The Last Charge (The Nameless War Trilogy Book 3) (2 page)

“Coms, Bridge. Laser signal from
Scorpion
.”

“My screen, Coms,” Berg replied.

On the small screen of her command chair, the faces of Captain ‘Bull’ Liv and Commander Dorsey of the
Puma
appeared.

“Commanders, we’re in the shits,” Liv coarsely began. “We’re in too close to break off. If we try it, we’ll be taken apart before we can make it over the Red Line and jump away. So we’ll have to plough straight though, lay down the hurt and hope we cause enough havoc to get clear. And when I say straight through, I mean straight fucking through. Stand by both of you for full orders.”

The screen blanked out again before Berg could reply.

“Yes, sir,” she muttered to herself but without rancour. Liv wasn’t wrong. Unfortunately.

“Guns, stand by for direction,” she ordered across the command channel. “Plan A just went out the airlock. Plan B is a frontal charge, then bug out in the confusion.”

“Fire Control, Bridge. Understood.”

On the holo the newly arrived ships were still milling around, but the three original escorts hadn’t moved. With so many new arrivals at close quarters, their detection equipment might have been overwhelmed by the mass of engine emissions at such close quarters. Or their operators might be distracted, assuming they even had operators in any sense a human could recognise. 

The movements of the convoy appeared to be dictated by the transports. They were circling round the space gate in a line astern formation.

“Sensors, Bridge. The space gate is moving. We are reading active thrusters. It is turning, three, four… stabilising at a turn of three degrees to port, vertical climb of two degrees.”

The transports were definitely lining up on the gate, preparing to use it to jump away. In thirty minutes at most they would be gone again. After more than a year of war, they were still no closer to understanding how those damn gates, or Nameless jump drives in general, worked. After a jump, a human, or any of the other three known races, would be extending radiator panels, dumping waste heat they’d had to store in heat sinks during their time in jump space as fast as possible. But the Nameless ships, both transports and warships, had much smaller radiators. Since heat build up didn’t appear to be a factor in their drives, why they seemed to hit the wall in terms of jump distance at about four point seven and a half light years was a mystery. God only knew what happened to the gateship transports when the gate they were to use got destroyed. They probably had to either divert to another or circle waiting for it to be replaced.

“Bridge, Coms. Download from Flag.”

“My screen.”

Mintz looked over her shoulder as she quickly skimmed down through it. There wasn’t much – there hadn’t been time for anything complicated. Still Berg read down with a growing sense of unease. When she glanced up, she could see matching alarm in Mintz’s eyes.

“Captain Liv is clearly a man of his word,” she observed as calmly as she could manage. “Bridge, Fire Control. I’m sending you firing instructions. Stand by to engage.”

There wasn’t time or the means for discussion, Liv was the man in charge and he’d made the call. Now they had to see how well it would work.

“Receiving,” replied the gunner over the intercom.

“Depressurise all compartments. Lieutenant Mintz, you’d better get to Damage Control,” Berg ordered as she tightened her seat restraints, “All hands, stand by for contact.”

Another twelve minutes crept past, until finally the human formation crossed the imaginary line in space where their gun entered effective range. On the bridge of the
Mantis
no order was given, the commands having already been programmed into the computers. The four guns of each destroyer fired simultaneously and a split second later the engines crash started. If the Nameless got any warning from their Faster Than Light sensors, it wasn’t enough. Four plasma bolts slammed into and through each of the two cruisers, while the third salvo smashed into the gate, just as a gateship passed through and started to fade away as it jumped.

“Target, heavy damage!” shouted Tactical.

On the holo, Berg could see that the Nameless ships had been thrown into confusion. The four gateships, which had been queuing to make their jump, were taking frantic evasive action as the shattered gate tumbled back towards them. The one that had been mid-jump when the gate was smashed somehow seemed to crash back into real space, disintegrating as it did so. But if the convoy escorts were thrown into disarray, the gate guards turned to bear.

“Missile ports opening, infrared spike. Contact separation, we have incoming!”

A cloud of new missiles appeared on the holo as the gate guards launched their cap ship and dual-purpose missiles.

“Stand by, Point Defence,” Berg ordered through gritted teeth as their ship accelerated and the G load pressed her into the seat.
Mantis
could probably survive a hit or two from the smaller dual-purpose missiles, but a direct hit by a cap ship missile, would reduce any destroyer to vapours. But the destroyer guns weren’t coming to bear on the approaching missiles, not yet. Instead their second salvo stabbed out at the three escorts that had arrived with the convoy. The gate guards would need at least two minutes to reload their smaller missiles, longer still the larger tubes. In that same time the convoy escorts could add to the fire against the approaching human ships if they were allowed to. In the trade off between attack and defence, Liv chose to attempt to kill ships rather than missiles.

An alarm sounded across the command channel as the Nameless missiles accelerated in.

“Point Defence, commence, commence, commence!” Berg barked out.  “Countermeasures, full spread!”

Out in front of the formation, the two gunboats started to fire, laying down a barrage the approaching missiles would have to come through, while behind them the missile popped chaff to confuse the missile homing systems
. Some missiles detonated as point defence found its mark, others lost their lock and veered away. Some got through.

One of the missile boats took a direct hit from a cap ship missile that was only marginally smaller than its target. The missile boat disappeared in a flash that consumed both the boat and one of its neighbours. The contact was so fast Berg barely had time to register their loss before the icon for
Scorpion
started blinking.

“Coms, Bridge. We’ve lost link up with
Scorpion
!”

“
Puma
?”

“Still online, Captain,” Communications replied.

Berg glanced away from the holo and switched her screen to one of the external cameras. With the ship going full burn there was a lot of vibration, but she could see that
Scorpion
’s guns were still firing, as was point defence. But there was a ragged gouge in the hull that intersected with one of the centrifuges folded down pods. The ship wasn’t turning or making any evasive manoeuvres. Instead it looked to be locked on the last set of programmed instructions. As she watched, the destroyer’s main guns fired again. So hurt but not fatally, either the bridge or its personnel had been knocked out and as the next most senior officer…

“Coms, inform
Puma
I am in command.” Berg snapped out as she looked back at the holo.

Liv’s plan had called for the formation to make a slight turn to cross just astern of the Nameless ships. That manoeuvre could already be pre-programmed into
Scorpion
’s helm, However, chances were it needed activation, because if there were personnel losses or command lines cut, then they might not be able to turn. So if the rest did, then
Scorpion
would be left isolated and vulnerable. As it was, with
Scorpion
’s coms down, the three destroyers couldn’t cross-link their fire control to ensure no overlap, so their firing effectiveness was already degraded.

“Helm, cancel course change. Maintain current heading.”

Someone on the command net drew breath sharply.

“Skipper,” said the helmsman, “that is dangerously close to…”

“Noted helmsman!” Berg cut him off, before adding quietly, “be ready to take evasive action.”

If the helmsman replied she didn’t hear him as her attention shifted to fire control. Quickly she assigned targets for the two destroyers and the missile boats.

“Coms! Upload to all ships’ missile targets. Execute in twenty seconds.”

“Understood, Skipper. Gunboats report fifty percent ammunition expended.”

“Order them to fall back behind the missile boats to cover the retreat.”

The timing was beyond tight. The two gunboats slid through the formation of the surviving eight missile boats just as the human ships crossed into missile range. Each boat salvoed off four missiles, while between them
Mantis
and
Puma
added another eight from their internal launchers. The missiles spread out as they bore down on the alien starships. The dual-purpose missiles that the Nameless now launched weren’t aimed at the charging human ships, instead they homed in on their opposite numbers. In front of
Mantis
, missiles started to smash together

“Bridge, Sensors. New contacts, those escorts have just launched fighters! Two each!”

That answered the question, but Berg didn’t have time to worry about it now. The two groups of ships were about to intersect. The Nameless vessels were still barely moving but no two of them were moving on the same track. The bridge collision detection warning started to scream.

“Helm, go manual!” Berg shouted.

The strike group flashed through the milling confusion of the Nameless ships.

“Cut power. Helm! Reverse face. Fire Control, fire at will!”

The bridge crew clung to their seats as the destroyer spun through one hundred and eighty degrees.

As
Mantis
coasted backwards, firing into the swiftly receding targets, Berg took stock of the situation. The first thing she noticed was the number of friendly blips was wrong.

“Sensors, I’m not seeing one of the gunboats. Where is it?”

There was a pause as the officer at the sensor control checked, then he wound back the computer records before turning back towards her with a downcast expression.

“I think they went into one of the gateships, Skipper,” he said.

“Shit,” Berg muttered.

On the holo, several Nameless ships were also missing. It looked like they’d got one of the cruisers, a couple of the escorts and all but one of the gateships. The four fighters seemed to be the only Nameless units attempting to actively engage them. The velocity at which the strike group had flashed past had left them floundering astern. With the human ships moving directly away from them, any missile their ships fired would be left trying to make a stern chase. They’d exhaust their fuel long before they reached their targets. The fighters were actively pursuing but it would take a lot more than four crude Nameless fighters to inconvenience two undamaged destroyers. But there were more vulnerable targets than the destroyers. The surviving gunboat only carried a single weapons mount, with limited ammunition. Even just four of those crappy fighters would overwhelm the gunboat, chase down the otherwise unarmed missile boats and gut them.

The Nameless tactics were continuing to evolve. At least this time the surprise hadn’t been a painful one.

“Skipper, signal from
Scorpion
, voice only.”

“Put it on,” Berg ordered.

“Commander,” Liv’s voice crackled across the link, “we’ve recovered helm control from the engine room. We took splinter damage, which severed the control runs and internal communications. Update me on the situation.”

“We’ve destroyed the gate, sir, and several enemy ships, with most of the remainder damaged. We’re now outbound…”

“Can we go around for another pass? Finish them before they can jump?”

“Negative sir,” Berg replied. “We’ve lost a gunboat and the enemy have put fighters up. The missile boats need
Mantis
and
Puma
. Without us the fighters will take them apart.”

Even more pressing, they needed to get the damaged
Scorpion
clear of the combat zone but put that way, the Bull would probably insist on going back in, to prove some kind of point.

There was silence on the link.

“Alright, Commander, lead us out,” Liv eventually agreed, but grudgingly.

Ten hours after
Mantis
and her strike group left, a reconnaissance boat made a prearranged pass through the system. It found the gate had already been replaced.

Chapter Two

The Few

15th November 2067

“Do you have anything else to add, Captain?” Admiral Clarence asked as he accepted her report.

“No sir, I don’t believe so,” Captain Faith Willis replied with a slight shake of her head.

A woman of average height and slender build, she presented the very image of a professional military officer. The three rings on her uniform sleeve had the shine of a new promotion. 

“All right, Captain.”

Clarence glanced at the computer screen and scrolled up and down aimlessly before sighing tiredly.

“Is there anything I can do to help? I might be able to lay my hands on a few more experienced ratings.”

“Thank you sir, but I don’t think so. Any newcomers at this stage would just add integration problems. Although if you have any experienced petty officers...”

Clarence shook his head.

“We’ll manage then. Thank you, sir.”

As she rose to leave, the Admiral spoke.

“As I think I’ve said to you before, Captain, good luck out there.”

The shuttle trip was a short one but from Willis’s position in the passenger compartment there was a lot to see. Earth’s lower orbit was clogged with the ships of the fleet, planetary defence starforts, construction platforms of the orbital industries and scores of civilian vessels seeking the protection of their home world. If the grapevine was to be believed, certain government figures were using civilian ships to transport their families to the safety of the Dryad system. However as someone who’d nearly had her arse shot off there, Willis severely doubted it. No, if there was any place of safety at all, it was here on Earth.

The shuttle homed in on one of the smaller construction platforms and a few minutes later Willis was pulling herself along the station passageway. As she went, both her own personnel and those of the dock itself pushed past, carrying equipment and supplies. Passing a viewing port that faced down into the dock, Willis caught sight of the harshly lit vessel within. Although there was a lot to – God there was a lot to do – she pulled up at the port and pushed herself down until her boot magnets locked onto the deck plating. Leaning down on the rail she stifled a sigh.

There within, lay The
Black Prince
, second ship of what Headquarters had originally called the Emergency Construction Programme, before boldly rechristening them ‘Warrior Class Cruisers.’ Most ships within the fleet collected at least a couple of nicknames during their time, but the Warriors hadn’t even gone into service before receiving their first. The crews and now even officers were already referring to them rather more accurately as ‘Austerity Class Cruisers.’ To an experienced eye like Willis’s, it was easy to see why.

The first weeks of the war had seen losses more savage than even the most pessimistic planner had allowed for. The fleet’s pre-war workhorse, the Myth Class, had on average each taken three and a half years to build. Their successors, the Statesman Class, required nearly four. But those planners had made allowances for at least some losses. Any war would likely be won or lost before a like-for-like replacement could be got into service. So instead, the fleet had constructed a number of basic space frames that could be finished much more quickly – in essence vessels that could be brought into service fast. But such speed of construction came at a price.

Black Prince
wouldn’t be the equal of the vessels she replaced. In terms of plasma cannons, a Myth class ship had four double gun turrets, while the Warriors got two triples. They did at least have flak guns – one double mount on each of the dorsal and ventral towers between the plasma cannons and the radar masts – which at least gave far better fields of fire than the Myth’s sponson mounts. The planned missile launchers had been deleted with the internal volume given over to more magazine space for flak gun ammunition. So on paper they were packing about two thirds of the armament of a Myth with a matching reduction in ship size. But Willis thought to herself as she pushed off from the deck, bald statistics never told the whole story.

In time of war or peace, no military ever got everything it wanted and for the internationally funded Battle Fleet, that was especially true. There was a joke both inside and out of the fleet that during the Contact War, when the fleet closed on the enemy, it was to save money by getting its ammunition back. Certainly it was true to say that in peacetime, something had to be pretty much comprehensively broken before the fleet discarded it. When ships went in for maintenance and upgrade cycles, any equipment removed was stockpiled on the Moon. With the start of the war, those stockpiles had been opened and used to turn the stock hulls into functioning warships in a little over a year.

Black Prince
’s engines had originally belonged to members of the Continental class cruisers. Her six plasma cannons had been removed from the Myths during their first upgrade cycle, while the radar and passive sensor arrays had originally belonged to two entirely separate classes of destroyers. Not everything was old – the reactors at least were new constructions. Hell, if they’d tried to stick in second hand reactors, then God and all his angels could not have got her aboard. The armour plate was also new but the thickness was unspectacular and, with it attached to the surface of the hull rather than integrated into the structure, they weren’t getting as much protection as might otherwise have been achieved for the mass. There was a part of Willis, specifically that part of her that loved new gadgets, which wanted to go into a corner and have a little cry when she thought about her new command. But then another part of her would sternly point out that compared her last command – the elderly cruiser
Hood
–
Black Prince
was a formidable warship.

Obviously alerted to her return, her two most senior officers were waiting for her at the personnel access hatch. Between them they summed up the duality in
Black Prince
’s crew. Her first officer, Lieutenant Commander Chuichi, was new to her and recently promoted. He seemed competent if slightly glum by nature. David Guinness, her Chief Engineer, was by contrast an old hand and veteran of the fighting around Dryad. He’d kept
Hood
going until the day the old ship was shot to pieces around them. Willis had always had suspicions he was overage for frontline service, but he was good at his job and what she didn’t know, she didn’t have to report. He along with about half the survivors from
Hood
had followed her to
Black Prince
. Chuichi was looking even more dour than usual. With his computer pad tucked under his arm, Guinness looked far more cheerful.

“Captain,” Chuichi said as they both saluted.

“Gentlemen. Follow me please,” Willis replied as she pulled herself past.

Climbing down into the centrifuge, they headed for officers’ row.

“I’ve been informed that as of oh nine Hundred hours, we are formally on strength,” she continued as she closed her cabin hatch. “Talk to the cook. We can’t manage much of a commissioning ceremony, but ask him to do his best. The crew has worked hard up to now and they’ll have to work even harder from here on in.”

If such a thing was possible, Chuichi looked even gloomier.

“That’s asking a lot,” he said. “The crew are still getting used to the equipment.”

In response, Guinness patted his computer pad, on which he had uploaded a copy of the ship’s tech ‘bible’.

“But Commander,” he said, “the advantage of old equipment is it doesn’t have any surprises to throw at us. All the kinks have been seen and we have the fixes on record, not to mention that a lot of my lads are used to older tech than this.”

Chuichi let out a non-committal grunt.

“What about the rest of the squadron?” he asked.

“
Cetshwayo
and
Saladin
are also being commissioned. We are to be designated Cruiser Squadron Twenty Three. Commodore Dandolo on
Saladin
will be squadron commander and we are joining the Home Fleet.”

“It is a lot to ask of any crew,” Chuichi said morosely, “to go from commissioning to combat inside a few weeks.”

“I know, Commander, but we aren’t the only ones and well… a few weeks from now, we will be shot at. We can do it out there where we can shoot back or we can be sitting here where we can’t. I know which one I would prefer.”

___________________________

The flak cruiser
Deimos
hung in geo stationery orbit over Mar’s equator. Around her in matching orbits were another dozen ships, mostly civilian. There was a continuous cycle of shuttles leaving the ships, being passed on their way by those climbing away from the planet surface. Five years old and designed with a projected operational lifespan of twenty-five years, she should have been in her prime. But
Deimos
was now a hard used warhorse. Many hull plates showed the scars of minor strikes, others dished inwards from the force of near misses and a few were paler and cleaner – new plates covering repairs to major damage. On board, Commodore Ronan Crowe was making his way down to his cabin when a furious bellow erupted from the compartment ahead.

“For the love of sweet Jesus! Would you shut your yap hole! People are trying to fucking sleep!”

As Crowe passed through he caught sight of a couple of shocked civilians and a tired and irritated looking petty officer leaning out of a sleeping alcove. One of the civilians caught sight of Crowe and by his expression clearly expected him to discipline the petty officer. Crowe kept walking.

The ship’s Bosun was waiting at the hatch to his cabin.

“Come in Benson,” Crowe said as he passed. “So what have you got for me?” he added, as he threw his cap onto the bunk before absentmindedly scratching his balding crown.

For years he had wondered which he’d do first – go grey or bald, but it looked like his receding hairline would carry the day. 

“We’ve found places for everyone so far, sir,” Benson reported as he stood at parade rest, “but a couple of compartments are starting to look like tins of sardines.”

“We won’t have to put up with them for much more than a day Bosun.”

“Sir, how many more are we getting? It’s just that we are overtaxing life support as it is.”

“How much redundancy do we have left?”

“The book says we can take another twenty warm bodies, but the book also says that we’re badly overdue a full system purge and overhaul. If we suffer any kind of failure,” Benson paused, “well then things will get a bit interesting, sir.”

“In which case we’ll declare an emergency and either head to Earth or offload them on someone else,” Crowe replied as he checked his computer for any other messages. There were a few from Headquarters and one from his wife. He moved it to be looked at later, then winced as he noticed the previous one still showed as unread.

“A lot of the civvies have non-standard survival suits – cheap rubbish, which won’t mate with our systems, sir,” Benson persisted. “If we have to depressurise, we can’t link them to a flow system. Some of them have small O2 tanks that give as little as twenty minutes…”

“Bosun, I appreciate your concerns, but we won’t be in action before we drop them off. Our presence here is no more than a precaution. Lieutenant Shermer is due to bring another dozen from the surface, then that’s us full.”

“Yes, sir,” the Bosun agreed in the resigned tone of a man who didn’t agree but knew there was nothing to be gained by further argument.

“Still a few precautions won’t hurt. Get a few hands to do carbon dioxide checks. Make sure we don’t have foul spots. These people with cheap suits, make sure they are moved to sickbay if we have to depressurise.”

When the Bosun was gone Crowe sat back in his chair and heaved a long sigh. It had certainly come to something when orbiting around Mars – pretty much Earth’s back yard – was enough to leave some of the crew feeling exposed. But this crew had seen a lot, maybe even too much. The Massacre at
Baden, Kite String, the defeat at and retreat from Junction – they been in the thick of it – and all in little more than a year. They’d seen the Nameless spring surprise after surprise on them: jump in capability far closer to a planet than any human ship could manage, FTL sensors, mass driver missiles and most recently fighters. It was no wonder that in the minds of too many, the Nameless were becoming less a military opponent and more an all-powerful bogeyman. We need a victory, and we need it soon, Crowe thought. He then smiled unhappily to himself. The next battle would be fought in the skies above Earth and if they didn’t win that one – well, that would be the end of all humanity’s problems.

Turning his chair, Crowe stared at the hologram being projected against the cabin wall. The powerful cameras mounted on
Deimos
’s outer hull could make out robots far below, hard at work darkening the surface and pumping out CO2. There weren’t many people on Mars – less than two thousand, all part of what was usually referred to as The Great Experiment. But now as the human race contracted inwards, back towards the world of its birth, it was being abandoned. Around Saturn the forces of planetary defence were being strengthened, while the orbital hydrogen processing facilities were being evacuated of all but the few brave souls willing to remain behind to form skeleton crews. The rest headed for Earth to be with their families.