as bare as
Minstrel
’s had been. All she could do was take position astern of the tankers and deploy chaff.

“Captain, signal from the Commodore.”

Dandolo appeared on her screen. There was no sign of Captain Ozo though.

“Captain,” he said without preamble, “the tankers have just crossed the Blue Line and this is as far as we go with them. We will turn to face and make our stand here – make clear to them that they won’t get those tankers without coming through us first. We don’t need to hold for long. The Fast Division is on its way.”

“They should have already arrived,” Willis replied grimly. “Sir, if I open all radiators I have left and coast backwards, I can stay in. Otherwise my engine rooms will start melting in about five minutes.”

“Alright, brake as hard as you can. We just have to hang on a little longer.”

The Commodore then disappeared, his last words sounding like those of a man trying to convince himself.