The Last Charge (The Nameless War Trilogy Book 3)

by Edmond Barrett

  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.

  The fabric of space peeled open ahead of Dauntless as the jump conduit formed and the carrier lunged back into Earth’s solar system. With the distance so short the time in jump space was only seconds before the vessel and her escort dropped back into real space. As the Dauntless crossed the portal threshold, the hatches of the hangars were already opening. The twelve fighters were pushed sideways, out on their docking armatures, then in a single smooth ripple they launched. As the fighters accelerated away, the carrier was already turning. Within minutes she would jump away, back beyond the heliopause until it was time to return to recover her children.

  As Dauntless disappeared, the Squadron cut power and coasted. With radio silence enforced, each crew was left to their own thoughts. Alanna found hers turning inwards and darkening. Once more unto the breach and she wondered how many more times she could do this. She should have been rotated out of the line months ago. But the early war losses meant there weren’t enough pilots to go round. New pilots and the transfers from the national militaries, who had to be trained to land on starships, weren’t keeping pace with losses. So people like her had to keep flying until the day they died or burnt out – usually at the same time.

  Rather than carry on down that path, Alanna checked her watch and navigational data again. Schurenhofer raised an eyebrow but made no comment. There were three fighter carriers deployed beyond the heliopause, Dauntless and her sister ship Huáscar, the older armoured carrier Illustrious and orbiting Earth was Akagi. There were fighters deployed on the various battleships and cruisers of the gun line, and finally there were the ground-based squadrons of Planetary Defence. That added up to a lot of fighters coming from a lot of different directions, with different distances to cover. Consequently, the Dauntless group had to wait to allow time for the fighters from Earth to climb out of the planet’s mass shadow. This strike would likely be the only combined strike the fleet would manage. Once the Nameless jammers came online, Dauntless and the other carriers would have to launch and recover strikes based on sensor readings taken from millions of kilometres out and, as such, hours out of date. Orders from Earth would be limited to either light speed radio transmissions or message drones that might be shot down or aimed at the wrong bit of interstellar space. Her watch let out a beep.

  “No updates?” she asked.

  “Nope. Looks like the Nameless haven’t moved yet. Pity, if the heavies could get in this would be over real quick.”

  “Yeah well, if they’d seen the fleet move you can be sure they would have to,” Alanna murmured. “Okay, here’s hoping everyone else is in position.”

  “Charging jump drive,” Schurenhofer said. “Tally-bloody-ho.”

  As they re-entered real space, Alanna threw Dubious into a fast series of evasive manoeuvres.

  “Contacts,” Schurenhofer reported. “Multiple contacts, confirmed as hostiles.”

  “Friendlies?”

  “Negative friendlies,” Schurenhofer replied. “No one else here, Skip. I think we’re early.”

  On the display, at a range of eighty thousand kilometres, the Nameless fleet was formed into a sphere with the carriers and support ships at the centre and successive smaller ships making up each layer with fighters at the outer surface.

  “Reading two to two-fifty fighters,” Schurenhofer said flatly.

  “Oh Christ,” someone said across the radio.

  “Who the hell said that?” Dati’s voice roared across the net.

  Alanna ignored it.

  “Fight Three! We stick to the plan. Follow me!” she ordered, as they accelerated in. The other two flights formed up behind.

  On the display she could see that a blob of at least seventy fighters had broken away from the fleet and was accelerating towards them, while behind them the enemy carriers launched yet more. Schurenhofer hunched over her console.

  “Acceleration curves and energy outputs match previous observations. I think we’re looking at the same type of fighters we’ve seen before,” she said after a minute.

  “Alright, Flight Three, stand by to engage with missiles.”

  Schurenhofer swiftly tagged two targets and cross referenced with other fighters’ targets. With both groups of fighters accelerating directly towards one anot
her, the range was dropping so fast that the descending numbers on Alanna’s display became a blur.

  “Flight Three,” Alanna ordered. “On my mark, fire and break left. Mark!”

  Dubious shuddered as two missiles detached from their pylons and streaked away. Six more from the rest of the flight all raced towards the Nameless. Alanna pulled to the left and up. As Flight Three pulled away, One and Two fired in turn. The Nameless fighters were caught between trying to pursue and defend themselves from the approaching missiles. They tried to do both and did neither well. Alanna rolled Dubious and in the distance saw brief tiny flashes.

  “Eighteen hostiles down,” Schurenhofer said.

  Someone else in the Squadron must have come up with the same count and got overexcited.

  “Oh yeah! Eat that!”

  It must have been someone in Flight Two as she heard Udaltsov shout at them.

  A smattering of new contacts appeared as the Nameless fighters launched their own missiles. Dubious’s threat detection system ran a swift analysis. They were the same dual-purpose missiles the Nameless had been using since the start of the war, slightly too small for anti-ship work and slightly too heavy for anti-fighter. With the Ravens curving round the edge of the enemy fighters, the missiles weren’t able to build up speed and those that reached them were picked off. As Alanna turned them in for another pass, another speckle of green dots appeared at the edge of her display.

  “I see them,” Alanna said, “about time.”

  For twenty minutes human fighters swirled around the Nameless formation. Although enemy fighters were steadily picked off, their carriers kept feeding fresh units in. As gaps opened in the fighter screen, the Planetary Defence and Battle Fleet squadrons darted in to strike directly at the fleet and ran into a hail of counter fire. The battle became a swirl of chaos as individual flights and even separate fighters fought and died. Flights One and Two pressed on into the sphere of starships, while Alanna and Flight Three provided top cover. As both sides exhausted their supplies of missiles, the fighting closed to gun range and the Nameless weight of numbers started to tell. Some moments Dubious was the attacker, pouncing on slower, less manoeuvrable opponents, then seconds later she would frantically twist and turn to avoid getting boxed in. Her wingman stuck gamely on position, but clearly overwhelmed, his fire came only in spasms. An American Cobra fighter streaked past Dubious, close enough for Alanna to see with the naked eye, one engine ablaze and with four enemy fighters in pursuit.

  “Live bait,” she said as she pulled in behind and took down two before they realised she was there. Her wingman potted the third and the fourth fled. The American gave a brief wing waggle as he headed for safety.

  “Second lot of strike boats are arriving,” Schurenhofer reported. Alanna couldn’t remember the first lot. But this time she was close enough to see the strike go wrong. A large group of Nameless fighters broke off from the dogfights and accelerated towards the strike boats. Human fighters tried to intercept but were blocked and engaged. The strike boats launched their missiles at long range and broke off. The fighters caught them and the gunboats succumbed while bravely attempting to protect their strike boat comrades. Only half survived long enough to jump away. As Alanna dodged Dubious around successive passes by Nameless fighters she could see the icons for the strike boats blink out and was glad they didn’t share a radio channel.

  “Flight Three, this is Squadron Leader,” Dati’s voice came through. “We’ve exhausted ordnance. Prepare to disengage.”

  “Understood Squadron Leader,” Alanna replied. “Standing by to cover you. A for Abbey, B for Bold – close on my position.”

  Pulling Dubious up she aimed into the nearest formation of Nameless fighters, throwing them into confusion. Flights One and Two flashed through the gap and before the Nameless could reorganise. Alanna gathered her flight and followed them at full power.

  Dauntless jumped in ten minutes after the squadron arrived at the rendezvous point. Time enough for Alanna to see that both Flights One and Two were missing a plane each and that two of hers were showing damage codes on their transponders. The landing was ragged, taking nearly twenty minutes, but this time there was no public abuse from Dati as he waited his turn. Alanna was among the last to land and leaving Schurenhofer to deal with shutdown, she left the hangar to find her troops.

  Ponta was out of his fighter by the time Alanna got into the hangar. He and his weapons controller were looking up at the damage. With the hangar still pressurising, they were both still helmeted, but despite that Alanna could see their grim expressions. The vertical stabiliser had been shot to pieces. Not necessary for space flight, but if B for Bold tried to fly atmospheric; she’d be as airworthy as a brick.

  “Ma’am,” said the weapons controller when he saw her.

  “What happened?” Alanna asked looking at the stump of the stabiliser.

  “I was going after a pair and they sucked me into a mob of them.” Ponta said with a shake of his head. Unconsciously his fingers rubbed at the front of his flight suit, where the rosary beneath pressed up against his skin.

  “They would have got us, but for the fact another squadron engaged them. Americans, I think.”

  “Someone up here… Someone out here was looking after us,” his weapons controller added.

  “Yes, something like that,” Ponta said, still rubbing the rosary.

  “Go,” Alanna ordered, “the computer will have finished downloading your logs. The intelligence officer will be waiting to debrief you.”

  “Yes ma’am,” Ponta replied, after taking a last look at the damage.

  At first glance the fighter A for Abbey didn’t appear damaged, but the deck crew gathered around the crew access hatch indicated otherwise. As she pushed off from the deck, Alanna could see weapon strikes on the fuselage and, most ominous of all, two panels of the cockpit canopy were shattered. Alanna dreaded to think what damage had been inflicted within.

  The deck chief saw her coming.

  “They’re both still alive,” he said, “though their guardian angels must have racked up one hell of an overtime bill on this one.”

  As he spoke, the deck crew started to stand back from the access way as the first of the crew pulled themselves out. There was something odd about the flight suit and it took Alanna a moment to work out what. The chest area and helmet were a darker grey, almost a black, with all insignia gone. Alanna abruptly realised what it was – the flight suit was scorched. When they were hit, something had come close enough to burn but not kill. The first figure in the now anonymous suit reached back to help as a shaky hand reached out to feel around the hatch.

  “Where are the fucking medics?” Jacka’s anguished voice came from the first suit to emerge.

  “Down here, Lieutenant,” the Chief replied. “Easy now.”

  As the injured weapons controller was taken into the medics’ care, Alanna took a quick glance inside the cockpit. Almost every surface showed evidence of heat damage, with the exception of the seats, protected by the bodies of the crew.

  “We took a direct hit, ma’am,” said Jacka from behind her. Turning, Alanna found Jacka floating beside her, holding herself steady with one hand on the wing. If they’d been in gravity, Jacka probably would have collapsed. Her visor was darker than it should have been – the polarisation must have been damaged. If her suit had looked bad before, up close if was frightening. It must still have been airtight to get her this far, but Alanna guessed she’d have to be cut out of it. She took Jacka by the arm and pushed them back towards the airlock out of the hangar. Catching sight of her weapons controller being strapped to a board for transport, Jacka resisted weakly.

  “What can be done is being done. He’ll catch up with you at sickbay,” Alanna told her.

  As the sickbay, orderlies cut through the scorched suit while Jacka talked.

  “They nearly got us as we were disengaging. We took a hit from the port side. I didn’t even see them coming. It was a passing shot,
so they only landed a couple of hits, but the first one hit the canopy. It must have caught us at a right angle because it went straight through – in one side and out the other, without hitting anything else.”

  Alanna felt sick. The bolt from a plasma gun was held together by a magnetic field. The cockpit canopy obviously hadn’t provided enough resistance to disrupt that field. If it had hit anything else on its way through, it would have lost integrity instantly and quite simply burnt out everything in the cockpit.

  “But James was looking in the direction of first hit.”

  Jacka cast her eyes towards the section of the sickbay where curtains had been pulled and the lights turned down low.

  “Afterwards, he said he couldn’t see,” she added in an anguished voice.

  “His helmet visor probably over polarised and locked. Let’s not panic. Let’s wait until the Doctor is done, then if we have to panic, well, we’ll panic with precision.”

  “Lieutenant Commander Shermer?” said a rating from the hatch.

  “Yes?”

  “You’re wanted in the briefing room.”

  “Alright,” she replied, before patting Jacka on the arm. “I’ll be down again as soon as I can. Try to get some rest.”

  Dati was waiting for her.

  “Where were you?” he demanded, but for once without any real anger.

  “Sickbay, sir.”

  “And?”

  “Lieutenant Jacka is pretty shaken, but will likely be okay. Her weapons controller is probably permanently blinded though,” Alanna replied tiredly, as it all just seemed to catch up with her.

  “Sit down before you fall down,” Dati grunted. “Intelligence is still compiling but at a rough count, we took down maybe thirty odd fighters, a couple of escorts and damaged a cruiser. They shot down most of our anti-ship missiles.”

  “Not a bad start.”

  Dati sat down beside her.

  “This was our big strike and I don’t think we hit anything the Nameless gave a rat’s ass about.” Dati shook his head. “Each member of the Squadron is the product of years of training, yet here we are on day one and four of them are dead and one might as well be for all the use he’ll be to us. When I think what the old Dauntless did with obsolete fighters.”